Kicking Off Women's History Month With Tanya Lee Stone

Once upon a time, when my husband was just a little guy, he believed that all doctors were women. That's because his own mom was an MD. So it made perfect sense to him that this was how the world worked. But as we know, that's not the way it was. Medical schools today are graduating women at roughly equal numbers as men. But there was time when simply the idea of a woman aspiring to be a doctor was laughable.

With the picture book Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors? The Story of Elizabeth Blackwell (Henry Holt, 2013), Tanya Lee Stone takes readers back in time to see what it was like through a young girl's eyes. Named a 2014 Amelia Bloomer Project book, Who Says shows what Elizabeth was like as a young, curious girl. And how she got the idea to become a doctor from a sick friend, who confided that she would rather be examined by a woman than a man. It lays out the challenges and frustrations Elizabeth encountered as she pursued her dream and opened the door for countless other women to pursue theirs. It's a great book to celebrate Women's History Month.

Question: While you have written teen fiction, your specialty seems to be non-fiction. You are the author of at least 15 non-fiction books for young readers – including Courage Has No Color, The True Story of the Triple Nickles America's First Black Paratroopers (Candlewick, 2013) – and 10 non-fiction picture books. What draws you to this genre? Were you been bitten by the research bug early in life?

Tanya Lee Stone: I was an outdoor, tomboyish kid who loved to read and grew up on the rocky coastline of Connecticut, so I feel as though my entire childhood was based in field research! If you pair that with the fact that I am continually amazed by the extraordinary things that "ordinary" people do (there is really no such thing as an ordinary person), it's easy to understand my attraction to non-fiction.

Q: Many of your books focus on pioneering women – Elizabeth Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, as well as Amelia Earhart, Ella Fitzgerald, and early female astronauts. Why write about these women?

TLS: The fabric of our history is so riddled with holes that I've been compelled to do my part and fill in as many as I can. This comes down, for me, to stories about women and people of color who have been largely left out of the record.

Q: With Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors? you lay out the challenges Elizabeth Blackwell faced in stark terms for the youngest readers to understand. Who do you hope to reach with your picture books? And what do you hope to accomplish?

TLS: My picture books are both for the standard picture book age range (4-8) as well as for older readers because of the topics I tend to choose. There are two things I'm generally interested in accomplishing with my picture books – capturing the essence of someone incredibly cool who we as readers are not particularly familiar with, and inspiring readers to dream big and not let anything stand in their way.

Q: Parents Magazine named Who Says Women Can't Be Doctors? the Best Non-Fiction Picture Book of 2013. And Booklist listed it a Top 10 Youth Biography. What do awards like these mean to you? Do they help you connect history and non-fiction to even more young readers? 

TLS: There are so many wonderful books that come out every year that don't get the attention they deserve, and it is always a huge honor to be highlighted with these kinds of accolades. Honors like these are also important in terms of elongating the life of a book and helping to keep it in print (and with nonfiction this can be even trickier than with fiction), as well as calling attention to it for readers who might otherwise miss it. For example, the Parents' Magazine press likely alerted a lot more parents than might have known about it. I am extremely grateful.

Q: Do you feel that the publishing world is more interested in non-fiction books these days than in the past? Was there a time when it was hard to sell your non-fiction work?

TLS: That's a bit of a tricky question, depending upon your perspective. While it is true that things like the Common Core have brought more mainstream, trade/bookstore-type attention to non-fiction, it has also been an area that has been strong for a long time because of the need for good non-fiction for kids in the school and library market.

Q: Where do you get your ideas for the next project? What will we see from you next?

TLS: I am always doing research, and always coming across things that elicit emotional responses from within, which can be negative or positive. Things I come across in the news or doing research that make me say, "Wow, how cool, I didn't know that!" are equally compelling to me as when I find something that makes me outraged or confused. I have several books in the pipeline, and the next one up (in 2015) is a picture book about Jane Addams called The House that Jane Built. After that, be on the lookout for more long-form narrative non-fiction from me, as well as new picture books. Thank you so much for getting in touch and Happy Women's History Month!

Jessie Hartland's "Bon Appetit!" Appeals to All Tastes

Some books are clearly for kids. And others are for the kid in all of us. Author and illustrator Jessie Hartland's Bon Appetit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child (Schwartz & Wade, 2012) is for everyone, young and old, who shares an interest in the food that's on our forks.

