I.N.K.

For the Kids

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Bausum) — Fri, 17 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

Susan E. Goodman shared a wonderful tribute to mothers recently, and the coincidence of my youngest son’s upcoming college graduation inspires me to add a note of recognition for children.

Whenever I do a school visit, I include a brief introduction about myself. “Here’s me in fourth grade,” I say, soon after the session begins. “If you’d asked me then what I wanted to be when I grew up, the first thing I’d have said was, ‘I want to be a children’s book author.’” It made perfect sense. I loved books. I loved to write. Why not write books for kids? Case closed.

And yet, I tell the school children, I didn’t immediately become a children’s book author when I grew up. Instead I turned, upon finishing college, to what I call “more practical writing,” and then I describe the work I did for ten years with the marketing of books, academic public relations, and the editing of an alumni magazine.

“It was only when I took a break to have kids,” I tell my audience, “that I reconnected with that childhood idea to write for young people.” So I have an easy answer when kids ask, “What made you want to become a children’s book author?”—“My kids,” I reply. Then I show a childhood photo of Sam and Jake “reading” Winnie the Pooh together. Hearts melt.

What came next, I tell the students, is the birth of my writing career. “While I watched my kids grow up, they watched my career grow. Now they’re in middle school/high school/college (fill in the blank depending on what year I’ve been speaking), and I’ve published seven/eight/nine books (add corresponding number of titles).”

Then I show a photo of my two sons at their present ages, contrasted with the photo of them as young children. Kids eat it up, of course, because they can see themselves in such a narrative, and I never tire of telling this story about my life and the lives of my sons.

Sam, Class of 2011, now with City Year

Jake, Class of 2013, Pitzer College

Silly me.

When I first became a children’s author, I thought that my story was unique. Now I’ve met and heard about dozens of authors who were inspired to write because of the children in their lives. Their own kids. Their grandkids. The children they teach. The children who visit the libraries where they work. The 10-year-old child embedded in their own hearts. You know what I’m talking about!

Yet here we are, writing away for the archetypal young while our own original sources of inspiration grow toward adulthood and beyond. This Saturday my youngest son graduates from college, and the narrative of my school visits will have to be updated again. From cuddly boys to grown men. There’s a tale to celebrate!

So it’s no wonder I’m drawn to visit schools, and you may be, too, for the same reason. Instantly we are surrounded by the little people who remind us why we write.

Yes, it helps that our work can pay the bills, and yes, we write because we were meant to be writers, but we write for young people because, at the heart of it, we care about their future. If we can just give them good stories, good history, good science, inspiring knowledge, we will have, we hope, made a difference.

I always say that being a parent was and is the best job I’ve ever had. Probably the hardest, too, but by far the most rewarding. Writing for young people is a very close second! Like parenting, it is a labor of love, born of the idea of passing on the joy of life to the youngest among us.

Thanks, Jake and Sam, for inspiring me to be a better parent and a better writer. While I'm at it, I commend my fellow authors for writing and sharing your hearts and minds through your own works, and we all thank those in the wider publishing community who connect our creations with those smaller hands across the land. All are causes for celebration!

Reminding Myself

noreply@blogger.com (Tanya Lee Stone) — Thu, 16 May 2013 12:46:00 +0000

I have been traveling much more than usual of late. Travel always sparks new ideas. Perhaps it is because it is spring, or because I’ve been to Italy and Texas and Little Cranberry Isle and back, but my brain is bursting with new ideas. I am always reminded, when I get outside of my own mini-microcosm, how many ways there are to live in this wide world. How many different perspectives, situations, surroundings, events—all shaping the larger cultures, and the smaller ones within. And how many interesting people there are--everywhere!

I remind myself to stop and be grateful. Grateful for all these things, and grateful I had parents and teachers and the rest of the village to remind me to look around and be AWAKE.

It is a marvel, really. A miracle. All of these fascinating things just beyond our own fingertips. Every day brings some new observation, if you’re looking. We talk about research, writing, and revision often, and those topics feel comfortable, like a well-worn pair of work gloves. But it’s the wonder that stops me in my tracks. Those moments when I allow myself to see the world through my own child inside, who is not imposing too much knowledge or point of view on the world. That is when I get my best ideas.

This is a lesson I will remind myself to hold close when I talk with children about writing nonfiction. Or perhaps, I will let them teach me. They are the best at it, after all.

Good Review / Bad Review

noreply@blogger.com (Jim Murphy) — Tue, 14 May 2013 07:30:00 +0000

   If you write a book, you will most likely get reviewed. Like it or not. Some reviews are perfectly nice; some not so nice. And then there are those reviews which seem to be lazy repeats of the front jacket copy, but that's another story.
   I read all the reviews that I get to see (my first book had well over 200 reviews, every one of them carefully clipped out and mailed to me by my publisher; I saw [maybe] ten reviews of my last book, all via e-mail!). Because I always blame myself for falling short, I study every line of the reviews, trying to figure out how to make future books better. I was thinking about my process with reviews a few weeks back and how both the good and bad ones have helped me to re-evaluate and change how I write.
   The Good Review: Way back in another time and dimension, I wrote a history of tractors (brilliantly titled -- wait for it -- TRACTORS: From Yesterday's Steam Wagons to Today's Turbocharged Giants, available as we speak at Amazon used books for $0.70). I may have told this story here before, so I'll make it brief. I was telling my Dad about this wonderful, innovative, amazing book about tractors I'd just revised and was ready to mail back to my publisher. After I stopped yammering, my Dad sat back, smiled knowingly, and said: "Jimmy, that'll be a big hit in Russia."
   I thought that line was brilliant and laughed out loud. But later I started to wonder who, in their right mind, would actually want to pick up a book about tractors, let alone read it. Panic set in. The package with the manuscript was sitting on a table, very neatly wrapped and ready to go out. But I hesitated. I had to do something before the published book was banished to the far away remainder Gulogs, but what? Which is when I remembered that almost all of the early steam tractors blew up at some point or other, and that the inventors and on-lookers often wrote about these unexpected and exciting developments. I opened the package and spent the following days putting in quotes, many of them offbeat and funny (what's not to laugh about when a giant metal tank of steam explodes?).  And guess what; it not only received very positive reviews, but School Library Journal gave it a star (and this was when starred reviews weren't very commonplace).
   The thing about the SLJ review is that it mentioned the quotes.  Not in any depth; more in passing briefly over what the book was about. I didn't think much of that little phrase until a few years later I began doing research on underage boys from both sides in the Civil War. As I gathered in more and more research, I began to wonder how I would present the information. Happily, I remembered the SLJ review for TRACTORS and decided to let these young soldiers tell their own stories, using pieces from their letters home, diaries, memoirs, and company histories to describe their enlistment, training, battle experience...in short, their stay in the army start to finish. This wealth of firsthand accounts also provided the book's subtitle. THE BOYS' WAR: Confederate and Union Soldiers Talk abop the Civil War received very nice reviews (and it didn't hurt that it was published the very same week that Ken Burns' Civil War documentary was first aired!).
   The Bad Review: Okay, this should be 'reviews.' So I was able to have several nonfiction books published and the reviews were encouraging. But one review source, while saying very positive things about these books, also tacked on a brief complaint. They wanted citations for my various sources. Please remember that this was a very different time (the 1980s); most nonfiction books then, even the most serious, usually had a brief bibliography and little else. So when this review source said this, I was troubled and wondered what to do about it.
   Here's a bit of publishing history. I'm sure there were people around back then who championed having more sources, but I never came across them. Not in person, that is. When I spoke to editors and other writers, just about everyone thought the idea of extensive notes and sources was a bit, how to say this, excessive.  It would take up a decent amount of space in the book (which could be used to add text or illustrations) and would enough kids really use them to justify this? I know, this seems like a silly question now, but back then it was real and we were all trying to puzzle out what to do (or not do).
   When the first negative review like this appeared, I had another book at the binder about to appear and another in galley pages (yes, it was a different era). I dithered a bit and both books were published sans notes and sources. And, yes, that review source criticized both titles for this lack of information.
   What to do? I wondered. I had another manuscript ready to go off and I was wondering if I should ignore my colleagues and just put in the info. Which was when I happened to have dinner with a friend, Jim Giblin.  We spoke about this emerging notes and sources situation (me feeling a bit put upon and undecided about what to do). Jim's response was characteristically practical. Why risk having a negative sentence or phrase soil an otherwise good review. Put the notes in!
   Fine, I said. But most backmatter is a bunch of ids and ibids and such that even adults find boring and difficult to interpret.  His answer: Have some fun with them.
   Which is what I've tried to do ever since. I try to play with and change up the backmatter in every book, shaping it in a way that makes it not just possible for young readers to know where my information came from and how to access it, but easy and non-threatening as well. Every time I do backmatter, I learn new things about how to communicate this to the readers (a quest that will probably never end but keeps me on my toes and having some fun).
   Good Review/Bad Review. Each kind is trying to tell me something besides whether the book works or not. Sometimes it takes a while for me to see exactly what it might be, but if I stay open to the reviewer's emotional response and hints, in time it'll register and lead me.

Happy Mother's Day

noreply@blogger.com (Susan E. Goodman) — Mon, 13 May 2013 09:00:00 +0000

I was going to write about something entirely different for this month’s blog but when I typed the first line on Sunday morning, out came, Thanks, Mom.

Yesterday, of course, was Mother’s Day. At this point in my and my family’s life, I am the mother who is celebrated with gorgeous flowers, chocolate (two of my great pleasures) and, if I feel like it, an extracted promise to do some odious chore.

