Literacy Now

Glennette Tilley Turner is an author, historian, and educator. Since the early 1970s, the Underground Railroad has been the focus of much of her historical research, particularly in Illinois and elsewhere in the Middle West and in, recent years, her childhood home of St. Augustine, Florida. She taught elementary school in Chicago, Maywood, and Wheaton, IL for more than twenty-four years. Turner was named Outstanding Woman Educator in DuPage County, and received commendation from Illinois State Legislature upon retirement. FORT MOSE: AND THE STORY OF THE MAN WHO BUILT THE FIRST FREE BLACK SETTLEMENT IN COLONIAL AMERICA (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2010) was named the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Golden Kite Honor Book for Excellence in Children’s Literature.

You are to be presented the National Park Service Underground Railroad Network to Freedom’s highest honor in June. Can you tell us about the work you have done to educate others about the people and locations that were important to the Underground Railroad?

I had been under the impression that the Underground Railroad had only operated on the upper East Coast. Years later, when our family moved to a Chicago suburb, I learned that the UGRR had operated there and elsewhere in Illinois and the Middle West. Intrigued, I began to conduct research and write about this “missing chapter” of UGRR history.

In the course of it I published THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD IN ILLINOIS; wrote magazine articles; conducted UGRR tours for the Newberry library; spoke extensively at schools, libraries, historical societies, and conferences; was interviewed on television programs and in the WTTW-PBS documentary FROM DUSABLE TO OBAMA. Having taught, I also developed games, mind maps, and strategies for teaching the UGRR across the curriculum

Speaking of teaching: you were also an elementary school teacher for nearly 25 years. What are some ways that teachers of younger students can introduce the history of the Underground Railroad in their classes?

I would read picture books such as SWEET CLARA AND THE FREEDOM QUILT and, more recently, AN APPLE FOR HARRIET TUBMAN. At pertinent points, I would pause and ask questions. For example, when these picture books described the babysitting Harriet did, I might ask, “How would you feel if you had had to do that?” And when she and Clara escaped, you could ask, “Do you think they did the right thing to leave?”

At other junctures in the story, explain that the UGRR was made up of people like Clara and Harriet and the free black and white people who assisted them. Ask, “If you had heard the words ‘Underground Railroad’ without knowing what it was, what would you have guessed?” (Most times the answer was “a subway train.”)

Fort Mose, the subject of your book by the same name, is a fascinating piece of American history, but it only got official recognition as a National Historic Landmark in 1995. Can you share some of the history of this place and how you came to discover it?

Fort Mose was the first officially sanctioned free black settlement in Colonial America. It was established under the leadership of Francisco Menendez. He was born in the Senegambia region of West Africa and enslaved in South Carolina, where he fought in the Yamasee War. He reached St. Augustine with the help of the Yamasee, where the Spanish had promised freedom to Freedom Seekers. Menendez was re-enslaved there before the Spanish officially established Fort Mose and he became its leader.

Reviewers have commended you for incorporating interesting cultural and period details into FORT MOSE. How did you decide what traditions and customs to highlight in a picture book about a place where so many cultures intersected?

Since some things are timeless and universal, I focused on traditions and customs like storytelling, foods, music, and dance. My feeling was that, although the specific details would be different now and in the 1700s and in the locations where the story unfolded, young readers would be interested in comparing and contrasting the past and present.

You chose to tell Harriet Tubman’s life story through the lens of her love of apples in AN APPLE FOR HARRIET TUBMAN. What steps did you take to portray her in a way that would make her more relatable to children?

To take “an eyewitness” approach. In the book, readers would simultaneously learn what Harriet Tubman’s life was like and think how they would feel in a similar situation.



5 Questions With... Doug Abrams (DESMOND AND THE VERY MEAN WORD)

J. Patrick Lewis is the author of more than seventy books for children and was recently named Children’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. His books include FIRST DOG, SPOT THE PLOT: A RIDDLE BOOK OF BOOK RIDDLES, THE HOUSE, and KINDERGARTEN CAT.

Jane Yolen is the award-winning author of over three hundred children’s books, including OWL MOON, a Caldecott Medal winner; the How Do Dinoaurs…? series; and SEA QUEENS. She lives in western Massachusetts and Scotland and has been called the Hans Christian Andersen of America.

