Swiacki Children’s Literature Festival hosts Ransome writer and illustrator

By Francisco Omar Fernandez Rodriguez Arts & Features Editor The Swiacki Children’s Literature Festival hosted Lesa Cline-Ransome and James E. Ransome as speakers for the Mary Burns Memorial Lecture Nov. 6. President Nancy Niemi said there has been a continuous debate about what is considered appropriate material for children’s literature “more or less since print has been widely available.” She said there are two ongoing attacks on literacy efforts for children. Niemi said, “On the one hand, some are trying to limit what children read, at least in schools and libraries. On the other, some are trying to control how children read. “The too cozy juxtaposition between tight control of what printed materials children are exposed to and tight control of the way in which they learn to decode them, is likely not lost on anyone in this room,” Niemi said. “It is lucky for us, however, that as authors, illustrators, educators, students, and citizens, we know that this control has, and will always fail, at least in the long run,” she said. Niemi introduced Cline-Ransome as a Newbery Honor award recipient and as an author of several nonfiction and historical fiction books. “She lives and works in the Hudson Valley region of New York, where she consumes - this is a woman after my own heart - large quantities of books and chocolates each day,” she said. Cline-Ransome works with her husband, illustrator James Ransome, she added. Niemi introduced Ransome as someone the Children’s Book Council named as “one of the 75 authors and illustrators everyone should know.” She said Ransome has completed several murals for the Children’s Museum in Indianapolis, Indiana, the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio, and the Hemphill Branch Library in Greensboro, North Carolina. His work can be found in both private and public art collections throughout the country, she added. Cline-Ransome said they met each other as sophomores at the Pratt Institute at a party. “After we began dating, James helped me with all of my art assignments and I helped him with all of his writing assignments, and I think that’s how we both instinctively knew we would be good collaborators in work and in life,” Cline-Ransome said. He was born in Rich Square, North Carolina. It’s a small town that gave him limited opportunities, Ransome said. The schools he attended didn’t teach art and there were no museums around to see artwork, he said. His first “art teachers” came from “Looney Tunes” and the comic books the next door drug store sold, he said. Ransome said one of his favorite comic books that he learned from was “Master of Kung Fu.” He added some people may be more familiar with the movie it inspired - “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings.” He would create stories about him and his friends based on the comics, he added. “What I liked about this artist who created this comic book was how he would often introduce animals and other things that were not necessarily written into the comic book story,” Ransome said. Ransome grew up with his grandmother, but she eventually moved in with one of her children, he said. He moved in with his mother in Birmingham, New Jersey. He said he got lucky because the school he went to had “an amazing art program.” He spent most of his time there making films, he added. Cline-Ransome is from Massachusetts and is the youngest of three, she said. Both of her parents were nurses and they “nurtured my curiosity and my love of writing,” she said. She said her father was a music fan. Now, Cline-Ransome has speakers in every room of her home, she added. She said she is also like her mother, who was an avid reader and regular library visitor. She didn’t like history much as a kid even though now she writes historical fiction for children, she added. Cline-Ransome said, “I was never a huge fan of history. As a child, it seemed as if history was just dates, and battles, and old white men. “What I didn’t know was that history is really interconnected stories of people from our pasts,” she said. Cline-Ransome and Ransome differ in how they connect with books, she said. She focuses on the words and lyricism. Ransome said he also loves the words, but he’s more drawn to the pictures and how it’s designed. Cline-Ransome said, “We could look at a book and James is like ‘Weren’t those illustrations amazing?’ and then I say things like ‘What illustrations?’” When writing biographies of people in history, she also writes the biography of the country, she said. “Like any well-balanced, accurate biography I need to write not just about the accomplishments and the successes of my subject but the obstacles faced, the inconsistencies, and the flaws,” Cline-Ransome said. When writing about John Lewis, a congressman and one of the leaders of the civil rights movement, she was also writing about his hometown and the social movement across the country at the time, she said. When Lewis died, Ransome reached out to one of his editors about doing a book about him, and the editor agreed almost immediately, he said. Cline-Ransome agreed to write it. They shared some scenes from the book, “Fighting with Love: The Legacy of John Lewis,” which depicted Lewis as a kid growing up in segregation. Cline-Ransome read, “Election Day meant whites only could pick the laws, mayors, and presidents. John hated that colored folks had to stick to picking cotton.” Ransome said one of his favorite pieces in the book is a scene where Lewis is listening to one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches over the radio. The illustration showed Lewis sitting in a chair, which Ransome described