My mom died in 2006, so she isn’t here to be included in gift giving. Or phone calls, although we affectionately and impulsively tucked her favorite, well-used red princess phone into her casket. She was a wonderful mom for many reasons. Given I.N.K.'s focus, I'd like to celebrate how she helped me become a writer just by being who she was.

We always had books in the house. We were always read to.

I had a lot of nightmares when I was a kid. So I slept with my door open and the hall light on, which threw a swatch of light into my bedroom that was perfect for sneak reading. Let’s just say, I took advantage of it. I think my mom knew. She never said a word, doubtlessly realizing that forbidden fruit is always more delicious.

Once I had a pajama party, maybe in fourth grade, and late into the night when we went into the kitchen for snacks, we found it had been invaded by a stream of ants. Our squeals brought Mom downstairs. I frankly can’t remember if she dealt with the ants first—or, not at all. All I can see is the picture of my mom standing in the kitchen in her nightgown, reading The World Book entry about ants to a bunch of girls waiting for their Swanson’s chicken pot pies to come out of the oven. She always liked to look up things.

When she could afford it, she bought us/her an Encyclopedia Britannica.

A year or two later, I was enthralled by reading Gone with the Wind. I got in trouble when my teacher found that I was using my textbook as a shield to camouflage my open copy. When Mom found out, she laughed. But her favorite GWTW story was when I burst into my parents’ bedroom a few nights later, waking her up with the tearful accusation, “You didn’t tell me it was going to end like that.”

Fast forward--about two years after I got a master’s degree in psychology that my parents paid for, tried it out and realized the job wasn’t for me, I decided to become a writer. Somewhat arbitrarily. Then it was what Mom didn’t say that was important. She didn’t say, you have never shown much interest in writing before or how will you make money or is this practical.

And when my first article came out in the Sunday edition of the Boston Herald American, she called the paper to get a dozen copies sent to her in Detroit. She wanted originals, not xeroxes. When my first book came out, she just might have put me in the royalty plus column all by herself.

Thanks, Mom.

Balance

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Kerley) — Thu, 09 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

At critique group this week, four of us sat around a table, crunching on nuts, sipping iced tea, and talking about balance. All four of us work at home, which can be great for things like having a flexible schedule. (Critique group meetings at 2 pm on Tuesdays? No problem.)

But working at home can have its drawbacks, as well—and that’s where the conversation wound around to after the critiquing was done.

Working at home can be lonely. If I didn’t have a dog, there might be days when I never left the house.

Working at home can be sedentary. If I didn’t get up for snacks, I might hardly move at all.

Most of all, working at home can be non-stop, if you let it. With no time card to punch, no daily commute defining the parameter of the ‘work day,’ you really could work all the time. Writer friends confess to me all the time that they feel guilty taking time away from their desk to meet a friend for lunch, take a walk in the park, go out with their husband for coffee.

But they shouldn’t, and if you work at home, you shouldn’t, either.

A story a few weeks ago on npr discussed several studies done on keeping your brain healthy and your memory strong—two things that come in handy when you’re a writer (or do anything else, for that matter.)

The studies looked at people over 80 and how they fared as they aged. But the conclusions apply to us all, especially those of us who work at home:

Physical exercise is key.

Social contact is essential.

And you need to leave your house and get out in the world, on a regular basis.

So, while I could work all the time, taking the long view of a productive career (not to mention a happy life) suggests that I shouldn’t—and I shouldn’t feel guilty about it, either.

I just joined a gym class full of neighbors I’d like to get to know.

I start today.

When Facts Change...Again!

noreply@blogger.com (Loreen Leedy) — Wed, 08 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

New information can be tough to swallow at times. I wrote previously on I.N.K. about my picture book based on the USDA Food Guide Pyramid that had to be updated due to a change in the graphic (see middle image, below). It happened again in 2011 when the MyPlate program was introduced. Actually, I prefer the plate graphic to the pyramids, which were visually awkward to work with.

My ever-alert editor at Holiday House, Mary Cash, sent me an email the day the news appeared in the New York Times. It was a surprise, but there's no sense crying over spilled milk, right? Obviously my 1994/2007 book The Edible Pyramid, which was set inside a pyramid-shaped restaurant, was instantly defunct. Or was it? More about that in a second.

A new approach was needed, so I began to noodle on it. For some reason, the idea of having big images of various foods with a small main character popped into mind. Have bugs as characters? Hmmm...obvious downsides to that. How about if the food is accidentally put into a machine that enlarges it...sounds implausible at best, or just plain dumb. Oh! I know who it's gonna be: that classic character Jack, who climbs up the beanstalk! So I wrote the story, yada yada, made a dummy, yada yada, digitally painted the illustrations, and yada yada, here it is:

Or will be, soon. It's technically a Fall title, but books have a way of getting around before their official birthday, you know? The story starts out like the traditional fairy tale, but instead of eating Jack, the giant cooks him a healthy meal. The giant, Waldorf, is definitely a good egg.

The book is designed to be a fun introduction to MyPlate and hopefully to a lifetime to healthy eating for kids. The goal for the illustrations was to show an abundance of fresh, appetizing foods, the best starting point for good meals. No processed factory foods here, except at the end under the Empty Calories section.

What about the leftovers, the existing copies of The Edible Pyramid? I was surprised to find out that some educators are still using the pyramid system, because the main difference is the presentation rather than the content. It can take awhile for some organizations to make the transition, apparently. So it's still selling, if not like hotcakes.

In any case, I'm looking forward to cooking up some activities to go with the book. Okay, I'll stop with the food and eating sayings now. Stick a fork in me, I'm done!

ARE WE HAVING ANY FUN YET? TEACHING TO THE TEST

noreply@blogger.com (Rosalyn Schanzer) — Tue, 07 May 2013 04:00:00 +0000

So today (I’m writing on Monday) I was supposed to do a 9:00 AM test call for an upcoming video conference with some seventh graders. Lo and behold, at 8:30 AM, my screen lights up and a harried-looking tech person appears amidst stacks of boxes. “Sorry,” she says, “but we have standardized tests all day long today so I’m in a hurry.” Since our upcoming video conference is based on a book I wrote about the Revolutionary War, I ask her if the students have studied that period yet. “Not much,” she says. “All we do in this state is test, test, test, so the kids don’t learn a thing.”

Hmmmm….I think she was in such a hurry that she was accidentally thinking out loud in front of a total stranger. But she’s definitely not alone. I hear this same complaint from teachers all the time when I visit schools.

Ever since the No Child Left Behind Act first reared its head in 2002, kids in have had to take tons of standardized tests, and if they don’t do well, their schools pay the piper. They stand to lose federal funding and free tutoring and worse. These tests cover a very narrow part of the curriculum, but they supposedly show whether kids are learning or not, whether their teachers are any good, whether students have to take even more mind-numbing skill-and-drill classes in summer school, and whether they will stay awake long enough to pass to the next grade. Cheating is common—even some teachers and principals cheat by upping the test scores because teachers and principals can get fired or get a fat raise depending upon the results. Kids are bored to death or stress out over these tests. And nobody is having any fun.

The worst part is that so much invaluable class time is spent teaching to the tests at the expense of every single thing that can get kids excited about learning. Who wants to sit in a chair all day long and study from some dry-as-dust standardized test prep book just to keep their school out of trouble? And as updated more “interesting” tests get progressively harder, even more test prep is in the works.

Ahem. Ladies and gentlemen, there are better ways to teach and there are better ways to learn. Why would anyone want to give up creative hands-on activities or ignore great music and art and foreign languages and amazing stories from history just so that they can mark the right box on a test form? Who want to cut out class trips, whether they’re to the school library (to find some great nonfiction books, of course) or to some outstanding museums or to the great outdoors? What is happening to young peoples’ health when physical education and even recess give way to studying for the tests? What if a class wants to explore a certain topic in depth? In many schools, plenty of such worthwhile and beloved activities are on the chopping block.

Even the best teachers have trouble raising test scores under certain conditions. In some places kids can come to school hungry. Some neighborhoods are like revolving doors where students come and go all the time. Plenty of parents are overworked or jobless or have other problems that keep them from getting involved with their kids’ education in any way. If students have recently moved here from foreign countries and are not fluent in English, they will fare poorly on the tests no matter how smart they are. But the tests reflect none of this. They don’t show a thing about individual student progress or whether kids can think creatively or whether they have good critical thinking skills or whether they love to learn.

But at least someone is thinking creatively out there. I loved this article entitled Eighth grader designs standardized test that slams standardized tests. Its your homework, so of course you have to read it.

Happy Birthday

noreply@blogger.com (steve jenkins) — Mon, 06 May 2013 07:00:00 +0000

I experienced another birthday recently (celebrated is no longer appropriate; endured is over-dramatic, at least for the time being). Without quantifying too much, let’s just say I can remember Sputnik but not the Korean War.

Why bring it up? My life has, coincidentally, been concurrent with the last half of the 20th century. Plus a bit of the 21st. And this period has been a remarkable one for science. I 've read persuasive arguments that for all the amazing advances in medicine, communications, and transportation that the past 50 or 100 years have witnessed, the greater paradigm shift happened during the industrial revolution. The telegraph, the steam engine, and the transition from farm to factory had a bigger impact on most peoples lives. This may be true, but our understanding of the natural world wasn’t changing at the same rate. The universe described by Newton in the 17th century was the same universe people inhabited at the beginning of the 20th century. Since then, we’ve come light years, literally.

One of the most commonly encountered criticisms of a scientific world view is that science, as a tool for understanding the world, is no more legitimate than almost any other mythological or investigative methodology. On the left, this manifests itself as relativism — the idea that there are no absolute truths, only truth relative to some cultural or intellectual frame of reference. On the religious right, science is sometimes positioned as an antagonist to Christianity or Islam, and is often characterized as a religion itself, especially evolutionary theory. To quote the Institute of Creation Research (I know, I spend too much time looking at sites like this): “Evolutionism is thus intrinsically an atheistic religion.”

