Nonfiction Institute with Sue, Sy and Nic

On Friday, Sue Kirch and I "swam" (i.e., we drove through almost non-stop, heavy rain there and back) from New York City to Maine for the 2nd Annual Nonfiction Institute (NI) at the College of Education & Human Development, The University of Maine on Saturday. I'm on the board of the NI and was the keynote speaker last year. Sue is a biologist who made original contributions to the field of immunology. (She also comments on my science-related blogs, e.g. , why cranberries float, 10/08/07, and caterpillar eggs & newborns, 3/21/08.) Luckily for everyone who cares about science education (& we all should!), seven years ago Sue decided to devote her impressive training and experience (and engaging personality) to science education. We met in 2003 when she joined the faculty in the Department of Elementary and Early Childhood Education at Queens College, the City University of New York. Currently she is on the faculty at New York University in the Department of Teaching and Learning.
Jan Kristo, professor, Reading and Language Arts, University of Maine, and head of the NI, set the perfect tone for the day with an inspiring call to action to promote/use nonfiction literature in classrooms. Then Sue gave her fascinating presentation "Question! Investigate!: Using Science Trade Books to Support Inquiry in the Classroom." She illustrated her points with examples from nonfiction books and hands-on activities. In addition everyone got a sticker with the picture of a three-legged stool, a visual representation of a holistic view of science: the word "science" is on the seat, each leg represents the three aspect of a holistic view --knowledge, method, worldview.
In planning the NI, we asked Sue for a list of authors whose books reflect this holistic view of science. Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop were at the top of her list. Sy is a naturalist, author, documentary script-writer and radio commentator. Nic is a photographer and writer. He also has a Ph.D. in biology, and, like Sue, changed directions from lab-based research to doing the photography and writing for books about natural history.
As collaborators, Sy and Nic have shared adventures in remote places to produce award-winning books, including Quest for the Tree Kangaroo. They have also produced books under their own name, e.g., Sy wrote The Man-Eating Tigers of Sundarbans and Nic wrote Nic Bishop Frogs.
Sy and Nic presented in the afternoon and held all of us spellbound with dramatic stories and stunning photographs.
Standing in the top picture from left to right are: Mary Evans, award-winning science teacher in Bangor & NI board member; Jan Kristo, professor, Reading and Language Arts, University of Maine, and head of the NI; Sy Montgomery; Sandip Wilson, professor, Literacy and Elementary Education, Husson University, Bangor, Maine & NI board member; Marcia Boody, Maine Literacy Partnership Trainer; Nic Bishop; Sue Kirch; Penny Colman; Amy Cates, who admirably handled all the arrangements for the conference. In these pictures, I'm signing books for people and answering questions. Deb Schuller, Ph.D. (standing to my left), is Literacy Coordinator and Coach K-2 for two elementary school in central Maine. Her colleague, Carol Crothers, is sitting to my right. Behind me is William Jackson, another elementary school literacy coach. The people standing on the left side of the first two pictures are waiting to have Nic and Sy sign books.

On Writing

I've been bouncing between my "outside" and "inside" self, i.e., my "outside" is when I'm teaching, meeting people, giving speeches, signing books, i.e. externally focused. This week had many "outside" days, e.g. On Tues, I did my first book event for Thanksgiving: The True Story, a fun topic because it elicits wonderful reminiscences from the audience. My "inside" is when I'm immersed in my writing, e.g. doing research someplace, working in my basement-with-windows-writing space.
Actually, the reality is that when I'm in the throes of writing (right now I'm deep into my joint biography of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony) my "inside" self is always "on": to quote Linda--"They're always with you, aren't they?!"
"Yes!" A couple of nights ago, I worked late & finished a chapter, however, periodically the ending "woke me up" to "chat" about whether or not it really worked--by morning I ("we"?) had revised the ending, which I then entered into my manuscript. As readers of my blog know, the ultimate test of whether or not something "works" is whether or not it "sets" me up to move forward--happily my revision did just that.

