How to use this Page

(written by Sandman, cat and writing buddy of Nancy I. Sanders)

Everyone wants primary sources in their nonfiction and even references for facts in their fiction these days.

What’s a cat gonna do?

I tried hiding in a bag and never dealing with it, but then I got too hungry for tunafish tacos so I had to come out.

So I decided to try a new tactic. I’d hunt those primary sources down and pounce on ‘em! First plan of attack was to sneak around the house, hide behind the couch, and jump out at any unsuspecting spider crawling by.

But that didn’t get me very many primary sources.

What are primary sources anyhow?

I looked up the definition of primary sources in my cat-dictionary and discovered they are:

Autobiographies: Whenever a cool cat writes a book or article about her own life, it counts as a primary source.

Diaries: My cat friend, Pitterpat, keeps a diary and in it she chronicles every detail about Devin and Derby, the two Rat terriers who live next door. Pitterpat knows those little yappers are up to evil designs and she’s determined to prove it! Diaries are a primary source.

More primary sources include

• letters people actually wrote

• artifacts, buildings and landmarks that were actually there during the era

• e-mails, interviews, photographs, official documents

• and speeches people actually spoke

But how do you FIND primary sources? I’ve tried digging in the dirt in every single potted plant in our house, pulling out all the tissues and reaching in the bottom of a tissue box, and shredding every paper that comes out of the printer, but that only got me in trouble!

So then I tried a new tactic. I already had a pile of picture books and books for kittens on my topic. This time, however, I went to my library and borrowed every book on my topic written for mature cats. These books have FOOTNOTES. (I think they should call them pawprints.) And these books list many many primary sources in the back where they cite those pawprints…I mean footnotes.

Plus these books have PHOTOGRAPHS and PAINTINGS from the actual era of my topic. I looked in the back for the places who own those primary sources and made a note to contact them and find out what kind of permissions they give to cats who want to use them. (Like me.) And when I contact them I’ll find out if it’s free to use them or if I have to pay them to use it. Plus they’ll tell me how I can get the right resolution to use on my website or in my article or book.

Then I went online and googled my topic. I didn’t look at Wikipedia like I normally do. (Okay, okay, I know that’s a no-no for research but it’s handy!) Instead, I read articles that looked official on my topic that were posted by museums and universities and national archives. I looked at THEIR footnotes to see where they got their primary sources. Plus, a lot of them have digitized primary sources such as diaries and ancient autobiographies and paintings and images of artifacts. So I checked on each of their pages for “rights and permissions” and details about how I can use the information from their sites. I even e-mailed the contact e-mails and asked people about rights and permissions, just to cover my bases.

So when my writing buddy, Nancy I. Sanders, was writing her book on Frederick Douglass for Kids, I gave her some tips and advice.

For example, I told her she could find this photograph of Frederick Douglass at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs site.

It says: Rights Advisory: No Known Restrictions on Publication

I assured her she could be pretty safe using that photograph in any way, shape or form as long as she included the credit line with it.

What kind of credit line, she wanted to know. Yikes! Does a cat have to know everything?! I told her to dig around on the Library of Congress site to see what kind of credit line they say to use. I also told her to check in other books by the same publisher that she was writing for (or another current publisher who uses stuff from the Library of Congress) and see how they are citing the Library of Congress.

But then I told her she had to be careful about using this photo of Frederick Douglass from the Library of Congress because it did NOT include that same line about rights advisory. She’d have to try to find out who owned it and ask THEM for permission to use it and details about how that could be done.

Plus I told her to check out museums and historic sites on Frederick Douglass, so she did. She found out that places like the National Park Service would let her use their digital images for free on her website as long as she included the credit line they want. So she did! You can see how she did this and you’ll also see this awesome painting of Douglass that’s on her book’s website by clicking here. Plus, she found out she could use images for a cost in her book. They told her the steps to take and the fees it would involve. So she did!

I guess you could say working with primary sources is like hunting for ants. I can hear them marching behind the baseboard inside the wall, but I gotta figure out how to get them out here in the open where I can eat them. I’ve tried smearing tunafish next to a little nail hole. That worked for a little while. They came out by the hundreds! But then the pest control guy was called out to spray them. So now I gotta think about my next strategy.

The bottom line is that there is no specific strategy for hunting ants except for search and dig around and search and call or e-mail the people you gotta call. It’s the same for working with primary sources. It’s just what a cat’s gotta do.

For more information, tips, and techniques on research, visit the site of Sandman and his writing buddies at https://writingaccordingtohumphrey.wordpress.com/writers-notebook-worksheets/ or get Nancy’s how-to book for children’s writers, Yes! You Can Learn How to Write Children’s Books, Get Them Published, and Build a Successful Writing Career at http://yesyoucanlearn.wordpress.com

Want to learn how to write a children’s nonfiction book in just one month?

Register for this online audio workshop, below.

Find out more at www.writeachildrensnonfictionbook.com.

 

For more informative and cat-chy articles by Nancy’s cats, please visit their website at:
https://writingaccordingtohumphrey.wordpress.com

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In discussing the persecution of European Jews in the years before and during World War II, my students would often ask, "How could they let this happen?" Meaning, how could the rest of the world stand by and do nothing? For all the answers I can help students to find, I still can't answer this question myself.