I think much of the misunderstanding about science has to do with a focus on conclusions rather than process. This is partly a function of the way science and scientific ideas are reported in popular media. When some finding — margarine is better for one’s heart than butter — is accepted as dogma only to be discredited later, it appears that the scientific method has failed. But the fact that science can accommodate new information and change its conclusions to provide a more accurate description of something is one of its strengths. Science thrives on failure. This is in contrast to many of the belief systems science now finds itself in conflict with, most of which have not changed the explanations they offer (if any) for hundreds or thousands of years.

So, back to that birthday. It’s offers a good excuse to think about a few of the important scientific concepts that have been accepted as mainstream science only during my lifetime. Many replaced earlier theories that had to be discarded or completely revised.

An incomplete list:

• By deciphering the structure and mechanism of DNA in 1953, Watson and Crick explained the mechanism of heredity and showed that life is digital, not analog.

• In 1964, Wilson and Penzias discovered the cosmic background radiation, which allowed other scientists to confirm the Big Bang as the universe’s origin and relegate the steady-state theory to the dustbin of cosmology.

• Continental drift. What is obvious to a second grader — the continents fit together like a jigsaw puzzle and must have been connected at some point — was proposed by a few geologists but resisted by most until the 1960s, when symmetrical magnetic anomalies on the seafloor showed that the continents were separating along the mid-Atlantic Ridge. Continental drift explained not only the shape and position of the continents but the existence of many geological features, such as the Himalaya mountains and the Marianas Trench.

• Until the 1970s, it was widely accepted that all multi-cellular life on earth is dependent on the sun, either directly or indirectly. In 1977, hydrothermal vents were discovered in the Pacific Ocean. These “black smokers” are surrounded by ecosystems that get their energy not from the sun but from dissolved chemicals in hot water emerging from the vents.

• In 1980, Walter and Luis Alvarez discovered a worldwide layer of the element Iridium in strata dating from the end of the dinosaur era 65 million years ago. They proposed a large asteroid impact as a key event in the extinction of the dinosaurs (and many other forms of life), an idea that is widely accepted by earth scientists.

• A few scientists proposed the idea of human-caused global warming as long ago as the 19th century, but it wasn’t until the 1980s that an overwhelming majority of climate scientists accepted the idea of androgenic global warming. As in the case of evolutionary theory, political and cultural factors have resulted in large segments of the population in this country dismissing what is an almost unanimous consensus among scientists.

• In 1998, cosmologists determined that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, probably due to dark energy, something we still don’t understand but which apparently constitutes almost 70% of the mass-energy of the universe.

These are just a few of the new ideas that science, by its own rules, has had to accept over the past 50 or 60 years. I say “had to” because each new idea displaced existing theories that, in many cases, represented the life’s work of other scientists.

But what, one might reasonably ask, does all this have to do with writing non-fiction books for children? It’s a reminder that science is a dynamic, messy affair. It rarely deals in absolutes. Its crowning achievements often turn out to be incorrect or incomplete. Keeping this in mind as we write can help us give young readers a more accurate picture of what science is and how it works.

The Road Not Taken

noreply@blogger.com (Sue Macy) — Fri, 03 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

Bergen County Court House, Hackensack, NJ

When I was in high school, I fully expected to grow up to be a lawyer. It seemed to be an honorable and exciting way to make a living, at least based on the exploits of the legal shows I watched on TV. I didn’t actually know any lawyers. My family circle included loads of CPAs, some doctors, and a bunch of store owners. But that handsome, young Ben Caldwell on Judd for the Defense sure made the law look interesting.

I’m flashing back to my childhood plans for a few reasons. First, I’m on jury duty as I write this. Once every three years, the citizens of my county get themselves to the courthouse to watch a “You the Jury” film and spend one day in the lottery that plucks jurors from the general population. This time, the film struck a chord because it was introduced by Stuart Rabner, Chief Justice of the New Jersey Supreme Court. Back in the early 1970s, when both of us were teenagers, our dads were undergoing medical procedures at the same time. I remember the future Chief Justice from the hospital waiting room.

Today there were four possible trials needing jurors, three civil and one criminal. I got called for the criminal pool, but was excused after I informed the judge about my approaching book deadline. (Fortunately, I didn’t even have to make a lame joke about how my editor might turn up on his docket for murdering me if I was too late with the manuscript.) It was a gun possession case with two defendants and three lawyers. From my vast experience watching The Good Wife and the various incarnations of Law and Order, I know that the more lawyers you have, the longer the trial will be.

That’s not the only reason lawyers are on my mind. I also recently attended an alumni conference at my college alma mater, where about 80 percent of those present seemed to be lawyers. Some were corporate attorneys, to be sure, but the vast majority were involved with social justice issues like marriage equality and sexual abuse in the military. I admit I was envious at their abilities to not just talk (or write) about change, but to do the nitty-gritty work of making it happen. While I don’t regret my ultimate career path, I kind of respect my younger self for my good intentions.

So what happened to my aspirations to the law? I took a constitutional law course sophomore year in college and realized that legal reasoning didn’t seem to have much in common with actual logic. I just couldn’t wrap my head around the extent to which semantics dictated the outcome of a case. The “letter of the law” seemed to depend so much on the actual wording of a statue that common sense was lost in the process. I preferred to use words to inform, rather than to debate. So I switched my major from Politics to History and never looked back.

Paperback Writer? -- Guest Post from Karen Blumenthal

noreply@blogger.com (Ann Bausum) — Thu, 02 May 2013 08:00:00 +0000

In the world of nonfiction for young people, California librarian Jonathan Hunt is one of my gurus. His reviews and essays are always incredibly insightful, and his latest article in Horn Book is no exception.

His thoughtful look at readers of children’s and young adult nonfiction comes on the heels of two recent experiences, the Texas Library Association annual conference and the upcoming paperback publication of my book Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition.

I was at TLA because Bootleg is part of the new Spirit of Texas Middle School program, which recognizes authors with a Texas connection. In addition, my book Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different is on this year’s Lone Star list for middle-schoolers, and I had a chance to visit with some of the amazing librarians who devote their precious spare time to reading and picking books for these lists.

One of them surprised me with her description of her readers. Her middle school students are “insulted” by heavily illustrated nonfiction and almost shun them, she told me. Instead, they gravitate to smaller books like Steve Jobs because it’s neither too thick nor too thin, and it is sparingly illustrated.

Hunt said almost the same thing in his essay, noting that “too many photographs can rob author and reader alike of the opportunity to exercise their imagination.”

As an avid nonfiction reader who would appreciate more photos and relevant images in adult books, I always assumed illustrations brought a greater depth and visual dimension to a true story. But they have another side effect: To properly display images, nonfiction children’s books are somewhat larger than fiction books, which gives them the appearance of either picture books (babyish!) or coffee table books (and who wants to actually read those?)

In fact, Hunt makes the case for smaller “novelistic” book sizes for factual stories, saying that they circulate easily in his library, without any special selling from him.

That’s encouraging news for Bootleg, which is the first of my four books for young people to go from hardcover to trade paperback. (Steve Jobs was published simultaneously in hardcover and paperback.)

Lauren Burniac, who oversees the paperback imprint Square Fish, says the Bootleg paperback, which will be out in late July, will be smaller in size than the original, which itself had a smaller trim size than many contemporary nonfiction books.

Paperback edition

While many young adult and children’s novels are published in paperback about a year after their hardcover publication, few nonfiction books make the leap. But with Common Core Standards calling for more students to read nonfiction and with school and library budgets tight, Burniac says that roughly a quarter of her paperback list is now nonfiction, up from just two or three titles before.

“We’re making a real effort to bring nonfiction into paperback,” she says, with the hope that a lower price will bring the books not just into libraries, but also into classrooms. (And, I hope, maybe on to home bookshelves!)
Will a paperback nonfiction book in a smaller size attract more buyers and more readers?

Or does that old publishing saw hold, that people choose fiction for the authors and nonfiction for the subject?

What do you think?

Authors on Call

noreply@blogger.com (Vicki Cobb) — Wed, 01 May 2013 04:30:00 +0000

iNK Think Tank has been pioneering a new kind of interaction with schools through Authors on Call, a group of nine nonfiction authors who are equipped to do interactive videoconferencing. (Many authors now Skype but there are other ivc technologies that some schools prefer.) We call our programs Class ACTS where “ACTS” is an acronym for Authors Collaborating with Teachers and Students. They are not exactly school visits nor are they professional development for teachers but a hybrid that takes the books and expertise of an author and “bakes” it into the classroom experience with the “buy in” of the teachers and the students. Andrea Warren wrote up her Class ACTS experience and posted it on this blog here. Let me give you some other examples.

I have been working with, Sarah Svarda, a media specialist from Discovery School in Murfreesboro, TN. She is using me as a mentor to help her 120 4^th, 5^th, and 6^th grade library students learn how to do research. She teaches these students once or twice a week and since she has so many students and interactive videoconferencing is more effective with groups of 40 or less (so that kids can ask questions) we decided that I would meet the students in smaller groups over the period of time that they were doing their research. Sarah would then model the lesson to the other students who didn’t interact with me. So I met with the 4^th grade just when they were starting the program, then with the 5^th grade as they were several weeks into their research to help direct it more specifically, and then with the 6^th grade as they were starting to write. I have one more session to go, which will be some kind of wrap-up.

