Elizabeth Rusch's Blog, page 31

Lose Yourself in a Book

Among the happiest readers may be
those who follow the advice: “Go lose yourself in a book.” I suspect the same
can be said for writers.




This winter I lost myself in the writing of yet
another book and was reminded of how magical a space that is to inhabit. Those people
lucky enough to write books know what I mean. Those who read
great books should imagine their own consumption pleasures magnified as if they
have traveled through the looking glass.




These days I write from the luxury
of solitude. In earlier years I juggled the responsibilities of marriage and
growing children when I wrote. Nothing could be harder, as I am reminded when I
observe the writing lives of younger friends. Somehow we do it, just as somehow
we smile our ways through days of thin sleep after the arrival of babies,
feeling like the luckiest, if not the most-rested, parents on earth.




Now, though, there are no alarm
clocks or car pools or meal schedules in my life. Time is measured in
deadlines, goals for the day, hunger pangs, and diversions for exercise and
other fun. After I’ve converted my research into ready-reference note cards and
aids—from time lines to diagrams to maps to photographs—I am ready to lose myself in the creation of a book.




I go through rituals before I start
this writing journey. I pay all my bills in advance. I plan what I will cook,
and I stock my fridge. I get extra sleep. I touch base with my closest friends;
they know I am about to become scarce, and, as a testament to their friendships,
they understand and forgive me when I stop corresponding and disappear. Ditto
for family members; we keep in touch, but the World of the Book becomes part of
their world, too, and when we interact they share in my investment in the
process. Lastly, I choose what books I will read at bedtime, something complimentary
(perhaps from the same era) or something familiar. I have been known to re-read
Jane Austin (“Not again!” say my sons) or Harry Potter—anything that is
relaxing without being diverting. I want to keep my thoughts in the World.




Then the work begins.




Let me be clear: All is not picnics
and roses. This is work.
Mind-draining, body-aching, spirit-straining work. For me, anyway, the book
takes over my head and my life. I’m a morning person, so work starts early.
Sometimes I wake up inspired and go straight to the computer in my robe and
pajamas. I may stay that way for hours, snacking on hasty meals and brushing my
teeth at out-of-routine moments. I measure my progress by how many inches of
note cards I have consumed, marking my place with a vertical manila card
bearing the hand-lettered text “HERE.” Chapter one, chapter two, and so on.




After a week or two of solid
writing, I begin to dream in paragraphs. I don’t mean that I dream nice
organized dreams. I mean that I see blocks of text in my dreams. (I used to dream in sentences, so maybe this is progress.) It is not
peaceful sleep. Occasionally, for variety, I dream about the historical figures
in my work. Sometimes I don’t sleep at all, wheels spinning as I work my way around
a writing corner, measure my progress against the parallel clocks for goals and
deadlines, and try to reinforce my commitment to the bone-wearying process with
reminders of treats that await at the end of the work. Renewed visits with
friends. The chance to plant a garden. Maybe a trip. Getting paid! Carrots and
sticks. You get the idea.




The easiest way to keep going, I
find, is to think incrementally. I know my destination (the conclusion), and I
have a pretty good idea of how I want to get there (because of my note cards
and research), but it is easiest to march along one chapter at a time, one paragraph
at a time, one scene at a time, as it were. Suddenly I’ve advanced another few
inches through my note cards. Suddenly another chapter is roughed out enough so
that I can proceed to the next one.




And so it goes until my head is in
the World 24-7, even when I am away from my desk. When I go out for walks, I
almost see the history. A dog, a car, someone’s gesture all are evaluated automatically
through the lens of the work. When that happens, I know I have lost myself in
the book. After slipping into that groove, I hang on for the dash to the
conclusion. As grateful as I am to reach the end, its attainment feels
bittersweet, akin to the reader’s experience of finishing a great book—you hunger
for more.




Fortunately, for writers, there is
more. Revision!




And so I stay in the World even
longer, testing my early work to see how well it holds weight, strengthening it
with rounds of rewriting, pursuing additional research lines, if needed, and
polishing, polishing, polishing the language.




When I finally step away with a
finished manuscript, I do so with a mixture of relief, gratitude, and regret.
My connection to the book will never be so strong or personal again. The end of
the writing process is like the end of a living thing, and I can see how such
loss might hit some writers particularly hard. For me, anyway, the regrets fade
quickly. There are those rewards, after all, including picking up again where I
left off with friends and family and fun.




As often as we write about writing,
I remain fascinated by the subject and about how others experience this process.
Perhaps you may want to chime in. Readers, writers: What happens when you
lose yourself in a book?

THE WORLD IS WAITING FOR YOU: A CCSS Approach

In the past few years, almost every state in the nation has adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS).
The English Language Arts Standards are not limited to upper grades, either.
Even the youngest kids—the K through 2 set—will be using the CCSS to explore
nonfiction literature in their classrooms, libraries, and homes.




With that in mind, I thought
I’d use this post to introduce two things: a new book and a new Teacher’s Guide
just posted on my website, with ideas for how to apply the CCSS to all of my
books.












