A librarian makes a case for sticking to the verifiable facts

Are informational books true? The American Library Association is clear. On the Web site of the Association for Library Service to Children’s Robert F. Sibert Informational Book Award a definition is stated as part of the award’s purpose: “Information books are defined as those written and illustrated to present, organize and interpret documentable factual material for children”. But after a year of chairing the Sibert Informational Book Award committee, I am not so certain.

In 2004, I read and evaluated well over 200 books that writers, publishers, librarians, and reviewers felt belonged in the category of informational books for children. These ranged from texts with discussion questions to information presented by talking animals, and from picture books to serious, scholarly works based on original research with primary-source materials. Many authors used the devices of fiction writing: dramatic beginnings, vivid descriptions, careful portrayal of setting to support the mood, character development, dialogue, and suspenseful narrative. But some did not just use fiction writing techniques; they also introduced fictional content, inventing details in order to add interest to the story for young readers.

Just how much fiction can there be in a book that is presented as nonfiction? Where should writers and publishers draw the line between fiction and nonfiction? What is the responsibility of the librarian who catalogs the book? Should the standard be the same for young readers as for adults? I have come to believe that writers of informational books for young people have a special responsibility to respect truth, to get their facts right and convey them accurately. Young readers do not have the breadth of experience to put information in context. They seldom read an introduction or an afterword where an author might explain that something has been added or changed. Even when there is such an acknowledgment, it still undermines the purpose of writing nonfiction, because the reader has no way of knowing which detail is false–so even if there are only a few fabrications, everything in the book is in doubt.

Among those who create and classify books for young readers there are different opinions about whether fabrication is ever acceptable, what kind of imaginative additions are appropriate, and how much fiction is appropriate in a nonfiction work. What follows are some examples from books that received positive critical attention and even awards in the past year but also contain invented or inaccurate material, and some examples from writers who struggle to make their work factually accurate.

The winner of the 2005 Coretta Scott King Award, Toni Morrison, broke new ground with Remember: The Journey to School Integration (Houghton, 2004). She tells readers up front, on the verso (for adults) and on the opening page addressed to young readers, that she has “imagined the thoughts and feelings of some of the people in the photographs chosen to help tell this story.” The photos are documentable factual material, dated, described, and sourced in the back matter. But the captions in the body of the text are Morrison’s ideas of what the characters might be thinking. Winner of the 1993 Nobel Prize in Literature, Morrison has demonstrated over and over the breadth and depth of her imagination. Clearly, the Coretta Scott King committee thought this was a distinguished book. It is. But I worry that children will be confused by the combination, especially if they take the book from their library where it will be shelved (according to the Library of Congress cataloging) in nonfiction about desegregating schools.

Anne Elizabeth’s Diary (Little, Brown, 2004), written and illustrated by Anne Elizabeth Rector with additional text by Kathleen Krull, is subtitled A Young Artist’s True Story. It is charming: made up of short diary entries and wonderful sketches as well as sidebars explaining what life in New York might be like for a privileged young girl in 1912. But these are not “her own diary entries” as it says on the back cover. On the last page, Krull tells readers that, while all drawings and events come from the diary, she has “added interpretations, continuity, and emotion,” based on interviews with Anne Elizabeth’s daughter and granddaughter.

Adding material is not the only way an author can mislead. Don Brown’s Kid Blink Beats THE WORLD (Roaring Brook, 2004) is a wonderfully readable account of a genuine and colorful child hero, the leader of a New York newsboys strike in 1899. But while Kid Blink marches at the forefront of the demonstrating newsboys all the way to the end of the book (and on the cover), in fact, according to the New York Times of July 28, 1899, Kid Blink deserted the cause before the end. This makes the story more complicated, and possibly confusing for young readers, but it is what happened.

