KIDS' WRITING CENTER: IT'S ALL IN THE DETAILS
Details, details, details! These are the facts that make stories come alive. I love looking for fun facts to put in my books. The hunt makes me feel like a detective or a miner, always digging for interesting and rich tidbits to add to my stories. Here's a sampling of what I found.
Did you know . . . .
- the Mexican culture has a strong tradition of family, music, and theater? (Read more about Mexican Americans and farmworkers in Dolores Huerta Stands Strong: The Woman Who Demanded Justice)
- children as young as seven once worked in factories? Many children
tended machines that wove cloth. These were dangerous jobs, and some
children got injured or died when machines broke. (Read about a girl
who invented a way make safer machines, Margaret Knight: Girl
Inventor)
- kids who use technology devices instead of talking to someone directly stunt their social skills? (Read more about communicating with others in Speech and Language Challenges)
- more children around the world leave their lost teeth for animals
than the tooth fairy? The most popular animal is the tooth mouse. (Find added tooth traditions in Tooth Tales from around the World.)
- mail was delivered by young boys on horseback during the 1860s? Pony
deliveries occurred long before there were railroads, roads, and cars.
(See more about horses and delivering mail in Bronco Charlie and
the Pony Express.)
- concrete mixers hold 32,000 pounds of concrete? That's enough to make
a sidewalk that runs 130 feet long, 5 feet wide, and 4 inches thick.
This is as long as standing about 5 elephants end to end in a row! (Find
more fun facts about making concrete in Concrete Mixers.)
- kids who have body tics (not the buggy kind) or make unusual sounds
may have Tourette syndrome, a condition that is not catchy? And these
kids cannot control their movements, so treat them kindly. (Read about
this interesting condition in Tourette Syndrome.)
- a secret group called the Underground Railroad formed to help slaves
escape to freedom? By the time slavery ended in 1865, more than 60,000
runaway slaves traveled the Underground Railroad to safety. (Check out
how the group worked in Allen Jay and the Underground Railroad.)
- Tiger Woods started swatting golf balls when he was only 10 months
old? (Find out more about Tiger and other kids who did awesome things
when they were your age in Extraordinary Young People.)
- seventeen-year-old pitcher Jackie Mitchell struck out the famous Babe
Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Tony Lazzeri? That was Jackie's only chance to
pitch with the guys. The baseball commissioner declared that baseball
was "too strenuous" for a girl. (Read how talented female athletes fared
in Winning Women in Baseball and Softball.)
- smoke from tobacco products, such as cigarettes, pipes, and cigars
consist of more that 4,000 different chemicals? Some are found in rat
poison, paint stripper, and lighter fluid. How gross is that? (Find
other smoking facts and the damage tobacco causes in Lung Cancer.)
- boys ages 7 to 13 risked their lives to be drummer boys in war? They
were too young to vote or go to high school. Yet they left home to drum
messages for soldiers before there were cell phones or computers. (Learn
more about these brave kids from Diary of a Drummer Boy.)
- women were kept from voting or speaking in public at one time? Women
who dared object were insulted, banned from groups and churches, and
thought unwomanly. (Read more about the battle females fought to gain
the vote in Let Women Vote!)
- every family in the United States throws away about 45 pounds of
garbage each week? That's enough garbage to fill 63,000 garbage trucks.
The line of filled garbage trucks for one year would stretch from Earth
halfway to the moon. (Check out more facts about these trucks in Garbage
Trucks.)
- Native Americans played the first soccer in the United States? They
called their game pasuckuakohowog, meaning "they gather to play ball
with the foot." (Learn more about soccer and women's role in the game
from Winning Women in Soccer.)
- when Michelle Robinson first met Barack Obama, she thought dating a coworker was "tacky" and "he was too good to be true." She later became First Lady Michelle Obama. (Read more about Michelle Obama's life in Michelle Obama: From Chicago's South Side to the White House.)
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