Out this month is my newest
book, The World Is Waiting For You. And while the main text only has 115 words,
it can still be explored using the CCSS.
















The ideas below are built
around the Anchor Standards for Reading. (For grade-specific guidelines, click on “Reading: Informational Texts” in the
sidebar on that page.)




CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.2  Determine central ideas or
themes of a text and analyze their development; summarize the key supporting
details and ideas.




CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.6  Assess how point of view or
purpose shapes the content and style of a text.




The central ideas of The World Is Waiting For You are the importance of getting outside
to explore and the benefit of following your curiosity.




My purpose is to encourage kids to get outside,
explore, and see where their curiosity takes them—and to suggest that if you
follow your curiosity as you grow, it will enrich your entire life.




The book begins with an invitation to explore:




“Right
outside your window there’s a world to explore. Ready? Follow that path around
the next bend. Who knows where it might lead?”




This question works on both a literal and
figurative level. The path itself leads to new places to explore and things to
discover; and the act of following your curiosity leads to personal growth and
a better understanding and appreciation of the world.




The text and photos then depict exploration on
a child-scale, such as hopping into a pond or standing under a waterfall,
followed by the same type of exploration on a future adult-scale: scuba diving
with dolphins. Similarly, digging in a mud puddle might one day lead to digging
for fossils, and star-gazing might one day lead to exploring space as an
astronaut.




Throughout the book, kids see the value of
exploring now and can imagine where the love of exploration might take them in
the future. And the final spread in the book echoes the opening lines and urges
them to get going:




 “The
whole wide world is waiting for you… Ready. Set. Go.”

  

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.CCRA.R.5 Analyze the structure of
texts, including how specific sentences, paragraphs, and larger portions of the
text (e.g., a section, chapter, scene, or stanza) relate to each other and the
whole.




In the guidelines for grades K-2, this anchor
standard asks students to identify text features and analyze how they provide
key facts or information.




The extensive back matter of The World Is Waiting For You provides a
wealth of information to enhance the main text.




The explorers depicted in photos in the main
text get a fuller introduction in “The Faces of Exploration” section of the
back matter. We learn their names, where each photo was taken, and specific
facts about their work as explorers. This section also includes quotes from
several of the explorers talking about the impact exploration has made on their
lives.




In a “Note From National Geographic,” John M.
Fahey, Jr., CEO and Chairman of the Board of the National Geographic Society,
discusses the Society’s mission and commitment to exploration. He ends the note
with words to encourage kids to explore on their own.




Thumbnails of the photographs identify where
each was taken and photo credits list the names of individual photographers.



Finally, the back flap of the book jacket shares
information about other books I’ve written and my personal experience with
exploration.







Check out my Teacher's Guide for ideas on how to apply the CCSS to my other titles, including the biographies Those Rebels, John and Tom; The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy); What To Do About Alice?; Walt Whitman: Words for America; and The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins.

Welcome to the Wild World of Enhanced E-Books

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher of my book The
Mighty Mars Rovers: The incredible adventures of Spirit and Opportunity
just released enhanced e-book versions of my book and three other Scientists in
the Field titles. And I have to say, they are pretty dang cool. Here’s a short video that shows how they work:





If you have trouble viewing the video click here.



I’m a pretty low-tech person (lucky to be married to a
high-tech hubby and raising a high-tech tweener) and I still read books the old
fashioned way – printed on paper and bound with a cover.  But iPads and the like can do something that
print books cannot. They can show video.




When I was researching and writing The Mighty Mars Rovers ,
I discovered a treasure trove of cool videos and animations produced by NASA
and the Jet Propulsion Lab, available for free to the public. They showed
Spirit and Opportunity’s launches (impressive billowing smoke at take-off), the
sequence of their landings (parachutes deploying, retrorockets shooting,
air-bag-wrapped landers bouncing to a stop), and how their robotic arms move. Several
videos strung together photos taken by the rovers so you could watch their
journeys across the red planet as if you were rolling in their tracks. And update
videos showed scientists and engineers talking about their work on the mission
– their hopes and dreams, their disappointments and triumphs.  I loved watching the videos while researching
and I remember wishing my readers could watch them, too.  But how would kids ever find them and would
they take the time to wade through the archives to find the best ones?  I linked to a few of my favorites on my
website, but I really wished readers could see
the robotic arm in action while reading about the robotic arm.




And now there they are (among other enhancements). As you
flip through the pages, small video icons show where to click to view a short
video on the topic discussed. My daughter, who has read the book, spent several
hours watching all the videos – some of them multiple times. And I think she
got more from the book as a result.




But what if kids simply flip through and only watch the
videos? Would that undermine the purpose of the book? From viewing the videos, kids
would learn a lot about rovers, about Mars and about the scientific process. Some
might be inspired to consider a vocation in science. Others might be inspired
to work a little harder to overcome obstacles to follow their dreams. But I
wonder: Will some kids be inspired to read a book they might otherwise have passed
up? That’s something I’d really like to know. Will the enhancements become a substitute
for the written word or a way to pull kids in or lead them to a deeper
understanding?




