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"What sort of day was it?" A narrator posed this rhetorical question to his unseen audience, curled up on couches or slouched on chairs out in TV Land. "What sort of day was it?" he'd ask, then answer himself: "A day like all days, filled with those events that alter and illuminate our times... and you were there." Between the years 1953, when I turned two, and 1957, the year two English teenagers, John Lennon and Paul McCartney made one another's acquaintance, Walter Cronkite hosted "You Are There" over here, on CBS. Reporters with cameras and microphones would "cover" such events as President LIncoln's Gettysburg Address, 19 Nov. 1863; or the assassination of Julius Caesar, 15 Mar. 44 B.C.E. This long-gone television show (unthinkable in this period of so-called reality programming), this high-tech escapade was a fine example, albeit black-&-white, of what writers of history try to do: take you there. Joy Hakim, in From Colonies to Country: "Let's climb into a time-and-space capsule...We'll cruise over the North American continent. It is early in the 18th century... So dense are the trees and grasses over most of the continent that it is hard to see anything else, except for the birds..." Here's Natalie S. Bober, in her Thomas Jefferson biography, describing dusty Williamsburg, VA in the 1760s: "Students from the college, in their black gowns and tricornered hats, were everywhere... politicians in velvet coats, frontiersmen in their coonskin caps, and judges trailing scarlet robes all made their way to the Capitol" As for me, here's the "Boston Massacre," March 5, 1770, in The Revolutionary John Adams: "Noisy men and boys were throwing snowballs and oyster shells at a British sentry ...The scene exploded with more soldiers, an alarm bell, and a mob of men running from the town and the docks, shouting "Kill 'em! Knock 'em down!" Shots rang out in the frosty air and five Americans fell..." For me, a sense of what the moment was like is what I want and what young readers need in historical nonfiction. Story, snappy description, humanity, and immediacy: these are the sugar that help the medicine, i.e. the need-to-know facts, go down, With these things, You Are There.

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"Truth is mighty and will prevail. There is nothing the matter with this, except that it ain't so." Mark Twain.

So. Screenwriter Aaron Sorkin gave one of Jack Nicholson’s characters a pretty pugnacious question to pose: “You want answers?" His interrogator (Tom Cruise), thought he was entitled to answers. In fact, he wanted the truth! What he got was the famous reply: “You can't handle the truth!”

Can any of us? I reckon we have to catch it first."Chase after the truth like all hell and you'll free yourself, even though you never touch its coattails." That was Clarence Darrow's take on the big T. 'T is B & B is T,' so said John K. And Galileo? "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." The subjects of one of my books [out of print, the world being a hard, difficult place], Mark Twain and the Queens of the Mississippi, said, "When in doubt, tell the truth." But our theme in this steamy month of dog days is not the handling, the telling, or the understanding of the Truth, but that chase, the search. And to my mind, no one spoke of the search more compellingly than the subject of my 2008 book, The Groundbreaking, Chance-Taking Life of George Washington Carver AND Science & Invention in America.

"Would it surprise you," George once asked a visitor who'd been noticing all of the scientific and artistic things he'd done, "if I say that I have not been doing many different things: All these years I have been doing one thing...seeking Truth. That is what the scientist is seeking. That is what the artist is seeking; his writings, his music, his pictures are just expressions of his soul in his search for Truth."

Yup. Thank you, Professor Carver. I have nothing further to add. That's about all the truth I can handle for now.

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You have questions. We have answers. Here’s what Sue Macy and Cheryl Harness had to say about this question from fellow blogger Loreen Leedy:

What are your main reasons for choosing a topic to write about?

Sue Macy said:
My first criterion for choosing a topic is my own curiosity. I have to want to explore the topic myself. Writing a nonfiction book requires months, sometimes years, of research, and without a personal interest in the content, I probably wouldn’t be motivated to continue.

My first book, A Whole New Ball Game, about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), was fueled by my love of baseball and my experience of studying women’s history in college. When I first found out about the league (it was mentioned in a book about “firsts” in women’s history), I was astonished that I’d never known about it.

I started doing research to satisfy my own curiosity, and I continued because the stories I was learning about the league and the women who played in it ignited my memories of growing up wanting to play baseball at a time when girls were not allowed in Little League or, like today, in the major leagues.