The question asked nearly as often, however, is this: "Why didn't the Jews fight back?" But to that question I can readily answer, "They did. They did fight back. But realize that it wasn't just with guns; even children your age found ways to disrupt and defy the Nazis who tried to exterminate them."

In teaching the topic of Jewish resistance, I've found a great resource in an impressive series of six books from Enslow Publishing titled True Stories of Teens in the Holocaust. This series explores, through hundreds of primary documents and photographs, the diverse experiences of Jewish and non-Jewish youth caught up in the Holocaust.

Another terrific single-volume resource for any middle or high school classroom is Doreen Rapapport's Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, published by Candlewick Press.

Check out the books below, and then read on for suggested sites for helping students learn history through analyzing primary sources.

Courageous Teen Resisters: Primary Sources from the Holocaust

The popular title Courageous Teen Resisters: Primary Sources from the Holocaust documents both violent and nonviolent defiance of Nazi terrorism, from the increasingly overt persecution of early 1930s Germany to resistance efforts in France to the twenty-seven days of the Warsaw uprising. Readers learn how subtle and secretive efforts by Jews and Gentile sympathizers disrupted and distracted occupying enemy troops in some circumstances, while outright armed resistance and acts of sabotage wreaked chaos and destruction in others.

From Courageous Teen Resisters:

Courageous Teen Resisters is recommended as a stand-alone volume for students seeking to learn more about Jewish Resistance, as well an informational text companion to Heroes of the Holocaust: True Stories of Rescues by Teens (available from Scholastic).

The remaining five titles in the Enslow series are described below with a short publisher's summary or excerpt as well as recommended companion titles. This series is especially useful in text pairings not only to meet demands of the Common Core emphasis on informational texts, but to provide students with the necessary historical and social contexts needed to truly appreciate biography and historical fiction rooted in the Holocaust. (If you're seeking Holocaust texts for lower-level readers, be sure to check out my Annotated List of Holocaust Picture Books).

Youth Destroyed - The Nazi Camps

"Alice Lok was deported to Auschwitz, a Nazi death camp, in 1944. Upon her arrival, she faced a "selection." Alice had to stand in line as a Nazi doctor examined the new camp inmates. If the doctor pointed one direction, it meant hard labor—but labor meant life. If the doctor pointed the other way, that meant immediate death. Alice was lucky. She survived Auschwitz and two other camps. However, millions of Jews were not so lucky."  ~ from the publisher

Youth Destroyed - The Nazi Camps is recommended as an informational text companion to The Devil's Arithmetic (gr. 6-8), Prisoner B-3087 (gr. 6-9; see my review here), Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story (gr. 4-6), Hana's Suitcase (gr. 4-5), Elly: My True Story of the Holocaust (gr. 5-7), I am a Star: Child of the Holocaust (gr. 5-7), Surviving Hitler: A Boy in the Nazi Death Camps (gr. 5-8), I Have Lived A Thousand Years: Growing Up In The Holocaust (gr. 8-12), and Night (grades 9-up).

Trapped - Youth in the Nazi Ghettos

"(M)any Jewish youth living in the ghettos in Europe... faced death, fear, hunger, hard labor, and disease everyday. Millions of Jews were forced into ghettos, where the Nazis kept them until they could be deported to the death camps."  ~ from the publisher

For this title I'd recommend Children in the Ghetto, an interactive site which describes itself as

"...A website about children, written for children. It portrays life during the Holocaust from the viewpoint of children who lived in the ghetto, while attempting to make the complex experience of life in the ghetto as accessible as possible to today’s children.

Along with the description of the hardships of ghetto life, it also presents the courage, steadfastness and creativity involved in the children’s lives. One of the most important messages to be learned is that despite the hardships, there were those who struggled to maintain humanitarian and philanthropic values, care for one another, and continue a cultural and spiritual life."

Once students have interacted with this site, they will have a mental bank of sites, sounds, stories, and symbols from which to draw upon, greatly increasing their understanding and appreciation of this nonfiction text as well as any novel with which they're working.

Trapped - Youth in the Nazi Ghettos is recommended as an informational text companion to The Island on Bird Street (gr. 4-6), Milkweed (gr. 6-8), Yellow Star (gr. 5-8), and Daniel's Story (gr. 4-8).

Escape - Teens on the Run

"Thousands of Jews lived on the run during the Holocaust. Some were able to escape Germany before the war started. Others had to move throughout Europe to flee the Nazis. And many more could not escape at all."  ~ from the publisher

From Escape - Teens on the Run

Escape: Teens on the Run is recommended as an informational text companion to Number the Stars (gr. 4-5), The Night Spies (gr. 3-5), When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit (gr. 4-6), Escape: Children of the Holocaust (gr. 5-7), Run, Boy, Run (gr. 5-8), Once (gr. 6-10), and Survivors: True Stories of Children of the Holocaust (grades 5-8).

