Beth Anderson, Children's Writer

Finding the focus and creating impact is always a huge challenge when faced with piles of research. I understand Megan Hoyt’s struggle with landing on just the right way to tell a story! In this post, Megan shares how she worked through a few ideas until she found what worked.

GIVEAWAY! Megan is offering one lucky writer a picture book critique. Just leave a comment below to enter!

Congratulations to Patricia Tilton, winner of Nell Cross Beckerman’s GIVEAWAY—a spot in her writing class, “From Brain Freeze, to Bunnies, to Book: Lessons Learned Writing From Park to Playa: The Trails That Connect Us.” 

A Grand Idea requires Perseverance, Determination, and Courage!

by Megan Hoyt

When I first began researching for my latest book, A Grand Idea: How William J Wilgus Created Grand Central Terminal, I found loads of facts and figures, stats, and details about how Grand Central and the New York Railroad were built. I took reams of notes, and they were all swirling through my head at once. It was overwhelming! I write narrative non-fiction, so I try to draw the reader into the story, much like we are drawn into a tv show or movie, with rich language and lyricism. But this one was loaded with facts, and they were all so interesting that it could easily have become expository instead.

First, I tried writing it in rhyme, but rhyme is very limiting. I would have had to leave out too many facts. Next, I tried writing it from the perspective of the actual terminal, as if it was the main character in its own story. It was a cute idea, but in the end, that was limiting, too. A building, even if it was alive, would only see the things that happened in front of it (or inside it). I would have to leave out all the feelings, opinions, and ideas of its builders and patrons.

I decided to blend the story of Grand Central Terminal with the story of William J Wilgus, the man who created it. PERFECT! Decision made! But this was not straight biography. It was also the story of an iconic building, loaded with facts about architecture and engineering. I began by categorizing the information in my notes. Anything about William J Wilgus—his childhood, his character, his concerns—was now primary. Anything about the Vanderbilts and the Gilded Age became secondary background information that would enrich the story. The building itself would be in the illustrations, so I knew I didn’t need to describe it too much. I put the spotlight on William J Wilgus and how he persevered through trial after trial, refusing to give up until he made coal-powered trains, with their dangerous smoke and smog, obsolete. 

There was a horrific train crash in 1912, and I found out William J Wilgus had been blamed for the accident initially. He was fired, and all his papers destroyed (to make sure no one found out it was his fault and tried to sue the railroad). William was devastated! So what did he do?

He went home and painstakingly recreated every diagram, every equation, every single page of his intricate design, FROM MEMORY. Then, he handed it back to the railroad executives, and proved that the collision was not the fault of his design but the train engineers and the smoky tunnel. Now we were headed somewhere—chug-chug-chugging toward some absolutely grand ideas!

Perseverance, determination, courage, hard effort!  

William J Wilgus refused to allow the thoughts and opinions of small-minded executives, who were worried about disappointing the wealthy Vanderbilts who owned the railroad, to derail him from his dream of creating safe, smokeless electric trains. He did not let anything deter him, in fact. And that is the thread I wanted to weave through this story about a giant city in need of a complicated train system, an extraordinary building, and seamlessly organized daily transportation. 

We see his courage and perseverance immediately after the train crash. And it continues through his part of the building’s story. But about halfway through the book, William J Wilgus retires. I had to then show how others persevered and fought to save the Terminal as it fell into disrepair. And there were so many facts to support that—they hired a celebrity to walk across a tightrope near the top of the lobby. They sold air rights to the area above the trains and Grand Central, and they refused to give up, even when Nazi saboteurs hid out in the movie theater at the terminal.

To keep these bigger ideas flowing through the story, from start to finish, I tried to make sure each spread built on the previous one in intensity, like a train picking up speed as it chugs its way toward its destination, homeward bound or off to new adventures in faraway places.

Kids love trains, and this is a fun book about a giant train system. I know they will enjoy learning more about how underground subway trains and their stations are built. But I also hope they will learn about the value of hard work, about being innovators, and about persevering even when you fail time and time again.     

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From School Library Journal:
VERDICT: A charming tale, and to think it’s all true! Whether readers are train and construction buffs or not, this is a living, breathing biography of a building, and the man who believed in it from the ground up. Extraordinary.

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Bio: Megan Hoyt first fell in love with reading on a cozy branch of the crabapple tree outside her Texas home. Marguerite Henry’s “horsey books” still remind her of the loud Texas cicadas at dusk. Her award-winning picture book biography, Bartali’s Bicycle, came out in February 2021 with Harper Collns’ new imprint, Quill Tree Books. Three more non-fiction picture books have quickly followed: The Greatest Song of All: How Isaac Stern United the World to save Carnegie Hall, Kati’s Tiny Messengers: Dr. Katalin Kariko and the Battle Against Covid 19, andA Grand Idea: How William J Wilgus Created Grand Central Terminal. Her poem, “Thanksgiving by the Lake,” appears in the Millbrook Press anthology Thanku: Poems of Gratitude (2019), and her first picture book, Hildegard’s Gift, came out in 2014 with Paraclete Press. Tzimmes for Tzipporah is her first Jewish-themed picture book, with Apples and Honey Press, a division of Behrman House.