From: Deborah Hopkinson <hopkinda>
Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 11:08:59 -0800

I read Pam Mu?oz Ryan's comments about Marian Anderson with great interest. I would agree that negotiating the complexities of history and finding a way to present them dramatically, yet accurately, for children in picture books is tremendously challenging.

Events such as these seem to get more complex the deeper you go, which makes recounting them dramatically difficult and full of the decision-making Ms. Ryan describes. I happen to be familiar with both Marian Anderson's autobiography and Keiler's biography of the singer, since I wrote an article several years ago about this for Cricket, which will also be a forthcoming picture book. My story centers not on Anderson but on Oscar Chapman, who worked under Harold Ickes, Secretary of the Interior in the Roosevelt administration. According to his oral history, Chapman was motivated to suggest that Ickes ask Roosevelt for permission for Anderson to sing at the Lincoln Memorial, in part because of a childhood incident. But even that is not the end of the story. When I dug deeper I found that although Chapman approached Ickes and listened in to the call when Roosevelt agreed ("Let her sing from the top of the Washington Monument if she wants to,") and Chapman arranged the concert and made sure politicians attended, it seems that Walt White, head of the NAACP, was in conversation with Chapman when the idea was brought up. Anderson's biography may even include the mention of others who were floating the idea. Anyway, as Ms. Ryan states, there was a lot going on.

I think When Marian Sang introduces young readers to Marian Anderson beautifully. What I always hope is that children and adults reading about history will want to find out more.


Deborah Hopkinson Whitman College
Received on Fri 13 Dec 2002 01:08:59 PM CST