TeachingBooks.net is delighted to welcome award-winning author Avi as our featured guest blogger.

Each month, we ask one distinguished author or illustrator to write an original post that reveals insights about their process and craft. Enjoy!

“The Challenges of Writing Historical Fiction”

by Avi

Photo provided by Nick Glass, 2009

Historical fiction is a complex genre.

It can strive to be as absolutely accurate as the writer can make it [as I attempted in Crispin: The Cross of Lead (Hyperion, 2002)] or create a general sense of time and place [as in my Midnight Magic (Scholastic, 1999)]. The latter is rather like a musical comedy. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, and, in fact, there are some real advantages. The primary benefit is that an author can deal with very modern ideas, simply placing them where they are the most fun.

The more accurate form of historical fiction brings many challenges. Foremost is language: how did people speak during that era? Consider Crispin. At the time that story takes place (England, 1377) the common language was Middle English. For a taste of this, read Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales—as he wrote it.

What to do? Before writing Crispin I read the poetry of the period, and tried to learn its diction, and told my story in that fashion. That made the text feel different without making it unreadable.

The other problem is the use of language. For example, a 14th-century character cannot steel himself to meet a challenge. Why? Steel was not yet invented. By the same token I recently looked up the words “old man” (as in “my father”) and was surprised to discover that the term was in use starting from the mid-19th century. Having the complete Oxford Dictionary of the English Language online is a great help.

Another problem lies in coming to understand and place your story in the physical world of the day. Here are some of the questions I’ve had to answer in the course of my writing: When were pockets invented? When did people first use buttons? What did a loaf of bread cost in the 14th century? What was that bread made of? How much would you be paid if you worked as a cabin boy during the Civil War? How do you shift gears in a Model T Ford? If you purchased a copy of the The New York Times on the street in New York City in the year 1889, how much would you pay for it? From whom would you buy it?

All these questions have answers, of course, and the accurate writer needs to get to them. It can be an enormously time-consuming effort, not always a very fruitful one, and sometimes you get it wrong. The upside is that it’s very gratifying to know that you got it right. These details shape a story and give it body.

Then comes the hard part: truly accurate historical fiction requires characters who think the same way the people of that period did. How does a character think about life and death? What is the role of religion in their lives? Ways of thinking and of understanding the way the world works have changed enormously over the ages.

But of course, the most difficult part of historical fiction writing is creating a compelling story with engaging characters. Research is necessary if you’re writing true historical fiction, but in the end, it’s the fiction, not excessive fact that you want to retain. It’s a delicate balance and a particular challenge when writing for young people because you can never assume your readers know anything about the period.

If it’s so hard, why do I do it?

History fascinates me, and if I do it well, it seems to fascinate my readers too.

- An original article by author Avi.

This material may not be used without the express written consent of Avi.

More online resources about Avi:

Hear Avi tell the story of his name, including how his twin sister helped name him.

Listen Now

Watch Avi and and others share insights and strategies for incorporating Reader’s Theater into the classroom.

Watch Now

Access all of TeachingBooks.net’s online resources about Avi and his books.

This post was originally published as an article in Carin Bringelson and Nick Glass’ monthly column for School Library Monthly.

Powerful photographs helped change the tide of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 60s. Some of these very photos moved author Elizabeth Partridge (goddaughter of the influential photographer Dorothea Lange) when she saw them 40 years later. Consider the role that photographs, books, and interviews play in historical research as Partridge discusses her process of selecting viable sources for Marching for Freedom: Walk Together Children and Don’t You Grow Weary (Penguin, 2009).

A Passion for Pictures

This book started when I came across a group of photographs online by a man named Matt Herron. These were photos of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March for the Vote led by Martin Luther King, Jr. I just instantly fell in love with his photographs. I wanted to touch them. I wanted to pour over them. I wanted to see more of them. Mostly, I wanted to make a book with them so I could share them with other people.

Primary and Secondary Sources

I plunged into reading everything I could get my hands on about The March. Pretty soon I had a pretty good overview. Matt let me come to his house and look at all his photographs he had in his archive. I was very happy. I started tracking down more photographs by other photographers.

Then I went back to my secondary sources I’d already read and I checked the source notes and the references in those books to find the primary sources that they had used. That’s where I started to feel like the rubber met the road. When I get a hold of primary sources, I’m very excited.

Making Connections

As I did all this research and looked in all these photographs, I realized kids and teenagers had been critical to the success of this March. Right there, hidden in plain site, was the story of how kids had endured being jailed, being beaten—and they’d gotten up every morning and gone out again. Day after day these kids were marching and being thrown in jail.