What do you think about interactive enhancements in ebooks?
What are the possibilities? What might be the drawbacks? Writers: What have
been your experiences with enhanced versions of your ebooks? Teacher, librarians,
parents and kids: Have you had any interesting encounters with enhanced
ebooks?  What was it like? Did it change
the way you approached the book? We are entering a brave new world full of pitfalls
and possibilities. I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences.




Elizabeth Rusch

It's All About Momentum

   Was chatting with a friend the other day and he asked me about this CCSS stuff he was hearing about.  I gave him a brief explanation and he thought it sounded like an interesting move and one that might benefit me and other nonfiction writers in many ways for years to come.  I said, "We certainly hope so!"  But as soon as I said that a dark cloud passed over my obvious enthusiasm.  And I added, "But there's been some push back about it."

   And we've all heard about incidents of resistance to and downright loathing for the changes to the CCSS.  Educator Diane Ravitch has come out against the CCSS and has recently called for parents to band together in an effort to get their states to withdraw their agreement to impliment the changes.  Even while saying that she finds much that is good about the changes, her anti-CCSS blogs sound like typical paranoid tea-bag rants about big gubmint and evil private business interests.  Or is that the evil gubmint and big business interests?  Anyway, it's almost as if she knows she won't convince the vast majority of level headed professional educators, so she's gone to scare tactics to get parents into her camp.

   There are other negative voices, of course.  At a recent literary conference the director of the college's library services said he liked the changes to the CCSS, except "there was too much nonfiction."  !!!!  I know a writer of children's nonfiction who feels the changes are profound and wonderful, but hates the Appendix B list of exemplar texts.  I tried to explain why I thought the appendix was useful and appropriate, but this writer would have none of that and still denounces the appendix whenever a discussion of the CCSS takes place.  Could some part of this writer's antipathy be because he/she doesn't have a book on the exemplar list?  Meanwhile, there is a blogger/reviewer who seemed downright annoyed that at last summer's ALA conference more and more publishers, especially of textbooks, are actively promoting their various products as CCSS compliant.  In the same breath, said blogger/reviewer promised to do a review column of books that are CCSS compliant.  Go figure.

   It's not that any of these individual voices will turn back the changes to CCSS on their own.  While insistent, I don't think they are ultimately very persuasive (there's too much obvious self-interest involved in their positions).  But I do think their constant, negative drone can have a wearing effect.  And I do have a parellel situation that, while it might be a bit of a stretch to some, does seem worth thinking about.  That's the anti-gun discussion that's going on right now.

   Following the terrible tragedy at Newtown, CT, there was a massive, emotional out cry for gun law changes.  This was answered by the now famous response of NRA President Wayne LaPierre (that certainly didn't do his or the NRA's image much good).  After this, a variety of news reports of shootings taking place all around the US were reported, until my wife Alison looked at the paper one day and said, "I can't stand to read about any more of these shootings!"  My response was, "if you want real gun reform, you should be ready to read about shootings every day of the week and every one should be on the front page."

   Of course, the news reporting of shootings has dropped off considerably and so has the emotional edge in the gun reform message.  But the anti-reform movement has steadily preached the usual line of "we must be careful about our Constitutional rights" "it's not the guns; it's the crazy people" "we already have enough laws; they just need to be enforced" etc., etc.  As announcers sometimes say about football games, the momentum seems to have shifted.

   What does this have to do with the CCSS?  It seems that a great many teachers, librarians, school administrators, writers and others have embraced the changes and are busily preparing to carefully impliment them.  But they aren't all explaining the changes or defending them publically.  So the negative voices seem to be holding court unopposed.  And having some effect.  Maplewood has an online community called, naturally, Maplewood Online.  Recently one poster who dislikes the school adminstration (and has for years) has begun including a condemnation of the changes to the CCSS as yet another evil plot by the school superintendent and his minions.  You would think other posters might call her on this, but they don't.  She goes on and on in various threads, each adding a negative buzz about the CCSS.  Which reminds me; I have to get a MOL account to respond to her rants!

   And that's my point.  We talk about, praise, and defend the changes to the CCSS here in this blog.  But I think we need to get our voices "out there."  Vicki did this very nicely in a response to a Dianne Ravitch blog and I'm sure others have responded in a variety of ways to similar negative comments.  But I think we need to add our voices if not daily, at least over and over again.  I'm going to respond tomorrow to the Ravitch post (though I promise not to be snarky) and then make it a practice to address the negative noise whenever I encounter it as best as I can.  I have a feeling that if enough positive voices are heard, and heard constantly, we can keep the momentum going in the right direction.                        

