A Word on Words; 3012; Patrick Mckissack

hello i'm done so you know once again welcome to word on words i guest is patricia mckissick welcome to world words and you so i set it all about going someplace special going someplace special is a children's book in the sense that it's about a little girl and it's a book that they get that you have targeted toward young people who need to know something about the history of racism before so as women fare yes it is my goal was to us so very often you go to school as an annual ask kids you know who was minded decaying in their city free dislocated speech they have you know they have no way of putting time of having a timeframe between slavery and the modern civil rights movement as nothing in between and so on looks like this i think have helped us help threatened me to try to get the get some

perspective well when i opened the book and it's a very short book is our audience can say other worries some place special and you tell me at the end i will say that for a little while for our reviewers but what you really do here is create the situation on a city bus for a little girl that you were concerned bob whose experience is cast in the days of song apartheid segregation and she is on the bus and the sons are there that same effect like to back no colon front end in this case the world is

somebody special and you call or treasure and and i wanted a treasured tin is not the treasure looking back on her own childhood yesterday's to share his is me but she's she's more than me when you're writing fiction you have to take yourself out of the story when you're writing it that way so that you can build a story around her if you'll notice when to share and makes a journey to someplace special i take it out of national proper because i have to have it going from place to place to place in a sequence in an order of some kind and my actual journey to the library did not encompass all of those are situations that i describe in the book but at one time or another i did experience them in my own in my own life are and so i didn't want it to be about although in my

office night i say that it's about nashville i didn't want to call names and places in nashville because i didn't want young readers today to fall on bad feelings about institutions that are still existing youtube then and beyond that ivins read in atlanta or birmingham or more real anywhere in the south the experience like you hers was a day and it becomes more universal way so i i did live richly outset it i'm in jazz the south and i had her going on a journey for starting with the bass and but if you notice all through the story to share is not alone she's going downtown for the very first time by yourself and her grandmother tells her you know carry yourself crowd you know don't don't yeah i'll hold your head out to zimbabwe you know yes that's my beloved grandmothers jack pitney is bunny cartoon work and he's a distinguished cartoonist he

like you you're an award winning author and he is an award winning cartoonist your work has been widely acclaimed and so has his bum but in his cartoon work his character in strikes me as almost almost nobody opposed to norman rockwell village except that is much more interested in this subject and rockwell a lot of talk a little bit about the collaboration kind and stare at jerry thing and i go back to nineteen eighty nine when he illustrated my miranda and brother when which was the cover caught on a book and i needed him a magnificent job with ed book it's about a little girl who tries to capture the way and gary and downs of course it takes on a mary journey again all my girl characters can go through journeys trying

to reach our reach a goal of some kind and so witty and she does indeed capture the way and in that india buying because i live stuff about the quacks she says and i'm geri just depicted by the win this big blue it iridescent blue character and he used himself as a model for the character brother when so we waited for years and years to get to do another book together and when he read going someplace special he said i want to do this one and i had to wait three years for him to illustrate he had other projects a grunt of mine but i waited gladly because this is this is this is i'm a good collaboration between the two of us were you at the blend of texting an art really captures the spirit of the story you'd put on this bus and that's one experience and then you put into a city park and you know

she's on the way somewhere else alone while she finds a bench a park bench for white only silly science she mother's says he's walked away along on her so religion should another experience i know your head of course in childhood which is talk a little bit about we just talk a little bit about the impact of those signs on children and the difficulty parents and grandparents head explaining the solution if it had not been for our parents and our community protecting

and shielding us from those devastating signs i imagine our lives would have been much worse but we were protected very often within the african american community by being a bad being supported by teachers who told us you can you can diffuse if you learn to read if you stay in school if you work hard you can achieve and then they kept telling us we were right in that we could do we could do things that we wanted to do even though they kind of suspected that it would be difficult for us when we really stepped out into the real world but if we were prepared and if we had this support system that they have built up with innes that one day we would win the doors did open we would be able to go through and indeed we were but i imagine that was very difficult for them because it has been difficult for me when my sons

came and talked to me about overt racism which is is still living it still alive in quite well we don't have the jim crow sides but believe me it still they and it's ever present in my sons have come to me to talk to talk about things he was very difficult for me for what what we did with in our community was to always give them that family and community support the socal within the circle in circle start with the core the family and then came your chair school in community and in the broader community beyond that but i know it was not easy and was very demeaning and you did not feel very often aren't he felt like the ugly duckling in fact that's one of my favorite stories is his accounts which didn't and so as the ugly duckling because you felt like the ugly duckling like the outcast that here are these beautiful little box and everybody was

