The author Joseph Bruchac participated in a bulletin board discussion with Scholastic students.

Joseph Bruchac also participated in a separate online interview with Scholastic students. For the interview transcript, click here.

What kind of research do you do to write your books?
I always do extensive research on my books, especially those dealing with periods in history other than the present. That research includes travel to the places where events took place. I also try to find people who are contemporary relatives of people I'm writing about. For example, I have just written a book about Jim Thorpe, the famous American Indian athlete and I've been in contact with some of his children — such as Grace Thorpe. I do a great deal of reading and try as much as possible to read primary sources — books and essays that are from the historical period, not secondary sources, books written later. In terms of American Indian history, I also listen to the oral traditions that haven't been written down, finding American Indian elders who will share the stories passed down to them.

However, I also research things I write that deal with the present-day. For example, I just finished a novel called The Warriors that is about a present-day Iroquois lacrosse player. I studied lacrosse, watched lacrosse games, read books about American Indian lacrosse, and talked with American Indian lacrosse players.

I didn't know that Sacajawea and Clark became such good friends. Why do you think that's not taught in history class?
I think that history teachers try to do the best they can, but they have to cover so much history they cannot talk about everything. They might feel that the deep friendship between Sacajawea and Clark is not as important as other facts. One reason I wrote this novel was to point out how important Sacajawea was to the success of their epic journey and to help readers see Sacajawea and Clark as real people, not just names in history.

Did you ever think of writing a story about Pomp's life and what it's like to have Sacajawea as a mom and William Clark as an uncle figure?
Thanks for this suggestion! I hadn't thought of it until now. But maybe I will try to tell his story in a novel some day. It would be a VERY interesting one.

How did you get the idea to name your My Name is America character Jesse Smoke? How did you come up with the other names in the book? Are they real people from the Trail of Tears?
I chose the names of the fictional Cherokee characters in The Journal of Jesse Smoke (those who are members of Jesse's family and some of his close friends) by basing them on the real names of Cherokee people of that time. For example, there are extensive census records listing the names of the Cherokees on the Trail of Tears, where they were from, what jobs they did and so on. But I didn't use their names directly. For example, I saw that Jesse was a common first name and that there were a number of people with the last name of Smoke (but no "Jesse Smoke" listed). So I put two names together. I also translated some Cherokee names from Cherokee into English. Actually, "Smoke" is "Gogisgi" in Cherokee. Gogisgi was the Cherokee name of a dear friend of mine who was a Cherokee poet and who taught me a lot about the Trail of Tears over the years. Gogisgi's 'European name' was Carroll Arnett and he was a very good writer. I'm honoring and thanking my friend Carroll Arnett by having my main character named Smoke.

But there are a number of real historical Cherokee figures in the novel, too. The most famous is John Ross, but there are many others, including Reverend Bushyhead.

Are you working on any new books now? What are they about?
I am working on several new books. One of them, Geronimo, My Grandfather, is a historical novel about a young Chiricahua Apache boy who tells the story of his famous great-uncle, Geronimo. The story takes place roughly between 1885 and 1905, I'm just about to make a trip to Arizona and to Florida, to some of the places where Geronimo and thew other Apaches were held in captivity for 27 years after their surrender.

I'm also working on the final draft of a scary novel called The Whisperer in the Dark which takes place in Providence, Rhode Island and is a suspense novel like Skeleton Man.

Where did you get the idea for Skeleton Man? Will you be writing another scary book? Also, I am always trying to find new books for boys. Can you recommend any for me? Thank you.
The idea for Skeleton Man came in part from the traditional Mohawk Indian stories (that I've heard and read both in English and in Mohawk) about a cannibal skeleton and also from knowing a number of Mohawk boys and girls like Molly, my main character. They are kids who have a lot of courage and ingenuity and I wanted to both pay tribute to them and also write a story that would remind other kids that even a child can defeat a monster if they use their intelligence and are brave in the face of great danger.

I also wanted to write a modern-day story about American Indians because there are so many stories that are just about Indians in the past. This is my way of reminding people that we are STILL HERE.

Yes, I am writing more such stories. I mentioned my third one, The Whisperer in The Dark, in the previous answer. But I just finished the second one, The Dark Pond (whose hero is a boy who is half Armenian and half Shawnee and is attending an outdoor education school in the Adirondacks mountains of New York). That one will be published in the fall of 2004 by Harper.

