Laurie halse anderson facts

It was the first novel which created critical acclaim for her. If we can spark their curiosity about our history, they’ll want to learn more about how our nation got to where we are today. It’s important to tell the history accurately, though.

Laurie was selected by the American Library Association for the Margaret A. Edwards Award and has been honored for her battles for intellectual freedom by the National Coalition Against Censorship and the National Council of Teachers of English.

In addition to combating censorship, Laurie regularly speaks about the need for diversity in publishing and is a member of RAINN’s National Leadership Council.

In fact, I often advise teachers to call my books “adventure novels.” I think kids are actually drawn to historical fiction for the same reason they are drawn to fantasy: the world-building is the same. The truth was much more interesting than the HBO version. By the time I started working on Rebellion 1776, everything had been digitized—thank you, scholars!

But I was able to do the immense amount of research this book required entirely via the internet. I wanted to write about class—not about an enslaved child, as in my earlier books. For example, I was able to read Abigail Adams’s uncle’s letters in which he inventoried all of his furniture and belongings, and use that information to authentically furnish the house where Elsbeth is working as a servant.

Then I went to various museum websites to view images of the furniture and other objects he mentions so I could describe them accurately. I watched it several times, then went down the internet rabbit hole of primary sources to learn what really happened. I now keep many documents of thematic quotations as I am researching.

Then she worked in a clothing store with maximum wage in her home. Before the internet, we’d have to drive to little towns all around the country to try to uncover unpublished primary sources. Those are Speak, Catalyst, Prom, and many more. It’s good to read about intense events at a historical remove, especially when we’re going through intense events ourselves.

One reason I continue to write about this era is because I think we could do a better job depicting the state of the colonies at the start of the Revolution in recognizing that independence was not a done deal. I wanted to create the voice of a character who would be somebody my readers would want to go to school with, while still respecting how people spoke during that period.

When and why did you decide to begin each of the 43 chapters with a quotation from a primary source?

This goes all the way back to Fever 1793 and my editor on that book, Kevin Lewis.

Stephanie Holcomb is the first child who was born in 1985. You can find that Laurie’s novels talk about family dysfunction, rape, high academic pressure, and body issues and disorder.

Laurie Halse Anderson Facts 7: respond

Laurie Halse cares a lot with the life of the teens and young adults. And really, we read history to help us understand our lives today.

Once I started researching the smallpox epidemic of the 1770s, boy, did it feel familiar to where we were in 2020.

I first had to understand the main character of Boston, and then I had to create a character about my reader’s age.