*See sample pages here:
*Watch two video trailers here:
Caroline Preston on the book:
Frankie Pratt’s video book trailer:
EARLY PRAISE FOR THE SCRAPBOOK OF FRANKIE PRATT:
“Scrapbooking was never like this before. Author Caroline Preston, with three novels to her credit, has let ephemera do a lot of the talking in her first “scrapbook novel” telling the tales of Frankie Pratt a very smart young woman from Cornish Flats, New Hampshire who was given a scrapbook for her high
school graduation in 1920. …The text, delivered by the old Corona, is sparse and terse, at times almost like Hemingway, but that’s to be expected when it’s images that fill most of the pages and add so much to the story. .. . It’s no wonder there are so many well-chosen illustrations. Caroline Preston knows her way around scrapbooks and ephemera as she has served as an archivist at both the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard’s Houghton Library.”
school graduation in 1920. …The text, delivered by the old Corona, is sparse and terse, at times almost like Hemingway, but that’s to be expected when it’s images that fill most of the pages and add so much to the story. .. . It’s no wonder there are so many well-chosen illustrations. Caroline Preston knows her way around scrapbooks and ephemera as she has served as an archivist at both the Peabody/Essex Museum and Harvard’s Houghton Library.”
―The Ephemera Society of America Newsletter
“In handsome, full-color pages, the memorabilia tell the story of Frankie, an aspiring writer who leaves her poor New England family to travel to Vassar, then to New York, then to Paris, where she becomes tangled in a romance with an older publisher with ties to her past. . . . . a nifty armchair tour of postwar literary culture.”
―Publishers Weekly
“ . . . .tore through THE SCRAPBOOK OF FRANKIE PRATT by Caroline Preston. I think a lot of readers are going to adore this novel told through collected ephemera, everything from 1930s advertising circulars to locks of hair and pieces of jewelry.”
―Friday Reads Blog
“lovingly constructed with gorgeous 20s ephemera. . . .the bee's knees, the cat's meow.”
―The Roaring 20s Blog
EVENTS FOR CAROLINE PRESTON AND HER BOOK
THE SCRAPBOOK OF FRANKIE PRATT:
*All events are talks, discussions and signing events unless otherwise noted.
TUESDAY OCTOBER 25TH – CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA
University of Virginia Bookstore – 8:00 PM
400 Emmet Street South
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904
Charlottesville, Virginia 22904
Main Phone: 434-924-1074
THURSDAY OCTOBER 27TH – NEW YORK, NEW YORK
192 Books – 7:00 PM
192 10th Avenue
New York, New York 10011
Main Phone: 212.255.4022
FRIDAY OCTOBER 28TH – NEW CANAAN, CONNECTICUT
New Canaan Library – 12:00 PM
151 Main Street
New Canaan, Connecticut 06840
Main Phone: 203-594-5021
FRIDAY OCTOBER 28TH – MADISON, CONNECTICUT
RJ Julia Booksellers – 7:00 PM
768 Boston Post Road
Madison, Connecticut 06443
Main Phone: 203.245.3959
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 1ST – WASHINGTON, D.C.
Barnes & Noble – 6:30 PM
555 12th Street NW
Washington, D.C. 20004
Main Phone: 202-347-0176
THURSDAY NOVEMBER 3RD – CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Ragdale Foundation – 4:30 PM
@ Southgate Café
655 Forest Avenue
Lake Forest, Illinois 60045
*Join Lake Forest native & Ragdale alumna Caroline Preston for an afternoon tea & reading event. Books sold by Lake Forest Book Store
*$30, advance registration required, call Ragdale 847-234-1063 x201 or m.ernst@ragdale.org.
