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>> Hi, I'm Barb Rosenstock, the
author of a bunch of non-fiction
and historical fiction picture
books for children,
and you're here in my writing
office, which used to be a bedroom.
And the only other thing you need to know is
that there is also my dog,
Nikki, is on the floor.
So you probably won't see her, and
I hope that you don't hear her,
but if you hear a dog that's what's going on.
I live north of Chicago, Illinois, and
my latest book is Leave It To Abigail,
The Revolutionary Life of Abigail Adams.
It is illustrated by Elizabeth
Bradley, and it's about Abigail Adams.
And Abigail was born before our country started.
People talk about the Founding
Fathers all the time.
But Abigail was one of our founding mothers.
And she's one of the most important ones, too.
She was the first American woman
to talk about women's rights.
And she did that in a really famous
letter to her husband, John Adams,
where she said the words, "Remember the ladies."
She was trying to get John to
put some idea of women's rights
in our country's initial
documents that were making the laws
for the beginning of the United States.
Abigail also surprised people
in millions of ways.
Her whole life, in a time when girls were
supposed to say quiet and in the background,
she was confident, and competent.
She was a great parent, a great politician,
a great writer, a great business woman.
And whenever there were problems
in her life, people relied on her.
And kind of Leave it to Abigail became one
of the things that was said a lot about her.
She could do anything.
She used her skills to support her family and
her country, and the other women in her life.
One of the favorite parts of the book that
I like best, and I'm hoping you're going
to be able to see it here, is
actually the last couple of pages.
And I hope you can see that.
Oh, let me see which way I'm going.
This is all of, some of the many other
American women that Abigail inspired.
Of all cultures, races, and times.
Their surprising lives are kind of also
featured in the book, and I really like the idea
that Abigail's independent spirit
lives on in young readers today,
and in our women leaders right now.
The seed that spurred the book was a third
grade girl that I met a number of years ago.
As an author, I go into a lot of elementary
schools to visit, to do author visits,
and to talk with kids, and there
are a lot of questions and answers.
And about four-- I'm going to say four years
ago, there was a young woman, a girl, in about,
in third grade, and she raised her hand
during question and answer session,
and she said how many books have you written?
And I said 10, about 10 at that point.
And she said, "How come only
one of them has a girl in it?"
Isn't history-- aren't girls
part of history too?
And that question just stopped me.
And I thought, wow!
I have been educated in a real
traditional history framework
where only men did important things,
and women were in the background.
And that was the first time that I
really realized it in my own work,
and I didn't want to keep doing that in my work.
So I started actively looking for female
characters, and one of the first people
that occurred to me in history in
American history, was Abigail Adams,
but I kind of rejected her right
out of hand, because I can remember
that the only thing I learned about her
when I was in like second or third grade was
that she supposedly hung laundry in
the White House, the new White House.
And I remember thinking oh,
she just did women's work.
She's not going to be important.
And again, I would stop again, I'm
like what does that mean, women's work?
You know, at the time, I was raising a
young family, I was doing the laundry
and I'm a writer, I was also writing books.
So that's women's work.
And I had friends who were doctors.
And that's women's work.
And friends were teachers.
Women's work.
Friends who worked in offices, and factories.
Women's work.
So it started to really dawn on me that
women's work has been sort of devalued,
like it's considered not important,
for generations and generations.
And I looked into Abigail further, and
visited her houses with some historians.
That was very helpful.
In Massachusetts, her homes
are part of National Parks.
Her homes with John Adams.
And I visited the park, and learned
way more about Abigail's life,
and how much she accomplished, at a time
when women really weren't
allowed to do much of anything.
And Abigail just didn't play by the rules.
So that's-- that fourth grade
girl, or third grade girl,
I can thank her for the inspiration
for the book.
Ingenuity often means invention, you know,
people use it as something about invention
and when I first saw it, I was like invention!
And then it occurred to me that ingenuity isn't
just inventing things outside of ourselves,
it's also taking the skills that we already
possess, and doing amazing things with them,
or even doing something different
that we maybe weren't told to do.
And I think in that way, Abigail
Adams is an example of ingenuity.
She invented and reinvented herself
throughout all the ages of her life.
As a young girl, as a young wife, as a
mother, as a politician, as a businesswoman.
She just kept inventing and reinventing herself
and I think that's just a terrific example
of American ingenuity, doing the best
you can with the skills you possess.