With Bon Appetit!, which is a 2013 Amelia Bloomer Project title and earned a starred review in Publisher's Weekly, Jessie takes readers on a journey through the life of Julia Child the chef, the cookbook author, and the television star. And what material to mine. Julia Child grew up in California, but her adventures took her to Europe where she worked as a spy during WWII. We see her as a student, attending cooking classes in Paris. We see her struggle with her writing as she tries again and again to publish Mastering the Art of French Cooking. And we see her searching to find her "thing," awkward – the size of her feet are laughably long – and unsure. All are moments young readers especially can relate to. With a distinctive illustrating style and hand-written text, Jessie has created a lush book that is dense with information about this culinary and cultural icon.

You might also recognize Jessie's work from her Museum titles with Blue Apple books. How The Sphinx Got To The Museum (2010) tells how the sphinx of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut wound up in New York City's Metropolitan Museum of Art. How the Dinosaur Got to the Museum (2011) explains how a Diplodocus longus landed in the Smithsonian. And coming this fall, How the Meteorite Got to the Museum (October 8, 2013), chronicles how a meteorite ended up in the American Museum of Natural History.

Question: You're one of those rare birds who can tell a delightful story in both word and picture. And you don't just touch the surface – you dig deep. With Bon Appetit! packed full of so many historical details, can you explain what inspired you to tackle such an enormous project? Why a picture book about Julia Child?

Jessie Hartland: Thanks for the kind words! The book was my idea. I love to read biographies and I wanted to do a series of “graphic biographies” for children,  my own way. I pitched Julia Child as the first in the set. This was about five or six years ago, before Nora Ephron’s film Julie & Julia. The response I got was “…no one cares about Julia Child anymore.” However the film revived interest in Julia, and I am so grateful to have been given the opportunity to do the book.

Q: You clearly did your homework in researching Julia Child's life. Was it hard to decide what you wanted to include in the story and what you had to leave out? Did you feel that you had any constraints?

JH: Well, I had a limited number of pages to work with: 48. More than the typical picture book of 32 pages, but not so many to cover the life of a busy person like Julia Child! I knew I wanted to spend plenty of time on the long and laborious process of getting the first cookbook published and to show how complicated and accomplished her cooking was, hence the 32-step galantine recipe.

The part I miss cutting most is a page when Julia has just moved to Germany and hasn’t yet mastered the language. She’s working on the poultry chapter of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and must visit a German butcher to buy ingredients. She flaps her “wings” and honks and quacks to communicate. The butcher responds, “Ach! Das Gans.” “Ya! Das Huhn!”

Q: Most people think of picture books as geared for a young audience, but Bon Appetit! appeals to the chef in all of us – at any age. Were you writing the story with a particular reader in mind, or with a broad audience of anyone who appreciates good food?

JH: Well, I started out writing this book for kids but then it got more and more complicated. I hope there is something for everyone in there.

Q: Do you like to cook?

JH: Yes, I love to cook. I grew up watching The French Chef on TV. My mother did not like to cook, and it was fun to watch someone cooking who enjoyed it. At home we ate frozen vegetables, canned fruit, and dreadful things made with soup mixes and such. As a teenager, I got an after-school job in my town’s only fancy-foods shop, where I had my first croissants, baklava, and French cheese.

While in art school I worked weekends and summers as a restaurant cook. Nowadays our family eats a lot of seafood caught by my 21-year-old son, Sam: tuna, sea bass, bluefish, porgies, mahi-mahi, and cherrystone clams. I grow tomatoes, cucumbers, and raspberries and have a thriving herb garden.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from your books? 

JH: For the Julia book, I want readers to get a sense of Julia’s perseverance and all the hard work and years it took to get her first cookbook published. I also like how she was a free spirit,  a rebellious soul,  a late-bloomer, and was a feminist before there was such a word.

Q: Can you talk about what we'll see next from you?

JH: I’m in the middle of another biography, this one of Steve Jobs. It is targeted to older kids, though, and will be even more of a middle grade/adult crossover. It will have a  smaller format,  with many more pages and printed in black and white. It’s now at 186 pages and will be coming out in 2014. More focus on the writing and line drawings—and I’m up for the challenge! He’s another fascinating character: rebellious, intuitive, ingenious. . .

