Part V Boys of Wartime -- Discovering America's Past through Historical Fiction

Dear Readers,

Please welcome my dear friend, Laurie Calkhoven. She's a veteran in the industry, so you won't want to miss this inside look at how her historical fiction series was born, her background research, her writing process, and much more!
Laurie has generously donated two autographed books that will be featured in the next several posts. As always, simply leave a comment for a chance to win, and random.org will pick the winner!We LOVE hearing from you!

Author Laurie Calkhoven

Bio: Laurie Calkhoven has always loved reading and writing (arithmetic is another story). She’s especially interested in the intersection between big moments in American history and the lives of ordinary people. That’s how the Boys of Wartime series was born. She is also the author of middle grade biographies and other nonfiction books for kids along with contemporary novels in American Girl’s new Innerstar University series.

She watched too many That Girl reruns as a child and decided she HAD to live in New York City. She made a beeline for Manhattan right out of college and has lived there ever since. She doesn’t have nearly as many madcap adventures as That Girl, but she has a nice life.
 Read more about Laurie and purchase her books here:  http://www.amazon.com/Laurie-Calkhoven/e/B001H6EU2U/ref=sr_tc_ep?qid=1299696322

Laurie Calkhoven  shares about her Research:

I love doing research. I love the twists and turns it can take. I love putting on my detective hat to find a particularly hard-to-find nugget of information. And I love that collections of facts can fire up my imagination to the point where I’m creating characters and worlds for them to live in.

I approach the research for each of my historical novels pretty much the same way, so I’ll discuss Will at the Battle of Gettysburg, 1863 as an example. I began with broad historical overviews, books and documentaries, about the entire war.

I decided to focus in on the Battle of Gettysburg for a couple of reasons. It was a pivotal battle that changed the course of the war. It was also fought in the streets and homes of Gettysburg’s citizens. I knew that I could put a 12-year-old boy in the middle of the action without being too unrealistic.

Of course, there are a huge number of books and articles written about the battle, and I think I read them all. One of my favorite things to do is go the library to get specific books and prowl around on the shelves nearby. There are always surprises that jump out – books I didn’t know existed but have exactly the information I’m looking for. I also prowl through the bibliographies of those books, looking for more.

Of course those books tell me what historians have to say about the battle, but ultimately I’m interested in the people. I want as many primary sources – first hand accounts – as I can get my hands on. The people of Gettysburg knew that something world-changing had happened in their town, and many of them put their thoughts down on paper. I was able to find copies of many of them in the excellent New York Public Library, and the rest were on file at the Adams County Historical Society in Gettysburg. These diaries, letters, newspaper accounts, and memoirs told me not just what happened, but how people spoke, what they wore, and how they lived before and after the soldiers came.

Ultimately, the most valuable research I did was in Gettysburg itself. Many of the buildings are not only still standing, but still sporting their bullet holes. Walking the streets Will would have walked, picking out his house and his church, and following his route throughout the battle was invaluable. He came to life for me there, and I hope I was able to bring him to life for the reader too.

Thanks for joining Laurie and me for this first of a three-part post about Laurie's historical fiction series, Boys of Wartime.  In the interview next week, Laurie will talk about other books in the series, Daniel at the Siege of Boston 1776, as well as the project she is currently working on, and her writing process!

Stop by often to leave comments for additional chances to win one of the autographed books!  The link again for Laurie's books: http://www.amazon.com/Laurie-Calkhoven/e/B001H6EU2U/ref=sr_tc_ep?qid=1299696322  

ANNOUNCING THE WINNER OF DEADLY by Julie Chibbaro

Dear Readers,

What an exciting couple of weeks it's been celebrating with Julie Chibbaro and cheering for her new YA, deadly, getting the inside scoop about her research and writing process, and discovering her first book, Redemption.  Just in case you still haven't checked out Julie's web-site, here's the link: www.juliechibbaro.com


I'll announce the winner in just a second, but first I wanted to extend a BIG WELCOME to new members--you know who you are! Thank you so much for joining the book party! In fact, one of you was chosen by random.org this morning. Without further hoopla, the LUCKY WINNER of DEADLY is
 new member, ***Elizabeth Mueller!***     CONGRATULATIONS, Elizabeth! 