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 4TH – CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
Women & Children First – 7:30 PM
5233 North Clark Street
Chicago, Illinois 60640
Main Phone: 773.769.9299
FRIDAY NOVEMBER 11TH – CHAPEL HILL, NORTH CAROLINA
Flyleaf Books – 12:00 PM
752 MLK Junior Boulevard
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514
Flyleaf Books – 12:00 PM
752 MLK Junior Boulevard
Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514
SATURDAY NOVEMBER 12TH – DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
McIntyre’s – 11:00 AM
220 Market Street
Fearrington Village
Pittsboro, North Carolina 27312
Main Phone: 919-542-3030
http://www.fearrington.com/village/mcintyres.asp
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 13TH – CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS
Concord Bookshop – 3:00 PM
65 Main Street
Concord, Massachusetts 01742
http://www.fearrington.com/village/mcintyres.asp
SUNDAY NOVEMBER 13TH – CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS
Concord Bookshop – 3:00 PM
65 Main Street
Concord, Massachusetts 01742
MONDAY NOVEMBER 14TH – BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS
Boston Public Library – 6:00 PM
Central Library
700 Boylston Street
Boston, Massachusetts 02116
Main Phone: 617-536-5400
*Caroline Preston & Marisa de los Santos in conversation
TUESDAY NOVEMBER 15TH – CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
Porter Square Books – 7:00 PM
25 White Street
Porter Square Shopping Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140
Porter Square Books – 7:00 PM
25 White Street
Porter Square Shopping Center
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140
Main Phone: 617-491-2220
http://www.portersquarebooks.com/
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 16TH – SOUTH HADLEY, MASSACHUSETTS
Odyssey Bookshop – 7:00 PM
9 College Street
South Hadley, Massachusetts 01075
WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 16TH – SOUTH HADLEY, MASSACHUSETTS
Odyssey Bookshop – 7:00 PM
9 College Street
South Hadley, Massachusetts 01075
Main Phone: 413-534-7307
THURSDAY DECEMBER 1ST – RICHMOND, VIRGINIA
Library of Virginia – 5:30 PM
800 East Broad Street
Richmond, Virginia 23219
Main Phone: 804-692-3813
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/
MONDAY DECEMBER 5TH – ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Decatur Public Library – 7:15 PM
Georgia Center for the Book
215 Sycamore Street
Decatur, Georgia 30030
http://www.lva.virginia.gov/
MONDAY DECEMBER 5TH – ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Decatur Public Library – 7:15 PM
Georgia Center for the Book
215 Sycamore Street
Decatur, Georgia 30030
Main Phone: 404-370-8450
How my love for vintage ephemera inspired a “scrapbook novel” –
The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt: A Novel in Pictures
By Caroline Preston
Several of my friends and colleagues have asked me how I came to write a scrapbook novel, or what some would call a graphic novel, which was such a radical departure from my three previous novels. In truth, the idea was forty years in the making.
I spent an unhealthy portion of my childhood rooting around in the boiling-or-freezing attic of my parent’s house in Lake Forest, Illinois. My mother could be called a tidy pack rat—keeping many generations worth of diaries, letters, clippings, dresses and weird souvenirs in neatly labeled trunks and boxes. Some of my favorite discoveries: a few pages of Ulysses corrected by Joyce himself (sent to my grandmother from her best friend Sylvia Beach), coils of my grandmother’s auburn hair which she’d bobbed in 1924, a skull my mother had picked up at Machu Picchu in 1938, my great-aunt’s suffragette sash. These treasures seemed to tell as vivid and romantic story as one I’d find in a novel.
In high school, I moved out of the attic and started rummaging through stacks of old papers in antique shops and bookshops. Pretty soon I had an unwieldy collection of antique valentines and scrapbooks, which I carried along with me to Dartmouth (where I majored in American Literature) and Brown (where I got a masters in American Civilization).
I turned my hobby into a vocation by becoming an archivist, first at the Peabody/Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and later at Harvard’s Houghton Library. In fireproof vaults, I sorted through vast collections of scrapbooks, valentines, and vintage photographs piled on dusty shelves— my childhood attic times a thousand. Some of the favorite items I cataloged: the court papers from the Salem witchcraft trials, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s boyhood diary, and Teddy White’s “Camelot Interview” with Jackie Kennedy two days after JFK’s assassination.
After fifteen years as an archivist, I decided I wanted to turn some of the stories I’d uncovered in letters and diaries into novels. My first novel, Jackie by Josie, was inspired by Teddy White’s Jackie interview. I came up with the idea for my third novel, Gatsby’s Girl, after seeing the scrapbook F. Scott Fitzgerald kept about his first girlfriend who was the model for Daisy Buchanan.
