My own children were assigned biographies for book reports in the second and third and fourth grade, and I went to the library, and there really were no strictly nonfiction biographies for children just 20 years ago. And the books that they did have, I felt, were an insult to children, because they were fictionalized. And why, if you’re only writing 1500 words, 2,000 words, do you have to make things up? When I was a child, I would read these biographies, and I remember reading one after another and finally going to my mother and asking her, “How did the author know what George Washington’s mother said to him?”
And she said, “Well, that part was probably made up.”
When I heard that, I stopped reading them, because if they made up one part, how do I know what else they made up? And the biographies I do at Holiday House – the picture book biography series – strictly nonfiction. Nothing’s made up. And I think it’s an insult to a child to make up stuff, if you’re calling the book nonfiction.
So, in the eighties, that’s when the picture book biographies first came out. I’ve heard afterwards that the teachers were so delighted and the librarians were delighted that they had strictly nonfiction picture books – biographies – for children.