saying how beautiful they were and then when they got to you somehow you didn't measure up you were not quite good enough you were never acceptable are accepted and so here we were growing up in this environment within one day the little duckling grows into a swan our beloved us that their comeuppance then end i guess that's how it kind of how i saw myself and i saw are races that we aren't the ugly ducklings but we i swans antony and one day we will blossom in people without beautiful we are you take treasury and two one of restaurant and twos the self lion hotel here and then in both those environments she says tastes rejection again but in both those environments there are people to help her

jimmy lee is outside the restaurant explaining there is a dormant a motel mr john willis and he is telling are the actual life with regard to the hotel she goes in but suddenly in a white crowd she sing out and everyone blair's that are about that time i suppose she's feeling about is as the means as isolated and is alienated as a child can feel but still she's on to something on our way to someplace she's going someplace special and ultimately a when she gets there will say this one un no incidents were followed thought it's worth

all of the isolation it's worthwhile of the being left out when you are when you get to someplace special and it really was a special as my going someplace that show it really wise to some kids it's a ballpark to some kids it's sad you know to get to go to the pharaoh into some kids it's going to go out to these very wonderful and special places but for me it was someplace special oven that i won't say what it is right now is were building no though i do just joining us were talking with derision because it about her new book they're going someplace special and to talk about some of your other work as well as we move along but let me ask about blooming mary ann bunsen the blooming mary and blowing mary really that song are under and deserve support and encouragement pretty much as i'm sure mama france's was going to win when she got home and told her about her

experiences a liver weren't willing where you come from lamine mary is a creation but she's also a very familiar character in most communities this is a woman that people thought was you use adult you know we all we are communities have them you know in india and down in in our community was a man however i made her a lemon and as she kind of took care of the church ruins garden of plenty the pie not the mission she just kind of did it and dad because she did people thought she was a little bit at all that she said that she really was one of those deer cells that as we go along in life's journey that we run into every now and again who can give us just that word it was just that look just that touch on the back again beckett help you to get over

a hurdle that you might be facing on your journey in life n n n roll me marry was one of those persons you know most of time would look to people like that is and what does she have to offer but she had a laptop for this little girl she didn't have an awful lot over into just in terms of having been there and done that and having experience the same rejection a friendly touch after all that rejection throughout the day must have made a difference years and then she goes to the grammys the palace and finds out the air when you can get to sit in the third balcony and finally she gets to someplace special and someplace special is the public coverage now can you tell me about tell me about that i mean the loans that's where you were when you were just you know

it's amazing my husband and this is as much my husband story that is my family gets sick or has been we were talking one night and we were just talking about the importance of libraries in our lives in an indian points of librarians there were talking about now but then we began to to talk about our childhood and he talks about having come to the national spotlight yes and you know it's an amazing that the library was integrated it it was always said it must have been because it was the carnegie library has been at carnegie had something to do with that well in our research we found out that's not true the carnegie gave the money and he wanted to be open top people within the community but he did make it a stipulation for getting the money so that wasn't the reasons i so what was the reason and we found out that in the late fifties and one more for the fifties lectures went into the lab or in a way never turned out why they

would use the live downtown library and they could just go in and nobody said they couldn't sell the end they weren't but it was in the late fifties that arm on the bad times was on the board and dunn audubon tense of course was the librarian at fisk university and one of the renaissance writers exactly a well loved to collect in the buyout firm in his own way in his own right but down the he was on the board and it seems like they it was just a decision a unanimous decision not one dissenting vote on the board to integrate the library but there was no fanfare that was not no big articles in the paper nothing like it was just open and i've always said that those who would've complained the most probably wouldn't use the cyber area so the library was

opened to me it i didn't know the politics behind i just knew that i could go to a library love course we had for the great collaborate fair skin we had tennessee state and we have actually popular at home which were you just but there was something special about going downtown head and especially going past all those places that said no and there's a place for us when you can go into a place you feel good about going gray and we feel good about going there we feel good about going to the library you read more and if you read more you read better if you read battle of course you reach success so i was a reader i read everything i read everything i could get my hands on and you could you could check out three books in the state's three books that site to take care and you could in you and bring them back within two weeks and but i was a hog piece before before it was time to turn them in but i grew up loving books and loving it does the smell of a live jade as uncertain

we know that love or their own accord or against clinton in may rosen has given us a magnificent new lover doesnt where the sun still says all along and that's the sun attrition that you did trisha ended she walked up through that place that was something special let's take a look ahead so you're the work is just briefly let's look at a previous children's book you've done in the us to be honest truth talk about the arsonist troops oh you know children a top fund babies tell the truth no matter where it and of course they do they tell the truth no matter how much it hurts other people and my children were no