No matter how enticing a subject is, however, there’s another criterion that must be applied: marketability. If a book won’t sell, publishers (usually) won’t publish it, so I need to prove its marketability to them and to myself.

A Whole New Ball Game had the advantage of being the true story of the league portrayed in the movie A League of Their Own, so the publisher knew their would be popular recognition of the topic. (My book came out the year after the movie, but the publisher bought it knowing that the movie was in the works)

Also, since the league started during World War II, it related somewhat to the U.S. history curriculum, so a book about it was likely to appeal to the school library market. Indeed, the book is still in print some 16 years after its initial publication, at least in part because students every year do History Day projects about the AAGPBL.

When I do a book proposal, the inclusion of a page on the marketability of the book is crucial. Highlighting any upcoming events, anniversaries, and curriculum or media tie-ins helps a publisher see the book’s sales potential.

When I’m in the process of researching and writing a book, I am consumed by my interest in the subject, but I’ve found that the best way to sell a publisher on the concept is to communicate both my passion about the topic and the reasons why publishing it is a good business decision.

Cheryl Harness said:
1. Is there an expressed need for a book about a certain subject? Ask a knowledgeable bookseller. Ask librarians, students, teachers, and parents. In her column, Needed Subjects, in the most recent Bulletin of the Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators, www.scbwi.org, Libby Nelson reports a desire for, among other things, books about feathers, time-telling, and Nellie Tayloe Ross, the first woman elected governor in the U.S.

2. When I look at what's occupying the shelves at my nearest library and book store, do I see a need for a book that's not there, but ought to be and would be if I ruled the world? Regularly studying what's out there is a sensible habit to form and you know what Frances E. Willard, long-gone-dead head of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, www.wctu.org, said about habits? "Sow an act & you reap a habit; sow a habit & you reap a character; sow a character & you reap a destiny." Which brings me to the business of a. dead people and b. falling in love with them.

3. Deborah Heiligman wrote about this in her July 21 posting and wonderfully, too. I could fall in love with old Frances E. Willard, even though she'd be turning 170 this coming Sept. 28. I mean, just read her telling about how she learned to ride a bicycle http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5038/ when she was 53, five years before her untimely death in 1898. (Yikes: 58!) I could at least develop a cerebral sort of crush on her. That's what I've done with all of my subjects over the years - of course, I'm pretty impressionable.

Your passionate fascination for your subject will fuel your initial studies. You'll need that fizzy enthusiasm/info combo if you're ever going to seduce some editor into doing what’s necessary to get her or his colleagues to sign off on a contract. If your book is ever to see the light of day, you must talk a publisher into gambling their money.
4. Will some editor who's managed to remain employed actually BUY my take on this or any subject? Will people--make that lots of people--out there exchange some of their discretionary income for a book about the subject I've chosen? Somewhere, someone will ask me about my subject's selling points. It'd be good to have an answer. I ought to know about comparable books, how they've done in the marketplace, and the subject's real-world relevance. I wish I'd had all this at my fingertips 20 years ago when I was telling a guy on the phone why a biography on Andrew Jackson would be a far out proposition. Impossible, he told me, bookbiz-wise.

Why?

Too obscure.

Well, there's a perverse pleasure in rolling one's eyes heavenward behind the back of a callow editor, knowing for sure that the world's going to hell in a hand basket, but having a knowledgeable pitch is more useful.

5. Can you link the subject to an approaching anniversary, the bigger the better? We're coming up on a century since the Titanic went down. Two centuries since the War of 1812 in which Andy Jackson got famous at the Battle of New Orleans - ha!

And 2012 will mark 600 years since Joan of Arc was born. (Oh baby!) The best book for finding such nuggets is Bernard Grun's The Timetables of History: A Horizontal Linkage of People and Events. (4th revised ed. Touchstone).

6. Do you have insider, up-close information on or experience with the subject? Pictures? Interview opportunity?

7. Have you been struck by a deep curiosity to learn all you can about pigs or the world's rivers or Stephen Foster, American composer?

