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In my ten years as a history textbook writer, I was constantly trying to sneak Benedict Arnold into my American Revolution manuscript. The editors were constantly cutting him out.

I’ll never forget my first attempt. I proposed introducing Arnold early in the Revolution unit. Most kids know he was a traitor, I told the editors, but few know what he actually did. So right away his presence adds this spark of mystery and danger. And as we follow him through the narrative, as we do with Washington, we’re surprised to see that he’s the star of some of the greatest adventure stories in American history. I pitched a little lesson opener, set in the raucous tax protest days of 1760s New England, in which Arnold drags a sailor—a man who informed on Arnold’s smuggling—out of a tavern and whips him in the New Haven town square.

There was a long silence in our conference room. The editors exchanged glances. They appeared to be in a small amount of physical pain.

“Benedict Arnold makes me… nervous,” said one.

“Me too,” said the other.  

I wanted to shout: That’s exactly the point! That’s what makes Arnold such a priceless character. He made George Washington nervous. He made Congress nervous. He was a loose-cannon action hero two centuries before Hollywood discovered the genre!

Instead, I moved on, and tried again later, and failed again, and tried more, and eventually gave up. But what can only be described as my Arnold obsession lived on. I spent weekends and holidays driving to the places Arnold lived and fought. And I soon discovered that historical sites are just like textbooks: Benedict Arnold makes them nervous.

In Norwich, Connecticut, the town where Arnold was born and raised, you can search out one obscure sign, at the site of his boyhood home. And it’s not even official; it was posted by a local jeweler. In New Haven, where he rose to local prominence as a rabblerousing Patriot, there’s nothing. At the Saratoga battlefield park, where Arnold led Americans to their “turning point” victory, there’s a statue of Arnold’s lower leg, the leg wounded in Arnold’s furious charge at the British. The plaque speaks of “the most brilliant soldier of the Continental Army.” Arnold’s name doesn’t appear.

The best Arnold signage is found along the route of his incredible march through the unmapped wilderness of Maine, en route to attack Quebec in the fall/winter of 1775. But even these signs are few, far between, and rusted—until you cross the line into Canada. Then you see Arnold plaques, the Arnold River, even hotels and bars named for Arnold.

I guess it’s that, as a country, we don’t handle contradiction well. We like our heroes pure, comic book-like. George Washington must be presented this way, as I learned from painful experience as a textbook writer. Of course, that’s why kids think Washington is unbearably boring.

 

Now it’s time to bring back Benedict Arnold. Not to apologize for him, not to absolve him from guilt, but to celebrate his story. A country only gets a few cracks at tragic adventure tales this good. Let’s face it: Washington never did any

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Hi all in "The Land of Blog,"

Tis I, The Sith with the mostest, Darth Bill. First off I feel I need to counterpoint some comments, with all due respect to the commenters, from the last post about Benedict Arnold.

First Dan commented:

"Thanks for the review. I want to look for this one and share it with my kids. Benedict Arnold is a chance to study character in the face of discouragement and frustration and injustice. He could have been a hero. In the end, he failed, not because his courage failed, but because his character failed, and embittered, he tossed his right to be a hero away. In spite of his abilities and amazing courage, he loses the character war. Character does count."



<------ Artist Rendition of Benedict Arnold




Carl also commented:

"Didn't mean to get on a soapbox, but it's true, guys. Hey, while you read the Benedict Arnold book, you ought to check out Washington at Valley Forge by Russell Freedman. (I reviewed it on the February 16 post titled "What a Book! What a Man!" It would be a good companion to the Benedict Arnold book because it shows how Washington, facing a lot of similar frustrations and discouragements, managed to overcome them."

<------ Artist Rendition of George Washington




While I do not disagree with either of them that character counts quite allot and it is a bit disappointing about some of the things Benedict Arnold did when he changed sides in The Revolutionary War, I would not go as far as to say Benedict Arnold was completely lacking in character nor that George Washington was far his superior in the department of character. One must look not through the eyes of history knowing what we know now, but look at the people and events that where happening at the time. If you read the book (and I plan on reading the one about George Washington), you will see that Arnold looked at what was happening with the Revolution at the time and from what he saw and experienced made a very difficult decision based on that. Anyway no one is perfect and hindsight is always 20/20, that's my take on it and my opinion of Arnold's "Character." Nuff Said!!!!!!


