Shirley Parenteau's new book for young readers tells the remarkable story of 11-year-old Lexie Lewis. It's 1926, and her class has been raising money to ship a doll to the children of Japan. Lexie dreams of accompanying the doll to the farewell ceremony in San Francisco. This warm novel is based on real events that occurred before World War II, when American children sent more than 12,000 dolls to Japan. In a Behind the Book essay, Parenteau shares the astounding and long-forgotten history of the Friendship Dolls program.

Imagine children all across 1926 America donating pennies to buy dolls for children in Japan. Imagine 12,739 dolls traveling with passports, visas and introductory letters, being greeted by children in Japan with celebration and ceremony.

The story is true, but was lost with most of the dolls in the tumult of World War II.

When I learned of the Friendship Dolls, I was looking for inspiration for a new picture book. I had written one called Bears on Chairs, adorably illustrated by David Walker, which is so popular in a Japanese translation that the bears in the book are now available there as plush toys and other items. I had a greater personal connection with Japan through my daughter-in-law Miwa, who is from Fukuoka.

When Miwa and my son took their daughter to the Girls' Day Festival, or Hinamatsuri, I was intrigued by their photos. Wondering if I could write a picture book about the festival celebrated with treasured dolls, I researched online. One source linked to this website and revealed an amazing story—the Friendship Dolls of 1926.

The project was the inspiration of Dr. Sidney Gulick, a teacher-missionary who had retired after working in Japan for 30 years. Fearing war might break out between the United States and Japan—two countries he loved—he urged American children to send dolls to children in Japan for Hinamatsuri.

All across America, children responded, emptying piggy banks and holding fundraisers. In return, donations from Japanese children allowed their finest dollmakers to create 58 large dolls to send to America. Each wore a kimono in a pattern designed by the empress’ own dressmaker and traveled with tiny accessories as examples of their culture.

Children in both countries continued to exchange letters, but sadly the Friendship Project could not prevent World War II. Fourteen years later, Japanese planes bombed U.S. ships in Pearl Harbor. The dolls became symbols of the enemy in both countries. In America, they were stuffed into storage. In Japan, they were ordered to be destroyed. Of those that survived, many were shattered during U.S. bombings.

I longed to tell this lost story through the eyes of an American girl and to set the book in Portland because I grew up on the northern Oregon coast. A second novel, Dolls of Hope (2015), will tell the story of the dolls from the viewpoint of a girl in Japan.

Happily, many of the surviving dolls have been recovered, beginning in the '70s. About 300 of the 12,000-plus dolls sent to Japan and hidden at great personal risk during the war years are on display. In America, 46 of the 58 Japanese dolls have been located. A list of 38 which can be seen in museums, along with their locations, is here.

In the past 15 years or so, children, communities and organizations in both countries have again begun exchanging dolls.

I wrote Ship of Dolls and Dolls of Hope to celebrate the unquenchable hope of children for international friendship and peace.

Science is far from serious in Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor, the first in a new series from Jon Scieszka and Brian Biggs. Take one kid genius, add two hilarious robots and an archnemesis with a doomsday plan, and you've got the perfect blend of imagination and invention. But with so much hilarity and adventure, how do you choose a favorite scene? We put Scieszka and Biggs to the test.

Jon Scieszka, author

Would it be cheating to say I have two favorite scenes from this first Frank Einstein book? Oh, good. I didn't hear anyone say no. So—my first favorite scene is when Frank first meets the self-assembled robots Klink and Klank. Because we, the readers, get to meet the robots with the same realization Frank has—that these two can help figure out/invent almost anything. Then Klank tells a pretty lame knock-knock joke. That drives Klink nuts. And Frank also realizes that these robots are a bit crazy too.

And my other favorite scene is when Frank and his pal Watson meet the evil kid genius, T. Edison, for the first time. They are all in Frank's Grampa Al's Fix It! repair shop. Edison introduces his sidekick and chief financial officer, Mr. Chimp. I don't want to give away too much, but Mr. Chimp's name is a pretty big clue that Mr. Chimp is . . . an actual chimpanzee. Mr. Chimp has taught himself sign language, accounting, jet engine repair and plenty more skills that we’ll find out about in books one through six.

Oh, and my other favorite scene is when Klank attacks Edison’s Antimatter Squirt Gun. This thing is powerful enough to destroy Einstein and Watson and both robots. And though Klank isn't the smartest robot in the world, he does have the biggest robot heart. And Brian's illustrations show exactly what happens.

Ooo ooo oooo and then every scientific diagram is a favorite scene of mine too! As part of the story, Brian and I get to show atomic structure, antimatter, fingerprints, eyeballs, E = mc² and cows producing methane gas . . .

Brian Biggs, illustrator

Being asked to describe my favorite scene from Frank Einstein and the Antimatter Motor is kind of hard. There are about a million really fun scenes in the book, and if Jon does one thing well (and he actually does eleven things well), it’s creating scenes in his stories that are fun to illustrate.

Would it be the scene at the beginning of the book where Frank and Watson are trying to build their first robot during a thunderstorm? The dramatic lighting, the maniacal laughter, the all-important introduction to the world of Frank certainly made this scene a good one.

