From: Angelica Carpenter <angelica>
Date: Fri, 03 Nov 2000 09:42:41 -0800

As a girl I loved biographies, second only to fiction. This was in the 1950s, when biographies were highly fictionalized and mostly about white men or boys, and still I loved the books, whether or not I had heard of the subjects. Life stories are interesting. I'm glad the selection has become more diverse.

As a librarian I am frustrated by silly 100-page requirements (applied to many other kinds of books, not just biographies) and other ridiculous rules such as the one that children may not use an encyclopedia as a source. As a reference librarian, when faced with an unfamiliar subject, I turn often to an encyclopedia to start, upsetting the children, who think I am wasting their time. Then there is the issue of starter biographies for beginning readers. These books give very little information and I think they waste the time of children, parents, teachers, and librarians. I know they waste a lot of money for libraries. They are a good source of income and easy to write for authors, but so far I have resisted. I can see an occasional use for them if a child asks who is someone, but I have a real problem with whole classes of first and second graders assigned to read biographies, and schools and libraries buying big series of them when funds are limited. If they acquire just one title on a subject, this is often it. Older kids are really disappointed to find these as a resource. There are many better, more appropriate books the youngest readers, and plenty of time for more serious biographies starting in fourth grade or so. These assignments, of 100 pages and beginner biographies, are imposed by educators, but I don't know who started the trend for them. Maybe they have to do everything numerically now, to be accountable.

I have written three biographies for Lerner, about Frances Hodgson Burnett, L. Frank Baum, and Robert Louis Stevenson. Luckily, all are more than 100 pages long! I make a conscious effort to relate the subject to the time, choosing incidents in their lives (Indian Wars were ending when Baum lived in Dakota Territory) that I hope seem familiar to kids. I use as many quotations as possible, from the subjects themselves (that's why I like to write about authors--they write about themselves) or from other contemporary sources. I arrange these quotations like dialogue. I try not to interpret personalities, but to let the quotes stand on their own and let the readers draw their own conclusions. My reviews have been quite good, though one review really panned me for not interpreting Baum's life more.

Of course a discussion on the use of quotes would make a whole book in itself. Why is a written-down quote okay but made-up dialogue is not, unless you are Diane Stanley? As a public library director, I was often quoted in our small town newspaper, often without ever having spoken to the reporter. "'We'll be open at eight a.m.,'" said library director Angelica Carpenter," is the kind of quote they would make up from a press release. Or they would make up ungrammatical or incorrect quotes. Anyone who has ever been quoted in a newspaper knows what misinterpretations occur. Yet newspaper quotes are fair game. I like to the think that the major papers are more reliable, but probably not. I try to use original sources where possible but even then, the history is filtered through people's feelings and interpretations. An aside: the Huntington Library has a policy that children's authors don't need access to original sources!

Needless to say, I am following this discussion with particular enthusiasm! Happy Friday,

Angelica Carpenter, Curator, Arne Nixon Center for the Study of Children's Literature, California State University, Fresno
Received on Fri 03 Nov 2000 11:42:41 AM CST