Meet the author: Mary Pope Osborne.The author of Adaline Falling Star falling star: see meteor. , this month's Read-Aloud, spoke to Instructor recently about history, fiction, and how she combines the two. Q You've written a fictional story about a girl who really existed, Adaline Carson. What made the story of her life appealing to you? A When my husband and I were researching the life of the legendary scout Kit Carson [Adaline's father] for a play, we came across the information that he had a daughter named Adaline. Little is known about her, except that her Native American mother died when she was very young, and she was sent off to live with relatives in St. Louis. One historical source quoted someone at the time describing her simply as "a wild girl." This characterization of Adaline seemed unfair and grossly insensitive to a child who must have faced great challenges both as a result of her heritage and the extraordinary era into which she was born. What was Adaline's own story? I couldn't help but wonder. Q How much research is involved in writing historical fiction? How do you go about it? A For me, the gathering of information is a deep, creative part of the writing process. My story takes shape as I comb the past and take notes. While researching Adaline Falling Star, I made a scrapbook A Macintosh disk file that holds frequently used text and graphics objects, such as a company letterhead. Contrast with "clipboard," which is reserved memory that holds data only for the current session. of 1840s America. I included information about Bent's Fort Bent's Fort, trading post of the American West, on the Arkansas River in present-day SE Colorado, E of Rocky Ford and La Junta and several miles above the mouth of the Purgatoire. The trading company headed by Charles Bent and Ceran St. in Colorado, city life in St. Louis, the "tall talk" of the trappers and mountain men, old hymns, school lessons, and so forth. The scrapbook helped create a collage, from which I drew a poetic interpretation of Adaline's life. For my Magic Tree House series, I mostly use library books, educational videos, and the Internet for my research. Whatever the source, I always make lots of lists, with headings such as food, weather, clothing, and figures of speech. When I'm working on the story, I can consult my lists and choose the right detail for the right moment. I usually gather at least three times more information than I actually use. Q Which elements in this book are "true"? A Little is known about the real Adaline, so her character is almost entirely my own creation rather than a biographical rendering. The "true" part of my book resides in the backdrop of Adaline's story. She lived at a crossroads in history. She would have seen mountain men, trappers, trading posts Trading posts The positions on the floor of a stock exchange where the specialists stand and securities are traded. , thriving Plains Indian Plains Indian Any member of various Native American tribes that formerly inhabited the Great Plains of the U.S. and southern Canada. Plains Indians are popularly regarded as the typical American Indians. cultures, missionaries, explorers, and steamboat steamboat: see steamship. steamboat or steamship Watercraft propelled by steam; more narrowly, a shallow-draft paddle-wheel steamboat widely used on rivers in the 19th century, particularly the Mississippi River and its tributaries. travel. She certainly would have experienced racial prejudice because of her mixed heritage. I researched all these subjects and tried to truthfully render them as I imagined Adaline would have experienced each of them. Q: What are some of the challenges specific to writing historical fiction? A: Getting the facts of daily life right: How did people eat, drink, sleep, dress, talk? What was the scenery like? The weather? The bigger challenge, though, is to find the emotional dramas and dilemmas of another time that people of our time can relate to. You can collect all the information in the world, but if you don't have a deeply emotional story to tell, you will not engage readers. Q: Which books and writers do you look toward for inspiration for your own writing? A: I'm most inspired by the storytellers of long ago. Right now I'm in the midst Adv. 1. in the midst - the middle or central part or point; "in the midst of the forest"; "could he walk out in the midst of his piece?" midmost of retelling re·tell·ing n. A new account or an adaptation of a story: a retelling of a Roman myth. the classic Homer's Odyssey
Q: What are you currently hard at work on? A: A fantasy about a haunted castle in Camelot--but who knows what other ideas will pop up in the days to come? The wonderful excitement of being an author is that characters and stories find you and you become obliged o·blige v. o·bliged, o·blig·ing, o·blig·es v.tr. 1. To constrain by physical, legal, social, or moral means. 2. to serve them. Mary Pope Osborne is The first portable computer, developed by Adam Osborne and introduced in 1981. Floppy disk based with 64K of memory, it used the CP/M operating system and a modified version of the WordStar word processor that would display only 40 characters at a time across its tiny 4.5" CRT. the author of Adaline Falling Star (Scholastic, 2000) and the Magic Tree House series (Random House). Her most recent book is Good Morning, Gorillas (Random House, 2002). |
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