                 

    

Literary Mood Swings

As kids’ book writers, when we think conference, we
usually think NCTE, SCBWI, IRA, or ALA. 
Now that I teach at the Low Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at
Lesley University in Cambridge, MA, I’m also a member of AWP (the Association
of Writers and Writing Programs).  Last
week I went to my first AWP conference—a crazy confab of over 550 readings and
panels with 12,000 writers spending four days trying to find connections,
inspiration, and bathrooms at Boston’s Hynes Convention Center.    






Writing for young people is a relatively new
addition to MFA programs so the proportion of programming devoted to our genre is
much smaller.  I also noticed that many
of our sessions were the first and last of the day, seemingly less desirable
times.  Interpret that as you will.






Hating
Your Writing: A Love Story didn’t have a children’s book author
on its panel, but still seems a useful discussion for any of us. Five poets and prose
writers (Richard Bausch, Molly Peacock, Daniel Nester, Melissa Stein, and Chuck
Sweeney) discussed that hideous moment when your euphoric assessment of your
draft somehow plummets from brilliance to dross upon the next reading.  What are these literary mood swings?  Is there ever an upside? Can dejection lead to
breakthroughs and better writing? 






If any of these writers were feeling literary
despair on Saturday, they kept it to themselves.  Instead they tried to share their insights on
managing the emotional ups and downs of creative life.  Here are some of their points that struck me:






Chad Sweeney likened these emotional downswings to
exhaustion, then commented that exhaustion is sometimes a healthy reaction,
especially if you are trying to write to anticipated criticism or expectations
or in a style that once fed you but no longer does so.  It can be a sign you have to figure out how
you’ve gone off course—dig in or dig out—and come up with something new.






Melissa Stein suggested that there are two types of internal
critics: one is discerning and can make helpful comments you should consider,
the other is the bad parent (think Joan Crawford in Mommy Dearest) who insists you don’t even have the talent or right
to tell this story.  Give yourself the
time and space to figure out which critic is in your head and act accordingly. 






Richard Bausch spoke like a veteran.  He said it’s working that is important.  Put in the time and at the end of the day,
ask yourself, “Did I work?”  If the
answer is yes, you’ve accomplished your goal.  Develop a sense of calm; you can’t mess your writing up because
you can always do over.  If all else
fails, lower your standards and keep on going. 
Remember, revision is all.








Molly Peacock agreed.  Keep your standards high and your
expectations low; it helps you keep going. 
But allow room for dormancy; it’s all right to walk away for a while
with the intent of returning.  Furthermore
know yourself and how to interpret your energies and feelings.  Peacock is a morning writer.  As a result, she refuses to make any
judgments or decisions about her writing after 3 p.m.






Donald Nester said he sometimes gets unstuck by changing
the form that he’s writing in a little.  Let
yourself get lost again and something new might happen. Even journaling can
transform material into the nugget you need to find your way.






Other miscellaneous tips:






--Be kind and compassion, give yourself permission to
fail by reaching into new areas.






--Create the conditions you need for good writing--good food or walks--anything that makes you feel more open and engaged and
closer to the source.






--Banish the critic and get it out there.  Then draft by draft by draft, things proceed toward
grace.






--If you can’t turn off the critical voice,
acknowledge it and go on.






--Always remember, things may not be as bad as you think.  Vladimir Nabokov dumped his manuscript of Lolita in the garbage, only to have it rescued
by his wise wife. In other words, wait a week and read it again.

School Visits -- Pros and Cons

Young Adult fiction author John Green is famous for his brilliant fiction and his
VlogBrothers video blogs. This week, he
talked about traveling to sustain his career with speaking fees and book
promotion.  And while we write different
kinds of books for different kinds of kids, we have that in common.   We both travel – a LOT.




So let's discuss the pros and cons -- in this case, the cons and pros -- of school visits. 





A GREAT hotel in Boise, ID.


CONS




I can’t define what “a lot” means for my friend John.  But I can define it for myself.  I have spoken to between 50 and 75 schools
and conferences a year for the past five years.   A few are within driving distance.  Most require airborne transportation.  And both kinds of travel can be really tiring.  Con. 




Ground transportation mix-ups are a frustrating after a full 10 to 12 hours in airports. It's cold on those curbs, waiting for a stranger to pick you up.  But waiting is all that works, with the flight delays of modern times.  So you wait.  LITTLE Con. 




Hotels and hotel beds can be if-y.  Not all neighborhoods are welcoming.  And some beds should be in sleep deprivation museums.  Enough said.  Con.




Hungry?  Sometimes that's a problem.  If your host forgets that authors eat, and your hotel is not within walking distance of a restaurant, those Southwest peanuts you stuck in your bag start to look pretty appealing.  Temporary starvation.  Con. 




PROS




Before I start to look really whiny, hold on.  Am I complaining?  I am NOT – not even
for a fraction of an instant.  These CON things don't happen very often, other than the long airport hours.  And I am
grateful for the chance to connect with the kids that read my books.  Pro. 



Hanging
out with kids keeps me on track to write true stories they care about.  I do this for my financial gain, sure.  But that’s not the real reason.  I do it for those kids.  And when I listen, they confirm my published
books were worth writing.  They evaluate
my new story ideas and show me where I should go to write the next one.  BIG Pro.





