American History

Taia Morley to Illustrate A PANDEMIC IS WORLDWIDE

Posted by on Oct 21, 2020 in American History, BOOK: A Pandemic Is Worldwide, Children's Literature, Illustration | 0 comments

AppleTrimInsta3Delighted to announce that the talented Taia Morley will be illustrating A Pandemic Is Worldwide! I love Taia’s work; it’s warm and rich and childlike. I thinks she’ll bring a nice balance to this serious topic.

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The Real Heroes

Posted by on Sep 10, 2020 in American History, BOOK: A Pandemic Is Worldwide, Children's Literature, Nonfiction, PIcture Books, SERIES: Let's Read and Find Out | 0 comments

Jenner_phipps_01_(cropped)

Jennings inoculating his first patient, eight-year-old James Phipps (who deserves a statue, too)

We put up statues to politicians and generals, but in a just world, people like Edward Jennings would have a statue on every corner. He created a true vaccine for smallpox, and the more I research pandemics, the more I understand how amazing his achievement was. This disease had been with us since ancient times and was capable of wiping out civilizations. Now? It’s gone. (Except for a few samples in laboratories which should be destroyed yesterday, if you ask me.)

Interestingly, he based his work on folk medicine practiced in Asia, where patients were immunized with pus taken from smallpox sores (it worked, though it was risky) and from the folk knowledge of farmers near his home, who insisted that, if they’d had cowpox, they were immune to smallpox (they were). So it was not just an individual epiphany, but an achievement built on observation and experimentation by countless others whose names science and history do not remember.

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A Pandemic Is Worldwide

Posted by on Aug 21, 2020 in American History, BOOK: A Pandemic Is Worldwide, Nonfiction, PIcture Books | 0 comments

800px-The_Earth_seen_from_Apollo_17HarperCollins is going to publish my new picture book, A Pandemic Is Worldwide! Pandemics through the ages, up to COVID-19. The research is a little grueling, but it’s quite remarkable to note how behavior patterns stay consistent from age to age. (Anti-masking prejudice, fyi, is not new….nor is anti-vaccine hysteria.)

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Blast Off!

Posted by on Aug 5, 2020 in American History, BOOK: The Story of Neil Armstrong, Nonfiction | 0 comments

ArmstrongJktThe Story of Neil Armstrong is now on sale! From building model airplanes to landing on the moon, the life of an iconic American…

…who, as his younger sister once said, “never did anything wrong. He was a Mr. Goody Two-shoes if there ever was one. It was just his nature.”

(Thank you, June Armstrong, for my favorite quote in the whole book.)

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