“What do you think, Rob?” Mrs. Yoder turned to her husband. “You know Zookiana better than anybody.”
“I think I should’ve noticed the handwriting myself,” he said. “Maybe I didn’t want to. But I still believe Gus Zook was a great man and a great thinker.”
“I’m not saying he wasn’t,” Effie said. “All I’m saying is he didn’t invent the barf bag.”
No one replied to that, but Effie didn’t care. She had made her point. It had taken her most of the summer, but she had asked a lot of questions and learned a little truth. Next time she studied her great-grandmother’s face in the silver frame, she would understand her better.
What Effie thought was, Effie Zook was a great woman.
What she said was, “Who wants a glass of ginger ale? We’ve got plenty of cherries.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The real inventor of the emesis bag was not from Central Pennsylvania but from North Dakota. His name was Gilmore Schjeldahl, and unlike Gus Zook’s, his subsequent engineering innovations were also successful. Besides devising innovations that protected research balloons, satellites, and Polaris missiles, he helped refine a medical device that clears diseased arteries around the heart. Schjeldahl died in 2002.
I didn’t learn about Mr. Schjeldahl until after I finished drafting the book, and I am glad to be able to give the inventor his due here.
Like most books, this one results from several inspirations meeting and mixing it up in the author’s head.
First off was a girl I met at a reading in rural Pennsylvania. Her name was Moriah, a fact she had to whisper in my ear for fear her parents might find out she had told a stranger. I never learned more, but that vignette stayed with me, and from it Rob Yoder and Beards for America were born.
The real Effie Zook (she spelled it Zuck) was a wonderful friend and artist who made the most glorious year-round wreaths from greenery and wildflowers. She wasn’t well fixed, at least not as far as I know, but she was abundantly rich in spirit. She died in 2012, and her daughter Leslie and I remain friends. My own daughter, Rosa, spent a summer volunteering on Leslie’s Pennsylvania farm—so there you have further inspiration.
I needed a heroic project for Effie’s parents and as sometimes happens, the universe handed me a gift in the form of Solar Impulse, the real-life round-the world flight of a sun-powered airplane—still in progress at the time of this writing. Happily, Solar Impulse never had to ditch in the Pacific, but its flight path and tribulations provided credible fodder for my story.
Another real-life inspiration was my friend Sharif, whom I borrowed to play the part of Pendleton Odbody. An African American bookstore proprietor in a small Central Pennsylvania town might be forgiven for seeing himself as an odd body. If anyone could carry off the role with aplomb, I knew it was Sharif.
Research for other projects got me thinking about the artificiality of the lines between races. See, for example, the 44th president who is as white as he is black (just ask his Kansas cousins), or the descendants of Sally Hemings and the third president, Thomas Jefferson. My own overwhelmingly Caucasian family tree is graced by a Native American woman. My friend Sharif’s mother, who is black, remembers as a child having to use the back door to enter the home of a mixed-race aunt who “passed” as white.
The truth is we are all descended from the first humans in Africa 100,000 years ago. Subsequent divisions by race, ethnicity, tribe, you-name-it have never been anything but destructive. In the book, Effie’s dauntless questioning reveals unexpected truths—and unexpected relatives—and our open-minded hero takes the truths in her stride and embraces the cousins. Most members of her community do the same. Unfortunately it’s possible that even in the 21st century, the nonfiction reaction might be different.
The alchemical reactions that yield a book develop over time. This one had been drafted and revised before I realized I was retelling the story of Isaac and Ishmael from Genesis, with one important difference: centuries of strife nipped in the bud, happy ending achieved. Well, why not? As Dr. Seuss wrote in Horton Hatches the Egg, my favorite of all his books, “It should be, it should be, it should be like that.”
Martha Freeman, is the author of more than twenty-five books for young readers, including the Secret Cookie Club books, the First Kid Mysteries, The Orphan and the Mouse, and Strudel’s Forever Home. Among parents, teachers, and librarians, Martha is known for funny, fast-paced stories that are both kid- and parent-approved. Martha’s fiction has earned recognition from multiple state award committees as well as Bank Street College, the Book of the Month Club, the Junior Library Guild, and the Scholastic Reading Club. Her books have been translated into Turkish, Japanese, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, and French. Her website is marthafreeman.com, and she lives in Philadelphia.
A Paula Wiseman Book
Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2017 by Martha Freeman
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Interior design by Hilary Zarycky
The text for this book was set in Life LT Std.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Freeman, Martha, 1956- author.
Title: Effie Starr Zook has one more question / by Martha Freeman.
Description: First edition. | New York : Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, [2017] | “A Paula Wiseman Book.” | Summary: “City girl Effie Starr Zook is not excited about spending the summer on her aunt and uncle’s farm in Nowheresville, Pennsylvania, until she stumbles across a mystery that leads her smack into an old family feud.”—Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016010813| ISBN 9781481472647 (hardback) | ISBN 9781481472661 (e-book)
Subjects: | CYAC: Mystery and detective stories. | Families—Fiction. | Pennsylvania—Fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Family / General (see also headings under Social Issues). | JUVENILE FICTION / Lifestyles / Farm & Ranch Life. | JUVENILE FICTION / Mysteries & Detective Stories.
Classification: LCC PZ7.F87496 Ef 2017 | DDC [Fic]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016010813
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