[ Music ] >> Naomi Coquillon: Hello
and welcome to the third and final day of the 2020
National Book Festival. My name is Naomi Coquillon, and I work at the
Library of Congress. I'm here with Deborah
Hopkinson, whose featured book at the festival is
Thanks to Frances Perkins: Fighter for Workers' Rights. I hope you've all had a
chance to see her video here on the children's
stage, but if not, do take a look after
this session. The Q and A will last
about 30 minutes, and I'll be pulling your
questions from the chat, so please add them here. And if you're a teacher or a
family watching with children, please let us know that, too, so Deborah can address your
question appropriately. So with that, I'll give
it just a second for folks to ask their questions, but
I'm wondering first, Deborah, if you could just say a bit
about why you wanted to write about Frances Perkins, what's
a major lesson you want kids to take away from her life? >> Deborah Hopkinson: Well, I knew about Frances
Perkins for a long time. And I wanted to first
say welcome to everyone and thank you for coming. I'm sorry it's not in person,
but I'm always interested in sort of forgotten people
from history or people that some people know, but we might not have
learned about in schools. So I first encountered
Frances Perkins's writing about the Triangle Waist
Company fire, and the fact that she was there in
Washington Square that day, it really transformed her
life, and I like to think about how events shape us
and how change happens. So even though she was inspired
after that moment to work for workers' rights, it took
a lot of hard work to make that happen over a lifetime. So I'm really hoping
to talk to everyone and read some of the questions. >> Naomi Coquillon: Yup. So Katheen [inaudible] asks, "If Frances Perkins
were alive today, what do you think
she'd be fighting for?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: Well, I don't think there's
any doubt about that. Frances Perkins really saw
inequities in the system within, at the time, factories
with women and children, and she also noticed details that we might not
have thought about. For instance, when she took
politician Al Smith into a tour of factories, she noticed that the workers didn't
have backs on their chairs. So I think the kinds of
things she'd be looking for is to make a more inclusive
and just society. >> Naomi Coquillon: Great. Let's see. There's another from -- >> Deborah Hopkinson:
Can you hear me? >> Naomi Coquillon: Oh, yup. There's another from
Laurie Enos [phonetic]. >> Deborah Hopkinson:
Can you hear me? >> Naomi Coquillon: I
can hear you now, yup. So Laurie Enos asks, "Reading
your book really inspired me. I -- " Are we there, Deborah? You guys, folks can keep
submitting their questions and we'll get them as soon
as we get Deborah back here. >> Deborah Hopkinson:
Is anyone there? >> Naomi Coquillon: Yup. We're here. Great. So we're glad to see you. >> Deborah Hopkinson: Sorry. >> Naomi Coquillon:
No, that's fine. Let me string back to
the question that popped up first I was going
to read you. It says, "Reading your
book really inspired me. I already work informally
on workers' rights within my own company,
but do you have any ideas on how individuals
can get more involved in workers' rights
nationally at this time without making a
whole career change?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: Well,
I'm not an expert in that area, so I don't know that I'm
qualified to say that, but I think certainly
reading and staying active and joining local organizations,
and then I think education. One of the reasons I wrote
this book was that, although, you know, we know about social
security, I really wanted to write about both financial
literacy and economic literacy. And I think that a lot of
times, those kinds of things -- And part of our history
isn't taught in schools. So possibly doing
a book group -- >> Naomi Coquillon: Oh, looks
like we may have lost her again. >> Deborah Hopkinson:
I just really -- >> Naomi Coquillon: Okay. All right, folks. We'll try one more time,
hopefully maybe just to get her on audio, if not video. So give it another
couple minutes here. And again, if you
haven't had a chance to see her festival
video, you can do that here on the children's stage or at
the YouTube channel as well, the library's YouTube channel. >> Deborah Hopkinson: Hello. Hello? >> Naomi Coquillon: Hi. We can hear you. >> Deborah Hopkinson: Oh good. Sorry. I have a cell phone,
a phone, and a computer, and none of them work. >> Naomi Coquillon:
Oh, no problem. So Beth Olchevisky [phonetic]
asks, "Can you talk to us about some of the interesting
things that you've found about Frances Perkins
in your research that you couldn't
fit into the book?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: Well,
she obviously had a very -- Wait, I'm going to
mute myself here. She had a very fascinating
personal life with a lot of struggles. So as you can imagine,
working with one child -- Her husband suffered
from mental illness, and she also had a long-term
later relationship with a woman. And it's hard to fit all
those biographical details into a picture book,
especially for younger readers. So I do try to put author notes
in my books as a way of sort of filling out the story. >> Naomi Coquillon:
[Inaudible] Yup. So the question from
Rocko Steino [phonetic] from the Empire State Center
for the Book in New York: "Did you visit the FDR
Presidential Library in Hyde Park, and if so,
what did you discover?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: I didn't
get a chance to go, Rocko. Thank you for that question. I wish that I had. And it's been very interesting
for me since the pandemic to think about in-person
research and how that will change. I was scheduled to go to
Texas for the Texas TLA and Library Association
Festival, and, of course, that got canceled and I was
doing some research there. So I did use oral
history that had been done with Frances Perkins, and that
was especially helpful to have, but I wish that I had
gone to the FDR Library. I have another book
about someone else in the Roosevelt
administration that Peachtree, who published Thanks
to Frances Perkins, also published called
Sweet Land of Liberty, and it's about Oscar Chapman. So I think I have this interest
in writing about middle managers or administrators because
I think in some ways, although we talk a lot about
the major figures in history, a lot of the work gets done,
you know, on that ground level. And looking at this last week, as we think about Ruth
Bader Ginsburg's life, we think about the details
and the hard work that went into the changes that she
helped to bring about. >> Naomi Coquillon: So