Another book I'd recommend for boys is a collection of scary stories I wrote with my son, James. It is called When the Chenoo Howls. And I think my new book The Warriors, which has lacrosse as a central element in the plot, is also a good read for boys.

At the end of the book Skeleton Man, you don't know who the Skeleton Man really is and why he did what he did. Do you have an explanation in your mind? If so, why didn't you put it in the book?
That's a good question. To be honest, I don't know who Molly's so-called uncle really was and exactly why he did what he did. Writers don't always know everything about the characters in their stories. In fact, we often only find out in the process of writing. I know of many cases where a writer started a book intending to have it develop in a certain way. But after a while, the story took on a life of its own and it was even a surprise to that writer how things turned out. I always do at least some planning (a lot, if I am writing a story based on history) but I like it when my characters and my stories surprise me.

If I write a sequel to Skeleton Man, I may find out more about Molly's so-called Uncle then. But I'm not writing a sequel yet.

I also think it is okay to leave some things a mystery. After all, in real life, there are lots of things that we can't explain. I like to leave some things up to the reader's imagination.

How do you decide which Native American folktales you want to make books of?
My process of deciding which folktales to turn into books is not the same every time. I'm always learning new stories (and learning more about the ones I've known), but I never pick up a new story with the idea that I'm going to make it into a book. I have to live with a story for a long time before I would even think of doing that. Also, if it is a story from a different tribal nation, I need to learn a lot about it and also make sure that my telling of the story will be correct and acceptable to knowledgeable people from that tribal nation.

Twice in the past, I didn't even decide to turn stories into books. They just happened. In both cases, illustrators I knew asked if they could illustrate one of my stories. They turned into the books The First Strawberries and Gluskabe And The Four Wishes.

Recently, I've begun doing books with my son Jim as a co-author. Jim chooses which story we'll do based on his love of the story, the lessons it contains, and his long familiarity with the story (These are stories I first told to him when he was a small child and he is now 35 years old.) Thus far we have done three such folk story books: How Chimpmunk Got His Stripes, Turtle's Race With Beaver (published in 2003) and Raccoon's Last Race (due out next year).

I know you write novels, poetry, and picture books. What kind of book do you like writing best?
To be honest, I like writing in many different forms and genres. I think that each form has its own requirements and possibilities. There are some things I can do in poetry — not just rhyme and rhythm, but also working with imagery and condensed language — that are quite different from writing just straight prose. (Of course there are also some terrific "novels" being published now by such fine writers as Karen Hesse and Sharon Creech, that are in the form of free verse poems.) Picture books are a special delight for me because they are a collaboration between a writer and an artist. I am always excited about the prospect of seeing a story I write turned into visual images by a fine artist.

What was it like when you were a kid growing up in the mountains with your grandparents?
I didn't actually grow up in the mountains. I was raised close to the Adirondack mountains, in the rolling foothills. But I was in a place where the woods and streams were right out my back yard and I spent a lot of time as a kid walking alone in the forests and fishing for trout in the rivers and creeks around our home.

Some things were very different when i was a kid. For one, we did not have a television. I didn't see a television until I was in 4th grade. We went to the movies or listened to the radio or read books. For another, NO ONE owned a computer. Computers back then were the size of entire buildings. (I am not joking. That is the truth.) Only governments or big corporations could afford computers. There were no home computers and none in schools. I sometimes used my grandmother's old typewriter (which was not even an electric typewriter, but a manual typewriter that only worked by hitting the keys very hard), but mostly I wrote or printed. In school everyone had to learn penmanship. Because you wrote everything by hand, you have to write very clearly.

My grandparents grew a lot of their own food. We had a big garden with all kids of vegetables and each fall my grandmother "canned" the vegetables by cooking them with a pressure cooker and sealing the vegetables into bottles. Sometimes, if the seal wasn't done right, bacteria got into the bottles. Then either the food would go bad or the bottles would explode. We kept the canned food in our old basement and i remember going down there once to get a bottle of pickles. When I picked it up it made a fizzing sound and then blew up. The bottle didn't break, but I was covered with foul-smelling canned pickles.