Elizabeth, please e-mail me (claragillowclark(@)gmail(dot)com with your home mailing address and Julie Chibarro's hot-off-the-press Novel will be sent to you asap!

Don't go away yet. My next guest and good friend, Laurie Calkhoven, has generously donated and autographed copies of her MG Historical Fiction from her series: BOYS OF WARTIME. The first book is: Daniel at the Siege of Boston 1776; and the second, just out this month is: Will at the Battle of Gettysburg. Laurie has wonderful insights to share about her research and her writing process, and her series, so please join us next week on March 9th!

 Thank you, dear readers! I look forward to hearing from you. Please join us again for the next exciting installment in "Discovering America's Past through Historical Fiction".

Part IV Redemption -- Discovering America's Past through Historical Fiction

Dear Reader,  Thanks for joining Julie Chibarro and me for the promised interview that shares insight into Julie's writing process and research! Be sure to read to the end for details about the drawing for deadly

In the short interview that follows, Julie shares about her first YA novel of historical fiction, Redemption, set in early Colonial America. (Read a review of Redemption below!) Purchase your choice of format by clicking on this very long link: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_i_0_14?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=julie+chibbaro&sprefix=julie+chibbaro

1.  What drew you to this time period--1524 England and the New World?

Before I started writing Redemption, I felt like I knew big dates in American history from school – 1492,1776 – but I didn’t really know history, I mean, where it began, with Europeans being curious about the New World and what was here in the years after Columbus came, but before the colonies were settled in the early 1600s.  In 1524, there were still a lot of Native tribes, and a lot of exploration (and, subsequently, the genesis of white Indians, whose existence started my path to writing Redemption).

2. What were some of the challenges you encountered when researching and/or writing about the 16th century?

There were very few people writing at that time.  There were some French trapper notes, and Jacques Cartier’s journals, and ship’s logs, but mostly I had to depend on historians looking back.  Historians often disagree with each other about this largely undocumented period in the Americas.  I had to decide things for myself.

3. How did you find your emotional connection and entry point into the story of 12 year old Lily?

I didn’t know I was writing a YA novel when I started Redemption.  I simply wanted to write from an innocent’s point of view, someone not too spoiled by the prejudice of her time. 

4. Can you offer any research tips or insights into your writing process?

Depending on the period, I think it’s always good to get as pure as you can when doing research.  I mean, read original texts, come to your own conclusions about what happened.  Writing history is sort of like learning a foreign language:  immersion is always best. 

About my writing process, I have periods of “in” and “out.”  I go “in” myself to write, and come “out” to promote my work.  Each period can last days or weeks, but I find it hard to do both simultaneously.

5. What was your favorite book as a child?

I’d have to say I return often to Anna Karenina.  I read it first in 7^th or 8^th grade, and fell in love with it, and have read it every few years since.  Talk about a world completely different from mine!  Yet I feel so passionately for Anna.  How did Tolstoy do that?  I’m still trying to figure it out.

Review of Redemption from TeensRead.com (Five stars!):
In 1524 England, twelve-year-old Lily hasn't felt warm since the baron's men dragged her father away eight months ago. She pictures him dead. However, Frere Lanther, who has come from the Rhineland to lead his own secret and forbidden church, suggests Lily's father may well be alive in the New World. The baron is forcing Lily and her mother to leave their home, which he owns. When Lily begs her mother to accompany her to the New World to find her father, her mother reluctantly agrees.
         The voyage is miserably cramped and filthy. A live pig lives in the room where the poor passengers eat their meals of watery soup and insect-ridden black bread. Lily meets the baron's son, Ethan, onboard and inadvertently blurts that Frere Lanther lives with them. When Lily's mother is raped, Lily is heartsick. She knows her mother's punishment was a direct result of Lily's exposing her family's secret.
        A shipwreck upon the shores of the New World ends the voyage. The castaways stumble upon a gruesome discovery, which increases Lily's fear that her father is dead. When her mother is kidnapped, Lily must set off alone through the forest, starving and terrified. What she finds in the forest is astonishing.
      Multi-layered REDEMPTION is truly unique. Lily's story is a harrowing physical and spiritual quest laden with mystery, filled with unexpected plot twists. The tale is harsh, violent and gruesome --- not for anyone wanting to view history through a rosy haze. Yet the book is also vibrant, riveting and beautifully written. Lily herself is a believable, sympathetic character surviving devastation after devastation.
     If you love history, you'll enjoy this powerful piece of historical fiction. If you snoozed through history class (as I did), you'll love REDEMPTION for a fascinating read that may even turn you --- yes, YOU! --- into a history buff. 

