Last month I wrote about deciding which story you want to tell, as narrative nonfiction is more than a collection of related facts—it has to tell a story, with a beginning, middle, and end. Months of research may reveal a half dozen (or more!) potential book ideas on the same topic. One of the greatest challenges an author then faces is to decide which idea resonates most deeply and tells, for them, the most compelling story.
In picture books, especially, there is no room for side-trips, interesting asides, meandering down this path and that—a picture book needs a tight focus and a clean storyline. And because a picture book is illustrated, the story you tell has to be dramatic—people have to do things, and, ideally, do them in different places. (No matter how great, say, a scientist’s accomplishment is, you can’t have a whole picture book of your scientist, page after page after page, sitting in a lab looking into a microscope. S/he needs to get up and move around.)
So you choose your story, the one you want to tell. You’ve been researching for months. The salient facts are in your head. You’re so immersed in the topic that you can often remember not just the facts but the source—book, article, interview—for each one.
You’re in the zone. You’re living, breathing, eating, sleeping, and boring your husband every night at dinner with Whitman or Roosevelt or Twain. You’re there, baby, and you’re writing your book.
You’re also in a bit of a bind.
Because after you’ve laid down the first, rough draft, after it’s there but still a mess, with huge gaps, incomplete thoughts, and fascinating but totally irrelevant details, you can’t really see what you’ve written. The story is in your head, but so is all the other stuff you’ve been reading for the past four (six? ten?) months. How can you possibly hope to see what’s really on the page—how can you tell if you’ve actually written the story you want to tell—when Walt tags along when you go to the grocery store, and Teddy shows up in your Zumba class?
Perspective.
Getting the story out of your head enough that you can see what’s actually on the page.
Time, of course, is a wonderful tool to gain perspective. Setting the manuscript aside for a while, even a few weeks, can do wonders. (Although the way to be disciplined and effective, oddly enough, is blow off the manuscript. You can’t expect those two weeks to give you distance if you spend them reading those last three Twain biographies still sitting on your shelf. You need to take walks, clear out your email inbox, make spaghetti, even start work on a new project.)
But what if you can’t take two weeks off? What if a deadline is looming? What tricks can you employ to bring fresh eyes to your manuscript?
*Since I compose at the computer, simply printing out the manuscript helps me see it in a new way. Printing it out and taking the copy somewhere else—say, a coffee shop—helps, too. It’s even different reading it sitting on the couch, instead of at my desk.
*I have a wonderful critique group that meets every two weeks, and sharing the manuscript with them is extremely helpful. Your critique group has not been reading about Alice Roosevelt for the past six months, and they can hear the story in a way you can’t. In addition, simply reading the story out loud to them is illuminating. (I don’t find reading the story out loud to myself to be particularly helpful for big picture items, like structure, although it works beautifully once I’m at the line-edit stage. But boy does it become painfully clear where the story drags when you are reading it out loud to an audience.)
*In the class I took in October, Stephen Roxburgh of
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By: Barbara Kerley,
on 12/9/2010
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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By: Barbara Kerley,
on 11/10/2010
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: writing, research, Barbara Kerley, history, biography, Add a tag
I’m back from my class with Stephen Roxburgh, definitely wiser. (And about a pound heavier—the food is seriously good there. Would I like fresh whipped cream with my warm apple crumble? Why yes, it turns out. I would.)
The class was held over four days: an intro the first evening, two full days of awesomeness, and then a wrap-up the final morning. One of the great things about it was this relaxed structure. Over the course of the class, I had four scheduled one-on-ones with a really smart editor whose sole focus for that half hour was to help me make my work better. But equally helpful was the fact that in-between each meeting there was down time when I could process what we’d talked about, let the cream rise to the top, and generate new ideas to discuss at the next meeting.
Roxburgh’s goal is to help you tell the story you want to tell. Sounds simple, right? But I’ve been surprised by how often authors I know (myself included!) struggle to articulate exactly what they are trying to say in the book they are working on. You’d think we would know what our book is about since we are writing the darn thing. But but but sheesh, when working in a field that offers almost limitless possibilities, it can be hard to choose: which story do I want to tell?
Though I worked on a novel during the class, it’s the same issue I face when writing a work of narrative nonfiction. After months of research, there is a LOT of information rattling around in my mind. I can’t really know what to keep and what to get rid of until I decide what my story is about.
This was a particular challenge when I worked on The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy). I was juggling three elements: the extraordinary—in every sense of the word—Twain and his quirky genius; his equally extraordinary daughter Susy—deeply perceptive to her father’s strengths and weaknesses; and the no-holds-barred biography she wrote of him in secret.
For months I researched, feeling alternately hopeful, excited, and frustrated. I knew there was a story there, but for the longest time, I couldn’t quite grasp it. And because I couldn’t quite decide which story I wanted to write (there were so many to choose from!), I couldn’t really start writing.
Luckily, I have an amazing editor, Tracy Mack, who knows this about me, and one of the many wonderful things she does is help me succinctly articulate what my story is about, so that I can then actually write it.
For a picture book, this kind of focus is crucial. It wasn’t until I had a simple plot statement that I was able to pick and choose the appropriate facts and shape them into a story: Susy showed her love for her father by writing a biography that set the record about him straight. (It sounds simple, I know, and sort of obvious. What else would the book be about? But you’d be surprised how hard it is to see a simple storyline after months of research, when your head is full of juicy details that are too fascinating to let go of, but don’t really fit the story.)