as “embracing him.” Ransome shared his newest book, “A Place For Us,” which he called a “wordless book,” relying on the illustrations for the story. He explained the story as he went through the book, which is about an unhoused Black mother and her son. He wanted to start the story with scenes most children and their parents are familiar with, such as being picked up from school, he said. “The only difference is they don’t go to a house to spend the night,” Ransome said. He wanted the story to bring up a conversation about the topic in classrooms, he said. Cline-Ransome said they’re often asked, “What is it like working together as a married couple?” She said she believes people imagine them as working side-by-side, when in reality they use separate spaces. They work on opposite sides of their home because they have different work styles, she added. “James likes to start work at an unfathomable hour and his eyes spring open at 5 in the morning. He’s off to the studio. He also listens to music, movies nonstop. I need silence,” Cline-Ransome said. Her room is lined with bookcases because “it’s impossible to be a writer without first being a reader,” she said. Ransome said his studio was added to the house a couple years after they moved in. In the studio is a desk he’s had since high school, he added. “We’ve gone to college together. It’s been our first dining room table. It’s been stored in the closet. It’s been lots of different things, but for the last 20 years, I’d say it’s been mostly a table I paint on,” Ransome said. Cline-Ransome said she wanted to foster an elderly pit bull named Miles Morales, but her family insisted she wasn’t cut out to foster. They told her that “the instant the dog came into the house and spent the night I would never be able to let him go. … ‘Don’t be ridiculous’ … ‘Of course I could foster a dog.’” She took Miles in and bought him a bed for her office, she said. She also bought him a bed for her bedroom, and the family room, and the kitchen. “I noticed that after years of sleeping in shelters, he was somehow no longer able to sleep on a hard floor,” she said. She ended up adopting Miles, and although he was diagnosed with cancer shortly afterward, his remaining time was spent with good food, toys, and love as she wrote her stories, she said. Cline-Ransome said throughout the historic stories they’ve worked on they have found accounts of people using every resource available to create a better life for themselves and future generations. She said, “Black people, who were under the constant threat of violence, discrimination, and intimidation, work together. They built community, they migrated, they escaped. “They fought for civil rights and equal rights. They created. They outperformed. They dreamed. They reported. They sat down and they stood up. They kept secrets, and they lived to see another day. This is how they survived, and because they did, so did we,” Cline-Ransome said. She said Black Americans worked to educate their children ever since enslavement and throughout history. “The fight for education is a story of resistance,” she said. She and her husband made a book titled “They Call Me Teach: Lessons in Freedom,” which is about an enslaved man nicknamed Teach, she said. In the story, Teach, who was taught how to read and write by a friend of the owner’s family, secretly teaches others, she said. “During enslavement, Black people learned in secret, late at night after working all day, often risking punishment and sometimes death, to get an education,” Cline-Ransome said. After slavery ended, Black people built schools to make sure their children were educated, she said. They also started newspapers to “share news, to reunite families, and to build on their dreams of hope and freedom,” she added. She said in 1879, thousands of Black Americans went westward to claim land that she recognized was originally stolen from Indigenous people as part of the Homestead Act of 1862. The Black Americans who successfully built on the land “settled in communities and built all-Black towns,” she said. Cline-Ransome said she used to wonder if there were any Black pioneers, and she found out there were and they were called exodusters. “They were the first, largest, mass exodus of African Americans who migrated from the South, seeking out the vision of the promised land in the West,” she said. In order to learn more about them, she traveled to several western states, she added. She learned about Black communities that had formed in Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, and New Mexico. The Q&A session was led by English Professor Jennifer De Leon. De Leon said their presentation was “so inspiring, entertaining, [and] informative.” In their presentation, she saw “windows and mirrors,” De Leon said. She saw “mirrors” in familiar aspects such as their offices, pets, and bookshelves, while she saw “windows” in unfamiliar aspects such as the illustration work process. She asked if there were any classroom experiences they’d like to share. Cline-Ransome said she finds it fascinating to go into classrooms, talk about her books, and have both students and teachers ask her, “That really happened?” Writing historic books can be discouraging, especially because it’s not the most popular genre, she said. “People prefer fantasy over history. Truth, I think, is really frightening to people,” she said. Ransome said he focuses on what is on the posters and signs around the classroom. De Leon asked about what people can do about art programs not being provided in many schools. Ransome said he didn’t know if he had any solutions but he thinks about how he might have ended up if he hadn’t moved to a school with an art program.