Reviewers of your new book, TAKE TWO! A CELEBRATION OF TWINS, often mention that their initial thought is that the book will only appeal to those who are twins or who have twin children. But then they discover that the poems are funny and relatable regardless. How did you make the poems twin-specific, but still accessible to non-twins?

J. PATRICK LEWIS: One glib answer is that, just as most humans are not twins, neither are they monsters, soccer stars, or U.S. presidents, and yet children will respond enthusiastically to books about all of those subjects. I’ve found that being a twin resonates with all sorts of singletons who are simply fascinated to learn what it is like to have a truly “significant other.” And that’s what I have tried to share in TAKE TWO!

JANE YOLEN: Every singleton has fantasized at some point about having a twin. To have a best friend who understands (and loves) you totally? Wow! And most mothers I know have thought (naively) that having twins would be a treat. They don't reckon with sleepless nights times two (or more). Diapers by the dozens. But I'm not sure that when we sat down to write poems we thought in terms of audience as much as we thought in terms of the twin experience.

You each have different experiences of “twinness” in your own lives. Can you tell us about the viewpoints and experiences that you brought to the writing of this book?

JPL: Apart from the wonder and delight of having children of my own, the seminal event in my life has been the existence of my twin brother. Perhaps because we agree on everything, we talk incessantly, and have done so for as long as I can remember, even though we live states away. He is my first editor, my last refuge, and my best friend. Little wonder that I tell children at my school visits, “If you can arrange it, get yourself a twin.”

JY: I had twin aunts, Sylvia and Eva. Not that they ever looked like twins. One was tall, one short, one was round and the other…well, rounder. I never got straight which one was which, even though they looked and were nothing alike.

Then when I got married, I acquired three brothers-in-law. The youngest brothers were a set of mirror twins and they were (and still are) so much alike that I only know that if I am in Clarksburg, West Virginia, it's Bob, and if I’m in Phoenix, Arizona, it's Dick. Otherwise, I use their common shared nickname: Bobordick.

Finally, when my youngest son had his first baby, it turned out to be twin girls. Like their great-great aunts, they looked nothing alike. Even at birth, they were incredibly distinct: Caroline, the oldest by one minute, was immediately people-centric and center stage, larger and louder. Amelia was the airy-fairy, "the silent assassin," as her other grandfather called her. She could always quietly entertain herself. And at nine years old, they have remained the same.

JPL: I knew Jane had twin granddaughters, so we thought we would parlay our experiences and do this collection. Happily, Candlewick was most enthusiastic and suggested that instead of a traditional 32-page picture book we do an 80-page gift book.

What surprises me is that it took me this long to write (co-write) a book like TAKE TWO!

You’ve predicted that your next collaboration, LAST LAUGHS: ANIMAL EPITAPHS, will be one of the “most love/hate” books you’ve ever written. What makes you think that the reaction will be so polarized?

JY: Well, to begin with, it's a humorous look at dead animals! Horses, dogs, cats, birds, fish, whales, frogs, deer, bear, chickens, eels, etc. Death, where is thy sting? Well, no, we see it as a laughing matter.

And the pictures are equally morbid and side-splitting.

It was fun being at IRA [for the Annual Convention in May] and watching teachers and librarians picking up the book and howling—with laughter and not in agony.

JPL: Have you ever read real epitaphs? The dead can be very funny, and their last lines are written in stone! I had written a daft collection of epitaph poems (for humans), ONCE UPON A TOMB: GRAVELY HUMOROUS VERSES (Candlewick), and so it seemed a natural progression to go whole hog, as it were, and include the rest of the animal kingdom. Jane eagerly joined me in the wicked fun. The humor lies in the wacky incongruity of it all—first, that a beast would actually be buried, and second that its tombstone might reveal something of its unfortunate demise.

You’ve now worked as collaborators on several projects. What are the keys to successful collaborative writing?

JY: First, I think, is that we adore one another’s work. Second, we are equally at ease with serious and with humorous poetry, loving metaphor and lyric lines and puns equally. Third, we both have a Type A writing personality. By that I mean, we sit down and get the work done. And lastly, we seem to have the same senses of poetry, humor, and self-deprecating honesty. Plus we both are willing to listen to criticism.

JPL: Ditto to all of the above.