And now for something a bit on the lighter side:




Hulk The Lounge Lizard Singing "Hulk Got You Under Hulk Skin"



Wolverine First Class: Wolverine-By-Night by Fred Lente, Mark Sumerak, Francis Portela, Hugo Petrus and Scott Koblish - If you love Wolverine, you will love this Graphic Novel. The Graphic Novel collects issues "Wolverine: First Class" issues 9 - 12 and "Wolverine and Power Pack" #2. The first story included has Wolverine visiting martial art expert Shang-Chi in order to seek aid in taking on his number one nemesis Sabretooth. The second story is a two parter in which Wolverine and Kitty Pryde take on Werewolves. Things go from bad to worse when Wolverine is bitten by one of the Werewolves and becomes one of them. Luckily Kitty finds a friend in Jack Russel, a somewhat "friendly" Werewolf, to help out. The story after this one has Cyclops returning to the X-Men after a long leave of absence. Along with fighting an ancient monster trapped within a temple and keeping Wolverine and Cyclops from killing one another, Kitty must choose which one should be her mentor. The last story has Wolve inviting Power Pack to the Xavier Institute where they learn the sad truth about bigotry towards mutants when Sentinels attack. I have been very impressed with this Graphic Novel Series and highly recommend it.

Well until next time me amigos,

Peace,

Bill

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If you've spent any time around middle school kids, you know they devour Jim Murphy's works of nonfiction.  Murphy has won two Newbery Honors for his books The Great Fire and An American Plague: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793.  His latest book, The Real Benedict Arnold, was brought to my attention this fall by a Vermont librarian who purchased it as a non-fiction companion to go along with my middle grade historical novel Spitfire, about a young girl who disguises herself as a boy to join Arnold's fleet on Lake Champlain during the American Revolution. 






Jim was kind enough to take time out from his writing to answer some questions for blog readers.

Thanks so much for joining us, Jim! Your most well-known works of non-fiction for middle grade readers have focused on disasters — fire, the blizzard, the yellow fever epidemic.  What drew you to write a book about Benedict Arnold?

Yes, I’ve done a lot of books that focus on one or another form of disaster.  In fact, my friends jokingly call me the Master of Disaster.  I try to write nonfiction that reads like a good “you are there” story and a fire or blizzard or whatever has the built feature of having a beginning, middle, and an end.  What’s more, these are often dramatic events that people who survive write about in vivid and dramatic prose.  Combine the event and the people and the result has the potential to be a book that allows readers to experience a part of our history in an active, involving way. 

So you’re right that The Real Benedict Arnold was a bit of a departure for me.  I was drawn to him because most books about the American Revolution or about Arnold simply paint him with the traitor brush and never try it discover why he turned against the Cause.  In addition, very few give him proper credit for his military abilities.  He was, in my opinion, the best field general that the colonies had and deserves a great deal of credit for the ultimate American victory.   

Where did your research for this book take you?  Were there many surprises along the way?

Researching The Real Benedict Arnold was a nightmare.  I ended just about every day with a massive headache and the feeling that I’d only scratched the surface.  But after six or so years the path to the finished began to look clearer.  Here’s why it proved to be so difficult.  I found that many, if not most of the negative stories about Benedict surfaced after he’d turned traitor.  I wondered how many were invented by people who wanted to distance themselves from Benedict or saw it as an opportune moment to get even.  I also wanted to find out the truth about the negative stories that existed before he went over the British.  So every event in his life had to be evaluated as if it was a potential crime scene and my job was to trace every story (positive and negative) back to its origins and then evaluate it as carefully as I could.  The biggest surprise for me was how many of these stories were completely fabricated and false, and then passed along as fact by succeeding generations of historians.

You’ve written both non-fiction and historical fiction.  How does your writing process differ with those two genres?