Photo by Roxyanne Young

Then there is research.  When I travel to a new city, I can do research for my future books.  In San Diego, I visited two haunted houses and investigated with a paranormal team for four twilight hours to prep for my ghost book.  Does it get any better than that?  Pro.





I also supplement   my writing income with speaking fees.  And those fees allow me to work well, not
quickly.  With school visits, I can take
four years  -- two years of research prior to sale, two years after -- to write a book that only paid enough to cover two months,  if I’m frugal; one month upon signing, the other after acceptance two years later.  Thanks to the generosity of parent teacher
organizations, I can do serious nonfiction research, even if my topics are
non-traditional.   And that is important to me and to the kids
that read me.  HUGE Pro. 




Let’s not forget book sales. 
I sell more books doing school visits than I could without
school visits.  In 2012, I visited 19
elementary schools in February, thanks to the Literacy Connection, a group of
retired educators in central Washington that organizes author visit tours each year. I
was one of their authors in 2012.  I
talked to hundreds and hundreds of kids and sold more than 2,000 hardcover
books , along with earning my fees.   The
organizers said we sold more books than had ever been sold before – most to
reluctant reader boys, aching to love a book. 
They loved mine. Pro! Pro! Pro!





Girls like my books, too!


That brings us to my last reason for loving (and enduring)
school visits.   Every time I walk into
that gym, that library, that commons room, that auditorium, that cafeteria,
what I do is plentifully reaffirmed. 




If ever I've wondered if I made the right choice
to write 25 years ago, if I've wondered if anyone cares about my books, if I've ever grieved not winning awards, or the pain in my knees, or the flus and viruses I get on the road, the uncertainties vanish the minute I see those smiling faces.  Doubt is replaced with joy, without exception.




I have a genuine passion for writing, and I’m good at
it.  But it pales in comparison to my
passion for young readers.  “You are my
favorite writer.”  “This is my favorite
book.”  “I want to do what you do when I
grow up.”  Sentences like those discount the con columns.  They wash the cons away. 




I do school visits because they are a part of who I am. I am never more
completely myself than I am when I’m with those kids – or the grown-ups
devoted to helping them. 




Travel in post 9/11 airports may feel like hell.  But once you get to a destination that feels
like heaven, what difference does it make? 
 




I AM lucky to do what I do -- even when it includes a 6:00 am departure
time. So onward! 


And to all of you brilliant, generous hosts out there, thank you for being the angels that you are.  You are not just my hosts, you are my friends. 





Kelly Milner Halls

www.wondersofweird.com

Artistic License and Telling Details

The newest crop of
award-winning films from Hollywood, Lincoln, Zero Dark Thirty, and Argo, are all
based on true stories.  The key word here
is “based.” It seems that film-makers have no trouble inventing scenes,
creating dialog, and inserting information that is completely made up if, in
their opinion, it makes a better story.  The
rationale?  Movie-goers “expect” an
exciting chase scene in Argo or a  Navy Seal raid on Osama Bin Laden’s
home to be noisy even if it never happened.  Historians
are worried because so many people are learning history from the movies.  Will the story from the movie’s point of view
become the myth that supplants the careful scholarship and meticulous digging
that drives the best historians to get it right?  The good news is that these transgressions
are being noticed.  But we authors
who contribute to this blog, who craft nonfiction for children, may be held to
the highest standards around.  We’re not
allowed to make anything up. 
Period.  Maybe we’re the last
group on the planet to be held to such high standards.  Anna’s recent post on Just the
Facts shows how hard we work to make sure we’re accurate.




The erosion of the truth seems
to be touching journalism as well. One previously absolutely inviolate
journalistic standard was that every fact must be verified by at least three
independent sources.   It’s hard for a
reader to check on the accuracy of many stories because journalists can keep
some of their sources secret.  So one
outcome is that people wind up reading and tuning in to the media they agree
with. The biased medium becomes the arbiter of what it wants its audience to believe, cherry-picking from the many conflicting “facts” being touted
in public that support different sides of critical issues.  It’s no wonder that the “echo chamber” of Fox
News [Un]fair and [Un]balanced skewed version of the news kept them in a bubble
oblivious to the possibility that Obama would be elected, even after the election results were called by other news services. 
Many pundits dissected why Fox News got it wrong but the consensus seems
to be that they had problems believing the inconvenient truth of independent
polls so their own slanted views became their own truth.  I googled 
the words “journalism erosion of standards” and up came a slew of posts
with many different  examples about the extent of misinformation foisted on
the public.  There was so much
disagreement between these posts that I’m now confused about the truth on a
variety of issues.  But all the articles
seem to agree that many news organizations play fast and loose with the truth
in the interest of ratings, readership, political and social bias, and the
bottom line. Propaganda is alive and well in the good old USA.