Deciding which story you want to write is the first step. Next month, I’ll post some thoughts on what to do after you’ve got that first, oh-so-messy draft down.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 10/14/2010
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Fall is here, and like a lot of other people I know, I’m going back to school. Only for four days, but still: I’m a tiny bit nervous and a whole lot excited. I even went back-to-school shopping for my first ever laptop (shiny!) and a new pair of jeans (comfort stretch).
The class I’m taking, “Editing for Writers,” taught by Stephen Roxburgh, doesn’t even start until this weekend, and yet I already have homework. I’ve been mulling all day: how to describe, in one paragraph, what the “core story” of my novel is—not a plot summary, mind you, but something much more challenging.
What is my story about?
It’s the same question I ask myself every time I embark on a new picture book biography—not what happened, but what is the story about?
(It’s not surprising that this question would come up whether considering a novel or a work of narrative nonfiction. After all, both genres are forms of storytelling.)
When working on a biography, what happened is unwieldy and amorphous. Its legions of characters and mountains of detail threaten to swallow the poor researcher whole and spit out the husk—dry and utterly spent. (OK, OK, a little melodramatic. But when buried up to one’s eyeballs in books and articles, when said eyeballs are spinning from a day peering into the screen of the microfilm machine, it’s hard not to feel a little put upon.)
One of the greatest challenges of writing narrative nonfiction, I’ve found, is that it’s not always clear at the beginning what shape the story will take, and I think it’s crucial to approach the material with an open mind. It takes a certain amount of mucking about and slogging through research material before the hint of a storyline emerges (since, after all, you can’t simply make stuff up). Certain themes seem to resonate with what you’ve been reading. It becomes easier to take step back and see how a character’s actions illustrate those themes, and then the beginnings of a story come into focus—a story about something.
I’m heading to class with the first draft of a novel, but I fully expect to apply what I learn to future narrative nonfiction projects, as well. I’ll report back next month what I learned.
Happy Back to School!
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 7/7/2010
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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He ended the story:
Now, then, that is the tale. Some of it is true.
MARK TWAIN
Twain was famous for drawing on his own life as inspiration for his humorous writing, and equally frank about his comfort in mixing fiction in with fact to make a funny story funnier.
For the biographer researching someone’s life, any autobiographical source is both utterly true and also, utterly suspect: we all tend to polish ourselves up a bit before putting ourselves on display. Twain just stated it up front.
So, what’s a biographer to do?
I’d been fascinated with Twain for years when, in 2007, I stumbled across an intriguing historical tidbit: when Susy Clemens was 13, she wrote a biography of her famous father. That tidbit was my angle in to exploring Twain, in The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy.)
In the opening pages of her biography, Susy explained her motivation for writing it.
She was “annoyed.” Greatly.
“It troubles me to have so few people know papa, I mean really know him. They think of Mark Twain as humorist joking at everything.”
Susy wanted to set the record straight, revealing his “kind, sympathetic nature.” Papa was a humorist, but he also had a serious side. “When we are all alone at home nine times out of ten,” Susy wrote, “he talks about some very earnest subject…. He is as much a philosopher as anything, I think.”
Susy described his fine qualities (“He does tell perfectly delightful stories…”) and his not-so-fine qualities (“Papa uses very strong language.”) She described his work habits and how he often stayed up all night playing billiards. “It seems to rest his head,” she explained.
She also painted a revealing portrait of Twain as a husband and father—how he played tennis with Susy and her sisters, made up silly arithmetic problems for them to solve, and relied on his wife’s keen editorial eye and moral compass to clean up what Susy called the “delightfully dreadful” passages in his novels.
I knew when I stumbled across Susy’s diary that it would be a rich counterpart to Twain’s own ‘polished up’ version of his life’s story.
And Twain agreed. He was so delighted with the diary that he later quoted liberally from it in his series for the North American Review, praising Susy for her even-handed portrait, and for being “loyal to her position as historian.”
“This is a frank biographer and an honest one; she uses no sandpaper on me,” Twain wrote in admiration.
Susy declared her father to be “extraordinary.” Susy’s biography reveals a girl who was pretty darn extraordinary, herself.
For more information on Susy’s writing process, see my web page flyer, Writing an Extraordinary Biography.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 4/7/2010
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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Writing about a person no one has ever heard of, as I did in the mid 1990s when I wrote about Waterhouse Hawkins, can be tricky: it’s often difficult to find enough research material to write your book, and even if you can, you then face the challenge of convincing a publisher that your ‘never-heard-of-him’ subject will be enticing enough to get noticed by readers.
Writing about a person everyone has heard of presents a different set of challenges. (I never imagined, as I searched and scraped for tidbits of info on Waterhouse, that I would one day bemoan having too much material to wade through while writing a biography, and yet at times, in the years since Waterhouse, I have been buried up to my eyeballs in primary and secondary sources about Walt Whitman, Alice Roosevelt, and Mark Twain.)
Famous people tend to have a lot of stuff written about them, and so while you might be able to convince a publisher that there will be plenty of interest in a book on your subject, you also need to have a fresh approach to counter the ‘already-know-too-much-about-him’ reality of today’s tight marketplace.
Famous people also tend to have a kind of mythology tied to their fame. I say “Mark Twain” and an image pops into people’s heads of a brilliant, funny man with crazy white hair and an exuberantly full mustache, dressed in a white suit and smoking a big cigar. And Twain was brilliant and funny, with crazy hair, a huge mustache, a white suit and often a big cigar. But he was a lot more, of course. And it is the job of a biographer to dig deeper and present a richer portrait, to take readers past the myth to the man.
