You Go, Girls!

Here Come the Girl Scouts
By Shana Corey
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Author and editor Shana Corey grew up on a steady diet of “olden-day” girls, the strong, determined types she found in the Betsy-Tacy and Little House books. “So imagine my delight when I went to college and discovered that I could take entire classes on (and get credit for learning about) olden-day girls!” the Smith alum explains on her website. “I learned to call it women’s history, but really, it was the same topic I’d been interested in since I was five.”

As a children’s author, Corey has mined the olden-day-girl terrain for some real gems: feminist pioneer Amelia Bloomer in You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer! (Scholastic, 2000), the first-ever All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in Players in Pigtails (Scholastic, 2003), water ballet founder and swimsuit modernizer Annette Kellerman in Mermaid Queen (Scholastic, 2009).

The plucky olden-day girl who founded the Girl Scouts one hundred years ago, Juliette “Daisy” Gordon Low, is the focus of Corey’s latest picture book, Here Come the Girl Scouts! (Scholastic, 2012). With her trademark punchy prose, Corey tells how this girl with gumption followed her dream of making a big difference in the world. Artist Hadley Hooper’s retro-ish illustrations in nature-hike hues complete the delightful package.

“I grew up hearing her stories of being a Girl Scout there in the 1950s. . .”
—COREY

AUTHORLINK:How did Here Come the Girl Scouts! come about? Were you a Girl Scout?

COREY: I’m embarrassed to say that I wasn’t! But my mom was a Girl Scout with a capital G, and she’s from Savannah, Georgia, where the Girl Scouts were founded (I was born there too). I grew up hearing her stories of being a Girl Scout there in the 1950s, and I always knew what a positive, important force it was in her life.

So when I learned that the Girl Scouts were about to have their one hundredth anniversary, I remembered my mom’s stories of how important Girl Scouts had been to her, and I started wondering what it would have been like to be a Girl Scout a hundred years ago. I had an image in my head of a group of little girls with giant 1912 hair bows camping out, and I wanted to find out more about those girls. (For the record, I was an Indian Princess [the YMCA’s girls group]. My name was Sacagawea).

AUTHORLINK: What kind of research did you do for the book?

“When I write, I usually start by reading a biography of the person I’m writing about to sort of dip my feet in . . .”
—COREY

COREY: When I write, I usually start by reading a biography of the person I’m writing about to sort of dip my feet in and get a big-picture sense of the subject and see where I might want to focus my story. Then I do as much primary-source research I can so that I feel like I know the subject from the inside out and have confirmed everything I’ve read for myself (and hopefully found material I haven’t already read). That also gives me first-person material to quote from.

For Here Come the Girl Scouts!, I went to the Girl Scout Archives and Museum in New York City and spent several days sifting through and enjoying the old documents there, including a wonderful travel diary Daisy Low kept on one of her adventures. I spoke to relatives of Daisy Low and to the historians at the Juliette Gordon Low Birthplace, and I read everything I could get my hands on that mentioned the Girl Scouts or Daisy—old newspaper articles, the early handbooks (which are a delight), and early editions of the first Girl Scout magazine, The Rally. I also use Google Books and the Library of Congress newspaper archives to get a sense of period language. (When I wondered if girls would have been more likely to say “marvelous” or “brilliant” in 1912, I’d look through books and newspapers published in 1912 to compare how those words were being used.)

I love researching, so for me the issue is knowing when to stop researching and start writing. Having a deadline helps with that. If I had my way, I’d read everything ever written by anyone anywhere ever about the subject I’m working on, and I try to get as close to that as I can (this results in lots of photocopies and a very messy office!).

AUTHORLINK: How did you transform your research into a compelling story arc? How did you know which details to play up and which to minimize or cut?

