Up for Discussion- Biography for the 21st Century

For me, deciding on the subject for a Biography always begins with curiosity. Something about the person makes me curious, and that makes me want to find out what forces shaped his or her actions. Of course, curiosity is only the first step in the writing process. Before proceeding with a new book idea, I have to believe that many young readers will also be interested in the person—enough, at least, to justify the book's publication.

I don't necessarily have to like my subjects in order to write about them. There were many things about Thomas Jefferson and Charles A. Lindbergh that I found questionable when I delved deeply into their lives—specifically, Jefferson's unwavering acceptance of the prevailing Southern attitude toward slavery and Lindbergh's admiration for the accomplishments of German aviation and, by extension, the Nazi regime. Adolf Hitler, whose biography I recently completed, struck me as a terrifying combination of personal charisma and insane hatreds. But I felt these men were worth writing about because their actions made a lasting impact on human history. Consequently, I think it is important for young people to know about them, if only—as in the case of Hitler—to be on guard against similarly dangerous leaders who may arise in the future.

Writers walk a tightrope in attempting to portray a destructive figure like Hitler. There's always the temptation to resort to labels, defining the person as evil from the start. But that doesn't help readers to gain a clearer understanding of how he or she got that way. Instead, I prefer to follow the time-honored piece of writing advice to "show, not tell." As young people read about Hitler's rise to power and his clearly stated plans to conquer all of Europe and to wipe the Jews from the face of the earth, I hope they will feel the evil nature of Hitler's deeds without my having to spell it out. I hope, too, that their reading will provoke discussions as to where and when he could have been stopped along the way.

The freedom to portray figures like Hitler, Lindbergh, and Jefferson in an honest, full-bodied manner is one of the major changes that have occurred in the way biographies for young people are written today. Whereas a person's negative qualities were whitewashed or simply ignored in years past, especially in series like the "Childhood of Famous Americans" (Aladdin), today writers are encouraged to include the subjects' weaknesses along with their strengths in an attempt to achieve a more rounded portrait. This has resulted in books like Russell Freedman's biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (Clarion, 1990), in which Roosevelt's longtime friend and mistress, Lucy Mercer, is openly and clearly acknowledged.

But biographers who write for young people are generally careful not to abuse their new freedom. Unlike some adult biographers, they do not sensationalize their subjects' peccadilloes to attract attention. For example, whereas there have been countless adult biographies of Bill Clinton that devoted virtually all of their pages to his sexual excesses, I doubt if any children's biographer would take that route. Those tendencies would undoubtedly have their place, since any account of Clinton's impeachment would be incomplete without them. But chances are they would receive less space than a discussion of Clinton's positive qualities: his intelligence, his empathy for the problems of ordinary people, and the breadth of his worldview.

This is only one of the differences that distinguish young people's biographies today from many of their adult counterparts. Another obvious difference is the emphasis on the visual in juvenile biographies for all age groups. Young adult biographies once followed the illustration pattern that still prevails in the adult field: namely, a book composed largely of text, with several six- or eight-page inserts of photographs or prints. But ever since the publication of Russell Freedman's Newbery-winning biography of Abraham Lincoln (Clarion, 1987), prophetically subtitled "A Photobiography," a greater emphasis has been put on illustration and design in biographies for young people. For example, there are 65 black-and-white photographs in my biography of Charles A. Lindbergh, 85 in the biography of Hitler. And they are dispersed throughout the book rather than being clumped together in one or two crowded inserts.

There's been much discussion in recent years of the need for better and more complete information about the author's research sources in all types of children's nonfiction. This is probably an inevitable reaction to the informational books of an earlier era that often included only a skimpy index and a brief list of books for further reading. Now even the shortest nonfiction picture book is expected to contain not only an index but a detailed list of sources as well.

Authors have responded in various ways to the call for more specific attributions. Some have utilized formal footnotes, others have settled for vastly expanded bibliographies. I've employed a variety of methods in my books. Wherever possible, I try to work the origin of the material into the text proper, since I hate as a reader to have to constantly turn to the back of the book to locate the sources. In my opinion, there's no better way to lose the forward momentum of the narrative. For the same reason, I put the source of each illustration after the caption instead of listing it on a separate page at the back.