How does a biographer do this?
Research, and lots of it.
Secondary sources are invaluable to paint an overall picture and provide a cultural and historical perspective. But my favorite source of information is primary sources—what I think of as ‘eyewitness accounts.’ That’s where all the juicy details come from.
I’m currently working on a biography of not one but two famous people, stuffed into the same book. (Yeah, I know. It seemed like a good idea at the time.) John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. Talk about mythology! Jefferson is carved in stone on Mt. Rushmore, for heaven’s sake! And it is in primary sources that I am finding details to help uncover just who these men were.
And so we have Adams, portly Adams, detailing in his diary all the culinary wonders he experiences as a new delegate to Congress in 1774:
“A most sinfull Feast again! Every Thing which could delight the Eye, or allure the Taste, Curds and Creams, Jellies, Sweat meats of various sorts, 20 sorts of Tarts, fools, Trifles, floating Islands, whippd Sillabubs &c. &c.”
The champion of democracy had a real sweet tooth.
And we have Jefferson, elegant Jefferson, meticulously noting in his Memorandum Book his expenditures as he shops the Philadelphia markets in 1775 and 1776:
“Pd. Starr for shoes 21/”
“Pd. for handkerchiefs 6/8”
“Pd. for pr. of gloves 7/6”
“Pd. Currie for leather breeches 35/”
“Pd. For a straw hat 10/”
The author of the Declaration of Independences was a bit of a clotheshorse.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 3/11/2010
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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I recently had the pleasure of hearing a talk about narrative nonfiction by Paul Collins—a professor at Portland State University, author of five books, and, if that isn’t enough, National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition Saturday “Literary Detective.”
Collins gave his lecture as part of the Multnomah County Library’s Everybody Reads program.
He presented an engaging overview of narrative nonfiction—nonfiction that tells a story—and discussed just how narrative nonfiction authors bring their stories to life.
Here are my notes (with apologies to Mr. Collins, who was way more insightful and engaging than the snippets below will reflect)…
* Narrative nonfiction is storytelling using facts. It is based in scenes, with characters and dialog, and thus is novelistic or cinematic. Instead of summarizing events, it places the reader in the scene, among the people. Unlike a novel, however, a narrative nonfiction storyteller must work strictly from facts.
* Not every event can be written about using a narrative nonfiction approach. In order to work as a story, there needs to be:
-- a specific setting
-- identifiable characters, and ideally a central character to hang the story around (a protagonist, as it were)
-- a beginning, middle, and end
*So just how does a narrative nonfiction author gather the facts needed to recreate a specific setting and the characters who people the story?
Through research. (And from what Collins described, plenty of it—he talked about a trip to New York City where for weeks, he showed up at the NY Public Library as soon as it opened each morning and stayed until closing, reading microfilm literally all day long, and then returning to his hotel room utterly spent.)
To gather enough facts to recreate a single scene, an author might:
-- interview participants
-- read letters, reports, and accounts written at the time
-- check a census or other history of area
-- utilize new digital sources to search for nuggets of information (more on that below)
From these sources, an author can begin to get a sense of how to place the reader in that scene, among the people. For example:
-- an interview could provide a wealth of information: who was there, what mood they were in, what people said (the ‘dialog’ for the scene), etc.
-- letters/reports/accounts can provide similar facts (and are especially helpful if there is no one available to interview)
-- a census or history of the area provides additional details that can be used to recreate a scene. (An example Collins gave was a historian learning that a horse stable/blacksmith were across the street from the event he was writing about, which let him know that in the scene he was recreating, there would be the background sounds of the blacksmith clanging and horses clopping down the street. These kinds of sensory details go a long way toward placing the reader in the scene.)
Also helpful to narrative nonfiction authors, and especially to historians, are all the new digitized books and newspapers, because they allow authors to search in whole new ways, accessing information that is not, and probably never will be, indexed.
In searching digitized newspapers, an author can type in a character’s name, or the street address of an event, and pull up articles and even relevant advertising. (Collins described how one such ad for a hardware store in the 1800s—the setting of one of his scenes—included a drawing of the inside of the store, right in the ad. It was a bonanza of information that he might not have had access to before newspapers were digitized.)
Digitized newspapers include the New York Times and the Washington Post, and sources such as the Library of Congress and a fee-based service, Newspaper Archive (dot) com.
Simil
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 2/11/2010
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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I am under a deadline. 8 days (but who's counting?) and that includes not just working through the weekend but, I should point out, working on Valentine's Day as well.
I'm wrestling with a project that has both inspired and bedeviled me from the start: fighting tooth and nail for every paragraph, leaving claw marks on the edge of my desk as I haul myself back up to the keyboard each time I topple off.
Most children's book writers I know have a love-hate relationship with deadlines.
When the work is going well, I appreciate the deadline as a zesty little kick-in-the-pants that keeps me on track and motivated. When the work is going poorly, the deadline looms, dark and menacing, keeping me awake at night until it becomes less painful to--alright already, enough!--go ahead and get out of bed at four in the morning to get to work.
Finally, of course, I am deeply appreciative that, after all those early years of rejections, someone is waiting to see my work at all.
And with that short post, I am done with today's blog. I would have loved to stay and whine some more, but you see, I have this deadline....
