Judy Lindquist's Blog

Banning books is not a new thing. The practice of limiting people’s access to printed material can trace its roots back to the Counter-Reformation when both Catholics and Protestants tried to curtail individuals from reading things that conflicted with their belief system. In the United States, we can trace the practice back as far as 1624, when some colonies banned books that were critical of their way of life.
Sadly, banning books has been part of our human experience for as long as we have had printed books.

There has been, however, a recent push to ban books that looks different than it has in the past, and one that should trouble us all deeply. What makes the current effort to have books banned different than those efforts that we have been dealing with for hundreds of years?

- The groups behind these current pushes to ban books are no longer small groups of people who are locally trying to make a statement. Many of the current challenges have been funded by national, conservative organizations who do not have a small, local agenda. They have a national agenda, and deep pockets. The damage they can do is already being felt across the country.

- Many of the current bans that have been successfully put in place, are becoming laws. The legislative process is being used. These are no longer “library guidelines” or “school policies”, they are laws. Like most laws, there are consequences for those who break the law. In some cases very harsh consequences, and they are focused on librarians and educators.


As parents, we should be outraged. The groups that are pushing through these bans may be saying that they are supporting a parent’s right to determine what their child reads, when in fact, they are legislating against that. Parents have always been able to prevent their child from reading a book they deem inappropriate. Schools have always respected a parent’s right to say that they do not want their child to read a specific book. Teachers have always complied with those requests. What is happening now is that conservative groups are deciding what everyone’s child has the right to read. They become the gatekeepers and decide what your child can and cannot read.


As educators, we should be infuriated. Laws that involve book banning prevent educators from making those critical instructional decisions. We are the trained professionals who understand the content standards we need to teach. We understand academic development and children. These bans not only impact the materials we can use when actually teaching our lessons, but they impact the books we can add to our classroom libraries that our students may want to read. These groups want to silence and eliminate those that do not agree with them and their views.


As writers, we should be incensed. This current push to ban books, is an effort to sideline and silence voices that do not support their political agenda. It is an effort to erase historical facts that they do not like, and to outlaw dissenting thoughts, opinions, and ideas.

As Americans, we should be deeply frightened. Historically, these types of efforts to ban books and to criminalize what does not support their agenda, is always part of a first step toward authoritarian and fascist regimes.

Stand up. Say NO to banning books.

I have always loved home libraries. I grew up in a home with lots and lots of books. I was an young teen when my parents, in an effort to corral and contain the books that were literally everywhere, put an addition on our house and one of the rooms was an actual home library. Every wall in the room had floor to ceiling bookshelves. When you walked into that room, the warmth and energy and ideas and thoughts from the books just enveloped you. There were a couple of built-in ladders for reaching high books and comfortable chairs and lamps for reading. It was also the room where my dad’s grand piano sat, so often when in there to read, one might be treated to a piano concert as well.


While I do not have an entire room to devote to my home library, I definitely have one. There are built in shelves galore in our home, thanks to my very talented and creative husband. The main living area is where most of our books are housed. They are grouped by genre. Cookbooks, entertaining books, travel books, biographies, golf books, poetry, and motivational books. The fiction section is broken down a bit further, with groupings by topic or author. Shelves in our home office house my teaching, textbook, and writing craft books. Shelves in the craft/play room contain children’s books, scrapbooks, craft and garden books, and the guest room/home gym contains fitness and health books as well as some select fiction titles.
Even my elementary school classroom has the walls wrapped in shelves that overflow with fiction, picture books, biographies, history and science nonfiction, and reference books. I do live my life surrounded by books.


According to Reid Byers, the author of the new book, The Private Library: The History of the Architecture and Furnishings of the Domestic Bookroom, home libraries are powerful places and can produce “book-wrapt”, a term he coined to describe the feeling one gets when surrounded by books.

Those who do love and appreciate books know this to be a legitimate hypothesis. Books do bring joy, comfort, inspiration, and ideas. Just being near them can produce this euphoria. Even being around books yet unread, can fill the air with potential.


An article recently on Mr. Byers and his book, written by Julie Lasky, looked closely at home libraries and tried to quantify them. How many books does it take to qualify as a home library? He mentions 1,000 as minimum, but then says that 500 will make a room feel like a home library. I was at first a little concerned and did a quick estimate. We have nearly 1,200 books. I must admit to being relieved that I do officially qualify as having a home library.


