Comments on: Bomb: Nina’s Take

By: Bomb: The Race to Build –and Steal– the World’s Most Dangerous Weapon | Kid Lit About Politics

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 20:34:06 +0000

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By: The Border Between Fact and Fiction | educating alice

The Border Between Fact and Fiction | educating alice — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 10:40:48 +0000

[...] nonfiction. One of my favorite books of this year, Steve Sheinkin‘s Bomb, has been getting quite a bit of scrutiny as to how well the author explains and documents aspects of his writing, especially the bits that [...]

By: Jonathan Hunt

Jonathan Hunt — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 17:30:27 +0000

Thank you for sharing this Deborah because I think it brings up another pitfall in terms of evaluating nonfiction. When reasonably informed readers comes across a reference to The Triangle Waist Company in SHUTTING OUT THE SKY do they assume that it should be Triangle Shirtwaist Company because that’s what every other book–including those by grown-up historians–call it, and thus assume that you, the children’s author, are in error? I think some of us might and it’s clearly a dangerous assumption to make.

By: Monica Edinger

Monica Edinger — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:41:57 +0000

Deborah, I just read Michelle Markel’s BRAVE GIRL: CLARA AND THE SHIRTWAIST MAKERS’ STRIKE OF 1909 (out this spring) and noticed that she called it the Triangle Waist Company so figured some how it had mistakenly become known as the Triangle Shirtwaist Company and now you’ve confirmed my guess. So interesting.

By: Deborah Hopkinson

Deborah Hopkinson — Wed, 21 Nov 2012 16:23:29 +0000

I just wanted to comment about the reference to a book by Leon Stein, which is, of course The Triangle Fire. Popular adult nonfiction of the mid-20th century (including Stein and Walter Lord’s A Night to Remember) did not typically include any source notes or bibliography (unlike, say, Seabiscuit). This limits their usefulness to a modern researcher. Lord’s book was apparently based on letters and interviews from survivors, but none of the quotes can be checked unless one travels to work with his papers.

Something interesting happened when I was writing Shutting out the Sky, Life in the Tenements of New York. I accessed microfilm of newspapers and realized that while Stein called it the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory (as most people still do), the actual name of the company was the Triangle Waist Company.

I wrote to the folks at Cornell’s Kheel Center, who maintain a fantastic online exhibition about the disaster. They were listing it as the Triangle Shirtwaist Company also. However, based on my query, they did more research, and were able to find a photograph of the factory sign. They subsequently changed the name of the factory on THEIR website and I often send students there who are doing a report on the topic.

The Common Core seeks to prepare students for college in an age when information literacy is more complex than ever, where they will soon be scurrying to Purdue’s Owl site to figure out how to cite sources for themselves, and where will be reminded, as my son’s college professor just told his students in the instructions for a paper: Wikipedia is not an academic source. Hopefully that won’t come as a surprise;)

By: Jim Murphy

Jim Murphy — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 16:09:01 +0000

I have a feeling that the demand for sourcing isn’t going to go out of fashion anytime soon, especially for some reviewers. Once I got into the flow of it, I was very comfortable with providing this information as clearly as possible, but I also change the way I approach it depending on the topic. I am not a fan of the academic, formal source notes (what kid knows what to make of an ibid here and an id there?), so I play with how I describe/detail this info. As for documenting how an idea was transformed into a text, well, that’s a more recent notion and I try to let readers know what this journey was like so they can see not only why I did the book, but why I thought it might be of interest. THE GIANT (about the Cardiff Giant hoax of 1869) began with me thinking about how Bernie Madoff fooled very intelligent people for years, though I didn’t want to do a “ripped from the headlines” book because all of the facts weren’t/aren’t in yet, and because BM’s scheme was really a boring bookkeeping game. A naked ten-and-a-half feet tall stone giant is much more visually, um, gripping.

By: Nina Lindsay

Nina Lindsay — Tue, 20 Nov 2012 01:13:51 +0000

Jim, thanks so much for taking the time to chime in! I know that the rigors of sourcing go in and out of fashion; and while in some cases I think the detailed page numbering is important, I don’t see it warranted in every case. How do you feel about “the demand for more information on how our books are assembled”? I feel like in the children’s lit world, where most of us aren’t historians, we may be asking for different kinds of information than in that field. To me, “making it easy–and fun” for kids to understand the way a book is assembled, and do further research if they want to, is the key…and I’m always interested in seeing authors’ different takes at going about this.

By: Jim Murphy

Jim Murphy — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 15:31:26 +0000

It’s taken me a long time to find this interesting discussion and to respond (broken bones, a torn tendon and an operation are my only excuse). First, about the sourcing for The Great Fire. That book was done a long time ago (as far as publishing goes) and sourcing wasn’t as rigorously demanded as it is today. But I listened carefully to the people who asked for more and better sourcing and now I make sure that everything is as thoroughly documented as possible, which includes specific page numbers (My aim is to make it as easy — and fun — for a kid to do such a search as possible). Second, about the sources for some of the quotes used here. Again, this was a long time ago, but my recollection is that Sullivan’s specific movements were part of his court testimony on how the fire started as well as newspaper accounts. Third, about INVINCIBLE MICROBE, that opening scene is sourced and was where Alison Blank and I learned the sex, approximate ago, location and description of where he died, and the form of TB he had (and was confirmed by a member of the research team as well as reading the more scholarly report). There are other nonfiction scenes in IM, though we did not attempt to make this a continuous start to finish “story.” The book looks at the long history of TB from three distinct angles, and a story line approach would have required simplifying the history in an unacceptable way. The scenes are, in many ways, stage setters, but they do provide real information and are in no way made up out of whole cloth. THE GIANT is much more of a continuous nonfiction story, though even here I let readers in on the “inside” story of the fraud after a few chapters to let them view and evaluate the people and situation from a variety of angles. Finally, I have always felt that there are many valid ways to approach a topic in a nonfiction book (both Steve and I did books on Benedict Arnold, for instance). And different approaches will have their champions (and, I suppose detractors). How much sourcing plays in the final judging process is hard to know, though I think the demand for more information on how our books are assembled makes this a crucial issue to consider.

By: Barb Gogan

Barb Gogan — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:41:51 +0000

I just wanted to point out The Horn Book’s interview with Sheinkin about BOMB including this quote: “I put quote sources in the back of the book, but not sources for each fact — standard procedure for narrative nonfiction. If anyone wants to know where I got something, they’re more than welcome to email me.”
http://www.hbook.com/2012/11/authors-illustrators/interviews/five-questions-for-steve-sheinkin/

By: NBA Comments « The Card Catalog

NBA Comments « The Card Catalog — Mon, 12 Nov 2012 05:59:23 +0000

[...] been some interesting discussion about this title over at Heavy Medal, but my opinion is still that this is one of the most distinguished non-fiction titles of the year, [...]