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 1/14/2010
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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In 1906-1907, Mark Twain published “Chapters from My Autobiography” in the North American Review. He concluded the series with a hilarious story of how he once earned the three dollars he desperately needed by selling another man’s dog—for three dollars—and then buying the dog back—for the same three dollars—to return the dog to its rightful owner (and accept a three dollar reward!)
He ended the story:
Twain was famous for drawing on his own life as inspiration for his humorous writing, and equally frank about his comfort in mixing fiction in with fact to make a funny story funnier.
For the biographer researching someone’s life, any autobiographical source is both utterly true and also, utterly suspect: we all tend to polish ourselves up a bit before putting ourselves on display. Twain just stated it up front.
So, what’s a biographer to do?
I’d been fascinated with Twain for years when, in 2007, I stumbled across an intriguing historical tidbit: when Susy Clemens was 13, she wrote a biography of her famous father. That tidbit was my angle in to exploring Twain, in The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy.)
She was “annoyed.” Greatly.
“It troubles me to have so few people know papa, I mean really know him. They think of Mark Twain as humorist joking at everything.”
Susy wanted to set the record straight, revealing his “kind, sympathetic nature.” Papa was a humorist, but he also had a serious side. “When we are all alone at home nine times out of ten,” Susy wrote, “he talks about some very earnest subject…. He is as much a philosopher as anything, I think.”
Susy described his fine qualities (“He does tell perfectly delightful stories…”) and his not-so-fine qualities (“Papa uses very strong language.”) She described his work habits and how he often stayed up all night playing billiards. “It seems to rest his head,” she explained.
She also painted a revealing portrait of Twain as a husband and father—how he played tennis with Susy and her sisters, made up silly arithmetic problems for them to solve, and relied on his wife’s keen editorial eye and moral compass to clean up what Susy called the “delightfully dreadful” passages in his novels.
I knew when I stumbled across Susy’s diary that it would be a rich counterpart to Twain’s own ‘polished up’ version of his life’s story.
And Twain agreed. He was so delighted with the diary that he later quoted liberally from it in his series for the North American Review, praising Susy for her even-handed portrait, and for being “loyal to her position as historian.”
“This is a frank biographer and an honest one; she uses no sandpaper on me,” Twain wrote in admiration.
Susy declared her father to be “extraordinary.” Susy’s biography reveals a girl who was pretty darn extraordinary, herself.
For more information on Susy’s writing process, see my web page flyer, Writing an Extraordinary Biography.
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By: Barbara Kerley,
on 12/9/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: nonfiction, Writing, inspiration, Barbara Kerley, Add a tag
One summer when I was about seven or eight, my parents sent me to camp. Every morning I’d board a bus full of kids I didn’t know and hunker down for the long ride (made longer by the fact that I always got carsick). Each day was filled with activities that seemed—even then—to be designed to kill as much time as possible. Then we’d all climb back on the bus for the long, hot, queasy ride home.
I was not a happy camper.
The highlight of the summer was supposed to be the overnight stay, where we’d get to sleep in tents without our parents and have lots of fun.
I quietly confessed to the bus driver—a guy in his thirties who seemed to be having as lousy a time as I was, but at least he was getting paid—that I didn’t want to go.
Why, he asked.
I didn’t like bugs, I explained.
At which point, in front of the whole bus full of kids, he whipped out a can of bug spray, said something snarky, and all the kids laughed.
And so, I did the overnight stay. I don’t remember the ‘lots of fun’ part, but do vividly remember the tick check we all had to submit to the next morning.
That may have been the worst kind of camp, but I’ve just returned from the best kind—a retreat, really, where I felt pampered and cared for, met great people, and spent days engaged in activities so interesting it made me wish the days were longer. Plus, there were no bugs!
I joined my buddy Kim T. Griswell, an editor for Highlights, Inc. and Boyds Mills Press, to teach a four-day workshop on narrative nonfiction. The workshop was held in a beautiful old farmhouse near Honesdale, PA (home of the Highlights editorial offices.) The participants stayed in cute private cabins with lovely wood floors and cozy quilts on the beds. The food was wonderful—fresh and healthy and delicious.
Best of all, everyone there was really into nonfiction. We had participants from Alaska to Texas to New York and all spots in between. We tackled issues big (theme, voice, character) and small (at one point, I shared a sentence from my current project and moaned about the stupid pronoun that refuses to work, no matter how hard I revise.)
There was time for discussion, time for work, and time for hanging out with a glass of wine or a warm cup of tea. We even had guest authors and editors who came for dinner and shared their thoughts on writing. I loved meeting so many people who are as passionate about writing nonfiction as I am, and I left Honesdale already looking forward to going to ‘camp’ again.
Kim and I won’t be teaching our class again until 2011, but there are plenty of other workshops offered next year, including two on writing nonfiction. Check ‘em out. Best. Camp. Ever.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 11/12/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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My husband and I are getting ready to move to Portland, OR. We’ve been in the same home in California for 10 years, and for all that time, I’ve worked in the same space: my little office.
In Portland I’ll be setting up shop in the corner of a too-big-for-us master bedroom (in a too-small-for-us condo.)
The space will be different, but it will still be quiet, with an empty table for my stacks of notes and a bookcase for my references. I’ll put my favorite things up on the walls—a goofy picture of my family, a perfect Dilbert cartoon, posters of my books, and artwork that my daughter has produced over the years, dating back to her Kindergarten attempt at a ladybug, when all the dots ended up on one side. I will make this new space into my space.
