the page crease.
Then comes a heading, “Section 1,” in a little golden egg, and “Road to
War.” Still the chapter does not start; first we have a summary headed “Read to
Discover.. .” followed by three topics. (I would call them themes, except that
term has already been usurped.) Then we have five “Terms to Learn.” They are
followed by a heading, “The Storyteller,” which introduces a paragraph by
William Shirer about a Nazi rally. At last, after a photograph of the book jacket
of Mein Kampf, we finally begin the narrative text about World War II. In all,
about 55 percent of the World War II chapter is not the narrative text, but
interruptions to it. Some of these sidebars and boxes offer excerpts from
original sources or useful vignettes. Others are less than useful “Activities”
and “Terms to Learn.” Overall, they distract. Since the narrative text comprises
less than half of the whole, often it looks lost on the page, becoming just one
more interruption.
Could this jumble be necessary? Millions of middle-schoolers have read
Harry Potter books voluntarily. Yet each book contains hundreds of pairs of
facing text pages with no illustrations, no sidebars—nothing but the main story.
Cluttering every page with “Multimedia Activities,” “The Storyteller,” and
“Terms to Learn” seems aimed at textbook adoption committees rather than
actual readers. The narrative looks more readable than Harry Potter but is
actually far less readable.
Moving beyond style, what content do adopters want to see? First off, they
look for nice treatments of events and people important to their own state. In
New Hampshire, woe to the textbook that speaks honestly about Franklin W.
Pierce, famed fourteenth president of these United States. He was perhaps our
second-worst president ever, as he presided over near civil war in Kansas,
had his diplomats gather to produce the embarrassing Ostend Manifesto (which
threatened to take Cuba; eventually the U.S. State Department had to disavow
the document), and was drunk much of the time. But he was the only president
New Hampshire ever produced. Likewise, the Alamo lies deep in the heart of
(Anglo) Texans; woe to any textbook that might point out that love of slavery
motivated Anglos to fight there for “freedom.” Some local demands make for
more inclusive history: California’s legislature recently debated a bill to
require textbooks to include the internment of Japanese Americans during
World War II.^32
Usually adopters find the details they seek. Most textbook editors start their