April 3

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 3, 1783: Washington Irving born.

Q&A with Heath Hardage Lee

Heath Hardage Lee is the author of the new book The League of Wives: The Untold Story of the Women Who Took On the U.S. Government to Bring Their Husbands Home from Vietnam. She also has written Winnie Davis: Daughter of the Lost Cause. She has worked in museum education, and she lives in Roanoke, Virginia.

Q: How did you learn about the women you wrote about in The League of Wives, and at what point did you decide to write this book?

A: Phyllis Galanti, the blond woman in the center of the cover, was a good friend of my mother’s. I knew her growing up, but didn’t know much about her. My first book was about Civil War women. I thought, I should talk to Phyllis about her activism in the Vietnam War, and then she died unexpectedly in 2015.

I was on a book tour about the first book, speaking at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. I’m always looking for hidden history about women. They said there’s something you need to see—Phyllis had donated her papers.

She had left [what was like] a treasure map. She was important, but Sybil Stockdale was where everything emanated from. Phyllis’s papers led me to Sybil Stockdale, and to the West Coast. I met with Sybil just before she passed away. Her sons were with us. I got permission to see her diary.

Between Phyllis’s papers, Sybil’s diary, and Jane Denton in Virginia Beach—her family gave me her diary and it led me to dozens of women who gave me papers, diaries, clothes for an exhibit [on the same topic as the book].

I’m a curator, also, and I thought, I’ve got to do something with this. I decided to do a book and an exhibit at the same time! It worked out, and we got through it. One person would lead to another. It took almost five years to do it.

Q: You focus on various women in the book, but the two major figures are Sybil Stockdale and Jane Denton. Why did you focus on them, and what do you see as their legacies today?

A: [It was important] to have a West Coast and an East Coast person. With naval bases, they tend to be on the coasts. There’s been so much wrong information about this group of women. The myth is that multiple people founded the National League of Families. It was Sybil Stockdale.

Sybil is probably my favorite character in the book. She’s such a strong character, so smart and capable. She would have been a great president. In another era, she could have been a rock star politician or diplomat. In this era, she was just as important, heading up the movement to [free] the POWs.

Jane Denton was the opposite of Sybil. She was a traditional, rule-bound person who had to fight hard to throw off the conventions of a military wife. She was more of a Southern woman taught to toe the line. Sybil was a New Englander, speaking out. It worked well to have people like Sybil and like Jane, who was more diplomatic and would smooth things over.

They all were worried their husbands could be harmed if they spoke out. They were all wary of speaking to the press. They said at the end that we are going to do whatever it takes, even speaking with peace activists.

Q: What were some of the surprises you found in your research?

A: Of course the coding of secret letters [they would write] was so cool. With the Stockdales, there are real details in her diary. I tried to give generalities—some in that generation are upset when you talk about specifics. I never knew any of that.

Some of the facts of the war, like the Gulf of Tonkin incident, were such a farce. They were used by Johnson to get into the war. I was born in ’69 and was never conscious of it. Our government under Johnson, what a total disaster. Johnson was a piece of work, but I didn’t know how much of one, how much of a disaster the planning and execution of the war were.

And that these women, none of them considered themselves feminists. It was considered a dirty word associated with communism and the left. They considered themselves human rights activists. 

But then it seeps in as they have more power. I wouldn’t say they evolve into feminists, but they became powerful independent women. It was not a question to them that they knew how to handle things, but they borrowed things from the [feminist] movement and from the civil rights movement.

You can’t project what you think. You’re the tour guide as a historian. I want them to be feminists and they aren’t—it was something I learned that’s more about myself, not to project your stuff on other people.

Q: What do you hope readers take away from the book?

A: I would like these women to be in the history books. They were so important and have never gotten credit. Even some of their husbands didn’t understand that they went over and above to get them out.

The fact that they organized a national group and had so much power—organizing as a group instead of as individual voices is effective. They got stationery, a bank account, and that legitimized them.

And giving them credit for the amazing thing they did, how their husbands would have died or wouldn’t have been rescued for a long time had the women not gone forward.

A lot of government officials are still trying to take credit for this. They have the point of view that the government did this. The government gave them a platform, but the women did this.

It changed the image of military wives—they’re not just passive, hosting parties. They’re powerful and smart and got things done.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: It’s always going to be about women. This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of these stories. There are tons of them. The next time is the ‘20s—something with World War I as the backdrop. It will have flappers and suffragists. I’m still working on it.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: The movie with Reese Witherspoon! It’s been optioned by Hello Sunshine and Fox 2000, and I’m an executive producer. We’re moving forward pretty quickly with that. It’s great to bring the story to another audience.

The exhibit opened March 1 in Richmond, Virginia, at the Virginia Museum of History and Culture. It will be there until September and then it’s going to West Coast venues including the Nixon Library. It’s important to have multiple platforms. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. This Q&A also appears on www.hauntinglegacy.com.