Hmm. Maybe it was the scene at the end that takes place in a giant factory where one of the robots, Klank, has hugged a huge, pink Antimatter Squirt Gun until he and the Squirt Gun explode in a humongous, colorful BLAM! Or maybe it was the small diagram in chapter seven depicting a cow fart. It was sort of hysterical the day that I had to research this drawing and learn all I could about cow methane.

But actually, my favorite scene in the book, as well as my favorite scene that I got to draw, is none of these. When I read Jon’s description of the moment we meet Frank’s nemesis, T. Edison, as he hides behind the old phonograph (a Thomas Edison invention, natch!), and then his ape cohort, Mr. Chimp, climbs down and joins him, I knew that this scene was going to be a joy to compose and create. I’d done some creepy character sketches for T. Edison showing his shifty eyes, weird mouth, and matted hair, and I’d hoped I’d have a chance to use these, and I did. Mr. Chimp is creepy in his own evil-sneer and barefoot way. He’s actually my favorite character in the series, and I knew that this drawing had to get everything about Mr. Chimp and T. Edison across.

In addition to the characters in this scene, I loved drawing Grampa Al’s Fix It! repair shop in the background. You may not know this about me, but I love details. As Jon wrote the book, I often felt like he was writing it only for me to draw. Frank’s science lab and Grampa Al’s shop are full of old musical instruments, unused appliances, broken clocks, funny contraptions, nuts, bolts and unusual tools, and it was fun to both draw the stuff that Jon described but also add my own layer. The red fan on the left is actually a fan I have in my studio, for example.

Bringing all these elements together still would not have worked without getting the mood right in this illustration. T. Edison and Mr. Chimp are really mean guys. They’re threatening to repossess Grandpa’s shop here. The light is coming in from behind, casting a dark shadow across both characters. I hadn’t had the chance to work with light and shadow much before Frank Einstein, and it was a lot of fun to bring this into the drawings, setting the tone for these two characters and their conflict with Frank that will take place over the six books in the series.

Illustrations © 2014 by Brian Biggs. Reprinted by permission of Abrams Books for Young Readers.

In the summer of 1859, a recently orphaned girl named Nell arrives on the doorstep of her Aunt Kitty, whose "pickled onion" face offers her sorrowful niece a less-than-warm welcome. But when Nell discovers her aunt is a detective for Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency, the two end up tracking down thieves and murderers in this fun historical tale.

The character of Aunt Kitty is based on real-life Kate Warne, the first female detective in the United States. Chicago author and former journalist Kate Hannigan shares more about the exciting real-life figure at the heart of her new book, The Detective's Assistant.

Researching and writing The Detective’s Assistant has been a giddy, wind-in-the-hair thrill since the moment I stumbled onto Kate Warne’s name. Really it was just a single sentence about her while researching another story from the same year, 1856, but the moment I read about her I knew I had to learn more. America’s first woman detective? And she had a role in thwarting an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln?

Her story begins when, as a young widow, she walked into Allan Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency office in downtown Chicago and inquired about a job. Pinkerton wrote that he’d assumed she was there for a secretarial position, but that she gave excellent reasons why he should hire her as a detective.

“True, it was the first experiment of the sort that had ever been tried,” Pinkerton said, “but we live in a progressive age, and in a progressive country.”

He hired her the next day, convinced that she could go, as she said, where no male detectives could by befriending the wives and girlfriends of criminals and crooks and worming out their secrets.

One of the hazards of writing historical fiction is that records don’t always survive. Pinkerton was meticulous about documenting his accounts, his cases and his operatives, but Chicago’s Great Fire in 1871 wiped out much of his writings. So I relied on his detective books, penned later in his career and looking back on the agency’s early adventures.

Pinkerton described Kate Warne as a master of disguise and, along with Timothy Webster, one of the finest operatives he ever employed.

“As a detective, she had no superior,” Pinkerton wrote, “and she was a lady of such refinement, tact, and discretion, that I never hesitated to entrust to her some of my most difficult undertakings.”

Her most important case came in February 1861 after Abraham Lincoln was elected president and had to journey by train from Illinois to the White House. As the Lincoln Special chugged east, the nation was ripping in two. By the time the train was to pass through Baltimore, Pinkerton and his detectives had uncovered a plot to assassinate Lincoln before he could take the oath of office.

Pinkerton’s operatives had swarmed the Baltimore area, and Kate Warne assumed an alias and disguised herself as a Southern belle, befriending the wives and daughters of the Baltimore conspirators. Pinkerton called the information she gleaned “invaluable” and “of great benefit to me” as he made the case for President-Elect Lincoln to slip through Baltimore under cover of darkness rather than in broad daylight, as planned.

When Lincoln finally agreed to the plan, two operatives rode with him on the train, escorting him safely through Baltimore and into the history books: Pinkerton himself and Kate Warne.

This makes for gripping storytelling for history buffs and detective fans, but what about for young readers? I felt like Kate Warne’s story is one young girls should know. Too often it seems that tales of heroism and bravery are limited to one gender. In writing The Detective’s Assistant, I wanted to share the story of a real woman who was brave and bold, full of as much derring-do and confidence as the men of her time.

“Kate Warne felt sure she was going to win,” Pinkerton wrote. “She always felt so, and I never knew her to be beaten.”

