Jeannine Atkins

Linda Cotta Brennan is running an interview with me today about Anne Hutchinson’s Way on her blog . http://lcbrennan.blogspot.com/. It was so nice to be asked by this great writer, generous teacher, and all around gracious person. And she’s kind of from the right state, too. I’m a proud resident of Massachusetts, but we’ve all got our bits of shameful past; while I’m glad to say a statue of Anne Hutchinson with a daughter now stands in front of our State House, a few hundred years ago she was told to get out of the Mass. Bay Colony or else. She was a little too free with words. Anne, husband, children, and supporters hiked and canoed to Aquidneck Island of the welcoming state of Rhode Island, where Linda lives.

Linda asked me questions I’d never been asked before. If you’ve ever been interviewed, you know how great that is. If you want to know more about Anne Hutchinson or writing picture book biographies, please check it out!

I got a call from the wonderful school librarian in the town next to mine. My mother-in-law used to volunteer there in Deerfield Elementary (how cool is it to have a librarian mother-in-law?), and Bette Schmidt’s kind, soft-spoken husband is our dogs’ vet: that’s how small-town/small-world we are. Bette told me that Michael Dooling, who illustrated two of my picture books, was coming with his wife Jane to do a presentation and I would I care to show, up, too?

It was a thrill to see them. According to Michael’s website, http://www.michaeldooling.com/ , History through Picture Books, he has visited 600 schools, illustrated 50 books, and sold a million books. I’ve got some work ahead of me. Meanwhile, we had a great lunch at Channing Bete, a local business which sponsors an annual author or illustrator’s visit. They kindly arranged trees to blossom and Mike got only the politest gawking appearing in his 18th century garb.



Then I got to watch Mike in action. The fifth and sixth graders who came in fidgety from a spring morning spent doing state-mandated tests quickly quieted down, and seemed enthralled when Mike began mixing blue and yellow to make green. Some volunteers helped him finish a portrait.

Michael showed slides, including many from MARY ANNING AND THE SEA DRAGON (he said he was nervous with the author, listening, but he was awesome.) Michael talked about the months he spends researching before beginning to sketch, and how, once he begins to paint, he steps back every few minutes to see if something’s wrong, then corrects it. Mistakes are part of the process. The students asked great questions about shading, perspective and, never mind that they haven’t begun middle school, good choices for studying art at the college level. One asked, "Of all the people you've drawn, which would you most like to have been?" The school principal beamed. Afterward one boy came over to me and said, “I know today is supposed to be about illustrating, but I’m not so good at drawing. How do YOU get your ideas?” I gave a quick answer about following what makes you curious, then he told me about how he’d wondered about how turtles breathe, told me what he’d learned, and did he maybe have the beginning of a story? Absolutely.



When I wrote the ms. for ANNE HUTCHINSON’S WAY it was my dream, and luckily my editor’s, too, to have a second book illustrated by Michael. He and I have worked separately, but we’re huge fans of each others’ work and of Farrrar, Straus and Giroux, which has kept Mary Anning and the Sea Dragon in print for nine years. I’m mulling over what I hope will become another collaboration.

Thank you Becky Levine beckylevine for the review on your blog of Anne Hutchinson’s Way! I blush.

And I’m going to respond to some of the thoughts in your other post today about ways to lure lovers of fiction to enjoy more of what nonfiction can offer. It’s not just your son, Becky, whose allegiance is to certain library shelves. I asked my college students recently about who liked nonfiction, and maybe half an unenthusiastic, polite arm was raised. So many have unhappy memories of textbooks. History seemed fact after fact, not argument and emotion. It seemed that way to me, and sometimes people are surprised, knowing that most of my books draw from the past, that I never took one history course in college. Instead, I learned about history from novels and the background reading I did for them. Those people seemed truly alive.

Now when I write about real people from the past, I use fictional techniques, mainly, inventing dialogue, which I note in an afterword. Anne Hutchinson was famous in her time – or notorious – so those who could write wrote about her. ( Of course some of those recorded views were not my views. Particularly that of Governor Winthrop who didn’t hesitate to say that woman was in league with the devil. So I weigh and interpret).

And even with quite a bit of information, what’s missing is what was said at the kitchen table or at bedtimes. Almost always missing is what the children said and did. We have a transcript of Anne’s trial, but no notes of what her children looked like when they heard her mother would go to jail. I use what’s known as a framework, then imagine my way in. It’s the kind of thing we do with friends: listen well, then take a step past the circumstances to feel our way closer to their hearts.

You can read more about nonfiction on Anastasia Suen's Monday roundup at http://6traits.wordpress.com/2008/02/25/nonfiction-monday-round-up-5/

Thank you to the ALA and in particular the Feminist Task Force of the American Library Association for choosing ANNE HUTCHINSON’S WAY as one of the books honored as a 2008 Amelia Bloomer Project Recommended Title. http://libr.org/ftf/bloomer.html I think much of what Anne Hutchinson said a few hundred years ago matters just as much today. I’m thrilled that my picture book about her was chosen as a book that “encourages and inspires girls to be smart, brave, and proud.”

