Picture Writing

Content Objectives

This unit's goal is to restore the perspective of the mothers, sisters, and aunts of American history. By using picture books, I'll introduce students to clear examples of their point of view. Illustrations interpret text. Students will gain skills identifying elements in the pictures that enhance the story and reveal the author's point of view. A lifestory reads more like a movie than a snap shot. Students will have to wrestle with understanding that attitudes and circumstances change over the course of a lifetime. A complex America emerges that may not fit neatly into the outline devised by textbook makers, but it will impel students to make connections between eras, economic strata, and political forces. One unit will not tell the whole of American history from all possible diverse perspectives. However, the authors of children's picture books are stepping forward "singing" new stories of diverse Americans. Deborah Hopkinson, Pam Munroz Ryan, Robert H. Miller, and Alice McGill have responded to the spirit of Baldwin's lament with striking pictorial biographies. This unit will view several approaches to successful picture-book biographies. It will offer a contrast with books that children tend to abandon. The unit will provide a significant compilation of strong pictorial biographies for classroom use, either individually as an introduction to specific historic periods or collectively as a basis for a language arts unit on biography. The list will aid teachers implementing the Common Core language arts standards, which emphasize narrative, explanatory or informational writing, and argument. We are expected to teach students to gather evidence, analyze data, and identify perspectives. Studying the lives of American women in such an accessible form as the picture book will prepare young children for more in-depth research. Students will graduate from exploring picture books into reading chapter books and historical fiction as their reading levels advance. Undoubtedly, students will scour the Internet to pursue answers to questions and to verify facts. By hooking students with a fascinating story, we can then introduce informational text and provide background knowledge. This rich body of literature will help students consider the contributions of American women as a whole and what their lives tell us about our past, present, and future.

Making Meaning with Picture Books

Biographical picture books are perfectly designed to help teachers hook their students into caring about history. They are especially effective with children who are reluctant readers. My students are bilingual; most speak a language other than English at home with their families. Many parents are hesitant English speakers. While students move from one spoken language to another with enough proficiency to test out of intensive English language instruction, they practice sustained fluent English speaking, reading, and writing only at school. Academic language is limited to the classroom and is often incomprehensible to them at first reading. This necessitates scaffolding strategies such as direct vocabulary instruction ⁵ and the deliberate use of graphic organizers.

I notice mixed outcomes for required reading and writing outside of class. Low motivation, lack of self-confidence, and high anxiety block the learning process. Students tend to self-select books with images and illustrations. Comic books and graphic novels lower what Stephen Krashen calls, referring to Dulay and Burt (1977), the "affective filter" or mental block against reading. Visual media lower the affective filter, allowing "comprehensible input" through thereby attaining understanding. ⁶ Pictorial biography, like a graphic novel, is a highly visual medium for teaching history. The visual display of complex situations gives the English language learner (ELL) a path to understanding.

One book that works exceptionally well is Molly Bannaky by Alice McGill and Chris Soentpiet. It tells the compelling story of an early American woman. The brilliant synergy of words and pictures enabled an ELL student of mine to grasp the irony of Molly Bannaky's dilemma: once herself an indentured servant, Molly's survival depends on her buying a slave. My student studied one particular illustration depicting the scene on the wharf at the slave auction. My student noticed details: the ship, the dock, the crowd of fully dressed white people (mostly men). Barely clad black men in chains hang their heads. But Bannaky (her future husband), on the block, holds his head up. As the crowd takes his measure, the text on the page says he looks each one in the eye. Molly buys him and vows to set him free as soon as her farm is successful. That page gets to the heart of Maryland life in 1690. My student and I pored over the image and discussed her observations. Did she know where the ship might be from? What were the people doing? Why did she think Bannaky acted differently than the rest of the slaves? Why did his act of defiance, of looking her in the eye, appeal to Molly? The drama of the story unfolded. Molly and Bannaky marry and have children against local convention and law. The story ends with Bannaky's sudden illness and death leaving Molly alone again to fend for herself and her children.

