“Nicole is an utter joy to work with. I recently enlisted her help with research for an American history series I'm writing for a major children's publisher, and she provided invaluable help with locating primary sources and tracking down exactly the information I was looking for. Her knowledge of history is both wide-ranging and comprehensive, and our missions were thoroughly aligned as we worked together to uncover the stories of people whose voices have been underrepresented in the historical record.  And while rigorously trained and expert in her field, she immediately grasped what I was looking for in the way of age-appropriate material for my readers.

Nicole is methodical and diligent in locating a variety of relevant and interesting primary sources, as well as providing answers to specific research questions about the minutia of daily life in a given historical period. Her familiarity with a wide range of archives enables her to bring together many original and unique sources and perspectives to help flesh out the historical world. She researches and then troubleshoots difficult questions nicely, drawing on a rich combination of material, textual, and visual sources to provide the supporting context and information I need. She addresses all of my queries promptly, and completes the research in an efficient and thorough manner. She is scrupulously attentive to detail, and organized the information, documents, and source notes I needed in a clear and user-friendly way.”

"When I worked on my biography of Alexander Hamilton for a young adult audience—readers 12 and up—Nicole VanderMeer was my secret weapon. Writing for this audience has some specific challenges. One cannot assume the same base of knowledge that adults have. And readers sometimes appreciate different details than adults do (or claim they do). This demands a writer present more evidence to readers, and Nicole was an absolute genius at tracking down what I needed. For example: I wanted to know what the docks where Alexander Hamilton landed in the colonies were like. What was being loaded and unloaded. How they might have looked. Nicole found an archeology report that not only had a map of the docks, it had information on what divers had found in the muck. Broken crockery. Boots. Exactly the sort of thing Alexander Hamilton would have seen when he arrived in New York as a teenager. Details like these are how we can make nonfiction read as vividly as fiction, but with the added weight that every single one is factually accurate.

With her help, Alexander Hamilton: Revolutionary received starred reviews and was a Junior Library Guild selection, not to mention a popular title at Target. She helped me produce a book that not only met exacting standards of librarians, but had enough broad appeal that it could be found by people shopping for electronics, diapers, and Cheez-Its."

“Nicole consistently went above and beyond the research parameters I gave her. She was a pleasure to work with - always organized, on time, and detail-oriented. I’d work with her again in a heartbeat.”