IF YOU DIDN'T get to meet or hear Marc Aronson when he visited Uni classes last month, you probably saw him interacting with students during the wonderful chaos of the school's third annual Cultural Fair.

The latest renowned author to wander Uni’s halls this year — Jimmie Briggs was another — Aronson’s presence at the fair was a perfect fit.

Known for his ability to cover a huge variety of subjects, his message at Uni focused on his 2007 book titled “Race: A History Beyond Black and White.”

In the two weeks preceding Aronson's Oct. 3 visit, subfreshmen approached the book from the different perspectives that their English, social studies, and science classes provided.

And what a thought-provoking book it was. Here is an excerpt:

On a broiling hot day in June, I was standing on line with one of my sons at the community pool, waiting to buy an ice cream and a drink. We were all sweating, impatient, annoyed. But the line did not move. Why? Crowded around the order-window was a knot of young black males, all about 11-13 years old. … Suddenly the order-taker accused one of the kids of taking a bill out of the tip jar.

Did he? I felt certain that he had. … Hard as it is to admit, I believed he was guilty because he was black.

Prejudice. I am prejudiced. As in a nightmare, a boy I have never met suddenly looms as a monster. We all know that it is wrong to be ruled by that kind of feeling. But that is useless in that flash of an instant when we see another person and form an attitude about him or her. It happens to all of us, all of the time.

I wrote this book to help understand why I, why we, Americans of all colors, experience race as such a powerful force, even as dutifully state that it is just a difference of skin color, and has no significance. Because I am a historian, not a biologist, it is not about cells and DNA, but about the deep roots of racism, and the astonishingly short history of the idea of race.

Janet Morford, head of the social studies department, was impressed with Aronson and how her classes reacted with him.

"They worked hard to understand [his] analysis and to formulate their own questions and responses to it," she stated. "As a result, they were able to learn a great deal from the reading and class assignments, and from the special session with Aronson during his visit."

As part of their English class, the subbies wrote letters to Aronson containing reactions to his book and questions about it. According to librarian Frances Harris, Aronson had nothing but praise for the students' thoughtful letters.

"He loved that they challenged him on a number of points in his book," she said. "There was so much discussion during his two-hour sessions with the subbies that we never even got to the activity that he had planned."

Feeling at home in many cultures is characteristic of Aronson. He takes pride in his status as an internationalist. One of his projects is an effort to collect coming-of-age stories from around the world and make them available to an American audience.

This would be yet another addition to his wide-ranging body of nonfiction work for young people. Among many other topics, his previous books have examined teen literacy, the Age of Exploration, avant-garde art, cool things for boys, and the Salem Witch Trials.

Aronson was kind enough to answer a few questions during a lull in the Cultural Fair’s excitement.

Besides being a prolific author, Aronson is an award-winning editor and the publisher of Cricket Books at Carus Publishing.

With original plans to become an archaeologist, he made the leap to earning a doctorate in history before eventually settling on his current path of writing for a young audience.

"I was working editing books, nonfiction books, and as I worked on the books I thought, 'You know, I can do this,'" he recalled. "So it was sort of an evolution."

Communicating via his own books, numerous school visits, and classroom teaching, Aronson is most enthusiastic about reaching young adult readers.

"I like smart teenagers," he said. "I think teenagers have lively minds, and their minds are not necessarily so frozen into position as adults might be. But on the other hand they're older than little kids, where you have a more limited range of things you can talk about."

Indeed, the main reason Aronson visited Uni was his participation in another event on campus that weekend, the U of I College of Education's three-day Youth Literature Festival. He was one of more than 20 authors and illustrators who visited local schools and took part in events throughout the community to celebrate reading and writing.

Aronson was eager to share his Web site so that readers could give him direct feedback. He wants to get a better idea of what is or isn’t working in his books.

Regarding his method for choosing future subjects, Aronson said he either follows his heart or reacts to suggestions made by his editor.

As for any parting words of wisdom for aspiring writers, Aronson offered two: "read" and "practice."

"You have to write a lot and read a lot, because reading shows you how other people have done stuff," said Aronson, whose wife, Marina Budhos, is a novelist and college writing teacher. "And so it's just like if you want to be an athlete, you study how other people swim or hit or whatever it is, and then you practice shooting baskets or taking slapshots.

"Well, it's no different for being an author. You observe how really good people have done it, and then you practice."