On another note: here's a quote that's particularly relevant for our times, I think.
Every moment is an organizing opportunity, every person a potential activist, every minute a chance to change the world.
Dolores Huerta

Why Women Should Vote

FYI: A suffrage press in Hornell, NY, published this flier in 1913, 7 years before women finally won the right to vote. The list of facts are a window into the arguments that were being used by the anti-suffrage forces; for example, the arguments that women did not want to vote, i.e., Fact No. 4 & 9, and that women's suffrage would lead to increases in divorce and crime, i.e. Fact No. 10, 11, 12.
(Click on the image to enlarge it.)

Cross references

After giving two speeches yesterday, I hunkered down today to work on Stirring. In the process I read a comment about Susan B. Anthony by Charles Dudley Warner.
Charles Dudley Warner, I said to myself, I "know" him. That's because in Thanksgiving: The True Story I quoted his account in Being a Boy (1877) of his pie-making chores: "For days and days before Thanksgiving the boy was kept at work evenings, pounding and paring and cutting up and mixing (not being allowed to taste much), until the world seemed to him to be made of fragrant spices, green fruit, raisins, and pastry,--a world that he was only allowed to enjoy through his nose. How it filled the house with the most delicious smells."

In 1869, Warner was a newspaper editor in Hartford, Connecticut, and attended a Women's Rights Convention that had been organized by Isabella Beecher Hooker. In a post-convention letter to a friend, Hooker quoted Warner: "Said one of our editors, Charles Dudley Warner, a man of finest taste and culture, when he had been praising the dignity and power of the whole platform: 'Susan Anthony is my favorite. . . .You could see in her every motion and in her very silence that the cause was all she care for, self was utterly forgotten."

Yesterday, a question during my talk to the James Michener Society prompted a conversation about Michener's admiration for Dickey Chapelle; a cross reference because Chapelle is one of the women I featured in Where the Action is: Women War Correspondents in World War II. That night I spoke to a group of women on a BookWomen Reading Retreat. One of the books they read was a novel about the Triangle Shirtwaist fire; a cross reference to A Woman Unafraid, my biography of Frances Perkins who witnessed that fire and later said "I felt I must sear it not only on my mind but on my heart as a never-to-be-forgotten reminder of why I had to spend my life fighting conditions that could permit such a tragedy." Perkins, of course, did just that as the U.S. secretary of labor where she was the architect of some of the most far-reaching social/reform legislation ever enacted in America, including the establishment of Social Security.
An interesting exercise--especially with all the current buzz about high achieving women--is to compare and contrast Perkins's experiences/policies/achievements during her tenure (1933-1945) and the experiences/policies/achievements of the current secretary of labor, Elaine Cha0 (2001- ). Interestingly, perhaps, ironically both women are graduates of Mount Holyoke College.

Why Women Should Vote

Like me, many of you have undoubtedly received the piece with photographs, "Why Women Should Vote" that is being widely forwarded via email. Just today, I received five forwards with long lists of email addresses. I forwarded it to the students in my masters class Nonfiction Literature for Children as a piece to evaluate for classroom use when we meet tomorrow. I'm thrilled that there's so much interest in the extraordinary story of the fight for women's suffrage. Currently I'm writing about the 19th century fight in Stirring Up The World. Next I'm writing Shout the Revolution: Women's Fierce Fight for the Vote, 1910-1920. ("Shout the Revolution" is the title of a song written by suffragist while they were in prison. See below for the words.) Consequently I've got books piled high everywhere! Here a few I recommend for those of you eager to learn more: Seneca Falls and the Origins of the Women's Rights Movement by Sally G. McMillen; The Road to Seneca Falls: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the First Woman's Rights Convention by Judith Wellman; African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote, 1850-1920 by Rosalyn Terborg-Penn; Woman Suffrage & Women's Rights by Ellen Carol Dubois; Jailed for Freedom: American Women Win the Vote by Doris Stevens, edited by Carol O'Hare; Iron-Jawed Angels: The Suffrage Militancy of the National Woman's Party, 1912-1920 by Linda G. Ford; Failure is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words by Lynn Sherr; Sisters: The Lives of America's Suffragists by Jean H. Baker.
FYI: Also I've posted a number of blog entries re women's history.