Hidden Teens, Hidden Lives
The fate of Jews who were hidden is of special interest to students. Even in a classroom that chooses not to embark upon a full Holocaust unit, time can certainly be devoted to learning about Jews who went into hiding rather than face extermination by the Nazis.

The uncertainty of such a choice is reflected in this diary entry from Anne Frank which appears in the book:

Hidden Teens, Hidden Lives is recommended as an informational text companion to Number the Stars (gr. 4-5), Jacob's Rescue (gr. 3-5), The Upstairs Room (gr. 4-5), Hidden Like Anne Frank: 14 True Stories of Survival (gr. 4-6), Anne Frank (10 Days) (gr. 5-7), The Hidden Girl: A True Story of the Holocaust (gr. 4-6), Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (gr. 7-up), and The Book Thief (gr, 8-up).

Shattered Youth in Nazi Germany

"Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party's rise to power in the 1930s changed life dramatically for all people living in Germany. Hitler used propaganda, fear, and brutality as his main weapons. Jewish children faced strong antiSemitism in their schools and on the street, and saw their families ripped apart. Non-Jewish children deemed "undesirable" suffered a similar fate. "Aryan" children were forced to enter Hitler Youth groups or endure humiliation."  ~ from the publisher

This book is a real stand-out as it not only chronicles the experience of Jews in Nazi Germany, but also Gentiles who were reluctant to submit to Nazi ideologies.

Shattered Youth in Nazi Germany is recommended as an informational text companion to The Big Lie (gr. 3-5), The Boy Who Dared (gr. 6-8), The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List (gr. 5-9), Someone Named Eva (gr. 6-9), Parallel Journeys (gr. 6-8), The Book Thief (gr. 9-up), Hitler's Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow (gr. 6-12), and The Berlin Boxing Club (gr. 9-12).

Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust

If you're looking for a single-volume resource for any middle or high school classroom, I recommend Doreen Rappaport's multiple award winning Beyond Courage: The Untold Story of Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust, published by Candlewick Press.

Like all of Candlewick's titles, this text is supported by a number of resources available from the publisher's site, including a full page spread, a teacher's guide, an interview with a survivor, and an audio excerpt. The book itself includes primary source excerpts, maps, a pronunciation guide, timeline, index, and sources.

In speaking of her accomplishment (which took five years to research and write), author Doreen Rappaport says,

"How Jews organized themselves in order to survive and defy their enemy is an important but still neglected piece of history. I present a sampling of actions, efforts, and heroism with the hope that I can play a role in helping to correct the damaging and persistent belief that Jews ‘went like sheep to the slaughter.’"

Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation

A key resource for teaching Jewish resistance, and for discovering a multitude of primary sources, is the web site of the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, whose key mission is "to develop and distribute effective educational materials about the Jewish partisans and their life lessons, bringing the celebration of heroic resistance against tyranny into educational and cultural organizations."

Over 30,000 Jewish partisans, or “members of an organized body of fighters who attack or harass an enemy, especially within occupied territory.” joined the hundreds of thousands of non-Jewish resistance fighters who fought the Nazis. Interestingly, however, their assistance was not always welcome, as antisemitism was often common in non-Jewish resistance groups.

This comprehensive and well constructed site offers teachers and students myriad free resources including:

• Professional Development modules which can be completed for continuing education credits (CEUs)  (I highly recommend that prior to using this site you complete at least the first module, to better understand how to best access the site's videos, articles, lesson plans, student hand-outs, and more);
• An extensive film collection, containing 3 to 20 minute films trhough which students can "witness the Jewish partisans' stories of endurance, victory, and struggle;"
• Interactive maps of Jewish partisan activity;
• A Virtual Underground Bunker;
• An Image Gallery (captioned and sourced); 
• Downloads for the classroom and a Resource Search option; and
• A very unique tool called Someone Like Me, where a students enter a combination of characteristics which describe themselves, and the site presents a partisan who matches those characteristics. Students can then explore the life and work of that partisan through any of the resource links above.

Primary Sources

Because the impact of Holocaust education relies heavily upon students learning the true events of this tragedy, primary sources should play a role in every Holocaust unit. The JPEF site described above provides a wonderful collection of sources from which to choose, but below I have compiled a number of additional resources which educators may find useful in planning their instruction. As always, please reach out and let me know what other sites, books, and documents you've found useful.

Why Should I Use Primary Sources?

Reading Primary Sources: An Introduction for Students
From Learn NC, a step-by-step guide for students examining primary sources, with specific questions divided into five layers of questioning.

Primary Document Webinar
This hour long recorded webinar present teachers with not only reasons for using primary sources, but also ten really easy-to-implement ideas for starting with primary sources in the classroom.

Making Sense of Evidence
This is a highly recommended collection of articles written by experts in the field on how to make sense of films, oral histories, numbers, maps, advertisements, and more. While written by the experts, students will find the language they use to be accessible. From the site:

“Making Sense of Documents” provide strategies for analyzing online primary materials, with interactive exercises and a guide to traditional and online sources. “Scholars in Action” segments show how scholars puzzle out the meaning of different kinds of primary sources, allowing you to try to make sense of a document yourself then providing audio clips in which leading scholars interpret the document and discuss strategies for overall analysis.

