The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy) by Barbara Kerley

Bibliography

Kerley, Barbara, and Ed Fotheringham. The Extraordinary Mark Twain (according to Susy). Ill. by Edwin Fotheringham. New York: Scholastic Press, 2010.

ISBN 9780545125086

Plot Summary

          Barbara Kerley bases her informational biography, The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy), on previously unknown diary entries, written by Mark Twain’s 13-year-old daughter, Susy.  In addition to daily events, Susy had recorded many facts, observations, and stories about her father that the media, reviewers, and readers of his works were not privy to.  Kerley chooses details from Susy’s writings to paint a personal portrait in words about Mark Twain, integrating Susy’s actual words with published information about Twain’s appearance, his habits, his life as she saw it, and his writing.

Critical Analysis

          The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy) by Barbara Kerley uses an authentic document as a base for an original, creative approach in writing a children’s biography.  Kerley, in her author’s note, explains that she “stumbled across an interesting, historical footnote.” 

          Mark Twain, an iconic American writer and humorist, was the subject of personal revelations by his daughter, Susy, in her diary.  She wrote about day-to-day activities and whatever habits, actions or thoughts her father had that she thought to record.  For example, Susy mentions that her mother was her father’s editor and would “turn down the leaves of the pages which meant, [sic] that some delightfully dreadful which part must be scratched out” (inset page 34-35).

          Kerley chose from among Susy’s writings and integrated Susy’s observations into her biography.  The result is a delightfully revealing, sometimes funny, but always forthright revelation of a Mark Twain few outside the family knew.  For example, when Twain talked about unwanted visitors, Susy quoted him as saying, they were “mentally dead people [who] brought their corpses with them for a long visit” (inset page 24-25).

          Kerley’s organizing principle in this biography seems to revolve around what she took from Susy's diary and integrated into the biographical information Kerley has chosen to use in the text.  Kerley provides a short time-line on the last page of the book, but the text doesn’t follow a typical biographical timeline.

          The style of writing is interesting to a reader.  The tone is revelatory, not conversational.  “Like any good biographer, Susy chronicled Papa’s (referring to Twain) early years.  The small inset tiny pages meant to imitate Susy’s diary entries elaborate what Kerley states.  “Papa was born in Missouri . . . ” (inset page 18-19).  Kerley does not misspell, but Susy does and that error, among others, endears her to the reader.

          In regard to design, those small inset pages are very effective, but the artwork is not.  Edwin Fotheringham, the illustrator, may be a “celebrated editorial artist” (back book jacket), but the colors, huge illustrations, and random scribbles do not seem to match a 13-year-old’s imagination.  Nor does the cover portray Twain and Susy in a way that would attract attention unless a youth already could recognize a caricature. 

          Quoting extensively from an authentic document is the most noticeable characteristic of Kerley’s biography of Twain.  Vardell states that one of the most important aspects in evaluating biographies is “the presence of documentable dialogue”[1] in order to distinguish it from historical fiction.  Kerley states that “all excerpts from Susy’s biography, including hand written notes inserted by Mark Twain, were drawn from the original manuscript housed in the Albert and Shirley Small Special Collections at the University of Virginia Library (back inside cover).  She provides a list of every quote and its page number from Susy’s biography.  This extensive documentation validates the text as historically accurate.

Review Excerpt(s)

2010 CYBILS Nonfiction Picture Book Award

Best Children’s Books 2010 -- Publishers Weekly

Best Books 2010 -- School Library Journal

Best Books for Children and Teens 2010 -- Kirkus Reviews

Best of 2010: Books for Young Readers -- Washington Post

A Junior Library Guild selection

100 Titles for Reading and Sharing -- New York Public Library

Eureka! Nonfiction Children’s Books Gold Award, California Reading Association

Winner of the Oregon Spirit Book Award for Nonfiction -- OCTE

Oregon Book Award Finalist

NCTE Orbis Pictus Recommended Book

Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People

Notable Children’s Book in the English Language Arts

CCBC Choices 2011

Best Children’s Books of the Year -- Bank Street College of Education

 

“A delightful primer on researching and writing biographies, and a joy to peruse.” - SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, starred review

“A heartwarming tribute to both the writing life in general and the well-loved humorist-oops, sorry Susy… "Pholosopher!"” – KIRKUS REVIEWS, starred review

“Though a story about someone writing a book sounds a bit static—and it sometimes is—Kerley manages to bring Susy and her famous father to life using plenty of household anecdotes.” - BOOKLIST

 

Connections

·        Writing an extraordinary Biography (According to Barbara Kerley) for students.  Printable page www.Barbarakerley.com/teachers.html.

·        Introducing children to genealogy.

·        Practicing interviewing skills for a feature article on a classmate.

·        Researching a famous person.  List his/her attributes and have class guess who it is.  Have numbered pictures of the people available on the bulletin board and students can choose the number of person whom they believe is being described.

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[1] Vardell, Sylvia M, Children's Literature in Action: A Librarian's Guide, Second ed. (Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited, 2014), 267.