I know many authors who take their laptop or their pad of paper and venture out into the world, to write in coffee shops, library corners, and park benches. I’ve never been like that. I may scribble notes here, there, and everywhere, but I write in my office. For me, the sense of place helps me shift gears, quiet myself, and focus. It helps me tap back into where I left off, the day before.
I’ve been thinking a lot about writing space ever since I began work on The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy.) For much of the year, Mark wrote in his home in Hartford, CT. But in the summers, the family went to visit his wife’s sister on her farm in Elmira, New York. And there, every morning after breakfast, he took a winding path up twenty stone steps to a special, octagonal study built just for him.
“To keep away the large number of sight-seers who come…to his sanctum,” the New York Times reported, “Twain has posted on the door the following novel sign: ‘Step Softly! Keep Away! Do not Disturb the Remains!’”
Mark did some of his best work in the little octagonal study. “It sits perched in complete isolation on top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills,” Mark wrote to friends. “It is a cosy nest, with just room in it for a sofa and a table and three or four chairs—and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes above the hills and beyond, and the rain beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it!”
It was, he concluded, “the loveliest study…you ever saw.”
Mark had his octagonal study. I’ll have my quiet space filled with my favorite things.
Where do you write?
By: Linda Salzman,
on 11/2/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Sue Macy, Jan Greenberg, Gretchen Woelfle, Deborah Heiligman, Barbara Kerley, Marfe Ferguson Delano, Add a tag
Barbara Kerley's book, What To Do About Alice?, won the 2009 Washington State/Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award in the picture book category. The book is illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham, a Seattle resident.
Gretchen Woelfle will speak on Reading and Writing nonfiction: A Study in Serendipity at the California School Library Association Conference in Ontario, CA on Friday November 20. She will also sign books at the Author and Illustrator Brunch on Sunday, November 22.
From Deborah Heiligman: CHARLES AND EMMA: THE DARWINS' LEAP OF FAITH is a Finalist for the National Book Award. Award ceremony is Novemer 18 when the winner will be announced. But I am thrilled to have my book be a finalist.
Helen's Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's Teacher by Marfé Ferguson Delano was named a 2009 Jefferson Cup Honor Book. Presented by the Virginia Library Association, the Jefferson Cup is an award that honors biographies, historical fiction, and American history books for children.
Sue Macy will be signing copies of her new book, Bylines: A Photobiography of Nellie Bly, on Friday, November 6, at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) conference in Charlotte. Stop by the National Geographic booth from 3:30 to 4:30 to pick up a book and say hi. And don't forget to mention you heard about it on I.N.K.!
From Jan Greenberg: Christo and Jeanne-Claude Through The Gates and Beyond is on Booklist's Top Art Books of 2009 list. I will be at NCTE on November 20 in Philadelphia signing Side by Side at Abrams booth 1:30-2:15pm and attending the Notables awards for Language Arts session at 2:30. Hope to meet some of you there.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 10/7/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Barbara Kerley, Global Awareness, classroom activity, Writing, photographs, Add a tag
When I was a kid, I loved National Geographic magazine. I won’t pretend I was the kind of precocious child who would actually read the articles. What I loved was the photographs.
I was drawn to their quality—the superb focus and clarity, the amazing composition—and studied them as works of art. I was drawn to their immediacy, how they placed me in a scene as no other photographs ever had.
Most of all, though, I was drawn to the way they let me peek into another way of life in another part of the world. I would pore over the photographs and wonder what it would be like to be that kid in front of me—the one tending cattle in Africa, or walking barefoot through a rainforest, or eating seal blubber in the frozen North.
Long before I ever thought of being a writer, I recognized the value of a good photograph.
Years later, after a stint in the Peace Corps, I began writing children’s books. I wanted to write about kids around the world—kids like the ones I’d seen in those photographs long ago. I was really excited when my first book about global awareness, A Cool Drink of Water, was accepted by National Geographic Children’s Books. I knew the photographs would be superb.
My love-affair with National Geographic photographs came full circle on a school visit in Norman, Oklahoma. The librarian there had asked children to choose a photograph in A Cool Drink of Water and imagine they were that person—collecting rainwater as it dripped from a roof in Nepal, or pulling down on a water pump handle in Thailand, or drinking from a melting glacier in the Canadian Rockies.
The kids in Oklahoma let the photographs take them to another part of the world. They imagined, and they wrote.
One boy imagined being a boy in Nepal, listening to the sound of the water dripping off the roof into his water jug. A girl imagined being a little girl in Thailand, so short she had to jump up to reach the pump handle and pull it down—and how good it would feel to stick her head under the pump and wet her hair on a hot day. A boy imagined hiking through the Rockies in Canada and realizing how precious water is to people around the world.
A good photograph had reached each of those kids—and made their world just a little bit bigger.
By: Linda Salzman,
on 9/14/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: Vicki Cobb, Melissa Stewart, Deborah Heiligman, Rosalyn Schanzer, nonfiction news, Barbara Kerley, Add a tag
Vicki Cobb is speaking on Tuesday at the University of Kentucky School of Education. Her topic is "Science That's Fun to Read and Teach." Her audience is elemmentary education students as well as interested faculty and area teachers and librarians.
Rosalyn Schanzer will be talking about her book WHAT DARWIN SAW; THE JOURNEY THAT CHANGED THE WORLD at George Mason University’s enormous Fall for the Book festival in the Greater Washington D.C. area. It’s free and open to the public. Here’s the schedule and site information about her presentation:
What Darwin Saw: The Journey That Changed the World
Sunday, September 20 from 2 to 3 P.M.
