Ms. Blumenthal -
I really enjoy reading your book "Let Me Play: The Story of Title IX." All I can say, this book is very easy to read and I learned better about myself as woman. I was born into where all girls can play sports, it was hard to believe that women weren't treated equal before I was born. It's a worth read and well informative as if I'm taking a quick course in the women's history!! I was fascinated the part of the book about "The Battle of the Sexes" of 1973 where Billie Jean King shook the world that she can beat a MCP, tennis player Bobby Riggs in 3 straight sets!!
I'm going to read more of your books!! Thank you!
Marsha Helmuth

Hello!

Hi, Folks!
Karen, here. I want to thank Prof. Vardell for inviting me to join you here. I’m excited to participate, and thrilled that you’re reading my books. I’ve very much enjoyed reading your comments. I’ll try to answer some of your questions here and more over the next week or two.

First, a little background: I began writing nonfiction for kids after a really bad day at work. My oldest daughter had a deep interest in history and biography, and I was distressed to see the quality of a lot of stuff out there. I thought maybe I could combine my growing interest in kids’ books with my experience as a business journalist in making complicated topics clear to readers.

I write for young people with a particular mantra in mind: Nonfiction provides context for a complicated world. You all know how complex our world is. But how do young people make sense of that? How can they put today’s news in some broader place, so that it has more meaning? They just don’t have much experience to bring to all this information flowing in. But as they move into their early teen years, they will begin to see a bigger world beyond their own and they should have great resources, beyond Google and Wikipedia, available to them. I think that’s one place where libraries, librarians, and books remain really important.

I also have a passionate interest in social change, how it happens, and why— all related to the power of any one individual to make a difference. (Or, as Steve Jobs said, “to make a dent in the universe.”) My “big picture” books—SIX DAYS, LET ME PLAY, and BOOTLEG—all try to get at this subject. One day we could drink and the next day we couldn’t—and that profoundly changed us. But how? One day, we had money and then we didn’t? Why, and what happened then? There was a time when girls couldn’t play sports—or go to med school. Who knew?

So, to answer Kathleen’s great question right at the start, I do set out to write social histories. Informational surveys are for textbooks, or Wikipedia. Christina and Jessica ask about why I included specific stories—the car salesman in SIX DAYS and Leroy Ostransky in BOOTLEG. There’s an old adage for writers: Show, don’t tell. Personal stories that illustrate specific themes move a story along and provide lots of valuable information in a readable, memorable way. To me, that’s what separates good narrative nonfiction from the run-of-the mill stuff. It takes a lot more research and persistence to find great, meaningful stories and substantive, entertaining details than to just gather some facts and figures and write them up. That’s what sets Candace Fleming’s and Jim Murphy’s books apart from everyone else’s.

As for Leroy, I especially wanted to show young people what prohibition looked like from a kid’s perspective. There is an enormous amount of material out there about prohibition, but none of it looked at it from the view of a young person. I did a ton of research to find those stories—Leroy’s, Raymond Parks’, Kenneth Nestell’s. For whatever it’s worth, not one review that I know of has mentioned this—but I thought it was very important. In fact, my own, personal subtitle for the book was “Drinking for Children.”

Okay, I’ve gone on too long now. I’ll answer Cheryl’s question about Sam Walton and privacy next time. I’m running into the same issue with this new project on Steve Jobs.
Thanks so much for your interest and your questions!
Karen Blumenthal

Mr. Sam:

I had the pleasure of reading Mr. Sam this week, and I must say, I am thoroughly impressed by the way you manage to make such high-minded concepts as business and corporate competition seem accessible to adolescents and younger readers. While it is no secret that Walmart is something of a controversial symbol of American consumerism, you manage to make Mr. Sam seem not only human, but likable at that. I feel that readers can learn a lot about business, and perhaps even a future career, by reading this book. Mr. Sam makes the American Dream seem both realistic and attainable. I feel is a positive lesson for students, who may even be ready to write business plans of their own after reading it. Your book takes business, by all accounts a mysterious topic for younger readers, and explains it to them in their own terms, as something they could even do someday themselves. I quite enjoyed the book, and would love to use it in my class should the occasion arise.

So, if you don't mind my asking, my question for you is this: How did you decide on Sam Walton as a topic for a book? And, if I may, what draws you to a topic in general?

We are honored to have you as a guest for our class!

-Patrick Yercich

Let Me Play

The title is what caught my attention. The first thing I asked myself was: What is title IX, why have I never heard of it, and why would anybody not let girls play? From the beginning I was hooked and the more I read I began to realize how much I took the freedom to do and become whatever I wanted for granted. As an educator and a woman I hope to empower young women by informing them about title IX and about all the women before us that helped lay the foundation for our rights.
Leticia Penn