Frieda Wishinsky is the author of two new books for kids, How to Become an Accidental Genius, with Elizabeth MacLeod, and the forthcoming picture book How Emily Saved the Bridge: The Story of Emily Warren Roebling and the Building of the Brooklyn Bridge. Wishinsky has written more than 70 books, and she lives in Toronto.
Q: Why did you decide to write a picture book biography of
Emily Warren Roebling?
A: I’m a New Yorker. I grew up in Manhattan and hardly ever,
as a kid, went to Brooklyn. I live in Toronto, and when we came back to visit,
I started to explore other boroughs. I love Brooklyn. I love the bridge—the
views are unbelievable. There’s something about that bridge.
There was a plaque about Emily Roebling, and I looked her
up. Her story is so amazing. There’s something profoundly smart about her, and
about the way she handled the men.
I’ve written about suffragettes before. Especially after the
election a lot of us are looking for women who are unsung. It was such a man’s
world. She had to go on a bridge in swooshing skirts, dealing with men all the
time, and she pulled it off. And then she became a lawyer! Unfortunately she
died a little after that. Her husband lasted into his 70s.
Q: What kind of research did you do to write the book, and
did you learn anything surprising about Emily or about the bridge?
A; I’m a huge fan of David McCullough. I own [his book] The
Great Bridge, and I owned another book, one of my favorites that he did, Brave
Companions. It profiled [Emily's husband] Washington Roebling and mentions Emily a lot, and he
does it in a story.
That’s my big thing—story is what we’re drawn to. I used
that [book] a lot. And there’s online material. Everybody refers to
McCullough’s work as the definitive work on the bridge.
I don’t feel my job is to write the definitive history of
anybody. I wrote two books on Einstein, kids’ books, and a writer wanted to
know if he was dyslexic. I’m not an expert. I like to make it accessible and
interesting and fast-paced, and give you a sense of time and place. I don’t
have to tell you what they ate for dinner.
Q: Did you find anything surprising?
A: I didn’t know that she became a lawyer, that she went to
Russia and attended the czar’s installation. She seemed interested in so many
things. She was a woman of her times and ahead of her time, and she pulled it
off in a way that didn’t antagonize the people she had to cope with. It’s one
of the main reasons I like her.
Q: What do you hope kids take away from Emily’s story?
A: I always think of a show years ago where famous people
would come back and see what happened to what they did. That bridge continues
to stand. There’s something almost mythological about it. Like the Empire State
Building. Certain places go beyond what they do. New York has a lot of bridges,
but the Brooklyn Bridge is the first one we think of.
There’s something amazing about believing in something,
seeing it through, and having the patience to weather the inevitable blows that
come along…
Q: You also have another new book out, How to Become
an Accidental Genius. What can you tell us about that book?
A: It’s the fourth book I’ve written with my co-author,
Elizabeth MacLeod. Our first book was about the history of food. We’ve done
these big projects together. We figure out a topic and if it’s accepted we have
an even number of chapters [to write]. She’s more detail-oriented; I’m more
big-picture. We balance each other well…
What I love about it is the persistence—people think they’re
looking for one thing and then they say, Oh, look what I made! Velcro is in
there. The inventor worked on it for years. Nobody knew what to do with it
until they started to use it on astronaut suits. Post-it notes are in there.
Some are not as well known. It’s about being observant and being flexible. I
really admire those qualities.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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