In-depth Written Interview

Insights Beyond the Meet-the-Author Movie

Marc Aronson, interviewed in his studio in Maplewood, New Jersey on March 26, 2004.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You have an unusual background for an author of books for younger readers; you have a doctorate in American History, you are an editor, and you write award-winning nonfiction for teenagers. How do all of these roles fit together?

MARC ARONSON: My passion for history is what links together all of my interests. I love learning about the past, I enjoy finding ways to help other authors express what they know, and I'm grateful to have the chance to write for young people myself. More than anything else, I want young readers to share my sense that history is fresh, alive — it affects your feelings, stimulates your senses and challenges you to think. What more could you ask a book to do?

TEACHINGBOOKS: That makes sense abstractly, but how did you end up in children's books?

MARC ARONSON: I started out in kids' books as the editor of the Land and People books, the Portraits of the Nations series. These were books I had read as a child, and it was a thrill to have the chance to revive and rework the series. As I edited books about South Africa, China and Spain, I learned a great deal about how to take complex information and make it accessible for younger readers. When I decided to write my own books, I had a good running start. At that time, in the 1980s, very few books for kids had detailed source notes. I helped change that.

TEACHINGBOOKS: But, aren't footnotes about the most boring thing in a book?

MARC ARONSON: I remember vividly when I discovered footnotes – I was a teenager standing in New York's Donnell Library reading a book about a radical, Protestant sect, the Anabaptists. It was the 60s, and they seemed quite similar to people I was reading about in the East Village Other. Something in the text made me look back at the notes. I suddenly understood what they were: a treasure map. The note was saying, "Hey, follow me, I've got the good stuff. I can tell you what really happened." I love following that trail because it takes you from what one author had to say, in the book you're reading, to how he found out and to how that person found out. Maybe I was listening to too much Jefferson Airplane, but I realized that a footnote is the "White Rabbit," inviting you to begin a journey, a quest.

To be fair, I think notes that just list sources are just OK. A real note should tell you what the author thought about that source.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What do you mean?

MARC ARONSON: I write my notes as a kind of conversation between a curious teenager and me as the researcher. I feel like I'm a magician explaining how the lady gets sawed in half. And in that way, I'm betraying the authority of adults; I'm treating my readers as my partners, not as children.

TEACHINGBOOKS: "Discover on your own, question and form your own interpretations." These are themes in many of your books. What are some of the ways you prompt your readers to think on their own?

MARC ARONSON: In each one of my books I include at least one dramatic clash — a trial, a battle, a furious argument in the press — that is a jumping-off point. I've commissioned Jean West, an educational consultant who is terrific at this, to write a series of lesson plans based on the books. I'm putting those plans on my website, www.MarcAronson.com, so that teachers can use the confrontations in my books in their classes.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Can you be more specific? In your award-winning Sir Walter Ralegh and the Quest for El Dorado what confrontation are you thinking of?

MARC ARONSON: Ralegh was an all around dramatic guy: in one battle he deliberately charged up a hill wearing a colorful scarf – making himself a more obvious target. He was daring the Spanish to shoot him, and, as he expected, his ferocious confidence was intimidating. But the set piece in Ralegh is his treason trial.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Why is a trial so exciting or interesting to teenagers?

MARC ARONSON: Ralegh was tried just after King James became King of England. It was one of the great trials of English history, and the attention it received at the time was like the OJ Simpson trial, the Bill Clinton impeachment — it was a national defining moment, but with a twist. Everybody knew Ralegh would be convicted. The crowd hated him. They even thought he might not make it to the court. One of the judges was the man who had been plotting to destroy him. By the rules of law at the time, he was not allowed to have a lawyer or to even know the charges against him until he got into court. Ralegh had no chance.

Ralegh spoke so eloquently, the crowd that came to enjoy his destruction wound up cheering for him. And the King, who had arranged the trial to destroy him, not only saved his life, but also made him the tutor to his own son.

You can see it in the trial record: you are hearing a man fighting for his life against impossible odds, and at the same time, speaking for the individual against the power of the state. Here is a man who was Shakespeare's contemporary making up, on the spot, lines as powerful as any drama.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Do Ralegh's words have any relevance now?

MARC ARONSON: Very much so. One of the most pressing issues in our nation is deciding how much power the state should have in a time of terrorism. Is it acceptable to house people in Guantanamo Bay without any charges against them? Which is greater, our need for security or their individual human rights? That is precisely what was at issue in Ralegh's trial.

TEACHINGBOOKS: How could teachers use this scene in class?

MARC ARONSON: They can have the class read it, or act it out. And here's another neat possibility, which would work best in an English or Language Arts class. The connection between Ralegh and Shakespeare is so close that one theory had it that Ralegh wrote the plays. No one believes that anymore. But there is good reason to believe that the very first performance of Hamlet was staged as a commentary on Ralegh's trial.

A teacher might want to have a class read a bit from Ralegh's trial, then stage the play within the play from Hamlet in class, then talk about how theater works – is theater a mirror? How does it show us ourselves? What kind of modern media event could so directly confront a leader?

TEACHINGBOOKS: You have suggested that historical conflicts have modern echoes. The parallel many high school teachers and students know is Arthur Miller's The Crucible: the play about the seventeenth century that commented on the McCarthy trials of the 1950s. You recently wrote a book on this same period, Witch-Hunt: Mysteries of the Salem Witch Trials. The 50s were now half a century ago, is there anything new those trials have to tell us?