At a session of the Notable Books for Children committee during the ALA midwinter meeting last January, one member said about Andrea Warren’s Escape from Saigon: How a Vietnam War Orphan Became an American Boy (Farrar, 2004) that it read like fiction “but it wasn’t, it was true.” Unfortunately, much of it isn’t. Although the author says she based her story on “documented historical fact and the testimonies of eyewitnesses,” some of her facts are simply wrong. The boy’s suspenseful airport departure, which readers are led to believe took place under “danger from incoming fire,” actually happened more than three weeks before shelling attacks on Saigon and the airport began. I was startled to find a picture of my nephew in an early chapter. But his name is nowhere in the book. His mother, who was a volunteer in the Holt Center–where he and Long, Warren’s subject, both lived–told me that she and my nephew had both been interviewed for the book. They were sent an earlier draft that had so many factual errors and so many fictionalized details that they asked the author to remove all references to him and his family. Warren removed their names, but not all the fictionalized material. There are also significant inaccuracies in the story about the Holt employee Warren calls Lan. My husband, at the time a reporter for the Baltimore Sun, was the American who helped “Lan” escape–not alone on a small private plane, as described in the book, but on a large transport aircraft with a planeload of others.

It wouldn’t be surprising if memories of those Warren talked to didn’t always correspond perfectly with the historical facts, but it is disturbing that her changes all seem to go in the direction of sensationalizing the story. The story would have been just as powerful if it were told without embroidery. And the facts were available.

Other authors of informational books for children go to elaborate lengths to track down and document details. In a private e-mail, prompted by discussions we had had at the Children’s Literature New England Institute last summer, Jennifer Armstrong described looking for the source of the widely quoted advertisement for Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 expedition across Antarctica: “Men wanted for Hazardous Journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness, constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.” Though it is often attributed to Shackleton, she couldn’t find an actual source for the quotation, and so decided not to use it in Shipwreck at the Bottom of the World: The Extraordinary True Story of Shackleton and the Endurance (Crown, 1998).

In Writing Books for Young People (Writer Inc, 2001), James Cross Giblin, longtime children’s book editor and author, recounted an example of this kind of careful cross-checking for his book Fireworks, Picnics, and Flags: The Story of the Fourth of July Symbols (Houghton, 1983). He states, “I read two books that said an old bell-ringer sat in the tower of Independence Hall almost all day on July 4, 1776. He was waiting for word that independence had been declared so that he could ring the Liberty Bell.

At last, in late afternoon, a small boy ran up the steps of the tower and shouted, 'Ring, Grandfather! Ring for Liberty!’ The old man did so at once, letting all of Philadelphia know that America was no longer a British colony.

It makes a fine story; however, according to the third source I checked, it’s apocryphal and appeared for the first time in a mid-19-century textbook titled Myths and Legends of the Revolution.” He still included the anecdote in the book–but as a good yarn, not a true story.

Susan Campbell Bartoletti describes similar cases where careful checking found stories that are apocryphal or untrue although they may have been widely published or even appear in primary sources. For her Hitler Youth: Growing up in Hitler’s Shadow (Scholastic, 2005), Bartoletti recalled that she searched and searched for a quotation often attributed to Hitler: “He alone who gains the youth gains the future.” She read volumes of his speeches, articles, and Internet resources in English and German. Finally she e-mailed Sir Ian Kershaw, an English historian who is one of the world’s leading experts on Hitler. He agreed that it was not certain that Hitler had ever said that. So although the quotation appears in many places, she cut it out of her book.

When examining informational books for children, it is clear that few books are completely without inaccuracy. Some of these are errors of omission or commission, but unintended. But some are deliberate invention–material the author wrote knowing it was not true. The attempt may have been to make the story more accessible, interesting, or entertaining but when a writer or illustrator changes facts for the sake of the story, reality is distorted. Avoiding unintentional errors is a matter of care and craft. Avoiding deliberate fabrications is easier: all it takes is a decision to write truthfully. The Sibert criteria call for “respect for children’s understanding, abilities, and appreciation.” Writers of informational books for children must respect children’s right to accurate information as well.