Yeah, history's heroes for today's children
is just a way that I have of reminding myself
that history is continually alive,
and that what I'm writing isn't
for readers all about the past.
It's to bring those past experiences,
good, the good parts of them,
and sometimes the challenging parts of them,
or the parts where we kind of,
as a society, got it all wrong.
And bring that into the future
and to talk and to make sure
that today's readers have an opportunity
to see themselves in that past history.
So it's just shorthand for me,
of talking about my own work,
remembering what I'm trying to do myself.
I love the library in general.
It's like my first memory is
being taken to the library.
But the Library of Congress specifically,
I wrote an entire book about the Library
of Congress, called Thomas
Jefferson Builds a Library.
And obviously did a lot of research in the
Library of Congress' own collections to find
out the information for the book and how
Thomas Jefferson's books became the core
of the collection.
I have actually used the library often.
This other book, Otis and Will
Discover the Deep, was inspired in part
by a librarian named Connie Carter,
who is at the Library of Congress,
and she was sort of the godmother of the book.
The book is dedicated to Connie, and we did
lots of work researching early ocean science
in those collections at the Library of Congress.
And Fight of the Century was, in
part, kind of inspired by the Library
of Congress' suffragist photo collection,
which is on a specific site right now.
It's the 100th Anniversary this year of
the 19th Amendment, and I used those photos
and realized how much actual conflict
there was in the suffrage movement,
and came up with the idea of
Alice, Paul and Woodrow Wilson,
and the fight that gave women the right to vote.
How she had to battle for it.
So I used the Library of
Congress, kind of all the time.
I'm a big fan.
Big fan! Kids, especially, kids have hundreds
of stories to tell, and I want them to know
that their stories are important.
People need to hear what you think and you
wish and you hope for, and you dream about,
so writing is the process of playing
with words, really, to tell a story.
So keep reading, and keep
writing, and keep playing.
Because that's the best part of being a writer.
Alright. Leave It to Abigail, The Revolutionary
Life of Abigail Adams, by Barb Rosenstock,
illustrated by Elizabeth Bradley,
and just so you all know, these,
Elizabeth Bradley's phenomenal
art is actually sewn in this book.
She took the women's work and
the women's art of cross-stitch
and made the illustrations out of it.
In a clapboard house, in
the colony of Massachusetts,
a baby girl's weak cries drowned
in the cold November wind.
Her worried parents hurried to bless and
name her, but Abigail surprised everyone.
She lived.
Abigail grew up in a time when most
colonial girls learned just enough words
to read the Bible, and just enough math to shop.
Everyone knew that good girls kept quiet.
But leave it to Abigail.
She blurted out questions
and eavesdropped on visitors.
She ignored mother's chores,
and explored father's books.
She bossed her sisters, brother,
and anyone else who would listen.
Only grandmother Quincy understood.
Wild colts make the best horses.
Little by little, Abigail teamed herself.
She finished tasks before reading.
She learned to milk, bake, stew,
salt, cure, spin, knit and weave.
Abigail banked fires, raised
chicks, and brewed herb medicines.
Everyone knew she should
marry a prosperous minister.
Leave it to Abigail!
She met a struggling country
lawyer named John Adams.
She teased him with her bold
opinions in letter after letter.
She insisted on marrying the man she loved.
Abigail stitched shirts, dipped candles, and
rocked their babies while John ran their farm
and practiced law from the house.
She reviewed John's notes on cases and clients.
Soon, he opened a second
office 10 miles away in Boston.
Abigail packed up the family
and moved with John,
farm to city, city to farm, and back again.
Out her city window, Abigail saw
Boston marching toward rebellion.
England's King George forced American
colonists to pay taxes on everyday items.
First sugar, then tea, glass,
paints, even paper!
But colonists had no say in how their
taxes were spent by England's government.
People boycotted.
Leaders organized.
The king blocked Boston Harbor, sent soldiers
and ships to keep the colonies quiet.
Riots broke out.
People died.
John wrote articles supporting colonial rights.
Abigail shaped John's words,
and shared her opinions.
And I'm going to stop there.
So, leave it to Abigail to fill a
book full of surprising stories.
The story continues here.
Thank you so much for listening,
learning all about Abigail,
and joining the National Book Festival.
Thank you so much.
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