Like so many things in life, I believe home libraries need to grow organically. One does not just wake up one day and decide to “get” a home library. Yes, there are those, I suppose, who have the resources to decide to purchase enough books to fill a home library and then do so. But part of the joy and power of a home library is the connections we have to the books (or those that gave us the book). Every home library is different because it becomes a reflection of the interests and passions of the owners. That is why I love perusing the home libraries of others. Just scanning the titles and topics and arrangement can give me such insight.


As we begin this new year, I wish everyone a home library!

This week I once again hit the milestone of completing a first draft of a middle grades novel. This is my sixth middle grades novel. I freely admit that is not an impressive statistic. However, when I calculate in the fact that I teach full-time in an elementary school and part time at a University, I cut myself slack and realize that I do not have to be producing a new manuscript in a matter of weeks. When I acknowledge in that I am a traditionally published author with three middle grades novels on bookstore shelves, I know that quality over quantity is a great place for me to be.


But finishing that first draft brings both a sense of relief, and the worries of now what.

As every writer knows, this is now when the work begins. This is when we take that manuscript and make it into a story that sings. We revise scenes. We fill plot gaps. We catch inconstancies. We deepen characters. We insert missing information. We fact check those details. We confirm historical references. We eliminate redundancy. We tighten up word choice. We polish up voice. We revise and revise and revise.

This is also the stage when we have to bring others into our process. Our critique partners, our beta readers, our historical experts- anyone whose opinions and insights can help us improve on the quality of our work.

For many writers, it is hard to know where to begin when jumping into the revision process. There are so many different approaches, and each one has its merits.

These are the steps that work for me:

- Reread the manuscript as a whole.
o For this, I make sure I have a printed version of the manuscript (usually in a three-ring binder) so that I can sit in a comfortable chair and mimic a reader’s experience as much as possible. I also have pens and notebook handy and I freely mark up the text, and make notes for myself that I will go back to after this reading. I also have my original outline and notes near-by in case I need to check on something that does not seem right or does not seem to flow. If it is something that requires more time or research, I note it on my note sheet, and keep reading. I do not want to break up the flow of reading the story too much at this first stage, since I am focusing on the big picture.

- Rework weak areas and problems.
o After this first reread, I go back through with my notes and work on the areas that did not flow. This is when I will take the time to confirm my research or fact-check something. Taking the time to rewrite the areas flagged during that first reread.

- Chapter by Chapter Revision.
o This next reread and rework step is done chapter-by-chapter. Now that I have smoothed out the entire manuscript, I take a deep dive into each chapter. I reread, revise, reread, revise, …until I am comfortable with it, then move on to the next chapter. Obviously, some chapters do not require as much work as others.

- Fresh Eyes
o This is when I have someone else read the manuscript. It is usually a trusted teacher or writer friend whose expertise I value and who will give me their overall impression of the story. I always give them a hard copy to read so that they can feel free to mark up the text with questions, observations, wonderings, or anything else that comes to mind as they read.

- More Revisions.
o Based on the input of others, more revisions are taken care of at this point.

- Expert Critique
o If I am working on an historical fiction novel, this is where I would get an historical scholar or expert to read my work for historical accuracy.

- More Revisions
o Based on your historical expert’s feedback, there will most likely be some additional revisions required.

- Edit/Polish
o Many writers like to employ the services of a professional editor to look over their manuscript at this point and help to catch all of those minor errors that have undoubtedly escaped your eyes up until now. If you do not go that route, make sure to have at least one more person read your manuscript (with a red pen handy) to note any issues. I remember reading about an award-winning author who even employed family members at this point. He said he gave each family member a chapter and offered to pay them for every editing error they found.

While this stage of the writing process is clearly labor and time intensive, this is when that average or mediocre story can be turned into a manuscript that an agent will fall in love with and that a publisher will just have to publish!

Do not shortchange the power of the revision stage!

This week I finished watching the video recordings of some Boot Camp Workshops that were provided through SCBWI ( The Society of Children’s Books Writers and Illustrators). These workshops were facilitated by successful authors, agents and publishers in the world of Children’s Literature.

