What Happens When History Forgets Her Name? | Nonfiction Kid Lit Craft Conversations
Three authors talk craft, research obsession, and the urgent work of reclaiming women scientists for young readers.
Episode recap · Watch the full episode on YouTube ↗
There’s a certain kind of fury that comes from doing the research. You’re paging through archives, pulling primary sources, cross-referencing dates, and then it hits you. This woman changed everything, and no one knows her name. That anger, and the discipline it takes to channel it into a book for young readers, is exactly what I unpacked along with three fellow authors in my latest episode of Nonfiction Kid Lit Craft Conversations.
Lindsay Metcalf, author of Footeprint, and co-authors Debbie Lauren Dunn and Janet Fox, who wrote The Real Rosalind, joined me to talk about two YA nonfiction books recovering overlooked women in STEM: climate scientist Eunice Newton Foote and X-ray crystallographer Rosalind Franklin. What emerged was a masterclass not just in biography writing, but in how form, collaboration, and emotional honesty can make history feel alive for teen readers.
📘 Footprint by Lindsay H. Metcalf
A novel in verse biography of Eunice Newton Foote, whose 1856 discovery that carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere was overlooked for more than 150 years. Published by Charlesbridge Teen.
📗 The Real Rosalind by Debbie Lauren Dunn and Janet Fox
A YA biography of Rosalind Franklin, the X-ray crystallographer whose work was essential to discovering the structure of DNA — and who received almost none of the credit. Published by Zest Books.
The Moment You Know You Have to Write It 1:34
Every book in this conversation started the same way: someone read something, felt something tighten in their chest, and couldn’t let it go. For Lindsay Metcalf, it was a 2021 article about Eunice Newton Foote, the scientist who discovered in 1856 that excess carbon dioxide can warm the atmosphere, only to be completely forgotten as a man named John Tyndall made the same discovery three years later and became crowned “the father of climate science.” Lindsay emailed her agent the next day.
“Why are there no books about this woman? There weren’t even traditionally published adult books.”— Lindsay Metcalf 1:48
For Debbie Loren Dunn, the spark came fourteen years ago when her daughter, then in medical school, told her about Rosalind Franklin. Debbie started reading and quickly realized that while a few light picture books existed, nothing had really told Rosalind’s full story, including the three groundbreaking scientific discoveries she made without ever receiving a Nobel Prize. Janet Fox came into the project later, recruited by Debbie after it had grown beyond a picture book into something far larger.
Why It Wouldn’t Fit in a Picture Book 3:27
All three authors initially approached their subjects as picture books, which, they quickly discovered, was like trying to fit an ocean into a teacup. The problem wasn’t just length. It was complexity.
For Debbie, the challenge was that Rosalind Franklin had three distinct major scientific contributions, each deserving serious treatment. The story also didn’t have a tidy, uplifting picture-book ending because history didn’t give Rosalind one. “It’s not a good night story,” Debbie said more than once. The injustice was too real, too layered to be smoothed into 32 pages.
For Lindsay, the issue was the sheer density of Eunice’s life. As she built out a research timeline, she discovered that Eunice wasn’t just a scientist — she was a suffragist, an inventor, a Seneca Falls Convention participant, a friend of Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She lived during the dawn of industrialization, at the exact moment fossil-fuel-powered inventions were being patented by men (including her husband!0 while she was quietly proving that carbon dioxide was warming the planet. A picture book, she realized, couldn’t hold all of that.
“It would not do it justice the way I wanted to tell it as a picture book.”— Lindsay Metcalf 7:22
Research as Obsession — and Excavation 8:48
If there’s a theme running through this episode, it’s that serious nonfiction research isn’t just reading, it sometimes takes a pilgrimage to important places. Both projects required authors to physically go somewhere to find the truth.
Debbie traveled to the University of Maryland, Baltimore, where Rosalind Franklin’s best friend had archived Franklin’s lab notebooks, personal letters, and correspondence from the 1950s. “I put on the white gloves, and I got to hold these things,” she said. She also flew to London to visit the Wellcome Collection, where Rosalind’s actual X-ray equipment is preserved.
Lindsay, with almost no adult biographies to draw from, had to build her picture of Eunice Newton Foote from scratch. She found a small archive of Eunice’s letters at the Smithsonian, letters held under the name of her daughter, a Washington D.C. socialite. She then Lindsay drove through upstate New York, visiting the places where Eunice grew up, studied, and conducted her experiments. She believes she found Eunice’s wood stove in Seneca Falls. She tracked down the actual court case documenting how Eunice’s husband saved her family farm — the same court case that, according to secondary sources, is how they met.
The lesson here is one every nonfiction writer knows but sometimes needs to hear again: the document changes everything. Until you have the primary source in hand, you can’t put it on the page with confidence.
Making the Science Accessible Without Losing the Truth 11:11
Writing complex scientific topics, even for teen readers, requires a deep knowledge of the audience and a tough balance.
Debbie, a relentless researcher, would go as deep as the science demanded. Janet, who has a science background but also writes literary fiction, would read those passages and ask: does a YA reader need all of this? Usually, they didn’t. Her job was to massage the language until it served the reader rather than the researcher’s enthusiasm.
“Debbie had all of the details. I just needed to pull back a little — just taking some of the language and massaging it until it was reaching that young reader.”— Janet Fox 12:34
Debbie put it more bluntly: “Janet made it palatable.” That division of labor — one author going deep, the other pulling back — is a genuinely useful model, even for authors who are self-editing.
Why Lindsay Wrote in Verse (And Why It Worked) 17:27
One of the most surprising moments in the episode came when Lindsay was asked why she chose to write Footeprint as a novel in verse rather than straight YA nonfiction. Her answer: “Don’t hate me when I say this, but I did it because it was easier.”