8. For an excellent repository of nifty things to write about, let me recommend this book put out by the Core Knowledge Foundation, www.coreknowledge.org. The Core Knowledge Sequence: Content Guidelines for Grades K-8. (ISBN 1-890517-12-7). It's loaded with lists of concepts, events, creatures, eras, and individuals, all so vivid & interesting & genuine that you gotta wonder how these subjects are routinely lumped under the label nonfiction, indicating what they're not. Ah well. Another subject for another day.

In the end, I'm thinking that settling on what to learn about and write about is a proposition of heart and mind. Be led by the one; dig in deep with the other. Or, I should say, choose your path, follow where it leads & keep your balance--like riding a bike.

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So, have I discovered anything particularly amazing in the course of researching nonfiction? The first thing that comes to mind is the story of Mrs. Hopkins. I found out about her in 1986, when I was painting the cover for a new paperback edition of Patricia Clapp’s well-researched work of historic fiction: Constance: A Story of Early Plymouth (originally published by Lothrop, Lee, & Shepard, 1968). Reading it led to my first historical picture book: Three Young Pilgrims (Macmillan: 1992) and my Adventurous Life of MYLES STANDISH and the Amazing-But-True Survival Story of PLYMOUTH COLONY. (Nat’l Geographic, 2006). The genuine, flesh & blood Constance was about 14 when her stepmother, Elizabeth Hopkins, gave birth to a child in the early autumn of 1620, in the course of an already pretty dashed uncomfortable voyage. It was not a story I’d heard in school.<?xml:namespace prefix = o />

Nor had I heard of Tisquantum’s saga, a.k.a. Squanto’s Amazing Adventures. The Patuxet tribesman had been taken to England long before he astonished the Mayflower “Pilgrims” with his knowledge of English, and even before he’d translated for Captain John Smith in 1614. It was after that stint that Squanto was kidnapped. The greedy and dastardly Thomas Hunt, one of Smith's comrades, sailed off with him and 26 other Natives. Hunt took his captives to the Spanish port city of Malaga and sold them at the slave market there!

Those terrified, despairing captives had to look up at the moon and know for sure they'd never see its light shining on their homes ever again. Some were dragged off to North Africa. Squanto ended up with Spanish monks, thence to London and back across the Atlantic to Newfoundland. The governor there hooked him up with Thomas Dermer, another English sea captain in need of a translator. Back to England Squanto went with Captain Dermer, who was preparing to explore Cape Cod Bay. So it was that, in 1619, Squanto finally got back to what the captain termed "my savage's native country."

No one was home. While he was away from his home village of Accomack, smallpox killed everyone he’d ever known. When a boatload of bedraggled English folks arrived, including Mrs. Hopkins and the new baby, they established their new colony where Squanto's people once lived. As far as William Bradford was concerned, Squanto had survived to become "a special instrument of God:" He’d saved Bradford and many a Plymouth Pilgrim from starving to death. It’s a tragic tale and, yes, maybe I'm amazed (thanks Paul McCartney).

George Little amazed me. After his cold, exhausted horse gave out, this teenaged Pony Express rider cut open his saddlebags, stuffed the mail into his shirt, then wallowed, slid, and tramped through a mountain snowstorm the rest of the way into Salt Lake City. (They’re Off! The Story of the Pony Express. 1996)

I was knocked out by the idea of an army of workers laboring away by the light of a harvest moon, busting to finish work on New York’s glorious ditch. If not exactly amazed I was certainly enchanted by the notion of all sorts of quaintly-dressed people firing cannon, lighting bonfires, waving flags, and playing fanfares on their drums and cornets when the "Amazing, Impossible Erie Canal" (1994) finally opened for business, October 26, 1825.

Studying for The Remarkable Benjamin Franklin (Nat’l Geographic, 2005), I first read about this endlessly curious, philosophizing scientist & author from the colonies, stopping on his bumptious journey across the Salisbury Plain and getting out of his stagecoach to see Stonehenge. Wow. It’s July 1757. B.F. is 51 years old. Here I am, 252 summers later, still mildly thrilled at the notion of that canny old bird wiping his brow, pondering those stones and whomever cut, hauled, and set them – all for what? The holy calculation of the circling heavens? There they stood, upon many a solstice, singing? Dancing? Pondering the rising of the moon, the same moon that silvered the sails of the Mayflower, captives upturned faces, and mountain peaks poking through the clouds. The constant, inconstant moon that Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walked upon forty years ago today. Amazing.

