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"Abraham Lincoln" - A Message from Author Amy L. Cohn
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From: Ginny Moore Kruse <gmkruse>
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 10:10:55 -0500
MESSAGE FROM AMY L. COHN:
Dear Ms. Woelfe and Participants in the CCBC internet exchange,
As Dianne Hess, executive editor at Scholastic, wrote, thank you for posting your concerns about ABRAHAM LINCOLN (Scholastic, 2002). I hope Dianne's preliminary reply provided you with some helpful information, and I hope the following expansion of those remarks helps, too.
Because you are a writer, I'm sure you understand our effort to forge a narrative voice for our book that had a palpable, almost physical presence. Whatever we wrote needed to be said in the voice of the narrator. So our problem-and all writing is one big problem-solving exercise, don't you think? -- was to describe the Emancipation Proclamation as the narrator might. What would he/she say to the listener? What words would he/she choose to convey the importance of the event? What words and details would enable the listener to learn something about Abraham Lincoln as a person?
So, we thought about the Emancipation Proclamation, we thought about Abraham Lincoln, and we thought about the audience for this particular literary portrait. We felt strongly that our book was not one which would be used by a student writing a report. It wasn't an encyclopedia article filled with explicit facts. It was an introduction to a historical personage for a young listener told in an incredibly personal way.
We read the proclamation and talked about it. We discussed its explicit meaning. We discussed its implications. Then, we consulted an academic historian and talked about it some more. We came to see the proclamation as one in a series of events that led eventually to the complete emancipation of the African population held as slaves in the United States. Its power was not in its precise content but in its general implication, not in its "letter," if you will, but its "spirit."
So, with all that in mind, we chose the words we did. I thank you very much for reading our book so carefully and with such passion and respect. I wish you nothing but success in your own writing career.
With all warmest wishes.
Sincerely, Amy L. Cohn c/o Scholastic, Inc. 555 Broadway New York, NY 10012
Received on Wed 17 Apr 2002 10:10:55 AM CDT
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 10:10:55 -0500
MESSAGE FROM AMY L. COHN:
Dear Ms. Woelfe and Participants in the CCBC internet exchange,
As Dianne Hess, executive editor at Scholastic, wrote, thank you for posting your concerns about ABRAHAM LINCOLN (Scholastic, 2002). I hope Dianne's preliminary reply provided you with some helpful information, and I hope the following expansion of those remarks helps, too.
Because you are a writer, I'm sure you understand our effort to forge a narrative voice for our book that had a palpable, almost physical presence. Whatever we wrote needed to be said in the voice of the narrator. So our problem-and all writing is one big problem-solving exercise, don't you think? -- was to describe the Emancipation Proclamation as the narrator might. What would he/she say to the listener? What words would he/she choose to convey the importance of the event? What words and details would enable the listener to learn something about Abraham Lincoln as a person?
So, we thought about the Emancipation Proclamation, we thought about Abraham Lincoln, and we thought about the audience for this particular literary portrait. We felt strongly that our book was not one which would be used by a student writing a report. It wasn't an encyclopedia article filled with explicit facts. It was an introduction to a historical personage for a young listener told in an incredibly personal way.
We read the proclamation and talked about it. We discussed its explicit meaning. We discussed its implications. Then, we consulted an academic historian and talked about it some more. We came to see the proclamation as one in a series of events that led eventually to the complete emancipation of the African population held as slaves in the United States. Its power was not in its precise content but in its general implication, not in its "letter," if you will, but its "spirit."
So, with all that in mind, we chose the words we did. I thank you very much for reading our book so carefully and with such passion and respect. I wish you nothing but success in your own writing career.
With all warmest wishes.
Sincerely, Amy L. Cohn c/o Scholastic, Inc. 555 Broadway New York, NY 10012
Received on Wed 17 Apr 2002 10:10:55 AM CDT
