Boston Globe–Horn Book Award Acceptance

hen I was five, our school held an assembly. Since we were the youngest, my class was led to the very front of the auditorium. I was right next to the stage and just tall enough to see that there was a V-shaped trough that ran from one side of the stage to the other with maybe twenty or thirty light sockets in it.

I noticed that half the sockets had light bulbs in them and half were empty. This, of course, got me wondering why Bernie, the janitor, hadn't replaced the bulbs. Then I wondered if maybe the bulbs hadn't been replaced because the electricity to them didn't work. The trough was very dusty and filled with scraps of paper, paperclips, and other debris, and I guessed it had been a long while since Bernie had even bothered to look in it. Then I had another thought. I wondered if maybe the electricity was actually on, but the still-existing bulbs were all burned out. Don't ask why. One of the reasons we write, illustrate, and read children's books is that no one has ever figured out why kids think the way they do.

It takes a long time to get an entire school, K through 8, into an auditorium, and I spent the long minutes spinning those questions around and studying the empty socket nearest to me. It had a hold on my imagination that I couldn't shake.

Which was when I noticed the nail. A very nice tenpenny nail.

I picked up the nail and looked at it. A tenpenny nail is very big in a five-year-old's hand, by the way, and it reminded me of a rocket ship I'd seen on TV.

Tenpenny nail. Empty socket. Tenpenny nail. Empty socket. You see where this is going, don't you? That's right, I wondered what would happen if I put the nail into the socket.

By this time one of my classmates had noticed the way my eyes were moving back and forth, back and forth. He knew in a flash exactly what I was planning and had immediate words of support. "Go ahead, do it," he whispered. "Sister Rose isn't looking."

Yes, I was in a Catholic school, and every one of the nuns on patrol appeared to be at least six feet tall to us little kids. "Go ahead," my classmate repeated. "I'll stand guard." He was smiling and nodding his head in a very encouraging way. He got several others to keep an eye on Sister Rose as well, then added, "Why are you waiting? You're not chicken, are you?"

It was settled. How could I not follow through with such encouragement? But I hesitated anyway and felt my face flush. What would happen if by some bizarre chance the surviving bulbs were all burned out, if the juice was indeed on?

I was small and dumb, but I knew what could happen and that it wasn't good. I got up every Saturday at 6:00 a.m. to watch a TV show called The Modern Farmer. (For some reason, we got that show in my hometown of Kearny, New Jersey, a small factory town on the Passaic River, and for some even more inexplicable reason I loved learning about milking machines, crop rotation, and hoof pebbles.) Anyway, as I stood there in the auditorium, I remembered one segment about a dairyman who let repairs in his cow barn slide year after year until one day he set a milk can down on an exposed piece of wire and zappo. He was toast and so were his barn and cows.

Of course, that sort of danger doesn't stop most kids. It just challenges them to be more creative. Which was when I decided to launch the nail like the rocket shape it was.

I glanced around to make sure Sister Rose wasn't looking, locked my eyes onto the socket, and let that nail fly. Out of my hand it went, hardly wobbling at all, into a tight arc. And directly into the socket.

I've thought about that incident several times these past weeks and have come to see it as the perfect representation of what a writer goes through when putting a project together. A chance encounter with a new topic; a strange, irresistible attraction; the encouragement from friends, editors, and creditors — countered by the possibility of failure and public humiliation.

For instance, I'd never thought about yellow fever, let alone considered doing a book about the disease, until one day back in the mid-1990s. I was unpacking books my wife owned before we were married, books that had been in boxes for over a decade. That's when I happened across a book written by J. H. Powell in 1949. It was called Bring Out Your Dead and was about the yellow fever epidemic that swept through Philadelphia in 1793.

Now, I like a good plague, especially from a safe distance, so I opened the book and started to read. And found myself hooked. It begins with this warning to readers: "Do not read this book before eating, or in the midst of a sleepless night. For it is a revolting book, filled with disgusting details of a loathsome disease. And unfortunately, all the details are true."

And what he described after this was delicious. A mysterious disease charmingly nicknamed the "Black Vomit" enters the city and begins infecting and killing folk in a gooey, gruesome way. The rich and famous flee. Even such familiar luminaries as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe ran for the pure, fresh air of the hills. The sick, the dying, and the poor were left behind to fend for themselves.

