The Election, 2008

Yippppeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Jonathan took Sophie with him to vote. When we arrived for dinner & election-watching, she exuberantly announced that she voted!
"For whom," I asked--"Obama," she replied.
There are many exciting aspects of the election results. In my classes at Queens College, CUNY, last night, I was delighted by the reports from my students--many classroom teachers & one middle school librarian--of the energy & excitement of their young students! Keep them engaged, I said, design projects, lessons, etc. that involve them/educate them about the process of transition. e.g. how/why/who BO appoints--engaged, informed citizens are the lifeblood of democracy!!!! I also talked about/honored the black & white women of the civil rights movement--Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Joan Browing, Virginia Durr, Pauli Murray, etc. FYI: my 32-page biography, Fannie Lou Hamer and the Fight For the Vote is out-of-print, but available from on-line bookstores & in libraries. My chapter "Mary Mcleod Bethune: Passionate Educator," including the story of her dramatic election night confrontation with the Klu Klux Klan is in Adventurous Women: Eight True Stories About Women Who Made a Difference. Also check out Women of the Civil Rights Movement by Linda Barrett Osborne; it's accessible & loaded with photographs. For a longer read, get Freedom's Daughters: The Unsung Heroines of the Civil Rights Movement from 1830 to 1970 by Lynne Olson in full of inspiring true stories. Both AW & FD are in print & available from local and on-line bookstores & libraries.

Book Festival & VOTE

I was on panel on Writing about Writing & Girls in History at the 3rd Annual Delaware Book Festival.
Check out the "Thank you for coming to the Delaware Book Festival" treat that I, and other authors/illustrators, found in our hotel room. Yes, it's a white and milk chocolate box filled with M & Ms!!!! (I "posed" it to show the inside.) The terrific festival was sponsored by the Delaware Division of Libraries, Delaware Center for the Book. The chocolate was delicious!!!
Tomorrow is election day--VOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTEVOTE
We're watching returns with Sophie, her parents, and her other grandparents who are visiting from Zurich, Switzerland.

Thanksgiving books, Delaware festival, voting

The publisher of Thanksgiving: The True Story asked me to recommend some of my favorite books for Thanksgiving. They're listed at:
http://us.macmillan.com/NewsDetails.aspx?id=9637&publisher=holtbyr

I'm looking forward to participating in the Delaware Book Festival this weekend. (http://debookfestival.lib.de.us) Saturday morning, I'm on a panel, Women in History, with Laurie Halse Anderson and Cathy Gourley. Of course, I'll be mentioning the fact that Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony addressed the Delaware General Assembly in 1881 as part of an effort to amend the state constitution to allow woman suffrage. No such luck. In 1920, Delaware had the opportunity to be the final state needed to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment, but didn't & the honor passed to Tennessee, which did, by one vote cast by a young legislator, who voted according to his mother's wishes!!

REMEMBER: The fight for women's right to vote was hard and hard; the victory narrow--VOTE on Tues, November 4, 2008

Books signing

I spent several fun hours on Saturday, signing books at Borders in Stroudsburg, PA (Route 80 to exit 302, right at the light, down the hill to the "Shoppes at Stroudsburg" mall on the left.) As always, the bookstore manager, Linda Crooks (pictured), set up a wonderful display of my books. The place was abuzz with excitement as people poured in(there was a fierce rainstorm outside) to join in the fun and games of a Halloween event Linda had organized--"Spooktacular."

Podcasts, students, booktalks

A middle school librarian, Kristy McCarthy, recently gave an interesting presentation in one of my classes at Queens College, about how she uses podcasts in her library. There are two useful examples on her library website: 1. samples of podcasts that she helped students create are found under "Student Projects"; 2. her personal podcast booktalks are found under "Podcasts."
http://westburyschools.org/middle_school/library/Welcome.html

Music, Art, Reading & Writing

Re my 10/16/08 post: The teacher, Marie Russell, who uses Vivaldi's Four Seasons" in her classroom sent me this picture of the autumn results, "Turning Nature into Art: Inspired by Vivaldi's 'Four Seasons'" (click on picture for larger image). She wrote, "The culminating activity was putting all four seasons plus the Vivaldi report together into a book which they were able to take home." The second picture is of her students' project about Pablo Picasso that included using a recycled water bottle in a sculpture.
"As you might have gathered," she wrote in her e-mail," I love to bring in music and art into the curriculum and always try to find a way to incorporate reading and writing."

