If you received the February issue of School Library Journal, you likely saw the cover story featuring an interview with Nina Cruz about an early picture book biography of Virginia Hamilton.called extraordinary magicThis book is already on the shelves of bookstores and libraries everywhere.
The article published in SLJ was an excerpt of the entire conversation with Mr. Cruz. today. We’re happy to present you with the final, non-deleted version. enjoy! !
One of the greatest children’s book authors, Virginia Hamilton has everything from medals to book awards to her name. But until now she had never inspired a picture book biography of her own. “EXTRAORDINARY MAGIC” by Nina Cruz traces the trajectory of Ms. Hamilton’s life and discusses each aspect of it through her poetry.
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Betsy Bird: Nina! Hello! Thank you for speaking with me today. We live in a world of increasingly epic picture book biographies, and I think it’s fair to say that your EXTRAORDINARY MAGIC is the first to feature Virginia Hamilton as its subject. . What drew you to Virginia?
Nina Cruz: I was interested in writing biographies of Black women creators and wanted their work to tell stories of people that would be interesting and relatable to young readers. When I was a child, I read and loved Virginia Hamilton’s books. (Geely and MC Higgins the Great) Virginia Hamilton was one of the most famous children’s authors of her time, but no one had written about her in the picture book field, which made the idea even more appealing to me. I’ve read several of Hamilton’s speeches and essays, and I’m struck by how deep and detailed she talks about her childhood, her family, and how they relate to her writing. got it. This made me confident that her story would resonate with young readers.
BB: Please tell us a little about your research process. As far as I know, you put this book together without a single source, using a variety of books, speeches, essays, anecdotes, etc. What was the process like? How did you decide what to use and how did you find the sources in the first place?
North Carolina: When I started thinking about this project, I started by thinking about what was possible. How much information can you find focusing on her childhood? I started with Julie Roubini’s middle school biography. Virginia Hamilton: American Storyteller, dedicates the first two chapters to her childhood. Reading the bibliography of this book led me to Hamilton’s collection of speeches. Virginia Hamilton: Speeches, Essays, Conversations. My books are full of post-its, bookmarks, and underlined sentences. I found a few stories that really stood out and a theme began to emerge.
I’m amazed at how much you need to know in order to confidently write (or illustrate) nonfiction. To write this book, I needed to understand the context of her experience. The Internet has brought great results. I found her archives of Yellow She Springs News online and learned more about the place and its history. This is an interesting place. It is a haven of sorts for formerly enslaved people and is also the location of the highly progressive University of Antioquia. I found a yearbook from Bryan High School. It included photos of Hamilton, three of her siblings and at least one cousin. I discovered an article that her eldest sister Nina wrote about her experience as a student at Antioch. I didn’t always have information that I could use directly in the book, but I just loved finding it.
I visited Yellow Springs in 2021 to get to know this place that she has so much fondness for. While there, I visited the Hamilton Materials collection at the Antioch College Library and the Greene County Community Library. Both had thick files of clippings about Virginia Hamilton and her family. A painting of her father, Kenneth Hamilton, hangs on the wall of Antioch College’s library. He was the head waiter at the cafeteria and taught many students how to work and study in the cafeteria. We also reviewed papers that Hamilton donated to the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. There wasn’t much about her childhood, but it was interesting to see her manuscripts and notes.
BB: There were also some primary sources that I could refer to. I heard that you interviewed Arnold Adoff, Virginia’s husband and fellow children’s author. Can you tell us a little about that conference and what you learned?
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North Carolina: I really enjoyed my conversation with Arnold Adoff. I had never met him (or Virginia) in person, but we had been Facebook “friends” for several years when I approached him. He was incredibly enthusiastic and generous with his time. When we spoke, he had been working on the book for nearly a year, but he hadn’t yet decided on an approach. I had some ideas about important themes I wanted to focus on, and lots of questions about her childhood, her family, and her hometown. Adoff was still living in the house he had built on the last acre of the Hamilton family farm. He is a great storyteller and we talked for over 2 hours. He affirmed some of my ideas, provided important family history, and told me about their courtship and early years in New York City. He talked about shared connections in publishing. He spoke about their commitment to diversity in children’s literature, the work she has done and he continues to do to support emerging writers.
BB: Was there anything that surprised you about Virginia during the research process? Was there anything unexpected that you didn’t expect to find?
North Carolina: To be honest, I didn’t know what I would find, but it was all very interesting. I learned a little about Ohio’s history and abolitionism. The Ohio River was only an hour’s drive away and was the dividing line between slave and free states. Hamilton’s grandfather was only 2 years old when his mother brought him to Ohio to be raised by another family. Ms. Hamilton has told different versions of her great-grandmother’s story over the years, speculating that she may have gone further north to Canada or helped other people in the south escape slavery. I learned that Coretta Scott King and her older sister Edith Scott Bagley attended Antioch College and that Edith knew Hamilton’s older sister Nina. We also learned about the big role music played in Virginia Hamilton’s life. She regularly talked about her father, who played the mandolin. She also sang and played the mandolin. During her college years, Hamilton dreamed of becoming a singer, and she would travel to New York City to perform at coffee houses and jazz clubs. She said she and Arnold first met at a jazz club where Charles Mingus was playing.
We discovered many surprises along the way.in Willy Bee and the Martian Landing (This was inspired by a family’s reaction to HG Wells’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast.) Children walk around on stilts. Did Virginia Hamilton walk on her stilts as a child? Of course she did! She told the interviewer that she and the other children in her family lived a very highbrow life and that it was an African tradition. I couldn’t find a place to put this in the text, but the LIES illustration shows her on her stilts.
BB: Is there something you thought you would find in your research but didn’t? Or something you wanted to include but couldn’t due to lack of information?
NC: MeIn many of her speeches, Hamilton spoke about the importance of social justice, black history, and how her family has been denied fair treatment. These themes are also present in her books. Her childhood was in the 1930s and 1940s, long before federal civil rights laws abolished racial discrimination. Ohio’s public schools were integrated in the late 19th century. Protests led to the successful desegregation of Yellow Springs movie theaters in 1942. Other businesses such as barbershops were also desegregated in her 1960s. Hamilton participated in desegregation protests at Woolworth’s in New York City in the 1960s. I wanted to understand more clearly how she understood her prejudices as a child. Did her father share black press coverage of the civil rights movement and lynchings? Did she hear adults talking about these things in hushed voices on Sunday afternoons?
I’m really grateful to Nina for answering my questions today. EXTRAORDINARY MAGIC OUT can be found on the shelves of any bookstore or library. Find it, explore it, and enjoy it.
File: Interview