Q&A with Lydia Fitzpatrick

Lydia Fitzpatrick, photo by Grainger David

Lydia Fitzpatrick is the author of the new novel Lights All Night Long, which focuses on a Russian exchange student in Louisiana. Fitzpatrick's work has appeared in a variety of publications, including The O. Henry Prize Stories and The Best American Mystery Stories. She lives in Los Angeles.

Q: You note that your protagonist Ilya was originally supposed to be a minor character in the novel. Why did you end up making him the focus of the book?

A: Sadie was the protagonist of the novel’s first few incarnations (there have been many!), and Ilya was a minor character meant to capture her attention briefly.

I’m generally resistant to the mystification of the writing process (maybe the muse was more apt to sing pre-Internet?), but the moment Ilya appeared on the page did feel charged.

I normally write exposition long and scenes short, but the scene when he and Sadie met went on and on, it became unwieldy and awkward, because, I realized, I didn’t want Ilya to leave the story. I wanted to know what had brought him from Russia to Louisiana, who he’d left behind, and in exploring his past, I found the novel’s final incarnation.

Q: You already had some familiarity with Russia, but did you need to do much research to write the book?

A: I read extensively about Russia in the ‘90s and 2000s. Svetlana Alexievich’s oral histories and Arkady Babchanko’s One Soldier’s War were invaluable in giving a sense of the varied Russian experience of these years. I also use photos as a way to sink into my fictional worlds—and Donald Weber’s photos, especially the ones shot in Vorkuta, were my favorite portals.

I’ve visited Russia twice—in the mid ‘90s with my family, and in 2008 on a research trip—but the street view function on Google Maps was also an amazingly useful way to “visit” when I couldn’t actually afford to get myself to Russia.

There’s one town, especially, that served as an inspiration for Berlozhniki and that I virtually roamed for hours and hours. I know its statues and street signs, the coupons plastered in the grocery store windows, the sweeping steps of the Miner’s Palace of Culture, and that one road—my favorite—that passes an ancient izba and ends in a field.

Q: How was the novel's title chosen, and what does it signify for you?

A: On the surface, the refinery lights are a symbol of hope—Ilya’s hope and the vast and varied hopes of Russians in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. The lights are a bit of a mirage, though, and there’s heartbreak in that. The wealth, the glitz they signify is in Ilya’s backyard, but it couldn’t be further from his pocket.

Q: Did you know how the novel would end before you started writing it, or did you make changes along the way?

A: No, which is probably the origin of my bitterness towards the muse. I wrote several endings that did not work, and then I spent a good six months puzzling out the plot without actually writing a single word.

Not surprisingly, the origins of the issue with the ending were pretty far upstream, so once I did figure out how I wanted the novel to end, it took a lot of reworking in order to have that ending feel earned.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I actually just finished up a short story today; and writing it has been a sort of haven in the lead up to the novel’s publication. I’m also in the early stages of a second novel, but talking about novels in their incipient form is a bit like telling people what you want to name an unborn child—a bad idea. I will say, though, that the second novel is completely unrelated to Lights. 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

Q&A with Joe Kulka

Joe Kulka is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book Undercover Ostrich. His other books include The Christmas Coal Man and My Crocodile Does Not Bite. He teaches at the Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia.

Q: How did you come up with the idea for an ostrich attempting to go undercover?

A: I always have my sketchbook with me and one day just started drawing goofy looking birds. One kind of looked like an ostrich and I drew a fedora on him. It reminded me of a gumshoe detective from a bad 1940s crime movie, who of course works undercover.  

I immediately liked the idea and the way that sounded like a good book title. I went from there and played around with the silliness of something so large and obvious as an ostrich being able to blend into everyday surroundings.

Q: Did you work on the text first or the illustrations (or did you work on them simultaneously)?

A: It was a lot of back and forth. I drew a bunch of different birds that it would be fun to see the ostrich try to mimic. The text was the thread that helped me make sense of it all.

Q: How did you first get interested in writing and illustrating kids’ picture books?

A: I graduated from the University of the Arts in 1987 and had my portfolio geared towards medical/scientific illustration and editorial illustration.

As I was about a month away from graduation, Charles Santore came to visit our class and showed his work from his first foray into picture books, his version of Peter Rabbit. I was blown away and thought, “Well, too late to take a children’s illustration class now.”

Soon after graduation, I was lucky enough to get a job at a medical publisher’s filling in while one of their staff illustrators went on pregnancy leave. I was thrilled that someone was willing to pay me to draw but after my 11th spleen illustration I realized I didn’t want to do medical illustration forever.

I slowly began transitioning my portfolio from medical to children’s book illustration. It wasn’t until 2000 that I finally got my first children’s books to illustrate. I realized soon that I would like to write as well as illustrate. That took another seven years for that dream to come true when my first book as book author and illustrator, Wolf’s Coming!, was published.

Q: Who are some of your favorite picture book authors and illustrators?

