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Welcome to the Back Matter Break Down! This week we have a fantastic interview with a dynamic duo behind a new PB bio! I’m so glad these two have decided to let us see behind the scenes into what their process was to put together the back matter in their book. And make sure you make it to the end of the post so you can enter the giveaway for a free book! Let’s dive in!

Book: Rollin’ on Down the Line: Lady Bird Johnson’s 1964 Whistle-Stop Tour for Civil Rights

Authors: Helen Kampion and Reneé Critcher Lyons

Illustrator: Erin McGuire

Publisher / Year: Sleeping Bear Press, 2024

Topics: Biography, US History, Civil Rights, Politics

Blurb: The late summer and early fall of 1964 was a turbulent time in America. After years of racial struggle, in July President Lyndon Baines Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act. This law, declaring that all citizens were equal, outlawed racial segregation. Many Americans cheered this legislation; yet some did not. Many Southerners despised it and worried about what it meant for their traditions and way of life. With the upcoming November presidential election, President Johnson was advised not to campaign in the South due to the threats of violence since the signing of the new law. But someone needed to visit the citizens in the South and explain why the new law was necessary and good for the entire country.

Born in Texas, First Lady Claudia Alta “Lady Bird” Johnson was from the South and understood its people and customs. Despite her fear of public speaking and threats to her own safety, Lady Bird undertook a train tour to reach out to her fellow citizens and Southerners. This is the true story of her historic Whistle-Stop journey, making almost fifty stops through eight Southern states in four days. 

What is your manuscript word count? What is your back matter word count? 

The main manuscript word count is approximately 1700 words and the back matter with bibliography and source notes is 950 words.

At what phase of the drafting/revising/publishing process did you decide your book needed back matter?

As the book is non-fiction, we knew it would need back matter from the very beginning of our work. Since it is a “slice” of Lady Bird’s life, we understood children reading the book would want to learn more about this iconic First Lady.

What did the first draft of the back matter look like?

The first draft of the back matter was mostly additional facts about the train trip, author’s notes, and also included a “read more” list. The draft constituted 1,500 words, lengthier than the finished product, and also included Lady Bird’s pecan pie recipe (as fed to dignitaries on the trip). 

Fifteen source notes are found in the final publication, whereas the first draft held nineteen. The bibliography in the first draft included eight entries, however, the final product referenced six sources. 

Tell us about the back matter revision process. Why did changes occur? What changes and revisions came about after working with the editor/agent? 

The revision process proved amicable. Changes occurred due to our editor’s suggestions. The editor wanted to cut down our facts about the train ride itself, and place more emphasis on Lady Bird’s legacy, her contributions to our society, lasting into the current day. As the main text targets the train trip extensively, we were happy to emphasize Lady Bird’s political work in the back matter.

How did you choose the photos that appear in the back matter? Were you involved in getting permission to include the photos? 

The editor reached out to us about photos to use in the back matter. Since we had been in touch with the LBJ Presidential Library and the First Ladies Library and Museum while researching the book, we passed on our contact information. The editor contacted the library and museum, decided on the photos, and we were delighted with the choices.

What was the most challenging part of the back matter publishing process?

Many of the quotes in the back matter were ones we had “lovingly” selected. The editor, nonetheless, wanted to paraphrase one or two of these. While we did so, it was a challenging edit. Also, we included many train trip details in the original text, such as her daughters’ contributions to the tour, the manner in which Lady Bird reached out to Southern governors, and Lady Bird’s favorite pecan pie recipe, served on the train. These were all eventually not included in the final back matter.

Is your back matter aimed for kid readers or adults? What do you hope readers will take away after reading your back matter content? 

The back matter is geared toward kids, but serves as an engaging read for adults as well. We want readers to further understand the extent of Lady Bird’s almost “super-human” bravery and courage. During the train tour, she was threatened, jeered, and endured sniper threats and a bomb scare. We also want readers to remember her important legacy of caring for and preserving natural areas. 

Reflecting on this process and what you learned, what tips (if any) can you offer picture book writers for writing back matter?