Prince George’s Memorial Library
Hyattsville Branch
6530 Adelphi Rd.
Hyattsville, MD 20782
301-985-4690
You can find out more about the author by clicking here:
http://www.fallforthebook.org/participants-detail.php?participant_id=53
You can find out all about the book festival and see the entire speakers’ list by clicking here: http://www.fallforthebook.org/
From Barbara Kerley: I'll be co-teaching (with Highlights Sr. Editor Kim T. Griswell) a class in writing narrative nonfiction as part of the Highlights Foundation Founders Workshop Series. The class runs from Nov. 5 - 8. For more information, go to http://www.highlightsfoundation.org/pages/current/FWsched_nonfictionStorytelling.html
From Deborah Heiligman: Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith has been named to:Booklist's Top 10 Romances for Youth and Booklist's Top 10 Biographies for Youth
Melissa Stewart will be speaking at the New England Reading Association Conference in Warwick, RI, on September 25 and the New England Environmental Education Association Conference in Ivoryton, CT on September 27.
Booklist Webinar: The Scoop on Series Nonfiction: Best Uses, Best Practices, and Best New Books for Fall
September 22, 3PM-4pm cST
Need help engaging reluctant readers, promoting reading success, and keeping your library relevant in this era of accountability? Attend "The Scoop on Series Nonfiction" Webinar and come away with a wealth of information and ideas for enhancing your collection and engaging young readers with series nonfiction. Booklist youth editors will moderate as four top series nonfiction publishers—Lerner Publications, ABDO Publishing Company, Norwood House Press, and Cherry Lake Publishing—share their expertise and introduce a selection of their fall titles. Webinar participants will also get a sneak peek at Booklist's October 1 Series Nonfiction Spotlight, including a focus on a new trend: series nonfiction and early literacy. Reserve your seat today!
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 9/10/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: reading, Barbara Kerley, Add a tag
Like many Americans, I tuned in with great interest to watch President Obama’s Back-To-School speech on C-SPAN this Tuesday.
I loved how the speech was held live, in front of a gym full of teenagers at Wakefield High School in Arlington, VA. I loved how the crowd of kids cheered almost as loudly for senior class president Timothy Spicer, Jr.—who introduced the Obama—as they did for the President, himself. And it was great to hear the school band play “Hail to The Chief” as Obama strode into the room.
Obama’s speech was about personal responsibility and how every student must take charge of his or her own future. “I’m calling on each of you to set your own goals for your education,” he told the crowd, “and to do everything you can to meet them.”
But just as importantly, the speech was about opportunity.
“Every single one of you has something you’re good at. Every single one of you has something to offer. And you have a responsibility to yourself to discover what that is. That’s the opportunity an education can provide.”
And, I’d like to add, that’s the opportunity that nonfiction books provide.
Nonfiction books open up the world to kids. Through exposure to a wide variety of nonfiction books, kids—whether they live in a high rise apartment in a big city, a small trailer on the edge of a tiny town, or a ranch-style home in suburbs across America, can…
…peer into a tarantula tunnel in a rainforest in South America.
…pull on flippers and follow Jacques Cousteau deep down into the Mediterranean Sea.
…board the Endurance and sail with Shackleton to Antarctica.
…learn about music, art, chemistry, physics, theater, dance, history—and learn about these subjects in exciting, inviting formats.
When teachers and librarians expose kids to a variety a topics, when parents choose nonfiction books to read at bed time, we help kids begin the process of discovering what they are good at. What they have to offer.
What a gift that is.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 8/13/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: writing tips, teaching, Barbara Kerley, Add a tag
This fall I’ll be co-teaching a class on how to write narrative nonfiction—nonfiction that tells a story. It’s a subject that has engrossed me for years, ever since I began work on my first nonfiction picture book biography, The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, over 13 years ago.
Back 1996, I hadn’t a clue what I was doing, but guided by my wonderful editor, Tracy Mack, I fumbled my way forward. Just as Waterhouse hoped his dinosaurs would bring history to life, I also hoped my story would do the same.
The book took about four years to write, partly because of the difficulty of finding information on my subject, but mostly because I was exploring a relatively new genre. I could find plenty of classes and how-to books for writing fiction, but very, very little on how to write narrative nonfiction.
And so, I revised and revised through 14 drafts, trying to shape an accurate, engaging story. Other books and magazine articles followed, and I began to get a better sense of what needs to be in place for narrative nonfiction to work:
Story structure: Narrative nonfiction tells a story and, like any story, there needs to be a beginning, a middle and an end.
Point of view: Textbooks have an omniscient narrator, but narrative nonfiction is told from the viewpoint of the characters in the story, as if we were walking around in their shoes and seeing the action unfold through their eyes.
Theme: A story needs a guiding concept, a key idea that gives focus and meaning to a story. This is true for novels, and it’s true for narrative nonfiction as well.
Strong character/s: Strong characters take action. They are in the driver’s seat, moving the story forward.
Voice: Impassioned, sly, suspenseful, comforting—a storyteller’s voice, their use of language, sets the tone for a satisfying story.
Sensory imagery/concrete details: Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures help place and keep us in the shoes of the character driving the story.
These are the elements I use to tell stories and hopefully—like Waterhouse’s dinosaurs of brick, cement, and iron hooping—bring history to life.