A: Charles Santore is, in my opinion, the greatest living illustrator. How he has not won a Caldecott is beyond me. His work is gorgeous and he is an incredibly nice man. I love the work of David Weisner. Molly Idle is a fantastic illustrator and her Flora books are just a joy. Mark Pett’s work I greatly admire.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: Currently I am illustrating a book about holiday cookies fighting over which one is the best cookie. I have a few dummies of my own that I am shopping around and hope to hear good news on them soon.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Yep. Only you can prevent wildfires! For the past 15 years, I have been working with the USDA Forest Service illustrating all sorts of materials featuring national icons Woodsy Owl and Smokey Bear, including posters, memorabilia, and picture books on both.

And that I teach in the illustration department at Moore College of Art and Design in Philadelphia, the nation’s only all-women’s art college.

--Interview with Deborah Kalb

April 2

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
April 2, 1840: Emile Zola born.

Q&A with Natascha Biebow

Natascha Biebow is the author of the new picture book biography The Crayon Man: The True Story of the Invention of Crayola Crayons. She edits the work of other children's book authors at Blue Elephant Storyshaping, and she lives in London.

Q: Why did you decide to write a picture book biography of Edwin Binney?

A: I was taking a non-fiction writing course and needed a topic. One day, I was watching a Sesame Street show with my son. Multi-colored crayons spun out of a huge sorting machine into the stadium-style yellow and green Crayola boxes. I was fascinated.

Today, children are given crayons almost as soon as they are born. But in 1900s, instead of colorful crayons, markers, paper and computers, children had a slate, clay and chalk. At home, they played with simple or homemade toys.

I imagined that, if you were a child in 1903 when the first box of Crayola crayons was made, suddenly your world would have been transformed. You could draw in bright colors that wouldn’t smudge and your drawing would last a long time. Wow! I set out to find out more about Edwin Binney, their Crayola crayons’ creator.

What I discovered is that Binney’s mission was to create safe, bright and affordable crayons so that children everywhere would have access to drawing in color.

I wanted to create a read-aloud story about the inventor of a toy that I loved as a child and about color, innovation and creativity.  

Q: What kind of research did you do to write the book, and did you learn anything especially surprising? 

A: I did a lot of research about the story of the invention of Crayola crayons as well as the extended Binney family, company history, background, production and composition of crayons, Binney’s home town in Old Greenwich, Connecticut (his house still stands), and the general historical time period around 1903, when the first eight Crayola crayons were sold. 

My sources included books, articles, videos, and websites, but particularly useful were librarians! I tracked down Binney’s great-granddaughter and interviewed her. I collaborated with Crayola and went to see the factory in Easton, Pennsylvania. I also visited the archives at the Smithsonian Museum of American History in Washington, D.C., where the company records are held.

I think the fact that I found most surprising was how much Binney loved nature and how he brought bouquets of flowers and produce from his garden in to the Crayola offices and factory to inspire his team.

Also, I was amazed how the Crayola crayons are still made in much the same way today, in Easton, Pennsylvania, as they were in 1903, though some of the new machinery produces crayons at a jaw-dropping speed – it is really cool! 

Q: What do you think Steven Salerno's illustrations added to the book? 

A: Steven Salerno has masterfully captured the story, which is all about color! The book starts out mono-color, with lots of tones of black and gray, because Edwin Binney worked producing carbon black, a substance used in printing inks, shoe polish and electric street lamps in the 1900s.

As Binney embarks on his quest to develop the Crayola crayons, the pictures show a gradual transition to color, until finally, at the end of the book when Crayola invents even more crayon colors, kids everywhere are empowered to draw anything!

I also admire how Steven Salerno captured Binney’s world so accurately, while at the same time infusing it with fun and verve. Between us, we referenced everything possible so as to create a historically accurate version of this special story. If you’re interested in Steven’s fascinating process, you can read more about it on his blog. 

Q: What do you hope kids take away from the book?

A: Edwin Binney had a knack for listening and making what people needed. He loved nature and it was the inspiration for the bright colors he wanted to create in the crayons. Still now, we are learning so much from nature!

Binney was also a generous entrepreneur who gave back to his community. His flair for innovation, creativity, persistence and ability to listen are all attributes that future generations will need to make our world a better place.

I hope young readers will be inspired to tap into their love of color and create something amazing! In this fast-paced world of ours, where kids are so often on devices, I’d love it if the book were to encourage kids to just doodle with crayons.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I have written some new non-fiction picture books and am also writing a series of chapter books, which is a new venture for me. 

Q: Anything else we should know? 

A: Alice, Edwin’s wife, is the person who coined the name “Crayola” – she was a retired schoolteacher, and encouraged Binney. My favorite Crayola crayon color is periwinkle blue – what is yours?

--Interview with Deborah Kalb 

March 31

ON THIS DAY IN HISTORY
March 31, 1809: Nikolai Gogol born.