Retired Summerlin educator uses love of history to pen children’s books

When you want to engage students in history, give them a little mystery. That’s what Summerlin resident Kay Moore does every time she writes a book for young people. An educator before retiring in 2013, she knows how to bring that spark to a young person’s eye with tidbits from history.

Her first two books were published by Scholastic as part of its “If You Lived” series. Besides being used in schools, her books are sold in gift shops at historical sites. Each has sold over 700,000 copies, and both are in second printings.

Moore is set to display her books and autograph them from 6 to 10 p.m. July 22 at the After-Hours Genealogy Fair at the Paseo Verde Library, 280 S. Green Valley Parkway. The event is sponsored by the Clark County Nevada Genealogical Society and Henderson Libraries.

Getting the publisher interested in her books took time and persistence. At first, Moore approached Scholastic, an educational publishing company, and proposed writing a book on the Gold Rush. Scholastic didn’t deem the topic worthy of coverage.

“If you told that to anyone in California, they would cringe,” she said. “Not significant enough (to warrant) coverage? Really?”

As Moore grew up in Maryland and had gone on many a school trip to sites relevant to the Civil War, she then offered to write about that topic. After all, her family had ancestors who fought in the war. When she was 10, Moore recalled going to the attic of her grandparents’ stone house, built in 1796, and finding a Civil War drum stashed there. Her grandmother was blase about it — she had likely forgotten it was there — but Moore was awestruck.

“Even as a child, I recognized the significance of it,” she said.

Fast-forward to modern day, and her query to the publishing company that eventually gave her the green light to write for it. The result was “If You Lived at the Time of the Civil War,” published by Scholastic in 1994.

It was followed by “If You Lived at the Time of the American Revolution,” published by Scholastic in 1998.

The books focus on what everyday life was like for youngsters living then. That’s not the only notable aspect.

“I think I’m the only one to cover it from both points of view, the North and the South,” she said. “If you were in the North, you did ‘this.’ But ‘If you were in the South, ‘it was this way’ kind of thing. You have to have a topic that lends itself to that.”

The concept of stepping out with your left or right foot, for example, was foreign to people in the early 1800s. Shoes were square-toed and made to fit either foot, so training soldiers to march in step resorted to using farm terms — hay for one foot, straw for the other. Movies where leaders call out, “Left, right, left” are inaccurate, Moore said. In the Civil War, it was “hay, straw.”

Moore said one fact young people struggle grasping was the act of slipping a note into one’s shoe so you could honestly say, “I am over 18.” Honor and duty were taken seriously, and a man’s word was his bond in a time when a significant part of the population could not read or write.

Just because one is a published author doesn’t mean there is a free ride for the next project. Another book, “The Great Bicycle Experiment: The Army’s Historic Black Bicycle Corps, 1896-97” was published by Mountain Press Publishing Co. in 2012. It details a group of soldiers tasked with bicycling roughly 2,000 miles, an experiment undertaken by the U.S. Army to determine if the two-wheeled mode of transportation could take the place of the horse. It was a finalist in the 2013 Western Writers of America Spur Awards in the category of Best Western Nonfiction-Juvenile and was recognized with Gold Status in the 2013 Eureka! Children’s Book Awards for excellence in nonfiction.

It told how there were issues from the beginning with the bare-bones invention.

“We’re talking bicycles that had no padded seats, no brakes,” Moore said. “The tires were always falling off. … Each man carried half a tent and some food. There was, like, one comb to share between six men. We’re not talking luxury living here.”

When speaking to classes, she brings artifacts — for example, a replica of Lincoln’s dinner plate, a wire tool to which a rag was attached to clean the inside of a kerosene lamp and scrapers used to remove the hair off pigskin. When Moore visits schools or gives talks, she often brings antiques used in everyday life to further the conversation.

“I like to put them inside a bag so the kids can feel them and try to guess what they are,” Moore said. “It’s the mystery element that gets their attention.”

She peppers her conversation with little-known facts — Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee kept a pet hen, Nellie, as he traveled during the war until his cook decided to serve chicken one night for dinner. The original version of Chutes and Ladders was Snakes and Ladders, so-called because it was a religious game and you had to avoid the snake that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden.

Lynda Griblin is a fourth-grade teacher in the Sylvan Union School District in Modesto, Calif., and past president of the California Reading Association.

“The Great Bicycle Experiment is in my classroom library, and it is always a favorite of my students,” Griblin said. “They tell me that it makes them feel as if they are there and experiencing all the hardships of the soldiers. They are also fascinated with the topic as it is something that they had never heard of before.”

When researching, Moore can spend eight hours at the library. When in writing mode, she said she limits it to four hours to “keep it fresh. I’m a morning person, so that’s when I do my best work.”

Another book, “Nevada Proud: People, Places, Events, Past and Present,” tells what happened in history on that particular day. The April 5 portion notes that it’s the birthday for Zak Bagans, a Las Vegas resident and host of the Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures.”

“It’s for kids, so you have to find someone they know,” Moore said.

Next up is “Bold Women in California History,” which is being written for Mountain Press. It details 13 women who had an impact on history in California. That is set to be followed with a similar book featuring women in Nevada, “Bold Women in Nevada History.”

To reach Summerlin Area View reporter Jan Hogan, email jhogan@viewnews.com or call 702-387-2949.