| Deborah Noyes
By Patrick Gerard Healy
Globe Correspondent Deborah Noyes has rewritten history. The 39-year old Somerville resident is quietly building a career out of writing books that teach about historical events in a way that can actually be enjoyed by a 6 or 12 year old. ''I think for me when I was a kid reading history it was always sort of a painful experience and I never enjoyed it much,'' she confesses, ''but as an adult I discovered things like social history and that is just such a fascinating aspect, to reveal the personal lives behind the numbers and dates.'' In 2004 Cambridge-based Candlewick Press released 'Hana in the Time of Tulips', which has recently gone into its second printing. It is a story based in the era of ''tulipomania,'' a craze that swept through the Netherlands between 1634 and 1637(cq), where the recently-imported tulip was worth as much as gold and eventually caused an economic collapse. The story focuses on a little girl whose family is deeply affected by each phase of the craze. Although tulipomania itself still puzzles historians, Noyes’ story is more about timeless aspects of the human condition that echo into the present day. Noyes brings tulip bulbs with her to the area elementary schools where she reads to the students. "To explain to these kids that one of these things was worth the price of a house at one time in Holland is really so phenomenal,'' she says, ''but I think more importantly it's the story of a child trying to draw a distracted parent back to them, which I think kids today deal with all the time with parents working.'' Noyes works four days a week as an editor for Candlewick, who also put out Gothic!, a multi-authored collection of dark tales for young adults which she edited and was nominated for a 2005 American Library Association(cq) award. Candlewick will also publish Red Butterfly next year, which is centered around a tale of an ancient Chinese silk smuggler Noyes began work at Candlewick in the marketing department as a copyrighter, as a way to support her own adult short fiction writing, but when she and her husband, freelance writer Courtney Wayshak(cq), started to have children 12 years ago, her transition to a different genre was a natural one. ''I had kids and fell in love again with children's literature, and I was in the midst of it, so I decided it was an area I wanted to explore in writing,'' she says. Her children, Clyde Wayshak(cq), 12(cq), and Michaela Wayshak(cq), 6(cq), are both students at the Healey School(cq), where Noyes often comes into the classroom to read and discuss writing. Michaela says when she grows up that she wants to be an artist like the kind whose drawings are featured in her mom's books. When Deborah goes to her daughter's classroom to read, she says Michaela insists on being the one to turn the pages. Clyde says he likes the attention that his mother has earned through writing. "I think that my mom's kind of famous,'' he says. But he wants to be a different sort of writer. ''Actually I want to be a journalist,'' he says. Clyde isn't the only one in the family who is interested in pursuing writing beyond children's and young adult stories. Deborah's adult novel Pearl, based on Hester Prynne's(cq) elf-like child from The Scarlet Letter, is coming out this fall from Missouri-based Unbridled Books The exploration of a famous fictitious character is a natural expression for Noyes. She says some of her favorite friends from childhood were books. Growing up as a self-described ''military brat'' meant that her family moved around a lot and she didn't spend enough time in one town to make lasting friendships with other kids her age. ''Books are tried and true friends that you can take wherever you want,'' she says. Although she has maintained her friendship with her books, she says she has quit moving around for a while. ''For the first time I am rooted somewhere,'' she says, ''and that's in Somerville.'' Patrick Gerard Healy can be reached at PGH@globe.com |