The students’ original idea of “research” is to look something up in an encyclopedia (or Wikipedia) and write up what they find, which often includes verbatim material, and turn it in the next day as homework. So, in effect, I was teaching them what I do when I start a project—a long term process that changes over time. As it happens, I’m just beginning a new book on hurricanes, so I do what all nonfiction authors do. I went to the library and took out every book on hurricanes I could lay my hands on. I showed the kids my pile of 25+ books and told them that I start by reading a lot of sources. This was a real eye-opener for them. I told them that I don’t read every book but that I look at all the books and read the ones that grab me first. This was another eye-opener—comparing sources and expressing preferences for different writers. In addition to the 4 videoconferences, Sarah and I also chronicle what we do on a wiki—a communal document. You can see the wiki for our work, as can parents and other people in the public, but only Sarah and I can write on it. Read it from the bottom up to get the chronology of our progress.

We are also working with a group of teachers in PA. Sue Sheffer is a retired educator working with the York School District on a Library of Congress grant to help teachers use primary source material. The group is scheduling sessions with our history authors: Roz Schanzer, Carla McClafferty, Jim Murphy, Andrea Warren plus Myra Zarnowski, our children’s lit consultant,who wrote a terrific book for teachers: Making Sense of History. The raves for each author have been off the charts.

Alexandra Siy is working with teachers from Lewis and Clark Elementary in Missoula, MT. They are using her book Cars on Mars as a mentor text for their own research. Here is the link to their wiki. Again, the enthusiasm for the program is unequivocally positive.

Here’s what our Class ACTS programs offer that is different from a school visit or professional development for teachers:

Author school visits are considered “enrichment.” Class ACTS are programs that are aligned with the curriculum and the classroom work of the students. They take place over a period of time from two weeks to several months. They bring the excitement of a school visit to daily work, although the author isn't present on a daily basis. Since a Class ACTS program is no ephemeral one-shot, it can be transformative for students.
An author visit is about the author and the author’s book. Class ACTS is about students and their work. The shift is to the “demand” side of the school money—it’s where the rubber meets the road in terms of results, so here authors can make a profound difference. Students are discovering that doing work in depth produces a more thoughtful learning experience than simply “covering” material. And content is now starting to matter again.
All educators know that the key to learning is motivation. When students are motivated they will do the hard work of learning. Having an author involved in the process provides motivation. Studies have shown that another character trait exhibited by successful people is grit. I maintain that none of us nonfiction authors would be here without it. We also exemplify the skills mandated by the Common Core Standards.
Scheduling is much more flexible than a school visit because it’s just a short time during the day and you don’t need travel time, etc. So the videoconferences are booked with a short lead time and are given at the optimum time for the students.
Teachers find that all day professional development sessions are not nearly as useful as having a personal learning network—a place to go to ask a quick question on an as needed basis. Through Class ACTS, an author becomes a part of the teachers’ pln with very positive outcomes.

Last year, Authors on Call piloted a program with many authors and one school. This year we have sold a variety of programs and we’re learning all the time. Here’s some of what we’re discovering:

The teachers we’re working with this year are PHENOMENAL. Make no mistake, there is a lot of extra work figuring out how to use us and our books and our skills so that students benefit. The teachers we’re currently working with are early adopters who see something for themselves in taking a risk and doing something different. As a result, they are, perhaps, a self-selected group totally committed to their students and are doing the lion's share of the work. We authors are learning from them in this truly collaborative effort. I have no doubt that our incredibly successful outcomes are due to the quality of the teachers we’re working with.
Last year, in our pilot program, the best teachers were the ones that signed on first. They created a bandwagon effect with other teachers joining in because they didn't want to be left out. But the teachers who joined later were not as effective
A successful program depends on planning, collaboration and commitment. But the rewards are beyond anything anyone imagined in terms of student output. It is humbling to see how much talent children have when you give them the opportunity to strive, think, create and shine.
It takes patience for a new idea to take hold. The success of Authors on Call depends on schools that have the videoconferencing technology to understand the value of books and authors and for schools that appreciate books and authors getting the technology. We’re moving forward, however, and Authors on Call is leading the way.

For more information on Class ACTS programs, you can download a pdf of our brochure here.

Introducing Judith Fradin

noreply@blogger.com (Jan Greenberg) — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 07:00:00 +0000

This month I interviewed Judy Fradin, author of dozens children’s and young adult non-fiction books. I met her recently at the 45th Children’s Literature Festival in Warrensburg, MO, forty authors and thousands of school children and adults meet every year. In the student center of CMSU all the authors books are displayed for sale and I found myself pausing to page through her beautifully designed books. Judy has written on a wide range of subjects from Who Was Sacagawea? (recently issued in Spanish) to the upcoming The Price of Freedom (illustrated by Eric Velasquez). She is a passionate cheerleader for non-fiction and enjoys visiting schools and talking with young readers. You can reach her at yudiff@aol.com . Her responses to my questions flowed together so seamlessly that I decided to present them without interruption.

My career as a writer was born of desperation. In the mid-1990s my husband Dennis landed a contract to write the Sea to Shining Sea series of state books. He had to deliver one book per month. Halfway through this project he fell ill from exhaustion and begged me to help him. I became his FrankenFradin, quickly writing the New Mexico and Louisiana books as he recuperated. Thus was born our collaboration.

We ultimately co-authored dozens of non-fiction books for children and young adults, many of them award-winners, on topics ranging from American history to biographies, from finance to natural disasters.

Four Fradin books have been published within the past two years. TORNADO! was released by National Geographic in 2011. It opened with the story of a teenaged survivor of the Greensburg, Kansas F5 storm that annihilated hundreds of homes and businesses. TORNADO! is one of the six books in our Witness to Disaster series.

STOLEN INTO SLAVERY (also Geographic, 2012) recounts the drugging, kidnapping and sale into bondage of a free black New York family man named Solomon Northup. Northup’s story of survival is currently being made into a movie directed by and starring Brad Pitt. ( National Geographic has made a study guide that can be acquired from Bill O’Donnell (bodonnel@ngs.org).

THE PRICE OF FREEDOM (Walker, 2013) is a historical Fradin/Fradin picture book illustrated by Belpre Award winner Eric Velasquez. This dramatic true story tells how the residents of two small Ohio towns rescued a re-captured slave, sparking the start of the Civil War.

Last but not least, ZORA! (Clarion, 2012) is our biography of Zora Neale Hurston, an early African American writer. I wanted to title our book “The Nine Lives of Zora Neale” because this remarkable woman went from family outcast to nanny to manicurist to waitress to anthropologist to teller-of-tales with several other “lives” interspersed.

I especially enjoyed marrying text to image in our National Geographic Witness to Disaster series. As I child I would spend hours poring through old National Geographic magazines. I was always fascinated by the natural world—animals, weather, and natural geology. I loved my college geology course and had been collecting rocks for decades. For me, the series was a perfect fit.

Non-fiction was a great genre for us. Dennis was more focused and detail-oriented; I am more scattered and speculative. Our contrasting approaches, I think, enhanced our books. Our work has led us on unforgettable, intriguing hunts for information. I know that truth is far more fascinating than fiction, and hope that we’ve enriched the field of children’s and YA non-fiction.

Below are book covers from The Price of Freedom and Stolen into Slavery and a spread from Tornado.

Endings and Beginnings

noreply@blogger.com (Dorothy Patent) — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

As we are so often reminded, for everything there is a season. And when the season of intense work on writing a manuscript and choosing dozens of photos to illustrate it ends, it’s time for a season of renewal.

Lucky me—I sent off my next manuscript and photos just a day before flying off to a beautiful spa in Mexico called Rancho La Puerta. I get the best deal there is—for my husband’s efforts in planning and carrying out three cooking classes using ingredients from the rancho’s amazing garden, I receive a free week to do as I please in this lovely environment. Opportunities to participate in all sorts of activities abounded, but I promised myself I would just live day by day, moment by moment, during our visit. Time and experience have taught me this lesson. As children’s fiction author Bruce Coville reminded fellow author Jeanette Ingold when she worried about not having any new ideas following submitting a manuscript, the well gets emptied and must be filled again before we can proceed.

Garden and dining hall at Rancho La Puerta

I believe this principle is in play for nonfiction writers just as much as for fiction creators. We fill our brains with facts and images. We struggle to find the best way to organize our material to present it to our readers in logical, easy-to-follow sequences. We get tired! Our minds need to rest, to clear out what we no longer need to remember and make room for the new information. And perhaps most importantly of all, we need to let the enthusiasm for the next project grow and let the “old” enthusiasm for the previous project fade.

This gradual process actually serves a dual function. Not only does it set in motion a new enthusiasm, it helps us distance ourselves from the previous project, knowing that soon an editor will be pouring over our manuscript with a highly critical eye, suggesting changes, preparing queries, and, most dreaded of all, making cuts. We authors must be able to distance ourselves at least a bit from that “old” project so we can react calmly to our editors’ reactions.

"Iris" awaits her mate on her Montana nest

And while we await that inevitable pain, we plunge into the next project, becoming increasingly involved and excited as we see the new possibilities involved with a fresh, open-ended topic. I want to share my enthusiasm right now with a new project, a book about osprey research. To me the most exciting aspect so far is learning about wild bird web cams. I’d known they existed but hadn’t paid much attention until I got going on this project. Two of the osprey nests in the study have web cams that allow anyone in the world with internet access to “spy on” these birds as they conduct their daily lives. (http://tinyurl.com/6mcdgst and http://tinyurl.com/dyj5ddf)

http://www.unavitaverde.net/webcam-black-stork/

Such cameras are working in countries around the world on many bird species, not just ospreys in Montana. As I write this blog, I’m watching a pair of rare black storks in Estonia and listening to the unfamiliar calls of European forest birds in the background. For a person like me, who identifies so strongly with the natural world, it’s the perfect background music for writing—one bird chirps a lovely song as a dove calls sweetly, then passing geese honk overhead.