Last year you teamed up on a book for older readers, SELF PORTRAIT WITH SEVEN FINGERS: THE LIFE OF MARC CHAGALL IN VERSE. What were the special challenges in translating a nonfiction story into verse?

JPL: Like many artists, Chagall led a life and a half, a mother lode for biographers. By turns heroic and tragic, a kind of flawed perfection, he presents himself as a nonpareil microcosm of humankind. Our words were in no way intended to approximate the stature or the grandeur of Chagall’s art. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH SEVEN FINGERS is merely an homage to his greatness, two hands pointing eagerly in the direction of his virtuosity.

JY: The book was an interesting mix of biography, art, and personality. Chagall was quite a character. His artwork ranges from that ionic, colorful, kabbalistic and mystic stuff to the more decorous. He worked in multiple art styles and genres. And his life story included some of the most amazing and deadly moments of the twentieth century—including the Holocaust, the Russian Revolution, World War II and beyond.

The poetry had to find a way to include, honor, as well as make metaphor and melody of it all. I think we managed in our individual ways to write good poems, and still were able to make a book that works as a whole. We ARE the Flying Wallendas!

Gloria Whelan has published over fifty books for young readers. Her young adult novel, HOMELESS BIRD, received a National Book Award. Her books have appeared on the ALA Notable Children’s Books, ALA Best Books for Young Adults, and IRA Children’s Choices lists. Although she has written about countries all over the world many of her books take place in northern Michigan where she lived with her husband for thirty years in a cabin in the woods. She currently lives in the Detroit area.

Last summer saw the release of MEGAN’S YEAR, a picture book that explores the life of a young girl who is a part of the Irish Travelers. What drew you to this partially nomadic group of people?

So many of my favorite writers come from Ireland. We have friends and family there and have visited Ireland a number of times. I’ve heard about the Irish Travelers for years and roaming the roads and the byways of that green country always seemed to me a magical way of life. It was only in reading about the Travelers that I realized that in spite of all the government can do, Travelers are still the victims of discrimination. This is especially difficult for the children of the Travelers who have to move every year from the freedom of the open road to the confined life of the city.

Over the course of the book, Megan learns that reading is a type of traveling, and you’ve mentioned that you share Megan’s desire to roam (mentally and physically). What part has this wanderlust played in your career as a writer?

I have traveled to many of the countries I have written about, from Russia to Africa, but some of my most interesting and exciting travels have gone on right here in my office. As I research my books I learn amazing things: how you have to tickle silkworm cocoons to hurry their spinning, how snakes are everywhere during the monsoon season in India, that the Russian Samoyed enjoy eating mouse nests!

I’ve learned about religions and customs, but perhaps most importantly I have learned how much people all over the world are alike.

You often cite your life in the Michigan woods as a strong influence on your writing. Can you tell us about your house and how the locale finds its way into your many published books?

Right now I’m back where I started from: Detroit. But for thirty years I lived in northern Michigan the middle of the woods on a small lake. The nearest house was over a mile away. There wasn’t a day when I wasn’t out on the trails, walking or cross-country skiing. Those woods and the lake, and especially a nearby river where I fished, are present in all my books. When I wrote about kingfishers and herons in India; though their coloring was a little different, they were the herons and kingfishers I saw from my cabin window.

The descriptions of French food in THE BOY WHO WANTED TO COOK are vivid enough to induce hunger! What kind of research did you do to make sure that the descriptions would live up to the amazing food your characters are preparing?

I love food and I love preparing it, so all the things I describe in THE BOY WHO WANTED TO COOK are recipes I have prepared myself. On my travels to France food was always one of the high points. Eating at renowned restaurants is very costly in France, but there are many small family establishments like La Bonne Vache that serve memorable meals.

But even just a dish of fresh raspberries is memorable if you are lucky enough to be sitting at a café table on a busy Paris avenue.

Your National Book Award winning young adult novel, HOMELESS BIRD, is set in India, and you’ve written a handful of titles for the Tales of the World series. Based on your experience writing about foreign settings, what advice would you give to a young writer trying to craft a story about a distant land?

I would tell that writer that accuracy is the most important thing in writing about a distant land. When I am writing about a country I read ten to twenty books about the country and I talk with people who are from that country. Details are crucial. They make the country real.