Julie is giving away copies of deadly until March 4th. Visit her web-site to learn the details: juliechibbaro.com

 Leave a comment here about the interview for a chance to win a copy of deadly. The lucky winner will be announced on Friday, March 4th!

Thanks so much for joining us today! 

Book Birthday! Part 3 Discovering America's Past through Historical Fiction

Dear Reader,
I'm pleased to introduce you to Author Julie Chibbaro and deadly, her hot off the press historical fiction novel set around the turn of the century in New York City. What you'll find in this post is a brief bio about Julie and the article she wrote for YOU, dear reader, along with some special links you'll want to check out.  An insightful interview with Julie about her first historical novel and writing process will follow next week. Julie has generously donated an ARC of deadly as a giveaway to celebrate her Book's Birthday! It's easy; simply leave a comment. Your comment will be numbered and random.org will choose the winner! Now, please join me in welcoming Author Julie Chibbaro! Let's all celebrate her Book's Birthday by leaving a comment to congratulate her.

Author Julie Chibbaro

A Short Bio: JULIE CHIABBARO grew up in New York City wondering how so many people could live together without infecting each other with mortal diseases. She is the author of Redemption which won the 2005 American Book Award. Julie teaches fiction and creative writing in New York. Visit her here: juliechibbaro.com
(I'd rush over there if I were you--if you don't win her book here, you have a chance to win one of five books she's giving away!)

And now, Julie Chibbaro shares an inside look at deadly: how do you catch an invisible killer?  

Julie Chibbaro:

"I’ve always been interested in other people’s business.  Not just their personal business, but their backgrounds as well.  Where did they come from, how did they get there, what do they do with themselves all day? 

Pretty early on in my life, I found that other cultures fascinated me for just these kinds of human stories – when I lived in Mexico as a 19-year-old, I spent a lot of time learning about the Aztecs and their evolution, their language and history.  Every time I visited a new country, I’d explore their story – who conquered this place, how did they settle, why did they stay?  Ten years later, after living in the Czech Republic, I came back to my side of the world (I moved to Montreal, where my husband was from), wondering who I was, and what my American history was. That was the genesis of Redemption, my first book.

Deadly by Julie Chibbaro

My second novel, deadly, came when I returned to my hometown of New York City after a seven-year hiatus.  I felt surprised by the dense population, the dirt in the streets.  It occurred to me (as it had many times in my youth) how easily an epidemic could wipe everyone out.  I grew up in New York City, and I’d always thought about how packed together we all lived – but upon my return, it came flooding back to me in memories, how friends and sisters often joked about spreading germs. 

While doing research for another book (one I never wrote), I stumbled on the story of a woman I’d only heard about in urban legends, one who tied directly in to my rekindled awareness of germs.  I’d always thought that this woman, who most called Typhoid Mary, was an intentional killer, slaying masses with her germ-spreading powers.  When I came across her real story, I knew I had to write about her.(Purchase deadly by clicking on this long link: http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Julie-Chibbaro/dp/0689857381/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1298131294&sr=1-1

The real Typhoid Mary lived at the beginning of the 20^th century in New York City.  Her story contained very interesting elements to me – she was an immigrant (which fit with my previous fascination with other people’s business), she spread disease among rich and poor, and she was a real firecracker of a lady (busting the stereotype of the refined “Gibson Girl” of the time).  I knew that writing about her would answer a lot of questions I’d always had about the city in general.  I wanted to use her real story – the scientists who tracked her down, the way they found her – but of course, I had to figure out a whole fiction around her too.  I needed to create a teen with a desire to fight disease.  I write for teens, so how could I involve them in this story?