Because of the career connections, this site is a valuable tool for achieving College and Workplace Readiness goals.

Engaging Students with Primary Sourcesfrom Smithsonian’s History Explorer site
A 64 page pdf that serves as an excellent introduction to using primary sources.

Primary Sources Fitting into CCSS
Brief article showing how instruction with primary docs helps fulfill CCSS.

Teaching the Holocaust with Primary Sources
From Eastern Illionis University, a Holocaust Unit utilizing resources provided by the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress: Why Use Primary Sources?
Very brief pdf discusses reasons in bullets; good for making your point when discussing unit plans with others.

Primary Sources Cautionary Tales (pdf article)
Considerations and concerns surrounding primary sources.

Where Can I Find Lesson Plans with Primary Sources?

I Witness
From the USC Shoah Foundation, this site contains over 1300 video testimonies and other digital resources, as well as assistance for educators seeking to use these tools in Holocaust education.

Response to the Holocaust: Resistance and Rescue(Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center)
A pdf format document filled with original writings and suggested student activities; you can also download the entire curriculum from the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center.

Jewish Resistance: A Curriculum from The Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center of Florida
Lesson plans include original documents, along with suggested student questions to help analyze them.

The Power to Choose: Bystander or Rescuer?
Popular set of plans that has been online for some time; used by many educators as a good starting place for planning units.

Where Can I Find Additional Sites for Primary Sources?

PBS Learning Media - Interviews with Survivors and Rescuers
A good online source for interviews.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Offers an ever-changing variety of resources, as well as searchable pages for research. Educators can often request free teaching materials as well.

PBS Resources on the Holocaust 
The search page of PBS provides a vast number of resources, including excerpts from shows which have appeared on public television.

Oral History from Virginia Holocaust Museum
Oral History Project provides witness of survivors and rescuers.

Dr. Seuss Went to War
Theodore Geisel was a radical political cartoonist who urged America to join "Europe's war," in large part due to the oppressive policies of Hitler's Nazi. But are Geisel's cartoons themselves a type of propaganda? See an earlier post here on Propaganda and Persuasion.

What Strategies or Tools are Available to Assist Students in Analyzing Sources?

SOAPS Primary Document Strategy
This pdf provides information about the SOAPS acrostic, which students can easily recall for use in analyzing primary sources of information.

Primary Source Analysis Tools from the Library of Congress
Several different tools in pdf form for analyzing oral histories, manuscripts, maps, movies, and more.

Document Analysis Worksheets from National Archive
These pdfs allow for blank printing or for students to type directly on them and then print out or save; very handy for conducting analysis online.

Analyzing a Primary Source Rubric
A rubric for scoring student efforts in using primary sources.

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I’m always working to catch up on the ever-increasing pile of New Yorkers at my house (or as one of their cartoon captions once said, “How is never? Is never good for you?”). But I’ve just read a great article in the February 9/16, 2009 issue by John McPhee about fact-checking. And fact-checking in particular at the New Yorker.

The prowess of NY’s fact-checkers is legend, perhaps matched only by National Geographic. I used to work for some of Nat Geo’s publications and remember hearing the following story more than once. (Is it true or urban myth? I did hear it from an editor there, but that hearsay source wouldn’t satisfy a real fact checker!)

Anyway, a writer returned from Africa where he was researching a story about elephants. Supposedly he went to the fact-checker’s office and plunked a bag on her desk. I’ll be writing about the color and smell of elephant dung, he said, and knew you would demand verification.

It’s a funny story, but it also seems a bit hostile. I can understand that. Sometimes fact-checkers can be a little too precise. Their exacting minds can take the fun or magic out of things. In my book On This Spot, I was describing a prehistoric bloodbath and wrote, “Meanwhile a phytosaur was slipping into a shallow lake. When he opened his jaws, nearly 170 teeth swam toward a giant amphibian called a metoposaur. The fact-checker’s comment? “Must change, teeth can not swim.” (ps. Poetic license won the day.)

But I think the hostility in that Nat Geo story actually comes from the fact that it’s embarrassing to be caught with your pants down—to be wrong about something, especially when it’s your business to be right. I’ve felt that flash of embarrassment, maybe even a touch of hostility. But within seconds, I am profoundly grateful that the fact-checker has saved my butt. I pride myself on doing good research, but I’ve messed up more than once. Like the time the tour guide at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center (which houses NASA's Educator Resource Center) said that NASA had the disposable diaper developed for the space program. Sounded good to me until the wonderful Janet Pascal, fact-checking my Truth About Poop manuscript, gave me the URL for the “Diaper Evolution Time Line” and I realized babies were wearing Pampers before Alan Shepard.

Three cheers for fact-checkers! It’s expensive, but I wish all publishers used them. You can’t have too many eyes on a page.

Ps. Then there’s the other problem—NO ONE has the right fact. That book On This Spot took a place in Lower Manhattan all the way back in geologic time to the very beginning—or at least, to when the earth was just rock, water and a dusting of algae. When was it? The top guy at Columbia gave me one date. The Harvard expert gave me another. They were many millions of years apart. And it didn’t seem as if conventional thinking took one side. What do you do?