I read to my student the rather long author's note on the final page. It tells what happened next. Molly and her daughters thrive. One daughter marries a freed slave who adopts her last name. They have a family. Molly teaches her grandson to read and write. He is Benjamin Banneker, who grows up to be a noted astronomer, publisher of almanacs, and surveyor of Washington D. C. My student and I were deeply moved. She completely understood how scary it must have been to homestead on your own as a woman. She appreciated Molly's attitude of respect for and empathy with Bannaky. She could see how they made a good team and grew to love each other. She enjoyed projecting the bond between Molly and her grandson into his future success as a notable African American scientist. Furthermore, this book had a long-term effect on her understanding of American history. As the school year progressed and my class debated the causes of the Civil War, this ELL student brought the strongest point to our class debate. She was able to articulate with conviction that the cause of the Civil War rested on the money being made off enslaved people. She built her understanding of Southern economics on the clear image and background knowledge gleaned from examining the illustrations in Molly Bannaky. She connected the economic realities Molly faced with the reasons why Southern farmers and plantation owners feared losing the source of their livelihood, extending her understanding of the economics of 1690s to the national calamity of the 1860s.

Balancing Words and Pictures

Words and images go hand in hand. Words can, however, overpower images and vice versa. How do you spot the right balance? Does this question reveal what makes Molly Bannaky so effective? What makes a good picture book, especially for teaching history? The key to a successful picture book is the blend of pictures and words in storytelling. William Moebius in his "Introduction to Picturebook Codes ^"7 quotes Irving Massy as saying, "Thinking consists of a constant alternation between image-making and word-making." ⁸ There is no one best formula for combining words and images. As in Molly Bannaky, the images should provoke questions, which in turn impel the child to read the words for understanding. In other cases, confusing words and concepts move the reader to look to illustrations for elucidation. Students will abandon a book if they are overwhelmed by looking back and forth to make sense of the story.

The problem with many pictorial biographies is sometimes having too much of a good thing. Two biographies of Annie Oakley can be held up for comparison: Bull's Eye: A Photobiography of Annie Oakley by Sue Macy and Shooting for the Moon: The Amazing Life and Times of Annie Oakley by Stephen Krensky and Bernie Fuchs. Bull's Eye, on one hand, has pages of great primary source photographs and quotes, but the prose is long-winded. Macy is Oakley's great grandniece. She tells the story with respect and reverence. Perhaps she wants to set the record straight, and that explains the lagging prose. I suspect Annie Oakley's story has been distorted by movies, plays, and musicals. Today's young reader is not biased by her fame, so the effort to teach us the truth about Annie is oppressive. I imagine my students looking through the pictures and skipping over the prose. This is a book that would be abandoned by most of the students in my class. Shooting for the Moon, on the other hand, gets the blend right. Fuchs sets the scene with impressionistic oil paintings. Krensky has a storyteller's timing. He starts with a young Annie. Tragedy strikes early in her life with the death of her father. Then there is a great injustice. When she is ten years old, Annie is sent to a poorhouse and is given out to work on a farm with the promise that after her chores she can practice shooting game. Unfortunately, the chores are endless. Annie is virtually a slave. It takes her two years to get up the nerve to run away. Twelve years old and back home again, she earns money selling game that she has shot so clean that it winds up on the plates of fine Cincinnati restaurants. Annie aims only at the bird's head; no meat is wasted. In this way Annie supports herself and helps pay off her mother's mortgage. All this happens before she meets Frank Butler and becomes superstar. Krensky edits out excess information and focuses on dramatic turns. The color and emotion of Fuchs' illustrations are captivating. Krensky adds an author's note remarking on Oakley's place breaking barriers for women in sports linking her accomplishments in the Wild West Show with accomplishments of present sports phenomena. While both books clearly propose to inspire young people, Krensky and Fuchs hold the attention and hit the mark. Macy's tribute to her great-aunt is an example of inadequate words overwhelmed by stacks of photographs, which are fine for reference, but obscure an inspiring story.