So I flew to Selma and I interviewed people who had been kids and teenagers on The March. Their memories were so vivid. This had been a huge, huge turning point in their lives, and they were able to recount so vividly for me what their experiences were. I took the narratives by these kids, and I wrapped my story around their interviews because they were just so precious, and then I managed to squeeze over 50 photographs by all different photographers into this book.

Activities for encouraging inquiry using archival photography:

• Find a historical photograph of your school, family, or community that intrigues you.  Write a list of questions that the photo inspired.

• Gather photographs that inspire or have personal meaning to you, and write a story based on sentiments you see in them.

• Read the footnotes and bibliography of a book with archival photographs, and follow some of the citations back to the primary source. Were they accurate?

• Consider the role that young people play in changing society. Write an essay about a social movement in which young people were integral to its success, and integrate photographs. How does adding photos add to or detract from your essay and writing process?

Posted by Carin Bringelson, MLS, Information Manager and Nick Glass, Founder & Principal of TeachingBooks.net

I encourage you to find poetry in unexpected places—in places beyond books. For example, 80-year-old poet and author Eloise Greenfield reminded me that poetry can be found in rap music. In fact, Eloise found inspiration for her book Nathaniel Talking (Writers & Readers, 1989) when she decided to write a “rap poem.”

The character who came to her as she wrote the poem “Nathaniel’s Rap” became the basis for her entire book.

Listen to Eloise Greenfield read the poem “Knowledge” and share the backstory of Nathaniel Talking.

A favorite line from this poem:

“I’ve got it all figured out/By the time I’m an old man/I’m going to know almost everything about everything”

The original book reading with Eloise Greenfield was created as part of the Coretta Scott King Book Award Curriculum Resource Center.

Poetry Friday is hosted at Picture Book of the Day this week.

Posted by Danika Brubaker, MLS, Web 2.0 Content Producer

I love how poetry can aid in revealing human nature. We learn more about the poet, or more about ourselves, or more about what it means to be human.  In Carole Boston Weatherford’s book of poetry, Becoming Billie Holiday (Wordsong, 2008), we can learn, via poetry, about Billie Holiday as a child, teen, and adult.

These poems are characterized as “fictional verse memoir.”  They help reveal fragments of Billie’s character and past.  These poems may even help readers explore Billie’s music in a new way.  For example, listen to Carole Boston Weatherford read “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” and see my favorite line below. You’ll hear it come alive as Carole seems to channel Billie Holiday, revealing the mischievous side of the famed jazz singer.

Listen to Carole Boston Weatherford reading “It’s a Sin to Tell a Lie” and two more poems

A favorite line from this poem:

“a pair of silk stockings called my name:
Eleanora, wanna dance?”

The original book reading with Carole Boston Weatherford was created as part of the Coretta Scott King Book Award Curriculum Resource Center.

Poetry Friday is hosted at Liz in Ink this week.

Posted by Danika Brubaker, MLS, Web 2.0 Content Producer

Sometimes customers ask us for audio books accompanied by text captions of the words being read.

While the vast majority of the Book Readings available via TeachingBooks.net are audio excerpts of books, there are some excellent full-length Book Readings and some of these feature text captions.

Watch this 1-minute video and/or follow the steps below to learn how to find audio Book Readings with text captions in the TeachingBooks.net database:

1) Go to the orange tab labeled “Book Readings.”

2) In the orange bar near the bottom of the page, note the Browse options.

3) Open the first drop-down menu in the orange browse bar and click on “Full-length.”

4) Click “Go.”  (See more details about full-length Book Readings.)

5) On the Search Results page, look in the “Created by” column for any of the following:
Kennedy Center

Light Up Your Brain

PBS Kids / Between the Lions

Storyline Online

Toon Books

We Do Listen Foundation

The above are all entities that have produced Book Readings that include text captions. Also, look for the titles written by Frank Asch—some of his Book Readings have text captions, too.

If you know of other places on the Internet to enjoy Book Readings with text captions, leave a comment below!

Posted by Carin Bringelson, MLS, Information Manager

Beginning today, we’ll participate in Poetry Friday every week on the TeachingBooks.net Blog.

Poetry Friday is a blogging community dedicated to sharing poets, poems, and poetry resources online.  We are excited to feature special resources from TeachingBooks.net’s extensive collection of online resources about poetry and poets.