"Shout the Revolution" was sung to the then familiar tune of a song, "Charlie is My Darling."

Shout the Revolution
Of Women, of Women,
Shout the Revolution
Of Liberty
Rise, glorious women of the earth,
The voiceless and the free,
United strength assures the birth
Of true democracy.
Invincible our army,
Forward, forward
Strong in faith we,re marching
To Victory
Shout the Revolution
Of Women, of Women,
Shout the Revolution
Of Liberty
Men's revolutions born in blood
But our's conceived in peace.

We hold a banner for a sword
'Til all oppression cease,
Prison, death defying,
Onward, onward,
Triumphant daughters marching
To Victory

Siblings

Here I am with my siblings, recently gathered together to celebrate my brother Kip's 60th birthday. An electrician, builder, golf course owner, Kip--in the yellow shirt--is building a new house--note, background--for his family on the shores of Lake Chautauqua in Bemus, NY. That's where we gathered; the first time we were all together in eleven years. For those of you who are familiar with the picture of Cam at about age 3 in Girls: A History of Growing Up Female in America (back cover, page 161), there is she all grown up. Cam is now a successful realtor. (See earlier entry about Cam's & her husband's long road trip to Alaska.) Readers of Thanksgiving: The True Story will read about Vin and the family tradition he started--"Toilet Bowl" football game on Thanksgiving. (p. 100) (Vin and I are eleven months apart to the day--9/2 & 10/2; meaning right now we're "twins". ) He is also the managing director of The Granger Papers Project, an excellent web site

http://www.nh.ultranet.com/~granger/index.shtml re the life and work of our great
uncle the renown paleontologist Walter Granger. I write about Walter & his wife Annie
in Adventurous Women (Author's Note).   Readers of Corpses, Coffins, and Crypts: A History
of Burial know that we had a brother Jon, who died in 1966. Our father died in 1969 and
our mother in 1997 (there's a reproduction of one of her paintings & a story about it in Corpses,
Coffins, and Crypts).  They all still live in our hearts and memories.

Perhaps because I write women's history, some people have asked me what I think about Sarah Palin. Using the lens of the words/lives of Elizabeth Cady Stanton & Susan B. Anthony--since that's what I'm writing about now--I respond that there's minimal congruence between their worldview and her's.

Women and Politics and Nonfiction Writing

My son Jonathan sent me a link to a blog re Sarah Palin. For those of you interested in women and politics and nonfiction writing (which I do & teach)the letter by Anne Kilkenny is an exemplar of persuasive letter writing. http://mudflats.wordpress.com/category/sarah-palin
Note: In doing research for Stirring Up the World: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, A Biography of a Powerful Friendship, I've been immersed in 19th century letters. Currently I'm reading the 580 page volume Selected Letters of Lucretia Coffin Mott edited by Beverly Wilson Palmer.

Letter to the Editor/The New York Times

My letter to the editor re the absence of nonfiction books and materials in classrooms is online at
www.nytimes.com/opinion under the heading "Teaching Children the Facts."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E1DC1E3DF931A3575AC0A96E9C8B63&scp=6&sq=%22Penny%20Colman%22&st=cse

Joint celebrations

Tomorrow Sophie, age 4, starts kindergarten in a New York City public school & I turn 64! Linda & Sophie & I spent the last four days together at our bungalow at the Jersey Shore. We did new things--played miniature golf & attended a lecture on edible plants that included a nature walk at Island Beach State Park--and familiar things--frolicked in the ocean, ate Jersey corn and ocean scallops, drank smoothies that we made with Jersey peaches and blueberries, and indulged in a daily trip to the ice cream store.
Nine of us are gathering for dinner tomorrow to sing Happy First Day of Kindergarten & Happy Birthday. My present for Sophie is a copy of Merriam-Webster's Primary Dictionary with illustrations by Ruth Heller. (Teachers who take my courses at Queens College know I'm a fan of Ruth Heller who wrote & illustrated wonderful nonfiction poetry, including Chickens Aren't the Only Ones.