For it to accomplish its purpose with ten-year-olds, a book must hold their attention and help them connect between the present and the past. Effective picture-book biographies usually grab your attention with a view of the subject as a child or young woman. On the book cover of Molly Bannaky, Molly is a seventeen-year-old milkmaid. The story quickly elicits the reader's sympathy for a character suffering an injustice. Molly is accused of stealing from her lord because the cow kicked over the milk pail, spilling her milk. Then Molly is hauled into court and sentenced to seven years labor as an indentured servant in America. This is a great alternative to being hanged – the automatic punishment. Reading the Bible out loud saves her life. The startling paragraph describing this event is accompanied by a sunlit tableau with bewigged judges, frowning men, and Molly reading a Bible. The page ends with, "Molly's voice rang out clear and true." The story has a fast pace. So much happens in a few pages. As she sails away from home forever, she looks forlorn, and we feel impelled to find out what happens next. This book is a page-turner. Barbara Bader, borrowing from Remy Charlip, calls this effect "the drama of the turning page." ⁹ There are many facets to the set-up of this story that appeal to ten year-olds. Law in the 1680s was arbitrary and unfair. Reading really saved her life! Molly will never see her home and family again, and she has no clue where she's going. This is storytelling at its best. McGill's expertise as a storyteller takes the lead in this book. The story is laid out, builds quickly, and sustains our interest at each turn of the page. Chris Soentpiet was charged with taking McGill's word pictures and creating illustrations for her text. His illustrations reflect the drama with lighting as if on stage and facial expressions between characters that capture the mood. Soentpiet took painstaking care to create historically accurate illustrations. On his website he tells an account of having to prove that Holstein cows existed in America in the seventeenth century. ¹⁰ This indicates the dedication illustrators have to have if they are going to hold true to the historical fact. In a great picture-book biography, the reader trusts both storytellers – artist and wordsmith. Molly Bannaky is successful because McGill and Soentpiet found the perfect balance of words with images.

Another example of great storytelling is Chris Van Allsburg's Queen of the Falls. This is the story of Annie Edson Taylor, the widow who sent herself over Niagara Falls in a barrel to try to raise some money. Van Allsburg is a master of blending just the right words with dramatic pictures. His timing and pace make the reader want to turn the page even while also wanting to get all the hints from his illustrations. He often lets the pictures carry the story. J. Hillis Miller in Illustration argues all sides of the debate when he asks, which is the stronger medium of communication, picture or words? ¹¹ On the side of picture, he quotes Svetlana Alpers, who says that the graphic arts present an element of a thing "that is in no way possible through words." ¹² How can you put into words how you feel about the woman in the barrel and the imminent tumble over the falls? It's the way you feel waiting for a roller coaster to plunge. You don't need words. The picture puts you right there. Still, the wordless pages in this book are few. Van Allsburg continues his storytelling in a blend of prose and picture. Some picture books are brilliant and effective without words. Works by David MacCaulay (Castle) and Istvan Banyai (Zoom) are thought-provoking. However, I have not come across a wordless biography. A lifestory requires words.

