Putting the Story Back into History

By Marissa Moss

One reason I write historical nonfiction is because I want kids to see how exciting real history is. Textbooks may be boring, but going right to original source material rarely is. When I wrote the diary of a pioneer girl taking the Oregon Trail in 1850, I read stacks of pioneer journals, some published, most not. I felt like I was looking over the writers’ shoulders, fording rivers alongside them. The result, Rachel’s Journal, is meant to give students the same thrill I got, the same sense of being close to an experience that happened in a completely different era.

One way to grab students is to tell them tales they don’t know about, giving them that wonderful sense of discovery.  I love stumbling onto people who should be better known but aren't. Those are the stories I turn into books, the tales of courage and achievement that deserve to be widely known.

   

 

Maggie Gee was that kind of lucky discovery.  I found her in a local newspaper article about WWII veterans.  I didn’t know that women had flown warplanes in WWII and it seemed like an important story for kids (and adults) to know about.  

 

I reached out to Maggie and asked for an interview. That interview and the many conversations that followed became a picture book. Maggie impressed me with her drive, her optimism, her courage. She barely mentioned the discrimination she faced when she talked about her life. As a child growing up in Berkeley, as a Chinese-American she couldn't swim in the public pools. But she could serve her country in wartime. Maggie not only had many stories, she had photo albums, even her WASP training materials, including a guide to aircraft, allied and enemy. She had a treasure trove of source material about the WASP experience, all useful for the story I wrote.
 

I thought of Maggie’s grit, her enthusiasm for taking risks and following her dreams, when I started looking for a Civil War story. I wanted to find a woman who had made similar daring choices. I started by reading widely, about both the North and the South. I learned that more than 400 women had disguised themselves as men and fought as soldiers for one side or the other. Could one of those women’s lives hold the story I wanted?

I plowed through books about nurses, soldiers, spies, but they all lacked some essential characteristic.  Some were there to be with a husband, brother, father, or fiancé. Some were adventurous, but not particularly patriotic or admirable. Very few cared about the issue of slavery.

Sorting through all these women, I found one who seemed promising. The first book I read about her didn’t tell me much, but it gave me enough of a sense that I wanted to learn more. When I saw she’d written her own memoir of her soldiering life, that I could hear in her own voice her motives and intentions, it was like finding a treasure trove. Source material like this is crucial to make history vivid and accurate.

That woman was Sara Emma Edmonds, aka Frank Thompson. She had integrity, bravery, loyalty to the Union. She wrote movingly about the horrors and wrongs of slavery. But there was more. Edmonds was the only woman to successfully petition the government after the war for status as a veteran. She wanted her charge of desertion changed to an honorable discharge, and she wanted a pension for her years of service.  Suffering from malaria she’d caught in the Virginia peninsula campaign early in the war, she needed medical care she couldn’t afford without it.

It took several years and two separate acts of Congress, but Edmonds received the legal recognition she so richly deserved. Men she’d served with testified on her behalf, praising her steadiness under fire, her work as a battlefield nurse, a general’s adjutant, a postmaster, and even a spy. All of this was more original source material.

I use the same kind of material in the middle-grade nonfiction I write. I follow the trail of whatever I'm writing about to get to documents directly from the period. You can read newspapers from the 1700s in the Library of Congress. The National Archive has digitized much material as well. Recently, I wrote a book about a woman who worked as a codebreaker before there was any intelligence agency in the American government. Much of her work had been declassified and I could read it on the NSA's site.

This is the history I like best, a kind of time travel that evokes real people doing amazing things: powerful stories that actually happened.

 

Marissa Moss has written than seventy children's books, from picture books to middle-grade and young adult novels. Best known for the Amelia’s Notebook series, her books are popular with teachers and children alike, using graphic formats to introduce history in an accessible, appealing way. Barbed Wire Baseball won the California Book Award, Gold medal and the California Young Reader Medal. It has also been banned from Texas and Florida schools.

 

In 2013, Moss founded Creston Books. The small press has earned starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, School Library Journal, Kirkus, and Booklist, as well as awards. Each list balances debut authors and established names, showcasing the best in children's books.