We also raised pigs and chickens to eat. I have a lot of stories about THAT! But that's enough for now.

How many books have you written?
I'm not sure how many books I have actually written. I do know that I've had over 100 books published. But I've been doing this for a long time. My first books was a collection of my poems called Indian Mountain that came out in 1972 — 32 years ago! Some of the early books I wrote — novels and collections of poems and stories — never did get published. But I am actually glad about that. I am a lot better writer now. I may go back some day and rewrite those early manuscripts to make them better and try to publish them.

Have you written any books that aren't about Native Americans? Are you planning any?
Yes, I have written quite a bit on topics other than Native Americans. I published a collection of Adirondack tall tales called Hoop Snakes, Hide-Behind and Side Hill Winders more than 15 years ago. (I love writing down tall tales.) I wrote a book called How to Start and Sustain a Literary Magazine, a book about the poetry of music lyrics called The Poetry of Pop, and many books of poetry made up of poems about such things as animals and gardening, and Africa (where I lived for 3 years in the nation of Ghana). I've also edited anthologies of Asian American poetry, poetry from people in prison, and poems from around the world. I've also written down (but haven't published in a book yet) a lot of African folk tales, and original short stories written about Africa.

One more thing — and this is really exciting for me. I've been interested for many years in the other half of my ancestry — which is Slovak. My father's parents came from a city called Turnava in Slovakia. But until recently all I wrote about it were a few poems. Now, though, I've written a short novel about Slovakia that is appearing in chapters in newspapers around the United States as part of the Breakfast Serials project. The story is called Janko and the Giant and tells a story based on traditional Slovak folk tales. In my story boy named Janko goes on an adventure and encounters all kinds of wonderful creatures, including a giant and a talking horse. I'm looking forward to doing more writing about Janko and my Slovak heritage.

My fourth grade class read Eagle Song. They made many connections to how Danny felt being in a new school and feeling isolated by feeling different. Many of the children felt that Danny had low self-esteem. He needed to feel proud of his heritage, family, and who he is as an individual. They really loved reading and learning about the Mohawk culture through the story. They hope that Mr. Bruchac will write more realistic fiction at the fourth grade level. Presently they are reading many of the folktales retold by Mr. Bruchac as part of their Native American Studies. We are using the folklore to learn what qualities Native Americans value in people.

I would appreciate it if Mr. Bruchac could write a letter to my class and encourage them to further their studies in an attempt to better understand the unique cultures of our Native Americans. They are really becoming empathetic to the mistreatment by the early Europeans and the need to reclaim their culture for future generations.

Mrs. Rosalind Orofino
John F. Kennedy Intermediate School
Thanks for this question. I'm delighted that you appreciate realistic fiction about contemporary American indian people. I am working on more such stories and I strongly believe that it is important for kids to have such stories to read. I think it reminds us all of the many things we have in common as human beings on this small planet while also helping us understand and respect different cultures. There is a lot happening these days in the many contemporary American indian coimmunities all around the United States. So much, in fact, that National Geographic Magazine has contracted me to write a story about "Indian Renewal" to appear in their September 2004 issue. Over the last few months I've watched Chippewa wild rice gathering in Minnesota, modern Lakota methods of herding and raising buffalo in South Dakota, the construction of the wonderful new Museum of the American Indian in Washington DC and many more things. It's really exciting.

What are some of the qualities that Native Americans value in people? You have to remember that the terms "Native American" or "American Indian" (either term is okay) refer to more than 300 different tribal nations here in the United States alone. They are very diverse. I think I can generalize, though, about a few of the things valued by most American Indian communities. Modesty is highly valued. People who brag or try to set themselves above others are not appreciated. Generosity and sharing are much more important than gathering a lot of personal wealth. In fact, people who have a lot of wealth are expected to share it. It is shameful to be greedy. Courage is greatly admired — among both men and women, especially the kind of courage that you show when you are protecting others. A good leader, in American Indian terms, is someone who always thinks first of others. Sitting Bull, a great leader of the Lakotas, said that his people loved and admired him because he was so poor — poor because he shared whatever he had and always thought first of others. As you might guess, coorperation is another of those valued qualities. One of the first things Europeans noticed among the native peoples of New England was the way everyone pitched in to help whenever there was a job to be done.