"Listen my children and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
Hardly a man is now alive..."
So wrote the poet, 151 years ago. Somewhere off in the Blue Beyond is the soul who once animated the renowned silversmith of Boston. Here's hoping that he knows that his exploits and those of his generation are remembered. It seems to me that I wrote (in my book Remember the Ladies), about another rider, another spring night, that of the 26th of April, 1777. Sybil Ludington and her horse accomplished forty miles that night, about twice the ground covered by her more famous contemporary and she was less than half his age. As for me, over this past weekend, I rode ever so much farther (357 miles), ever so much faster, with a great deal more comfort (in Grace, my little red car: "Tis Grace that brought me safe thus far..."), and all the while listening to one of the clever and beautifully researched Mary Russell books, written by the great Laurie R. King. Some things about this 21st century I positively adore. Why was I out and about? Because I was asked to speak, draw, sign books, & otherwise be part of the entertainment on Saturday, at the George Washington Carver National Monument, down in Missouri's southwest corner. If you're reading this, it's likely that you already know plenty about Dr. Carver, as he was called, out of respect and due to the honorary doctoral degree awarded to him by a college he'd attended in Iowa. GWC was also known as "The Sage of Tuskegee," or "The Peanut Wizard," or "The Black Leonardo." I thought I had a pretty good idea of him, too, until I was set the task of writing an
As I write, the vernal equinox is mere hours away and a veritable cluster of crocus is abloom in the next block. It's late on the 19th of March, the 151st anniversary of the birth of "the Great Commoner," William Jennings Bryan. When he was but 36 years old he electrified a bunch of Democrats when he wound up his speech (on the nation's monetary policy), saying ] "you shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns; you shall not crucify mankind on a cross of gold!" This most gifted gasbag ended up winning his party's nomination three elections in a row, losing every time, but he did become President Wilson's Sec'y of State. He (or rather, a character based upon WJB as he was at the "Monkey Trial" down in Dayton, Tennessee in 1927), was portrayed devastatingly by Fredric March (opposite Spencer Tracy) in Inherit the Wind in 1960.
Early in the morning I'm off to the University of Central Missouri, where I once was an exceedingly impressionable art-dork, back when President Nixon was in office. Tomorrow I'll be expected to talk to teachers attending the school's 43rd annual
Children's Literature Festival. What about? History, by golly. I'm to address these questions:
How can an awareness of the past improve the present, the future, and very possibly save the world? How can you (and your students) get it? I hope I'll know the answers by tomorrow afternoon! Then on Monday I'll gas away to several gatherings of some of the 5,500 school children, entertain and educate them to a fare-thee-well as to my books and the good old writing/rewriting process. I'll torment them with my harmonica, too, and draw pictures. It's the least I can do, seeing as they will have gotten up far too early in order to pile onto yellow busses charged with carrying them to the festival, where they'll hear four different authors in the course of their day, buy books, get them signed. Really, a pretty extraordinary deal.
To get there (Warrensburg, MO), I'll go down state highway 13, past land once farmed by my great-great grandfather, Alden Harness, and his sons, in the years before and during the Civil War, when passions ran terribly high hereabouts between largely (but by no means entirely) southern-leaning Missouri and Kansas, a.k.a. the "Free State." Farms, towns, lives - all were well and truly torn up, as shown here in a rightfully famous image entitled
Order Number 11. It was created by George Caleb Bingham, another passionate politician, one who happened to be exceedingly handy with a paint brush. Had he not died in 1878, he'd be turning 200 on the 20th of March, as it was on that day that he was born, in Virginia, in 1811, the year of the great earthquake, centered near Missouri's boot heel. So fierce the quake was that the Mississippi flowed backwards, for a little while anyway - what a swell year in which to take a boat rid down the river. So Nicholas Roosevelt (great-grand-uncle of Theodore) did, along with Lydia, his bride, upon the
New Orleans, their steamboat, clear down to the city by that name. A first. I learned about this in the course of doing my book,
1 Comments on Paintbox on the Frontier, last added: 3/21/2011
So. It's that time of year again. American kids, postal employees, and bank tellers have a three day weekend and merchants of mattresses and major appliances will post big, cut-rate newspaper ads for big sales. And it appears that I am to be interviewed on Coast to Coast AM between 10 and 11 PM, Pacific Time, tonight, 21 February, thanks to my book, Ghosts of the White House. (I asked the producer, 'Have you guys seen my book? It isn't so very dashed spooky.' I'm sure that this fact has pissed off many a kid who'd shelled out perfectly good money for it only to discover that it held no bona fide spirits who walk by night, haunting the halls of the place where they'd suffered in life then found no rest, not even in death. Ah well. Too bad, so sad. Poor kids. Sucks to be you. I'm not above luring innocent young citizens into learning more about their nation's leaders.) By the way, Abraham Lincoln is said to be the most restless of spirits.
Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, who was spending the night in FDR's
White House, said that he (Abe, not Franklin) came and sat down on the
edge of her bed. Cool! But you think that the poor soul would be able to
rest comfortably in the Blue Beyond after all he went through. Here's what
Bess Truman, my former neighbor, had to say about the subject: "Now, about
those ghosts. I'm sure they're here and I'm not half so alarmed at meeting up
with any of them as I am at having to meet the
0 Comments on A Fine Time for a Sale as of 1/1/1900
News:
Books by several I.N.K. bloggers are among the winners of the first annual Eureka! Nonfiction Children’s Book Awards issued in October by the California Reading Association. Barbara Kerley’s The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy) was a Eureka! Gold Award winner, while Eureka! Silver Honor Books included Bylines: A Photobiography of Nellie Bly by Sue Macy, Down, Down, Down: A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea by Steve Jenkins, Under the Snow by Melissa Stewart, and The Boy Who Invented TV: The Story of Philo Farnsworth and Lives of the Pirates: Swashbucklers, Scoundrels (Neighbors Beware!) by past blogger Kathleen Krull.
Melissa Stewart will be presenting at the TED Women's Conference at the Paley Center for Media in Washington D.C. from a satellite location at Olin College in Needham, MA at 1:00 on December 6. http://conferences.ted.com/TEDWomen/
Penny Colman is joining Ink Think Tank and Ink Link:Authors on Call. Penny has written major award-winning books on women's history. Check out her website: http://www.pennycolman.com/
Vicki Cobb is covering the WISE - World Innovation Summit for Education - to be held in Doha, Qatar from December the 7th to the 9th 2010 for Education Update newspaper. She'll undoubtedly be blogging about it for I.N.K.
Book Recommendations:
As I write, 28 November, 2010, let me note that today is the 115th anniversary of America's first
automobile race. I note it here because author/illustrator Michael Dooling did a grand job of showing
and telling all about the event in his book, The Great Horse-less Carriage Race. And, with another
Christmas bearing down upon us all, I'll be reading & recommending Jim Murphy's grand book about
the impromptu Yuletide TRUCE, celebrated by English and German soldiers, caught up in the Great
and Terrible War, in 1914.
Books
Almost Astronauts: 13 Women Who Dared to Dream by Tanya Lee Stone
Born to Be Giants: How Baby Dinosaurs Grew to Rule the World by Lita Judge
Charles and Emma: The Darwin’s Leap of Faith by Deborah Heiligman
The Day-Glo Brothers by Chris Barton (illus. Tony Persiani)
An Egg is Quiet by Dianna Hutts Aston (illus. Sylvia Long)
How Many Ways Can You Catch a Fly? by Steve Jenkins and Robin Page
Lucy Long Ago: Uncovering the Mysteries of Where We Came From by Catherine Thimmesh
Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary by Elizabeth Partridge
Meet the Howlers by April Pulley Sayre (illus. Woody Miller)
Neo Leo: The Ageless Ideas of Leonard da Vinci by Gene Baretta
Nic Bishop Spiders by Nic Bishop
Planting the Trees of Kenya: The Story of Wangari Maathai by Claire A. Nivola
Redwoods by Jason Chin
River of Words: the Story of William Carlos Williams by Jen Bryant (illus. by Melissa Sweet)
Ubiquitous: Celebrating Nature’s Survivors by Joyce Sidman (illus. Beckie Prange)
Under the Snow by Melissa Stewart (illus. Constance R. Bergum)
Volcano Wakes Up! by Lisa Westberg Peters (illus. Steve Jenkins)
Vulture View by April Pulley Sayre (illus. Steve Jenkins)
What to Do About Alice? How Alice Roosevelt Broke the Rules, Charmed the World, and Drove Her Father Teddy Crazy! by Barbara Kerley (illus. Edwin Fotheringham)
When the Wolves Returned: Restoring Nature’s Balance in Yellowstone by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent (photos Dan and Cassie Hartman)
Where in the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed and Revealed by David Schwartz and Yael Schy (photos Dwight Kuhn)
Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator by Sarah C. Campbell and Richard P. Campbell
From Susan Goodman:
I have two new favorite nonfiction book
Loreen Leedy is one of over 50 authors that will appear at the University of Central Florida’s inaugural Book Festival on Saturday, April 17 on the UCF campus. She will participate in the Adventures in Children's Books author panel at 10:30 am and will sign books immediately afterwards. For more information, please visit this web site:
http://education.ucf.edu/bookfest/
Rosalyn Schanzer, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent and Vicki Cobb are launching the videoconferencing division of INK Think Tank (INK Link: Authors on Call) with a webinar on April 21. This highly-entertaining free webinar for professional development for teachers is being Spotlighted by CILC.org, one of the most prominent marketplaces for videoconferencing in the educational arena. The title of the webinar is "Award-Winning Nonfiction Authors in Your Classroom." http://cilc.org/c/community/spotlights.aspx
Deborah Heiligman will be on a panel at the Los Angeles Festival of Books on Saturday, April 24, at 10:30: Fact vs. Fiction: Storytelling in Young Adult Nonfiction with Elizabeth Partridge and Stephanie Hemphill, moderated by Jonathan Hunt.