Writers like me are truly blessed by the opportunities of delightful discoveries that our work gives us.

How to Empower Girls – Use Nonfiction, Not T-shirts

noreply@blogger.com (Anna M. Lewis) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 13:00:00 +0000

"Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.” Harriet Tubman

In an April 11, 2013 Huffington Post article, Sexist'Avengers' T-Shirts Tell Boys To Be Heroes And Girls To Need A Hero, Christina Huffington draws attention to how products continue to be marketed differently for boys and girls. It is noted that the boy’s shirt is child-size and the girl’s shirt is junior-size. Compare the two shirts:

This week, a HuffPost Live segment titled Gender Equality? Keep Dreaming discussed the same subject - hosted by Josh Eppes with guests Cristen Conger @MomStuff Podcast host of "Stuff Mom Never Told You", Sarah Mulhern Gross @thereadingzone National Board Certified Teacher, Michael Riegel, Managing Director of Engineers Are People Too, and Charity Stewart @SpaceCampUSA Social Media and Advertising Manager, Space Camp. The live telecast brought to light many topics concerning the quest to bring more girls into STEM careers. The focus of the discussion concerned t-shirts sold at Space Camp, a champion for STEM careers for over 30 years. (The t-shirts have been removed from their site.) Compare the two shirts (Men's on left, Women's on right):

It has been over 20 years since Mattel Toys got into hot water for releasing the Teen Talk Barbie that uttered the phase, “Math class is hard!” We are getting better at creating products to encourage young girls into STEM careers, but we still have to stay on our path. Dr. Wilda V. Heard, writes about STEM careers and girls in her April 21, 2013 blogpost titled Reducing gender differences in STEM education , where she outlines what needs to still be done.
Interesting, for readers of this blog, Jonathan Olsen and Sarah Gross, in a April 16, 2013 guest post in an Scientific American article, site a 2006 research study that shows that "storys activate the brain and changes how we act in life." In the article, To Attract More Girls to STEM, Bring More Storytelling to Science, Olsen and Gross, both teachers at High Technology High School in Lincroft, New Jersey, suggest that STEM be taught through the lens of a story - and they add "it sure beats a pink microscope".

As we approach the next decades, our world needs the ideas of all our young people - both boys and girls. Looking for a few good nonfiction STEM books to empower young readers? Here’s a few links I found on STEM nonfiction books, which include several excellent books written by our INK authors.
YALSA - STEM Resources
Carnegie Library of Pittburgh – STEM books – Great source for all things STEM
PBS Parents - Empowering Books for Girls
STEM Nonfiction Reading (Middle Grade) via Goodreads
STEM Friday

I know I've left out some favorite links. Readers ~ please leave suggestions in the comments, I'll be sure to include them.

NOTE: Quote from the intro page of Anna's YA book Women of Steel and Stone: 22 Inspirational Architects, Engineers, and Landscape Designers, to be published by Chicago Review Press, January 2014.

Excerpt of Common Core guide for The Mighty Mars Rovers

noreply@blogger.com (Elizabeth Rusch) — Thu, 25 Apr 2013 11:00:00 +0000

I did not write The Mighty Mars Rovers with the Common Core standards in mind, but it turns out that all of my nonfiction books, and I would venture to say virtually all of the I.N.K. bloggers nonfiction titles, offer rich opportunities to support Common Core learning. (Adopted in 45 states, the Common Core State Standards will be shaping teaching and learning across the country in years to come.)

But how exactly can teachers use high-quality nonfiction to support Common Core learning? Teacher Erin Dees and I collaborated on a Common Core guide to The Mighty Mars Rovers, which you can download for free here. Before giving students these Common Core tasks, I hope teachers will first have students read and enjoy the book. I think being engaged in a book can inspire kids to be more interested in delving into how the book was researched and written.

What follows are some excerpts from our guide. I hope to make Common Core guides for all my other nonfiction titles, so I would love any feedback from teachers, other educators, and other writers…

Craft and Structure

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.5 Describe the overall structure (e.g., chronology, comparison, cause/effect, problem/solution) of events, ideas, concepts, or information in a text or part of a text.

Ask students to describe the overall structure of The Mighty Mars Rovers and why author Elizabeth Rusch might have structured it that way. What are some other structures she might have considered? How would they have changed the book? What would be gained and what would be lost?
The author also uses all of the structures listed above within the main structure. Where? Why?

Chronology of events. EX: The book is written chronologically for each rover.
Comparison of ideas, concepts, and information. EX: The book switches focus from rover to rover in order to compare their two journeys.
Cause/effect & problem/solution. EX: Many obstacles cause the rovers to put their journeys on hold. The team works together to free/help the rovers.

The rovers encountered some obstacles along the way. Ask students to describe the cause and effect of each situation. Summarize how the JPL dealt with and solved problems the rovers encountered:

Opportunity’s jam in the Purgatory Dune on page 55.
Spirit’s stuck wheel on page 59.
Dust storm on page 64.

The book spans more than eight years, so some material was left out. Ask students to compare events in the book to those described in mission update on the website http://marsrover.nasa.gov/mission/wir/. What did the author emphasize and what did she leave out? Why? Do you think there was anything else she should have included? Why?

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.6 Compare and contrast a firsthand and secondhand account of the same event or topic; describe the differences in focus and the information provided.

Encourage students to compare and contrast daily rover updates for Spirit and Opportunity with accounts in the book. How are the adventures of the rovers the same and different?

Ask students to read firsthand blogs from NASA engineers then match and compare/contrast them to events detailed in the book.

http://blogs.jpl.nasa.gov/category/solar-system/mars/

Ask students to compare Rusch’s version of Opportunity’s journey toward Endeavor (pg 63-64) to a Robotics Engineer’s version.

http://blogs.jpl.nasa.gov/2008/10/on-the-road-again/

Integration of Knowledge and Ideas

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.7 Interpret information presented visually, orally, or quantitatively (e.g., in charts, graphs, diagrams, time lines, animations, or interactive elements on Web pages) and explain how the information contributes to an understanding of the text in which it appears.

The book provides many opportunities to teach text features. It includes titles, subtitles, sidebars, maps, images, captions, maps, an index, a table of contents, and a glossary. Create a treasure hunt to help students find and understand these important text features.
Ask students to interpret the photographs of Steve Squires as a child and young man on page 8 and 9. What do they tell us about Steve? Why did the author include them? How will/do they help us understand the motivations and passions of Steve Squires?
What does the diagram of the solar system on page 14 tell us about the launch of the rovers? How does this diagram contribute to the understanding of the text on page 15?
Page 53 displays a map of Opportunity’s adventures. How does this map help the reader understand the journey of the rover?
Ask students to interpret the image on page 64. Ask students to explain how the information detailed in the image relates to the story on page 64, starting: “Suddenly, whoosh, a huge dust storm blew in.” What does the image show? Why did the author decide to add this image? How would the image affect your perception of the story if it was an image of only the last measurement?

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RI.4.9 Integrate information from two texts on the same topic in order to write or speak about the subject knowledgeably.

AND

CCSS.ELA-Literacy.W.4.7 Conduct short research projects that build knowledge through investigation of different aspects of a topic.

Students may combine information from The Mighty Mars Rovers with information from other books on the same topic to compile research papers. Check out Cars on Mars by Alexandra Siy or Eyewitness Mars by Stuart Murray.
Have students pick a subtopic from the book to research. They may use the book and other resources to write short informational reports. Potential topics:

Early Mars exploration
Rover tools/parts of the rover
Life of Mars
Powering the Rovers
Landing rovers on Mars

The next Mars rover, Curiosity, landed on Mars in August 2012 and offers a great opportunity deepen students’ knowledge and understanding of space exploration. Send students to the NASA website on the mission: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/ Ask students to compare the two missions. How are they the same? How are they different? How have rover design, launch, and landing changed? What are the biggest challenges of each mission? How were they overcome? What questions are the missions designed to answer? What tools do the rovers and scientists have to answers those questions? What questions might come next?

You can download the whole guide on my website: www.elizabethrusch.com or go here. We welcome any comments and suggestions!

Thanks,
Elizabeth Rusch

My Turn For The Next Big Thing

noreply@blogger.com (Gretchen Woelfle) — Wed, 24 Apr 2013 04:00:00 +0000

If you read Tanya Lee Stone’s INK blog in February, you know about The Next Big Thing. If you didn’t or if you forgot, it’s is an author blog tour. Each week a different author answers specific questions about his or her upcoming book. The answers are posted on authors’ blogs. Then we get to tag another author. On and on it goes.

I was tagged by Nina Kidd, member of my local critique group. She was tagged by Julie Williams. My tags are at the end.

And just in time because…. I’ve got a new book!

What is the title of your book?

The Wind at Work: An Activity Guide to Windmills –Second Edition Revised and Expanded – published by Chicago Review Press. For more on how I wrote the second edition click on one of my previous INK blog posts.

Where did the idea come from for the book?

Way back in the mid-nineties, just when I started writing for children, I wanted to explore renewable energy. Can’t remember why, but I chose wind energy and found a fascinating history of windmills that included not just the machines themselves, but the intriguing cultures of windmillers. They had their own idioms, jokes, folk tales, “signal codes,” and more.

What genre does your book fall under?

Nonfiction: part historical, part contemporary environmental, from middle grade to YA. Each chapter includes activities that can be performed at a younger or more advanced level.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?

Stephen Fry is a perfect plump European windmill.

Russell Brand would make a good North American Windmill – tall and skinny, whirling about.

And Ed Begley, Jr., Mr. Green himself, could be a wind turbine!

What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

1000 years of windmills: how they created a country, powered an industrial revolution, watered the American west, and offer a bright energy future.