Prudence Galewski, my 16-year-old heroine, shares with me only a love of journaling and a curiosity about the world.  Other than that, she is a lot smarter than me, and certainly braver.  She helps her mother the midwife deliver babies (an occupation that takes her close to life and death often), and she loses her brother to disease.  This makes her need to know why people get sick, and why they die.  Prudence’s voice was a struggle for me to find – I rewrote this book from scratch a number of times, first as a boy, then as a series of letters.  Once I understood her strong desire, once I could hear her secret whisperings to herself (in the form of a diary), then I could write this book.

My research took me many times to the New York Public Library, where I buried myself in the many tons of microfiche they have of the newspapers of the time (about 20).  I read the whole paper, not just the articles about Mary.  Newspapers tell you what price apartments rent for, how much salaries are, what people are buying and eating and reading in a time period.  I also visited the Tenement Museum in the Lower East Side, a building that is preserved from that time period.  And I read historical fiction of the time (especially helpful was A Tree Grows in Brooklyn), and looked at many pictures (my favorite photos were Byron’s).  I read a great book called Typhoid Mary by Judith Walzer Leavitt.  Imagination was really my best tool.

I think the trailer for Deadly gives you a good sense of the book.  Made by the artist Jean-Marc Superville Sovak (supervillesovak.com), with music by Eric Helmuth:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHMFec_e6Vk

I’m currently working with Jean-Marc on another book.  It’s about a graffiti artist (though he wouldn’t call himself that) and a poet (though she wouldn’t call herself that) who live in the parks of NYC.  That’s about all I can share about it right now.

I love to hear from readers, who can visit me and download an excerpt of Deadly from my website, juliechibbaro.com.  I’m also on FB (Deadly by Julie Chibbaro: http://bit.ly/bHtTBx), and twitter (@juliechibbaro).  I will be at the Empire State Book Festival (http://empirestatebookfestival.wordpress.com/) in Albany, NY the first weekend in April, and would love to meet readers there.

Thank you, Julie, for stopping by to share with us! Congratulations on your new book, deadly!
Thank you, dear reader, for joining the celebration! We'll be back in a week with more from Julie!

Announcing the Lucky Winner of COUNTING ON GRACE

Dear Reader,  It's always an exciting moment to discover just who is going to be the winner in the book drawing. I'm always wishing it could be all of you, but since it can't be, I rely on random.org to choose for me. Much easier that way!  So, who is the LUCKY WINNER of  Counting on Grace, so generously donated and autographed by Author Elizabeth Winthrop? www.elizabethwinthrop.com We'll find out after some important news and updates!

In the last post, Elizabeth wrote that she was assisted by Joe Manning when she was on the trail of Addie Card, the child in the Lewis Hine's photograph that you see on the cover of Counting on Grace. Mr. Manning left a comment on the post and shared some links you'll want to check out. Who knows, one of you may be inspired to write about one of the children Joe researched!

This is what Joe wrote:
"I am the author and historian who helped Elizabeth track down Addie's family. I wrote a long story about the search, and it is posted on my website. You can see it at: http://www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/addiesearch1.html

"Thanks to Elizabeth, I was inspired to create what I call the Lewis Hine Project, which is a quest to track down the stories of many other child laborers who were photographed by Hine. I have since completed successful searches for more than 200 children." www.morningsonmaplestreet.com/lewishine.html


Before I announce the winner, I wanted to share this jazzy book by Elizabeth that will get you snapping your fingers and tapping your toes!

The Red-Hot Rattoons by Elizabeth Winthrop  illustrated by Betsy Lewin: Grade 4-6: The rats of NIMH have nothing on Benny, Fletcher, Ella, Woody, and Monk, five young jazz- and tap-dancing rats who set out for the fabled Big City in hopes of seeing their names in lights. Making the Big Time turns out to be no walk in the park-well, actually, it does, as the Rattoons escape a misguided and near-fatal debut on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art by diving into Central Park's shrubbery. Escaping hawks, dogs, poison, and other hazards, the troupe then makes its way to Rat Hollow, a bustling subterranean burg whose residents can chow down on tasty garbage provided at the "ratomat" between visits to the Performing Rats Library. Ultimately, the Rattoons ascend to the massively grandiloquent "Crystal" (known to humans as Radio City Music Hall), where an impromptu performance during the Holiday Hullabaloo earns the quintet not only a standing "O" from the stunned audience but a marquee billing with their names in four-foot letters to boot. Lewin's sketches of tiny, high-stepping rats add stylish notes at each chapter's head, and Rat Hollow, which mirrors the thinly disguised New York above ground, provides a side-splitting backdrop to this engaging tale of life on (and beneath) the boards. School Library Journal John Peters, New York Public Library  
Click on this link to learn more about the Red Hot Rattoons and purchase it! http://www.amazon.com/Red-Hot-Rattoons-Elizabeth-Winthrop/dp/0805079866/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1297724758&sr=1-1

