Judith Josephson loves to dig into the past and is fascinated by people’s lives. A former teacher, Judith Josephson has written stories, columns, and articles for children. Her award-winning biographies and history books include both nonfiction and fiction for children. Jesse Owens: Legendary Olympian is her most recent title.

In February, we celebrated African Americans. In addition, all eyes were trained on Sochi, Russia, where the Winter Olympics took place. Each day’s sports coverage featured athletes in blazingly colorful athletic outfits. Results of each competition were instantly photographed, tweeted, emailed, and recorded in real time on television. For more than a century, the Olympics, summer and winter, have represented the greatest athletic competition in the world, an event where months and years of training culminate in the best of the best, producing surprises, disappointments, and heroes.

1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin

At a very different Olympics seventy-seven years ago, the 1936 summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany, African American track and field star Jesse Owens won four gold medals, surprising the world and infuriating Nazi dictator Adolph Hitler, who called Owens and other African American teammates America’s “black legions.” Hitler’s close associate declared Jesse and his teammates unfit to compete with “human” athletes, akin to allowing a gazelle or a deer on the team.

Today’s Olympics are different in many ways, but similar in others. Olympic athletes have always trained hard to reach this pinnacle of sports. Jesse Owens had grown up in poverty, but had been training for this day since junior high and high school days, when he started breaking records for his age.  In college at Ohio State University, at a 1935 meet in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the space of forty-five minutes, he broke four world records.

Politics isn’t supposed to have a role in the Olympics. But in 1936, the Olympics unfolded against Hitler’s evil intents, racism in the U.S. and the gathering storm of World War II.  Since then, issues like the “Cold War,” “Human Rights Violations,”  America’s “Civil Rights Movement,” and “South Africa’s apartheid policies” have caused boycotts and affected outcomes.

Fresh-faced young people have always inspired those who watch the Olympics.  When Jesse Owens won the gold medal in the 100-meter race, he graciously thanked his Olympic hosts, saying that Berlin was “a beautiful place, a beautiful city.  The competition was grand.  But I was very glad to come out on top.”  Proudly, he wore the winner’s laurel wreath and saluted his flag. Jesse Owens had class. Similarly, earlier this year, American luger Kate Hansen, danced for the crowd and in spite of her 10^th place finish, said, “I will be thankful for this moment the rest of my life.”

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Susan L. Lipson, a middle-grade novelist who also happens to be our Forest Beat reporter, shares her recent interview (below) with Althea, a tree fairy with unique knowledge of the human lifestyle. Lipson was tipped off to the fairy’s whereabouts by 10-year-olds Sara and Jonathan, who shared their tale, The Secret in the Wood, with her. The kids accidentally met the displaced tree fairy when Althea regained consciousness after a long sleep on Sara’s wooden bedroom wall. In this interview, Lipson discusses with Althea the positive effects of the burgeoning ebook industry on forest dwellers like herself.

SLL: Hello, Althea! So, I imagine that you have some strong feelings about the book industry that humans have created. Is that correct?

Althea: Oh, yes, indeed I do, Susan! As I’ve told Sara, I believe that humans who write words on paper must at all times remain conscious of the fact that trees gave their lives for that paper; and you must honor that sacrifice with well-chosen, vivid, concise words—the very least one can do to conserve paper and respect our natural world. Too many books spend too many pages saying too little that is worthy of the paper upon which it is printed. It’s a waste of precious tree lives, in short.

SLL: Do you think we should stop printing books on paper then and read exclusively on electronic reading devices?

Althea: Well, no, because not all humans have access to technology, and I have learned that illiteracy is as harmful to this planet as wasted trees. So, I believe you humans need to strike a balance, as we fairies do in Nature. I believe that you must print some paper copies of books, but definitely balance out the paper copies with ebooks. And definitely get more children to read on screens whenever possible—and to be conscious of not wasting paper when they write, too!

SLL: How can kids avoid wasting paper?

Althea: Be concise and precise!

SLL: Like poets?

Althea: Yes, indeed—by writing memorable words!

SLL: That’s the name of one of my blogs: Writing Memorable Words (www.susanllipson.blogspot.com)!

Althea: Blogs? Those are the electronic alternatives to paper journals and newsletters, right? Hurray for alternatives to tree chopping in every form! For every tree chopped down to make paper, tree fairies are displaced; remember that!

SLL: Your tales in The Secret in the Wood certainly make us remember that! What was the worst part about having your tree chopped down?

Althea: The worst part was ending up on Sara’s bedroom wall without roots for energy or the natural world for company. But then again, I never would have met Sara and learned so much about your human world if I had merely followed the fairy kingdom rules without questioning them . . .

SLL: Are you implying that young readers should also be rule-breakers?!

Althea: Not rule-breakers, necessarily. NONCONFORMISTS. I changed my life and the lives of Sara and Jonathan for the better by not conforming to the rules of the fairy kingdom. But now, with my new perspective, I respect the wisdom behind those rules and follow them because I choose to, not merely because I have been ordered to follow them.

SLL: In other words, you’ve branched out, spread your limbs, grown up . . .

Althea: Yes! Just like a tree! Oh, how much better life would be if everyone lived like a tree!

SLL: Ah, you just stated the chorus of a song I wrote, “If Everyone Lived Like a Tree”! That song will soon be added to the soundtrack I’ve written for The Secret in the Wood.  People can already hear the first song on my author-teacher website’s Songs page, a haunting song called “Dance of the Trees” (www.author-teachersusanllipson.com) or click on the picture of the trees.