We might wonder if primary source material can hold up its part of the balance in a picture book biography. Maybe old-fashioned photographs lack resonance. Perhaps they just don't illustrate the dramatic moments of the story. Tonya Bolden gets around this problem in her biography of Maritcha Lyons, Maritcha: A Nineteenth-Century American Girl. This story is based on the memoir of a woman who began her life in antebellum New York City, the daughter of an abolitionist. As a young girl, she lived through the Draft Riots of 1863. Mobs set buildings on fire, looted businesses and rich people's homes, and beat up blacks. Poor Irish immigrants resented being drafted for the Civil War. Blacks were not allowed to join the Army. Maritcha's family owned property and businesses. Her godfather was a prominent African American surgeon who had traveled to Scotland to become a doctor because there were no medical schools open to blacks in America. To escape harm during the riots, Maritcha and her siblings moved in with friends across the river in Brooklyn while her parents protected their home. After the war they moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where Maritcha petitioned the state legislature to be admitted to high school. The legislature overturned public-school segregation. In 1869 she was the first black person to graduate from Providence High. Maritcha Lyons became a teacher and assistant principal in Brooklyn – during a career spanning fifty years. She wrote her memoir in 1928. Bolden came across this memoir while doing research at the New York City Public Library and felt it begged to be turned into a picture book for children. She illustrates the story with family photographs, realia (Maritcha's father recorded all the items destroyed in the riot on a ledger), and period photos of New York City. Each illustration is captioned and given generous space on the page. This is a book that can be read straight through to get the story and reread for the captions. There are no photos of the Lyons family during the riots, but there are photos of the rioters. Because Maritcha mentions attending the first world's fair in New York, Bolden takes the opportunity to show us images of this event and extend the lesson. Bolden's photobiography uses primary source material, but it doesn't allow the illustrations to overpower the narrative. The book is a fabulous resource, adding a unique picture of America during the Civil War as well as holding up a model of a young, single woman who stood her ground for civil rights and chose to be a life-long educator. I hope Bolden has a sequel on the drawing board. The history of education after the Civil War is the story Baldwin hoped would be told. Bolden's book is exactly the user-friendly type needed to reach the goals of the Common Core. Primary sources can be infused into storytelling without smothering the story.

A Turning Point for Women

When one compiles a list of children's books on the women of America, one notices a common characteristic. Women who were Native American, pioneers, early colonialists, or former slaves exude an attitude of solid confidence. Mary Ludwig Hays McCauley, known as "Molly Pitcher," was a woman who served the Revolutionary Army. She ran across the battlefield on a blistering hot day between a spring and her husband's cannon unit with her water pitcher. When he collapsed from the heat, Molly took her husband's place at the gun. Children's author Anne Rockwell gives us a stirring vision of Valley Forge and the battle of Monmouth in They Called Her Molly Pitcher. Joseph Bruchac's Sacajawea plants an indelible image of this young girl's early kidnapping, life as a slave of a rival Native American tribe, marriage to French trapper, and guide on Lewis and Clark's expedition. Bruchac's Sacajawea is not a picture book. It is a rich piece of historical fiction with which to teach point of view. It challenges readers with multiple voices presenting the narrative, and it includes Native American storytelling at the beginning of each chapter. It may work best as a read-aloud or as the book for a small group literature circle. I recommend using it for children to practice visualization. Molly Pitcher and Sacajawea are examples of women in America's early history who were sturdy; they saw a need and supplied it. They were direct, practical, and strong. While they followed their husbands, they did not take a back seat to them. What happened to the perception of women's capabilities as our country advanced?

Something changed for East Coast women in the late 1700s. Page Smith sheds light on the shifting attitudes about women in Daughters of the Promised Land: Women in American History. Smith explains how ideas about marriage changed. Puritan ideals define the purpose of marriage as essential to the greater good of the community. With the growth of a middle class came a new attention to fashion and a loosening of the old Puritan ways that were replaced by reformed religious ideas and the freedom to marry for love. Women were, says Smith, "for virtually the first time in history, in the position of adapting themselves to the prevailing masculine notion of what constituted desirability in a woman." ¹³ Being middle or upper class in America gave young ladies time to fuss over European fashion. Some adopted the view that women were frail, that they needed protection, and that they had limited roles to play in society. Clearly, women not so fortunate had to keep their minds on their work. Yet the new middle-class values crept into society and politics. What saved American women from this slump were the abolitionists, the Civil War, and ultimately the women's suffrage movement. In fact, it was at a meeting where women's suffrage was under debate that Sojourner Truth lost her patience and stood up to deliver her "Ain't I a Woman?" speech. Her point was well taken. No one ever lifted her over a puddle on a rainy day. Women took the stage again at the end of the nineteenth century.

