The Extraordinary Mark Twain

The Extraordinary Mark Twain

(According to Susy)

By Barbara Kerley; Illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham

 

 

          Bibliography:  Kerley, Barbara, and illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham. The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy). New York: Scholastic Press, 2010.  ISBN:  9780545125086

Summary and Critical Analysis:

“It troubles me that so few people know Papa, I mean really know him” wrote Susy Clemens about her father Samuel, better known by his pen name Mark Twain.  These words were written in a biography of her father that Susy Clemens wrote when she was 13 years old.  In Barbara Kerley’s “The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy), the author, along with the illustrator Edwin Fotheringham allow the reader to see inside the life of the Clemens family through the eyes of the young Susy.  The award winning author and illustrator combine their efforts to create a visually appealing, humorous, and personal look at the very public figure of Mark Twain.

Written in story form, the book, using text, images, and fold-out Journal entries with Susy’s writing tells the story of a young girl’s view of her very famous father and her frustration that so many knew the real man that she knew and loved.  Kerley is very effective at using Susy’s words along with Fotheringham’s illustrations to show what life was like for the young daughter and her family. 

Clearly organized in a chronological fashion, and using Susy’s own words to tell the story, Kerley allows the reader to see Mark Twain the father, husband, and friend.  Fotheringham’s illustrations are beautiful and perfectly tied to the text.  A great example of the way the illustrations help to tell the story occurs early on in a two page illustration of the Twain home with the façade stripped away so that we, the reader, can see directly into the house and see the subject of Susy’s writing in many different situations from bathing, pontificating, resting and conversing with the cat as a haughty looking couple passes by.  Along with Kerley’s descriptive prose, this page is one of the finest in the book and gives the reader an idea of what it must have been like to live with such an energetic, intelligent and creative man. 

Wanting to show a full picture of her father, Susy wrote not only about his abundant humorous side, but also of his serious and morose sides, with Kerley noting “But sometimes Pap had to suffer when, as he put it, some ‘mentally dead people brought their corpses with them for a long visit.”   Though indicative of an aversion to unwanted intrusion, is still, in its way, humorous.  Susy also wrote of her father’s love for Quarry Farm where her mother’s sister lived and where her father could have peace and quiet.

Throughout the outstanding illustrations runs a theme of the physical impact of words.  Curly lines emit from mouths, pens, pages, and other places indicting the importance of language and ideas and their impact on, and importance to, the Clemens family.

The story ends noting that “Susy’s observations were so ‘clear and nicely shaded’ that twenty years later when he published his autobiography, he included his favorite passages from Susy’s notebook.”

Kerley includes an “Author’s Note” after the main story, divided into sections titled “Papa” and “Susy” which tell us more about the father Samuel Clemens, the writer Mark Twain and the life and tragic death of Susy at age 24.  Also included is a page titled “Writing an Extraordinary Biography (According to Barbara Kerley) which lays out the way to write an excellent biography using Susy’s work and habits as its basis.   It includes tips including “Whenever possible, use primary sources – things written by people who actually know or knew your subject.  Think of primary sources as eyewitness accounts.

The final page of the book is a short selected time line of Mark Twin’s life and the inside back cover contains the Sources list which documents each line of dialogue and each quotation. 

Review Excerpts:

Booklist - Two texts run though this unusual book. The first is Kerley’s account of Samuel Clemens’ 13-year-old daughter, Susy, who decides to write her father’s biography in her journal. The second is a series of excerpts from that actual biography, neatly printed in script like font with Susy’s misspellings intact. These entries appear on smaller, folded pages, each marked “JOURNAL,” that are tipped into the gutters of this large-format picture book’s double-page spreads. 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. With a restrained palette and a fine sense of line, Fotheringham’s stylized, digital illustrations are wonderfully freewheeling, sometimes comical, and as eccentric as Susy’s subject.

School Library Journal - Starred Review. Grade 3–6—Kerley and Fotheringham again craft a masterfully perceptive and largely visual biography, this time about the iconic 19th-century American writer. In pursuit of truth, Susy Clemens, age 13, vows to set the record straight about her beloved (and misunderstood) father and becomes his secret biographer. Kerley uses Susy's manuscript and snippets of wisdom and mirth from Twain's copious oeuvre as fodder for her story. The child's journal entries, reproduced in flowing handwritten, smaller folio inserts, add a dynamic and lovely pacing to the narrative, which includes little-known facts about Twain's work. The text flawlessly segues into Susy's carefully recorded, sometimes misspelled, details of his character, intimate life, and work routine during his most prolific years. Digitally enhanced illustrations, colored with a Victorian palette and including dynamic, inventive perspectives, tell volumes about the subject by way of Fotheringham's technique of drawing lines that represent Twain's impatience, mirth, smoking habit, love for family and cats, storytelling, pool-playing, and truth-pondering.

Awards:

Awards for Mark Twain:

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

Texas Bluebonnet Award nominee

Utah Beehive Book Award nominee

Keystone to Reading Book Award nominee

Children’s Crown Award nominee

 

Connections:

Have students write their own biography of someone they know using firsthand accounts.

Read excerpts from some of Twains works such as Huckleberry Finn, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and The Prince and the Pauper, discuss parallels between Twain’s life and his books.

Discuss the basics of excellent biographical writing skills such as using first hand sources, double checking facts, etc.

Discuss the life and early death of Susy Clemens and the effect of her death on Twain.

Discuss the significance of the illustrations and how they enhance and reinforce the writing.