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So. The season for visiting schools is coming to an end: an appropriate time to be coming home to read Jan Greenburg's artful notes on aging. Grateful and thrilled I continue to be, getting to gallivant around the country, talking to kids about the virtues of studying history ["Any nation is a COMBI-nation of all of the stories of all of the people who've lived in the land down the years..."] and answering their questions. How old am I? 57 Never before been so old in my entire life. My favorite book? Different ones for different reasons. GEORGE WASHINGTON because I'm a sissypants who's too often given up too easily so I admire someone who persevered no matter what. GHOSTS OF THE CIVIL WAR because it was the most difficult and "No, it's not some Casper-deal that's going to rot your brain & give you nightmares. It's more like old Scrooge seeing the 'shades' of the departed going about their business back in the living past."

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So. It's travel season and here I am back home from Kirksville, a nice courthouse town over on the eastern side of Missouri, where a swell children’s lit fest was convened at Truman State University. Then off I go to talk to school kids in Topeka, KS. I'll draw and answer their questions. We'll laugh and I'll tell them how I study for, write, draw, & paint my books. I'll talk about history too, seeing as I tend to write about dead people and what all they did in the world. Some people think that history's kind of boring. Just a pursuit of factoids: battles & birthdays. (just for you to know: Adolf Hitler's is April 20, 1889) According to history, many a well-known person delighted in dissing history, calling it “a great dust heap.” (Thomas Carlyle) “A fable agreed upon.” (Napoleon Bonaparte) “A catalogue of the forgotten.” (Henry Adams)

Well yeah, sure. I suppose. On the other hand, “to not know what happened before we were born,” said the great Richard Peck, “is to be always a child.”

And too, history is positively juicy with adventure and it's loaded with role models. Me being sort of a sissypants, I admire my sturdy, stubborn subjects: pilgrims, reformers, and a particularly persistent fellow who used to live a couple of blocks from my house. President Truman would have had his 125th birthday next month if he hadn't gotten his ticket punched back in 1972. He's the subject of The Harry Book, my first comic book biography. According to Mr. Truman, "the only thing new in the world is the history you don't know."

A historical vantage point helps us to understand how we got here so we're not wandering around on the world's stage with no idea of what the play's about. After all, any nation is more than its borders and banner; it's a combination of all the stories of all who’ve lived in the land, all down the years of the living past. Knowing what people did and survived helps to explain why peoples and governments behave as they do. A nation is like a person whose experiences and ancestral blood make for a lot of explanation, identity-wise. I’m me because of Ray & Elaine Harness & the rest of my ancestors, their blood, their inclinations, plus all that I've done, been, and read - especially the works of Laura Ingalls Wilder. Ten times a piece. I'm an accumulation of it all. Who we are is who we have been.

Anyway, I figure that knowing what folks have survived gives us courage to face what trials we have and a sense of history gives the present a boatload of drama and serious fun. After all, just about all of us live where others, generations of others, once lived, none of them knowing what the future held. A sense of history livens up the calendar with anniversaries and just about any set of numbers with – uhm – associations. When I see 1836 on the odometer, I think ‘Alamo!’ If the person behind the counter rings up $10.66 on the cash register, don’t you think ‘Battle of Hastings’? I’m afraid I do. <?xml:namespace prefix = o />

Ah well, on tangents I’ve been known to digress and all I meant to do was tell you how I came to write about the past besides the fact that I'm way better at drawing horses than cars. More about that in the future, Fates willing.

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Today I will be having the third and final chat with author illustrator Cheryl Harness.

Marya: Welcome back to TTLG Cheryl. Today I would like to talk to you about
the book creation process.

Cheryl: Hello right backatcha. I'd love to talk about how I do my books.

Marya: For those of you who don't know, Cheryl illustrates other people's
books and she also creates books that she has both written and illustrated. I thought I would begin by asking you how things work when you are going to write and illustrate a book yourself. For example, for Young Teddy Roosevelt, did you come up with the idea for this book yourself or did a publisher approach you about the idea?