Encountering a poem when it is read aloud by the author can bring a poem to life in a way that the printed words cannot. For example, this week, please relish the sweetness of author and poet Joyce Carol Thomas reading the title poem from her book The Blacker the Berry (Harper, 2008).

Listen to Joyce Carol Thomas reading “The Blacker the Berry”

A favorite line from this poem:

“I am midnight and berries …”

Poetry Friday is hosted at Great Kids Books this week.

Posted by Danika Brubaker, MLS, Web 2.0 Content Producer

This post was originally published in Nick Glass’ monthly column for Curriculum Connections, an e-newsletter published by School Library Journal in partnership with TeachingBooks.net. Subscribe to this free newsletter here.

Engage students with technology as you explore best practices in writing. By integrating the online resources listed in this post into your curriculum, students can have award-winning authors model the application of specific writing tips and techniques.

Lois Lowry shares that The Giver (Houghton, 1993) was written by asking, “what if….”

Ingrid Law tells how drafting “one, absolutely crazy sentence” gave her the first line of her Newbery Honor title, Savvy (Dial, 2008).

Sharon Creech, Walter Dean Myers, Avi, and Sarah Weeks perform Creech’s Love That Dog (HarperCollins, 2001), a story in which a boy reveals how important it is for him to feel safe and comfortable before expressing personal feelings in his writing.

Posted by Nick Glass, Founder & Principal of TeachingBooks.net

TeachingBooks.net is delighted to welcome award-winning author Sharon M. Draper as our featured guest blogger.

Each month, we ask one distinguished author or illustrator to write an original post that reveals insights about their process and craft. Enjoy!

“Coming Full Circle”

by Sharon M. Draper

Photo provided by Sharon M. Draper, 2009

I went to Ghana several years ago and was overwhelmed by the beauty of the land and people, as well as the history of the place that hovered just out of reach. When I visited the slave castles, where millions of Africans were housed like cattle before being shipped as cargo and sold as slaves, I felt their spirits crying out to me. Crawling on my hands and knees through the “Door of No Return,” which led from the dark confines of the prison to the bright vastness of a beach, I knew I must tell the story of someone who had passed that way.

Copper Sun (S&S, 2006) became that novel. It’s the story of 15-year-old Amari, who watches as her peaceful village is destroyed, and is marched across the continent to Cape Coast Castle, where she is held, sold, and pushed through that “door of no return.” With strength and dignity, Amari learns to survive, then yearns for freedom. The book has been read in schools all across the United States and in Europe and most recently, in Africa.

My book was one of the titles students from Ghana, Nigeria, and the United States read and discussed—online, and later in person, through the program Reading Across Continents. The experience was a truly cross-cultural social and educational event focusing on friendship and shared interests. As Americans, we sometimes see only the negative aspects of African society. We often fail to recognize the positive—including the value Africans place on education and academic success. The young people who were part of this program are the future leaders of their countries, and perhaps because of the program, they have formed friendships that will ease some of the world’s social tensions.

In all, 10 students from Ghana and 10 from Nigeria visited the United States for three weeks in September 2009. Two weeks after that, 20 American high school seniors from Washington, DC, made the journey to Africa to meet their friends. The reunions, which I witnessed, were joyous and heartwarming.

I went to Nigeria first, and got to know the students there. We visited the American Embassy in Abuja, as well as other sites, and the Americans began taking classes—wearing the same school uniforms as the Nigerians. I spoke with the students from both countries about Copper Sun. It was an amazing, powerful conversation. Because half of young people discussing the book were Africans, their perspectives on slavery were personal and intense.

In Ghana, I met the other 10 American students as they arrived from the United States. Here there was an even more effective and powerful discussion of Copper Sun. I think this was because Ghana is where it all started. Ghana was Amari’s home.

Together the students and I traveled to Cape Coast Castle, the place where the seeds of Copper Sun were sown.  I was able to retrace my steps, to touch the stones of that building once more, and to tell Amari that I had done what she asked—to tell her story. I stood at the Door of No Return, in front of those African and North American students, their teachers, assorted guides, and other visitors, and told how my story began.

I then gave thanks that I was able to write the book, bring it back to that place, and that it had been instrumental in joining the hearts and minds of 40 young people, their teachers, and their schools. Standing in front of that door was one of the most emotional moments in my life. I wept. So did many of the students.

This book is dedicated to the millions of girls like Amari who died during that process—as well as those who lived and endured, and to the multitudes of ancestors who needed a voice. I speak for them. Amari carries their spirit. She carries mine as well.

I took Amari back home.

Thank you.

