You’ve probably heard about Charles Lindbergh, the first pilot to fly across the Atlantic. But did you ever hear about Cal Rodgers? Only eight years after the Wright brothers flew the first heavier-than-air machine, newspaper tycoon William Hearst offered a $50,000 prize to the first to fly across the continent in less than 30 days. Although Cal Rodgers had just learned to fly, he was ready. “He’ll need every atom of courage..,” Wilbur Wright had said of any man who attempted to win the prize. The nation had not a single airport, and there were no navigation aids or repair places. . To help him, a train carrying a second plane, spare parts, a crew of mechanics, Cal’s wife Mabel, his mother, and reporters was rented by a company producing a grape drink named Vin Fiz. In exchange, Cal named his airplane after it, and would scatter Vin Fiz promotional leaflets from the sky— the first aerial ad campaign. On September 17, 1911, Cal took off from Brooklyn, made a sweep over Manhattan and headed for New Jersey, where the train, and an enormous crowd, was waiting. The next morning, right after takeoff he tried to avoid some power lines, hit a tree, and plunged into a chicken coop. Feathers floated as he emerged from a tangle of wires, splintered wood, and torn fabric. Head bleeding, cigar clenched between his teeth, he muttered, “Oh, my beautiful airplane.” They rebuilt the Vin Fiz, and a few days later he was again airborne. Stopovers were frequent, as were brushes with death. The plane struck telegraph wires; it piled into a barbed-wire fence (demolished again); and landing in Indiana, Cal was attacked by a bull. He became the first pilot to fly in a thunderstorm. But the Vin Fiz buzzed on. When he reached Chicago, other contenders had dropped out. Cal realized that he wasn’t going to make it to the west coast in 30 days. But he pressed on… To avoid the Rocky Mountains, he flew south over Texas, then west. By the time he reached California, after a dozen crashes, his plane had been rebuilt so often that little remained of the original. A month later, after still another crash and in yet another rebuilt plane, he finally reached the Pacific, greeted by 50,000 spectators Tragically, Cal’s luck ran out. A few months later, he flew into a flock of seagulls, and plunged to his death. But he did it— he became the first pilot to fly across the American continent.
 The Vin Fiz departing New York. Roxie Munro  The first of what would be many crashes of the Vin Fiz. The chickens seem to be much more disturbed about the incident than Cal is. Roxie Munro  Cal in, or perhaps we should say on, the Vin Fiz getting ready to land on the shore of the Pacific. Roxie Munro  Victorious Cal is welcomed by his fans and the press. Note the crutches. It was not an easy trip! Roxie Munro  In eleven intricately drawn mazes, eight vehicles, each carrying a different product, are on their way to the city. Fish, apples, dairy products, corn, vegetables, flowers, eggs, and baked goods all travel through colorful and minutely detailed landscape mazes to reach the city farmer's market. Information on all of the products and their journeys is included, along with answers to all of the mazes. For additional fun, kids are challenged to look for objects hidden on each spread. For more information, on Roxie's Market Maze, click here. MLA 8 Citation Munro, Roxie. "A Transcontinental First." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 22 Jan. 2018, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/ a-transcontinental-first. 
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When I was a kid fifty years ago, President Theodore Roosevelt had a bad rap. We learned that way back in the 1900s, he banned Christmas trees from the White House. What a lousy father, I thought. Down through the years, the story went something like this: Across America in the early 1900s, huge forests were in danger of destruction from a lumbering practice called “clear-cutting.” Lots of newspapers and public leaders asked Americans to stop going to the woods to cut Christmas trees. Now when the Roosevelts and their six kids lived in the White House, they didn’t have a tree. Stockings and presents, but not a tree. So folks assumed that Roosevelt had outlawed Christmas trees, because he was a huge outdoorsman and conservationist. But, according to people who’ve done their history homework, that’s not the whole truth. It’s possible that First Lady Edith Roosevelt had six kids to think of and didn’t want the extra fuss of a Christmas tree. Christmas trees had become very popular ever since the old German tradition was picked up in the United States, but not everyone chose to have one. As it turned out, the Roosevelts did have at least one tree, courtesy of their eight-year-old son Archie. On Christmas morning 1902, Archie surprised his family. The president wrote about it in a letter that told of Christmas morning:
A magazine ran the story of Archie’s tree the next year. From then on, it picked up all sorts of embellishments, sort of like playing telephone at a birthday party. Today, the best explanation of the old story appears on a blog run by the Forest History Society. Visit their website. And for more cool facts about Christmas trees, check out the website of the folks who know, the College of Agriculture at the University of Illinois.  Roosevelt Family in 1903 with Quentin on the left, TR, Ted, Archie, Alice, Kermit, Edith, and Ethel. Credit: Library of Congress  Young Archie Roosevelt on his horse Algonquin. Credit: Library of Congress  The discovery of the tree in the seamstress's closet was a popular Christmas illustration for a story that ran in Ladies Home Journal. The story underscored the simplicity of the Roosevelt family’s Christmas decorations and the president’s conservation ethic.  Theodore Roosevelt for Kids brings to life this fascinating man, an American giant whose flaws were there for all the world to see. Twenty-one hands-on activities offer a useful glimpse at Roosevelt’s work and times. Readers will create a Native American toy, explore the effects of erosion, go on a modern big game hunt with a camera, and make felted teddy bears. The text includes a time line, online resources, and reading list for further study. And through it all, readers will appreciate how one man lived a “Bully!” life and made the word his very own. Kerrie Hollihan is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through FieldTripZoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more. MLA 8 Citation Hollihan, Kerrie Logan. "Did Theodore Roosevelt Ban Christmas Trees?" Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 22 Dec. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/the-nonfiction-minute/ Did-Theodore-Roosevelt-Ban-Christmas-Trees. Accessed 22 Dec. 2017. 
