She was born in China and lived there for the first thirteen years of her life, the daughter of missionary parents. Anne is feeling lonely and yearns for her old home in Gettysburg when George Washington comes riding down the road, stops by, and stays for supper.įritz knows something about childhood isolation. The story is set in 1784 and tells of young Anne, whose family has just moved to the isolation of western Pennsylvania. 'I always knew it was a good story,' she says. In The Cabin Faced West, Fritz uses a family story about her great-great-grandmother, Ann Hamilton. In And Then What Happened, Paul Revere?, Fritz helps readers to visualize a blueprint of Boston as it existed in 1775, and takes them along with the patriot from the beginning to the end of his famous ride. Shh, We're Writing the Constitution captures the personalities of the Founding Fathers and the difficulties they faced as they met in Philadelphia in the hot summer of 1786 to draft the constitution.

These are the kinds of stories Fritz includes in her biographies and histories. Madison took down a portrait of Washington, cut it out of the frame and saved it before the British burned the White House.' 'You have to learn it all factually,' she says, 'but you have to feel it, too.

history, from Benjamin Franklin to Harriet Beecher Stowe to Teddy Roosevelt.įritz worries that children do not find history interesting because there is too much emphasis on memorizing facts. 'In my writing, I give people their place.' In the last fifty years Fritz has written about many of the major figures in U.S. 'History isn't boring, once you get to know the people,' says children's author Jean Fritz.

The Cabin Faced West by Jean Fritz