Discover Amazing Shore Birds With The BLUES
Did you know that Atlantic Puffins can carry more than 10 fish at a time in their colorful beaks? Or that the Brown Pelican has air sacs under its skin to cushion the impact from plunge-diving? Thanks to the BLUES, children (and their adult counterparts!) are learning fascinating facts about America’s shore birds.
In the opening of The BLUES Go Birding At Wild America’s Shores the BLUES receive a postcard that inspires them to plan another birding trip. At Eggbert’s suggestion the BLUES take off and follow the path of famous birder Roger Tory Peterson along Wild America’s Shores. The BLUES travel from Newfoundland, Canada to Isla Coronado, Mexico and meet 15 different shore bird species along the way.
Adults will enjoy sharing these books with children as the story, quips, and birding notes provide multiple levels of enjoyment. Co-author Carol Malnor in her activity Suggestions for Reading Aloud encourages readers to focus on different sections in each reading. For example, tracing Peterson’s route on the map at the back of the book can help children understand the epic nature of this journey.
Apart from the delightful storyline and exquisite depictions of real birds by illustrator Louise Schroeder, the BLUES packs in scientific facts. Presented in such a way as to pique the curiosity of readers young and old the BLUES will inspire people to take a closer look at the next passing bird. As stated by Ed Pandolfino, Ph.D., Chair of the Sierra Foothills Audubon Society Placer County Conservation Committee: “[W]onderful, engaging, and important… loaded with information likely to fire the imagination and interest of the young reader.”
A Dragonfly Brings Magic and Suspense
One moment it swims and breathes water. The next it flies and breathes air. A fantasy? No, a true story of a dragonfly. Eliza and the Dragonfly by Susie Caldwell Rinehart and illustrated by Anisa Claire Hovemann is a picture book story in which a dragonfly is a main character.
In the story, Eliza, a young girl, discovers a dragonfly nymph at a nearby pond. At first she thinks it’s “gross.” Then the magic and suspense of watching it hatch into a beautiful creature changes her mind. She even names it Horace. Horace is a Common Green Darner, a species that is widespread across North America. In the process, Eliza learns something about growing up. Readers will never look at a dragonfly the same way again. In fact, young readers may run outside to find a dragonfly.
Author Susie Caldwell Rinehart says, “I wanted to write a story about that moment of discovery between a child and a live creature, without sacrificing realism.” For Susie, the project is “mostly autobiographical.” It is her first book.
The was also the first book for illustrator Anisa Claire Hovemann. Anisa took a semester off from her senior year at the Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, Maryland, to complete the project. Composed of mixed media but primarily watercolor, she says that she “tried to bring dragonfly essence to the whole project – a light, free, whimsical quality, fresh, playful, yet elegant. I had a lot of fun developing each of the characters.” Anisa spent hours at “Dragonfly Pond” near her home in Nevada City , California in preparation for the project.
A Perspective on Author/Illustrator Collaboration
– by Joseph Anthony author of The Dandelion Seed, and In a Nutshell
Interestingly, I have discovered that readers tend to assume authors and illustrators work together on children’s books, though this is often not the case. In fact, there are good reasons for keeping authors and illustrators apart, as disagreements can get in the way of a successful completion. A couple of exceptions are when the author and illustrator are either the same person, or already a team, as my wife, Cris Arbo, and I are.
Our first collaboration writing and illustrating for children was The Dandelion Seed. I had written the rough story out and given it to Cris to look over, giving her only one illustration suggestion, the child blowing the seed at the end. She always provides a careful critique and honest feedback, so when she got excited about the story I knew that was a good sign. She got a bunch of illustration ideas right away and sketched them out, and one of these she turned into a painting. She added some pages to flesh out the seed’s journey, then we sent the package to Dawn. It was fortunate for me that Cris was there to improve and illustrate the simple story or it might never have materialized.
I remember one of the first comments coming from the art director when the paintings were being done was that they looked rather bland. This was because the story started out in winter, the first page reading “It was winter in the garden.” The reason was that I wanted the reality of the death of the little seed’s parent plant to be the harshest it could be. It took Cris’ convincing for me to change the season to autumn and allow her to put more color in the paintings. At first I thought the story would be compromised by even such a subtle change, but of course not only the illustrations are better but the story was improved as well.