For more information on my class (co-taught with Highlights senior editor Kim T. Griswell), or the many other classes taught by authors and editors, visit the Highlights Foundation Founders Workshops.
By: David Elzey,
on 7/29/2009
Blog: The Excelsior File (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: 01, storyography, picture book, brian selznick, dinosaurs, barbara kerley, waterhouse, biography, scholastic, Add a tag
An Illuminating History of Mr. Waterhouse Hawkins, Artist and Lecturer by Barbara Kerley illustrations by Brian Selznick Scholastic 2001 The story of Waterhouse Hawkins is one of those odd ducks that are at once as fascinating as they are forgetable. Waterhouse (as he apparently preferred to be known) was a (self-taught?) naturalist artist who (somehow) managed to find himself
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 7/9/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: research, Barbara Kerley, Add a tag
Continuing the theme of “great discoveries while researching…”
One of my enduring memories of college is sitting in a big lounge chair in a t-shirt and cut-offs, reading Walt Whitman’s poetry instead of doing my homework.
Unlike some other poets who seemed to live in a rarified world instead of the real world, Walt was right there in the thick of things: milling around with the other passengers on the ferry boat and tramping down the road in his great big boots.
There was something so elemental and relatable in his imagery and language; I could feel the person behind the poem.
It’s not surprising, then, when I began to write picture book biographies years later, that I would return to Walt Whitman as a long lost friend. But while I’d read and loved his poetry, I’d never actually read much about his life. I came to the research for Walt Whitman: Words for America expecting to write a book about a rambling man, hungry for new experiences, living his life with vigor and making myriad friends along the way.
I did not expect to discover that he was also a true hero.
For several years during the American Civil War, Walt tirelessly volunteered in the Civil War hospitals of Washington D.C. He was not trained as a medical professional, and yet his sheer presence brought comfort and cheer to thousands of wounded soldiers.
Walt kept notebooks filled with reminders of “little gifts” he could bring to ease the soldiers’ long days:
David S. Giles—Company F 28th New Jersey Volunteers—wants an apple
Janus Mafield—7th Virginia Volunteers—2 oranges
Henry D. Boardman—Company B 27th Connecticut Volunteers—wants a rice pudding, not very sweet
He read to soldiers. He wrote letters home for them. Sometimes he simply sat quietly with a dying soldier so he would not have to die alone.
Walt called this experience “the greatest privilege and satisfaction” of his life, and yet the effort took at permanent toll on his health—by war’s end, he was exhausted and never regained the health and vigor he had enjoyed before the war.
A picture book biographer, constrained by the physical limitations of the genre (these books are short!), looks for a theme to carry the book, a simple concept to give focus and clarity to a complex life. Walt’s wartime experience—displaying his generosity of spirit, his care for others, and his love of country—did just that.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 6/11/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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When my husband and I were poor students living in Seattle, we rented the basement apartment of a big house one year, right next door to Ralph and Bernice.
Ralph and Bernice were this great older couple who loved to talk. They appreciated having an audience, and I liked hearing their stories. Bernice told me about the little dog she once had, so small she could carry him around in her apron pocket while she made dinner. Ralph was always puttering around the house and yard, and chatted about this and that—usually whatever he was puttering around.
Most especially, he talked about his fig tree.
Many people have only tried figs as the sweet-and-chewy main ingredient of Fig Newtons. Fresh figs are a completely different animal, more like tiny water balloons filled with honey. A lot of people really love fresh figs. Ralph did. Unfortunately, so did the birds in his yard.
When I first met Ralph, he was embroiled in a years’ long battle with those pesky birds. He had tried shooing them away. He had tried hanging pie tins from the tree, hoping the clatter and reflective glare from the sun would drive the birds away. The year I was Ralph’s neighbor, he was looping the tree with rubber snakes.
The snakes didn’t work, and when we moved to another apartment months later, Ralph was already contemplating what his next move should be.
Ralph was doing what I have to do all the time as a nonfiction writer: approach a problem from different angles, to see what might work.
Every book has puzzles to work out, and they can be devilishly stubborn. I can spend hours/days/weeks pulling out my hair. I can always tell when a solution is the right one when it doesn’t require any explanation or rationalization but instead has a clarity and simplicity that leaves me feeling a little chagrined that it took so long to figure out.
Take, for example, a problem that stalled me while writing THE DINOSAURS OF WATERHOUSE HAWKINS, the true story of the artist who made the first life-size dinosaur models and, in doing so, introduced dinosaurs to the world.
I knew I needed to explain how he had extrapolated—from the few fossils available at that time—what the whole dinosaurs might have looked like. Waterhouse talked about the process but not in language that would work well in a picture book, so I couldn’t use direct quotes. I didn’t want to bog down the text with a lot of technical details. And, I didn’t want to use invented dialog.
Days of hair-pulling later, I realized I could describe the process in the way I set up the narrative. And so, when Queen Victoria visits Waterhouse’s studio, the narrative captures the essence of a conversation-that-wasn’t (but might have been.)
“The Queen’s eyes grew wide in surprise. Waterhouse’s creatures were extraordinary! How on earth had he made them?
He was happy to explain: The iguanodon, for instance, had teeth that were quite similar to the teeth of an iguana. The iguanodon, then, must surely have looked like a giant iguana. Waterhouse pointed out that the few iguanodon bones helped determine the model’s size and proportion. And another bone—almost a spike—most likely sat on the nose, like a rhino’s horn.
