I am indebted to Allison Wortche and Katherine Harrison, my editors, for embracing Rocco’s story and for helping to bring this tale to life through their perceptive insights and suggestions. Thanks also to Nancy Hinkel and so many people at Alfred A. Knopf and Random House, including Anne Schwartz, Lee Wade, Adrienne Waintraub, Laura Antonacci, Lisa Nadel, Aisha Cloud, Lisa McClatchy, Melanie Cecka, Karen Greenberg, Kate Gartner, Trish Parcell, Iris Broudy, Amy Schroeder, and Lisa Leventer. My agent, Steven Malk, is unfailingly supportive, and Michele Kophs of Provato Marketing is a wizard with social media, blog tours, and websites.
As I often tell students during my author visits, history must be seen. Barbara Noseworthy and Jim Cunningham generously allowed me to stay in their New York City apartment while on a trip to research this book.
A Bandit’s Tale became a family affair. I’m grateful to my daughter, Rebekah, for accompanying me on several long (and hot) walks during that trip, traipsing around neighborhoods in which Rocco and Mary would have wandered. We tracked down 45 Crosby Street and craned our necks to make out Michael Hallanan’s initials on the former site of the blacksmith shop and stable on Barrow Street. I hope that Rebekah’s students at the Lake Champlain Waldorf School will enjoy Rocco and Mary’s story. My niece Ellie Thomas, who grew up in New York City, was also an integral part of this research trip. My husband, Andrew Thomas, created Rocco’s map and read an early draft of the manuscript, and my son, Dimitri, became the first listener, critiquing as I read the final draft aloud. Even the dogs helped. When Brooklyn and Rue barked, we would go for a walk and I’d think about Rocco’s next misadventure.
Thanks to Joseph T. Gleason, director of archives at the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, for his generous assistance and for access to archived annual reports, which chronicle the arrest of Giovanni Ancarola. Thanks also to Lindsay Turley, assistant director of collections at the Museum of the City of New York, for making ASPCA papers and the letters of Henry Bergh available; and to Nilda I. Rivera, the museum’s director of licensing and reproductions, for her help in obtaining photographs by Jacob Riis. Any errors of fact or interpretation are my own.
Since becoming a full-time writer in 2014, I have had the privilege of visiting many more schools and of attending conferences across the country. I am so grateful to all the librarians, educators, and parents who champion children’s literature and help young people discover a love of reading (and especially reading about history!).
Thanks to my sisters, Janice Fairbrother and Bonnie Johnson, for always being there—they may recognize the twinkling eyes of our dear late father, Russell W. Hopkinson, in Officer Reilly. As always, Deborah Wiles helped me believe I could tell this story. I am fortunate to have wonderful friends, including Vicki Hemphill and family, Elisa Johnston, Ellie Thomas, Teresa Vast and Michael Kieran, Maya Abels, Sheridan Mosher, Kristin Hill and Bill Carrick, Deniz Conger, Cyndi Howard, Deborah Correa, Sara Wright, Becky and Greg Smith, Nick Toth, Eric Sawyer, Kathy Park, and many more. As always, I am grateful to my husband and children for bringing me such love and joy.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
DEBORAH HOPKINSON has written more than forty books for young readers. She is the author of the middle-grade novels Into the Firestorm: A Novel of San Francisco, 1906 and The Great Trouble: A Mystery of London, the Blue Death, and a Boy Called Eel, winner of the Oregon Spirit Book Award and cited as a School Library Journal Best Book of the Year.
Her picture books include Sky Boys: How They Built the Empire State Building, an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book and a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor Book; Abe Lincoln Crosses a Creek, an ALA-ALSC Notable Children’s Book; A Boy Called Dickens; Annie and Helen; and Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt, winner of the International Reading Association Children’s Book Award.
Deborah Hopkinson lives with her family in Oregon. Please visit her online at DeborahHopkinson.com.
Join Deborah Hopkinson on another historical adventure!
* “A delightful combination of race-against-the-clock medical mystery and outwit-the-bad-guys adventure.”
—Publishers Weekly, Starred
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