Other examples of our collaboration are from the creation of In A Nutshell. Even the title needed work, as you can see from the very first draft (below). Cris always weighs in on the title. We burn wood for heat in our house, and this page was barely rescued from the wood stove when we realized what it was! Also, beyond the writing aspect, Cris needed a scale model cabin built so that she could photograph it from different angles. She researched eighteenth century cabins and came up with the dimensions for me, and I was able to build the model.
Kids Learn about the “Neighbors”: Mercury, Venus…
Today’s children – the generation that may put a colony on Mars – will grow up knowing that Earth, Mars and the other planets are part of a “family of planets,” in a “neighborhood” that circles the Sun. The books they grow up with, such as Going Around the Sun: Some Planetary Fun, take that kind of perspective in stride.
As a former director of children’s theater as well as a former teacher and librarian, Marianne Berkes has just the aptitude to pull off a book about astronomy that is both entertaining and informative. To the tune of the old ballad “Over in the Meadow,” children count the planets, learn their names, and discover some amazing things about them. Jupiter for instance, is “A gigantic ball of gas/ Here is planet number five.” A ball of gas? Yes, that’s right!
Real-life astronomers love this little book. Neil deGrasse Tyson, Director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York, wrote, “If the Sun were a poet, then Going Around the Sun captures just what it would say to its beloved family of planets.” And Bruce Betts, Director of Projects at The Planetary Society, said, “Going Around the Sun combines good science with good fun.”
Illustrator Janeen Mason of Stuart, Florida, has since 1989 studied and painted life in the oceans. Janeen is a prominent Florida artist and a member of the Florida Arts Council, the advisory board to the Secretary of State regarding culture in the state. She created the backgrounds to each of the planetary illustrations by melting crayons on heated paper, which created a unique and textured background suggestive of space.
A Mother’s Bond
Fran Hodgkin’s book, If You Were My Baby: A Wildlife Lullaby, shows the life-giving bond between mothers and babies, regardless of their species. A duck and her ducklings, a mountain goat and her kid, a bison and her calf, as well as a human mother and her baby – all are tenderly guiding their young in ways associated with their own animal kind.
There are many books about love on the market, but they either fictionalize the bond through talking animals, or focus solely on humans. If You Were My Baby highlights the real relationship in lullaby-like poetic form, as the adult animals fulfill their parental roles in a factual way.
“People ask me if this is fiction or non-fiction,” Fran often says. “I call it ‘creative non-fiction,’ because the facts are there but they don’t hit you over the head. So often, non-fiction is seen as boring. Yet children love books that portray real life. The challenge for the writer is to be a little more creative. Just make sure you have your facts straight.”
The book grew out of a lifetime love of wild creatures. Fran says that her mother taught her “how to watch and how to really see” the squirrels, jays, sparrows, bugs, worms… “One of my earliest memories involves watching a garden spider build a web in my tire swing. I seem to remember staying put for hours just to see what would happen as the spider worked.”
Now as a mother herself, Fran passed her love of “Watching and seeing” animals on to her daughter Rosie. “Rosie inspired the book through her questions about nature and animals,” Fran says, so in a meaningful way, If You Were My Baby is the product of three generations of women nature lovers.
Book of the Week: In One Tidepool
Congratulations to last weeks winner Rena Jones. Rena was the winner of a free copy of Amy’s Light by Robert Nutt.
This week we’re giving away a copy of In One Tidepool: Crabs, Snails and Salty Tails to one lucky eNewsletter subscriber.
Have you ever ventured to the edge of the sea and peered into a tidepool? A whole community of creatures lives there! This salty, splashy habitat book by Anthony Fredericks is unique and colorful. Vivid close-up art by Jennifer Dirubbio, and amusing text make this both fun and educational for children.
Book of the Week: Amy’s Light
Congratulations to last week’s winner Traci Grider. Traci was the winner of a free copy of A Swim Through the Sea by Kristin Joy Pratt.
This week we’re giving away a copy of Amy’s Light to one lucky eNewsletter subscriber. From under her bedcovers on a warm summer’s night, Amy peers at dark shadows on the wall that seem at least twenty feet tall. Suddenly she sees a faint flicker of light from the window! Amy discovers a magical light in her own backyard. As she learns about the light, she also learns about the light within herself. Here is a story to brighten one’s evenings – any time of year. Inspiration for the book came to author Robert Nutt one summer evening when he and his wife were walking and came up on a house with a yard full of dancing, flickering lights. At that moment, he knew he would write about it. That night, in bed, the verse just started to come – it “just started spilling out of me, and I wrote it down.”