exceptions i taught them always to tell the truth and they would especially at the inappropriate time in the wrong way at the wrong reasons you or they would point out things that didn't need to be pointed out in a long time and that they would say things and do things and then when i would get on them about it it mines them about it they would said but mom you must always tell the truth so i said i need you had a book about this and so i did and it's about so you're talking about we might we have a couple of of the incident they do you just continue and those shows do to pictures and they will move on to mr kelley libby least tells the truth tells a lie to her mother and she gets in trouble for it and she decides that she's going to tell the truth and she starts the very next day by pointing out to her best friend that i like to dress but you've got a hole in your stocking and she tells the teacher that we doesn't have his whole work and that law so we didn't have

is on his lunch money and borrow some from his jackson and and she tells our neighbor their garden looks like a joe so she's decked in trouble she says mother you know why they are angry many angry at me for telling the trophy and she said well the truth must be tile with honesty and love and sea i miss to goodness truth comes in the hall so you must be honest with international more meaningful then you have done a series on barbies and buses take a look at the lowes those seven include one of the king by be well it's about madame c j walker means a book the washington jesse owens louis armstrong and paired with a bomb you know we talk about role models and everybody needs them for so many years so much of american literature was

white that ends there was little in american literature then expose young after americans two role models and there was an oral tradition family has talked about these people but unless it's not the same as if you have something close to start a bargain talk to me about why you have done this really meaningful series on black heroes class and we when we started writing and that was twenty years ago there were very few books that she say that introduced young readers to the african american contribution i know to the growth in development of this nation that was just nothing that kids could fly and if they did it was followed her readers

the children learned a very early age that he said there needs to be a series of books for the young reader so these books are targeted for the second and third grade reader which shows those characters because we felt that these were people who really made major contributions and all children should know about them not just african techno and i was one of the late jimmy also should know about the experience of going someplace oh yes they should yes they should because you go back to that just the moment when you say that the law is not just about say it's not just about segregation that's the way i was able to write this book because for so long i was unable to write because there was so much anger still attached to it so i had to exercise be the the the the anger know get that out of me an even like this one that from a perspective of some distance and some successes they can help it overcome the bad the best or even just six

and so i used that as is almost like a poem and munching you know i will work hard and make the sacrifices my parents made worse with the doing and so i wanted young people to be able to read going someplace special and see themselves in that book if they for example have a handicap on physical handicaps you can get over that you can you can make that leap you can get beyond those obstacles that us that in front of you you can make it with with family love with community care if you can make that leap on you've got to have the determination you can turn back with their blooming mayor is that they are there with john willis is out there they are all kinds of people who were willing to reach out and habit you've got to begin the journey you got to make that first step those who perhaps come from homes that i'd say broken homes are especially now in light of what happened on the

eleventh children are going to be somewhat leery about going out making that first step by themselves they're going to be dealing with fear that you can overcome and if you have a community that's loving and caring of their children so i think that i think going someplace special is more than just about my own experience with segregation it will help them to understand it and also i think as a broader context to be used within about how tough i go to a book short enough on your book yes and how are they publish i'm brandon house of simon and schuster and scholastic all my major publishers on dr tom insel publishing did the biographies islands located in new jersey but scholastic does most of my major buy most of my major major non fiction most in my picture books of simon and schuster still an

edited by anne schwartz inch what's books with that in a m which is a part of which is a sub of simon and schuster and then of course random house's thunder are a number of my books where you are oh i'm working on about three price fixing them very excited about all three of them but one i'm particularly air and i'm excited that is a book about the emancipation proclamation and the freeing of the slaves in this country it was kind of interesting and then when you think that'll be out there will be out probably a year a year from now this time each day you know it'd be interesting to see how quickly it catches on rollers fishing population for many people lose just a cliched term that has no historical think that's where i tried to explain in there is that it has been given it has been given a

lot more credit than like the emancipation proclamation freeing absolutely no one but it set the tone i think that's important for the what followed after it but actually the thirteenth amendment is what actually freed the slaves and i was the constitutional amendment so am i tapped him but when you have to explain it in such a way that it's a series of events that leads up to that actually it's called whether working you never know which you title is going to be until it's actually i made almost ready for publication but right now the working title is dave days of jubilee days of jubilee and it's not see there's no one day because the slaves were freed in many different ways are some were freed by the generals who for example general friedman who just simply said i'm freeing all slaves that i come in contact with we've been talking about her new book bill in

some going someplace special great to have you and grade them all of you for funds it involves the world wars the treaty