“I'd like to ask Eleanor Roosevelt what she regrets most, because I think that might reveal something that I didn't catch on to while I was writing my book and, hopefully, that would start a conversation.” ThinkingWritingBookRegretHopefullyEleanor Author:Russell Freedman
“I try to find clues in the documented record - from the subject's own testimony, from the testimony of other people. When you're writing a biography, you're trying to understand your subject in the same way that you try to understand one of your friends, and that effort at understanding is always very imperfect.” PeopleWritingTryingUnderstandingEffortImperfectClueTestimony Author:Russell Freedman
“Digging up new information and speculating on it isn't your primary purpose when you're writing a biography intended for young readers, unless you find compelling evidence that departs from the accepted wisdom. A biography for young people calls for the demanding art of distillation, the art of storytelling, and your responsibility is to stick as closely as possible to the documented record.” PeopleWritingArtPurposeResponsibilityEvidenceAcceptedStorytelling Author:Russell Freedman
“Let's say that history is what happened. The record of what happened is how each individual happens to see those events. They've already been filtered. When the historian or biographer takes over, history is no longer exactly what happened, because there has been a process of selection going on; it's impossible to write about anyone, any event, in any period of time, without in some way imposing, even unconsciously, your own standards, your own values.” WritingValuesIndividualImpossibleHistorian Author:Russell Freedman
“Anyone writing a picture-book biography of Lincoln has a different set of responsibilities from someone writing a biography for sixth-graders, say, or from a Lincoln scholar writing an academic book on Lincoln. Each of these writers has a different audience and different goals. That's obvious.” WritingBookDifferentGoalResponsibilityAudienceObviousAcademicScholar Author:Russell Freedman
“With the audience I write for, I want to make sure that the reader is eagerly turning every page. I want each of my books to be an absorbing reading experience, an authentic piece of literature. The worst thing that can happen is for a book to have a chilling effect on the reader, to have a kid pick it up and look at a bunch of footnotes and think, No, I'm not going to read this, it's too intimidating.” ThinkingWritingBookKidsReadingLiteratureAudienceWorstChillIntimidating Author:Russell Freedman
“I get letters from two kinds of readers. History buffs, who love to read history and biography for fun, and then kids who want to be writers but who rarely come out and say so in their letters. You can tell by the questions they ask - How did you get your first book published? How long do you spend on a book? So I guess those are the readers that I'm writing for - kids who enjoy that kind of book, because they're interested in history, in other people's lives, in what has happened in the world. I believe that they're the ones who are going to be the movers and shakers.” WorldWritingBelieveKindLongBookKidsFunI BelieveEnjoyLove To Read Author:Russell Freedman
“Writing history and biography for kids calls for special skills that can only be acquired through practice and that are different from those required for an adult audience.” WritingDifferentKidsAudienceSpecial Author:Russell Freedman
