Hidden Heroines

Ahead of her TAC Talk this month, author and illustrator Marissa Moss shares the inspiration behind her stories.

A tea party hosted by an owl sounds like a lot of fun. But one publisher didn’t think so and passed on 9-year-old Marissa Moss’ story about the whimsical gathering.

That snub, however, did little to deter her ambitions to pen her own books. It took time, but a winding road through university history lectures and waiting tables led Moss to a breakthrough, and she’s been writing and illustrating children’s books ever since.

Her most popular work is the Amelia’s Notebook series. “I wanted to comment on the real lives that kids have,” says the Californian. “Nothing extraordinary happens to Amelia. What’s extraordinary is her point of view. There are a lot of diagrams and quizzes inside, so it’s really a visual-thinking book.”

The series—now 30 tomes and counting—draws on Moss’ childhood experiences but gives them the endings she longed for. One arguably extraordinary example is that Moss’ school was firebombed. In Amelia’s Notebook, the students go through a healing journey together and come to a mental closure.

Moss also tackles more complex stories with her non-fiction narratives about historical figures. Her latest book, Spying on Spies, released in March, follows the true story of Elizebeth Smith Friedman, one of the world’s greatest code breakers.

In addition to Friedman, Moss has written about Austrian-Swedish physicist Lise Meitner (The Woman Who Split the Atom), baseball player Kenichi “Zeni” Zenimura (Barbed Wire Baseball) and one of America’s first female private eyes (Kate Warne, Pinkerton Detective).

Moss will take Members behind the scenes of The Woman Who Split the Atom and Amelia’s Notebook this month in a series of events at the Club.

“I’ve always had diverse characters because I felt like I never saw myself in picture books; I’m always trying to be more inclusive,” explains Moss. “When I started writing history, I was aware that there was a lot that isn’t taught. I wanted to do picture books about history that involved lots of people, generally minorities and women, who’d been erased from history.”

This can take her down a rabbit hole, but the journey is reinforced by research skills gained from her art and history studies. These skills are crucial for her work, and she tries to nurture them in others through her workshops. “How do you vet information? How do you go about getting it? That’s a real skill that I don’t think is taught so much anymore. A lot of adults are falling for fake news because they don’t know how to look at, and evaluate, information.”

Moss also hopes to inspire children and give them a place to imagine themselves.

“We need to tell history more fully. Especially in math and sciences, girls have not been encouraged. And it’s still an issue, because they don’t see themselves in those fields. They need to know that there were women who made a difference.”