Cheryl: There was a story on television some years back about a book containing TR's letters to his children - did you know that he illustrated them? He did, with funny little line drawings. Anyway, hearing of that book filled me with instant enthusiasm for a TR book. After all, I grew up reading those Betsy-Tacy books by Maud Hart Lovelace, the first of the series set in the very picturesque time of TR's presidency [1901-1909]. As I read more about the man himself - I mean, I knew the basics, but finding out more about Teddy, his overcoming of chronic ill health, tragic early deaths of those he most loved, etc., etc., ETC. I just HAD to do a book about him.

Marya: I see. And what did you do once the idea was in place? Did you write
it first and then illustrate it or did you do the written work and the artwork at the same time?

Cheryl: Writing's the foundation; it always comes first. The first thing that I always do is go to my encyclopedia, a fine place to get a brief but solid introduction to the life & times. Then I'll begin looking at what has been done for older readers. For instance, when I worked on my Thomas Jefferson [Nat'l Geo., 2004], I read Natalie Bober's wonderful book, Thomas Jefferson, Man on a Mountain.[S. & Sch. 1988]. Based upon these, I write an outline and send this off to the editor. Now when I was first starting out, in the late 1980s, I sent a carefully, completely done story, literally cut and pasted into a 'dummy,' illustrated w/ very tight pencil drawings, photocopied, colored w/ colored pencils and pasted into place w/ the text. THEN I slipped each page into an acetate sleeve, all these pages held w/ a plastic binder, you know? usually used, back then anyway, for a term paper. THEN I gift-wrapped the whole shebang w/ white tissue paper, kissed it for luck, & mailed it. By golly, every single time I send art and/or writing off to an editor to this day, I still kiss the envelope for luck before sending it away.

Marya: What form is the book in when you send it to the publisher. and what
happens to it next?

Cheryl: The outline might well be little more than a page breakdown and/or a storyboard. For example, here's what I put together for a possible book about the wonderful/horrible individual who was our 7th President, Andrew Jackson:

p. 1 paste
pp. 2/3 endpapers
pp. 4/5 title page
pp. 6/7 It’s winter 1767. Many a mile and a stormy sea away from their native Ireland, Mr. and Mrs.
Jackson were pioneering in the wild Carolina country. They were building a new life for themselves and especially for their boys, little Hugh and Robert, and for the new baby, soon to be born. Life was hard, but the future looked bright.
Then Mr. Jackson got hurt. With all his might he’d been struggling to lift a huge log when he hurt himself so badly that he died of his injuries. A few weeks later, redheaded Betty Jackson gave birth to her third son. All the long years of his adventurous life he’d wear the name of the father he never knew: Andrew Jackson.
pp. 8/9 serves as a messenger in Rev War in which his 2 older brothers die, taken prisoner, wounded
by a furious sword-slashing British officer, & orphaned by age 14 (Betty & Robert died of smallpox)
pp. 10/11 wild Andy, known as "the most roaring, rollicking, game-cocking, horse-racing, card- playing, mischievous fellow that ever lived in Salisbury" [NC] becomes a lawyer! / off to Nashville [western NC]
pp. 12/13 Rachel [m. 1791, again in ‘94]/ the Hermitage/ Andy the politician [involved in Tennessee statehood convention]
pp. 14/15 1796-97 - AJ: U.S. Congressman, Senator, judge: Tenn. Supreme Court (1798-1804)
pp. 16/17 1804-13 AJ: merchant, planter, race horse breeder/War of 1812 AJ: the general. "Old Hickory" leads 2,500 militiamen 800 mile-march > Natchez, Miss…. Bloody Battle of Horseshoe Bend, Creek War Mar. 1814 [several duels, challenges in this period as well as a gunfight w/ Thos. Hart Benton!]
pp. 18/19 Battle of New Orleans/ Jean Lafitte & the pirates Jan. 1815
pp. 20/21 Florida campaign against the Seminole/ nasty presidential election No. 1 in 1824
pp. 22/23 nasty election No. 2 "rise of the common man"/ death of Rachel, just before Christmas, 1828 (buried at the Hermitage in her gown for the Inaugural Ball)
pp. 24/25 wild inauguration: big cheese in town
pp. 26/27 Jackson White House/ 1st term of "King Andrew the First" [issues: nullification, Bank of U.S., internal improvements. Peggy Eaton]
pp. 28/29 Black Hawk War/ Indian removal/T. of Tears.
pp. 30/31 2nd term: war on the Seminoles, Texan independence
pp. 32/33 last years 1837-death: 8 June 1845
pp. 34/35 Epilogue: the world of and/or chronology of President Andrew Jackson MAP States [2 new ones: Arkansas & Michigan] & territories….. inventions : 1st steam locomotives, daguerreotypes, & such
pp. 36/37 backmatter
pp. 38/39 endpapers
p. 40 paste

