“Who knew it would be a big hit.”Īfter accumulating a number of published credits Albee felt confident enough to return to history. Albee wrote Dora’s Backpack, the launch title for the Dora the Explorer series and a New York Timesbestseller. “When I left Sesame Street and moved to Connecticut with my husband, I had plenty of work.” Work she rarely turned away because by that time she had three children. “Once you have books in print it’s easier to get published,” she says. “As an editor I would write books on staff.” The popular Elmo Loves You is a Sarah Albee book. Her position created the perfect segue to writing children’s books. “It incorporated all the things I love best: humor, wonderful music, characters with real complexity and it’s for kids.” “I was too old to have grown up on Sesame Street, but I knew I wanted to be part of this show,” she says. She first saw the program on television as an adult. she became an editor at Sesame Street (Children’s Television Workshop back then). “I still owe her a thank you note thirty years later,” Albee says. With the help of a stellar recommendation from a poetry professor who encouraged her writing, Albee landed a journalist job at the American University in Cairo Press Office. She played basketball in college and after graduation played for a semi-pro team in Cairo, Egypt. While studying for her undergraduate degree at Harvard she had the vague idea that she would someday enter the world of publishing, but not necessarily as a writer. It’s almost like I get to do whatever I want for a living.” As a nonfiction history writer if I want to learn about X, Y or Z, I can and write a book about it. “In a way, I feel like I have achieved that. Albee was one of those kids who wanted to be fourteen different things when she grew up. “We were not afraid to try new stuff,” she says. Which is exactly how Albee’s father hooked her, and she is grateful that her parents endowed her and her siblings with confidence and curiosity. “My mission is to tantalize kids with fun facts from history that maybe will get them to learn more.” “By the time they land in my husband’s classroom freshman year of high school they hate history.”īut Albee hopes to change their minds by showing them how it is relevant to their lives and piquing their curiosity.

“When I go to a school visit and ask third and fourth graders, ‘How many of you guys like history?’ almost everyone raises their hand,” she says. John Snow proved that the 1854 cholera epidemic in London was caused by contaminated water from the public pump on Broad Street. From early on her father bounced her on his knee with tales of how Dr.

Dog Days of History by Sarah Albee