Authors Out-&-About: Jennifer Morgan Visits the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab
Caption: Jennifer Morgan with Andrew Zwicker, Ph.D., program head, science education program, Princeton Plasma Physics Lab.
In May, I had the honor — and very deep pleasure — of meeting and giving a program for members of the science education department at the DOE Princeton Plasma Physics Lab (PPPL) last month. PPPL works with researchers around the globe to create on earth the conditions inside of stars in order to release fusion energy, a safe, clean and abundant energy source for the future. My program was about using the Montessori Cosmic Education Curriculum (Born with a Bang) as a scaffolding for teaching science and all subjects at the elementary level. Then the conversation took a turn that completely surprised me.
They were most fascinated with the combination of art, photographs, story, and science writing in a single book. Jerry Ross, one member of the science education staff had recently won the “Art of Science” competition held at Princeton, that selects images of beauty created in the course of scientific research. Dr. Andrew Zwicker, program head of the science education program speculated that now we see the beauty and artistic value of scientific inquiry… is there a way to flip that and use art to help further science discovery? He went on, “Is there a way to use art to see things differently?” Hmm, What a fascinating conversation inside a mega science research facility, one that I never expected!
A Seed is Planted, a Book is Born
From the Dawn Publications newsletter archives, by Jennifer Ward, author of Forest Bright, Forest Night.
I am a writer. I am also: a parent, a daydreamer, a quiet observer, a voracious reader, obsessed with picture books, and highly fond of nature and animals.
Not a day goes by that I don’t observe something in nature that I’d love to communicate to children in the form of a book. As I sit here writing this on a chilly winter morning, I note a hint of spring as I state out my office window and spy a finch playing tug-of-war with the old mesquite that guards my office. The bird the victor, off it flies beak full of green, with an addition for its nest. Viewing this, I am given nature’s promise of a new season, one that will offer new growth and new lives.
With my book Forest Bright, Forest Night, I wanted to communicate diurnal & nocturnal animal activity, using juxtaposition in a manner that would be fun and simple. The original manuscript I wrote was set in a desert, something I know very well, as it’s my home. I’ll never forget when Dawn Publications rejected this manuscript. The publisher called me on the phone to tell me they wouldn’t be publishing my story. Now that’s not as dire as it sounds. As a matter of fact, I was elated to get the phone call. It’s not everyday a publisher telephones to reject you! (Usually they simply mail your manuscript back to you with a ‘no thank you’ letter.) Dawn stated that they liked the nocturnal/diurnal concept very much, and they liked my writing style, but would I consider rewriting the manuscript set in a different habitat? Hence, the seed was planted and a new book was born.
I love writing about animals. I read a lot of non-fiction as it is, but each writing project I embark on gives me an opportunity to learn and grow as a writer and as a nature enthusiast. Of course, I jumped at the chance to resubmit a different version of my diurnal/nocturnal theme to Dawn. I read and researched and scribbled and crafted and wrote and revised over the course of months.
I spent time observing animals in the wild while visiting my hometown in Illinois. Driving by a clearing near a forest one early evening I spied a flock of turkeys,: Strut and woddle, turkeys gobble. A verse was born (my mind often thinks in terms of text!), and a page came to life.
Camping with my family in the Colorado mountains, my daughter and I patiently observed chipmunks quickly and warily dashing to and fro from under a large boulder: Chatter and chase, chipmunks race.
Visiting my parents, my childhood home, afforded a great opportunity to spy on squirrels and jays. Seems that squirrels were always gathering and jays were always jabbering when I was a child. They still are today! Store and stash, squirrels dash. Jabber and talk, blue jays squawk.
And so, I embraced my book. With it I have had many new opportunities, too: the opportunity to meet new friends as I travel and speak and share my writing with others. I hope my book brings new awareness and growth to others as well – an appreciation of nature and earth, and a love of reading and books.
Book of the Week: A Swim Through the Sea
Congratulations to last week’s winner Chris Leach. Chris was the winner of a free copy of There’s a Babirusa in my Bathtub by Maxine Rose Schur and illustrated by Michael Maydak.
This week we’re giving away a copy of A Swim Through the Sea to one lucky eNewsletter subscriber. In this illustrated tour of the plants and animals of the undersea kingdom, Kristin Joy Pratt highlights a selected species on each page with a full-color illustration and a paragraph of fascinating facts. The alliterative storyline and alphabet book format provide parents and teachers with an engaging way of sharing this special ecosystem with their children.