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Reading Between the Facts
Don’t you just love it when a story comes to life? When you are reading something and you can smell the sooty aromas, hear the grinding gears of a new invention, taste the tang of tart pie? And when, long after you’ve put a book down, you find yourself wondering about the characters? But that’s fiction, right? A story that wraps you up and carries you away.
Wait, what about fact-filled books that transport you like that? When I looked at this month’s book list, packed with techy inventions and their nerdy inventors, a story that transported me was the last thing I expected. Physical science isn’t my thing, so I gritted my teeth anticipating some dull, dry reading.
Boy was I wrong. Flying Machines: How the Write Brothers Soared had me so hooked I convinced my aerospace engineer husband he had to read it (sidenote: he was impressed with the accuracy of the content). Eureka! Poems About Inventors drew me through periods of history I had never cared about. And then there’s Isaac The Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d which made me pondering how light works, I mean really think about the physics of it. A week later I found myself Googling “Newton’s Laws of Motion because I wanted to actually understand them – not just memorize them. How did this book do this to me?
I had to know.
So I did what every good writer does, I studied the words on the page. I looked at how Mary Losure cast stories, how she used sentences, how she arranged paragraphs, and how she constructed chapters that draw me in. And then I noticed something.
Writing Between the Facts
Mary Losure had written a lot between the facts. When you research a historical figure, you only have so much information. From the level of detail included (like the child’s drawings found in the house where Isaac grew up) it is obvious that this author dug and dug and dug until she found gold. But even a gold nugget won’t reflect light unless it is polished and placed in just the right position – in this case it shone a spotlight on Isaac’s childhood attributes. Losure had to bridge the gaps between the facts.
I’m not saying she falsified facts. No, through clearly-stated, careful conjecture, she brilliantly brought her readers into the world of inquiry.
“Far in the future, a child’s drawings would be found scratched in the farmhouse’s soft stone walls: a windmill, a church, a figure with a spurred boot. It was clear the child who drew them was bright and imaginative. The pictures had been hidden by layers of plaster for many years. The people who found them wondered if the drawings had been made by Isaac. It was easy to imagine him scratching away, unnoticed by anybody in the busy household.” Page 5, The Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d
Once I noticed that, I turned my mental search engine on, pulled out my wet-erase markers and transparency paper. I got to work. I wanted to ferret out all of the hard facts on a page, find the gaps between them, and see how Losure bridged them. Laying the transparency paper over a page allowed me to mark up the page without leaving a mark in the book.
I highlighted the obvious facts in green, qualifying words in red, and passages I wasn’t sure about in yellow.
Page 5, Isaac The Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d
Cool! Working my way through the book, I found lots of examples:
- She presented us with quotes from texts he read: “In his book The Mysteries of Nature and Art, there were instructions for making: A Water Clock …” page 31
- She admitted we don’t know but presented evidence: “No one today can know exactly how Isaac and his friends spent their time, but the list Isaac made …” page 55
- She referenced oral history: “To this day, people tell an old familiar story …” page 122
I learned lots of writing moves from Mary Losure that day. And as a bonus, the next time I read a fact-filled text, you can be sure my mind will read right between the facts – that’s an skill for every reader needs to hone.
—–
By Heather L. Montgomery
Heather L. Montgomery writes for kids who are WILD about animals. She reads and writes while high in a tree, standing in a stream, or perched on a mountaintop boulder. www.HeatherLMontgomery.com
The O.O.L.F Files
For the Out of Left Field (O.O.L.F) post, let’s look at inventions gone wrong.
Some inventions are completely pointless, like shoe umbrellas and the car exhaust grill : http://www.complex.com/style/2013/05/25-inventions-that-are-completely-pointless/air-conditioned-shoes
Inventions aren’t always used the way they were intended. Read how a soybean fertilizer became Agent Orange and why the Wright brothers regretted creating airplanes:
http://bigthink.com/laurie-vazquez/6-scientists-who-regret-their-greatest-inventions
Time shares 50 of the worst inventions, including pay toilets, DDT and hair in a can:
http://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/completelist/0,29569,1991915,00.html
And then there are always human errors… To read true tales of technological disasters, check out Steven Casey’s Set Phasers on Stun.
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We are thrilled to have on the Mixed Up Files today two authors with new middle grade books featuring awesome girls in sports! Welcome to J.H. Diehl, whose TINY INFINITIES came out on May 8th, and Laura Shovan, whose TAKEDOWN releases on June 19th.
TINY INFINITIES: When Alice’s dad moves out, leaving her with her troubled mother, she does the only thing that feels right: she retreats to her family’s old Renaissance tent in the backyard, determined to live there until her dad comes home. In an attempt to keep at least one part of her summer from changing, Alice focuses on her quest to swim freestyle fast enough to get on her swim team’s record board. But summers contain multitudes, and soon Alice meets an odd new friend, Harriet, whose obsession with the school’s science fair is equal only to her conviction that Alice’s best stroke is backstroke, not freestyle. Most unexpected of all is an unusual babysitting charge, Piper, who is mute—until Alice hears her speak. A funny and honest middle-grade novel, this sharply observed depiction of family, friendship, and Alice’s determination to prove herself—as a babysitter, as a friend, as a daughter, as a person—rings loud and true.
TAKEDOWN: Mikayla is a wrestler; when you grow up in a house full of brothers who are die-hard mat heads, it’s in your DNA. She even has a wrestling name: Mickey. Some people don’t want a girl on the team. But that won’t stop her. She’s determined to work hard, and win.
Lev is determined too–he’s going to make it to the state championship. He’s used to training with his two buddies as the Fearsome Threesome. But at the beginning of sixth grade, he’s paired with a new partner—a girl. This better not get in the way of his goal.
Mickey and Lev work hard together, and find a way to become friends. But at States, there can only be one winner.