Then I cross my fingers! It's a bit like entering a contest, sending a story idea to a publisher. For the publisher, remember, it's a bit of a gamble

Marya: Goodness that is a lot of work. Right, so you have sent the publisher the mockup. Let say they love it and want to go forward. What happens now?

Cheryl: Now what happens is that I make a list of all of the illustrations TBD [To Be Done] in my calendar book then I march down that list like Gen. Sherman through Georgia. Very systematic. I lay in a supply of recorded books from the library and rule the first board, meaning I draw with a ruler and a pencil the size of the open book. This is called a spread: 2 pages, gutter line down the middle. I draw my border with an extra 1/2" or so beyond the actual 'trim size' of the book. This extra margin is called the 'bleed': the color can 'bleed' off the edge. Icky sounding, I know. Then I tape the rough, tracing paper dwg [drawing] to the watercolor paper or illustration board -I've mostly used the latter over the years. heavy, cold-pressed illus. board. Hot-pressed paper is real slick-feeling: crummy for watercolor, which is what I use, that + some. colored pencil. Underneath the rough dwg I slip a piece of graphite paper which allows me to trace & transfer the dwg onto the good stuff. I refine and complete the dwg w/pencil then I paint it. It takes me about a week for a big, complicated double-page spread. And I paint at the size you see in the books. For my picture book biographies published by the Nat'l Geo,. for example, ea. of those paintings were approx. 12" x 18"

Marya: How many times do you typically go back and forth with a story? How does the editor tell you what he or she wants you to change? Do you have a face to face talk about the project?

Cheryl: Generally, I'd say that the editor and I have perhaps a dozen email exchanges regarding the text and she'll send me the marked-up manuscript. I'll do all of the fixes and we may well discuss one or two things that I don't feel need fixing! But for that I must have a sensible reason. This is all most congenial. We'll at least one long telephone conversation as we go through the ms. line by line. Now, when I did my novel, Just For You To Know, a few years back, it was a much more complex project, requiring three revisions. It was a happy process. I know that the editor & I are of the same mind: we both want a good book. With my picture books, this revision process takes a few days. Time is of the essence! It's the illustration that is the most time-consuming. For my Washington Irving book the paintings took approximately three months.

Marya: How long does all this take?

Cheryl: My novel was finally published (in 2006) almost two years after it was accepted, June 18, 2004, a very happy day, by the way. Upon completing a picture book [approx. 6 to 8 months), 6 months to a year pass before the book is published. The paintings must be prepared to be scanned and printed. the pages must be folded and gathered and bound.

Marya: What happens when the book is all ready? What role do you play now?

Cheryl: I talk with young readers about my books, sign books whenever I can, and attend young author conferences, lit fests, and I've visited many a classroom over the years. I love this part of my job. It isn't meant as merely promoting my books. I come intending to tell younger writers what I've found out about the step-by-step of creating a book and to encourage them to ENGAGE. Why leave the creative process to the professionals? WHY should they have all the fun? Find your perfect work, the best use of your time and your talent while you're here on the planet. You know what Marvin Gaye said: "As long as you're alive, you might as well live!"

Marya: Thank you Cheryl. We have learned a great deal from you. Good luck with all your future books.

Cheryl: It's been a pleasure Marya. Talk to you soon.

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For some months now I have been talking to author and illustrator Cheryl Harness via email. She a wonderfully warm, funny, and clever lady. To try to give you sense of what she is like I am going to be having several 'conversations' with her over the next few weeks.

Cheryl have illustrated numerous books that were written by other people, and she has both written and illustrated many titles as well. Her National Geographic biographies are both fascinating to read and a joy to look at. Her books include such titles as The Remarkable Benjamin Franklin, Franklin and and Eleanor, and The Remarkable, Rough-Riding Life of Theodore Roosevelt and the Rise of Empire America

Here is my first talk with Cheryl:

Marya: Good morning Cheryl. It is a pleasure to have you here on the TTLG
blog with me. I hope you are having a terrific 2009 so far.