another question from Rocko: "What is the most
difficult thing about writing nonfiction
books for children?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: I think
the most difficult thing is, how do you have something
about an adult who accomplished something
as an adult and make that of interest to children. So for Thanks to Frances
Perkins, what I tried to do was to put kids - Oh,
there's my dogs barking. Sorry. To put kids at
sort of the center. So it starts out, let's start with two math questions
especially for younger readers. So just try to make a connection
or a way into their lives. Another difficulty with
this book was the idea that Frances Perkins
was very much motivated by both being present as an
eyewitness on March 25, 1911, during the Triangle Waist
Company fire and also by Rose Schneiderman's speech
in the memorial service, and presenting that in a way that wasn't too frightening
to kids. So Kristy Caldwell, the
illustrator, I think, did a fantastic job of
anchoring that pivotal moment in American history, but it
can be scary for young readers, which is why it's great
to have such books shared with young children
by parents, educators, librarians, and teachers. >> Naomi Coquillon: Great. So Les Turner asks, "Are there
any subjects children have written or asked
you to write about?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: You
know, back in the before time when I did lots of school
visits, the one question that they kept asking
about 9/11, which I think is
very interesting, which other people
have written about and I have not written about,
but that seemed to be something that loomed heavily in
young readers' minds. They also asked me if I
-- one third grader -- I had written about the Titanic,
and one third grader asked me if my book was based
on the movie. >> Naomi Coquillon: All right. So Adam Kreps asks, "What inspired you
to write this book?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: Well, I think I might have
said before we sort of lost the technical
difficulties that I started writing
about workers' rights and the Triangle Waist Company
fire probably around 1999, and I did a nonfiction book
on Lower East Side and life in the tenements of New York. I grew up in Lowell,
Massachusetts, and although I wasn't really
interested in history as a kid, I think I later have looked back
and saw that I was really living within that time of having
those mills around me. So I've gotten interested
in workers' rights and in unions partly, I
think, from my own experience, my mom worked in a
factory for a while. And so the moment --
And also that idea that something can happen to
us as children or one event such as the Triangle
fire or the things that have happened this summer
can really usher in sort of a sea-change, and we hope that that will take place also
now as we look at inequities in our justice system. >> Naomi Coquillon: Okay. Thank you. And I think we'll go a
little bit past 1:30 just to [inaudible] time
if that's okay. >> Deborah Hopkinson: Sorry. >> Naomi Coquillon:
No, no, no, no. Thank you for making the time. >> Deborah Hopkinson: I have a
very old computer, everybody. >> Naomi Coquillon:
Not to worry. We're together now,
so that's good. So Sharon Soaper [phonetic]
thanks you for writing this and talks about her career in
workers' rights, then asks, "What did you find to
be the most challenging about publishing your book and
likewise the most rewarding?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: I
think here it was to try to make these sort of
complex issues of interest to young readers, and the most
rewarding, I think, is to see - There was no way, I
think, that we could -- We wanted this book to come
out for the 85th anniversary of social security, but there
was no way to predict when, years ago when I started writing
it and when we were working on it, the kinds of debates
that we would be having in our country this year
about the kinds of things that Frances Perkins cared
about, so unemployment, really a rock of security,
poverty, and fairness. Those are the kinds of things
that have been intensified and will continue to be as we
go into this election season. >> Naomi Coquillon: All right. We have two more questions. One is from Marilyn Mendenhall: "What made you decide
to become a writer?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: Well,
I loved to read as a child, and I wanted to be either
a doctor or a writer, but I haven't been
a full-time writer. So one of the things that
I always tell young readers and people who want to write is,
you can still do what you want to do, even if you
can't do it full-time. So I worked up until six
years ago, most of my career in academic fundraising,
and I always wrote on weekends or in evenings. So it's only been
the last few years that I've been able
to do it full time. So it's really wonderful,
although it feels like everything is
changing again because I spent all my
spring visiting students all over the country, and
I will miss that a lot. So I'm doing some Zooming Into
History virtual author visits, but it's not the same as
showing old historical photos to 200 young people
in an auditorium and having them catch their
breath with excitement at seeing someone at the top
of the Empire State Building or really delving
into primary sources. >> Naomi Coquillon: Yeah. Well, wonderful that
you can be on Zoom, and hopefully some other classes who are watching here
will be able to bring you to their classes as well, and someday we'll be
together again in person. But last question also from
Rocko at the Empire State Center for the Book: "Which is
your favorite illustration from the book and why?" >> Deborah Hopkinson: So I think
my favorite illustration is the last one, which you can't
see if I told it up, but Kristy Caldwell, we set the
book up sort of with an entry, and then at the end of it
to think about the impact of social security on people's
lives throughout their lives, whether they received
benefits as a young person or closer to retirement. And there's a scene of people
back in Washington Square, a diverse group of people
with these little billboards that say, "Thanks, Frances,"
and some people are painting, and they're painting
a picture of Frances in her ever-present hat. And people are on bicycles and
walking dogs and playing music, and it's that sense of
community and that society that she really helped
to envision and build. So that's my favorite
illustration. >> Naomi Coquillon: All right. Well, thank you, Deborah,
and thank you to our audience for sticking through it. It's a really lovely
conversation. And to our audience, I hope that
you'll have a chance to check out Deborah Hopkinson's book. [ Music ]