While it was wonderful to get insight into the journey to publication from some of the authors, and to hear the agents talk about what made submissions stand out for them, and to work through the process of creation with some editors, there were some definite themes that ran through all of the presentations. These were my key take-a-ways:



- Rules are not carved in stone.
o As writers, we walk that fine line between creativity and the rules of writing. Rules of grammar, rules of publication, rules of genre.
What I heard again and again was- yes- know the industry guidelines, but don’t be afraid to break the rules if the story you are trying to tell requires it. That is not to say that all rules go out the window, but if you have a really good reason for not following a specific rule, go for it!





- Putting a manuscript in a drawer does not have to be forever.
o Every writer deals with rejection and almost every successfully published book was rejected at some point. Setting that manuscript aside is not admitting failure. Sometimes a manuscript needs to rest. As one publisher shared, “Every day quality manuscripts are rejected.” It is just not the right publisher or the right time for that manuscript. Setting aside that story and letting it breathe and letting some time pass can sometimes be the best thing for the long-term. Revisiting those manuscripts from time to time to see if there are revisions that can be made, or to see if perhaps they are more relevant now, can be very productive.



- You are never done growing as a writer.
o Even the most successful writers who presented at these workshops, had growth-mindset language. They talked about lessons learned, personal breakthroughs, and struggles and challenges. They talked about next steps, forward thinking, and honest evaluation of weaknesses. They talked about their strengths, as well as the areas that they were focused on for growth. They were forward thinking and often pointed out that they were only one voice and one experience.

- Trust your muse and keep writing
o If there is a story to tell, and you believe you are the right one to tell it, persevere. If you have hit a wall with your current manuscript, work on another piece for a while. Experiment with different genres. Get feedback from a different source. Just write and write and write.

I always leave workshops inspired, rejuvenated, and with much to think about. This set of workshops was no different. Thank you SCBWI!

With the 2021 Banned Book Week now behind us, I am reflecting on some of the discussions that populated that week for me.

Censorship is almost always discussed and studied in the Children Literature Class I have taught at the University, but it is also a topic in classes like the Social Studies course that I am currently teaching. Since this course focuses on Social Studies content and strategies, historical fiction is always a topic that we dig into deeply. My college students were just finishing up historical fiction book studies that revolved around the Revolutionary War, when the topic of censorship and banned books came to the forefront.

Many discussions focused on the tough issues that came through in these novels- slavery, conflict, racism, sexism, violence. Tough topics for any books, but these were books that were specifically written for young people. Children. Many of my students wondered if it was appropriate to bring these topics up in an elementary school classroom. Was it appropriate to use these books in the classroom to help students deepen their understanding of this historical time period?

My answer- it depends.


It is important to remember that CENSORSHIP is different than SELECTION. Censorship is a small group of people saying that no one should be allowed to read a specific book, because they have deemed it inappropriate, bad, or offensive. Selection is when parents, teachers, or schools, decide they will not bring a specific book into a specific classroom or use it with a specific group of children because it is not appropriate for THEM. These are very different processes.

Is every children’s book appropriate for every child? Of course not. When selecting books for inclusion in classroom libraries, school media centers, and the curriculum, these are just a few of the things that need to be considered:

- Reading level/ Lexile. This is the actual readability of the book and it is calculated based on vocabulary, sentence length, syntax, and complexity. This determines the average developmental age of the reader most likely to be able to independently read and understand the text. Remember though, these are averages and based on independent comprehension. We all know that most kids are not average, and often, when books are read in class, they are read and discussed together, not independently.

- Themes. Most books have both main themes and secondary themes, so both need to be taken into account. Not only do we need to consider if the themes are developmentally appropriate for the age/grade of the students, but we need to know our students well enough to decide if it is personally appropriate for them. For example, a book I usually do with one of my groups, which has a sub-theme of loss ( the main character’s mother has died), I chose not to do one year because I had a student who had recently suffered through the death of her father. Her loss was recent and raw, and I felt that she was not ready to deal with her emotions through a book study yet.

- The Teacher’ comfort level with the content. While we often consider the students’, we must also consider the teacher’s. If the teacher is not comfortable or does not feel competent enough with a particular topic or theme to adequately deal with the discussions and questions that will come up as a result of reading the book, it is not a good fit for that classroom or class.