Cheryl: I am indeed; so far so good. The December snow & ice has melted, so for today, at least, there's sure footing and the sky is blue.

Marya: We had a sort of white Christmas, but snow has been almost non-existent since then. This is a little disappointing for me because I love to ski.
Recently you told me that you got to look at the cover of the new book
that you are working on. This book is about Harry Truman. I was
wondering what got you interested in writing about this particular
president.

Cheryl: Well, as you and your readers may or may not know, Independence,
Missouri, is my home town. This is true, too, of our 33rd President. Neither of us were born here - he was born south a ways from here in Lamar, MO, 125 years ago; I in Maywood, CA, when he was the president, in 1951.
I actually saw him only once, in person even though we lived in the same neighborhood. I wasn't curious enough, youth being wasted on the young. I was more interested in drawing pictures and reading Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Anyway, I've been asked more than once, "When are you going to do a book about Harry?" Turned out that the answer was "these past few months."

Marya: When will this book be in bookstores?

Cheryl: The book will be available mid-February, in time for Presidents' Day, but I wouldn't expect to see The Harry Book (The Life of President Truman in Words & Pictures) in bookstores any time soon. I'm self- publishing this. It's something I've never done before and I confess that I am a much better writer and illustrator than I am a businesswoman. I imagine that one who goes to my website will find how he or she can get a copy. Or lots of copies! And I reckon that I'll have a bundle of Harry Books with me when I travel about, school visiting. It's comic book - did I tell you that? NO, I didn't! It's 48 pages' worth of pen & ink detailed pictures & lettering about this truly remarkable fellow. I learned so much about my long-gone neighbor. I wish I hadn't been such a doofus and had met him when I was young and had the chance... ah well.

Marya: You have written about several presidents so far including Teddy
Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln. Which president interested you the most and why?

Cheryl: Indeed, I should say Mr. Lincoln, this year being the 200th anniversary of the year in which he entered the world - same day, by the way, as Charles Darwin, the naturalist. And truly, I loved learning, writing, and illustrating his inspiring life, but of all the presidents - of all the Americans I've studied Teddy Roosevelt is the most interesting. Not saying I agree with all of his politics, but that TR was a fabulous individual. I love stories of overcoming and considering Abe's poverty- stricken background, FDR's polio, Geo. Washington's steadfastness in the face of truly aweful obstacles, TR's early illness - golly, I could go on and on. These individuals overcame so much. And too, each president represents to me a different chapter in the history of our nation.

Marya: I am also fascinated by Teddy Roosevelt's story. He was smart, funny, very active, and full of energy. And, like FDR, he had to overcome a severe illness. In TR's case it was asthma. In general I love reading biographies and books about history. What is it about history that excites you so much?

Cheryl: It's EVERYTHING! All we've done and hoped and dared. All humankind's accomplishments, our cruel, ridiculous, short-sighted mistakes; our explorations and our digging out of the holes we've dug.
And it's positively thick with role models. Me being such a sissypants, I'm ever drawn to courageous examples down the years. Harriet Quimby totally interests me these days. the first woman to fly across the English Channel, in 1912. Hugely brave & skillful PLUS she was totally beautiful, not that it matters, and she died far too young. a real pioneer. Plus, historical, real-life stories go well with my sort of illustration.

Marya: For those of you who don't know, Cheryl's artwork is full of detail and action, and she is a wizz when it comes to maps. Do you have any plans to branch out into fiction?

Cheryl: I did do that a few years ago in my novel for young readers, Just For You to Know [HarperCollins, 2006] It was set here in Independence, MO, 1963. Harry Truman had a brief, cameo appearance in it. That book was my heart's darling. I've got another book in the works - several really - and one of them might well involve another President. Stay tuned!

Marya: That's right! I remember the book because I reviewed - and loved - it. Here is my review. I look forward to seeing more works of both fiction and non-fiction with your name on them. Thank you for the chat Cheryl.

Cheryl: You are welcome.

I will be talking to Cheryl some more about her life and her work in the weeks to come. In the meantime do please visit Cheryl's website to find out more about this wonderful lady.

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