Despite publishing setbacks, former Isthmus editor Dean Robbins is out with his first children’s book.
Snow falls gently outside. A fire crackles in the fireplace. And two pioneers for justice are having tea.
The only characters in the new children’s picture book Two Friends (Scholastic Publishing) are women’s rights activist Susan B. Anthony and her neighbor, abolitionist Frederick Douglass.
They were two of the most outspoken and forward-thinking figures of the 19th century, and the former slave and suffragist did regularly share tea in Anthony’s parlor in Rochester, N.Y., as author Dean Robbins discovered on a family trip in 2008. After touring Anthony’s house and seeing a nearby statue commemorating the friendship, Robbins realized the story was something worth sharing with young readers. “It was really just a blessed moment of serenity before they headed out once again to face adversity and change the world,” says Robbins, a longtime Isthmus editor who now works as a communications specialist for the UW.
The book is aimed at ages 4-10, and its spare text and evocative illustrations create a world where ideas and words matter and where two people, alternately scorned and revered by the public, come together for a quiet moment.
Robbins succeeds beautifully at creating a mood, and we get the sense that these two fiery figures found strength and renewal in each other’s presence. “It’s hard to find the right language for little kids about slavery or women’s rights,” says Robbins. “To kids as young as 4, how do you explain that? So I left a lot of that to the artists, who did such a great job of conveying what happened when these two get together.”
The masterful illustrations by husband-wife team Sean Qualls and Selina Alko, who are based in Brooklyn, N.Y., capture the setting and the warmth and energy of the two characters. “They did a nice job of picking up on the mood in the text, which is so spare, and just evoking it beautifully,” says Robbins. “They’ve picked up on a theme where Susan and Frederick were constantly reading and writing and talking about their ideas regarding freedom and equality. The illustrations show in a poetic way that their words were spreading everywhere — you see them in the road, in people’s clothes, in trees, in steam coming out of a cup of tea.”
Although he has made his living as a writer and editor for decades, Robbins took a roundabout journey to become a children’s book author. “I love going to places that are associated with my heroes,” says Robbins. “I’ve dragged my family along to abandoned shacks in Mississippi and obscure cornfields in Illinois that were associated with Abraham Lincoln or the bluesman Robert Johnson, so they grudgingly put up with this.”
But it wasn’t until a conversation with a friend about 10 years ago that Robbins thought about translating his passion for history into books. “I was reading a biography about Babe Ruth — another one of my childhood crushes — and a friend came over and I was telling her this story from the book with just way too much intensity, arms waving and eyes bugging out. And she suggested that I channel my crazy hero worship into writing a kids’ book on the subject,” say Robbins.
Robbins wrote that first manuscript, and soon after, it was snatched up by Harcourt Publishing, which also contracted with Robbins to write biographies about Jackie Robinson and Louis Armstrong.
“As a journalist I was used to the long, hard slog of trying to get articles placed in national publications, where they usually send you a rejection notice or they never get back to you. But this seemed incredibly easy. And I thought, ‘Is this too good to be true?’ Well, in fact it was,” says Robbins. In 2007, Houghton-Mifflin gobbled up Harcourt, and the people who championed his books were let go. The economy tanked in 2008 and the books were abandoned.
But Robbins persevered. “I was having too much fun writing children’s books to stop. So I reverted to my long, hard slog,” he says. Robbins dedicated himself to finding an agent, wrote more manuscripts and piled up rejection notices. In 2011, his agent placed the manuscript about Anthony and Douglass with Scholastic. Since then, Robbins has sold two other manuscripts to a different publisher.
Early reviews are superlative, and Robbins seems tickled that the story of his heroes will now be shared with children around the world. “Susan B. Anthony and Frederick Douglass are not musty figures from the past,” says Robbins. “I think they’re really relevant right now. I don’t understand why they’re not on Mount Rushmore because I think they are about the best America’s ever produced.”
Dean Robbins will appear at Mystery to Me on Saturday, Feb. 6, at 10 am and at Arcadia Books in Spring Green on Thursday, Feb. 11, at 6:30 pm.
