The Story
Life as she knows it is about to end for quiet and shy eleven-year-old Ginny Myers. First her beloved grandmother dies, then she learns her family will be moving from the farm where she’s always lived to a cotton mill village in search of a better life and a regular paycheck. The move means leaving behind her friends – including her best friend and cousin Annie – as well as her school, her town, and everything she knows. Ginny is certain she won’t know what to do or how to act, especially without Annie by her side.
Can she overcome her guilt at not being able to save Grandma? Can she live up to her parents’ expectations? Can she summon the courage to act when disaster befalls the village? Ginny’s tale recounts challenges faced by children 130 years ago as well as by today’s youth—encountering death, experiencing hardship, struggling to be accepted, and, ultimately, finding your place wherever you happen to be.
Did that really happen?
Finding Your Place is a work of fiction, but because it’s historical fiction, I’ve made every effort to present facts and situations appropriate to the time period. When reading the book, you may have wondered whether something like that really would’ve happened in 1894.
Let’s take a look...
Did children really work in the mill?
They sure did. At the time, there were no laws against children working like there are today. Children—sometimes as young as seven—filled the lowest paying, lowest-skilled positions in the mills. Many children worked as doffers, sweepers, helpers, and spinners, earning just a few dollars each week. From 1880 to 1910, one fourth of the textile mill workforce was under sixteen.
Some mill owners saw millwork as the best education children could get. After all, they thought, if you trained them for a job when they were young, they would have lifelong skills and be able to work at the mill as adults. Others viewed it as necessary for poor families; it was another way to bring in money. The National Union of Textile Workers and the Knights of Labor led efforts against child labor in the 1880s and 1890s. It wasn’t until 1913 that North Carolina adopted a law that prohibited labor for children under age twelve. Still, without government enforcement, younger children continued to work in the mills.
Source: The Rhythm of the Factory: Life and Labor in North Carolina’s Textile Mill Communities, from a 2006 Exhibit at Glencoe Mill, NC
Is “pasty butt” a real thing?
Unfortunately, it is. Ginny described it correctly as happening when the baby chicks’ poop gets sticky and hard and plugs up the hole where the poop comes out (called a vent). It usually happens only to very young chicks and can be caused by stress or by temperature that is either too hot or too cold. Farmers and backyard chicken owners have a lot to worry about, don’t they!
Source: www.purinamills.com
Was there such a thing as McGuffey’s Reader?
Yes! The Eclectic Readers (informally known as the McGuffey Readers) were reading and literature books for grade levels 1–6. They were widely used as textbooks in American schools from the mid-19th century to the early 20th century and are still used today in some private schools and homeschooling.
The editors of the Readers were brothers William Holmes McGuffey and Alexander Hamilton McGuffey. William created the first four readers and Alexander created the fifth and sixth readers. About 120 million copies of McGuffey's Readers were sold between 1836 and 1960, placing its sales in a category with the Bible and Webster’s Dictionary.
The edition we used in Finding Your Place (pictured here) was published in 1879, and its official title is McGuffey’s Fifth Eclectic Reader, Revised Edition. (Copyright, 1879, by Van Antwerp, Bragg & Co.)
Source: Wikipedia
Did the mills really have baseball teams?
Baseball was a favorite pastime in the mill villages for both athletes and spectators. Children and adults played informal pickup games, but the very best athletes played on the mill-sponsored team. Some mill hands were actually hired for their baseball abilities rather than their work skills. Mills throughout the state sponsored teams, and match-ups were highly anticipated social events. A winning team was a source of great pride for the workers and local community.
Source: The Historical Marker Database, www.HMdb.org
Why did we pluralize the word “Sea” in the title of Jules Verne’s book Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas?
Many people think the real title is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, using the singular word. The original title of this novel, written in French, is Vingt Mille Lieues sous les mers. (In English, that’s “under the seas.”) According to Wikipedia, the novel was first translated from French into English in 1872 by Reverend Lewis Page Mercier. His translation incorrectly used “sea” rather than “seas,” and later translations continued to repeat that error. I used “seas” in Finding Your Place because that was the original title.
And isn’t the fairy tale Emma Jane loves titled “The Princess AND the Pea” rather than “The Princess ON the Pea”?
That’s what I thought until we were making final edits to the book and discovered the actual title is "on" the Pea! The story was written by Hans Christian Andersen, who was from Denmark, so he wrote the story in Danish. Even though the title “The Princess AND the Pea” is all over the internet, we saw at the Hans Christian Andersen Centre website in Denmark that "on" is the correct word. Apparently, over the years various translations of the fairytale from Danish to English and other languages used “and” instead of “on.” Now you know what Hans Christian Andersen chose as his title!
including a Q&A for fun questions to see what you remember from the book, discussion questions, and more!