Kate Hannigan writes fiction and nonfiction for young readers. She likes to think of writing as a bit like detective work, and she’s a great eavesdropper, though only occasionally is she full of derring-do. Visit her online at KateHannigan.com.

Author photo credit Warling Studios/Picture Day.

Sara Nickerson's new middle grade novel is full of summery secrets, but the inspiration behind The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me is an open book. Nickerson takes us to the blueberry-picking days of her childhood.

When I was a kid I wanted to live inside books. I wanted to test myself, face hardships, survive fever 'n' ague. I read Heidi with bread and cheese in my hand. It was regular sliced bread and Thriftway cheddar, but when I ate it, I felt surrounded by mountain air and sunshine. After reading My Side of the Mountain, I mapped my solo escape to the wilderness and spent hours working to trap small animals with a cardboard box and string. To this day I can’t read Farmer Boy without gaining five pounds.

Around that same time, the time of living inside books, I got my first job. My older brother, wanting better school clothes, came up with the idea to pick blueberries. My younger brother and I, obsessed with the awesome things you could order from the backs of comic books, begged to come along. Our mother, busy with two baby brothers, was not hard to convince. We were living in Olympia, Washington, and the blueberry farm was miles past town. Like the farm in my novel, there were feuding farmer brothers, one on either side of a giant hedge. On that first day we were warned: Never go on the other side. I felt the thrill of a real-life adventure.

"Most of all, we treasured the blueberry field because it belonged to us. We weren’t at day camp or a playground or even in the woods behind our house. We’d moved past the boundary of our mother’s voice."

There were other kids in the field, of course, but also grown-ups. We were out there together, sharing an outhouse, and not the modern kind with hand sanitizer. There was mystery in the blueberry field, and romance. There was a girl who would stick a blueberry in her belly button and do the hula. This job, picking blueberries, was a hot and sweaty torture. My brothers and I hated it, we loved it, we were obsessed by the money of it and made lists of the things we would buy, like colonies of Sea Monkeys and giant inflatable beer bottles. Most of all, we treasured the blueberry field because it belonged to us. We weren’t at day camp or a playground or even in the woods behind our house. We’d moved past the boundary of our mother’s voice. Finally, finally, I had stepped into the pages of my very own book.

The Secrets of Blueberries, Brothers, Moose & Me takes place during that summer when everything changes. Twelve-year-old Missy and her older brother Patrick are on their own, making painful mistakes and amazing discoveries. It’s not the story my brothers are expecting to see. They probably won’t recognize my main characters. They’ll miss the dirt clod fights and the old lady named Bernice, who sat on an overturned bucket and couldn’t stop talking, even when no one was around. They’ll miss the dirty jokes, the ones I couldn’t understand but made a point to memorize for the day that I could. They’ll miss the groups of migrant families, who did this work for real.

What my brothers will recognize is the feeling we had out there. We were part of the big wide world. I remember walking into a grocery store a week after I’d started the picking job. I stood in the produce aisle and thought: This is food. It doesn’t just come from a store. I know where it comes from.

For the kids who live inside books, I hope this one will make them want to go outside and look at dirt, even if it’s between the cracks in the sidewalk. Follow an ant’s crazy path, or try to tell time from the sun. Hold an apple or a blueberry or a peach, even one from a can, and wonder where it came from—where it really came from. And maybe feel a new connection to their very own big wide world.

Author photo credit Ingrid Pape.

What lengths would you go to in order to attract the attention of your crush? In Jake Gerhardt's debut middle-grade novel, three eighth-grade boys are all crushing on the same girl: Miranda Mullaly. Told in alternating voices of class clown Sam, studious Duke, athletic Chollie and oblivious Miranda, this comedy of errors is a breezy, fun read.

Gerhardt perfectly captures those awkward middle-school years with lots of humor and plenty of heart. In a Behind the Book essay, he shares his own hilarious story of noticing girls for the first time.

The characters in my book, Me and Miranda Mullaly, fall deeply for their first crush during class one fateful day. It’s the first time a smile from a girl meant more to these eighth-grade boys, and it’s a moment that sets them on a path. My aha moment—as far as girls are concerned—happened just as swiftly, and it’s tied to a flashy movie from the early ’80s. Let me explain.

When I was 12 years old, I spent a lot of time palling around with a set of twin brothers who lived nearby. The twins were the youngest in a family of 11 children, many of whom were in college or otherwise didn’t spend much time at home. We usually had the whole place to ourselves, and our favorite thing to do besides playing basketball was watch “The Dukes of Hazzard” while eating junk food.

Ah, the good life. 

I can’t put my finger on exactly what it was about “The Dukes of Hazzard” that captivated us.  I guess there were just enough car chases, bad guys and mysteries to keep 12-year-old boys interested.

This all changed after we heard about Flashdance.

We’d just finished watching the Dukes break up a gang of bootleggers when the front door burst open and a seemingly endless stream of high school and college girls danced into the house—friends of the twins’ sisters. They were kicking up their legs and shaking their heads in a way we’d never seen before. They shimmied into the kitchen where they raided the refrigerator. We watched and tried to make sense of what was happening.

Apparently they had just seen a movie called Flashdance, and it had changed their lives. They couldn’t stop dancing. And we couldn’t stop watching.