We suggest:

1.  View the back matter as a means of providing a broader scope of the book’s subject matter;
2. Use back matter to address any areas not covered in the story, but which assist with additional inquiry;
3. Consider back matter as a way readers can enhance internalization of the story itself, providing details that don’t “fit” into the non-fiction narrative;
4. Write back matter in an engaging way as well – don’t give up after the narrative text is finished;
5. You will find tons of facts about your subject and be overwhelmed as to the extent!  Use the most important or poignant facts you find outside of the storyline.

Are there resources or comp titles you can share that would be helpful for writer’s wanting to learn more about back matter?  

 Children’s Books That Connect the Past to the Present with Back Matter

Use these books as examples of the “differing” types of children’s non-fiction, paying particular attention to the back matter:

Night Owl, Night by Susan Edwards Richmond (narrative non-fiction)

Seashells, More Than A Home by Melissa Stewart (traditional non-fiction)

The Leaf Detective by Heather Lang (biographical)

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Thank you, Helen and Reneé! It’s so helpful for us all to see how the editing process happened and how you landed on the final version we see in the book.

Please support Helen and Reneé!

Purchase Rollin’ on Down the Line at these sellers:

LBJ Library Bookstore 

Bookshop

Amazon

Learn more about Rollin’ on Down the Line:

Jr. Library Guild distinction

Read With A Ranger:  First Ladies National Historic Site

The Children’s Bookshelf

Kathy Temean highlight

Vivian Kirkfield 

Kirkus Review 

Follow Helen and Reneé on social media:

@helenkampion

@reneelyonsMFA

Visit Helen and Reneé’s websites:

Helen Kampion

Renee’ Lyons

Now for a giveaway! Helen and Reneé have generously offered to give one lucky person a free copy of Rollin’ on Down the Line: Lady Bird Johnson’s 1964 Whistle-Stop Tour for Civil Rights! To enter: leave one comment on this blog post by October 8, 2024 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. Leave a comment on my Twitter/X, BlueSky, and/or Instagram posts a bout this blog for a maximum of 3 bonus entries. (Remember to check back on this blog post and social media to see if you are selected as a winner!)

Thank you for reading!

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Welcome to the Back Matter Break Down! I am so excited today to bring an interview with one of my writing friends about her debut picture book! Marie Chan was actually one of the first people I met when I joined SCBWI a few years ago, and it’s amazing to get to see her reach this milestone. She put so much work into the back matter of her book, so this will be a treat. And don’t forget to read all the way to the end so you can enter the giveaway for a free copy of her book! Let’s dive in!

Book: Mamie Takes a Stand: The True Story of Mamie Tape, a Chinese American Girl’s Fight for School Rights

Author: Marie Chan

Illustrator: Sian James

Publisher / Year: Ten Peaks Press, 2024

Topics: Biography, US History, Civil Rights, Chinese American History

Blurb: In the fall of 1884 in San Francisco, California, Mamie excitedly arrived for her first day at an American public school, only to find the principal blocking her way. Why? Because Mamie was Chinese.
 
Thus began the Tape family’s yearlong struggle to secure Mamie’s right to attend public school. In the spring of 1885, Mamie’s case reached the California Supreme Court, who reaffirmed a lower court’s ruling that public schools should be open to children of all races.

What is your manuscript word count? What is your back matter word count? 

Manuscript word count: 1,700 words; plus 182 words for excerpts from Mrs. Mary Tape’s letter; total 1,882 words.

Back matter word count: 1,072 words (not including quotation source notes in the bibliography); 578 words for the timeline; total 1,650 words.

My manuscript word count is higher than a usual picture book, but that is because my acquisitions editor envisioned my biography to be geared more toward middle grade readers, ages 8-12. Having an Asian American editor, who understood my intention behind why I included certain cultural details, such as Chinese words (and decided not to omit them), positively impacted the authenticity of Mamie Takes a Stand. I am grateful that my editor understood the nuances of Chinese culture, the bicultural aspects of being Chinese and American, and also could differentiate between the various dialects of Chinese because of his own lived experience.

At what phase of the drafting/revising/publishing process did you decide your book needed back matter?  

From the beginning, I knew I would need a significant amount of back matter to explain this very complex court case and explain how difficult it was to research this hidden figure. I wanted to include additional facts to explain US and California laws, the Tape v. Hurley court case and other school rights’ cases; provide more background about different key leaders in the case; and share interesting family facts, quotation sources, additional resources, archival photographs, discussion questions, a glossary, and a timeline.