When I was writing HOMELESS BIRD I read about hundreds of bats that spent the day hanging from the ceiling of a temple. When I wrote YUKI AND THE ONE THOUSAND CARRIERS about ancient Japan, I learned that officials traveled with from one to five thousand carriers to transport their luggage and I longed to turn up at airport security with my one thousand carriers.



5 Questions With... Dorothy Hinshaw Patent (DOGS ON DUTY)

5 Questions With... Laurie Calkhoven (I GREW UP TO BE PRESIDENT)

Annie Barrows is the author of the Ivy and Bean children’s series, which has sold over 2 million copies, as well as of THE MAGIC HALF. She is also the co-author, with her aunt, Mary Ann Shaffer, of THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY.

You’ve described the creation of your precocious protagonists Ivy and Bean as like making a cake. Can you explain what you mean by that?

I always find that making a character is like making a cake. Even if I think that Character X is going to be the spitting image of Real Person Q, there is never a one-to-one correlation because reality is awfully inconvenient and because real people are so very odd that Character X would be dismissed by readers as unbelievable. So I end up adding extra traits and habits, like ingredients, until Character X no longer resembles Real Person Q at all but does resemble a person who might be real.

When I began to write about Ivy, for example, I thought she would be a lot like one of my daughters. And she is like my daughter in her interests and the way she dresses. But then I ran across a kid whose manner of enacting her ideas I found totally hilarious, so I used that kid to make Ivy, too. And Ivy’s trepidation about hurting herself is an altogether separate ingredient.

However, once the ingredients are mixed into the cake batter, they are no longer removable; they become a whole, a cake, that exists as itself. In the same way, Ivy is now—in my mind, at least—a person who has impulses and ideas and wishes of her own that none of her sources would ever have. She’s her own cake.

You’ve said that your earliest attempts at writing consisted of mimicking your favorite books; how did you discover your own voice, and at what age did this happen?

No one could ever accuse me of being a quick learner. It takes me an appalling amount of time to figure anything out. I finally learned how to write essays while I was writing the very last paper of my undergraduate career. I was an editor for fifteen years before I realized that I could write myself.

I started writing in my early thirties, and the voice I developed at that point, which I sort of shamefacedly acknowledge as persisting in my current work, was probably created in opposition to the very sensitive and serious writers I encountered while getting my MFA. They were mostly young and poetic, and I was mostly middle-aged and impatient, and I think that’s why I write the way I do.

On your website, you write, “I was terrible at spelling. Grownups were always talking about it, acting surprised that I was such a terrible speller. ‘She’s such a good reader! How can she not spell?’” What was the disconnect for you between reading and spelling?

I’m still a terrible speller. I’m better than I used to be, but I’m still terrible.

To me, there’s no relationship between reading and spelling, for two reasons. First reason: I read really fast. The more I like a book, the faster I read it. So I read most words the way people read the names in CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: the hero is Ras[blur]. I never actually see the whole word.

Second reason: I don’t care. When I’m reading something good, all I care about is getting more more more. While we’re on the topic of spelling, I’d like to report that I’ve recently come to the conclusion that it’s not my fault that I’m a bad speller. The truth is that English is completely ridiculous. Watch this: Won. One. Have you ever seen anything so confusing in your life?

Your Ivy + Bean chapter books are aimed at an age group that you’ve described as being at the “pinnacle of life” and imagination (7 year olds, specifically). Why do you feel so strongly about writing stories for young people at this stage of life?

I really like seven-year-olds a lot. They are young enough to have full access to their imaginations and old enough not to hurt themselves enacting their ideas. They generally are interested in the project of reading and in stories. They aren’t yet jaded or beguiled by defiance.

Also, they’re funny. Given all these wonderful aspects of the seven-year-old character, it’s odd that there are so few books for them. I don’t get it, but I want to fix it.

The short explanations of your books that you provide on your site reveal that you infuse many of your own fascinations into your writing. How do you communicate your sense of awe while keeping the language at a level that is accessible to a seven year old?

Easy—I don’t understand any of the things I write about. Notice that the subjects that crop up in Ivy and Bean books are things like marine biology, paleontology, climate change, world records, economics, bugs, and ballet. I have expertise in none of those subjects, so the tone of awe is genuine, and as for the language, I write for my own level of comprehension (low).

