“History is a continuous thread, not a series of events that stand alone,” says Rebecca Stefoff, whose sensitive adaptations have introduced young people to such landmark works of adult nonfiction as A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. In this semiquincentennial year, two of her adaptations will help teenagers take a broad view of American history. Last month saw publication of a revised and updated edition of A Different Mirror for Young People, drawing from Ronald Takaki’s groundbreaking 1993 survey of multicultural America. In September, Seven Stories will release The Rediscovery of America for Young People, based on Ned Blackhawk’s National Book Award–winning history of Native America. Stefoff recently answered some questions by email.

As you adapted The Rediscovery of America, what did you learn that surprised you the most?

What surprised me most was discovering the adoption programs that targeted Native children in the mid-20th century. Many people know something about the boarding schools of an earlier generation, which removed Native children from their homes and communities. Yet the Indian Adoption Project, launched by the Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1958, also “haunted reservations,” as Ned Blackhawk says. Designed to shift the costs of caring for Indigenous children from the government to adoptive and foster families, the program created a generation of “lost birds”—Native adoptees who grew up lacking any connection to their heritage.

Americans are known for their patriotism but not always for an attentiveness to our history. How can we do better at teaching and learning history?

Acknowledging the messiness of history would be a good place to start. Young people are very capable of understanding complexity, mixed motives, and ambiguity. More effort could be made, too, to show how the past shapes the world that young people live in today.

If you could correct one major common misconception about U.S. history, what would that be? 

That the United States is essentially a white, Northern European–descended country. That view, which is entangled with beliefs about exceptionalism and destiny, stems from generations of education that focused on the British colonies along the East Coast as the foundation of our nation. Yet Indigenous peoples occupied the entire hemisphere before Europeans arrived, Spain colonized a vast portion of the present United States, and enslaved Black people outnumbered whites in some colonies. I’d like to see a wider acceptance of the fact that even before it came into existence, the United States was a racial and cultural mosaic.

How would you like the young readers’ adaptation of The Rediscovery of America to contribute to the conversation of where we are now as a country?

I hope young readers will come away with new awareness of how much of U.S .history has been shaped by interactions with the Indigenous nations, from conquest to diplomacy and everything between. In its relations with the sovereign Indigenous nations within its borders, our country has enjoyed periods of cooperation and mutual flourishing in the past. Learning that history tells us that such relations could again be possible, and with nations beyond our borders as well. I hope also that young people will be inspired by the centuries of resolute adaptability by Native people, who have not only resisted erasure but actively worked to define what it means to be Native American.

When you look at America today, what gives you the most hope for the nation’s future? 

I feel as though a growing number of Americans—of all ages, but young people among them—sense that the current status quo is unsustainable: environmentally, economically, politically. A spirit of unrest is not enough on its own to bring about positive change, but it makes me hope that constructive new ideas, new solutions, and new leaders may be on the way. 

Tom Beer is the editor-in-chief.