That's a pretty good story, intriguing — much like the attraction of a nail to an open socket — but not quite enough to hang an entire book on. Writing about any disaster provides a natural story line with a beginning, middle, and end, but readers deserve more. Broader historical issues, odd and intriguing characters, and humor, to name a few. So I went to Philadelphia, to its libraries, museums, and historical societies, to see if there was any more to the story.

Of course there was, or I wouldn't be standing here. What I discovered — with the patient help of some amazingly dedicated and knowledgeable staff members — were scores of voices from that time of plague. Firsthand book accounts of the fever. The daily newspapers from those awful months. Letters and diaries.

For instance, I found George Washington trapped in Virginia while his official papers were locked away in some unknown house in Philadelphia. Without these papers, the normally unflappable first president found himself writing one letter after another apologizing for his inability to make any important decisions.

I also met Benjamin Rush, Jean Devèze, William Currie, and the handful of other doctors who stayed to treat their patients. And then fell to squabbling bitterly in the newspapers and later in their books over whose treatment really worked and whose killed the most people.

There were heroes as well. Real heroes. After Washington and his cabinet fled Philadelphia and after the governor and state legislature ran off, only one elected official remained in town, Matthew Clarkson, the mayor. Clarkson stayed because he worried that shutting down the local government would result in complete chaos. He and just twelve ordinary citizens shouldered the responsibilities of running the city and aiding the twenty thousand people still there. They stayed even though they had no legal power to act and could be made to pay back any money spent. All of their hard work is noted in the meticulous official minutes of the committee.

The members of the Free African Society were heroes as well. They were the only group to volunteer to nurse the sick and bury the dead. They went out every day without fail even though the mere smell of an ill patient was thought to cause the disease. They went out even when they began coming down with yellow fever and even after being accused (falsely, as Clarkson was to prove) of extorting money from helpless fever victims. And when the vicious rumors persisted, two members — Absalom Jones and Richard Allen — wrote an account of the group's work that is not only a detailed history of the epidemic but a stirring proclamation of principle and self-worth.

Usually, you're lucky to find one or two firsthand accounts, but the yellow fever epidemic inspired a small army of people to write down what they had seen and felt. Aside from the remarkable details provided, most of these accounts are amazingly well written. Active, dramatic, and emotional.

Maybe having a near-death experience prompted this outpouring of words. To brag about surviving, to pass along advice for the disease's next visit, to explain actions or blame others for theirs. Whatever, it's a rich trove, and their voices are still as emotional and vivid today as when they were written two hundred years ago.

All of this research, all of the big and little pieces of the yellow fever story, found their way onto paper, were sent to my editor, and, after several revisions, eventually An American Plague was published.

You might be wondering what happened when I tossed that nail into the socket? Well, the electricity was on, and when that nail made contact there was an incredibly loud explosion, followed by a two-foot-long blast of white flame shooting out of the socket. The nail zinged past my ear and imbedded itself in the ceiling, and every light in the school went out.

Now I hope you don't take this to represent the incandescent, triumphant, not-to-be-ignored reception of An American Plague by the waiting public. Some people were put off by the graphic details of the illness. One reviewer even suggested that readers should skip the opening ten chapters and only read the last.

No, the explosion and aftermath represent my good luck. First and foremost at not having that nail drilled through my head and, second, at not having my head removed by Sister Rose and her associates. After the initial shock and investigation, I think they realized their culpability and decided to hush up the whole affair.

The response to An American Plague represents the good luck I had in stumbling upon an interesting subject years before infectious diseases became headline news.

My good luck in meeting library and museum personnel who guided me and helped me find a wealth of fascinating firsthand accounts.

My very good luck to work with Dinah Stevenson and everyone else at Clarion Books. Dinah was able to look past what many people might have considered an "old" and disagreeable disease and appreciate its relevance for young readers today; and then Dinah and her staff helped me to write the strongest possible text I could.

And finally, there is this important and prestigious award, for which I want to thank the Horn Book, the Boston Globe, and the award judges. I know there are a great many excellent and worthy nonfiction books published every year, and to have mine singled out is both a great honor and the ultimate sign of my good luck. Thank you all very much.