Henry VIII gets a lot of bad press notably for his seven wives and a regrettable habit of chopping off heads. But there were two Henrys: early and late. Early Henry was a humdinger. He became king at age 17 in 1509, a big (over six feet) handsome lad. He was broadly educated and well-read in English, Latin, and French. He played the lute, organ, and harpsichord, composed music, and sang well. He loved a party, and he was a ferocious sportsman. Henry played excellent tennis, was a skilled wrestler, hunter, and jouster. His love of jousting may have been his undoing. This was not a battle skill but a royal game: on huge horses, in heavy armor, opponents rode at each other with blunt lances to knock each other out of the saddle. But in 1536 Henry left his face-covering visor up during a joust, catching a lance on his forehead. His majesty went down under his horse. His legs were crushed and he lay unconscious for two hours, apparently a serious concussion. Henry changed radically. The broken long bones in his legs healed poorly and developed infected ulcers, which had to be drained using red hot probes. Ouch. Walking became difficult and painful, and finally impossible. The smell from his infected legs was awful. He became angry, paranoid, and irrational. No longer active, he ate and ate, bloating from around 210 pounds (95 kg) to 400 pounds (181 kg). This was late Henry: obese, dangerous, and smelly. His altered mental state and his constant pain surely contributed to his marital difficulties and to steady employment for head-choppers. A mental, physical wreck, Henry VIII died at age 55 in 1547. Court embalmers replaced his innards with sawdust, resin and herbs to preserve the body, but Henry was already rotting from the legs up. The royal corpse was placed in a sealed lead coffin. An enormous regal procession set off from Whitehall Castle to Windsor Castle. The funeral parade halted the first day at the old Syon Abbey. In the middle of the night, the lead coffin exploded! Or did it? Some historians suggest that it simply broke because Henry was too fat and the roads were bad. Yet contemporary morticians insist that gasses of decomposition can blow open even a modern sealed coffin. The coffin was soldered shut and the parade hustled on to the burial at Windsor, an untidy end for a wonderful and terrible king.
 Henry VIII’s vault now lies under the choir loft at St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle, about 20 miles west of London. His coffin, the center one, has been badly damaged over the years and has broken apart in places. Wikimedia Commons
 In 1843, thirty-one-year-old Charles Dickens had money problems. His wife was expecting their sixth child, he was in debt, and he supported a slew of needy relatives. He was known for long novels that were published in weekly installments, but because time was of the essence, he decided to write a short story (actually a long story by our standards, but short by his) that he could publish quickly. The British were enamored with the paranormal, so he decided it would be a ghost story. To increase interest, he included THREE ghosts. And to seal the deal, he added a bonus apparition that appeared at the stroke of midnight, dragging its chains from hell. That would get readers’ attention. He didn’t intend to simply entertain them. He was Charles Dickens, after all, and his writing was also meant to inspire. His family had once been poor, and his quest, as always, was to help the less fortunate. The tale he crafted happened at Christmas, a holiday that in England included charitable giving—the perfect setting for his message that charity must come from the heart, and that it’s never too late for redemption. From his fertile imagination he conjured up Ebenezer Scrooge, “a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous, old sinner!” whose refrain to anything distasteful was “Bah, Humbug!” Scrooge represented the self-serving upper classes, while his poorly paid clerk, Bob Cratchit, and his family, including sickly Tiny Tim, represent the deserving poor. Dickens sent Scrooge on a wild night’s journey, led by the ghosts of Christmases past, present, and future. Scrooge visited his childhood and learned why he’d become such a miserable miser, and he saw a grim future awaiting him if he didn’t change his ways. By sunrise Christmas morning he was a new man: his hard heart had melted and he became a good friend to the poor, beginning with the Cratchit family. He resolved to “honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.” To Dickens’ delight, his readers did the same. In example after example, A Christmas Carol inspired the upper classes to be more charitable to the lower classes. And because the book became a bestseller, it eased Dickens’ financial worries. Dickens’ ghost story remains popular today, reminding us all that it’s never too late to do the right thing, and allowing us to proclaim with Tiny Tim, “God Bless Us, Every One!”  The title page of the original 1843 edition of "A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas."