- An original article by author Sharon M. Draper.

This material may not be used without the express written consent of Sharon M. Draper.

More online resources about Sharon M. Draper:

Hear Sharon M. Draper tell the story of her name, including the importance of her middle initial “M”.

Listen Now

Watch Sharon M. Draper discuss how being a teacher affects her writing process and style

Watch Now

Access all of TeachingBooks.net’s online resources about Sharon M. Draper and her books.

This post was originally published as an article in Carin Bringelson and Nick Glass’ monthly column for School Library Monthly.

Making history come to life is sometimes like solving a mystery. To help unravel and understand the inquiry process, professional historian Phil Hoose provides the following insights into the craft of researching and writing history.

Watch this 3-minute video with Claudette Colvin and Phil Hoose discussing Claudette Colvin: Twice Toward Justice (Farrar, 2009), winner of the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature for 2009.

Claudette Colvin:  Twice Toward Justice

Claudette Colvin, in 1955, was a 15-year-old African American girl growing up in Alabama. She refused to surrender her seat to a white passenger on a segregated bus in Montgomery, Alabama a full nine months before Rosa Parks later became famous by doing the same thing.

I found out about Claudette while I was doing research for a book I wrote entitled We Were There Too: Young People in US History (Farrar, 2001), which shows the incredible contribution that young people have made to US History.

I kept hearing this one story about this teenage girl who had done what Rosa Parks did, but earlier. I was fascinated by this story.

Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Sources

I think any person who sets out to write history worries about whether they’re getting it right and how to validate this. What I tried to do was, first of all, never to rely on a single source. I would read or interview from several sources, and thus get as much context as I could. Secondly, I sent the book out to a group of readers that included historians.

There were several kinds of sources that I used in making We Were There, Too! What I preferred were primary sources: journals, diaries that people wrote while they were young, and interviews. Essentially, I found that there weren’t that many journals and diaries written by young people, particularly back in the seventeenth century. And those who kept journals tended to be rich, well-educated kids, and more boys than girls. Often I would find that the diaries or the journals were not very interesting.

So, there was a secondary source that I ended up using a lot, and that was retrospective accounts of adults; that is, people who later wrote about their childhood once they grew up. Frederick Douglass, for example, wrote some wonderful things about his childhood.

Sometimes, and somewhat reluctantly, I used a tertiary source, which was accounts written by second or third parties — people who saw or knew somebody else when they were young. For example, we know about Sacagawea through the writings of Lewis and Clark.

Passion for Interviews

I love to interview people. When maybe two interviews would do, I’ll interview seven people. I want a lot of context.

I find interviewees by delving into the material of whatever it is that I want to write about. I keep interviewing, and every interview is like a rose unfolding. There are more and more people identified to talk to, and after I while, I get to talking with them, too.

I record the interviews on tape, always with the permission of the interviewee. I have a tape recorder that hooks up to my phone. I wait a day or two and then I listen to it again. Sometimes I type out what people have said, but often I don’t. Then I pick the “greatest hits” from the interview and remind myself with notes about the highlights in the interview. Then I weave that material into the stories that I write.

Questions for encouraging students to do historical inquiry:

• What historical events would you like to investigate?
• Why do you think having multiple sources would be helpful?
• What primary sources could you use? Secondary? Tertiary?
• What can be gained from primary sources, unlike other sources?
• If you were to do an oral history project, who would you interview and why?

All online resources about Phil Hoose and his books.

Posted by Carin Bringelson, MLS, Information Manager and Nick Glass, Founder & Principal of TeachingBooks.net

As a way to perpetuate readers’ personal connections with book creators, we at TeachingBooks.net have periodically featured original artwork created by some of the illustrators with whom we’ve worked.

We like imagining that when these great illustrators aren’t working on books, they are feeding their own creative spirits by making art just for the fun of it.

Please enjoy this collection of non-book artwork generously shared by five professional illustrators.

Click thumbnail to see original artwork

Cartoons made via copperplate etching by Arthur Geisert

Click thumbnail to see original artwork

Cats made using tin cans, bottle caps, & rivets by Denise Fleming

Click thumbnail to see original artwork

Collages made with magazine ads & watercolor by Bryan Collier

Click thumbnail to see original artwork

Travel sketches created with pens & pastels by David Small

Click thumbnail to watch movie

Stained glass windows created with sea glass by Ashley Bryan

What do you think of these one-of-a-kind pieces?  How do they inspire you to create your own artwork?  Leave a comment below!

Posted by Carin Bringelson, MLS, Information Manager