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April Pulley Sayre’s blog on May 28, “Nonfiction and Hands-On Science,” inspired me to continue the conversation:

The word “author” means “source.” Part of the job of an author is to be able to defend one’s work. So if someone asks, “How do you know?,” an author should have an answer. For writings in history or language arts, for example, often how we know is that we read it somewhere. So authors in scholarly disciplines cite the works of others to lend credence to their own work. Most people are not studious enough to follow a chain of footnotes in a history text back to an eyewitness account, which may not be all that accurate in the first place. And, as nonfiction authors for children, we all know that there is nothing like first-hand experience to enliven our texts and add credibility to our voices. But for science, “hands-on” means something more.

“How do you know?” is a question that every scientist can answer by saying, “Don’t take my word for it. This is what I did. If you do what I did, then you’ll know what I know.” In other words, scientists must be able to provide procedures so that others can replicate the behavior that produced their results, or not. When I wrote the Marie Curie biography, I was fascinated to learn how the scientists of that day eagerly performed each others experiments, gaining new insights into phenomena about the structure of the atom from their varied perspectives, deepening and enriching their collective knowledge. Science advances because of a community of shared experiences. Everyone who is interested can see for themselves. The knowledge accumulated this way is not merely a collection of anecdotes or hearsay, but an overwhelming body of first-hand evidence.

How we know, in science, is central to what we know. Hands-on experience in observing nature and doing experiments teaches kids how to do science, just as giving kids art supplies lets them be artists. You cannot truly understand science unless you know how it works. Last week I watched a History Channel program called “The Link” about finding a 47 million-year-old fossil that may be a transitional specie between the primates that became modern lemurs and the primates that became apes and humans. The program recounted the various ways scientists from several disciplines studied the fossil and come to their conclusions about its life and death. It ended with the famed Dr. Leakey saying that he didn’t “believe” in evolution because evolution is like gravity. It is an indisputable fact, not something that may or may not exist so that you can choose whether or not to believe in it. When you see the nitty-gritty of how scientists studied this fossil, there is no way to make sense out of it without the fact of evolution.

The biggest problem I have with some hands-on science activities is that there is little or no connection between an activity and the questions it illuminates, or even why you’d want to know about it in the first place. So many science activity books just gratuitously give directions for things to do without giving the reader any reason to do them. That kind of “hands-on” is only fun if you’re making an explosion or a volcano. That’s why I write with hands-on activities in context. A good example is in I Face the Wind. Catching air in a plastic bag is a “So what!” unless the reader gets that this proves that air is “real stuff” even if you can’t see it, smell it or taste it, and you can only feel it when it moves or when it is trapped in a plastic bag and you can push against it. Even the most mundane activity takes on import and drama when presented in a context that makes the outcome of an activity significant.

So it is our job as authors who write hands-on activities to create the context through language that makes these experiences meaningful for our readers. This is where our individual passions and enthusiasms shine through and make our writing distinctive.

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My friend Pamela Curtis Swallow is writing a biography of her relative Ellen Swallow Richards. This is how our conversations go lately:

Me: Pam, could you please pass the salt?
Pam: Salt comes from mines, Deb, and did you know that Ellen Swallow Richards was the first woman member of the American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers?”
Me: Really?
Pam: Also Ellen was the first woman admitted to M.I.T. and did you know that she founded the first health food take-out restaurant and was the founder of Home Economics?
Me: Pam?
Pam: Deb, it all comes down to Ellen.

Pam is besotted. She talks about Ellen all the time. Did I mention she also giggles when she talks about Ellen sometimes? She is completely obsessed. And this is how it should be.

I have written four biographies and each time I fell in love. It wasn’t always love at first sight, and sometimes I had to fight to stay in love. But love it was. And being in love with your subject serves an author very well. Because when the road gets bumpy, love keeps you going.

My first love affair was with Barbara McClintock. I had heard of Barbara back when I was an editor at Scholastic News (See Karen Romano Young’s post of March 5, 2009). McClintock won the Nobel Prize for her discovery of jumping genes and we ran a photo of her holding up an ear of maize, the plant she worked with. A few years later, I was thinking about how much I loved biographies as a kid and I decided I wanted to write one about Barbara McClintock. She had won the Nobel Prize for work she had done three decades earlier and when she finally won, interviewers asked her, "Wasn’t it hard that nobody believed you for all these years?" She answered she knew she was right, and “it would all come out in the wash.” What kind of person believes in herself so much that she keeps on working despite the fact that nobody believes her? I had to write about her so I could find out what made her tick.

I read the first chapter of an adult biography of her, called A Feeling For the Organism by Evelyn Fox Keller, which gave some insight into McClintock as a person, and I was hooked. I wrote a proposal, got a contract, and then read the next chapters of Keller’s book and realized I couldn’t understand the science AT ALL. The short arm of chromosome number 9? What is a chromosome? Jumping genes? What is a gene? How do they work? I had barely taken any science since 9th grade biology. I wanted to give my advance money back. But of course I had already spent it on diapers and cheerios and printer ink. I had to write the book.

Besides, I was already in love, which was a very good thing because I stayed up late many nights giving myself a crash a crash course in genetics so I could write the book.

