Where Did You Get Your Ideas, Jean Fritz?

H istory books have always held a deep fascination for me. Biographies, children’s histories, pictorial histories, history textbooks — I could often be found, sitting on the basement floor, completely enraptured by anything from a coffee-table book on 20th-century Germany to a book from my dad’s youth covering the life of JFK. I have my historical likes and dislikes (looking at you, Tudor-era England), but give me a well-written history book on just about any person or era, and I could disappear for hours. There are many such books written for children. But those penned by Jean Fritz rank among my most recommended because of their lively style and excellent pictures.

Much as my younger self would’ve preferred just to shove books back on shelves at random, my mom insisted on having at least some semblance of order. This cataloguing system, involving colored stickers and designated shelf space, came in handy when I was looking for our collection of Fritz biographies. Of the nearly 50 books Fritz wrote, we owned three of her historical biographies. Her account of King George III most captured my interest growing up.

Fritz worked with various illustrators over the course of her writing career, such as the celebrated Tomie dePaola. His amusing and imaginative spreads in Fritz’s Can’t You Make Them Behave, King George? always stood out to me because of how well they married with the text. Fritz packs plenty of information onto each page; a necessity, since she is writing about famous and complex figures. She walks a careful line, however, and finds a way to present the important information in an interesting way without overwhelming readers or making her subjects two-dimensional.

Trina Schart Hyman, the illustrator of some of my favorite fairy-tale picture books, also worked with Fritz, collaborating on the two other Fritz biographies we owned. Fritz’s titles always had a clever twist, often involving a question. Poor King George couldn’t make those colonists behave, as we already saw. The Hyman-Fritz collaboration produced Will You Sign Here, John Hancock? and Why Don’t You Get a Horse, Sam Adams? (as well as The Man Who Loved Books, but that’s a story for another day). These two, along with old King George’s story, grace my parents’ bookshelves.

It’s amazing how well Hyman and dePaola understood Fritz’s writing style and melded it with their work. These two distinctive illustrators each infused a soft humor into these books, capturing Fritz’s sometimes wry phrases in wonderful expressions and poses. History is never embellished upon or mocked, though. It is clear that Fritz’s illustrators — and the author herself — took pride in their work and did their research thoroughly.

Fritz herself was a fascinating woman: an American who was born in China to missionary parents and who lived her first 13 years there. One of her autobiographies, Homesick, My Own Story, won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature and nearly received a Newbery Medal. Her historical works also received two Boston Globe–Horn Book Awards and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award, and she was a Hans Christian Andersen Award nominee.

Lately, I’ve been trying to get my hands on more of her books, and was thrilled to discover she’d written not only about Teddy Roosevelt, but also Harriet Beecher Stowe and Pocahontas. So, during a recent thrift-store outing, I was excited when my browsing turned up a copy of her book Shh! We’re Writing the Constitution, also illustrated by dePaola.

This book, which details the trials, woes, and triumphs that led to our Constitution, is truly wonderful. Yes, it is packed with information, but Fritz does an admirable job of explaining to children what it took to form this incredible country we live in today. Really, this is the perfect book for anyone looking for a primer on the Founding of our country.

So if you have a moment, this holiday weekend, do yourself a favor and pick up something by this talented author. She truly gave all of us a wonderful gift.