If you were to examine the lists of banned and challenged books and look at the reasons given, it is almost always because the book includes a tough subject. Racism, LBGTQ issues, violence, sex, sexism, bigotry, hatred. And when these books are meant for children, a great deal of complex emotions surface. After all, our first response as a parent, teacher, or grandparent is to want to protect children. To protect them from pain, from negative emotions, from the ugliness of life. But as we know, we cannot protect them forever, so when they are ready to deal with these types of issues and concepts, isn’t literature a great and safe place to do it?

Life is filled with tough issues, and subjects that make us uncomfortable. Great literature can help us make sense of it.

Several years ago, as I was getting ready to present to a group of brand new teachers, I found a wonderful article that focused on one essential rule for these new teachers. To find their marigolds and avoid walnut trees.

Jennifer Gonzalez, the author of the article, pointed out that when gardeners wanted to protect growing plants, they planted marigolds around them. These amazing flowers helped to repel pests and helped the plants to flourish and grow. Gardeners also know, she pointed out, that plants never do well near walnut trees, which give off toxic fumes, damaging other plants. Her premise was that schoolhouses are filled with teachers who are either marigolds or walnut trees. To survive that critical first year of teaching, she advised surrounding yourself with marigolds.

I think her comparison can be applied to many endeavors, especially writing! Whom we surround ourselves with inevitably will affect us. They can either make us better, or bring us down. It was motivational coach Tony Robbins who once said that the quality of our lives will reflect the expectations of our peer group. Those we hang with will either raise our standards, or drag us down.

So how do we find those amazing marigolds? Are all marigolds the same? What makes someone a marigold? While there is much variety among marigolds, they do have common traits.

Traits of Marigolds:
- They have an underlying positive approach to things.
- They are good listeners.
- When you are having a tough time and vent to them, they will help you focus on solutions, not just rehash your frustration.
- They ask questions in an effort to really understand what is going on with you.
- They realize that they do not have the answers to everything.
- They realize that their way is not the only way, so they ultimately support the choices you make.
- They will sometimes challenge your thinking and force you out of your comfort zone. But they will do it in an effort to make you better, not undermine you.


While I am no expert, in my experience, there are also different types of marigolds.

Types of Marigolds:
- Fellow writers who are masters at craft! These are the marigolds whose writing you admire, and just being near them will improve your writing. You can soak up their insights and advice about your own writing. They make you want to be a better writer. They raise your standards!
- Fellow authors who have accomplished what you hope to. Being around them will give you clues about success. Watch them, listen to them, ask them questions. Embrace them as mentors in your life.
- Fellow writers who believe in you and your goals. Your goals may not be the same as their goals, but they understand and support you in your pursuit of your goals. They cheer you on, they read your writing, they give you feedback, and just being around them makes you feel more capable.


Of course, being surrounded by marigolds is wonderful, but we also have to work to avoid spending too much time around those toxic walnut trees. And we know who they are.

Walnut Trees:
- They complain about things that are out of their control and will always focus the blame for negative things on others. They are perpetual victims, and if you spend enough time around them, you will feel powerless as well.
- They focus on the negative and the challenges, rather than opportunities and solutions. Spend enough time with them and you will believe that it is impossible to succeed.
- They think that your passion and enthusiasm is “cute”, and they tell you that you will wise up when you have as much experience as they do. Their cynicism is palatable and toxic.
- They offer advice without being asked, and view themselves as experts on a great many things. No matter how much experience and insight you might have about something, they will make you doubt yourself.
- They are judgmental by nature and set impossibly high standards. You wrote for 3 hours yesterday? They wrote for 10. You sent out two queries this week? They sent out 5. Just being around them will make you feel like a failure, no matter how much you work.


For those that want to read Ms. Gonzalez’ original article, here is the link:
https://www.cultofpedagogy.com/marigo...

Yes, Marigolds are beautiful and powerful! May we know them, may we be surrounded by them, and may we be them for our fellow writers!

A Growth Mindset. That all-important emotional perspective that will help us ultimately be successful. We all think we have it. But do we really?

According to brainpicking.org whether or not we have a growth mindset is determined by how we approach five key situations: challenges, obstacles, effort, criticism, and the success of others. Let’s look at each of these from a writer’s point of view.

- Challenges
o A writer’s life is filled with challenges. Some minor, like how can I find a quiet work space in my busy home or how can I make this dialogue more authentic. Some major like, how can I finish this manuscript in the next month or how can I get my book onto the shelves in the local bookstore. Those without a Growth Mindset typically try to avoid challenges they have difficulty solving, while those with a Growth Mindset embrace the challenge. Avoidance or embracing challenges. Which describes you?


