I am writing to you from the lovely hills of the Berkshires where I have just finished the first draft of a new historical novel for children. This has been the project that has occupied me for three months which means I feel as if I have been living in another time and place. The book is one in a series called DEAR MR. PRESIDENT to be published by Winslow Press (www.winslowpress.com) . My assignment was to tell the story of the Great Depression. I chose to set the novel in North Adams, Massachusetts, a New England mill town, and to tell the story through the eyes of a twelve year old Italian girl named Emma Bartoletti who writes to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. My job as a writer was to bring the Depression alive for young readers through a fictional story. As you can imagine, this was a tall order as much of the decade of the 30's revolved around what people liked to call the "alphabet soup" of governmental legislation. How do you make the NRA, the WPA, the CCC and the ERA topics of interest to young readers today? You tell them a story about a child whose daily life as the daughter of two textile mill workers was affected by the decisions made in Washington. Emma Bartoletti is one feisty girl who tells Mr. President Roosevelt exactly what she thinks. And FDR seems heartily grateful for her forthright opinions. I learned during the course of researching this book that Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt received more than 5,000 letters a day, many of them from the unemployed and disenfranchised workers of America and from their children. So it did not require a great leap of the imagination to imagine the kind of correspondence that might happen between my character and this particular president. The book will be published in the Fall of 2001 with an accompanying website specifically dedicated to it. So when Emma writes that she sure is glad they caught the man who stole the Lindbergh baby, readers will be able to click on a prompt that tells them more of that exact moment in history. I do believe that this is the kind of book that the web was invented for.

Please watch for DUMPY LA RUE illustrated by Betsy Lewin (Henry Holt, Spring, 2001), my picture book about an irrepressible dancing pig. The publisher is so excited about Dumpy that they have given him the cover of the spring catalogue and a two-page spread inside. The book will be published on March 1st which is officially designated as National Pig Day.

Please visit the News and Events page on my website to hear my other exciting news. For the teachers among you, I continue to be interested in your thoughts on how to make the website work better for you as a teaching tool either in or outside of the classroom. You can post your ideas on the guestbook at my website or e-mail me directly at winthrop@absolute-sway.com.

Random House has just published an excellent teacher's guide for THE CASTLE IN THE ATTIC and THE BATTLE FOR THE CASTLE. The guide is full of ideas for classroom projects and discussion topics on questions as varied as family relationships and science in the Middle Ages. You can find it at www.randomhouse.com/teachers/guides/castle.html.

I wish you all a happy fall.

Elizabeth Winthrop