Research for both my nonfiction and historical fiction is pretty much the same.  I’m a bit obsessive about assembling facts and trying to “see” what the person or event was really like.  The writing process itself is different.  In nonfiction I can include only information that I’ve been able to verify with at least two reliable sources.  This means stopping frequently to discover, for instance, what the weather was like every day during Benedict’s march with his troops through the Maine wilderness.  With my historical fiction, the emphasis is on the characters – what are their conflicts or aspirations, what problems get in their way and how to they overcome them, etc.  Still, I try to create characters that are historically accurate.  This means shying away from giving them obviously modern opinions and ideas (say about the environment or war in general).  

Many teachers are using your books in the classroom, particularly as companion books alongside historical novels.  I know that my school has a class set of An American Plague that we use with Laurie Halse Anderson’s Fever, and I’ve heard from another school that’s planning to use your new Arnold book as a non-fiction companion to go along with my own historical novel, Spitfire.  As an author, how do you feel about the trend of fiction & non-fiction being paired in the classroom?

On a purely selfish level, I love to have my nonfiction books paired with someone else’s historical fiction counterpart.  In general, kids will much more readily seek out historical fiction than nonfiction (historical fiction comes with a promise of action and drama, while nonfiction seems like tons of facts).  So using one of my nonfiction books and historical fiction together in a classroom allows more readers to get a taste for the way I write history and might even convince some that it might even be fun to read.

I like the pairing of nonfiction and historical fiction for another reason.  Reading historical fiction allows readers to see the past through a character’s eyes and, hopefully, might prompt a series of opinions or questions.  Readers can then use the nonfiction book to check out their ideas or get a fuller understanding of our past. 

Are there other works of historical fiction that you like to recommend as companions to your non-fiction titles?  Have you heard about novels or picture books that teachers  like to use along with Blizzard and The Great Fire?

This is a great question for which I have no answer.  I tend to muddle along day to day struggling to get words on a page, so I haven’t devoted much thought to additional pairings.  And most teachers I’ve spoken with have spoken about the pairings mentioned above, but not offered new ones.  Maybe the notion is so new that most of us don’t think about it in a regular way.  Besides, I have a feeling most of your readers a better qualified to make such pairings.  Or maybe someone out there should write an article about it for SLJ….

(How about it blog readers?  Any thoughts on novels or picture books that would work well as pairings for Murphy's other books?  Betsy Bird, doesn't that sound like a blog post in the making?)

Readers always love a sneak preview, Jim.  Can you tell us what you’re working on now?

What am I working on?  Well, I’ve written a nonfiction book about the Battle of Antietam called A Savage Thunder.  It’s a look at how Robert E. Lee and George McClellan managed their armies both before, during, and after the battle, but the story line is driven by scores of firsthand accounts of the fighting.  It will be published by Simon & Schuster in spring, 2009.

I have two other nonfiction books in the works.  One is entitled Truce: The Day the Soldiers Refused to Fight (and is about the famous Christmas truce in 1914).  The other as yet untitled book follows George Washington from his disastrous performance in the Battle of Long Island to his miraculous victory at Trenton.  Neither book has an official pub date, but (if someone somewhere smiles upon me) might appear in 2009. 

Finally, my wife, Alison Blank, and I are writing a history of tuberculosis (which is much more interesting and scary than it sounds).    

Jim, thanks so much for joining us for Nonfiction Monday!  We'll be looking for those new titles in 2009.

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You've probably heard it already: the public library in Saugus, Mass. is closing. Close on the heels of the Jackson County public libraries closing... Media coverage includes:

• Library Journal
• Saugus Advertiser (local paper)
• LibVib (a library-focused podcast)

An April tax-override vote failed, and now apparently the city council must approve a trash fee in order to keep the library open and funded.

I wonder what the larger story is, behind the April vote. Did citizens not understand what was at stake? Or were they using the only poker chip they had--the vote--to send a clear message to city council that they did not approve of the way the city's funds were being handled?

In hearing from citizens who live in Medford and surrounding towns, the library's closing didn't seem quite *real* to people. Even as the doors were already closed, many people expressed an optimism along the lines of "some how, some way, truth, justice and rightness will prevail (and the library will re-open)."

I hope this is true in both of these communities. Situations like these are exactly what we're working on, with the Gates Foundation marketing grant.

Speaking of library marketing, have you read the Worth Their Weight report from ALC yet? I've sent away for it--still need to read it. It's all about demonstrating library ROI. Some comments from Brian about it.

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