- Obstacles
o Obstacles are also a daily part of our lives as writers. Whether a case of writer’s block or publisher rejections, obstacles are everywhere. The question here is do I persist when faced with setbacks, or do I tend to give up? Am I the writer who dreams of landing that publishing contract, but after repeated rejections decides to just give up on that goal? Or will I examine my approach, adjust my strategies, and persevere? Those without a growth mindset will quickly adjust their goal and move to a back-up plan, rather than adjust their approaches and continue to work toward that goal.


- Effort
o As a writer, how do you REALLY feel about effort? Do you see a clear connection between effort and success, or do you believe that things like luck play a bigger role in success? Writing is hard work. Being a successful writer requires herculean effort. Those without a growth mindset will often see effort as fruitless. They do not see the very real connection between effort and mastery. Those with a growth mindset understand that the path to mastery involves effort. Blood, sweat, and tears effort. And they are willing to put in that effort, supported by the belief that it will ultimately make a difference.


- Criticism
o Criticism is a standard, integral part of being a writer. Of course, we don’t call it criticism. We call it feedback or critiques. And it is not easy to take because it means our writing is not perfect. But the only way to get our writing to the next level is to seek out that criticism. It can be in the form of a critique group, beta readers, agents, or writing contests. Writers with a growth mindset seek out these opportunities, while those without, avoid them. Growth mindset writers welcome and examine the feedback they get and use that to help plan next steps in their craft. Those without that mindset, may give that critique a once over, but if it does not tell them what they want to hear, they will justify setting it aside and ignoring it.


- Success of others
o Success is not a pie. More for one writer does not equal less for another. People with a growth mindset understand this and genuinely celebrate the success of their fellow writers. When peers experience success, those without a growth mindset take it personally and will often allow it to shake their own confidence. Those with a growth mindset will look at it for clues on how they can adjust their own approaches.

If, after reviewing your approach to these five key situations, you know you have that growth mindset, congratulations! If not, don’t worry. We can all improve in how we deal with things like challenges and criticism, and therefore, improve our growth mindset. After all, that is the underlying premise of the Growth Mindset approach- we are all just a work-in-progress.

One of the hardest things to do as an author is to cut words. To delete passages or scenes. Even just eliminating descriptions can be difficult.


As a 28-year educator, being brief is not a natural tendency for me. In the classroom, I must make sure my students understand the directions, expectations, and the content being delivered. That usually means long explanations or detailed discussions.


And I do not accept brief answers from my students. I want them to elaborate. I ask them to explain what they mean. I prompt them to go into more depth and share their process and connections with us.


Yet as a writer, cutting things out of our writing is a critical part of the revision process. After we have gotten the first draft down, we start to go back through the manuscript and look for places where we can eliminate redundancy or unimportant words, phrases, or passages.


As the author of middle grades novels, this has definitely been part of my process. But my recent foray into writing picture books has given me a whole new appreciation for being brief.


I recently had a critique session with an agent who had read one of my picture book manuscripts. It was a short 900 words and she had many positive things to say about the story and the writing. She did end though, with the fact that she thought I should hone it down to 500 words or less.


Cutting almost 400 words may sound easy, but I found it was torture. That was almost half of what I had written. In order to do that, I had to realize that in a picture book, the illustrations will eventually tell half of the story. That meant that as I looked at each word and every sentence, anything that could be shown through the illustrations, had to be eliminated. I had to trust that whomever the publisher gets to illustrate my story, will be insightful enough to know what must be included in the illustration, to more completely tell the story.

This kind of trust is not a natural trait for someone like me, who likes to be in control and tends to work best when doing it alone. But that is part of the process. That is what is required. As writers, when we cut words, and eliminate passages, we need to trust that the reader will still understand the message we are sharing. Because if we have done it correctly, we have pealed off unnecessary layers and exposed the heart of the story.

I have been without my sense of smell for just over 5 weeks now. That was when I passed out, hit my head, fractured my skull, and had a brain bleed. That all sounds horrendous, and it was definitely frightening, but after a couple of days in the hospital under the care of phenomenal nurses and doctors, I went home with a headache and a black eye, but the bleed had stopped and all else seemed normal. It was when I got home that I realized I could no longer smell.