Is your book represented by an agency?

I found Chicago Review Press on my own. They published the first edition back in 1997 and it has been in print for fifteen years! I can’t praise them enough. They have reprinted the book over and over, and were keen to do an updated edition. As well as the paper edition, they are publishing the new edition in three ebook formats: Kindle, epub, and pdf.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

I had published short stories in Cricket and Spider, but The Wind at Work was my first book. These days a book can take me years to write, but as a naïve newbie I plowed through it in about three months, as I recall. The activities, all the appendices, and photo research took a few more months.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Chicago Review Press has published dozens of history/activity books similar to The Wind at Work. Friends of the Earth: A History of American Environmentalism by Pat McCarthy is a nice complement to my book. I’d also like to recommend The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind by William Kamkwamba and Bryan Mealer. This is the amazing story of a young African boy who built himself a wind turbine. It’s out in a YA/adult version and a picture book. Both tell a terrific story in very different ways.

Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My interest in renewable energy got me going on the first edition. After the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster I contacted Cynthia Sherry, Chicago Review Press publisher, thinking that we’d have renewed interest in renewables. Cynthia reported that they were near to selling out the latest reprinting, and so I went to work. The difference between 1997 and today? This time I did all the text and photo research online!

What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

Check out the activities. I had so much fun with them. They range from science experiments to cooking, singing, writing, drawing, collage-ing, saving energy at home, researching local environmental issues, finding out how your politicians vote, and becoming a local activist. You can also plan a Global Wind Day celebration (June 15). There’s something for everyone here.

Now for the lucky taggee: Susan Kuklin.

The Demise of Our Intellectual Playgrounds

noreply@blogger.com (Linda Salzman) — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 10:00:00 +0000

This photo is my last look at my beloved local children’s bookstore. Like so many others, it will soon close and be gone for good. I mourn the loss of this important staple in the neighborhood. I really believe the slogan, “there goes the neighborhood” is apt in this case and throughout cities and suburbs across America as one way of life begins to all but vanish.

My kids and I went to this bookstore for a variety of reasons: to browse, to buy birthday gifts for friends, to get a long awaited book on its release date, and to meet authors in person. This was the kind of bookstore that drew in authors for presentations and then set them up to visit local schools. We met a great many interesting, friendly, famous children’s authors in this store. It was here that we admired Jacqueline Wilson’s rings on every finger, talked to Linda Sue Park about her recent carpel tunnel surgery, and chatted with Wendelin Van Drannen about the origins of her name.

I got all fan girl crazy a couple of times. I got to shake hands with Christopher Paul Curtis and I know we were smiling and chatting but I can’t really remember anything else clearly after that *swoon*. And after years of adoration I got to meet E.L. Konigsberg in person. (Who sadly passed away over the weekend after I originally wrote this). My kids now have a signed copy of “From the Mixed Up Files” It’s hard to think of anything much cooler than that. Soon there will be no place to meet favorite authors and nothing to sign. Typing an autograph on someone’s Kindle is just never going mean much.

Not to sound like an amateur Jane Jacobs, but the bookstore closings show me that our environments are becoming wastelands for intellectual growth. Urban and suburban design are becoming devoid of places to meet and exchange ideas. If there are no places to browse for books, no places to meet like minded book lovers to chat about a book, no places to interact with actual writers, then there will be no place to grow as readers and lovers of books. The multifunctional nature of these spaces are not being replaced by anything similar but by clothing stores, juice bars, and the like. City neighborhoods and suburban communities thus both lose a key element of their successful design.

So what will our kids do instead? I guess they will run around on the artificial turf with shirts that say “play hard or go home.” And then they will go to their SAT prep classes so they can produce the results that our society seems to value. Clearly they will not buy books in the numbers they used to and they will not have the opportunity to appreciate the value of a society that supports intellectual curiosity, creative writers and thinkers, and reading for pure unadulterated pleasure. The demise of our intellectual playgrounds seems to be a done deal.

Guest Blogger Andrea Warren on Using Nonfiction to Help 5th Graders Think About Family History

noreply@blogger.com (David Schwartz) — Mon, 22 Apr 2013 04:00:00 +0000

I have asked author and journalist Andrea Warren to write in my place this month. Andrea has written seven esteemed books about young people who have experienced extreme personal challenges as a result of extreme historical circumstances that changed their lives. Andrea is a member of iNK's Authors On Call videoconferencing group, and she writes about her videoconference experience with a school in New York City.

David

What's it like to serve as an author-consultant in the schools? I’ve just completed my first experience, and I loved every minute of it.

As one of the iNK “Authors on Call,” I worked with fifth grade faculty and students at PS 49 in Queens, New York, on a two-week study of the orphan trains. For those who don’t know, the placing out program that came to be known as the orphan trains was the brainchild of Charles Loring Brace and New York City’s Children’s Aid Society. CAS started a number of fine programs to assist poor children. Brace believed that every child needed a family. He did not like institutional care and was especially concerned about street children, many of whom were the sons and daughters of down-on-their-luck immigrants. He theorized that if he could get homeless youngsters to good-hearted farm couples who could afford to feed an additional child and could also benefit from another pair of hands to help with all the work, that they would step up to either foster or adopt one of the train children. A few experiments lent support to his notion, and thus started a movement that over a 75-year period sent nearly 250,000 children west via trains to new homes.

The 5^th grade teaching team at PS 49 had each student read my book Orphan Train Rider: One Boy’s True Story. I suggested supplemental materials, including my young readers nonfiction book, We Rode the Orphan Trains.

We agreed that I would do four Skype sessions. The first was with the teaching team to discuss planning for the unit. They wanted students to understand the history, economics, and culture of the 1850s when the orphan trains began. I made some suggestions and then pulled together some research to assist them. When we had our second Skype session, they were further down the road with their preparation. They had used many of my suggestions and we had a lively discussion.

Then I had a Skype session with the students and talked with them about a variety of subjects related to the orphan trains. The students were well prepared with questions. Many of them come from immigrant families. We talked about the value of them interviewing family members whose stories they did not know. I gave them examples of how they could start their interviews and the importance of taping these to preserve their relative’s voice. The students were lively and engaged during our session. The teachers reported that they bubbled over with enthusiasm about doing interviews and were also excited that they’d met a “real” author.

Instead of a second Skype session with students, the teachers chose to have a third Skype session with me so they could review how the unit had gone. They shared essays the students had written and they reported that many students had gone above and beyond in their research and in buying books for themselves to expand their learning. Among their in-class writing assignments was one in which each student imagined being the eldest child in a large family who was told to go fend for himself or herself on the streets because the family had too many mouths to feed. This assignment helped students imagine how lost and helpless some of the children were who boarded orphan trains. The teachers had some additional questions about how students could interview relatives and asked how students could proceed if their relative was resistant. Again I offered suggestions.

Altogether I invested between 20-25 hours in my initial preparation, additional research to assist the teachers, participation in four Skype sessions, and all the e-mails and other communication that took place. After our final session, Paul Longo, who coordinated my work with the school, said that the unit was a professional high point for several of the teachers. He wrote, “I think this experience has confirmed some of their best instincts as teachers and that has been made possible by you and the good work you have done in your writing and sharing. The whole experience has been extremely positive for all of us on our end of the exchange.”

On my end, too! Should I have other opportunities to serve as a consultant, I will certainly do so. It’s one more way we authors can bring our work to educators and students, and assist in exploring and fulfilling the goals of the CCSS. And it’s a great way to connect with students in the classroom—which in my book is always a joy.

Feed Your Brain: Eat Your Math! (A guest blog by Ann McCallum)

noreply@blogger.com (Marfe Ferguson Delano) — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 08:00:00 +0000

A guest post—with recipe!—by Ann McCallum, a pal of mine from the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, DC. Ann's latest book is Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds.

As a kid, I thought that math was bland—unappetizing worksheets and heaps of boring word problems. Those were the worst, the word problems: Disjointed scenarios that you had to sit with until you were done.

I fell in love with math after college. Not a case of love at first taste, it was more an awakening of the senses. A realization that there was pattern and meaning to all those seemingly random numbers. Like a well-made dish, the ingredients aligned so perfectly when I finally understood. The steps were meaningful, too—not a series of machinations to memorize, but a logical process of creating. With my new-found appetite for math, I knew I had to share.

Pairing food with math was a fluke, really. It started with a math project for my students (I was teaching 5^th grade at the time). It was nearly winter break, and I had my students make mathematical gingerbread houses. I didn’t provide many instructions—just, you know, make one of those graham cracker houses glued together with icing and be prepared to talk about how you used math. The results were far richer than I had anticipated. Students shared innovations such as polygon windows and doors, candy tessellations, the perimeter of roofs, and the length of icing pathways. I was so excited, I went home and made multiplication meatballs! Okay, maybe not right away, but the idea was there. Food, I figured, was a perfect medium for getting kids to love math.

What followed was a series of yummy experiments: Estimation Cookies, Fibonacci Snack Sticks, Variable Pizza Pi . . . Fun, oh fun! Finally, here was a connection to some of math’s tough concepts, but with a delicious new twist. It made so much sense to learn math by using food.

Eager to share this idea beyond my students, I sent a book proposal to an editor and was accepted—but not for a math cookbook. Instead, I was engaged to write “The Secret Life of Math” which is a history/project book about math for kids (I was allowed one recipe:

Mayan Number Cookies). I went on to write two math fairy tales, but I still kept coming back to the math cookbook idea. I tried again. This time, a second editor accepted my proposal for “Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds” and I was thrilled. I went back to the kitchen to perfect my math recipes.

One of my favorite math authors, Theoni Pappas, says it best: “The joy of mathematics is that it is everywhere.” I’ll add to that: Even in cupcakes!