It seems counterintuitive, but as Lindsay explained, Eunice Newton Foote’s life had enormous gaps. Months, sometimes years passed where no primary source told Lindsay what was happening. In prose, those gaps are a problem. In verse, they’re an opportunity. A poem can zoom in on a single moment, carry its emotion through metaphor, and then leave white space where the reader brings their own feeling. It lets the writer be honest about what isn’t known without stopping the book dead.
Lindsay also used contextual poems — writing about the layers of a woman’s dress in the 1860s, for instance — to fill in gaps while keeping the work grounded in historical truth. She notes that about 98% of what’s in the book is factually documented, and the back matter carefully distinguishes any imaginative connections she made.
“Poems could help with those transitions. You’re providing a snapshot in time — not only zooming in on something, but providing the emotion around it. And I didn’t wanna make up the emotion, so I used metaphor to have the reader bring their emotion to it.”— Lindsay Metcalf 18:33
Early readers who weren’t familiar with the novel-in-verse format have responded enthusiastically, with trade reviews described as “glowing.” The white space, Lindsay says, helps readers move quickly through the book while the poems pull them into intimate moments that make history feel immediate.
On Collaboration: Staying in Your Lane 21:37
Debbie and Janet’s co-authorship works, both agreed, because they “stay in their lane.” Debbie is the researcher and structural writer; Janet is the editor and emotional depth-finder. They describe their process as almost never disagreeing — not because they agreed on everything, but because they had clearly different areas of authority, and they respected each other in those areas.
The workflow was simple: Debbie sent Janet a chapter. Janet edited it, adding emotional layering and a paring back scientific explanations. She sent it back. They met weekly to discuss what wasn’t working. Repeat.
“We stayed in our lanes.”— Debbie Lauren Dunn 21:58
What made the collaboration possible, Debbie says, was shared work ethic and mutual respect — they didn’t know each other well when the project began. “It would not be a book without Janet,” she said. That kind of generosity in a co-authoring relationship, the willingness to name what the other person brought, is exactly what makes these partnerships work.
Lindsay, who has done collaborative anthology projects with two other authors, describes a different but equally intentional model: massive spreadsheets, coordinating with poets and young activists, dividing responsibilities explicitly, and doing final edits all together on the phone in real time.
Presenting Injustice Without Drowning in It 27:27
Both books are, at their core, about women who were systematically denied credit for work that changed the world. So how do you write about that anger — and the grief underneath it — without overwhelming teen readers?
Debbie’s answer came from Rosalind herself. At first, Debbie was “mad, mad, mad.” But as she read deeper, she found something that shifted her perspective: Rosalind Franklin genuinely didn’t seem to care about the competition and the accolades the men around her were constantly jockeying for. She loved science. She was captivated by what she was finding. That love gave the book its emotional center — not grievance, but passion.
Janet adds that the misinformation about Rosalind’s contribution to DNA still persists in scientific circles today, which gave the book an urgent present-tense quality. Rosalind’s story isn’t just history; it’s a platform for young women currently moving through STEM fields who need to know someone was there before them.
For Lindsay, the key was Eunice’s own resourcefulness. Eunice couldn’t hold a patent as a married woman in New York State — so her stove was filed in her husband’s name. Women weren’t being admitted to the American Association for the Advancement of Science — so she threw herself into the women’s rights movement to change the conditions under which women could practice science. Her carbon dioxide paper couldn’t be presented by a woman — so she got the first director of the Smithsonian to present it for her.
“There were barriers, but there are ways to achieve your dreams and your goals. Even if there are things that conspire to stop you… if you believe in a story and you get rejected, you don’t just put it away.”— Lindsay Metcalf 33:34
The Biggest Shift When Moving from Picture Books to YA 35:22
I closed with a question directly relevant to many writers in this community: if you’re a picture book author considering longer nonfiction, what’s the most important thing you need to know?
Three answers emerged.
From Debbie: There’s a place for all that material you’ve been cutting. Everything you squeezed out of the picture book draft, the detail that didn’t fit, the context you had to sacrifice — in YA nonfiction, it can live. You get to slow down and tell the good parts. (Though you’ll still end up with material you won’t use.)
From Lindsay: Find the subject you’re genuinely obsessed with, because the research and writing process is long, and obsession is what propels you through it. She described writing Footeprint as an act of liberation: instead of condensing, she could finally expand. “I can spend pages writing about this one topic. What?” She thought she was writing middle grade. It came out YA.
From Janet: Put on a completely different hat and think about audience first. With picture books, you’re parsing information for young children. With YA, you get to go deep — layers of character, emotional arc, personal history. The relationship between author and reader is built differently, and you have to understand that shift before the writing can work.
Key Craft Takeaways
- Form follows subject. Sometimes a story is too big for a picture book — and that’s okay. Let the complexity of the material guide your format decision.
- Go to the archive. Primary sources — letters, court documents, lab notebooks held under white gloves — unlock things no secondary source can give you.
- Poetry handles gaps. When the historical record goes silent, verse can carry the emotional truth without fabricating facts.
- In co-authorship, define your lanes early. Respect for each other’s strengths makes the collaboration feel seamless, not like a negotiation.
- Let the subject’s own resilience be the message. Both Eunice and Rosalind navigated injustice by loving their work more than they feared the barriers. That’s the story worth telling.
- Obsession is a feature, not a bug. You’ll need it to carry you through a project that’s bigger and longer than a picture book.
Ready to hear it all in their own words?▶ Watch the Full Episode on YouTube