I think I’d have a lot more problems if I wrote about subjects in which I had some expertise. Luckily, there are only about four of them, and nobody wants to hear anything about of them.

Sara Varon is a comic book artist, illustrator, and printmaker, currently living in Brooklyn, New York. Her books include CHICKEN AND CAT, CHICKEN AND CAT CLEAN UP, ROBOT DREAMS, and BAKE SALE. Her forthcoming graphic novel, ODD DUCK, is a collaboration with the writer Cecil Castellucci. It’s due out in Spring 2013.

You’ve written comics with words (BAKE SALE) and without (ROBOT DREAMS). What are the unique challenges of communicating your story to the reader in each format?

I like to draw pictures of characters quietly going about their business and I like drawing diagrams. Writing is not my strong suit, so my instinct is to tell a story without dialogue. BAKE SALE was a challenge and an experiment, since it was my first book with dialogue. But I couldn''t have drawn it without dialogue—there was too much information that I could not impart through drawings alone, simply because it was too specific.

You’ve said that you didn’t start thinking of being an artist as a career path until you were about 20. What made that realization click?

After high school, I studied biology at a liberal arts college for a year, and the only classes I regularly attended were the art classes. After dropping out, I finally realized that maybe I should consider art school and eventually I found my way to the Art Institute in Chicago.

There was no preparation there for life after art school, and the school had really discouraged commercial art, so I didn''t know you could have a job drawing pictures. It sounds kind of dumb, but I just didn''t know anyone who did it, and I never thought about who drew pictures in newspapers or ad campaigns.

Then one day, in my mid-20s, I was at the book store looking at magazines and I stumbled across the Communication Arts Illustration Annual. It totally blew my mind. I thought, “Wow! That''s a job?! That''s what I want to do!”

What sorts of books or comics were you most excited to read as a child?

When I was very small I remember especially liking anything by Richard Scarry. I also liked the Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel, A BARGAIN FOR FRANCES by Russell Hoban, the George and Martha books by James Marshall, and LYLE, LYLE, CROCODILE by Bernard Waber.

The only comic books I read were Donald Duck. I pretty much exclusively liked things with animal characters.

Were there any teachers who particularly encouraged or nurtured your artistic and literary talents?

I don''t remember any teachers standing out, but my mom always enrolled me in art classes when I was small. And she would find little drawing contests for me to enter, like on the backs of cereal boxes and things, which I occasionally won.

One time, my brother and I drew pictures at a Marshall Field''s department store about what we wanted to be when we grew up (I drew a zookeeper and he drew a baseball player.) I won the contest and got a gift certificate, which I promptly squandered on stuffed animals. (I was maybe five at the time.)

And I won a Green Giant pocket watch once when I was about seven (it must have been a contest on the back of a box of frozen vegetables or something). It was a really cool watch—it had a green suede leaf attached to it, but I don''t remember what I drew to win it.

There were a few others, but those seemed like the best prizes to me as a kid. I think my mom was trying to keep me busy and it was something I liked to do.

I stopped doing art stuff in high school (though I was always a notebook doodler) ’cause I thought it wasn''t cool. But then my senior year I switched schools and was required to take an art class to graduate. My teacher was really amazing and encouraging and got me back into making art.

Your story BAKE SALE was inspired by a desire to travel to Turkey. What other characters or stories have been inspired by your surroundings or places you’ve travelled?

All of my books are inspired by my surroundings in some way. CHICKEN AND CAT was inspired by my then-neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which happened to be particularly gray.

CHICKEN AND CAT CLEAN UP was also set where I lived at the time. The neighborhood they live in is pretty much identical to Ridgewood, and the neighborhood they work in is the neighborhood I work in. When they turn in the rat-thief, they turn him into the 10th precinct, which is on W. 20th Street in Manhattan, close to their job, but also close to my job.

And in BAKE SALE I just went around the city drawing places I like to go or that I passed by regularly. My studio at the time was near Madison Square Garden, which makes a few appearances in the book, and I am also a patron of the bath house they frequent and the restaurant they go to.

It''s hard to make things up completely out of one''s head. It helps me to take photos of places and then I can base the story and pictures on the photos.



5 Questions With... Dave Roman (ASTRONAUT ACADEMY: ZERO GRAVITY)

Reviews of New Graphic Novels