MARC ARONSON: Very much so, and this is going to be made evident in a History Channel show in October 2004 – which happens to also be titled "Witch-Hunt." Mary Beth Norton, one of the best colonial historians, has uncovered new evidence that shows that both some of the accusers and the judges in Salem were deeply influenced by Indian wars that had taken place in what is now Maine. It was, in other words, a time when people were more fearful and their sense of justice shifted, because they had experienced something similar to what we call terrorism. I was fortunate in that I communicated with Professor Norton early on, and my book is the only one for young readers that includes her theory.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Terror then, terror now, how can teachers make the connection?

MARC ARONSON: One of the great things about studying the Salem witch trials is that all of the evidence is on the Internet. Any class can go to the Internet and read the trial transcripts, study them, and come up with their own interpretations.

But I've made it even easier than that. You can take the opening scene on pages 3-6 of Witch-Hunt and act it out. That scene is taken directly from the transcripts. The class doesn't have to act out Arthur Miller's interpretation or a fictional translation. They can actually create the Salem courtroom in their class. I've done that with 100 sixth graders who knew nothing about Salem until they saw the scene unfold in front of their eyes. They immediately started thinking about it. "What's going on? Why are these accusations being made? Were the devilish attacks real? Not real?" You get kids thinking, coming up with theories, imagining themselves into the past.

Questions lead to questions. The first round might be, "Why did kids your age make these accusations?" So far, when I've presented this to kids they overwhelmingly think the accusers, their peers, were consciously faking. They tend to reject psychological explanations. I'm not sure if that is because they know themselves well and are cynics about teenage theatrics, or because they don't know themselves that well, and are not yet that aware of unconscious drives. Once kids are engaged, making up theories, you add another layer — torture.

So, the next questions could be, "In witch trials before Salem suspects were not tortured. In Salem both physical and psychological torture was used. Why?"

A classroom discussing torture in Salem can very naturally begin talking about torture today. I say this not to push any political agenda. I think that young people, some of whom will enlist, should have thought about these questions, should be weighing moral choices before they are confronted with them.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Are all of the confrontation moments in your books so directly linked to current events?

MARC ARONSON: Not at all. In fact, since I write the books at least a year before they first appear, I never expect to match the news, it just sometimes works out that way. In my most recent book, John Winthrop, Oliver Cromwell, and the Land of Promise, for example, there are two dramatic moments that I wrote hoping to challenge readers to think and these have nothing to do with war.

For one, there is the trial of Anne Hutchinson in New England where she was tried essentially as a heretic. One very smart, brave, articulate woman took on the leaders of Puritan New England. She was as devout as they were, but they felt she was having too much influence

– and who knew what she was preaching? As with Ralegh and Salem, the trial transcript itself is fascinating – so dramatic. I've included excerpts in my book and in the lesson plan. I could easily see a teacher staging it in class. The teacher could ask, "Why was she on trial? Who won the trial? Why did she claim to hear the voice of God? Was Winthrop right that she was a danger to the community?"

TEACHINGBOOKS: What's the second dramatic moment in John Winthrop, Oliver Cromwell, and the Land of Promise that will challenge readers to think?

MARC ARONSON: In 1647, after Cromwell had essentially won the English Civil War, a group of leaders gathered to try and decide how England should be governed. And some of his soldiers said, "Here's an idea: Every man should have the right to vote and pick the government that is appropriate for him." In other words, they articulated the ideas of the Declaration of Independence 129 years before the Declaration.

The discussion took place in a church at Putney in England, and I'd love to see a class stage the Putney Debates. You have essentially Americans shifted back in time. Were they right? Or was Cromwell right that their ideas would have produced endless and bloody wars? Can an idea be ahead of its time? Are there any such ideas now? I could see any class having a great time with this.

TEACHINGBOOKS: You've made the case for how history can be dramatic, and current. Are there personal stories you can share about researching or writing your books?

MARC ARONSON: I am very fortunate in that my wife's father was from Guyana, and that is the area where Sir Walter Ralegh went in search of the fabled kingdom of El Dorado. I got to traipse through the very same jungles that Ralegh explored. That was one treat.

And I have another personal connection to Witch-Hunt. My parents designed the original sets for The Crucible. I grew up with my parents telling me the stories of working with Arthur Miller. I included some of my parents' set designs in Witch-Hunt in a chapter about The Crucible. Having my parents' sets gave me a good frame to talk about art and history, and what each has to offer.

Art Attack, my first book, was really my tribute to my father. He took to me to see so much modern art as a child, and I wanted to pass along that gift. I got to understand art that can be really wild — not as an assault but as opening doors, opening eyes — and I thought teenagers deserved that knowledge.

TEACHINGBOOKS: What are you working on now, what new doors are you opening?

MARC ARONSON: In 2005, Clarion will publish my book on the causes of the American Revolution. About a third of the book is about India. I asked myself a simple question: "We all know the Boston Tea Party was an important event, by why tea? Why did tea matter so much to the English?" The answer is entirely about India. And it seemed to me that as we now live in a world of global interconnection it was a good idea to show how that is true throughout the history of our nation. In 2006, Atheneum will publish a book I am now writing: a history of prejudice in the West, from Sumner to the present.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Any last thoughts?

MARC ARONSON: Yes, if teachers do use any of my books, or any of the scenes I've mentioned or the lesson plans on my site, I would love to hear from them. I want to know about classroom realities: what works, what doesn't and how can I make my books, or the resources I provide for teachers, better.

TEACHINGBOOKS: Marc Aronson can be reached through his website, www.MarcAronson.com

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