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1912 Comes to Life

By Sarah Wood

Rosa can't believe her ears. "Strike! Strike!" Her entire town is on strike, and her mother and sister Anna are heading the protest march. The police are arresting strike leaders, and one of Rosa's neighbors has been shot.

Author Katherine Paterson's new book, Bread and Roses, Too, is a compelling fictional account of a real historical event. The story explores the struggles of poor immigrant workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts. During the winter of 1912, 25,000 mill workers left their jobs to demand better pay. Through their brave and risky efforts, the workers eventually won a raise of one penny an hour.

"This became one of the most successful strikes in American history,"Paterson told TFK. She says that the inspiration to write about the strike came from a photograph of 35 Lawrence children that hangs in the labor hall in her hometown of Barre, Vermont. The kids stayed in Barre for their safety during the strike. In the book, the character Rosa is one of these children. She must live with strangers and deal with a runaway boy who keeps asking her for help.

Paterson has won numerous awards for children's literature, including Newbery Medals and National Book Awards for Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved. Earlier this year, she won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award for Literature. The award is named for the Swedish author of the Pippi Longstocking book series. Paterson received the $640,000 prize from Sweden's Crown Princess Victoria last May.

As a child, the author dreamed of being a movie star or a missionary. Her young fans must be pleased that neither of those options worked out. Over her long career, she has written more than 30 books, many of them based on historical events.

"I'll never be a science-fiction or fantasy writer. It's just not in me,"Paterson admits. But historical fiction allows her to travel to another place and time. "It's the same impulse to explore a world different from your own and yet somehow connect it to your own," Paterson says. "History helps us look at our own times in a different way."

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