This warmhearted, engaging novel by the author of the highly praised The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary explores competition among athletes, how it influences family and friendships, and what happens when one girl wants to break barriers in a sport dominated by boys.
TINY INFINITIES centers on a swimmer and TAKEDOWN features wrestlers. What inspired you to write about these sports? What was hard and what was fun about doing a deep dive into them?
Laura: I’m a recovering wrestling mom. My son wrestled for many years. During his practices and tournaments, I would sit in the bleachers and write in my notebook – little poems and sketches about what I observed on and off the mat. When my son moved on from the sport, I wasn’t ready to leave it behind. I still wanted to understand what it means to compete one-on-one, with no equipment other than your body, your brain, and your training. I needed to think through youth sports, and how competing at a high level affects not only the young athlete, but their entire family.
The hard part? By the time I was ready to write TAKEDOWN, it had been several years since my son hung up his wrestling boots. I had to relearn the sport and that was definitely a deep dive. I interviewed coaches, athletes, and wrestling parents, went to competitions, and watched hours of documentaries and tournaments on YouTube. The interviews were my favorite part. I love hearing people’s stories as I research a book. I made some good friends in the process.
Jean: In TINY INFINITIES, I wanted thirteen-year-old Alice to have an activity and a place to go outside her family. And I wanted her to have a goal she was seriously passionate about besides her goal to reunite her family. It needed to be a summer activity, because fireflies also play a key role in the story, and the season for fireflies in summer. For me, the book is partly about how a sport like swimming can help a kid through tough times.
Like Laura, I’m the mom of two kids who participated in the sport I wrote about. My son and daughter swam for a community pool summer team for more than a decade. I married into a swimming family, and in fact I’m the only person in two generations who did not grow up swimming competitively. We have age group, high school and college swimmers, water polo players, and one of my sisters-in-law trained to swim with the Argentine Olympic team. So I guess you could say TINY INFINITIES is my contribution to a family tradition.
The hard part, for me, was that Alice turns into a backstroker, and I don’t swim backstroke. Fortunately, I had plenty of family members to consult. I did lots of research, too, including – like Laura – reviewing YouTube videos, especially to watch backstroke races and tutorials in backstroke ‘starts’ and ‘turns’. The fun part was writing about what it’s like to participate in summer swim meets. I also loved getting to write in detail about something I’d never accomplished myself, that is, winning a backstroke race. And (minor spoiler alert) I loved writing about what it felt like for Alice to achieve her goal in the sport.
There seems to be so much pressure on girls these days to be “Instagram-ready,” and many aspire to a particular kind of stereotypical beauty and glamour. You’re showcasing a different type of girl. Did you think about the stereotypes that are imposed on girls and how to respond to that in your book?
Laura: One of my main characters, Mickey, is the first girl on an all-boy wrestling team. As a female athlete competing in a traditionally male, contact sport, Mickey has to confront deeply held beliefs about whether girls have the physicality, ability, and emotional strength to step on the mat and face a boy. It was important to me to give Mickey some female friends to talk this through with (her two older brothers – both wrestlers – help too). The character of Kenna, Mickey’s best friend and wrestling partner, is more aware than Mickey that middle school girls are expected to conform to feminine stereotypes. Her decision to walk away from the sport is devastating for Mickey.
I also wanted to look at societal beliefs about male athletes. The other main character in TAKEDOWN, Lev, sees wrestling as an important part of his identity. But when the coach assigns him to be Mickey’s training partner, Lev starts to question stereotypes too, especially around boys and toughness.
Jean: In my book, Alice’s new best friend, Harriet, is entirely engaged by her interests in math and science. Harriet enjoys reciting the first three hundred digits of pi and is laser-focused on creating a winning project for next year’s school science fair. She’s humble about being super-advanced in math, has an eclectic curiosity for the science of the world around her, and eventually leads an experiment to recreate firefly bioluminescence in a makeshift lab. Harriet is not entirely oblivious to feminine stereotypes around her, but she doesn’t allow them to define her – she has no time for them. I wanted to contrast Harriet with Alice, who has grown away from a group of friends more influenced by conventional stereotypes. I think Harriet gives Alice some sense of freedom to just be herself.
Friendship is an important part of both books, as well, and is such an important part of kids’ lives in the middle grade years. What was your goal in featuring these friendships?
Laura: My goal was to reflect the experience of moving out of the elementary school bubble and into junior high, a transition which can strain friendships. There are new kids to meet, new academic pressures, and a busier schedule as students travel between classes. Suddenly, the friends kids spent most of their elementary school day with are pulled in different directions. Both Mickey and Lev put so much time into their training and competition schedule, it’s easy for their non-wrestling friends to feel neglected. I wanted to show how my main characters struggle to form a good partnership with each other, even as they each fight to keep old friendships intact.
Jean: In my book, Alice makes three unlikely new friends. The first is Piper, a four-year-old girl who has lost the ability to speak and to hear language; the second Owen, Piper’s half-brother, an aspiring sushi chef who’s spending his summer being bounced around among relatives; the third is Harriet, who is new to the swim team and also thirteen. Unlike Alice, who has a talent for connecting to people, Harriet’s social skills are kind of like a stereo tuner with its treble and bass out of balance. Over the course of Alice’s life-changing summer, she influences her new friends in a profound way, and is influenced by them. My goal was to characterize how the good friendships we make – sometime the most unlikely friendships we make – can help us to grow up.
Thank you, Laura and Jean, for sharing your wonderful stories with us!
Kate Hillyer was a high school soccer player, including one ill-fated game against Mia Hamm. She runs, writes, and raises her three kids in Washington, D.C. You can find her online at katehillyer.com, and on Twitter as @SuperKate. She also blogs at The Winged Pen.