They bounced out as quickly as they’d bounced in, leaving behind an empty milk carton, chocolate cake crumbs and an air of promise.

We went outside to play basketball, but anything resembling our usual camaraderie was gone. The game we played that night was quiet but much more contentious than usual. There were many hard fouls and nasty picks. I got a ride home even though I wanted to walk back, alone.

The next Friday night started out like normal. We sat around the large television and watched in silence as Waylon Jennings began, “Just some good old boys. . . .” After a chase that ended with the bad guys in a rancid pond, no one cheered. We were, in fact, bored.

“This sucks,” we said.

And then someone produced a surprise: a VHS tape containing “What a Feeling” and “Maniac,” songs from Flashdance taped from MTV. Watching the music videos put us in a stupor. We did not blink. We did not touch our buttered popcorn. We ignored our sodas.

“Play it again,” we muttered when the videos ended.

After watching “Maniac” 15 times in a row our blank expressions began to change. Smiles slowly stretched across our faces. They were the smiles of anticipation, the smiles of better days ahead. These were the smiles, I imagine, of the scientists and engineers when Apollo 13 landed on the moon.

We hadn’t accomplished anything yet, but we were excited to embark on a new frontier.

It was the end of “The Dukes of Hazzard” and the beginnings of the rest of our new lives.

Author photo credit Karen Todd.

I never thought I’d write a book about birds. I mean, NEVER!

Birds? Who cares about birds? They chirp, fly around and poop on bikes.

I had simply never given birds much thought. But then there was this one bird, a northern mockingbird, that nested in a tree limb hanging over my roof, right above my bedroom. Right above my head! And every morning it would start singing a “Hello, how are you doing?” song at 3 a.m.

Every. Single. Morning.

Then mating season ended and the song vanished—just like that. My beauty rest and sanity were saved!

A couple of years before the three a.m. singing bird, I moved from teaching fourth-grade language arts to teaching sixth-grade English. I remember being suddenly thrown into a cross-curricular research project on North American birds. I was shocked. Birds? This is English class. We read Shakespeare and other classics, like The Outsiders. No one here cares about birds. All I could think about was that mockingbird waking me up every morning at three a.m. and how I wanted it to migrate somewhere far away and never come back.

During my first year teaching the bird research project, I barely survived. Between learning which birds lived where, and which birds migrated, and which birds stayed home year-round, I felt as blind as a bat (not a bird). Then there was keeping track of students’ progress and helping them find resources about that rare hummingbird that might—just might!—fly over North American airspace every other year.

This bird research project was a staple of the sixth-grade curriculum, and if I wanted to keep teaching middle school English, I needed to commit and invest myself. I needed to put my best foot forward. That meant I’d have to take a genuine interest in BIRDS!

Biiiiirrrrrrrds… (eye roll)

To make our teaching lives more tolerable, my colleague and I curated a list of North American birds that allowed students to experience more success during their research. It also exposed students to a wider range of resources. We streamlined the project to include research categories such as appearance, habitat, migration, diet and mating. We also created writing projects that went along with each category of research. Students were suddenly having fun. WE were having fun!

All this time, I was learning to love birds, and I didn’t even know it.

Over the next several years, I came to appreciate birds and their various behaviors, quirks and personalities. Birds are, after all, similar to people. They’re social and habitual, and they teach their young to fly. Okay, people don’t literally teach their children to fly, but we do guide them out of the nest at some point. And isn’t that like flying?

I was also writing a lot during this time. In 2012, I published a book called The Color of Bones, a book I’d worked on for a few years. I was searching for my next writing project, and little did I know it was staring me right in the face.

One day, while hovering over a stack of students’ note cards, I thought to myself, “What if there was a boy who couldn’t find a bird? What if he searched for this bird every day, like his life depended on it? What if he was searching for a bird and no one believed he could ever find it?”

A couple of years later, after hundreds of hours of research, poring over field guides and websites, and then hundreds of hours of writing, I finished writing a book called Bird Nerd. Which gained me an agent, and then sold to Simon & Schuster as Might Fly Away. Which then molted (one last bird reference!) into its final incarnation as Soar.

Title changes. That’s another essay in itself.

Author photo credit Kremer/Johnson.

Young readers discover an unforgettable voice in the latest novel-in-verse from Skila Brown, To Stay Alive, about 19-year-old Mary Ann Graves, a real survivor of the tragic Donner Party of 1846. Brown shares the moment when Mary Ann captured her imagination.

What did I know about the Donner Party? I’m sure I’d heard about them in school—a paragraph in a dry textbook chapter on westward expansion. I had a fuzzy idea their story involved cannibalism when I pushed play on a How the Donner Party Worked podcast while driving on an interstate through Indiana four years ago.

I was immediately captivated.

This story was the very definition of high-stakes drama: accidental deaths, sickness, fights, missing treasure, romance and murders (plural!).

And of course there was the fact that they were stuck by the mountains all winter and watching their food supply dwindle. Mothers couldn’t feed their children. Honestly, the cannibalism seemed the least dramatic part of the whole escapade.

I had to know more. First books . . . then documentaries . . . then . . . googling the names of survivors for photos.   

And that’s when I saw her. The “belle of the Donner Party.” Mary Ann Graves. Staring off to the side with dark ringlets and a strong jaw and a haunted look in her eyes. I couldn’t look away.

