Article by Laurie Needham
Neighbors Magazine
November 2005
Page 8
On first encounter, Anthony seems like a typical 12-year-old. He attends school, plays soccer, and loves the outdoors. However, Anthony is an accomplished time traveler, and has narrated his adventures to his dad, Michael, who has documented Anthony's travels in a new book called “Anthony and the Magic Picture Frame.”
The storyline of the book is fictional, of course, but the times and places that Anthony visits are authentic. According to the book, Anthony is transported back in time with the help of a magical picture frame that he steps through to visit people such as Charles Lindbergh, Jonas Salk, Thomas Edison, and Buzz Aldrin. After each visit, Anthony reflects on what he has learned and suggests moral lessons that can prepare kids for the future. The photos of the historic events, with Anthony in them, make the stories really come alive.
The book is the brainchild and four-year labor of love of Anthony’s father, who penned the book under the pseudonym, Michael S. Class. After September 11, 2001, Michael felt that children were searching for guidance and he wondered, ”What would the heroes of the past say to the children of today?” The answer: “The people of the past have something important to tell us: that the purpose of life is to live a life of purpose, and doing the right thing always matters.” Because he wanted complete control over the publication and content, Michael started a company called Magic Picture Frame Studio. His publishing company is dedicated to telling the stories of the past in ways that make history exciting to the children of today.
The idea of presenting the stories in such a unique way germinated while Michael was working for Corbis, a stock photo company in Seattle. At the time, Corbis was producing CD-ROM based educational products using pictures. Michael had been thinking of documenting his family’s history and believed that using photos would be a good way to tell the story and make it more interesting to his children.
After Corbis, Michael helped start up an Internet security company, WatchGuard Technologies, and take it public. Its success enabled him to retire as a “dot-com” executive. Now, he could devote the time and energy to turn his dream into a reality. He started his family history project with son Anthony’s piqued interest. Anthony’s favorite subject had always been history and he especially liked doing research to discover more things to do and read about important historical events.
As ideas for the project evolved, Michael imagined placing Anthony’s image into family photos. He started by taking photos of Anthony against a blue background and then overlaying the image into historical family shots using photo-editing software. The quality of his first attempt was so poor that he decided to enroll in photography school (The Photographic Center Northwest, in Seattle) to master digital photography and compositing. As father and son’s enthusiasm grew, Michael decided to include the story of his grandfather’s immigration from Italy in 1907 with other events of the past into a book and "Anthony and the Magic Picture Frame" came into being.
To make the book historically accurate, Michael set out to get as much original source material as possible. Because copyrighted materials required approval for use, he obtained permissions and approvals from the estates of historical figures. For example, for Anthony’s interview with Charles Lindbergh, Michael collected quotes from Lindbergh’s historic flight across the Atlantic and wove Anthony’s interview into them. To reproduce Lou Gehrig’s famous “Farewell to Baseball” speech, he contacted the Gehrig family’s representatives. Michael says one of the more pleasant surprises was that most approvals were enthusiastically given once people found out what he was doing and saw early proofs of chapters.
To make each chapter visually impressive, Michael went to Corbis to purchase additional historical pictures he wanted, and to acquire the permission to place Anthony into the photos. He estimates he spent about a week on each of the 82 photos included in the book. He had to create shading and shadows of Anthony to match the existing composition of a photo and alter colors to blend in with the black and white or sepia tones of the historic photos. In some pictures, Anthony is quite noticeable, such as the photo of him with Buzz Aldrin on the moon, but in others he is barely visible, such as in a bread line during the Great Depression, but he’s always there somewhere.
Since the book is intended as a teaching tool, both Michael and Anthony hope that it captures the interest of today’s students by turning American History into a grand time travel adventure. Each chapter is about a historical event and carries a moral message. The chapter on Anthony’s observations of D-Day and the liberation of the death camps is a testament to the reality of evil and the need to fight it. The book also includes fun “to do” lists containing hundreds of books, movies, music and places to visit. Everything on the lists is content rated. The Web site, www.MagicPictureFrame.com, includes a final exam.
Michael already has ideas and materials for a second book. And, Angela, Anthony’s sister, is eager to step through the magic picture frame and become a time traveler, too. Michael remembers the amount of work and money that went into producing his book. However, he learned enough through four years of research, writing, and publication that he knows he can avoid some of the frustrations and pitfalls the second time.
To order this 225-page, elegantly printed book ($35, hardcover), visit www.MagicPictureFrame.com or call toll-free 1-800-247-6553. Also available on Amazon.com.
Tempus Fugit!