What did the first draft of the back matter look like? Can you show us snippets?

I originally formulated my back matter as “Did you know?” sidebars that were to appear on each page. Later, I took the content and incorporated the information into the timeline, main text, and allowed the illustrations to show the information. I also included some of the sidebar information in my 45-page digital Parent & Educator Guide that I wrote to accompany Mamie Takes a Stand.

Tell us about the back matter revision process. Why did changes occur? What changes and revisions came about after working with the editor/agent?  

My publisher preferred to put everything in the back matter, so it would look more like a narrative picture book than a reference or educational book that reads more like an encyclopedia entry.

Unfortunately, there was only enough space to put my source notes for my quotes and not my full bibliography. My back matter pages were really full, and my editor and I didn’t want the font to be any smaller, which would make the text difficult to read. My actual bibliography is much longer; I probably have enough sources to write a doctoral dissertation! I may post my full bibliography on my website in the future.

I wanted to include more photographs, but there wasn’t enough space for more photos and all my historic notes to fit in 48 pages. I had suggested inserting additional photographs on the end papers, but the art director and designer decided otherwise. Instead, I included some historic Tape family photographs in the Parent & Educator Guide for Mamie Takes a Stand.

I am grateful for the designer, who created a beautiful layout for the interior, and took my comments into consideration when I shared ways to format the text to improve readability and to make the text more accessible to students with dyslexia. I liked how she added spot illustrations to the timeline, which really help students comprehend the content better when they have visuals next to the text. I also liked how the designer framed the archival photographs like they were in a scrapbook and kept some of the original borders on the photos to reflect the time period.

How did you choose the photos that appear in the back matter? Were you involved in getting permission to include the photos?

I chose the photos that were rarer and showed the span of Mamie’s life. I wanted to cite and include at least one photo from the National Archives to encourage students to utilize their library of primary sources. It was important to show the photo of the Chinese Primary School.

I had to obtain photo permission release forms from the Tape family descendants. I also asked UC Berkeley for the correct citations. The National Archives provided a guide to help me evaluate whether a primary source was within copyright or public domain and how they would like me to write the citation.

I wrote to a California historian and a professor who specializes in Asian American history to gather more information and ask questions about different historic photographs.

What was the most challenging part of the back matter publishing process?

Fact checking everything again after the designer created the layout for each page. Sometimes there were typos and other times the mistakes were mine.

I thought I was done researching, but then I would uncover new evidence that made me question whether another source I had used was completely accurate. Discrepancies abound! It was important to dig deep and look at multiple primary sources before deciding on what to print.

I spent weeks researching the difference in one letter in the transliteration of a single Chinese character (word). This involved contacting a professor who specialized in the research of Chinese dialects and asking an elderly friend who spoke Toisanese to gather more insights. Thankfully, my father had an antique Chinese dictionary that confirmed my research that listed the word with an alternative pronunciation.

Also, there was so much propaganda written against the Chinese during the era of the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, that even newspaper articles sometimes were biased in their reporting, so I had to search for other reliable primary sources to make sure the facts were accurate.

Is your back matter aimed for kid readers or adults? What do you hope readers will take away after reading your back matter content? 

I wrote the back matter more for adults, but I encourage kids to read the afterword, author’s note, and historic note, analyze the archival photos, and evaluate the primary and secondary sources. I intentionally wrote this biography to read like a story with a narrative arc, but still have robust historical facts so that a child could use my book as a resource for research when writing a biography report for class.

I hope the timeline can be used as a springboard for researching other hidden figures and significant civil rights court cases in US history that involve Asian Americans. Furthermore, I wanted to broaden readers’ perspectives of historic school rights’ cases and show solidarity between different minority groups (e.g., African Americans, Chinese Americans, and Mexican Americans) and how these cases were interconnected and built on one another.

Reflecting on this process, what tips can you offer picture book writers for writing back matter?

If you’re writing a biography, make your own family tree of the person while you are conducting research. Write notes to show how family members are related to each other and where they lived.

Use Google maps to pin key locations in the setting of your story. Take natural disasters into consideration when you do your research. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake resulted in many structures being rebuilt, so I had to check that my reference images of school buildings and other locations pre-dated this earthquake. Some schools moved, were remodeled, or were renamed as well.