COREY: I sometimes feel like nonfiction is almost cheating because the basic outline of your story is already there. You have the character, the main events, and the order they happened in. As an author, of course, you can decide where to start and stop the story and what events and threads to highlight, but a lot of the work is done for you. In a picture book, I know I have thirty-two or forty pages and I can’t cover everything, so I try to really focus on what I think will resonate the most with kids (it’s usually what resonates the most with me, too)—Daisy’s adventures and the campouts and hiking with the early Girl Scouts did. I also focus on what I think makes the story relevant today. In this case, I was amazed and surprised by how green the girl scouts were, how much of it was about appreciating and protecting nature, and that really struck a chord with me. I was also very moved by how intentionally inclusive it was. Both of those were things I found very inspiring, especially for an organization in 1912, and so I wanted to highlight them.

As for cutting and minimizing, my editor, Tracy Mack, is always hugely helpful with this. I knew I wanted this story to be breezy and brief, similar in tone to my first book You Forgot Your Skirt, Amelia Bloomer!, and to that end Tracy suggested I be “merciless” in cutting to get the kind of read-aloud feel I was going for (thank you, Tracy!).

One thing that helps me is to have an author’s note, where I can explore in a little more depth things that might not be appropriate in the narrative of a read-aloud picture book, so a lot of information that didn’t make the text—the historical context, Daisy’s marital woes—ended up there.

AUTHORLINK: The illustrations and design have such a lovely vintage look and feel. Did you have much input into the art direction of the book?

COREY: The team at Scholastic has always been very generous in terms of keeping me in the loop, but I’m also very aware that I’m not an expert on art, so I try to leave that to the folks who are because they do it so well! In this case, my editor Tracy shared samples with me of several artists that she and the art director, Marijka Kostiw, were looking at, and, happily, we all immediately fell in love with Hadley Hooper’s work. After that, it was really about Hadley’s vision—she decided what to illustrate (if you’re reading, Hadley, I’d love to hear more about your process!). Tracy and Marijka and I would look at the art and I’d share it with historians at the Juliette Gordon Low House to make sure it was historically accurate, and I also shared some historical reference with Scholastic. But the look and feel is really all Hadley, and I love what she did with it.

I did know that I wanted to include quotes in the art, so those came from me, but Hadley figured out how to incorporate them. And I think I may have also asked if we could play up certain words in the text (but, to be honest, Marijka would have probably done that anyways—I think I learned that trick from her in the first place).

AUTHORLINK: You’ve written many children’s books related to women’s history. Why?

COREY: I love history and it’s the thing that inspires me. I’ve also always been interested in women who have the courage and confidence to break the rules. I think it’s because (to my chagrin!) I’m a bit of a conformist myself, and I wish I had the kind of guts and gumption it takes to do that! I find it endlessly fascinating to look closer at those stories and see why and how others manage to strike out on their own.

I also think moments of change in general are fascinating, and most of my stories are about those—the first girls to play professional baseball, the first woman to wear bloomers or a one-piece bathing suit. What makes someone stand up finally and say, “Enough!” and then go their own way? That’s what I’m often exploring.

AUTHORLINK: Where do you get your ideas? How did you know about Annette Kellerman, Amelia Bloomer, and “Katie Casey” and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, for example?

COREY: In many cases, one thing leads to another. I first learned about Annette Kellerman from a footnote when I was researching fashion history for Amelia Bloomer. I was pretty far into my Players in Pigtails research on the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (which I’d been introduced to in the movie A League of Their Own) and having something of a block because I wasn’t sure who my main character would be. I couldn’t write about the whole league, but there were so many interesting women in it and it was all about teamwork and sisterhood—it just felt wrong to pick one woman to write about. And then while I was researching, I came across the lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and saw that the first verse was about a baseball-loving girl named Katie Casey. That gave me goosebumps, and suddenly everything fell into place and I had my main character.

AUTHORLINK: And then what’s the process? How do you go from the little nugget of information that can launch a book to full-fledged manuscript? How long does it usually take?