 Ignorance and want of the miser -- a particularly moving etching of children suffering. Drawn by John Leech for the original edition of "A Christmas Carol."  You can learn more about Charles Dickens and his stories in Andrea Warren’s book Charles Dickens and the Street Children of London and on her website. Andrea Warren is a member of iNK's Authors on Call and is available for classroom programs through Field Trip Zoom, a terrific technology that requires only a computer, wifi, and a webcam. Click here to find out more. MLA 8 Citation Warren, Andrea. "Dickens' A Christmas Carol: How a Short Story with a Big Message Helped the Poor." Nonfiction Minute, iNK Think Tank, 12 Dec. 2017, www.nonfictionminute.org/Dickens-a-christmas-carol. 
You need to write a biography, a story of someone’s life. What do you do to discover the person’s silly quirks or darkest secrets? Probably you go online. That’s a good start, but that’s all it is—a start. Real authors—and students completing assignments—dig deeper. Only by checking a variety of resources can you find the juiciest facts to make your biographies come alive. For example, when I write about someone, I start by reading an overview of their life. I might check a general resource, such as Wikipedia, But not all information is accurate in this or other websites, so I play detective to locate resources that confirm what I’m reading. One way to find good resources is to look at the bottom of the Wikipedia article and see which articles and books that author used as resources. If these sources seem credible to you, click to find the original articles the author used. Another source of information is your librarian. Librarians love to delve into the craziest topics. Need to locate a long-lost relative of your biography subject or trail where that person lived over the years, ask your librarian. Librarians locate books, specialized online resources, and newspapers and magazines that can help you. When I researched Dolores Huerta Stands Strong: The Woman Who Demanded Justice, I wanted more personal resources. So I looked for people to interview who knew her at different times of her life. I called up volunteers who marched with Dolores to protest unfair treatment of farm workers. I found others who helped the public learn not to eat table grapes until farm owners agreed to pay farm workers fair wages and provide clean housing, breaks in the fields, and places to go to the bathroom. When I wanted to learn how Dolores Huerta worked to improve lives of women, I contacted Gloria Steinem, a leader of the 1970s women’s movement. I talked with Huerta’s children. I prepared before each interview. I learned about connections between the interviewees and my biography subject. I wrote questions ahead of time, so I wasn’t wasting interviewee time. At the end of each interview, I asked: “Is there something else you remember?’ That’s when I got some of the best stories. Between interviews, books, magazine and newspaper articles, I found enough material to tell Huerta’s life. You can with your biography, too.  Once you've researched and written your biography, you will probably want to add a picture of your subject. You've probably seen many pictures during your research, but you must be careful about permission to use photographs or drawings. You can find some good guidelines at How to Find Free Images With Google's Advanced Image Search. This photo of Delores Huerta is from her Wikipedia article. Most photos from Wikipedia may be used for non business purposes. By clicking on a picture, you are taken to Wikimedia, the place where photos reside. You will be able to download a photo and decide how you want to caption it. Here's what it says about this photo in Wikimedia: Description English: Dolores speaking at an event in Phoenix, Arizona. Date: 20 March 2016 Author: Gage Skidmore This information will allow you to tell your reader about the photo in the form of a caption and also credit your source: Delores Huerta speaking at an event in Phoenix Arizona on March 20, 1916. Photo by Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia  Marlene Targ Brill's Dolores Huerta Stands Strong follows Huerta’s life from the mining communities of the Southwest where her father toiled, to the vineyards and fields of California, and across the country to the present day. As she worked for fair treatment for others, Dolores earned the nation’s highest honors. More important, she found her voice. |
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