Author Nathan Hale Might Just Have Found An Antidote For Our Kids’ Literacy Malaise
By Jennifer Liebrum
Judging by the reaction of the toughest crowd any human can face–middle schoolers–Nathan Hale seems to have honed a remedy for the nation’s reading and retention problem.
As a New York Times best-selling author of historical fiction for young adults, Hale knows his way around titter-inducing fart humor and gasp-inducing gore.
But cannier still is his ability to amplify historical events that might otherwise be overlooked, bringing to light some encouraging and little-known facts, recounting them in a palatable way using his skills as an illustrator.
His incredibly popular Hazardous Tales–13 historical non-fiction biographical novels with a focus on American history are celebrated for “lively, rigorously researched, visually engaging stories,” according to the School Library Journal.
Hale is retired from the school circuit, but was coaxed out thanks to Wood River Middle School librarian Samantha Archibald Mora, who met him at a book signing.
“I told him that if he were ever to visit, he should come to our school. His reply: If you can get me skiing in Sun Valley, I’ll come to your school for free. Deal struck!”
Mora secretly went about upping the ante to ensure an RSVP from Hale.
“Our community did WAY better than that,” Mora said. Hale was invited to a two-week stay as a Writer-in-Residence at the Hemingway House through The Community Library.
The Utah native shared his unique riff on famed explorers Lewis and Clark, and given the audience’s rapt attention and laughter, Hale deftly proved he has their pulse.
“My whole job is to dig through history and find things that are positive,” he told a packed audience at the Hailey school last week. “That can be difficult to do since history is filled with so many horrible things.”
At WRMS, it took Hale a little under an hour to bring history to life, and enlist a new batch of fans.
Sitting comfortably at a table, a small screen in front, mic in one hand, pen in the other, and a big screen at his back, Hale silenced a twitchy audience within minutes using his tenor and pacing to enhance a fast and funny narration of the following:
This misadventure began shortly after America purchased a whole lot of real estate called the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and Capt. Meriwether Lewis and Lt. William Clark were dispatched on a U.S. military excursion meant to survey and document the land mass to prove its worth.
It was opined that Lewis should pick up a medical kit and some last-minute tips on field medicine from the then Surgeon General Dr. Benjamin Rush. Lewis balked, “we aren’t going to get hurt,” but, he went anyway because he was shamed by others who called that thinking, “the stupidest plan ever.”
Rush taught him to use blood-sucking leeches for simple wounds, you know, gunshots and such. If a broken bone isn’t healing, he was to grab the bone saw, and amputate. There would be a lot of blood on his face, and screaming, which should be ignored.
“I’m not telling this to make you laugh, this is real,” Hale sidebarred.
Rush threw in some liquid mercury and his namesake stomach pills, which he didn’t explain, just offered with a sinister brow.
The intrepid crew loaded up with the aforementioned bone saw, leeches, Dr. Rush’s Bilious Pills and silver “friendship” medallions. They donned their Captain Crunch-style epithets, loaded up a web-toed Newfoundland puppy, voluntold Clark’s family slave, York, that he was coming along, and went to locate 39 more for the Corps of Discovery tour.
York was born into slavery in the Clark home and was a childhood companion to Clark. York towered over everyone, broad and strong. The natives would dub him Buffalo Man, and they couldn’t keep their hands off his black and muscled body, or his fluffy puppy.
Told by superiors that a woman should be recruited next, Hale said explorers’ initial reply was, “No one even tried out,” but they still followed a lead from a French trapper to Sacajewea, a Native American woman stronger and shrewder than most men. She was pregnant with what would turn out to be the first baby of the Corps, a boy nicknamed Pomp.
“So this diverse group of people of all races and backgrounds,” proceeded along the river, noticing, naming and then barbecuing every single animal—from coyotes to pelicans—that they met on their journey. “Two hundred and thirty brand new species of animals and they barbecued every one of them,” Hale recalled.
This equated to six pounds of meat, per person, per day, with no fruits or veggies. This led to unbearable constipation.
Dr. Rush’s pills to the rescue with scorched earth style relief. Each popped a pill and headed off into the brush to relieve themselves in epic pain, glory and thunder.
York, it was said, “set off a mushroom cloud.”
Two hundred years later, explorers with metal detectors located giant, explosive piles of mercury in the Corps’ former campsites. They determined the toxic dump was because the pills contained mercury, a deadly metal if ingested.
As ugly as history has proven, Hale brightened the ending of his true tale noting that two white men, a French trapper, and otherwise powerless Americans, York and Sacajewea, were united and even shared voting rights.
“Pomp couldn’t vote though, dogs and babies are cute, but they are too dumb to vote. But, Pomp was the first baby to ever walk the trail.”
The Corps, Hale noted, was “an American history miracle.”