      *****ANNOUNCING THE LUCKY WINNER of  Counting on Grace*****


The winner is: ****Linda O'Connell****   Congratulations, Linda!  I hope you'll take a moment to congratulate her, too!  Linda, please e-mail me: claragillowclark (@) gmail(dot)com with your mailing address and your autographed book will be on its way shortly. 

Thank you, Elizabeth Winthrop for sharing insights and inside stories of your books, your writing, and your research. 

Our next guest writes historical YA, and I know you won't want to miss her book birthday coming up next week on George Washington's Birthday! The setting of the book is NYC around the turn of the 20th-Century! How exciting is that?

 

PART 2 of "Discovering America's Past through Historical Fiction"

In Part Two of our historical fiction series, Author Elizabeth Winthrop shares insight into her research and in the story behind the character of Grace from her book, Counting on Grace, that we learned about in Part One.  Leave a new comment at the end of the post for a chance to win an autographed copy of the book! Winner to be announced on Valentine's Day. Thank you, Dear Reader, for joining us!

http://amzn.to/eGYzzZ

Through the Mill

Because of a Lewis Hine photograph, Addie Card became the poster child of child labor. But what became of Addie Card?

• By Elizabeth Winthrop

She leans casually on her spinning frame, staring out at the camera, dressed in a filthy work smock. Her bare feet, planted firmly, are slick with black grease. Her left arm rests easily on the huge machinery but crooked at a strange angle, as if perhaps a bone had been broken and never set properly. To keep her hair from the frame's hungry grasp, it is pulled tight and pinned in a style befitting a grown woman. A few wispy strays float around her head like a halo. The elements of her face seem perfectly proportioned: the delicate nose, the small ears tucked back, the curve of her lips, the puff of her cheeks. She is a painter's dream. Or a photographer's.
      I first saw her four years ago in a show devoted to Lewis Hine's pictures of child workers in Vermont. Hine had been hired by the National Child Labor Committee to bolster its written reports with documentary photographs. Records show that he was a traveling man. From 1908 to 1918, he crisscrossed the country by train and automobile, taking pictures that brought home the hard realities of child labor. Because of Hine, comfortable middle-class Americans were forced to look at children embroidering lace in airless tenements on New York's Lower East Side, selling newspapers on crowded streets in St. Louis, cutting sardines in Eastport, Maine. He talked his way into mines in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, where the bounce of his magnesium flash off the whites of a breaker boy's eyes illuminated a blackened, airless landscape. To back up his photographs, Hine scribbled details in a notebook hidden in his pocket. About this sad-eyed Vermont girl he wrote: "Anaemic little spinner in North Pownal [Vt.] Cotton Mill."
      Hine took several photographs that August day in 1910, but the image of the girl somebody named Addie Laird is the one that endured. Who was she? Lewis Hine once said that he was "more interested in persons than in people." The same is true of a novelist. Even though I didn't know what had happened to that child, I decided to imagine a life for her. After I finished my novel about her, I began to search for Addie herself.
I had little hope; the U.S. Postal Service had been unable to locate her in 1998, when officials there put Addie's picture on a 32-cent stamp. But it turns out they didn't look hard enough.
I found her in the 1910 Census when I thought to put "Adelaide" and any logical variant into a database search form. On sheet 12B in Bennington County, Vermont, on May 4, 1910, a Census worker recorded a Mrs. Adalaid Harris, listed as head of household living with six orphaned or abandoned grandchildren, including the Card sisters: Anna, female, white, 14 years of age, single; and Addie, female, white, 12 years of age, single.
So Addie's name was not Laird, but Card. That clue led me and fellow researcher Joe Manning down a trail that twisted through town offices, dusty historical societies, funeral homes and Social Security death records.
     Hine's little spinner lived the dark side of the American dream, according to records and relatives. Her mother died of peritonitis when Addie was 2. She was put to work in the mill at the age of 8. (She had to stand on a soapbox to reach the bobbins.) She renamed herself Pat and married twice, neither time happily. Months after losing custody of her biological daughter in 1925, she adopted another girl, the newborn illegitimate child of a Portuguese sailor. Mother and daughter moved often from the dreary mill towns of upstate New York to the big city itself, where Addie and friends were captured in a studio photo celebrating victory in Europe.
Recently, Manning and I met with two of Addie's adoptive descendants. We learned that by the time she died, at 94, she was living in low-income housing and surviving on a Social Security check. "She didn't have anything to give, but she gave it," Piperlea Provost, her great-granddaughter, told us. "I could not imagine my life without Grandma Pat's guidance." 
Addie never knew that her face ended up in a Reebok advertisement or on a postage stamp issued 100 years after her birth, or that Hine's glass plate negative resides in the Library of Congress. Addie Card LaVigne never knew that she had become a symbol.
Like so many of the subjects of his photographs, Lewis Hine also died in poverty. In the 1930s, the work began to dry up, and he was perceived as rigid and difficult; efforts of friends such as fellow photographer Berenice Abbott to resuscitate his career failed. He died at age 66 on November 3, 1940, a widower whose rent was covered by a friend.
And like Addie, Hine seemed to recede into the mists of history. But his child labor images secured his reputation as a documentarian and as an artist. We return to the photograph of Addie again and again because Hine saw her not just as a symbol but as a "person" with a life beyond the mill. For that reason, the "anaemic little spinner" remains as firmly burned into our national memory as she was etched into the glass of Hine's negative almost a century ago.
Elizabeth Winthrop is the author of Counting on Grace, a novel based on the Lewis Hine photograph of Addie Card.   http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/indelible-sep06.html#ixzz1BIIs6MMr