I'm so glad for the ALA's recognition that feminism matters and women’s struggle for equal rights is far from over. Yes, we’re forever grateful to Amelia Bloomer and others that we can live without having to wear dresses, hoops, and corsets. But I think we all know that in many circles, women have to work extra hard to get heard or be treated fairly. I appreciate the challenge the ALA’s Feminist Task Force puts out, along with the list, to publish more books featuring strong women and particularly those who come from non-western, non-white traditions. We know the stories are around.

Last week I visited Anne Bussler’s fifth grade class at Conway (MA) Grammar School to talk about writing and Anne Hutchinson’s Way. We were going to meet in the restored schoolhouse by their school, and since the winter air was in the twenties, I was kind of wishing for a snow-length woolen dress and long cape. Instead I dressed in layers and tried to forget those Laura Ingalls Wilder tales of hovering by wood stoves. How did those children learn anything? How could they think of anything but cold hands and feet? Anyway,
here’s the beautiful sight I drove up to.




It turned out that Grace’s dad had gotten the wood stove burning well and the room was perfectly cozy. They had lots of good questions and how can you not love a fifth grader whose favorite authors are Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain? Wish I’d had time to get to know her.

Here’s the schoolhouse in warm weather 1904. Love the bow ties and lunch pails.





And here we are (thanks to Paul Franz/Greenfield Recorder):

Yay! My picture book, Anne Hutchinson’s Way, was named one of 2007's “Top Ten Religion Books for Youth” in the current issue of Booklist. I'm very curious about what others are on the list, but you need to subscribe to this ALA publication to view it online. I guess I'll have to stop at my library!

I am enjoying Linda Lear’s biography of Beatrix Potter, maybe especially because she shows a less devastating take on her childhood than others have reported. Her father, Lear states, shared her interest in art, and really, Beatrix was quite happy with her motley animal companions, and with the London Natural History museum nearby, did she really need formal schooling? There are
snippets from Potter’s early journals (translated from her secret code). I like knowing that Potter thought she came up with her best ideas in chapel services. It’s cool that she discovered and drew a rare pine cone fungus one day before she wrote her famous letter to her former governess’s child, Noel, the picture letter that became Peter Rabbit. I like knowing that her interest in the natural world pretty much stopped at the galaxy. In her journal she mentioned that aside from enjoying a meteor, she didn’t feel the need to pursue a knowledge of the sky and stars. “It is more than enough that there should be forty thousand named and classified funguses.”

But there are too many full days, and, let’s face it, too many boring ones. Linda Lear doesn’t follow the edict that just because she dredged something out from extensive research, it should be reported, but the bulky bio format doesn’t encourage cutting to the chase. I can take a fat biography on vacation, but… thank goodness research has made me good at skimming. I have no problem sliding over draggy sentences. I can sniff a genealogical flashback coming and think: Do I need to know about Potter’s great grandmother? No, thanks.

It’s good to have some kind of fabric to hold the gems together – other than saying “Isn’t that cool” and getting list-like. But limit that day-to-day reportage I like biographers who select material the way a fiction writer choses details: it should be relevant to a theme. That’s why I often prefer biographies written for children, where I often find relevant, fascinating information, and polished prose all between one set of covers. Hey, life is short.

But it's all about audience. Yesterday we had a five year old guest, and my friend asked me to read her Anne Hutchinson's Way, which I knew was too old for her. We started out, me cutting my own words, but it soon moved too me answering her, "Where is the mother?" "Where is the mother now?" In a way that is what the picture book is about. Though I did want to get in a bit about religion and all.

It's odd writing a picture book, because you're so involved in research, choosing words, changing those words, arguing about a title, looking at the illustrator's dummies, looking at revised dummies, then Michael Dooling's gorgeous finished artwork.... and then there's a long wait. About four years ago I lugged home piles of biographies about Anne Hutchinson and histories of the Puritan era in early Massachusetts (when it was essentially Boston) and Rhode Island (when it was a refuge for any and all who didn't fit elsewhere -- yay, R.I.!) and Long Island -- before there was a Hutchinson Parkway, there was a Hutchinson River, and before that river was named, there was Anne herself, mother of 18, midwife, preacher, renegade -- talk about finding balance in your life!

Anyway, there's that total immersion -- how do you take this complex life and put it into a 32 page book? How do you make religious freedom and freedom of speech interesting to an eight-year-old? What do you do when a household holds 18 or so people -- should I name every brother and sister and how? All these kinds of things, then years pass.

The book will come out next month, and a few reviews are coming in. Here are some quotes that made me very happy from Kirkus Reviews to appear in August.

"Atkins offers a beautifully produced and constructed fictionalized tale of the preacher and midwife Anne Hutchinson, told from the point of view of Susanna, Hutchinson’s youngest child until they arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1634...Atkins tells a complex story of faith and freedom with clarity and strength."