I love visiting schools. I did not have an author visit my school when I was a kid. The closest thing I had was a girl in my class whose dad worked at the old B. Dalton bookstore in the mall. And I do remember going, “Wait, you can have a book job? Work with books, that sounds neat.” But it was Career Day, her dad came in to tell us what it’s like to work at a bookstore, and then he left behind a big box of free giveaway books, and we’re able to all go up and pick out a book. And that was a very special day for me, I mean it was just a career day, I don’t think many of the other kids remember it, but I remember getting that book and knowing you can have a book job. So I’m a big believer in school visits.
When I visit a school I do a big presentation all about American history and I draw the whole thing. I got a tablet that plugs-in and I’m drawing on the screen, and it’s appearing on the screen above me. So when you see me at a school you’ll see 20 pages of comics drawn live, a crazy story, and I love it, and the kids get all whipped up and excited about it, and I tell them where they can research more about the stories I tell. I do a thing about the Louisiana Purchase and Lewis & Clark, a bunch of different stuff. And I bring books from their library up and I show you, “Look at this, here’s a book that shows all the animals that Lewis & Clark discovered on the trail. And here’s a book that shows what the trail looks like today.” And I get them all excited about it.
And then we open it up for questions, and the questions are never questions, well, I mean, they are questions, but they’re like okay, “When are you going to do the Titanic?” I get a lot of Titanic. A lot of interest in Vietnam. The kids are very interested, they’re like what is Vietnam, what’s the Korean War? They don’t know what it is. What’s this, the Korean War? The one I get a lot is the Cold War. I don’t think they know what the Cold War was [chuckles], and I think they’re getting the Cold War confused with “Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back” where people are running around in the cold and shooting each other with guns.
You know, the kids have these interesting ideas. So my mind is always open. In fact, the next book to come out was titled by a student, the next book comes out at the end of this year, it’s going to be book nine in the series about John Wesley Powell the geologist slash Civil War Major who took the first expedition through the Grand Canyon by river, and he did it with one arm.
And I explain the premise to a room full of kids at a school visit lunch, and I said, “Who here has an idea because we haven’t titled it yet?” You know it’s about a one armed guy going through the Grand Canyon, what should we call it? The kid raises their hand, “Mission Impossible!” I say, “Well, I like it, but I think that one is taken. Oh, another hand, what would you call it?” And the little kid said, “Major Impossible,” because he was a major, Major John Wesley Powell. And I said, “Give me your name.” And I wrote his name, and he’s going to be thanked in the acknowledgments of the book. We need to find his address so we can send him some stuff, but he named the book. The kids are very involved. They want to be part of the history and the research. They love going to the sites.
Kids will send me weird fan mail where they’ve gone to a historical site. They take a picture of themself next to the tank or next to the thing, and they’ll just send it to me, they’ll say, “Look at this!” And that’s it. But they’re fascinated by history. It’s a great, great moment for nonfiction in history.