DEBORAH TREFTS
Staff Writer
The lives and accomplishments of innumerable women icons and instigators have historically and systematically been left out of textbooks and biographies.
Children’s and young adult book author Deborah Heiligman, a recipient of many awards and honors — with 34 published works of fiction and nonfiction to her name, including a 10-book series for National Geographic — has in part been delving into the journeys of women who ought not to have been forgotten in order to share their stories with young readers.
Young adult parents and others keen on filling in some of the holes in their own historical knowledge may be hard-pressed to figure out how to do so without reading her biographies.
At 3 p.m. Saturday in the Hall of Philosophy, Heiligman will give a talk with the same title as her latest YA book, Loudmouth: Emma Goldman vs. America (A Love Story). Teenagers are encouraged to attend and to ask questions after her presentation, which is part of the Chautauqua Women’s Club’s Contemporary Issues Forum series.
“When I was looking at my work, I really seem to write about people who aren’t well known in history,” she said. “I was just at a children’s literature conference in Virginia. … At an auditorium full of teachers and librarians, I asked, ‘How many people know about Emma Goldman?’ Maybe five people raised their hands.”
Yet according to Heiligman, “For three decades — starting when she was in her early 20’s, in 1892 — (Goldman) spoke to tens of thousands of people around the country about workers rights, birth control, free speech, anarchism, contemporary drama, free love and more. … (She) changed the landscape of political discourse in America forever.”
Since her highly acclaimed and honored biography of Goldman — which Booklist described as a “masterclass” — was part of a two-book contract, Heiligman said she began her current young adult project, a biography of Anne Frank’s older sister, Margot, while working on Loudmouth.
“I often have different books going on at the same time, but they’re in different stages,” she said. “Two picture books are just (now) out of my hands; one maybe not completely. … I try to work on only one big book at a time.”
By big books, she means, Charles and Emma: The Darwins’ Leap of Faith, Vincent and Theo: The Van Gogh Brothers, Torpedoed: The True Story of the World War II Sinking of “The Children’s Ship” and Loudmouth.
On her website, Heiligman “confesses” that during her senior year in high school in Allentown, Pennsylvania, she not only co-edited The Canary, the sanctioned school newspaper, but also served as the ringleader for a one-issue underground paper, called Birdsh*t. The paper challenged the principal’s plan to fund a new gym rather than improve the school library and buy books. Although everybody else on the staff of The Canary was sent to the principal’s office, she got off scot-free.
Ironically — but perhaps not surprisingly, since “heilig” means “holy” in German — Heiligman went on to major in religious studies at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Upon graduation, she started off her writing career at Monument Magazine, and as it happens (or more often, does not), two weeks later met the man she would marry.
A position at Scholastic News in New York City came next. “Scholastic News Explorer was for the fourth grade classroom,” she said. “It was competition to the Weekly Reader. I wrote about all the things in the news at the time at a fourth grade level.”
First, however, she and other Explorer staff went to a school “to see what the kids were like,” Heiligman said. “One kid raised her hand and asked why nuclear arms are being pointed at each other.”
Later at Scholastic, she wrote articles at the first grade through the sixth grade level. “I wrote six weeks ahead of time, so this wasn’t ground-breaking news at all,” she said. “I would write a 40-line article in the morning for first graders, and then in the afternoon an article for older kids about the Challenger disaster, pesticides and Rachel Carson, nuclear war, (or something else).”
Heiligman’s transition to freelance writing was gradual. “I thought, I can be a freelance writer and write, with a baby,” she said. “My husband quit his job and was working on a book. No one ever said, ‘Do you think that’s good?’ I kept writing a little for Scholastic, and pieces for Parenting Magazine and Good Housekeeping.”
At this time, she was also reading to her first son “all the time,” she said. “I had a book idea, I sold it, and it was published” when he was a toddler.
Into the Night, her first children’s book, which came out Jan. 1, 1990, was illustrated by Melissa Sweet (who Heiligman said would later become famous).
Goodreads describes it thusly: “During the peaceful time just before bedtime, a mother and her small boy review the events of their day — from going on a picnic, to collecting special treasures.”
“That started me on books, and I gradually stopped doing freelance,” she said. “I was feeling my way. In those days, children’s books were not hot. Harry Potter made them hot. I’d tell someone and they’d say, ‘That must be fun,’ and ‘They don’t pay you well.’ … I wish I could say I had a very good plan, but I didn’t know what I was doing.”
That was then; this is now — 33 books later and counting.
“Every writer has a theme, and I think my theme is connection,” Heiligman said. In writing and life, her motto is “to connect with other people and to unite the heart and the head.”
This she will do on Saturday while sharing the astonishing story of “fiery little anarchist” Emma Goldman, “who fought to make her adopted country, which she loved, live up to its ideals.”