Happy eating—happy math!

Recipe→ Common Denominator Cupcakes

These math goodies have a common denominator. Before baking, place an Oreo cookie in each cupcake cup, and then spoon the dough on top. Bake, bite in, and work out approximately what fraction of the cupcake is the Oreo cookie.

What you need:

½ cups butter

1 ¼ cups white sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ cup rainbow sprinkles

Oreos (one for every muffin cup)

What you do:

1. Cream butter, sugar, vanilla, and eggs.

2. Mix in flour, baking powder and baking soda, alternating with milk.

3. Stir in the colored sprinkles.

4. Grease a muffin tin (or use cupcake papers) and place one oreo cookie in every muffin cup. Pour dough on top so that each muffin cup is ¾ of the way full.

5. Bake for about 30 minutes in a 350° F oven.

A Guilty Confession and a PSA for INK

noreply@blogger.com (Tanya Lee Stone) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

Sex and the City: Carrie and her friends are having their usual breakfast gathering, going over the issues of the day when Carrie makes a reference to something she wrote in one of her columns. This is followed by a lengthy awkward silence. One by one, she points her raised eyebrow at Samantha, Miranda, and Charlotte for an explanation, as each confesses her own guilty reason why she has not, in actual fact, been reading her best friend’s column.

Present Day. Present Company: Hello, my name is Tanya, INK fellow and regular contributor, and I don’t always read our column.

Now that that guilty confession is out of the way, let me just say, that changes today.

There is a lot of content out there, friends—and content is a word we nonfiction writers are learning to loathe, what with the current trend to label most of what we do “content” or “informational.” A lot of content + too much to do + not enough time to do it = (hangs head) INK not always making my reading list.

What a mistake. Here’s the PSA part.

Bottom line: If you are a person who loves reading, writing, teaching, and/or helping readers find interesting nonfiction for kids (a.k.a. INK), make INK a frequent place to come calling.

Why? There are a ton of incredible, fascinating blog posts here! I am in awe of what I have learned just in the past hour by scrolling through the posts of my esteemed colleagues. And funny! Insightful, witty, interesting, and off-the-beaten-path. Check it out.

Highlights from this past month: ways to think about alternatives to e-books, what “writing like a boy” might mean, intelligent design in science classrooms, and more!

From this past year: meaningful uses of backmatter, how an illustrator tackles creating a pb about an artist, why books pub on Tuesdays, nostalgic childhood stories directly relevant to an author’s current process, and more!

From years past: photo research, ethics, responsibility to our readers, visual storytelling, movies made from books, and more!

Wow. I have always known that this was the place to be. It’s why I’ve been here all these years. But seeing it in black and white brings it into clear focus. Thank you, all you INK writers, for contributing to this wealth of fascination. I’m yours, now and forever. Carrie Bradshaw won’t need to raise her eyebrow in my direction ever again.

A Painless Way to Accomplish Common Core State Standards: Using Nonfiction Books and the Library of Congress

noreply@blogger.com (Carla Killough McClafferty) — Wed, 17 Apr 2013 04:30:00 +0000

One of my favorite parts of being an author of nonfiction books is using primary sources. There is something wonderful about seeing actual documents or images related to what I’m writing about. It makes the events deeper, richer and more meaningful. I use primary source documents to learn more about the topic I’m researching and I look for ways to use them in my books.

Recently I took a class through the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Program. Since I often write about historical topics, I wanted to learn more about the collections at the Library of Congress (LOC). I was amazed at their massive online collections which contain documents, maps, newspapers, images, sound recordings, sheet music and much, much more. While searching the LOC website I found myself getting lost in a fascinating world of primary sources—a real treat for a nonfiction author.

Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Program

Since the LOC places incredible primary sources at our fingertips, I’ve thought a lot about how to use them in conjunction with my books in order to accomplish the goals of the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). These standards require using nonfiction books not only in English class but in history, science and math class too. This is good news to me because as I write, I’m thinking of possible ways great teachers could use my books in various content areas. In each subject area, I want readers to take in what I’ve written about the topic, but I also want them to use my books as a jumping off place to learn more about related topics.

A teacher could use one short scene in my book The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon to read and discuss in class-then go to the LOC website to search for related primary source documents (suggestions below excerpt).

For example:
Excerpt from pages 98-99, The Many Faces of George Washington: Remaking a Presidential Icon (Carolrhoda, 2011).

At noon, the hooves of six white horses clattered on the cobblestones of Wall Street as they pulled a white coach carrying one man. Fifty-seven-year-old George Washington climbed out. Out of respect, the silent crowd removed their hats. Washington removed his hat and bowed to the right and left as he moved through the crowd. Nearing the building, he walked through a line of soldiers and was escorted inside and took a seat in a mahogany armchair. Vice President John Adams told Washington that members of Congress would accompany him as he took the oath of office.

So more people could witness the ceremony, the swearing in would take place on the second floor balcony, which had been decorated with red and white stripped curtains. Federal Hall had recently been remodeled using patriotic symbols. On the balcony, the middle wrought-iron railing featured a design of thirteen arrows, representing the thirteen states. The pediment above featured the image of an eagle.

Washington stepped onto the balcony wearing a ceremonial sword and dressed in the height of fashion. He wore a linen shirt with pleated ruffles underneath his suit. His waistcoat and jacket were made of the same brown fabric as his knee breeches. For this formal occasion, his hair was pulled back in a braid, covered in white powder then tucked into a black bag.

Robert Livingston, the Chancellor of the State of New York, administered the oath of office. Secretary of the Senate, Samuel Otis, held a huge Bible.

Washington placed his hand on the Bible and said: "I do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Livingston raised the Bible slightly, and Washington bent over and kissed it.

“Long live George Washington, the President of the United States!” exclaimed Livingstone when he turned to the crowd.

“Huzza! Huzza! Huzza!” roared the masses.

President George Washington bowed.

“Huzza! Huzza! Huzza!” they cheered.

Some were so overcome with emotion that they could not speak. Tears of joy rolled down the cheeks of many members of Congress and people in the crowd.

Library of Congress website

Go to the Library of Congress and search for:

1. Original U.S. Constitution, which created the office of the President. Find the oath of office in Article II, section 1. Note that George Washington was given the honor to be the first person to sign the Constitution and his name appears at the top. (You could also take a look at the Articles of Confederation and the Bill of Rights.)

2. Federal Hall, location of inauguration. See a 1790 hand colored image of the building.

3. George Washington’s inaugural address, April 30, 1789. See and read Washington’s handwritten notes-the actual pages he held in his hands as he addressed Congress that day.

By using and discussing the primary source documents from the LOC, and my book (or another nonfiction book that deals with this topic) as a secondary source document, a teacher accomplishes many of the CCSS Anchor Standards. With these few selections, a teacher can teach reading, writing, research, speaking and listening skills, and language-and it happens naturally and all at the same time.

Painless . . . really.

www.carlamcclafferty.com

Writing and Teaching Outside our Comfort Zones

noreply@blogger.com (Deborah Heiligman) — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 07:30:00 +0000

I joke at school visits that my speciality is writing about things I know nothing about. There are no jokes, a boss of mine used to say. She said it with a large measure of meanness, usually when someone had just made a joke. In fact, she was the boss who made me decide to become a freelance writer. Anyway...

I do, often, write about things I know nothing about. Presumably by the time I'm done writing them, I do know some things. And yet.... A few weeks ago in the New York Times puzzle blog, Gary Antonick wrote about Paul Erdos on the occasion of his 100th birthday. He included some excerpts from The Boy Who Loved Math: The Improbable Life of Paul Erdos.

THAT was WAY COOL. I was dancing. But.... I couldn't understand a bit of the math in Gary Antonick's puzzle. Or in the comments afterward. I didn't try that hard, really. Mostly because I went into a white hot panic. I was so far out of my comfort zone. I passed calculus in high school only because Mr. Hunsberger was a supremely nice human being. No math courses since. And yet I wrote a book about a mathematician.

And I, the author of many science books, took one science course in college--biology for poets. Pass/fail. I passed, thank you very much.

Over the years I have written so many books outside of my comfort zone that I guess those zones have become more comfortable. But that took a long time. Teachers, especially elementary school teachers, tell me they often teach subjects they are not that comfortable with--usually science or math. And yet they find ways to teach outside their own comfort zones all the time.

Recently on Twitter a professor at Fresno State got in touch with me. She was teaching Charles and Emma to her college class of students who want to be English teachers. She wrote:
‏@cakeypal

11 Apr

@DHeiligman We're going to play with the idea of the writer as scientist, figuring out what your hypothesis was and what you observed

I told her I loved that idea! What a great way to teach that book! And then she wrote back:

‏@cakeypal11 Apr

@DHeiligman It also might be a how-the-English-teacher-can-infuriate-her-science-colleagues lesson. ;)

I told her I doubted it. Because the trick for her and her students, just as it is for me, is to find the way in. I asked her to tell me how it went. While I waited to hear the results of her experiment I thought more about writing outside my comfort zone--how I do it and why. It's first and foremost about finding a way in.

For me the way in is almost always with the person and the personal story. I am, above all else, a people person. How did Paul Erdos manage to live in this world being very much not of this world? Why was he the way he was? Was he happy? How did other people view him? What excited him about math? How did math change his world and how did he change the world with this math? In answering the questions about him and how he lived his life, I learned why mathematicians all over the world loved him, and still do. I understand the spirit of his math, if not the actual numbers. (Though I admit, I do understand more than Mr. Hunsberger would ever believe!)