Learn more about the author's life and books here: www.elizabethwinthrop.com

Author Elizabeth Winthrop alongside photo of Addie Card (Grace). This Lewis Hine photograph is hanging in the Met Museum right now in a show called OUR FUTURE IS IN THE AIR, Photographs from the 1910's.  The show's up until April, 2011

 

Discovering America's Past through Historical Fiction

Author Elizabeth Winthrop

Our first featured guest in the Historical Fiction Series that will be running for the next eight weeks, is Elizabeth Winthrop, a veteran author with over fifty works of fiction! 

I first met Elizabeth when we were both presenters at the Hodge-Podge Conference in Albany, New York a number of years ago now. I decided to sit in on her presentation and was delighted and enthralled by her stories of childhood. For me, Elizabeth's life was exactly what I had imagined, as a young reader, an author's life should be. I was charmed by her storybook world, and I'm pleased to be sharing her life and work with all of you!

Dear Readers, Please welcome award winning author Elizabeth Winthrop and her featured book, Counting on Grace!  

Interview with Author Elizabeth Winthrop

What or whom were the early influences that inspired you to become a writer?

My father was a journalist who worked at home.  Every day, when I opened the kitchen door, fresh off the bus from school, the first sound I heard was the banging of his old Underwood typewriter keys.  He had a sign on his door which read, PLEASE DON'T KNOCK UNLESS YOU'RE BLEEDING.  This was to keep me and my five brothers out of his hair.  That was my earliest influence... to have a working writer for a father who was self-disciplined and who loved what he did.

My grandmother also encouraged me to write, in contrast to the dour nuns at school who taught me that grammar should be more important than the love of reading or the musical poetry of language.  I had enough influences at home to counter those dictums, thank heavens.

When did you first know that you wanted to write children's books? 