Love makes you do crazy things. Love made a telemarketer give me her rendition of Marilyn Monroe singing “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” when I told her I was on a deadline writing a biography of John F. Kennedy. Love made me write a first draft of said book, High Hopes, in six weeks, as my editor begged me to. Love made me, the only girl who didn’t get into the sixth grade chorus, sing the lyrics to J.F.K.'s campaign song “High Hopes” with Tita Cahn (“Sing it with me, Deborah!”), widow of Sammy Cahn, so I could get permission to use the lyrics in the book. And love made me agree to write the book in the first place even though I knew I would find out things about John F. Kennedy I did not like. (O.K., love and a decent advance.)

So what do you do when you find out things about your person you don’t like? You take a deep breath and say, I am a biographer. I am not, actually, marrying the person. (Not that the people we marry are perfect, either.) You tell yourself that you are obliged to give a full portrait of your subject. And you want to. Within limits, when you are writing for kids.

Writing is all about choices. Did I write about J.F.K.'s extramarital affairs? No. Not only was it not relevant for kids, it was not an integral part of the story I was telling. Did I write about the fact that he and his family covered up his poor health so he could win the election? Yes, absolutely. It was an integral part of the story: his illness and the decision to cover it up shows who John F. Kennedy was. When kids read the book I hope they come away with a sense of the real person – a boy who grew up in a large family in the shadow of his older brother, and overcame illness to become President of the United States. I must admit I was glad I couldn’t write about the affairs.

Love can be hard. Love is hard when your subject dies. I spent many years thinking about, researching, and writing about Charles and Emma Darwin for Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith. And every time I read or wrote about Charles or Emma dying, I cried. As time went on my tears did not lessen. Because as time went on I was more deeply in love.
By the time I was writing what would be my almost final draft, I started sobbing uncontrollably when Charles died. This moment coincided with our younger son packing to go to college. Everyone in my family knows I do not deal well with separation. Benjamin was only moving 13 blocks uptown, but he was moving out and we all knew things would change. So Benjamin assumed I was crying about him. He came into my office, patted me on the back, and said, “There, there, Mom, I’ll see you soon,” and I said, between sobs, “It’s not you. Charles Darwin died.” Benjamin has not yet forgiven me, and he’s a sophomore. My husband likes to tell the story that months later, when I got to Charles’s death again, this time in galleys (of my OWN book), I whispered to myself, “Maybe this time Charles won’t die.”

I wasn’t always in love with Charles Darwin, and I barely knew he had a wife. My husband sort of owned Darwin in our family. But one day he (husband, not Charles) said to me, “Did you know that Charles Darwin’s wife was religious? And they loved each other very much. She was upset that he would go to hell and they would be separated for eternity.” I fell in love with the subject immediately: marriage, science and religion, God, devotion, death… I knew I had a book to write. Now I just had to fall in love with Charles and Emma themselves. Primary sources were the way in. I read (and as the research went on, read and read again) a two-volume book called Emma Darwin: A Century of Family Letters. There is no surer way to love than through someone’s personal correspondence—assuming, of course, that person is wonderful and articulate and funny and kind and spunky and true and (oh, dear, stop me). I was in love with Emma.

Next I read Charles Darwin’s autobiography and then his journals, and letters, and the same thing happened. I fell in love with him, too. Irrevocably. How can you not love a man who writes in a private notebook, “But why does joy, & OTHER EMOTION make grown up people cry.—What is emotion?” while he’s thinking about the theory of evolution? And writes to Emma around the same time, “I long for the day when we shall enter the house together. How glorious it will be to see you seated by the fire of our own house.”

Darwin was “one of the true Good Guys of history,” as the woman who helped put together the Darwin show at the American Museum of Natural History said to me after my book was published. He was a terrific husband (and Emma deserved that!) and an attentive and loving father. Charles and Emma had a wonderful marriage, which was a profound influence on his work. When he finally wrote The Origin of Species, it was a different book than it would have been had he not been married to Emma. Although Charles Darwin saw wars in nature he also saw the beauty and--

“Deb?”

Sorry.

But I can't help it. I'm in love.

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Whenever I’m doing a school visit that involves teaching kids about primary sources there is always one aspect of that idea I find more fun to explore with them than any other. I call: it What Happened at Lunch? Here’s how it goes.

I ask the kids to tell me something of note that happened recently in the cafeteria. Was there a disagreement, an accident, did something funny take place? I choose one of the many inevitably raised hands. After hearing that person out, I then ask who was sitting nearest to the event. Then we hear from that person. Then I ask for a few different perspectives—we hear from someone who is a good friend of the person involved in the incident, someone who heard about it from a friend, and maybe even someone who is not so close to the person involved.

After doing this, I then have them orient me to the history of that day and that cafeteria (I don’t put it that way, but that’s what they’re doing). I try to get a sense of who usually sits where, where they were coming from and going to afterwards, if there was any fallout, and so on.

All of this work culminates in an interesting discussion about why someone may have the opinion they do. I ask them to think about how their feelings about the person involved affect the conclusions they draw. How are the whys as important as the whats? Working together, we make the best diplomatic sense of the situation and draw our conclusions of What Happened at Lunch.