COREY: I start with researching, and that’s where I spend the bulk of the time. Sometimes it can be very quick (there was a deadline for Here Come the Girl Scouts! because we wanted it to be out in time for the Girl Scouts’ one hundredth anniversary in 2012, so that happened very fast, probably a month and a half from idea to finished manuscript) and sometimes it can take a long time. For Mermaid Queen, my editor and I both had children in between the time that I first mentioned the idea and when I finally sat down and wrote a first draft. The research for that was difficult—there just wasn’t very much out there about Annette. And because I like to have stacks and stacks of research, it took me a long time to decide that I had enough—or at least as much as I was going to get—and I needed to stop looking for more and start writing.

AUTHORLINK: Are publishers looking for books on relatively obscure historical folks? Is it these people’s contributions to the culture, their interesting personal stories, or your fabulous writing that wins over editors?

COREY: I wish I could say yes to the obscure historical folks. But being on the other side, as well, I’d have to say probably not. It’s a tough picture book market, so there needs to be an audience (I hope the Girl Scouts will be an audience for this book), and you don’t want a story so obscure that no one will be interested in it. But that said, I think publishers are looking for fresh stories, and I think a positive about obscure folks is that their stories haven’t been told a million times before. I would say if you’re going to write about an obscure character, you want to find a way that kids today can connect with it, there has to be something to make it relevant to them. Maybe they’re a Girl Scout themselves or they’ve worn a bathing suit or they play baseball—there has to be something that makes the story connect to their modern life. For that reason, I think picture books on sports and music history can work really well for kids, because the connection is so clear.

AUTHORLINK: You’re an editor yourself, with Random House. How does that impact your writing? And how does your writing life affect your work as an editor?

COREY: They’re very intertwined. Being an editor makes me really respect all the work that goes into a book on the publisher’s side. It’s a team effort, and I’m very aware of how much everyone—from the artist, to my editor, to the art director, to the copyeditor, to production and sales and marketing—brings to it, and I really appreciate that. I try to say thank you a lot because I know how much it means to me when authors say it to me. It also helps me manage my expectations (or, more honestly, at least to know that I should be managing them), because I know how tough the market is. And it inspires me, because I constantly see how hard my own authors are working, not just in their writing, but in promoting and marketing their books, and I’m often following their lead in that.

And writing life affects my work as an editor because I sympathize. I know how hard it can be—the stress over reviews or revisions—so I try to be very, very sensitive to that and to give a lot of encouragement (which is always deserved; I wouldn’t be working on these books if I didn’t love them) and to give as much time as I possibly can for each round of revision. It also makes me very aware of how hard my authors work, and I’m constantly impressed by that. And I’m learning from my editor, as well. I’ve said this before, but I know my early edit letters were modeled very closely on Tracy’s wonderful, enthusiastic, encouraging letters to me.

And I think all editors feel this way, but, of course, writing makes sending rejections or any bad news that much more painful. I hate telling people no. I know how hard they worked on manuscripts and how much they have at stake in the answer, so it’s not a fun thing to do (I angst over sending anything too close to holidays, etc.). But luckily, I’m also able to say yes to many wonderful manuscripts and authors, and that’s a very fun thing to do!

To help separate the two sides (and keep some level of sanity), I primarily publish at a different house or imprint than I edit, and, for the most part, I edit chapter books and up and don’t usually edit picture books.

AUTHORLINK: What are you working on now?

COREY: Right now, I’m working on a picture book about New York City’s first subway—a privately built pneumatic train that ran in lower Manhattan in the early 1870s—so I’m deep in New York city traffic history research.

About Susan VanHecke

Susan VanHecke is an author and editor of books for adults and children. Her titles for young people include Raggin' Jazzin' Rockin': A History of American Musical Instrument Makers (Boyds Mills, 2011), Rock 'N' Roll Soldier (HarperCollins, 2009), and An Apple Pie For Dinner (Cavendish, 2009). To find out more about Susan and her books, visit www.susanvanhecke.com and www.susanvanheckeeditorial.com.