From the July/August 2001 issue of The Horn Book Magazine

Milton Meltzer

By Wendy Saul

t that terrible moment mid-life, when buying a sports car too often substitutes for a real turning, Milton Meltzer thought about making his life more meaningful. He had what his immigrant parents surely would have called a good situation: a successful job in advertising, a lovely wife, two daughters, and much else associated with being a real American — the un-hyphenated kind. But for Meltzer this life was both too much and not enough. Too material in orientation, too narrow in focus, with too little time and energy for ideas and values. So he thought about writing a book that mattered.

Meltzer's first title was published in 1956 — written at the same time the historic case of Brown v. Board of Education was making its way through the courts, before Rosa Parks decided to challenge the laws of Jim Crow, long before the term political correctness had been uttered. He chose as his subject the struggle of African Americans to achieve freedom and equality. Meltzer's goal was to interest the broadest possible audience and to present information in such a way that even a casual reader could be persuaded to dig more deeply into the subject. In conceptualizing this project he browsed his own library and found two volumes that had the kind of visual appeal he sought — one on life in America and another on science and invention; both books used a highly pictorial, oversized format.

Writing a book of social import, especially a book about real people and events, suggests a particular understanding of audience. From the beginning, Meltzer saw his readers as people anxious for a truly inclusive historical record, as well as people hungry for information. In this volume, as in all of his nearly one hundred titles, Meltzer made available to readers what has come to be a hallmark of his work — original sources including photos, documents, drawings, and even advertisements. Mentored by his co-author Langston Hughes, the book served up what Ossie Davis, in his introduction to another of Hughes and Meltzer's books, Black Magic (1967), calls "art in action."

There are two obvious ways that an author comes to see himself as a writer for young people. In some cases one simply writes, and the books one writes are appropriated by the young. This first volume of Meltzer's was never meant for anything but an adult audience, but slowly it found its way first into college classes and later into high schools. Meltzer barely noticed; he was hard at work on other titles he saw as adult fare.

But one night, sitting at the dinner table with his teenaged children and wife Hildy, the idea of actually writing for young people struck. Family members were chatting about their day's activities, and when it was Milton's turn to share, he described a wonderful man he was then reading about, Samuel Gridley Howe. Meltzer is, by predilection and training, a storyteller with an amazing memory. That night he regaled his listeners with the tale of this Harvard-trained physician who in 1824 turned from the quiet and secure life of a Boston doctor to join the fight against Turkish oppression and became medical director of the Greek fleet. As Meltzer notes in his autobiographical work Starting from Home, "the writer's imagination is always remaking the real, even as he struggles to be as honest as he can."

"Hey, Dad, why don't you write a book about him for us?" asked daughter Janie.

What did she mean, Milton queried.

"I mean a kids' book. I'd like to know more about him, and so would other kids."

The step from adult historian to young adult author was unexpectedly simple. Meltzer approached Robert Crowell, still head of the family-owned publishing house, who suggested that the fledgling writer pitch his idea for a series to Elizabeth Riley, then senior editor with the Thomas Y. Crowell Children's Division. Riley liked the idea immediately. A Light in the Dark, the Howe biography, was published in 1964, and a few years later the three-volume work In Their Own Words: A History of the American Negro appeared.

At that time the biography market for young readers was dominated by the Landmark series, books replete with invented dialogue and undocumented incident and designed largely to inspire patriotism, good character, and hard work. Meltzer's books for young readers would be markedly different, based on original sources and scholarly research. Moreover, Meltzer had a great ear for language — trained through a deep familiarity with authors like Thoreau and Emerson and Twain.

Today, now in his mid-eighties, Meltzer still lives a writerly life and still finds pleasure in the kind of research and presentation that has characterized his books from the very beginning. I ask him how he goes about gathering information and shaping it into artful fact. He turns to one of his newest titles, There Comes a Time, and says that the process is the same as it's always been. He begins by identifying a subject of interest — in this case, the history of Civil Rights in America. And then he "reads around," sketching in his mind the parameters of the topic and identifying sources of interest. Each source is then meticulously coded — by title, author, call number, and, if it came from a library, which branch. These bibliographic notes are placed in a box that holds 3x5 inch slips of paper with data — by the time he finishes a study, thirty, forty, sometimes fifty sources will be used.

It is at this point that Meltzer undertakes a more focused note-taking, coding each entry by the kind of information it contains — in this case, statistical fact, quotation, insight, financial fact — and keys each note to the bibliographic record previously organized. These substantive entries are filed, usually in chronological order. When he finally turns to his typewriter (yes, his typewriter), all his notes are organized and easily accessible.

Meltzer is a master at opening books with a critical and captivating incident. In this case, he begins with the first sit-in, four young guys . . . 1960 . . . the Woolworth lunch counter. Because Meltzer has taken careful notes, he can easily locate quotes taken from an interview with the protesters. We hear their voices and their interpretations of the event. Once the information on the card is used, he strikes a line through the note and places it in another box, to be checked again when the time to create an index rolls round.

It has been another productive morning of work. Now Milton and Hildy sit in their sun-soaked Upper West Side apartment, together reading a book of letters or sharing insights from the newspaper.

Back in Baltimore, I remember our conversation and get ready to introduce Meltzer's work to my education students. These books, I'll tell them, will leave you feeling not only better informed, but also more powerful and dignified, and somehow more ready to face the world.

Wendy Saul teaches Children's and Adolescent Literature at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. She has edited and introduced Meltzer's essays in a book titled Nonfiction for the Classroom: Milton Meltzer on Writing, History, and Social Responsibility (Teachers College Press, 1994).