A side effect of a concussion, this seems to be the only lingering impact of the fall. And while of the 5 senses, I would definitely rather be without smell than any of the others, it is quite the adjustment to live without your sense of smell.


As a cook and baker, I did not realize how much I depended on my sense of smell when I am cooking. While I look at the clock and occasionally set timers, I often depend on the smell of the cookies, bread, or bacon to pull me into the kitchen and peek into the oven.


As a gardener, I did not realize how much the smells in the yard are part of my experience, until I did not have them. When watering my herbs, I will often rub my hand over their leaves and sniff. The smell of the fresh cut grass or the peaty smell of the dirt as I pull up weeds- these are things I no longer experience when I am in my garden now.


The good news is that this is most likely not permanent and my sense of smell will return. However, this has certainly made me more aware of the millions of people who have permanent loss of one or more of their senses.


It has also made me more cognizant of the way we, as authors, write descriptions. Are we using more than one sense? Is our description sight heavy? Are nuances of smell and sound included? Are tactile details implied? As I pondered this in terms of the current novel I am drafting, I realized that it may be time to pull out some writing activities I have done in the past with my students or used in conference presentations with writers and writers’ groups, that pertain to writing descriptions.

One writing exercise is to pull out one of the scenes in your latest work-in-progress and take a quick assessment. In your descriptions, have you included what your character is seeing? Feeling (tactile feeling, not emotional feeling)? Smelling? Tasting? Hearing? Obviously, it is not possible or advantageous to include all 5 senses in every scene or chapter, but are we using enough of a variety to engage as many senses as possible?

Another is to look back at a description you may have jotted down in your journal or notebook. What senses were employed in your description? Our default sense is usually sight, as most descriptions start with what something looks like. But if we stop there, we deny our reader a full experience.


These activities will give you insight into your natural tendencies as a writer, but to take it a step further, try some writing exercises where you consciously employ the senses. Start by thinking of a specific place and describe it in terms of just one sense. Then add another sense, and another, until you have used as many as you can to describe that particular place.


Another activity I use with my students is to describe a place in one sentence, focusing on only one sense, and making sure not to name the place. For this exercise, start with the sense of smell or sound. Students love sharing these descriptions with each other and seeing if they can guess the place being described. Another way to expand this is to give them a picture of something, and ask them to describe the smell or the sound that the picture brings to mind.


Helping our readers to more deeply experience our writing, be sure to employ all of the senses!

This past week, I had the pleasure and privilege of being part of a Summer Teacher Institute put on jointly by the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It brought together 30 teachers from across the country, and a team of historical scholars, and we spent the week digging deeply into American history from colonialism to reconstruction. The lectures, discussions, virtual field trips, and collaborative work was inspiring, rejuvenating, and eye-opening.


The focus of our work was the primary documents related to these times in history. Letters, articles, photos, maps, treaties, posters, artifacts, and art work. These things give context and depth to the events that were happening. They help us to understand the nuances of time periods and people’s lives.


With the focus on science and technology growing, I worry that the value placed on the Humanities will diminish. I see the effects of the STEM focus in the classroom. There are less resources and less time devoted to teaching the Humanities. And this is tragic. For it is the Humanities that make us who we are as a people. It is the Humanities that enriches our culture and gives us identity.


Many of the documents we examined this week I found very powerful. The letters written by John and Abigail Adams. The political cartoons of during the World Wars.


But my favorite was the working copy of the Bill of Rights. Not the final version that I have posted in my classroom and that we all know and recite. But the document that the creators worked on for weeks. The copy that shows revisions and changes as they debated and discussed. The version that shows the compromises and clarifications that were added, taken away, and adjusted to reflect the common ground they were able to uncover through this process.


I love what this represents and what this says about us as Americans and what it shows about our system of governance. It is a visual reminder that we are a nation of varied perspectives and points of view. That we are a diverse group with often conflicting priorities. That we each bring different experiences and ideas to the richness that is our country. And that it is acceptable to work to find common ground. That it is advantageous to us all to compromise when needed.



These documents are not just for historical scholars. They are for all of us. The National Archives, the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History- these are just a few of the organizations that house, protect, and share these documents with us all. Sometimes looking at artifacts from the past, can help us understand the present.

That is the power of the Humanities!