Children's book authors have given us an array of superb books on strong women of the late 1800s. Linda Arms White writes and Nancy Carpenter illustrates I Can Do That! Esther Morris Gets Women the Vote. Esther rises to the occasion when adversity strikes in the 1830s. She stands up to a mob that wants to burn down her church for its abolitionist teachings. A widow with a baby, she moves out West to claim her right to her husband's property, but it is denied her. Eventually remarried, she follows her second husband to Wyoming and is present as Wyoming becomes the first territory to grant women the vote in 1869. In 1870 she is appointed the first woman judge. Another tale from the Wild West is Robert H. Miller's The Story of Stagecoach Mary Fields. Mary (born enslaved in 1832) is best friends growing up with her white owner's daughter. After they are grown and the Civil War is over, her friend, who has become a nun, moves to Montana. Mary gets a letter inviting her to go out and work for the convent. She runs the property for the nuns and gets mixed up with a ranch hand who doesn't want to take orders from a black woman. They shoot it out. Mary wins. The bishop is not pleased. The nun sees an ad for stagecoach driver on a new dangerous mountain run and encourages Mary to apply for the job. Mary is the fastest at hitching up the wagon, and she gets the job: the first African American woman postal carrier and only the second woman to work for the U. S. Postal Service. Mary becomes legendary shooing off bandits and toughing out a night surrounded by wolves. These are fun stories of strong, adventurous women. Each follows the good picture-book combination of balancing words and image. Each gives students the opportunity to analyze character, plot, cause, and effect. They show women taking charge of their lives, benefiting their communities, and demanding equal treatment with men in contrast to prevalent attitudes that women were weak and reliant on men for their care.

Back in the East and Midwest, the women's suffrage movement picked up steam. Smith writes, "The woman's rights movement was indeed an offshoot of the agitation against slavery, a campaign most of whose foot soldiers and many of whose officers were women." ¹⁴ Women became politically active organizing abolition societies. In 1840 seven American women delegates were turned away from the World Anti-Slavery Convention in London including Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Elizabeth Leads the Way: Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the Right to Vote by Tanya Lee Stone gives clear examples of the restrictions on girls and women as Elizabeth was growing up. The book emphasizes injustice when a visitor sighs at how sad it is that Elizabeth's new baby sister is a girl, and another time when her father, a judge, informs a widow she must lose her farm because as a woman she can't own property. Elizabeth is outraged. Her quest for equal rights begins. She vows to do anything a man can do. This is why she insists on traveling to London along with her husband as a delegate to the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Being rejected for being female angered her and her friend Lucretia Mott. By 1848 these two women opened the first Woman's Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Women, including Susan B. Anthony, responded to the cause. Abolition and woman's suffrage often blended in speeches and rallies. People came just to see women take the stage. The looming Civil War brought more opportunities for women to organize and gain status. Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin, Clara Barton created a corps of nurses, women organized sanitary fairs to create and supply military hospitals, and with emancipation thousands of young women teachers went south to start schools. Women performed essential roles that proved their abilities to organize and accomplish vital missions for America.

