Poetry Friday: Nikki Grimes
Nikki Grimes’ book Talkin’ About Bessie: The Story of Aviator Elizabeth Coleman (Orchard, 2002) is the biography, written in 20 voices, of the first African American licensed female pilot.
Listen to Nikki Grimes share more about Elizabeth Coleman and read…

Nic Bishop is an award-winning, well-known photographer of the natural world. Having traveled all over the world to document scientists on expeditions, Bishop has his share of stories. He also goes to great pains to capture action-packed photographic images of mammals, insects, and reptiles in his own studio.
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: Cross of Lead) or it may go no further than to create a general sense of time and place (as in Midnight Magic). The work that is merely dressed up in a general sense of time and place is rather like a musical comedy. There is nothing inherently wrong with this approach, and in fact there are some real advantages. The primary advantage is that one can deal with very modern ideas and simply place them where one can have the most fun.