Bartography

Here’s a bit of what the American Library Association’s Booklist magazine has to say about my new book, which officially hits the shelves a week from Thursday:

“Barton … has assembled a rogues’ gallery of con artists, impostors, and pretenders from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. … Barton uses a second-person voice to draw readers into every sketch, ending each one with a wrap-up: ‘What Happened Next?’ Hoppe’s black-and-white line drawings lend a gritty comics quality to each story, and a bibliography lists articles, books, and movies about each subject. Thoroughly researched and grippingly presented.”

I’m expecting two special Can I See Your I.D.? deliveries this week: My box of author copies, and a box (or two) of bookmarks smashingly designed by Sarah Rehm. As much as I’m looking forward to having those hardcovers in my hands, those bookmarks are really something else — I can’t wait for the chance to give them away at the Texas Library Association conference here in Austin next week!

This sure was a fun one to see. The Publishers Weekly review, in part:

“In 10 impeccably crafted profiles, Barton (The Day-Glo Brothers) shares the stories of individuals–many just teenagers–who adopted false identities for amusement, profit, or survival. … The use of second-person narration is very effective, allowing readers to assume the identities of each individual. Barton’s prose captures the daring, ingenuity, and quick thinking required of each imposter.”

You can read the rest here.

Just this morning, I’ve published the initial version of the discussion guide I’ve put together for Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities, my YA nonfiction title coming this spring from Dial Books for Young Readers.

Below is a bit of what you’ll find in there. There’s also an excerpt from the first chapter, a set of discussion questions, and a Q&A about the book’s origins, the research I did for it, my use of a second-person narrator, etc.

I’d love it if you’d take a look and let me know what you think. Like I said, it’s an initial version — so much of what there is to discuss about this book hinges on the actual discussions that actual readers will have, so I plan to revise and update the discussion guide in the months ahead.

Dear Reader,

What would make you pretend to be someone else?

For my subjects in Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities, the
reasons were many: They wanted to make it in Hollywood. They didn’t want
to be killed by Nazis. They wanted to escape from slavery. They didn’t want
to go broke. They really wanted to drive a subway train. And so on.

This is a book about identities both false and true, because all of these
people pretending to be someone else were, at the same time, truly
themselves on the inside. I believe that’s a theme that a lot of readers can
relate to, but especially young adults.

During adolescence, “Who am I?” is neither an idle nor an uncommon
question. I hoped that my researching and telling these ten stories would
help both me and my readers understand the reasons a person would assume
a false identity, the specifics involved in pulling off such fakery, and the
psychic toll taken by that kind of deception.

And to give you, the reader, a feel for that experience, I wrote Can I See
Your I.D.? in a way that puts you in each subject’s shoes – that gives you, for
a few pages, a new identity.

I hope you’re up for that, and that this book gives you lots to think about, and
lots to discuss. Most of all, I hope you enjoy it.

Yours (truly!),

Chris

At the fantabulous Austin SCBWI conference this past weekend, various folks asked me what I was working on these days. I know they wanted to hear about new picture books or nonfiction projects or the like, but what most came to my mind was Groucho Marx glasses and curriculum guides.

Why’s that? Well, I’ve got a new book coming out in less than two months, Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities, and I’ve been taking the jittery, nervous excitement that comes with a book release and trying to channel that energy into plans and efforts to get the word out about it.

There are lots of things I could spend my time and/or money on in support of the launch of Can I See Your I.D.? A book trailer. A blog tour. A launch party. Paid advertising. Lesson plans. And so on, including — yes — novelty Groucho glasses in keeping with the “false identities” theme. And at least some of those, I will spend my time and/or money on.

But there’s a limit to it, and I can feel that limit approaching. The book is finished — it’s as good as it’s ever going to get — and there are other projects of mine that would also like me to finish them. (The feeling is mutual.) So much of what happens with Can I See Your I.D.? from here on out depends on work that’s already been done, and I need to keep that in mind and keep the importance of the promotional efforts in perspective.

Does that make me a little uneasy? Does it make me wonder whether I’ve considered everything I could and should do in order to give this book a happy launch out into the world? You bet your life. But a year from now, the launch will be long over, the book will still be the book, and I’ll hopefully have a new launch to start thinking about — if I get back to the work of writing, that is.

Last night, I began doing something I’d avoided throughout the process of researching and writing Can I See Your I.D.? True Stories of False Identities, which Dial Books for Young Readers will publish this April. I began watching the movie versions of the stories I included.

Can I See Your I.D.? is a young adult collection of 10 profiles of people who pretended to be someone they weren’t, and as you might expect, many of those masquerades have caught the fancy of filmmakers over the years. But because my book is nonfiction, I deliberately did not watch the dramatizations (with the exception of Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can, which I watched way back before I started working on this book) so that my understanding of these people, their motivations, their stories would not be distorted. But all the while, I’ve looked forward to getting caught up on those cinematic tellings when the time was right.

Three months away from publication, I do believe the time is right.

The first profile in the book — and one of the first two that I wrote for the project — is of 16-year-old New Yorker Keron Thomas, who in 1993 (nearly) got away with impersonating a subway motorman and driving the A train for three hours. Surprisingly, Hollywood hasn’t done anything with Thomas’ story. So I began my Can I See Your I.D.? film festival with a movie about the other of my original subjects, Solomon Perel, a Jewish teenager who spent most of World War II at a school for Hitler Youth.

Here’s how I begin that story in Can I See Your I.D.?:

Your name is Solomon Perel. You’re a short, skinny, sixteen-year-old Jew, and you’ve just been captured by the Nazis. It’s all you can do not to piss yourself.

They’ve nabbed you an a bunch of other refugees, just a few days into Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union. Now they’ve line you all up in a field as they decide what to do with each of you.

Agnieszka Holland’s film version of Perel’s story, Europa, Europa, takes a lot of dramatic liberties — more than I had expected, and more than I was able to overlook in order to simply appreciate the movie on its own merits. I didn’t mind the flights of fancy — such as a fantasy sequence in which Hitler waltzes with Stalin while candy rains down from overhead. But when it came to the portrayal of Perel himself, no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t help keeping track and keeping score of the ways large and small that Holland broke away from the facts Perel laid down in his memoir by the same name.

That’s not to say that viewing Holland’s film can’t be just as rewarding as reading Perel’s book. And I hope that my juxtaposition of Perel’s story with Keron Thomas’ and the eight others can be just as satisfying as those other two works. But if you’re anywhere near as prone as I am to get hung up on the facts, you might want to watch the movie first.

Just over four months away from its publication date, Can I See Your I.D.? (Dial, April 2011) has gone from red to blue. Thanks to designer Jasmin Rubero for the spiffy new spin on Paul Hoppe‘s cover art!

Young adult nonfiction, coming from Dial Books for Young Readers in April 2011…