In 2009 as I was casting about for the subject of my fourth novel, I realized I was frustrated by the conventional novel form. I missed the visceral thrill of unfolding letters and flipping through old albums of my archival work. Then I had a sudden inspiration—why not create a novel that was a scrapbook? Not a metaphorical or digital scrapbook, but a real scrapbook, made up of real stuff – letters, postcards, tickets, clippings, menus, fabric swatches, magazine covers, fashions spreads, candy wrappers, and sheet music – that I cut up with scissors and pasted together with glue.
Making a scrapbook novel turned out to be a ridiculously ambitious and multi-stepped project. First I made up a fictitious character—Frances Pratt, an 18 year-old aspiring writer, who journeys from a small New England village to Vassar, Greenwich Village, and the Left Bank of Paris in search of love and success. Frankie’s story begins in 1920 and ends in 1928—those whiz-bang years when every aspect of American life was upended and reinvented.
The next step to was to assemble Frankie’s scrapbook item by item—in all I collected over 600 pieces of original 1920’s ephemera. Some I found in my own stash of vintage paper, the rest I tracked down and bought from dozens of antique stores and hundreds of eBay sellers.
Here is a sampling of favorite finds for each chapter.
*For Frankie’s early years in Cornish, New Hampshire: a 1915 Corona Portable typewriter (which I used for all the captions in the book), a pack of Gypsy Fortune Telling Cards, a 1920 Sears Catalog, McCall’s dress patterns, a Warren Harding campaign pin and hair clippings.
*For the Vassar chapter: a 1923 Vassar yearbook, a Bakelite bracelet, a Cashmere Bouquet powder compact, a “Hawaiian Fox Trot” record, a Chesterfield cigarette pack, a 1922 sex manual, a Yale dance card, a book of Green Stamps, a pair of women’s driving glasses, and a silk graduation tassel.
*For the Greenwich Village chapter: a 1924 subway map, a spoon from the Horn & Hardart automat, a Coney Island Thunderbolt ticket, a bracelet of Cracker Jack toys, the first New Yorker cover, and a Prohibition prescription for “medicinal liquor.”
*For the chapter on Frankie’s Atlantic crossing on the deluxe Cunard liner, Mauretania—vintage luggage tickets, 3rd class menu and stateroom postcard, and a box of seasickness pills.
*For the Paris chapter—a 1924 Paris Blue Guide, a beaded Flapper purse, a tortoise shell and rhinestone cigarette holder, a Folies Bergere ticket, a dust jacket for The Sun Also Rises, and a Spirit of St. Louis badge handed out on the streets of Paris when Lindbergh landed.
I must confess that creating The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt was more guilty pleasure than painstaking labor. What other project could I spend countless hours and dollars on eBay every day and tell my husband with a straight face that I was “working on my novel”?
I have started in on my next scrapbook novel, this one kept by a bride during her first year of marriage 1959-1960. I like to think of it as a prequel to Mad Men. Once again, my beleaguered mailman trudges to the front door with an armful of packages that won’t fit in the box. My favorite gets so far: a 1959 Brides magazine, the Betty Crocker Bride’s Cookbook, a 1960 sex manual, View-Master slides, a set of bride and groom paper dolls…
Caroline Preston is the author of three previous novels, Jackie by Josie (a New York Times Notable Book), Lucy Crocker 2.0, and Gatsby’s Girl. For more on The Scrapbook of Frankie Pratt, visit her web
In my opinion this was a sweet, fun, witty take on a novel. It was so much fun to scan all the photos on the page as I read the story of Frankie. Frankie is definitely a character you won't soon forget. When we meet her she is a fun loving, nice girl who us accepted at Vassar College but because of the price, she tells her mother she will not go instead she will work and save to become a nurse as her mother did. She knows her mother doesn't have the money to send her and doesn't want to burden her mom.
She takes a job as a nursemaid "babysitter" for an elderly woman but when the woman's grown son makes advances Frankie's mother does what any mother would do and gets them to write a check out to send Frankie to Vassar.
On a college scholarship, Frankie attends a prestigious school and matures. I loved the book and would love to hear more about Frankie. The photos of the memorabilia surrounding and enhancing the story forces me to remember how much I loved scrapbooking and I wish I had time to pull them out right now to look at them. Wonderful story and a great way to read. I always use the philosophy with my social media clients, "if there is a picture attached, they will read it! Quick read! Very well done! Can't wait for the next one.
To Own:
Disclaimer: I received a complimentary book for my honest opinion from Harper Collins
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