Use Zotero to keep track of your sources and to create one version of your manuscript with footnotes for every sentence in your text; this way you will know where the evidence comes from for each fact you write.

Although binders may be cumbersome, one time I needed to fact check something for my manuscript, and the online archive was down for maintenance or inaccessible. I am glad that I had printed out the articles and was able to refer to the hard copy when the electronic version was unavailable. Over the years of research, there have been cases where webpages were no longer existent.

Keep good records of your photo permissions. Copyright can be complicated. Publishers want images that are 300dpi or higher, so make sure photos are scanned at a high resolution for printing.

Also, download the digital educator guides that accompany mentor texts to use as samples when you write a resource guide for your book. Lee & Low Books makes very thorough educator guides that are good examples.

Are there resources or comp titles you can share that would be helpful for writers wanting to learn more about back matter?  

I referred to historic Bloomingdale’s, Sears Roebuck, and Montgomery Ward catalogues when I needed images of historic artifacts from the late 1800s-early 1900s. These catalogues gave me a better glimpse of Mamie’s daily life and what clothing, toys, books, and materials may have been in her classroom and home.

I also utilized city directories and Sanborn Fire Insurance Maps to approximate the locations of different places to describe the setting for Mamie Takes a Stand.

A good reference book and general guide to writing children’s nonfiction books is:

Facklam, Margery, and Peggy Thomas. Anatomy of Nonfiction: Writing True Stories for Children. Writer’s Institute Publications, 2011.

Next, on my “want to read” list is, Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-Winning Children’s Book Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing, edited by Melissa Stewart, National Council of Teachers of English, 2020.

The websites of these authors are helpful as well. When I first began writing Mamie Takes a Stand, I had the opportunity to converse with a few of the authors on this list, who were very generous in sharing their experiences in writing nonfiction for children.

Nonfiction Fest

Beth Anderson

Tina Cho

Lesa Cline-Ransome

Lisa Crayton

Julie Leung

Annette Whipple

Children’s Picture Book Biographies Back Matter Examples

Anderson, Beth. Lizzie Demands a Seat!: Elizabeth Jennings Fights for Streetcar Rights. Illus. E.B Lewis. New York: Calkins Creek, an imprint of Boyds Mills & Kane, 2020.

Brockenbrough, Martha, with Grace Lin. I Am an American: The Wong Kim Ark Story. Illus. Julia Kuo. New York: Little, Brown, and Company, 2021.

Hale, Christy. All Equal: The Ballad of Lemon Grove. New York: Children’s Book Press, an imprint of Lee & Low Books Inc., 2019.

Maclear, Kyo. It Began with a Page: How Gyo Fujikawa Drew the Way. Illus. Julie Morstad. New York: HarperCollins, 2019.

Tonatiuh, Duncan. Separate is Never Equal: Sylvia Mendez and Her Family’s Fight for Desegregation. New York: Abrams Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Abrams, 2014.

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Thank you, Marie! You’ve given all of us some great tips and resources for working on our nonfiction picture books and back matter!

Please support Marie!

To order Mamie Takes a Stand: mariechan.com/books

To access digital download of Parent & Educator Guide for Mamie Takes a Stand: mariechan.com/books. This extensive 45-page guide includes engaging, multi-sensory, cross-curricular activities with analysis of archival photographs and primary sources. (I felt like I was writing a second book!)

For upcoming events and to get signed books: mariechan.com/upcoming-events/

I will be teaching Chinese calligraphy and sharing some of the Chinese words in Mamie Takes a Stand at some of my book events. Bring your whole family for art and story time!

Follow Marie on Instagram: @mariechanbooks

Follow Marie on Facebook: @mariechanbooks

Now for a giveaway! Marie and her publisher, Ten Peaks Press, have generously offered to give one lucky person copy of Mamie Takes a Stand! To enter: leave one comment on this blog post by September 17 2024 at 11:59pm Pacific Time. You may earn 1 bonus entry if you leave a comment on the Twitter/X and Instagram posts about this blog to let me know you commented here. (Please remember to check back on this blog post and Twitter/X to see if you are selected as a winner!)

UPDATE: The giveaway is now closed. Congrats to Jamie on winning a copy of Mamie Takes A Stand!

Thank you for reading!

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