This exercise is not unlike holiday conversations kids may frequently witness with their relatives. A group of family members get together for a wedding or Thanksgiving and start to either reminisce about an event or discuss some controversial family issue. Uncle Pete remembers things one way. Aunt Mary is sure if Pete knew the whole story he’d see it differently. Grampa Joe is certain that the others are wrong—he was there and he saw what happened. Cousin Sue knows Grampa Joe hasn’t got it right because she heard it from her mother, who never forgets a thing. Sound familiar?

When writers have the wonderful opportunity to interview the very people we are researching, we often discover unknown details and interesting perspectives on our topic. If we are lucky enough to be able to spend time with multiple subjects on one topic—as I was in the course of meeting eight of the Mercury 13 women whose story I tell in my forthcoming Almost Astronauts—the job gets exponentially trickier—and a whole lot more fun. Kids, like writers, always need to consider the source of their information. Jumping to conclusions is not an option. Neither is drawing conclusions without exhausting the angles and perspectives our sources offer.

What I like best about giving kids a glimpse into this kind of research is how it makes their eyes open wide to consider the real possibility that they don’t know the whole story of how something happened to someone until they are willing to consider a broader picture and ask those crucial whys in addition to the whats.

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Being book-oriented means I have always preferred doing my research at the library.  Or in an easy chair in front of the fire.  Sometimes, however, there is no substitute for direct experience.  Depending on the topic of the research, however, there may not be an opportunity for direct research.  Not many of us get to go into space, for example, so writing a book about space travel will have some unavoidable physical limits on the kind of research you can do.

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Here I will give another example from my book, Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War. In doing research with photographs and other primary sources, one must always consider the source.  This famous photograph (in the National Archives) is entitled "Brady Under Fire."  On your screen it may be hard to make him out, but the celebrity photographer, Mathew B. Brady, is indeed in this picture, standing by the wheel of an artillery piece, wearing his distinctive straw boater.   "Wow," the viewer exclaims.  "That Brady risked life and limb to get his pictures of the war."

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Using primary sources in the research process can be both rewarding and frustrating. Reading a letter or a diary can be exciting, but so often I find myself thinking "Why didn't he explain X?" -- or Y or Z?  So much is left out that the original audience was expected to know without being told!  My job is to figure out what went without saying, and to decide what the missing pieces might be.  This requires a certain amount of confidence, and the willingness to make logical inferences.
Let me give you an example. While doing research for a book about the Civil War (Photo by Brady: A Picture of the Civil War), I ran across a fascinating battlefield tidbit (of course, I ran across dozens, but I'm just going to use one right now.) The tidbit was the information that at the end of a battle, sodiers' faces would be black around the mouth from gunpowder, because they had to bite off the ends of their paper cartridges, and in the frenzy of battle the biting and tearing got a little messy with gunpowder splashing and spilling.  

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Rafe Colburn contextualizes what Jon Udell reframes about what Tim Bray mentions. The big question is how big is the new technology club that either 1) you and your friends are all a part of, or 2) you sort of hear about but don’t quite understand or see the need for? When I talk about Twitter to the library blogogeeks at CiL they’re usually saying “Yeah, love it, tweet me.” or “Not for me, thanks.” they’re not saying “Twitter? wtf?” However when I mention it at home, I have a hard time even explaining why I think it’s interesting, much less how it works.

As 2.0 apps are built on top of 2.0 apps and people can give conference presentations about making Twitter talk to RSS via a jabber server to do things with your library catalog, the gap between people who are just making the foray into email, or even blogs, and the digerati grows larger. Clubbiness can be offputting, regardless of which side of the club fence you’re on. Let’s not forget that we’ve got to be putting out feelers and explainers and breadcrumbs pointing outward to what we’re building as well as inwards.

cil2007, jonudell, rc3, theclub, timbray, twitter

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If you’re getting a little overwhelmed with all the info from the CiL conference coming down the intertubes, you might want to sit back and look at Derik Badman’s Flickr photo set containing drawings and notes from the conference.

cil2007, derikabadman, madinkbeard

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I’m on my way to give my talk in one of the giant ballrooms. For anyone who wants to follow along at home or in the back of the room, here are the links you’ll want.

• Pimp My Firefox How to Make Firefox Really Work for You - slides
• Pimp My Firefox “e-handout” with links for all examples. Also available as a Word document.