She will also be speaking about Charles and Emma at the Santa Monica Library on Sunday, April 25, at 3:00 with a reading by Rosalyn Landor, who performed the audio book.
From Susan Kuklin: I’m participating in PEN’s World Voices Festival of International Literature this year. The festival runs from April 26 – May 2. Here is the blurb about the panel I will be moderating.
War and the Novel
When: Saturday, May 1
Where: Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York City
What time: 12:30–2 p.m.
With Bernardo Atxaga, Filip Florian, Assaf Gavron, and Atiq Rahimi; moderated by Susan Kuklin
Free and open to the public. No reservations.
Cheryl Harness signs copies of her book, They're Off! at the Pony Express Museum in St. Joseph, MO,
on Saturday, April 3, 2010, 150th anniversary of the launching of the Pony Express. Wahoo!
From David Schwartz: Where Else In the Wild? More Camouflaged Creatures Concealed and Revealed (the sequel to Where In the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed and Revealed) has been published and has received the following "awards":
Cooperative Children’s Book Center (CCBC) Choices 2010
National Science Foundation Outstanding Science Trade Books for Students K-12
and is already about to come out in Korean...
So, by official decree, this being Women's History Month (also, I've read, Irish-American Heritage month and the time of year in which we are to be particularly aware of the American Red Cross and Colorectal Cancer), I most respectfully wish to call your attention to a few of the dames, written about by my fellow INKers. Many a young citizen has learned more about Pocahontas (Do you yearn, as I do, to know what she really looked like?), Hillary Clinton, and sister presidential candidate, Victoria Woodhull; thanks to Kathleen Krull. Determined dames, Annie Oakley, Nellie Bly, and many an athlete: We know them better thanks to the efforts of Sue Macy. Me, I contented myself with brief introductions (threaded into a social history) of 100 American women and girls in my Remember the Ladies. (Me favorite page? All 100 of them, all together, on a pair o' pages at the back o' the book. Did I tell you that me ancestor, Eliza Stewart came over from Ireland, County Tyrone, in 1825? Well, that she did.)
Helen's Eyes, Marfé Ferguson Delano helped us see into the lives of Annie Sullivan and her student, Helen Keller. Tanya Lee Stone shone her bright light on the life of Amelia Earhart (Where the heck is she anyway?), upon 13 Women who were Almost Astronauts, and upon the great Ella Fitzgerald. Thanks be to all that's holy that we live in an era in which Ella's music was clearly captured before she left the world's stage. None of us can hear how beautifully Clara Wieck Schumann played the piano. Look at those still, pale fingers in the picture here, belying the strength and wisdom they contained. Stuck here in the present, we can only imagine her and her music, but we're better able to do so, with the help of Susanna Reich's biography. And why should we bother? Why should we reflect upon the spirits and stories that lie behind the calm, pretty (more or less) faces in those antique photographs, tintypes, paintings, and engravings? Because they lived and their lives shine down the years, illuminating ours with their courage, their examples, if only we'll look and read, learn and reflect.