Kathee Godfrey reported back that her class was a success. Here's what she wrote:

Here is the photo of several of my wonderful students: Dana Resendez, Amelia Sarkisian, Marcella Camino, and Melinda LaRochelle. We're studying your book in a senior seminar on young adult literature and all these students plan to be English teachers. In class Thursday, they came up with hypotheses about what you wanted to illustrate in your book and then identified the evidence or methods to support their hypotheses. It worked surprisingly well!

Brilliant, right? She and her students found the way in, and you can see by their smiles they were happy and proud with the results because they connected. That's all that it takes, right? As E.M. Forster said: "Only Connect."

To read more about the class, go to Kathee's own blog about it, which she calls it, by the way, The Writer As Scientist.

So how do teachers connect when they are out of their comfort zones? Sometimes they bring in experts to help. Or ask friends behind the scenes. But mostly they rely on books--good, well-researched, entertaining, original nonfiction books for kids--to help them teach the subject. This weekend I'll be at IRA, talking with reading teachers and other authors about nonfiction and how to use nonfiction books in their classrooms. (Come say hello--here's my schedule.) I know I will hear more ideas from teachers about how they teach out of their comfort zones. And I know they will tell me books are key.

As to why I write, so often, outside my comfort zone... I think it's because I never want to be bored. I hate being bored. And I love to be challenged. I'm sure there's some other darker reasons, but why go there?

In college I took one art history class, also pass/fail. It was early in the morning, in a large auditorium. There were lots of slides, so the room was darkened. You know what I remember? It's where I learned the word UNDULATING. That is all I remember. I did, however, pass that one, too. With a certain amount of relief.

And now back I go, into the dark, outside of my comfort zone, to my book about--an artist!

I'm starting to think, folks, that my I.N.K. columns are in place of therapy. Thanks for listening.

Confessions of a Sissypants

noreply@blogger.com (Cheryl Harness) — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 12:00:00 +0000

"Adventure is just bad planning." Roald Amundsen

"Adventure is worthwhile in itself." Amelia Earhart

So, okay, I've written about many an adventurer.

Seafaring pioneers, living in close, seriously smelly damp quarters, offering up prayers and rationing their limited quantities of foul food and beverage down below the decks of the pitching, tossing Mayflower.

John Adams setting off on horseback [me, I sat astride a horse exactly once, when I was about 9 years old, feeling as if I'd been plunked atop a the broad, warm ridgepole of a living house] to Philadelphia, not quite 400 miles from his Braintree, Massachusetts farm. Picture this earnest, talkative lawyer and his 11-year-old son daring their voyage to France in the winter of 1778. Crossing the Atlantic, whose waves were thick with the ships of His Britannic Majesty, who had less than little use for John Adams or any of the rest of his treasonous buddies at their upstart Congress.

Teenaged Ben Franklin on his own, a runaway apprentice, hiking across NJ to PA. Or stranded in London.

Sister Sojourner, long in years (47 or so), poor in pocket, rich in conviction, setting out on foot to speak the Truth.

Teenaged express riders, each alone but for his pony and mochila full of mail, pounding away through the wilderness.

Dan'l Boone, Adventurer

Daniel Boone. Need I say more? No, I think not.
Teddy Roosevelt. Ditto.

True, setting out to write about someone, some long-gone event is a voyage of discovery. There are suppositions to be challenged. Facts to be discovered and verified. True, one must travel to walk about where others have walked before. Photographing. Sketching. Envisioning the vanished past. Thanks be to all that is holy for historic sites and practitioners of living history at such places as Plimoth Plantation and Williamsburg.

Grateful as all get out am I that I got to do it but it occurs to me that I've not been entirely worthy of writing and illustrating stories about these valiant souls. I'm afraid that my feelings regarding adventures are more aligned with those of Bilbo Baggins: "We don't want any adventures here, thank you!..."nasty disturbing uncomfortable things! Make you late for dinner!" That being said, I'm awash with pre-travel oogly-booglies because way too early tomorrow morning I'm off on one those beastly things. By the time any of you read this post, what I hope won't be part of any posthumous noting of my final efforts, I will have well and truly had an adventure to the Brent International School in Manila. About which I'll write and have pictures for next month's post, God willing.

I'll have had moral support from fellow INK-sters Deborah Heiligman and Susan Kuklin, bless 'em, regarding changing planes in Tokyo. They could have advised me to put on my big girl panties and deal with it, for crying out loud, but they knew to be kind to a rattled soul standing, bags packed, upon a ledge and/or brink. More to the point of this blog, for these 3rd, 4th, and 5th graders on the far side of the world, I shall be conducting writing workshops. Certainly I have done these before and have been charmed, sometimes chagrined, and knocked out more than once by the work of young writers. But because my presentations have generally consisted of 1. my being entertaining and instructive – about history, about writing about history, about finding the facts because making the past come alive but not in some horrid zombie way– before the convened, silent but for their laughter. And 2. a boatload of jolly Q & A. Working with young writers is a comparatively foreign country. An adventure.

In preparation, I'm finding a wealth of information gathered by those who manage classrooms every single day – wait. I must go put on a hat so I may take it off to those who daily convey the nuts and bolts of commas, indenting one's paragraphs, and constructing clear narrative to newbies in acceptable forms of written communication. It occurs to me once more that writing is one skill set, acquired by years of writing and reading; teaching writing, quantifying traits, all six, is entirely another. And nothing is more instructive than preparing to instruct. I'm so eager to meet these young writers, who've been reading my take on the Pilgrims, the Pony Express, Daniel Boone, etc. Oh to BE there, listening, sharing, guiding, and applauding their efforts. If only I didn't need to GO there.

to be continued....

Guest Blogger, Darcy Pattison, Everyone Knows! False Assumptions

noreply@blogger.com (Carla Killough McClafferty) — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 05:00:00 +0000

I’d like to introduce today’s guest blogger, Darcy Pattison, an author, blogger, and writing teacher. Darcy has been published in eight languages. Recent nature books for children include: WISDOM, THE MIDWAY ALBATROSS, first place winner in the Children’s Picture Book category of the 2013 Writer’s Digest Self-Published Book Awards, and a Starred Review in Publisher’s Weekly; DESERT BATHS, an NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book 2013, and PRAIRIE STORMS. Darcy Pattison is the 2007 recipient of Arkansas Governor’s Arts Awards for her work in Children’s Literature.

As a speaker, Darcy presents programming on her books, and is well known across the country for her Novel Revision Retreat. Because of her reputation as an excellent writing teacher, Darcy’s blog, Fiction Notes, which offers practical advice on the craft of writing, has many followers. Her blog can be found at www.darcypattison.com/

Have you heard the old folk song, “Sweet Violets”? It’s a practical demonstration of setting up an expectation and thwarting it:

There once was a farmer

Who took a young miss

In back of the barn

Where he gave her a. . . lecture

On horse and chickens and eggs

And told her that she had such beautiful. . . manners

That suited a girl of her charms,

A girl that he wanted to take in his. . . washing and ironing

And then if she did,

They could get married

And have lots of . . . sweet violets.

Kids and science are like this. They make assumptions about a topic and it is sometimes difficult to move them past those assumptions. Take the subject of baths.

Everyone knows that a bath means lots of soap and water, right?

Not necessarily.

I heard a story about birds who take baths with ants. Anting is a well-documented behavior among certain species of birds, and happens one of two ways. The birds may simply go and stand on an ant nest and allow the ants to crawl through their wings. Or a bird may crush an ant in its beak, then use the crushed ant like a washcloth to stroke its feathers. Scientists suspect that the ants are helping the bird get rid of parasites, such as tiny mites. Or the crushed ant releases formic acid, which may act as a disinfectant.

When I heard about anting, I wondered how else animals might take a bath. First, I had to define for myself what a bath meant. Bathing is a method of hygiene that helps remove dirt, parasites, dead skin/feather cells, etc. When you remove the assumption that a bath means water, many types of animal behaviors can be defined as a bath.

It was time to research. To stretch the idea to the max, I decided to use only desert animals—just to emphasize that a bath doesn’t have to be water. This did mean some limitations. I couldn’t include fish. In fact, it was hard to document any cleansing behaviors from amphibians or arachnids. I stretched the definition to the max by including a snake (reptile), who sheds his skin as a bath.

The result if my picture book, DESERT BATHS, which was named a 2013 Outstanding Science Trade Book. For me, the most interesting thing is how kids stretch their definition of a bath and challenge their initial assumptions. That’s good science.

Video on You Tube: How Do Desert Animals Take a Bath? Arkansas Audubon Summer Camp

I Can Just Ask!

noreply@blogger.com (Barbara Kerley) — Thu, 11 Apr 2013 08:00:00 +0000

Today’s post will be short and sweet, partly because I’m juggling a handful of projects (a process that deserves a whole post in its own right) and partly because I’m a little hyped:

For the first time in my nearly 20 years of working on biographies, I am working on a project about a live person.

Waterhouse Hawkins, Walt Whitman, Alice Roosevelt, Mark Twain and Susy Clemens, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were all lively, and I tried to bring them to life on the page, but technically, they are no longer with us.

For the first time, I am working on a book about someone, happily, who is—who very much is.

Writing about someone long gone has its advantages. You can utilize the scholarship of others to help inform your understanding of primary sources. And it’s way easier to determine the lasting significance of someone’s accomplishments when you can see if it actually lasted.

But there is something amazing about thinking, “I wonder how she felt about x?” and then realizing, “Oh! I can just ask!”

I’m feeling a little giddy, like a kid in a pastry shop filling the box with more and more treats. Every day I seem to be emailing a dozen or so questions (though I was kind enough to give her the whole weekend off—both days) and then, in a little bit, getting answers.

Will everything make it into the book? Probably not. But the box is brimming over with treats, and I get to choose the ones I like best.

And then, even better, to ask for more.