Update: Talk went great. I spoke to about 200 or so people and almost all my demos worked! I went to go sit down and catch up on email and I ran into Jesse Andrews who is the guy behind userscripts.org (greasemonkey script repository mentioned in my talk) and BookBurro (very cool, check it out). He’s speaking tomorrow late afternoon, if you get a chance to see him, you should.

cil, cil2007, jessamyn, me, talks

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Hi. I spent an awful lot of time on the phone or on Skype today, most of it making things with other folks. In order

- Chitchatting with Casey about his Library Technology Report in which I write a chapter on Open Source Software Tools for libraries. We messed about with formatting and structure, laughed about how “Web site” is spelled in formal publications compared to everywhere else on the planet, and admitted the whole thing looks pretty good. Keep an eye peeled for it.
- Talked to Jay Datema from Library Journal and Bookism along with Peter Brantley for a podcast about all sorts of things. Specifically we discussed the nature of library content and social content becoming digital and the ramifications for archivists, librarians and plain old lovers of books.
- Did my weekly podcast with Matt Haughey from MetaFilter. This is always a fun weeks-end summary of what we’ve noticed on the site including my favorite posts from Ask MetaFilter

Then I swam. Then it was nighttime. I decided to take the train to CiL so that I can swing by and say hi to some friends in NY on the way. I have books and a few little snacks to bring with me. I’ll be in the CiL area from about Sunday night late til Tuesday afternoon/evening so please say howdy if you see me around. My talk is Monday. As with most of these quickie conferences, all my mealtimes are spoken for, but I still have some discretionary walking around time, depending on when I wake up. On the way back I’ll be stopping to see friends in Baltimore and then going to give a talk in Dodge City Kansas. People laugh when I say Kansas for some reason but I had such a good time there last time and finally got a good answer to my “please explain this Second Life and Libraries thing” question from some Kansas librarians.

So, I will be on the road for a while. Then I am coming back to teach an eBay class, some more digital pictures classes, maybe help one of the small libraries I work with install an actual OPAC instead of their in-library PAC and preparing a few more local talks in the next few weeks. I may not have mentioned this previusly, but I’m contributing occasionally (well, once so far) to the Slow Library website, so if you were waiting for it to come back from dormancy, that time has arrived.

cil2007, hi, slowlibrary

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Hi. I spent an awful lot of time on the phone or on Skype today, most of it making things with other folks. In order

- Chitchatting with Casey about his Library Technology Report in which I write a chapter on Open Source Software Tools for libraries. We messed about with formatting and structure, laughed about how “Web site” is spelled in formal publications compared to everywhere else on the planet, and admitted the whole thing looks pretty good. Keep an eye peeled for it.
- Talked to Jay Datema from Library Journal and Bookism along with Peter Brantley for a podcast about all sorts of things. Specifically we discussed the nature of library content and social content becoming digital and the ramifications for archivists, librarians and plain old lovers of books.
- Did my weekly podcast with Matt Haughey from MetaFilter. This is always a fun weeks-end summary of what we’ve noticed on the site including my favorite posts from Ask MetaFilter

Then I swam. Then it was nighttime. I decided to take the train to CiL so that I can swing by and say hi to some friends in NY on the way. I have books and a few little snacks to bring with me. I’ll be in the CiL area from about Sunday night late til Tuesday afternoon/evening so please say howdy if you see me around. My talk is Monday. As with most of these quickie conferences, all my mealtimes are spoken for, but I still have some discretionary walking around time, depending on when I wake up. On the way back I’ll be stopping to see friends in Baltimore and then going to give a talk in Dodge City Kansas. People laugh when I say Kansas for some reason but I had such a good time there last time and finally got a good answer to my “please explain this Second Life and Libraries thing” question from some Kansas librarians.

So, I will be on the road for a while. Then I am coming back to teach an eBay class, some more digital pictures classes, maybe help one of the small libraries I work with install an actual OPAC instead of their in-library PAC and preparing a few more local talks in the next few weeks. I may not have mentioned this previusly, but I’m contributing occasionally (well, once so far) to the Slow Library website, so if you were waiting for it to come back from dormancy, that time has arrived.

cil2007, hi, slowlibrary

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Hi. This is just to say I’ll be at Computers in Libraries next week. I’ll be giving a little talk called Pimp My Firefox, only the name is slightly different in the program. It’s about making Firefox do your bidding and how to customize it for various types of library staff and users. I think it will be fun. However, I am speaking at the same time as Meredith: 11:15 on Monday, April 16th. So, if you have to make a tough choice, I will not feel bad if you go see her talk. I am just sorry that I can not see her talk.

Also, I am planning my trip to DC. I may drive from Vermont. If there is someone that could benefit from a ride down on Sunday sometime, please let me know. I will be staying in DC for the week, so this is likely a one-way-only offer. Alternately if there is someone in the Northern New England area who is already driving, I would be happy to pay for gas to not have to drive.

One more logistical note: I am staying at the Hyatt Regency Crystal City on Sunday night. The CiL crew is putting me up since I am speaking. However, they are not putting me up the next night and the hotel is totally booked, so I either have to find alternate accomodations or move on and miss some of Tuesday’s activities. I have many options in DC and Maryland and would not be heartbroken to have to move on early. However, if anyone out there has a room with space Monday night, I would chip in a pint of maple syrup (and whatever else you’d like, up to and including cash) and regale you with stories of small town librarianship for a chance to stay through Tuesday. I added my name to the CiL Roomshare page, we’ll see what turns up. I seem to be all set for this part, thanks for the notes everyone.

From DC, I’ll be taking a quick detour to Dodge City, Kansas to be giving a talk about “the whole 2.0 thing” which I am looking forward to a great deal. I’ll be a little distracted at CiL, but if you see me running around, please do say hello.

cil2007, conference, me

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