A little bit of research and suddenly I was holding in my hands a copy of her marriage license. Sunday, May 16, 1847: Just weeks after she was rescued, and while her feet were still healing, she and a rescuer named Edward Pyle—a man born in the same county in Indiana where I now live—stood before an official and took their wedding vows.

They were married for a year when her husband disappeared the following spring. For 12 months, he was missing and Mary Ann was alone. Around the time that would have been their second anniversary, his body was recovered. He had been dragged behind a horse, and when that failed to kill him, his throat had been cut. A man was tried and found guilty of the crime. Mary Ann reportedly cooked for him and delivered food to him in prison so that he would live long enough to hang.

I liked Mary Ann.

She remarried a few years later and had seven children. Those eyes that haunted me in her photograph gave her trouble after the snow-blindness she suffered while trying to cross the mountain for help. For the rest of her life, she couldn’t make tears.

Here was a woman who’d journeyed west by foot for the promise of new land and better climate. She’d watched her family starve around her on the way, then taken a husband, only to become a widow. Later in life she cared for her son while he was dying, taking sick herself and following him shortly after to death. And all the while, she was tear-less.

You don’t meet a character like this every day. I didn’t set out to write a book about the Donner Party, but no character I could create as a fiction writer would be as interesting to me as this woman. Someone who actually existed. I had to get my hand on every letter she’d written, every interview she’d done. I had to see what her siblings said about her, how the other people she traveled with described her.

I had to write about her. What choice did I have?

Joel ben Izzy, when he was “way too awkward to live.”

What’s the deal with the choliday of Chanukkah?

Though everyone’s cheard of it, few can understand it, even among Jews. Especially among Jews. We can’t even agree how to spell it, which is how you know it’s a Jewish holiday. In Dreidels on the Brain—written from when I was a 12-year old super-nerd magician—I spell it differently each time use it.

The ever-changing timing of Hanukkkkkah is also baffling. Three years ago it actually began before Thanksgiving! That’s only happened once and—due to quirks in the calendar—isn’t scheduled to happen again for 79,000 years. Hope you enjoyed it! This year Haanukah begins at sunset on December 24—Christmas Eve! That’s even more confusing, because whatever Kchaanukah is, one thing is clear—it is not the Jewish Christmas.

So, what is Haanukah all about? From the beginning, it’s been an uneasy melding of two stories about miracles. One was of the Maccabean revolution, with a simple moral: We kicked their butt because God was on our side. The problem was that the Maccabees went on to be terrible rulers, so bad that people decided not to include the story in any Jewish holy books. It’s true—to read about the Maccabees, you need a Christian Bible!

The other story tells how after the battle they went to rededicate the temple in Jerusalem, but only had a tiny amount of oil. Yet it lasted all eight nights—and that was the miracle.

I could go on about how confusing Qchanukah is, but I won’t, because here’s what’s important: I think I’ve figured it out—and that’s why I wrote Dreidels on the Brain.

It’s about what happened to me and my family during the eight nights of Chaaanukah, in December 1971, which is when the story takes place. It was a dark time in my life. My family was poor, my dad was sick, and I was way too awkward to live. So I made a bet with God, over a game of dreidel: All I wanted was one Kchanukkah miracle. 

Without giving away the story, I will say this: When it comes to dreidel—and miracles—God does not play fair. During that Chaanukah, my life fell apart. But, at the end of it all, I was given something I will always treasure.

I’ve always loved stories, which is why I’m a professional storyteller. And when I have a good one, I’ll turn right around and tell it. But this was different. I knew I needed to hold on to that story until the time was right.

That was 45 years ago. And now, at last, I’m ready to share the gift I was given that Haanukkah—a tale of how, no matter how dark things get, you can still somehow find light within the darkness.  

And, for me, that’s what Hanukkah—and Dreidels on the Brain—is all about. 

In 1983 storyteller Joel ben Izzy graduated from Stanford University and set off to travel the globe, gathering and telling stories. Since then, he has performed and led workshops in 35 countries. Over the years he has also produced six recorded collections of his stories, which have won awards from Parents’ Choice foundation, NAPPA, ALA and a Booklist Editor’s Choice Honor. Joel is also one of the nation’s most sought-after story consultants, supporting organizations and leaders working to make the world a better place, with clients in fields ranging from philanthropy to medicine to technology to entertainment. Joel’s first book was the highly acclaimed memoir The Beggar King and the Secret of Happiness, which has been published in 17 languages and is currently in development as both a film and a musical. He lives with his wife in Berkeley, California.

Andrew Maraniss and Perry Wallace at the RFK Book Awards, where the adult version of Strong Inside received a special recognition in 2015.

When I set out to write the original, adult version of Strong Inside, I felt pressure to satisfy two discerning audiences: historians and sports fans. These folks may not hang out in the same pubs, but they both know their stuff and aren’t afraid to call you out when they think you’re wrong.

I’m pleased the book, a biography of Perry Wallace, the first African-American basketball player in the Southeastern Conference, succeeded on both fronts. It debuted on the New York Times bestseller list in both the sports and civil rights categories, earned two major civil rights book awards, became the all-freshman read at Vanderbilt University, and may have been the first book covered by both the SEC Network and NPR.