Besides weaving sources into the text, I also write a bibliographical essay that traces the path I followed in my research. My hope is that this will be helpful to young readers when they have to construct their own research paths for term papers and other classroom writings. Following the essay, which appears at the back of the book, is a chapter-by-chapter listing of specific sources, with particular emphasis on those I wasn't able to weave into the text.

While thorough research and detailed attributions of sources are essential elements in any serious nonfiction work, they will go for naught if the author fails to employ a lively, well-paced writing style laced with revealing anecdotes. Writers must also be able to distill a vast amount of primary and secondary source material into a form that their readers will find manageable. Sometimes I think this skill more than any other serves to distinguish writers of children's nonfiction from their adult counterparts. For example, the adult biographies of Hitler that I turned to most often in the course of my research were John Toland's 1372-page study, Adolf Hitler (Anchor), and Ian Kershaw's portrait, Hitler, whose two volumes (both Norton) total 1960 pages. By contrast, my biography of the dictator came in at 256 pages.

Nowhere is the need to distill stronger than in the fast-growing field of picture-book biography. This relatively new genre was pioneered by such authors and author-illustrators as Diane Stanley, David Adler, and Kathleen Krull. They and their perceptive editors recognized that readers aged seven or eight and beyond no longer rejected as "babyish" informational books published in a picture-book format. Accustomed to getting much of their information from television and the Internet, young readers now welcome nonfiction books, including biographies, that give as much or more space to illustrations as they do to the text.

Eager to try my hand at this type of book, I entered the field with brief biographies of several of the Founding Fathers—George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and, most recently, Benjamin Franklin. The positive responses I've gotten from readers as young as 7 and as old as 13 have been immensely gratifying. However, on a less happy note, I must admit that I've sometimes wondered if the acceptance of the books by older readers may also reflect a decline in reading ability, or an unwillingness to tackle longer books, written in greater depth.

Whatever the reasons for this acceptance, picture-book biographies are obviously here to stay. This makes it even more imperative for authors to master the technique of compressing vast amounts of complicated material into no more than 10 or 12 manuscript pages. For example, Benjamin Franklin's autobiography takes more than seven pages to cover his surreptitious departure from Boston at the age of seventeen, and his journey first to New York and then to Philadelphia in search of work as a printer. In my picture-book biography, The Amazing Life of Benjamin Franklin (Scholastic, 2000), I had to condense these decisive events into just three short paragraphs, while at the same time attempting to retain the spirit and flavor of Franklin's original.

Even though picture-book biographies must, by necessity, be shorter, my chief goals in writing them are the same as those that guide the writing of my longer books. Whether I'm portraying Benjamin Franklin or Charles Lindbergh or Adolf Hitler, I want first of all to engage and hold the attention of my readers. Then I want to leave them with a full and honest impression of the human being at the center of the book. This impression will inevitably be more condensed in picture-book biographies like the one of Franklin, more expansive in young adult biographies like those of Lindbergh and Hitler. But if I achieve my goals, both types of books will give readers a solid base of understanding the person that they can build on by reading more detailed adult biographies when they're older.

At this juncture in history, it seems to me that writing young people's biographies is very much a work-in-progress. In the future, I can imagine writers employing various innovative approaches in an attempt to achieve a more complete portrayal of their subjects. For example, a biography in book form might be planned and written in conjunction with computer software that would show the subject in action. Or perhaps a future biography of Thomas Jefferson, for example, will combine several different interpretations in a single book. These might include an adulatory study of Jefferson written by an unquestioning admirer; another view of the man as he might have been seen by his slaves; and a comprehensive overview that takes into account both his faults and his virtues.

The current generation of biographers, led by such eminent practitioners as Jean Fritz and Russell Freedman, has set new standards for solid research combined with imaginative insight into their subjects and the storytelling skills required to bring them to life. Now it will be fascinating to see where the next generation of biographers takes the field. Building on the accomplishments of the past, the possibilities for innovation are virtually endless, and endlessly exciting.