Of all the women of the 1800s, Harriet Tubman is one of the most impressive. Born a slave in 1820, Harriet grew up on a Maryland plantation. She escaped to Philadelphia in 1849 and the next year began a series of nineteen return trips. She is single-handedly responsible for leading nearly 70 people to freedom. Instructions she left behind helped over 230 more. She was known as the "Moses" of her people. As she gained fame, she was invited to be the guest speaker at abolitionist meetings in Boston and traveled with a group of abolitionists to South Carolina to aid the Union Army as nurse, scout, and spy. She led Col. James Montgomery's forces in a raid that freed 800 people. Harriet Tubman and the Underground Railroad by Michael Martin is illustrated by Dave Hoover and Bill Anderson. A brief graphic novel, it is easily accessible to all readers; the images get to the heart of her story. Another picture book team, Lori Mortensen and Frances Moore, created Harriet Tubman: Hero of the Underground Railroad. This book depicts the episode when she was seven and was hired out to a mistress who whipped her if the baby in her care cried. Harriet ran away when the woman came after her with the whip for eating a sugar cube. Hiding in a neighbor's pigpen for five days, Harriet scrounged for food scraps. Hungry, she returned to the house and was sent back to the plantation in shame. There is a substantial body of literature at various reading levels on Harriet Tubman. ¹⁵ She would be an excellent topic for teaching research and expository writing. Tubman is a true American hero. When she was growing up, slaves would run away, but none returned to tell what the North was like. Ann Petry writes, Tubman "became a legend. Each one who heard the story would feel stronger because of her existence. … their faith in a living God would be strengthened, their faith in themselves would be renewed." ¹⁶ Tubman had the strength and courage to save herself and risked her life to save her family and friends. After the Civil War she continued serving her community, creating a home for old and poor African Americans, and she was a key figure in the women's suffrage movement. She inspired people of her day and continues to inspire us. As Petry says, "Freedom's a hard-bought thing, not bought with dust, but bought with all of oneself – the bones, the spirit and the flesh – and once obtained it had to be cherished, no matter what the cost." ¹⁷ Harriet Tubman's story needs to be told and retold. Her example shatters any notion that women are frail and weak.

After the war the women's suffrage movement splintered into groups with diverse perspectives on marriage, race, and sexuality. Victoria Claflin Woodhull and her sister Tennie C. Claflin are a rags-to-riches story. Kathleen Krull gives young readers an idea of their colorful run in A Woman for President: The Story of Victoria Woodhull. The Claflins are so poor that Victoria's father puts her on stage as a medium to earn money for the family. Victoria is beautiful and has a mellifluous voice. The sisters are spiritualists. They move to New York and get Commodore Vanderbilt to set them up as stockbrokers (Woodhull Claflin & Company, Wall Street Brokers), and they publish a newspaper. They are the first women stockbrokers and the first women to start a newspaper. The sisters are ambitious and uninhibited. Victoria has a vision in 1872 and announces that she is running for President. She appears before Congress demanding women's right to vote. This wins enthusiastic support from Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony at the National Woman's Suffrage Association convention. Victoria begins stumping for women's rights. Images in Krull's book are amusing. They get the flavor of various social classes. Krull does not go into the philosophy that put Woodhull at odds with New England suffragettes: free love. Woodhull is embroiled in scandal. She does not get any electoral votes. The scandal breaks up the suffrage movement. Victoria leaves for London and marries a wealthy Englishman. American suffragettes write her out of their history. Belva Lockwood is the next woman to run for president in 1884. Ballots for Belva by Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen tells the story of how Lockwood pushed barriers to become a lawyer. She ran for president twice, but the ballots were not counted. Lockwood illustrates two sides of the push for women's equality: equal rights and women's suffrage. Lockwood broke barriers by insisting on her right to practice law. She was the first woman to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. Her political activism pressed the point that women should be able to vote. Interestingly enough, these two strands of activism were not always working in sync on the national scale. Not all women activists wanted to vote. The debate over the role of women in society went on for decades before the Nineteenth Amendment was ratified in 1920.

That debate continues today. Women are politicians, electricians, doctors, pilots, CEOs. The twentieth century is the setting for women breaking barriers to male-dominated professions. The picture book list at the end of this unit includes well-crafted biographies of women leaders from Amelia Earhart and Marian Anderson to Eleanor Roosevelt. Teach these women to our children. Let there be a well-rounded history of America in elementary schools. Honor our grandmothers, mothers, aunts, and sisters.