But now, with Strong Inside out in a middle grade format, I may have the most skeptical readers of all to satisfy: 12-year-olds.

Talk about a tough crowd. And none more important audience.

I’ve seen the news that middle school suicides at an all-time high. I’ve read the reports about incidents of racially motivated bullying increasing since the election of Donald Trump. I’ve learned the term “reluctant reader.” I feel a country divided between rural and urban, right and left, white and black.

Yet in Perry Wallace’s story, I see an opportunity to deliver a dose of hope. Chances are, you’ve never heard of Perry Wallace. I doubt I’ll meet a middle schooler who knows Wallace’s name. But his story could not be more important at this time in history, when racism—subtle and overt—was at the heart of a winning presidential campaign.

Wallace was no ordinary basketball player. Yes, he was a star on the court: three-time high school state champion, team captain at Vanderbilt, NBA draft choice. But he has always been so much more than an athlete. As a kid, he taught Sunday School, practiced trumpet four hours a day, studied his four older sisters’ college textbooks. He was the valedictorian at Nashville’s all-black Pearl High School, earned an engineering degree at Vandy, and graduated from Columbia University law school. He watched Nashville’s 1960 lunch-counter sit-ins as a 12-year-old, met with civil rights figures Martin Luther King Jr, Stokely Carmichael and Fannie Lou Hamer while in college. Today he’s a professor of law at American University.

And all along the way, he’s overcome gigantic obstacles, seen the worst of human nature, feared that racists in a small southern town would shoot him, been taunted as a token by some black observers. He’s the most courageous—and smartest—person I’ve ever met.

I’m hopeful young students of color will discover a character they recognize and admire. I’m hopeful white kids will learn something about race and racism, empathy and understanding. I’m hopeful that kids who love sports, but not books, will find a story they can’t put down. I’m hopeful that boys and girls who don’t care about sports at all will identify with Wallace’s intellect, his sensitivity, his challenges to overcome bullying and isolation.

Call that a lot to hope for from just one story, but I know the power of Perry Wallace. I first interviewed him when I was just a student myself, a sophomore at Vanderbilt in 1989 working on a paper for a Black History class. I’ve dedicated more than half of my life now to telling Perry Wallace’s story. And it’s because I know how meaningful that story can be to people that I paid close attention to the advice I was given by those who guided me through the process of adapting this book for young readers. Professor Ann Neely at Vanderbilt, bestselling author Ruta Sepetys, and editors Brian Geffen and Michael Green at Philomel said: Respect the audience. Don’t dumb-down the story. Don’t sanitize it.

And that was on top of the advice I had already received from my father, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Maraniss: Do the real work, the reporting, the research, the interviews. And the advice from Perry Wallace himself: Just tell the truth.

Authors have always had the opportunity to bring light where there is darkness, and in this new America, we have a special responsibility to counter hate and bluster with truth. Kids, of all people, still demand it. And I know they deserve it.

Follow Andrew Maraniss on Twitter @trublu24 and visit his website at www.andrewmaraniss.com. Strong Inside: The True Story of How Perry Wallace Broke College Basketball’s Color Line was published by Philomel on Dec. 20, 2016, and is a Junior Library Guild selection.

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”
       —“History Has Its Eyes on You,” a song from the musical Hamilton

On a January evening in 1969, 10 paintings were vandalized at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the letter “H” (which presumably stood for Harlem) scratched onto the surface of each canvas. There was no permanent damage to the paintings. The vandalism was committed in protest of the Met’s new exhibition, “Harlem on My Mind: Cultural Capital of Black America, 1900-1968,” and occurred during its exclusive opening gala. The perpetrator was never caught.

I stumbled on this juicy tidbit of a story[1] while doing research for The Harlem Charade. Eureka! I immediately assumed that this unsolved mystery—complete with art, intrigue and more than a little chutzpah—would become the cornerstone of the story. But as I dug deeper, I realized that there was a lot more to this story than vandalism and vengeance.

The “Harlem on My Mind” exhibit was controversial from the very start. Protests against the show sprouted quickly. Community members and artists, including the well-known painters Jacob Lawrence and Romare Bearden, decried what they saw as the museum’s failure to include the input of Harlem residents in the planning of the exhibition. They also criticized the Met’s decision to exclude black painters and sculptors from the exhibit, choosing instead to focus exclusively on photography, which made the show feel more like a sociological study than a fine art exhibition. A flyer in protest of the exhibit proclaimed, “If art represents the very soul of a people, then this rejection of the Black painter and sculptor is the most insidious segregation of all.”[2]

As I read more about “Harlem on My Mind,” it became clear that this conflict wasn’t about art at all. This was a battle—of life and death—over representation and the right to define and tell one’s own story. Rather than accept the Met’s definition of art, and of who they were as artists and what Harlem was as a community, those who initially protested “Harlem on My Mind” put their dissatisfaction to productive use. They built new organizations and institutions, like the Studio Museum in Harlem, and created opportunities, like artist residencies and programs to mentor new curators of color, that nurtured the creativity and careers of artists of color and helped to change the palette of the art world in New York City and beyond.

Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

The Harlem Charade is set in contemporary Harlem, decades after the “Harlem on My Mind” exhibition took place. However, I wanted to make connections between the Harlem of the 1960s and the Harlem of today, because both periods represent moments of significant change in the neighborhood. Though the issues may have been slightly different (civil rights and poverty in the ’60s, gentrification of the community today), the fundamental question remains the same: Who tells your story, and what story do you want to tell?

As Alex, Jin and Elvin, the three protagonists of the book, go about solving an art mystery of their own they—like those Harlem artists years before them—must grapple with what it means to live in a society where people have very different visions of community and progress, of the truth, of history and the future. In the process, they must also figure out what stories they want to tell, about themselves and their community.

My challenge to readers of The Harlem Charade is to learn more about their own neighborhoods and to ask questions of their families and of our local and national leaders in order to formulate their own ideas about the changes that they’d like to see in their immediate communities and in the world. Stories matter, and the stakes are high. If we don’t tell our stories, we risk being rendered invisible, washed away in the tidal wave of change. I want to inspire young people to not only discover their own stories but also to recognize and activate their power to use these stories to shape the future.

Author photo credit Phill Struggle.

[1] “Paintings Defaced At Metropolitan; One a Rembrandt” by Martin Arnold, The New York Times, January 17, 1969.

[2] "Black Artists and Activism: Harlem on My Mind (1969)" by Bridget R. Cooks, published in American Studies, 48:1 (Spring 2007): 5-40.

In the isolated society of A Single Stone, only the seven smallest girls can tunnel into the mountain in search of the mica that allows their isolated society to survive harsh winters. But Jena, one of the seven girls, begins to question her society’s traditions, forever altering her understanding of the world around her. Meg McKinlay’s latest middle grade novel displays an intense reverence for the earth, the bonds of sisterhood and carefully chosen prose. McKinlay describes the inspiration for her novel as being like drops of water laden with sediment, disparate elements all building to something powerful.

The way a story comes together always feels a little mysterious to me—a kind of alchemy. It starts with a drop of something, which is joined at some point by a drop of something else altogether, and I’m never quite sure how or why certain things combine. I’m not sure I want to be, to tell you the truth. I like the mystery of it.

What I can say about A Single Stone is that its very earliest “drop” appeared when I was around 7 years old, reading The Chronicles of Narnia. In The Silver Chair, there are some gnomes who live deep underground and who express their horror of the "Overland," saying things like:

They say there’s no roof at all there; only a horrible, great emptiness called the sky.

You can’t really like it—crawling about like flies on top of the world!

This had a profound effect on me, making me think for the first time about what cultural difference really meant. I wondered how I might feel—who I might be—if I had grown up somewhere else. I think it’s from here that my main character, Jena, eventually evolved—a girl so comfortable underground she feels ill at ease outside with nothing pressing on her.

There’d be no story, though, without the other drops. The most important of these presented itself when, as a teenager, I was introduced to the work of Franz Kafka, and became very fond of his aphorisms, among them this one:

Leopards break into the temple and drink what is in the sacrificial pitchers; this is repeated over and over again; finally it can be calculated in advance and becomes part of the ceremony.

As a teenager attending an Anglican high school and spending time in church youth groups, I was taken by this notion of how something inherently random and meaningless might be co-opted into sacred ritual. For what reason, to what end? Consciously or otherwise? And what are the consequences when that practice becomes detached from its origin?

For me, these questions are at the heart of A Single Stone, and with these two “drops,” I had the beginnings of both character and theme. But while I can see all this in retrospect, I had no sense of it at the time. I never consciously gather ideas; it’s more that these random fragments sleep quietly in the back of the mind, and at some point certain things seem to bump against each other and set a story in motion.

There are many other influences at work, too, some of which I was unaware of while writing, and probably many more I’m yet to discover. For example, my brother recently reminded me that I love rocks. It’s something I’ve inherited from my father, who always used to stop and point out interesting stones. And as a child growing up in a goldmining town, I spent a lot of time scanning the rocks around me for surface gold. It was a reader who asked whether there was any connection between this and the way the girls hunt for flashes of mica in the book. Somehow, I made neither of these links myself. And this is actually something I love about being a writer. I can’t count the number of times people have said things like, “I love the way you did this,” or “I was just wondering why you did that,” and I think, Well, but I didn’t, and then in the next breath, Oh yes I did!

For me, writing is a kind of discovery, and readers have a huge part to play in that. I can’t wait to see what a new audience brings to A Single Stone.

Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of more than 25 books for adults, children and teens, including the popular series The Sisters 8. In her new middle grade novel, I Love You, Michael Collins, the students of Mamie’s class are assigned to write letters to the astronauts who will journey to the moon. Mamie is the only student who chooses Michael Collins, and she fills her letters with stories of her troubles at home. She admires the part Collins plays on the mission; he may not land on the moon, but it is very important that someone stay with the ship. These engaging, folksy letters transport the readers back to 1969, where young Mamie contemplates what it would be like to be near the moon, but to not set foot on the surface.

In the summer of ’69, the U.S. was a country divided. We were in the midst of the civil rights movement; women’s liberation was gaining momentum; Vietnam, both the war itself and protests against it, was heating up; and on June 28, Stonewall, a seminal moment in the history of gay rights, occurred. The entire country was in turmoil, separated by divisions stronger than at any time since the Civil War. And yet, amid all that, there was one bright spot. . . .