 What happens when misinformation is embedded
in a compellingly told story that has a lot of truth to it? What should our
response be when it is uncovered?  Here’s
a thorny problem from the film Lincoln:  It seems there were two invented Connecticut
“nays” against the 13th amendment in the voting scene in the movie thus casting the Nutmeg State
incorrectly on the wrong side of history. 
My initial reaction was:  where
were the fact checkers?  This is the kind
of error that is so easy to correct. Were the film-makers being lazy or
sloppy?  The Connecticut congressman, Joe
Courtney, called out the error in an open letter to director
Steven Spielberg.  In response, Tony
Kushner, the screenwriter admitted that it was no accident.  He had made the changes deliberately.   Kushner
argues that the facts were changed to serve the larger story: “These
alterations were made to clarify to the audience the historical reality that
the Thirteenth Amendment passed by a very narrow margin that wasn't determined
until the end of the vote. The closeness of that vote and the means by which it
came about was the story we wanted to tell. In making changes to the voting
sequence, we adhered to time-honored and completely legitimate standards for
the creation of historical drama, which is what Lincoln is.” In other words, he
used artistic license to shorten the voting scene in the film from the actual
historical voting time in the interest of a dramatic effect.  You can read the arguments  here.
 So it wasn't laziness or sloppiness. I
think he has a point. 




Dramas like Lincoln and Argo
create tremendous interest in history. When kids encounter a compelling story or an
amazing fact they want to know if it is true. The proper answer is
“Mostly.”  But a curious kid now wants to
know what’s true and what isn't.  Aha!  A teachable moment!  What an opportunity!  Telling details (small things that catch
one’s attention) can add to the credibility of a work if true or, if incorrect, indicate
that the work was not vetted for accuracy and perhaps shouldn't be trusted.   If only
the interested person knew for sure which were which!




Maybe this is an opportunity for
us.  Perhaps it takes authors who write
history for children to create white papers on these films.  They could explain what is true and where
truth has been manipulated.  They could
ask questions like, can you think of another way to meet the requirements of an
historical drama without changing the facts? Are there any fabrications that
are unacceptable in a work that portrays real events?  If so, what are they and why should they not
be included?  What does a careless error
of fact tell you about the creators of the work?  Whose responsibility is it for those
errors? 




Searching for truth drives us in
creating our books.  Perhaps we need to add
our voices into the larger conversation engendered by the popular media.

ALERT THE MEDIA – YOU ARE ABOUT TO BECOME A FAMOUS AUTHOR AND ILLUSTRATOR

 Hey teachers! 
Kids too!  Are you writing any
nonfiction stories in class these days?  Lots
of schools are trying out this approach to writing in general, and they’re
studying the different ways good nonfiction books are written in particular, especially
in light of the CCSS.  So what different
kinds of writing might work nonfiction-wise? 
There are plenty.

 



Try doing live interviews or writing a
journal, for example—they both count as nonfiction. A few ideas:




Maybe your class can interview various folks who were on the scene during a great or terrible historic event,
such as the Summer Olympics or even 911. Or try interviewing somebody who has an unusual job; maybe the old Santa Claus at the mall  or a fireman (naturally) or your mayor or a local musician or a TV personality or your own bus driver. 




And maybe you can pen some truly
amazing journals during a field trip to a museum or a festival or an historic
site. (Of course if you aren’t going on any field trips, you can always write some
pretty entertaining journal entries about the food in your cafeteria.)






Or take a stab at uncovering the true story of how your own family came to America. Whether they got here last Wednesday or
300 years ago, doing the research is a hoot…and be sure to ask your parents or
grandparents. You'd be surprised what they know and what you don't.




Or you can write research papers about things you’re
learning in class—some examples might include compiling all sorts of comments
about the frogs (living or dead) in your science lab, or researching and
writing about a disterous Civil War battle for your history class, or making like
a professional critic who’s writing book reviews for your English class, or examining
the statistical issues behind today’s economic crisis in your math classes without
putting anyone to sleep.  Now there's a challenge for you.

 



IT IS OK TO HAVE FUN WHILE YOU DO THIS…YOU
DON’T NECESSARILY HAVE TO GET ALL SERIOUS (UNLESS YOU WANT TO.)






Yup, your writing has to shine; that’s a
given.  But here’s an outstanding tool
that lets you spice up everything you write, gets people interested in your
stories and papers, helps you learn faster, makes sure readers remember your
most complex material in a flash, and entertains your own self at the same time:

 



JUST STIR IN ALL KINDS OF PICTURES AS YOU GO
ALONG.






Really? 
Most definitely!  After all, just
think about it.  Whenever you go online
or watch movies or TV or play video games or look inside certain books, they’re
all about the pictures.  Lots of you are probably
taking pictures yourself today by using a cell phone, or you’re adding pictures
to online sites like Facebook.  So while
you’re busy writing papers and journals and stories at school, why not think
the way you do in the real world…whenever you write, stir plenty of artwork and
photos and other visuals of your own into the mix.






