This Is Neil Armstrong
New year, new project! I’m gearing up for work on a biography of Neil Armstrong, the first human to set foot on the moon.
So far, my favorite quote is not “That’s one small step for man…” but actually comes from his sister, June: “He never did anything wrong. He was Mr. Goody Two-shoes, if there ever was one.”
You can fly fighter jets and fight in a war and blast off into out space and walk on the actual moon, but I’m telling you, you’ll never get respect from your little sister.
Read MoreNew England Vampires
JB exhumed skeleton beings studied at the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
Forensic science and folklore can piece together some truths about life (and the afterlife) in New England in the 1700s and 1800s. Like Mercy Brown in Mercy: The Last New England Vampire, JB was a real person, a Connecticut farmer who died of tuberculosis….and whose community dug up his grave after his death, convinced he was a vampire. The Washington Post details new discoveries about him here…one of the few so-called vampire burials to be exhumed and studied.
You don’t have to travel to Transylvania to encounter homegrown vampire folklore. The same legends that led to JB’s exhumation were the basis for my YA novel Mercy. Family, loss, terror, and love–the elements of a good horror story or a supernatural legend.
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We Need Diverse Books…and Let’s Not Stop There
Yes, yes, we need diverse books. We need books with black kids and brown kids, trans kids and gay kids, poor kids and not-so-poor kids, able-bodied kids and kids with disabilities. Kids of all kinds. I’m there, I promise.
But. But.
What happens next? What happens when the art is created and the words are written? What happens when we’ve created the books that act as mirrors (so every kid can see him/her/theirself reflected in the pages) and windows (so every kid can experience what life is like for people who don’t look or sound or pray like him/her/them?)
I’m a little worried about this part.
When I tried talking with the principal of our local elementary school about the fact that my daughter will have been there six years and will graduate without learning a thing about the Civil Rights movement or the Underground Railroad or the suffragettes or Native American tribes in our state, he pointed me toward the school and classroom libraries and encouraged me to channel my activism into getting diverse books on those shelves. Okay, good, I can do that.
But. Are the books getting taken down? Are they getting read? If they are read, are they getting discussed? Are kids finding ways to apply what they read to their own lives?
When I ran a before-school books and breakfast club and we read and talked about Wonder, my kid could relate the way Auggie was treated to unkindness a classmate was suffering. When we read Marvin Redpost: Is He a Girl? and talked about stereotypes, another mom told me that her second grade daughter quickly got adept at spotting them.
But that was because we talked. We discussed. We engaged.
What happens without that context? What happens if you read Freedom Summer without talking more about the civil rights movement and its heroism and struggles and triumphs and ongoing challenges? What happens if you leave young readers knowing that a town would rather fill its swimming pool with concrete than let brown and black and white kids swim together–and that’s all that those kids end up learning?
Yes, we need diverse books. We need diverse curriculum too. (And diverse teachers in our classrooms!) And once we have the books, we need to talk about them. Discuss, argue, praise, weep, think. Think hard.
Diverse books can’t save the world. Diverse readers just might.
#WeNeedDiverseBooks
#WeNeedMoreThanDiverseBooks
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The Lost Subway Station of New York
The City Hall station–worse for wear, but still elegant today.
Mayor George B. McClellan (front, center) inspects the brand new subway.
In The Ring of Honor (third in the Secrets of the Seven series), our intrepid heroes Sam, Marty, and Theo must flee through the New York subway system and wind up here–in the City Hall station, the very first ever built in New York. When you think of New York’s subways, do you think grime–trash–rats–filth–delays and frustration? You should have been there in 1904, under tiled and vaulted ceilings, glowing skylights, and elegant chandeliers, lining up for your five-cent ticket.
The station is long since abandoned (the curving platform is too small for today’s trains) but occasionally opens for tours. Wish I could have taken one!
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews