The Ink Splat is our monthly activity letter filled with inspiration sparking challenges and resources guaranteed to inspire your creativity. In this Ink Splat, the book and author spotlighted is Children of Alcatraz: Growing Up on the Rock by Claire Rudolph Murphy along with an author interview! Submit a response to a challenge and you may have a chance to be published online! What are you waiting for?
The Challenge: Map It Out
Take any toy or object from your room and hide it somewhere secret in your house. Now, take out a piece of paper and some markers to draw a map that would lead a person through different rooms in your home until they reach the room with the treasure! Think about an object from each room you can draw as a clue to what room the treasure trail should be followed through. For example, if the hunt goes through the kitchen maybe you can draw a fork or a spoon. Once you are done with your awesome map give Mom, Dad, or a sibling this Treasure Hunt Challenge! Have fun!
Submit your response HERE!
Try using this word in your writing:
Shirk is a verb verb meaning to avoid something.
All but one of the soldiers shirked from the morning patrol of the river.
Children of Alcatraz: Growing Up on the Rock by Claire Rudolf Murphy.
When most people think of Alcatraz, they think of the high-security prison and the infamous criminals who resided within its walls. Not many know about the children who lived outside of them. What was life like for the children on Alcatraz?
The children lived on Alcatraz because their parents worked there. Soldiers and prison guards brought their families to live with them on the island, and later Native American families occupied the island. Life for the children on Alcatraz was different than life for children who lived in the city in many ways. This book gives a glimpse into those experiences, telling the stories of these children through the decades. These stories are full of vivid detail, ranging from going to school to playful adventures to safety concerns (and lack of them). Currently, not much research has been done on the history of the Alcatraz families and the communities they built there. Claire Rudolf Murphy’s book is changing that fact, using research, interviews, and photographs to chronicle those unique stories. Children of Alcatraz: Growing Up on the Rock is 64 pages. While recommended for ages 9-12, readers of all ages can enjoy the book’s clear descriptions and photographs.
The timeline of Alcatraz’s history with children begins with the Native Americans that fished there, and continues on to include the lighthouse and military families, the prison families, and finally, the families of the Native American occupation ending in 1971. Now, large numbers of families visit the National Historic Park at Alcatraz, including the now-empty prison. The children who lived on Alcatraz during the late prison years and the Native American occupation are now grown up, but they hold many memories of Alcatraz that are shared in Murphy’s book.
Children of Alcatraz: Growing Up on the Rock by Claire Rudolf Murphy. ISBN-10: 0802795773 get it here.
Q: What inspired you to write about the children of Alcatraz?
I can still remember the moment I stood in the little museum room near the dock, that featured photographs of the history of the island. 1953 Life Magazine photographs featured kids playing on the parade grounds and getting on the boat for school in San Francisco. How could that be, I wondered? Families living in this dangerous place? And then my research began and I found out that it was a wonderful place to grow up – safe and surrounded by community.
Q: What surprised you in your research about Alcatraz?
How kids have lived on the island ever since it was a military fort in the 1850’s and how later the inmates in the infamous federal prisoner weren’t the most dangerous ones in America, but rather ones more prone to escape. San Francisco Bay turned out to be a great deterrent, with only one successful escape in its 29 years as a federal prison.
Q: If you could live in any time period from the past, which would it be and why?
So many periods in history appeal to me. That’s why I love to write about them. The writer Beverly Cleary (Ramona books) says, “Give yourself the gift in writing you don’t have in your life.” Right now I’d love to be a suffragist, working to win women the vote in America. I am working on an historical novel set in the final suffrage vote of 1920 and my newest book Marching With Aunt Susan: Susan B. Anthony and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage features a real girl in the 1896 California suffrage campaign. But that said, how lucky we are to live in 2011 when women can not only vote, but run for president, run a corporation and compete in the Olympics.
THANK YOU, Claire Rudolf Murphy.
To purchase a copy of Children of Alcatraz: Growing Up on the Rock by Claire Rudolf Murphy click here.
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