Candace Fleming on"The Lincolns"
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-- School Library Journal, 07/26/2009
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Photo: Scott Fleming |
It’s almost a disservice to call The Lincolns a scrapbook—there’s some serious scholarship in there. How do you go about researching your nonfiction books?
I think of it as an adventure. You never know where you’re going to go. I start with a list of nosy questions. They get real personal. My favorite question for any subject is, “Did they believe in God?” In what way? Were they members of churches? I also ask a lot of questions about their childhood. What kind of students were they? And I don’t want to know if they were A students, I want to know if teachers had problems with them, if, say, they didn’t show their work on a math problem. What did they wear to school? Are there report cards? I’m always looking for a visual. My readers are really interested in that. Invariably what you discover are more questions.
What intrigued you about Mary?
With Mary Lincoln I wondered why she was sent to boarding school, and that led me to find out she had a terrible relationship with her stepmother. Why? What did her brothers and sisters, her cousins say? And that’s how I found this wonderful story that her father relayed to a friend, that as a 14-year-old she got up before the sun and raced down the street to go to poetry class, and the watchman thought she was eloping! He said something like, “I didn’t know anything but love could make a girl move so fast.” I think that said a lot about the kind of student Mary was.
Did you plan on covering both Abraham and Mary when you started?
I hadn’t intended to do Mary but I kept bumping into her. A lot of what we know of the Lincolns is from the ‘20s and ‘30s, that poor Abraham was saddled with the fate of the Union and he had a shrew for a wife. But that was not what I encountered in my research. I was irritated that history hadn’t given her a fair shake.
How did you come up with the idea of scrapbooking for biographies?
I heard a talk by [University of Washington professor] Eliza Dresang on how we’ve created a new generation of readers in this digital age, readers who are used to getting information in little tidbits. On a computer screen, and even on TV, the news has those tickers crawling across the bottom—you’ve got five or more things on a screen at once. Eliza contends that this is not bad, just different. We need to think about texts that speak to these new readers. Additionally I was thinking about historical literacy, that nonfiction should have source notes, and how can we incorporate visuals, historical visuals.
I think if a kid can read just one interesting true story and learn something then I’ve done my work. And maybe they’ll flip to the back and find a picture of the Lincolns’ dog. And if they read three or four entries, then what they’re doing is like real historians, taking a piece here and there and putting together a puzzle, drawing their own conclusions. And once you make your own connections, you own it. It’s far different from a traditional biography, which is “This is what I think, take my word for it.”
Is your next book in scrapbook format?
The scrapbook format also gives you the opportunity to add stories and quotes that traditional biographies might not have room for. It works well for certain lives. I’m working now on a book about Amelia Earhart—there’s new scholarship about the search for her—and that’s not going to be a scrapbook, but it won’t be a traditional biography either.
Are you a scrapbooker yourself?
No. I have friends who are, and I admire them, but I sure don’t do it. I love organizing other people’s lives, but my own is a big mess. My friends look at my photo collection, which is in a big pile in no particular order in an old trunk, and they say, “When you get old you won’t remember what this picture is.” Well, if I don’t remember I’ll make something up. I can always make up some story.
You’ve had a lot of practice making up stories.
Yes, I was a good storyteller even as a kid, just none of them were true! I learned that people would believe all kinds of things if you gave them really good detail. I told my second-grade teacher about our trip to Paris using details from Madeline. I told her I was wearing a yellow hat that blew off when we were on the Eiffel tower. My teacher called my mom to see if she could share pictures of our trip and of course we didn’t have any.
The great thing about her was that she didn’t get upset. She helped me write my stories down and share them with the class. She really encouraged me to write.
Another teacher introduced you to the word "cornucopia" and you thought it sounded delicious. Do you have any other favorite words?
I love the word "flummox." I still love "cornucopia." I like "flabbergasted." "Whooped" has a good sound to it. I was pawing through the dictionary reading for some good words and came across the word "doodlesack," for carrying your bagpipes in. What a funny word! It sounds almost dirty. Kids would love that word.
You read the dictionary?
Yes, I read the dictionary. You must think I’m such a nerd. I love my Roget’s Thesaurus too. I love the thin paper. That’s why I write books, I guess.
Do you read other children’s books?
I read a lot of children’s books. Right now I’m reading Kate DiCamillo’s new book, The Magician’s Elephant (Candlewick, 2009), which comes out in September. I read The Hunger Games (Scholastic, 2008), too. I never thought The Lincolns would make it past the first round of Battle of the (Kids') Books because it was nonfiction. When it came up against Hunger Games I said, “Even I would vote for Hunger Games!”
If you could write only one more biography, who would it be about?
Barack Obama. I’m from Illinois! I can write about all the great presidents from Illinois. Then I’m going to conduct those personal interviews myself. It would be nice to talk to a living subject.
If someone were to make a Candace Fleming scrapbook biography, what would be in it?
There would be a lot of stuff about my kids. Why would anybody want to read about me? I suppose there would be bits and pieces of manuscripts, my house is full of them. My friends, they’re really important. Biographies are about people. Who did I know, who did I love, who was I a friend to. My parents, my sisters, you could put in my ex-husband, my sons. My new partner. I think it would be sort of dull. Candy sits in her office a lot. She reads the dictionary. I think it’s a great life, but a lot of people might think it was a little mild. But that’s OK.