Here are a few tiny examples of the gazillion
ways to add pictures to your writing:






TAKE THE JOURNALS, FOR EXAMPLE:

 



When you bring your journal along on a school
field trip – or even on a regular day – be sure to bring some colored markers
or colored pencils or just regular lead pencils. Then draw the coolest things
you see.  Try to show the real world and
still use your artistic imagination at the same time.  Put pictures next to the words
you just wrote or use pictures to make a rebus or spread pictures into the margins
or make them into cartoons or make them extremely realistic.  Let some of the pictures fill a whole page or
two or three of their own.  They can most
certainly be funny. They can most certainly be serious  or scientific. Doodling is just fine.  Cartoons are just fine.  Beautiful pictures are, well, beautiful and
wonderful.  And of course you can draw all
kinds of fancy lettering in your topic headings along the way. 

 



Trust me, people will want to see what you
wrote if it’s illustrated.  When explores
like Lewis and Clark or scientists like Charles Darwin wrote journals, they did
these exact kinds of things. Their writing was incredibly fun to read and was
informative to the max at the same time. 
Yours should be too.

 



Another idea is to take photos during the day, print them out, and tape them in later.  Or collect small
stuff you find and glue that in too—for example, add brochures or cut them up
and tape some of the picture into your journal. Or add small parts of the plants
you see on a farm visit. Or leaves you pick up on a hike during the fall.






AND HOW ABOUT ART FOR YOUR INTERVIEWS?

 



One idea is to draw the person you are interviewing yourself!
Or take your own photos of them doing something verrry cool and then paste
or tape them into your written work. Or if they have any pictures taken when
they were kids, make photocopies and add them to the mix. Even if you write your interview (or any other stuff) online, you can scan in your pictures and imbed them. 






GEOGRAPHY CAN BE MEMORABLE IN SPADES:

 



Make colorful illuminated maps of the places
you’re studying and add them into the mix. 
To see exactly how this works, go here and check out the pictures


 




MORE TIPS:






Think of cool and colorful pictures you can add to your charts
and graphs:

 



If they look great, they can offer readers a
fast and entertaining way to learn a lot of boring stats in a single glance.



Try putting the quotes inside of talk
balloons that point at a picture of the person who's being quoted.  Maybe this person is a new cartoon character
of your own creation (kind of like the one Jeff Kinney made up for his Wimpy Kid), or
maybe you can research what the people you quoted really looked like and what
they really wore, and then draw them accurately.



FAMOUS LAST WORDS:


  



YIKES! Art is in danger of disappearing from our
schools, and that would be a DISASTER.  Help bring
it back by adding artwork to your written work in school.  

Paint pictures on wood! 

Rough canvas! 

Pebble
board!  

Write words on all kinds of unusual
paper.  

Try playing
around with paint, scraps of cloth, cut paper, or scratch board, and then add them to
your written work.  

Experiment
with your photographs.   

Make collages using buttons, flowers, seeds, or leaves
picked up off the ground....if your essay or journal is lumpy, so what? Your writing
will end up being a keeper, and you will learn to think, be creative, do
research, and remember what you wrote about for a very long time.

Forests and trees

Last week Brian Greene, the physicist and mathematician, gave a lecture at the University of Colorado in Boulder. Greene is the author of several books about relativity, quantum mechanics, string theory, parallel universes, and other fields of contemporary physics. He’s also hosted two Nova series dealing with the same subjects on PBS. Several members of my family attended his presentation, including my 14-year-old son Jamie.




Greene talked about string theory, multiple dimensions, and the multiverse. The hall, which holds more than 2,000 people, was completely full (apparently that many more people showed up but couldn’t get in, which struck me as pretty remarkable).




The audience included lots of physicists — even a few Nobel laureates. But many of us were non-scientists, so the talk, which presented mathematical, theoretical, and observational arguments for the existence of multiple universes, had to accommodate a wide range of educational backgrounds. Greene managed this by placing his main points in a linear historical context and by using stories, analogies, and images rather than advanced math to explain his hypotheses. He’s quite good at this. When I talked to Jamie afterward, I found that he’d understood the essential points of the lecture even though his freshman physical science course hasn’t progressed beyond Newton’s physical laws.




There’s an obvious connection here to writing nonfiction picture books about subjects like evolution, geology, and astronomy for an audience with a limited scientific vocabulary. Before I go there, however, one more story.




When I was a graduate student in design school, I taught an introductory photography course for four semesters. This was in the pre-digital era, so in addition to the aesthetics of the medium the class covered many of the technical  aspects of B&W photography: the relationship of f-stop and shutter speed, the process and chemistry of film development and printing, and so on. The first two times I taught the class, I just turned the students loose to make images, and we covered the technical issues as they arose. The quality of the final product — a B&W print — was pretty abysmal, at least for a while. But the class was having fun making pictures. As an experiment, I decided to try a different approach during the third semester. I spent the first few weeks of class explaining the technical side of the process before we started making images. Depth of field, freezing motion, reciprocity failure, the chemistry of film, that sort of thing. And the students were bored to death. I can’t ignore the possibility that my limitations as an instructor were at least partly to blame. But it was pretty clear that jumping right into the heart of the process — making images — was much more rewarding.




