Behind the Book: Daniel Bernstrom, author of BIG PAPA AND THE TIME MACHINE
My Papa, African American Storytelling, and the Everyday Time Machine
by Daniel Bernstrom
Going to the library as a child, the small selection of books I found featuring black or brown characters were usually about the titans of black history: Dr. King, Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Jackie Robinson, George Washington Carver, Booker T. Washington. I am thankful for these books. In them, I read about successful black heroes whom I could celebrate and emulate. They exposed me to the successful African Americans that I did not see around me. But when I think back to the everyday stories that featured black children, like me--the only story that comes to mind is Ezra Jack Keats’ beautiful book The Snowy Day. As a child, I yearned for these types of every day, small stories to help me find belonging.
Story has great power. Writing coach Lisa Cron, in her book Story Genius, explains that story is that magical vehicle that can whisk a child away to practically, well . . . anywhere. How? Very nerdy science suggests that because of brain scans taken with MRI technology, we know that “when we’re really engaged in listening to a story, our brain synchronizes with the speaker’s brain—literally mirroring it.” Essentially, what this means is that the listener experiences the story as if she were the storyteller, making stories the time machines that wrinkle time itself to help the listener find answers to life’s great questions. This exactly what happened to me when I first heard my grandfather’s stories.
I grew up adopted by a white family, so when I met my black biological family, I needed a guide. It was my grandfather, or “Papa,” as he liked to be called, who stepped in to help me understand where I fit into the family--and he did this through storytelling. Papa usually told me stories when we were driving around Chicago’s South Side: stories about buying his first car (a 1952 Ford) and moving to Chicago, working as a brick mason, falling in love, adopting a baby, and not being able to finish school. Riding around Chicago with Papa felt like riding in a time machine. Through Papa’s stories, I was taught about my black heritage. Through story, Papa helped me belong.
In writing Big Papa and the Time Machine, I realized Papa’s stories were universal. Yet, in another way, they were very specific to him. Let me explain how my own black history influenced my book--Big Papa and the Time Machine is primarily a dialogue between a grandfather and grandson. That’s how Papa passed down his stories to me. When writing the book, I wanted to show this form--oral storytelling--to illustrate its critical role in African American culture and history. So I wrote the stories in the way Papa told them to me, in his beautiful voice, in what linguist J. L. Dillard would call Black English. The result was my Papa inviting the reader into this centuries-old tradition of African American oral storytelling, but it features a little boy who hears and processes it.
Just as Big Papa and the Time Machine was written in Black English and shows us how history can be passed down, stories written by authors of all cultures have similar nuances at play and, likewise, impact how their children see themselves and others. Though stories about black heroes inspire us, as African Americans, to dare greatly—the small, everyday stories about nobody famous are just as essential in helping us belong; helping us empathize with an unfamiliar culture; and helping us communicate universal truth in diverse, time-wrinkling ways.
About the Author
Daniel Bernstrom is the author the critically acclaimed One Day in the Eucalytus, Eucalyptus Tree and Gator, Gator, Gator!. Dan earned an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University, and currently works at the Learning Resource Center Coordinator at Minnesota State College Southeast, where he tutors students in math, writing, and science. He lives in Red Wing, Minnesota with his wife Heather, daughter LaVonne, and sons Grace, and Haven. Visit him at www.lillylabs.com.
About the Book
Discover the true meaning of being brave in this tender and whimsical picture book from Daniel Bernstrom (One Day in the Eucalytus, Eucalyptus Tree) and Shane Evans (Chocolate Me!) that follows a grandfather and grandson who travel through time in a beloved 1952 Ford.
A little boy who lives with his grandpa isn’t reprimanded for being afraid to go to school one day. Instead, Big Papa takes him away in his time machine—a 1952 Ford—back to all of the times when he, himself, was scared of something life was handing him.
Full of heartfelt moments and thrilling magical realism, Big Papa and the Time Machine speaks to the African American experience in a touching dialogue between two family members from different generations, and emerges as a voice that shares history and asks questions about one family’s experience in 20th-century black America.
“Wasn’t you scared?”
“Oh, I was scared,” Big Papa said. “Sometimes you gotta walk with giants if you ever gonna know what you made of. That’s called being brave.”