Flash forward in time, to the 11 years between 1983 and 1994 when I was an independent bookseller in Westport, Connecticut. One of my favorite customers was a man by the name of Robert Hanrahan. He came in nearly every week, bought a lot of books and never made any trouble. What was there not to like? He also had steel-colored hair to match the frames of his glasses and suit, blue ties to match his eyes—here was a man who knew how to play to his strengths. One Friday, though, he came in looking like James Dean: worn blue jeans and a tight white T-shirt, the only thing missing a pack of smokes rolled up in his shirtsleeve. Naturally, I had to know: Why the change?

Mr. Hanrahan said he’d retired from his job that day. And, because for the first time since I’d known him he had time on his hands, we had the opportunity to chat. He told me that the first significant job he ever had was, in the summer of ’69, working for NASA right when they were trying to land a man on the moon for the first time. Having been 7 years old myself when Apollo 11 made its historic landing, I naturally had a lot of questions. Graciously, he answered them all. But one of the things that made the biggest impression on me was when he said:

“It was the most amazing time. Everywhere we went, when people found out we worked for NASA, they wanted to do whatever they could for us: clap us on the backs, buy us beer, pick up the tab for our dinners. The entire country was excited about what we were doing.”

The entire country was excited about what we were doing.

Flash forward yet again, this time to the present, nearly a half century since Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon. I write a book called I Love You, Michael Collins, a book that to me is about so much: a girl, a family, a very special astronaut and the importance of staying with the ship. It’s also about a divided country coming together in excitement over one common goal.

When you sit down to write a book for children, you’d better not be thinking, I hope my book educates you in some way! The truth is, if you can’t and don’t entertain your readers first, they won’t still be there by the time you get around to saying something important. So I hope kids are entertained by my book about one girl’s extraordinary journey. But beyond that, if I can dare to wish for something more, I hope that kids—kids who are living through a time in our nation’s history when we are more politically and starkly divided than in any time since the Civil War or the ’60s—get a glimpse of a time when we were all united by one common goal: putting a man on the moon.

Some days, I think that that’s what we need now: one goal to unite us. It seems so unlikely, but then the Pollyanna part of me—and the one who lay on the floor with my brother, watching men walk on the moon for the first time while the amazing, the incredible Michael Collins orbited, staying with the ship as he awaited the return of Armstrong and Aldrin—wonders: If it happened once, why can’t it happen again?

Follow Lauren Baratz-Logsted on Twitter @LaurenBaratzL or visit her website at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com.

I’ve always been fascinated by Edgar Allan Poe. 

I had read some of his stories. I’d seen the iconic photo, showing a man with scraggly black hair, sunken eyes, a mustache crawling wormlike across his face and eyes that didn’t look quite right. But it wasn’t until I read more about Poe that I discovered the most remarkable thing of all: He invented three literary genres—science fiction 25 years before Jules Verne, mysteries 50 years before Arthur Conan Doyle and horror 100 years before H. P. Lovecraft. Poe lived so long ago that when he was born, Thomas Jefferson was president.

"Poe deserved a fitting death, not an ignominious one."

I felt compelled to write about Poe, and my first thought was historical fiction, a form I’ve always enjoyed. I imagined a novel featuring Poe that would consist of three parts, in sequence: science fiction, mystery and horror. I still think it’s a good idea, but something else kept nagging at me. It was his death.

Poe was obsessed with death. Death was his greatest and most terrifying subject. And yet his own death—what we know of it—was squalid and sad. 

At the time, Poe was living in New York. After his beloved wife Ginny died, he sometimes traveled to Philadelphia and Richmond to raise money for the Stylus, a journal of literature and the arts that he dreamed of starting. In October of 1849 Poe found his way to Baltimore, where his writing career had begun and he had spent some of his happiest years. There he was discovered in a tavern, suffering from an unidentified illness, and was taken to a hospital, where he died a few days later. It was reported that before he died, Poe repeatedly called out the name “Reynolds.” That’s all we know.

Poe deserved a fitting death, not an ignominious one. My goal in writing this book, therefore, wasn’t to portray history but to fix it. I took those few facts, built on them, and reimagined his death—not as it was but as it should have been. 

What if …
… Poe concocted a final magnificent story that he was determined to live out when he died.
… the plan went terribly wrong and left him trapped in agony between life and death.
… his soul wailed and screamed and grew twisted over time. 
… a house sprouted like an evil mushroom—haunted, horrible, worthy of Poe.
… a boy moved there years later and, through his anger, unleashed Poe’s spirit. 

The story gripped me, hard, and I wrote it. Eventually it became Room of Shadows, the first novel I’ve written that actually scared me. 

We are in modern-day Baltimore. Thirteen-year-old David Cray is angry. Terror takes root in the closet. And Edgar Allan Poe, at long last, gets the death he deserved.

Ronald Kidd has written more than 30 works, including plays, novels and children’s books. His suspenseful new middle grade novel, Room of Shadows, follows the experiences of 13-year-old David Cray, who moves into a creepy house in downtown Baltimore with his mom and unwittingly unleashes the spirit of Edgar Allan Poe. Kidd lives in Nashville with his wife and daughter. Visit RonaldKidd.com to learn more about his writing.

Author photo by Helen Burrus