Based on own experiences as a student — and on those of my three children ­— something similar often happens in school science classes. The beautiful, awe-inspiring parts — the power and elegance of Darwin’s theory, the way Einstein changed our fundamental understanding of the world, Watson and Crick’s incredible discovery of the digital nature of life — get buried in an often intimidating deluge of formulas and facts to be memorized. It’s a forest and trees problem. This isn’t intended as a criticism of science teachers, who have a prescribed — and, sadly, often circumscribed — curriculum to get through in a short period of time.




Instead, it’s another way to think about what we do as authors. We know that children — even very young children — can often understand complex scientific concepts as long as they are presented in a context and with a vocabulary that makes use of what they already understand about the world. A 32-page book (I’m talking picture books, but these ideas are just as applicable to longer chapter books for older children) presents the same sort of challenge that Brian Greene faced in explaining a significant chunk of  modern physics to a lay audience in an hour and a half. Children’s book authors also use stories, analogies, and images to make complex concepts understandable. We have no choice but to skip over many of the technical details and get right to the heart of an idea.

How To Write Funny

My friend, Julie Winterbottom, writes funny stuff. She was editor-in-chief of Nickelodeon Magazine, and she has a new book coming out on March 19. Since I sometimes find it challenging to write funny, I thought I'd ask her to take my I.N.K. slot this month and explain how she does it.






I was a little surprised when Sue
asked me to write a guest post for I.N.K. because my forthcoming book, Pranklopedia , while technically nonfiction,
is more likely to get shelved under “Humor.” But Sue’s invitation got me
thinking about the role of humor in nonfiction. Humor can draw kids who don’t
like to read into enjoying nonfiction as much as they enjoy short-sheeting a
bed (well, almost). In fact, my hope is that kids will pick up Pranklopedia to learn new pranks and end
up reading the many (nonfiction) sidebars about creative capers in history,
art, sports, and the White House.




There was another surprise: I found
myself thinking about something I don’t usually pay much attention to—the
process of writing humor and more specifically, the techniques I use to get
myself into a funny frame of mind. I thought I’d share them here. I learned most
of them during my 12 years as an editor at Nickelodeon Magazine , where the humor bar was set high. Even the masthead had to be funny!
At Nick Mag, we often wrote humor pieces
in pairs or small groups. It strikes me now that most of my techniques bring collaborators—real
or imagined—into the writing process.




1. Read Something Funny

When I’m not feeling funny, I read
someone who is. While working on Pranklopedia,
I often started the day by reading a few pages from How to Play In Traffic, one of Penn & Teller’s hilarious books of
pranks for adults. It helped me find a devious, slightly conspiratorial voice
that was perfect for writing about pranks. On days when my ideas seemed too
tame, I would dip into Mad Magazine to
unleash my more irreverent side. For those who are more literary, one nonfiction
writer I know suggests reading P.G. Wodehouse to get into
funny mode.




2. Live With Someone Funny (or
have easy phone access)

My boyfriend Stephen should probably
be listed as co-author of Pranklopedia.
He isn’t a prankster himself, and he doesn’t know much about writing for kids.
But he has a fine ear for what’s funny and what isn’t. Whenever I had doubts
about something I wrote, I would run it by Stephen. He would not only nix the
bad ideas, he would help me brainstorm better ones.




3. Ask Yourself: What Would Jim Do?

My friend Jim is a natural-born
prankster. Where other people see a boring trip to the supermarket or another
tedious day at the office, Jim sees opportunities for pranks. Whenever I got
stuck trying to come up with new pranks, I would pretend to be Jim. I’d find
myself looking at everything around me, from the eggs in the refrigerator to
the houseplants in the living room, as potential prank material. This technique
let me ditch the cautious editor inside me and come up with lots of crazy
ideas—some of which actually worked. Who knew that the musical birthday card on
my living room shelf would make an excellent prank when taped to the inside
edge of a closet door?




4. Wait a Day

When you’re working alone, it can be
hard to know if what you wrote is actually funny. One way to find out (besides
asking Stephen) is to put the writing aside and read it first thing in the
morning. You will know right away whether or not it is funny. This can be a
very disappointing experience. I’ve spent whole days writing what I thought was
hysterical material only to read it the next morning and cringe: It was forced,
unoriginal, and definitely not funny. The good part is that when this happens, it
usually leads me to write a much better replacement.




5. Pray for a Last-Minute Request From Your Editor

Some of the funniest pranks and
sidebars in Pranklopedia are the ones
I added very late in the game, after the book had been designed and there were
holes that needed filling. There’s something about a tight deadline that
produces superior comedy. I saw this happen all the time at Nick Mag: The humor piece that we wrote in
two hours because an ad dropped out at the last minute was always the funniest.
Of course it’s hard to employ this technique if external forces are not cooperating.
Hmm…maybe I can get writers to hire me to impersonate their editors and then I
will make last-minute requests for new material. Any takers?