Althea: Do all writers write songs to enhance their books?

SLL: No, and I don’t write them to enhance the books either. The songs just start playing in my head as I’m writing. I have songs for everything I write! Words and music just seem to flow in my head.

Althea: You must live around trees then, for tree fairies harness the music of the wind and fill human hearts with songs.

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Gary Paulsen: Adventurer and Author is part of the Spotlight Biography ebook series for young readers. This collection of previously published, well-reviewed biographies will grow over the next two years. Next in line is Judith Josephson’s award-winning biography on Jesse Owens. Download Gary Paulsen free on Tuesday, September 10. Download Barbara McClintock: Nobel Prize Geneticist free on Thursday, September 12.

Gary Paulsen is a writing machine, his books magnets for young readers, especially boys. His work has been translated into fifteen languages, and more than 15 million copies of his books—200+ titles—are in print. He’s used more lives than a cat—during the Itidarod sled race, on a motorcycle journey, in storms at sea, and at a Minnesota lake where he fell twelve feet through thin ice, rescued by his beloved lead dog Cookie, all fodder for his writing.

Most remarkable is Paulsen’s ability to set different tones. From books like his rollicking Harris and Me, Liar Liar, Flat Broke, Crush, and Lawn Boy, to the phenomenally popular Newbery Honor Book Hatchet, from the searching Canyons to the poetic A Christmas Sonata, Paulsen’s books fly off the shelves.

Paulsen’s own childhood was rough. “My parents were drunks,” he says bluntly of his itinerant upbringing. As a teen steeped in loneliness, he escaped to the woods and rivers of northern Minnesota, calling it “a kind of self-fostering.” Paulsen is best known for his Newbery Honor survival story Hatchet.

Paulsen Does Research

Nancy Johnson’s poignant eFrog Press blog post about writing her book My Brother’s Keeper brought to mind Gary Paulsen’s similar Civil War era research. Their focus on making history come to life for young people struck a particular chord as the nation notes the sesquicentennial of the battle that raged at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Paulsen’s Civil War-based research resulted in Soldier’s Heart, which frames the Civil War through the eyes of Charley Goddard, an underage soldier who enlists in the First Minnesota Volunteers.

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Nancy Johnson is a retired school teacher and an active author. She envisioned a trilogy of books for children about the Civil War from different points of view: a Yankee drummer boy, an African-American soldier from Boston, and a VMI cadet and young people from the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.  As she explains on her website: “As a teacher I realized there was a need for historical fiction about the Civil War. I believe many of the issues which divided our country during the Civil War still touch us today.”

 To mark the 150^th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, My Brothers’ Keeper: A Civil War Story for middle grade readers, will be free on Amazon on July 2, 3, and 4.

When I was a little girl, my mother read letters to me which had been written by my great, great uncles, two brothers from Rochester, New York.  The brothers left home to fight in the Civil War when they were very young.

Mother kept their letters and pictures of the brothers and their little sister, Carrie, in a black box which was decorated with gold hearts and flowers.  I was heartbroken when I learned that the youngest brother, George Peacock, had been killed in an ambush in Virginia while he was still a teenager.

In my young mind, I made up stories about the brothers, based partly on their letters and partly on my imagination. I think I knew then that someday I would write a story about them.

I still have the letters. They are yellow now, the edges bent down and crinkled, and the ink has faded. The letters, and the stories my mother wove as she was reading them, were the inspiration for my book My Brother’s Keeper: A Civil War Story.  I used parts from the letters in the story. For example, in August 1861, my great, great uncle, Charlie Peacock, wrote:

As I passed through one of the back streets of Alexandria I saw a building 3 stories high built of brick with the sign Price Birch & Co Dealer in Slaves. It struck me as something different from anything I had ever seen before.

When you read My Brothers’ Keeper, you will find Price Birch & Co mentioned in Chapter 7, The Road to War. On my website, you can view  a photograph of Price Birch & Co.

In addition to the letters and stories from my family, I did many months of research in books and by traveling to the places I was writing about. My husband and I climbed the rocky hill of Little Round Top at Gettysburg. We stood in the peaceful Virginia woods where my great, great uncle had been killed in an ambush in 1863. We found that three-story brick building in Alexandria with the lettering, Price Birch & Co Dealer in Slaves, still visible. We followed the path of Lee’s Retreat which led General Lee to Appomattox.

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My two adult children love to read—my main claim to success as a mother. They grew up in a home surrounded by books and often opted to spend their birthday money on new volumes of their very own. I remember my daughter as a toddler “reading” with an adult and interrupting if a page were skipped. I knew I was raising another reader when my six-year-old son fell asleep in his bed curled around an open encyclopedia volume.

I also knew my daughter was marrying well when I discovered that her new in-laws had more books than I did!

So when friends and family began to plan her baby showers (yes, multiple showers), I was not surprised that two focused on her love of books. Guests were encouraged to gift children’s books that they loved to form her new son’s library.

Shower guests shared some touching stories about their own memories of reading these titles aloud to their children. One guest had to hunt down her special book as it was no longer in print but find it she did. My mother could not attend but sent a copy of Goodnight Moon and this note:

I have such wonderful memories reading Goodnight Moon to you over and over again. I know you knew it by heart but wanted me to read it to you anyway. Jennie, I’ll never forget the time I took you to Target and sat you in the cart. You probably were around three. I was shocked because as I pushed the cart along you were reading all the signs out loud! I was so impressed.

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