But next coming out is the third in my Museum series of books — How the Meteorite Got to the Museum. It’s about the Peekskill meteorite and the amazing story of a rock that fell from space and landed on a parked car in the town of Peekskill, New York. And in this same series, for the fourth book I’ll be working with MoMA, NYC’s Museum of Modern Art, exploring the provenance of an object in their design collection.

Q: What do you hope to accomplish in your writing and illustrating life? 

JH: Having done picture books for some years now, I’ve been saying I’ve wanted the challenge of doing both a book without pictures, just words—and a book with no words, just pictures. So I have just taken a stab at writing a chapter book. We’ll see if someone will publish it!

Laurie Lawlor 's 'Rachel Carson' Shows the Power of One

With Earth Day around the corner, it seems a perfect time to spotlight Laurie Lawlor's terrific non-fiction picture book Rachel Carson and Her Book That Changed the World (Holiday House, 2012). And even better timing is that Laurie and her book will be receiving the prestigious John
Burroughs Riverby Award, which recognizes outstanding nature books for young readers, today at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. Rachel Carson and Her Book, which is illustrated by Laura Beingessner, has also been named to the ALA Amelia Bloomer Project List for children's books that promote a feminist outlook.

Question: Your book is not only a look at Rachel Carson's life, but at the importance of her book Silent Spring. What made you decide to write about this? Where did the spark come from?

Laurie Lawlor: I have always been interested in books about the environment, specifically how to inspire children and young adult readers to go outside and explore and understand where they live. The great challenge is to create a book that is not all gloom and doom – the kind we see so often about species extinction and the rapid deterioration of the planet. While it’s important to understand these ongoing threats, it’s easy as a young reader to begin to sense only despair and defeat. How can one person make a difference? Asking this question helped me re-discover Rachel Carson and her seminal work, Silent Spring, which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary.

I began exploring her early work about the ocean. What amazed me most was the freshness of Silent Spring – how it speaks to us today. Carson took incredible risks to publish Silent Spring, which had such an enormous impact on the beginning of the environmental movement in this country and around the world. I found her courage and dedication to writing clearly and truthfully very heroic, especially in light of her own battle with cancer as she was struggling to finish.

Q: The challenge to writing a picture book is the economy of language – distilling your thoughts down to a few tight sentences. How hard was this to do with a book like this one, where the ideas are so immense?

LL: This was probably one of the biggest challenges. I have written much longer biographies of such individuals as Daniel Boone, Captain James Cook, Edward Curtis, William Henry Jackson, and Helen Keller. Creating an accessible yet accurate and engaging biography about Rachel Carson with a limited format was very difficult. What to include? What to leave out? I was very pleased to have the back-matter area of the book to give more in-depth information about the impact of Silent Spring on environmental laws and the furor that she faced from the well-funded chemical industry.

Q: Your book has just been named an Amelia Bloomer Book: What does this mean to you? And what does this mean for the book?

LL: I am absolutely thrilled about this list because Rachel Carson was an individual, like Amelia Bloomer, who bucked the system. During the mid-20th century years, when she was struggling to become a biologist, few women were accepted in this field. She faced enormous prejudice not only
in her collegiate training but in her job search. Yet she did not give up on her dream of writing and research. I think that today this message is very powerful for young girls and young adult women who are still woefully underrepresented in the fields of science and technology. I have two bright granddaughters who I hope will feel free to explore these fields and pursue their passions, too!

Q: You're the author of more than 30 books and counting. What do you hope young readers take from your stories?

LL: The desire to explore, to find out more, to think about possibilities that maybe they’ve never considered before.

Q: With so many books to your name already, you might run out of ideas. Where do your inspirations for new books come from? How do you decide the next project you're going to tackle? And what will we see next from you?

LL: I love research, and so I hope to never run out of ideas. One “detective” trail usually leads to another and then another. If I could, I’d just keep sleuthing in libraries and museums and special collection departments and trips to cemeteries and ruins and never write the book. Research is
so much more fun. I am currently working on a young adult love story set in western England during the tumultuous years of the early 17th century – a time not so different from our own. This book has an environmental theme as well because it is about the political unrest and turmoil centered around the little known story of the draining and sale of the moors by wealthy land owners.  These early English wetlands had traditionally been held as common land by poor crofters and cottagers, and provided them with a way to keep their families alive with fish, fowl, reeds for their thatch roofs, and turf for their fires. The customs, magic, and folktales surrounding this fragile ecosystem are fascinating – and so are the tough people who lived there.