Students and scientific reasoning and Sue Kirch

Here is a link to a short video in which Sue Kirch, a science educator at New York University, discusses the question: Can elementary school students engage in scientific reasoning? See my 9/29/08 entry, for a summary of Sue's recent presentation at the Nonfiction Institute at the University of Maine.
http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/videos/susan_kirch

Click on "comment" at the bottom of the entry to read Sue's response to questions I emailed her after I viewed her video. If you have questions for Sue, feel free to post them on the comment page & she'll respond.

Music, Teaching, Writing

Last night in my Issues in Children's Literature class at Queens College, a teacher described how she plays Vivaldi's "Four Seasons" throughout the school year & ties in lessons & activities. She said that her students love the whole experience. I love the idea!

I grew up in a musical family (raised one, too): I remember going to sleep to the sounds of my father, Norman Morgan, playing the piano. My mother, Maritza Morgan, played the cello & was the music editor at the Chautauquan Daily, the newspaper for Chautauqua Institution, Chautauqua, New York, for years. My tastes range from country (love Dolly) to soul/blues to classical--right now I'm listening to a new recording of Beethoven's Fourth Piano Concerto--so gorgeous, perfect antidote to worrying about the state of the country & the world.

There's a sound track for everything I've ever written, i.e., I write to music. What kind? Depends & I never know until some mysterious process kicks in & the "right" music "reveals" itself to me. And I mean mysterious, e.g. I'm writing Stirring to Nanci Griffith's CD "Clock without hands." Here's what's mysterious about that: I've never particularly responded to her music. In fact, I only have that CD because it has her song, "Pearl's Eye View (The Life of Dickey Chapelle)," one of the women I wrote about in Where the Action Was: Women War Correspondents in World War II. (My son Jonathan told me about the song.) In April, I had retrieved the CD to include it in "Celebrating Women," my PowerPoint presentation about my 20-year quest for monuments, markers, and memorial to historic women. During a multi-tasking moment, I was listening to it & working on Stirring & they glommed (now there's a good Scrabble word). Now, in a Pavlovian way, when I've carved out writing time--I put on "Clock without hands" & play it over and over and over until my writing time is up. Note: Recently for my b-day, my son David & his wife Crystal gave me Emmylou Harris's CD "All I Intended To Be"--hummmm, Emmylou may nudge Nanci aside--I'll keep you posted.

I'll write another post detailing the sound track for my other books. During school visits, I used to bring a tape of 4 excerpts & 4 books & ask kids to listen & match the excerpt with the book. It was always lively & fun. Not sure why I stop, probably because I like to keep myself, thus my presentations, fresh.

Writing, Words, and Scrabble

The act of writing is putting one word after another. That's why we should start teaching writing by teaching youngsters--to LOVE words, one by one.
We play Scrabble most every night at bedtime, even when that means starting a game at 11 p.m. Last night I started the game with a 7-letter word--"touring." Also check out "zygote"

"You just can't be afraid."

What an intense time--I'm writing about the Civil War & I'm following the worldwide financial meltdown & I'm noting the ugly crowd reactions to inflammatory rhetoric by SP, J & CM. To keep focused and steady, I turn, as always, to the life lessons I've learned from historic women. For this situation, I've turned to Frances Perkins (1880-1965) secretary of labor during the Great Depression and World War II, and the architect of some of the most far-reaching and important reforms and social legislation ever enacted in America, including the establishment of Social Security. Here's an excerpt from my biography of Frances Perkins (A Woman Unafraid: The Achievements of Frances Perkins):
Several years before her death, Perkins had talked about the state of the world. 'I hear people say that the world is in a crisis . . . . I think crisis has occurred in the world's history many times, I'm glad to say that in those other crises we didn't have radio, television, and the movies to run it up until everybody died of terror . . . . You can't do any of those things we did in the early part of the century in you're afraid . . . . You just can't be afraid . . . if you're going to accomplish anything.'"
Although A Woman Unafraid is out of print, I have copies. If you'd like one, send me an email & I'll send you an autographed book for the price of postage and handling.

On Writing & Usefulness

After a break for my son Jon's electrifying performance of his powerful songs Monday night (you can find him of FaceBook), I've been hunkered down in my basement office working on Stirring Up The World. Since last week, I've been "piling up pages," to quote Linda, in large part because my Wed. night classes at Queens College, CUNY, haven't met for two weeks, due to religious holidays--having a stretch to immerse myself is such a treat.
A couple of weeks ago, I met a retired New York City librarian who told me--insisted, in fact-- that applying the word "usefulness" to a book is the "kiss of death" for librarians, a "code" in a book review that indicates that the reviewer didn't want to write something negative, but couldn't write something positive. Whoa! If that's the case, then it seems to me that there is a huge gap between what many readers seek & teachers need and librarians who shun "usefulness."
No school for Sophie today so we're off to the Bronx Zoo!

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.