My senior year in college.  I went to Sarah Lawrence where I was allowed to major in writing starting in  freshman year.  I studied with the likes of Grace Paley, E.L. Doctorow and Jane Cooper.  I wrote a large pile of short stories, mostly about experiences I knew nothing about.   Jane wisely pointed this out to me. She noticed that the children in my stories rang very true and steered me in that direction.  When I graduated from college, I worked as an editorial assistant in the Harper and Row Childrens Book department under the legendary Ursula Nordstrom.  From then on, my fate was sealed. My first boss, Nina Ignatowicz, became my editor.

Do you have a favorite book from childhood?

 THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE

Tell us a little about your writing process.

Character and setting are both crucial to my fiction.  If I don't feel I know a character well enough, then I often write a diary in her voice to dig deeper into what makes her tick.  Or him.   And I need to know where that person lives.  In Counting on Grace, I deliberately picked a mill near where I live in the summer so that I could walk in Grace's footsteps as often as I needed to.  In The Castle in the Attic,  the attic itself is the one in my grandmother's house in Connecticut where I spent many childhood hours.  

Do you write for other audiences?

Yes, I've published two novels for adults, In My Mother's House  and Island Justice.  And I am currently at work on a personal history, the story of my parents' love affair in London during World War II.

Is it difficult to switch back and forth between writing for children and writing for adults?

It's a matter of voice.  I hear a different voice in my head when I'm writing for adults and when I'm writing for children.  And point of view.  In a children's book, you stay very tightly in the protagonist's head.  It keeps you from getting preachy and moralizing.

I'm glad that I can switch back and forth.  When I've been working on a novel for two years, I like being able to write a picture book for young children that might be finished in a week or sometimes, rarely in a couple of days.  Picture books bring me back to language and poetry, the short novels for children force me to focus on plot.  All of these tools are of course, vital when I work on fiction for adults.  It's all writing.  Librarians and booksellers need to slot the books into different age groups so they know where to shelve the books.  I don't.

Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

Read, read, read.  And designate a time in each day when you are nothing but a writer.  Turn off all the gadgets that so easily distract us these days and sink into your writing self.  There's no other way that I know of to keep the inner stream flowing. Honor that writer within you with uninterrupted time and with a place, even if it's the corner of the kitchen or a table in a local coffee shop.

ELIZABETH WINTHROP is the author of over fifty works of fiction for all ages. Her most recent historical novel, COUNTING ON GRACE was chosen as a Notable Book of the Year by the American Library Association, the National Council of Social Studies, the International Reading Association and the Children’s Book Council and was nominated for state book awards in Vermont, Virginia, Kentucky, Kansas, Missouri, Hawaii and Arizona.

Ms. Winthrop is the daughter of the late Stewart Alsop, the political journalist.  She divides her time between New York City and the Berkshires. She is currently at work on a memoir. Learn more about the author here: www.elizabethwinthrop.com

The featured selection for this series, "Discovering America's Past" is Ms. Winthrop's most recent historical work of fiction, Counting on Grace. A teaching guide for the book is available on her web-site: www.elizabethwinthrop.com [Find by clicking on TEACHERS on the menu bar] Read below for what reviewer's say about this important book!

Counting on Grace 

To purchase:  http://amzn.to/eGYzzZ 

"Winthrop's compelling story vividly captures the mill experience.  Much information on early photography and the workings of the textile mills is conveyed, and history and fiction are woven seamlessly together in this beautifully written novel. Readers won't soon forget Grace." -Starred Review, School Library Journal

"The most compelling thread of the novel chronicles the mounting tension between Grace and her demanding mother who dominates the other workers. This enlightening novel explores the perils of mill work for children and adults alike.  Readers will cheer the feisty heroine when Grace uses her smarts to triumph."      -Publishers Weekly

AWARDS and HONORS for COUNTING ON GRACE

*ALA Notable Book

*Notable Trade Book in Social Studies

*IRA-CBC Children's Choice Selection

*NCTE Notable Book for a Global Society

*Jane Addams Peace Prize Honor Book et al

Elizabeth has generously donated an autographed hardcover copy of Counting on Grace. As always, for a chance to win, all you have to do is stop by and leave a comment on this post and/or the follow-up post next week when Elizabeth will share the story behind the book and insights into the research process involved in uncovering Grace's story.  The winner will be chosen by random.org on Valentine's Day!