“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead and rotten, either write something worthy reading or do things worth the writing.” So wrote the wily old Philadelphia printer, born way back in another, long-gone January. By way of the calendar adopted by the British Empire in 1752, when said gent was 46, today (the 17th, as I be typing) would be his birthday. If you’re reading this, you most certainly know that I’m referring to the remarkable, Benj. Franklin, a man of many a worthy word and deed. I didn’t like his cracking wise about John Adams’s sanity or lack thereof, but then, nobody’s seamless. The fact that today makes 304 years since yet another baby was born in the already-crowded Franklin household doesn't mean so very much, all in all. Noting birthdays is a little game, pretty much. A good excuse, as if one needed one, to have cake. An anniversary just reminds us to flick a glance in the rearview mirror, reminds us to remember an event and its meaning or the life of a person who came into the world on, perhaps, just such a day as this: snow melting outdoors, turned to filthy slop, making footing even more difficult. Folks worried, then and now, about money and about the future.
B. F.'s birthday – It's Al Capone's b-day [1899], too, and tomorrow? the 18th of January? that of Cary Grant [1904] and A. A. Milne [1882] – gives me a chance to remember writing about him and trying to envision him, watercolor-wise, as a boy, as a broad-shouldered teenager, and as a young businessman and father. What knocks me out about him these days is the fearless, systematic manner in which he took on wordsmithery. Just as he'd plunged into Boston's Mill Pond and taught himself to swim, this teenager set about reading. He inhaled what was being written, dissecting the grammar, the usage and flow of the words and reasoning that lay behind them. It was all part of his larger scheme, his plan - now here's where he really challenges me - to fully utilize the technology at hand: "A printer could publish his own ideas." [So I wrote, a few years ago in The Remarkable Benjamin Franklin] "If they were good and well-written, people would read them, then reader and writer would have better lives."
There we have it. Thank you, Birthday Dude, for reminding me of the unchanging truth: Ideas have power. Sure, the technology has changed and is changing, blast it. And the printed page appears to be dying the death, but it's as true now as it was 304 years ago that ideas conveyed in words well-written have the power to better the lives of those who read them as well as those who write them.
I’ve been wondering how we authors can help teachers use our books. This, of course, requires that we learn more about what teachers actually do with our books in the classroom. So I created a questionnaire and Cheryl Harness gave it to Carol Hutchens, a teacher friend at Mountain View Elementary in Windsor, CO who went to the trouble of filling it out. The results are below. My questions are in boldface. Carol prefaces her responses as follows:
I'm a special education teacher for grades 3-5. I primarily work with 4th and 5th graders, teaching reading, writing and math in "core replacement" groups. Explanation: all of our 4th graders have reading at the same time, so the group I have is getting "core replacement" in my room at the same time their peers are being taught reading in the general education classroom. Same with math, writing and 5th grade reading. My school also has a literacy teacher (for students who are doing a bit better than mine academically) and a Title 1 reading teacher.
What kind of reading assignments do you give kids? In class, we all read the same story/book together. Sometimes, I'll let the kids read silently to themselves or in pairs, but this is usually not very effective because of their lack of reading skills.
How important do you feel it is for every kid in your class to read the same assignment on a topic? For my kiddos, this is very important. This way, I can be assured they are reading correctly, and we have wonderful discussions to ensure comprehension of the material. Most of my kids are way better verbally!
Do you feel you MUST teach from the textbook? Unfortunately, yes. If so, why? District 
requirement. But, I supplement a lot in my classroom by reading non-fiction books at the beginning of each reading class (the kids love books by Cheryl Harness!) and also by pulling in additional non-fiction books to support stories we're reading. (ie: 5th graders are reading a story about cowboys that mention Nat Love, an African American cowboy. He wrote a book about his experiences and I found it online. I copied it and shared selections of it with the kids - they loved it!)
Have you ever gone to the library and looked for books on the content you have to teach? Honestly - I usually hit half.com or ebay first. I like to purchase books with my own money, then I'll have them for the next years! I have quite a collection of books in my classroom and like to have them "at my fingertips" to pull for kids!
Have you ever used a trade (library) book on a subject covered by your textbook instead? Yes. If so, why? Usually because the story provided in the book I'm required to use doesn't go "in depth" enough about the subject. Also, I like to show my students that each and every book about a subject can offer different/additional information! For instance - my students are stunned to know that I personally own more than 50 books about Lewis and Clark.
How closely do you coordinate what you are teaching with your school librarian? H
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Cheryl -- The pix on my website shows me wearing my guitar shirt (which really is cool). I wear it at the two day Maplewoodstock music festival held here in Maplewood every july. My tux is brought out on more formal occasions, such as candle lit nights on our porch. Thanks for the Inaugural Day facts.
Cheryl: Terrific post! Go to a nonfiction writer for a good story on any occasion!