From the moment I first saw her portrait, I was captivated by Millie Cornaro—bonnet strings dangling, busy hands held together, that impish smile.
Her expression is one that I see on my students’ faces, on my own children’s faces. They look up from their work, ready for play, for a laugh, checking to see if you’ll join in or steer them back to the task at hand. Ten-year-old Millie’s task had nothing to do with classwork; she picked cranberries.
Day in and day out, until the job was done, and her family moved on to the next harvest. It didn’t matter that Millie and many children like her missed weeks, even months of school. In this photograph, taken by Lewis Hine on September 28, 1910, a sparkle of Millie's personality shines through, despite the physical discomfort and tedium of the job. It is this persistence of the “human spirit,” as Hine called it, that “is the big thing after all.” Hine's ability to show that spirit while revealing the terrible nature of child labor is what drew me to him as a photographer.
Lewis Hine and his advocacy for working kids are the subjects of my new picture book, The Traveling Camera: Lewis Hine and the Fight to End Child Labor, illustrated by Michael Garland and published by Getty Publications. Hine took photographs for the National Child Labor Committee from 1906 to 1918, documenting the large numbers of young people in the labor force and the harsh conditions under which they worked. His pictures attracted national attention and assisted in the passage of child labor laws.
It’s hard to find children in the historical record, let alone poor, working-class, minority, or immigrant children. Hine, though, took thousands of photographs of kids, catching moments like the one he shared with Millie: eye-to-eye, mid-exchange, mid-task. And he went to great lengths to do it, traveling around the country and using disguises to sneak into some work sites.
When children read The Traveling Camera, they visit textile mills and coal mines, and they meet Millie and other children who are based on real kids that Hine photographed. Readers also get to know Hine himself, not only through Michael Garland's wonderful illustrations but from direct quotations.
Hine had a poetic voice and a great sense of humor, and his students at the Ethical Culture School in New York City—where he taught before becoming a full-time photographer—thought he was an excellent actor. About his decision to leave teaching, he said, “I was merely changing the educational efforts from the classroom to the world.”
I decided to write the story in first person from Hine’s perspective, and in free verse, which seemed like an obvious choice given the lyrical language Hine used in his articles and letters. As children and the adults who read with them enjoy hearing poetry and exploring the beautiful and detailed illustrations, they can find their way into many different conversations.
Some topics are obvious: the differences between the lives of the children depicted in the story and those of young readers now, how child labor laws have improved, but also the continued existence of child labor today. When I visit classrooms, we talk about how we have each likely eaten something produced, in part, with child labor, especially if it contains chocolate or palm oil. We talk about why 2021 was proclaimed by the United Nations the year to end child labor, and why the COVID-19 pandemic has led to an increase in child labor.
Some topics are natural extensions, such as the power of art to help achieve social justice and the responsibility that comes with taking pictures. And we imagine putting ourselves in another’s shoes, be that today or at another time. After all, that’s the gift of reading.