Just so for the megalosaurus. Start with its jawbone. Compare it to the anatomy of a lizard. Fill in the blanks. And voilà! A dinosaur more than forty feet long.”
The solution felt so simple that I couldn’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner. But it took days of poking and prodding (hmmm…pie tins? rubber snakes?) to make it work.
A lot of my job seems to be trying one thing and then, when it fails, trying something else. Choosing not the first solution but what I hope is the best solution.
I don’t know if Ralph every found a way to defeat those darn birds. His figs were a sweet enough prize, however, that at the very least, he kept on trying.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 5/14/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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In 1981, when I was fresh out of college, I joined the Peace Corps. My decision to sign up was certainly motivated by a desire to do something worthwhile, and the altruism of the job appealed to me.
But the other major reason I went was entirely selfish: I wanted to go because I was curious. I knew that many people in the world did not live as I did. I had a comfortable home, the security of abundant food, easy access to medical care, and a family with enough resources to provide a safety net should I ever – literally or figuratively – stumble and fall.
I did not, however, have the foggiest idea how people in poorer parts of the world did live.
And so, I went to live and teach in Nepal.
Altruism might be the best reason to join the Peace Corps, but I don’t think curiosity is necessarily the worst. Curiosity implies at least a certain openness to new ideas. (I don’t think it’s possible to be truly curious if your mind is already completely made up.)
And since part of the Peace Corps mission is to bring a greater understanding and tolerance of the world back home to America, I think my curiosity served me well.
On the surface, of course, life in my rural Nepali village was very different than my life had been back home. The village lacked electricity; the homes had no running water; kids went barefoot to school; moms cooked the family’s dinner over an open fire in the middle of the kitchen floor.
But beneath the surface, I found that much about life in my Nepali village was exactly like my life had been at home. Parents worked hard to feed their families. Kids studied and played with friends. And everyone gathered to relax at the end of the day.
By the time I left, I knew that the woman I saw hauling water home from the community water tap in a copper jug, had many of the same values and goals that I did.
Today we live in a much more global society than ever before. And it’s crucial that we help our kids learn about other cultures. It’s only through learning about other cultures that we can begin to develop tolerance for our differences, and look past them to seek common ground.
That’s why I write books about other countries. I’ve written about water around the world, about families, and about peace. My latest title with National Geographic, ONE WORLD, ONE DAY, is about school kids around the world. The book shows how their lives may be a little bit different. But more importantly, it shows how their lives are a lot alike.
By: Barbara Kerley,
on 4/9/2009
Blog: I.N.K.: Interesting Non fiction for Kids (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
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One thing that being middle-aged has brought me (along with creaky knees and, as my hairdresser once commented, “platinum highlights”) is the beginning of a sense of perspective.
This has proved true in my own life, and in my writing career. I’ve had some amazing highs—the deep satisfaction of nailing an idea after weeks of floundering; starred reviews that sent me flying out the door to walk the streets of my neighborhood until I calmed down enough to get back to work. I’ve also had my share of dismal lows—the five year period when I did not sell a single manuscript; the review in a major newspaper that called my writing style, and I quote, “irritating.” Ouch.
I’ve pursued intriguing book ideas that sometimes work out beautifully (see “high”, above), and sometimes bite the dust after weeks or months of work (and that would be a “low”).
But as the list of highs and lows grows longer, it does make it a little easier to step back, take a deep breath, and then soldier on. Perspective.
About 20 years ago, some of you may recall, there was a national advertising campaign to Name the Raisins—an animated (literally) rock band that sang “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” on TV commercials.
My husband and I were in school, we were broke, and I really wanted to win the $10,000 prize. Besides, how hard could it be to name a piece of dried fruit?
I like raisins. Truly, I do. And the fact that you had to submit raisin box tops with your raisin names meant that we ate a lot of raisins that month. I even made a sour cream raisin pie, a mistake I will not repeat.
Over the course of that month my long-suffering husband and I managed to eat enough raisins for me to submit three names—three glorious raisin names—to the judges.
I tried to think what fun raisins would be like. I didn’t want boring names. I wanted my raisins to have style. To be spunky and just a little bit sassy. MY raisins would have PERSONALITY.
Amazin’ Raisin. Jammin’ Raisin (they were in a rock band, after all). And my own personal favorite, Misbehavin’ Raisin.
I sent in my names, sat back, and watched the grand prize go… to whoever invented the name Tiny Goodbite.
I was outraged. How could Tiny Goodbite compete with that finger-wagging rogue, Misbehavin’ Raisin? Somehow, a Tiny raisin had bested him.
So what did I learn from the raisin days? That it’s good writing practice to be playful, to think about character, to have a little fun. That even if your ideas are not embraced by the powers-that-be, there is a benefit to exploring them anyway.
And, of course, never to make that pie ever again.
I sometimes write Step into Readings and when I do, I always use 18 point type. It helps me channel the young kid reading it. Long words look really big. Long sentences go on forever. You can easily see the mix of long and short ones. It's very helpful. words
I usually rely on the "let it cool", aka "let it simmer" method, but I love the other ideas you've suggested. I'm going to try triple spacing or changing the font the next time I'm at that stage. Thanks for a great post, Barbara.
Interesting ideas.
Susan -- That's a great idea. It never occurred to me to use font size to think about how kid-friendly the text is.
Melissa -- Yes, letting it cool is my favorite :)
Linda -- Thanks!