Showing posts with label 2011 titles. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2011 titles. Show all posts

Friday, May 4, 2012

Happy National Bike Month!

Cornelia Neal, of the Office of Transportation of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Washington, D.C., was so determined to give her son the experience of riding his bike to school despite the stream of cars on the capital’s roadways that she came up with a creative solution. She regularly piled her son and his bike into her car, drove him to a park en route, dropped him off to cycle across the park, and then picked him up and drove him the rest of the way to school. Neal grew up in the bike-friendly Netherlands, where, she says, “Every kid goes to school on a bike.” She wanted her son to have the same experience, despite his living in Washington.
Neal told her story as a panelist at the first-ever National Women Cycling Forum in Washington on March 20. The purpose of the forum was to explore ways to encourage more women in the United States to ride bicycles. (A 2009 study by the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals showed that only 24 percent of bike trips in this country are taken by women, compared with 55 percent of the bike trips in the Netherlands.) I was honored to be invited to start things off by highlighting the impact of cycling on women during the 1890s bicycle revolution.

Bike MonthI bring this up now because May is National Bike Month, so designated by the League of American Wheelmen (now the League of American Bicyclists) in 1956. This year, specific dates within the month are designated as the first-ever Bike to School Day (May 9), Bike to Work Week (May 14-18), and Bike to Work Day (May 18). Internet resources abound in support of these efforts, making it possible to map the best cycling routes, enter to win contests (with prizes such as bike racks for your school), and register or find events in your community.

On Bike to Work Day, I’ll be in Washington, DC, where the publisher of Wheels of Change, National Geographic, will be one of the “pit stops” for the 11,000 or more area cyclists expected to take part. It will be fun to be involved in this celebration of the bicycle, some 120 years after the two-wheeler first took America by storm. Today, more and more communities are developing the infrastructure to promote safe cycling and more people are turning to the bicycle as an economical, ecological, and healthy means of transportation. I admit that I have a particular affection for this durable, revolutionary invention of the Gilded Age, and I’m glad to see that its place in society continues to grow.

Happy National Bike Month! Now get out and ride!

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

A Look at the 2012 ALA Awards

CONGRATULATIONS to INKsters Roz Schanzer, Steve Sheinkin, and Sue Macy whose birthdays came early this year!

Every January brings a second birthday to a chosen few children's authors – with perhaps the best presents ever. That's when ALA announces the Oscars of our profession. Monday was that day.

The Newbery and Caldicott awards top the list - literally and status-ly. Finding a nonfiction

book in these lists is rare indeed, but this year we snagged a…

• Caldicott honor for Patrick O’Donnell’s Me…Jane, a picture book biography of Jane Goodall.

See my review here.



CSK AWARDS

We scored big time in the Coretta Scott King awards.

• Kadir Nelson’s Heart and Soul: The Story of America and African Americans won the gold medal for text and a silver for illustration.

If you include poetry in our camp, we won two silvers:

• Eloise Greenfield and Jan Spivey Gilchirst for The Great Migration: Journey to the North

Patricia McKissack and Leo and Diane Dillon for Never Forgotten. This is an original folktale told in verse and I’m going to claim it for nonfiction, just because I want to!


SIBERT AWARDS

In our own category – the Robert F. Sibert International Book Awards – we find

wondrous variety. The gold medal went to a picture book,

Balloons Over Broadway: The True Story of the Puppeteer of Macy’s Parade by author/illustrator Melissa Sweet.


The silver honor awards went to…..

Black & White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene ‘Bull’ Connor, by Larry Dane Brimner, a middle grade photo-illustrated book;

Drawing from Memory by Allen Say, a middle grade illustrated autobiography;

• The Elephant Scientist, a Scientist in the Field series book, with text and photos by Caitlin O’Connell, along with co-author Donna M. Jackson and co-photographer Timothy Rodwell;

Witches! The Absolutely True Tale of Disaster in Salem, a middle grade illustrated book by our own inimitable Rosalyn Schanzer.


YALSA Awards…

…. for Excellence in Nonfiction for Young Adults - and the Gretchen Woelfle awards for the most engaging subtitles:

The 2012 Excellence winner is Steve Sheinkin, erstwhile INK blogger, for The Notorious Benedict Arnold: A True Story of Adventure, Heroism, and Treachery.

Finalists were

• INK’s Sue Macy with Wheels of Change: How Women Rode the Bicycle to Freedom (With a Few Flat Ties Along the Way.)

Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos for Sugar Changed the World: A Story of Magic, Spice, Slavery, Freedom and Science

• Karen Blumenthal and Bootleg: Murder, Moonshine, and the Lawless Years of Prohibition.

• Susan Goldman Rubin and Music Was It: Young Leonard Bernstein.


Total tally:

14 books, 15 medals - 3 gold; 12 silver (2 for Nelson’s book)

2 illustrated picture books

5 middle grade illustrated books

6 books with photos

1 unillustrated book

And –

1 autobiography

1 folk tale

5 biographies (including one biography/science book)

7 history books

Award-winners covered American history (both white and African American,) world history, women’s history, and music. Judges leaned toward biography this year, with science getting rather short shrift. I wonder why. Nevertheless we’ve got some fabulous books to teach from and enjoy.

Congratulations to all the winners – and to their editors, book designers, and illustrators!

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

'TIS THE SEASON....FOR NEW BOOKS

Children’s nonfiction continues to shine, and if I had to choose one word to define its glory, the word is VOICE. That voice ranges from whimsical to witty to irresistible “sit-down-and let-me-tell-you-a-story.” The “voice” or style of picture book illustrations is just as diverse. Here are a few new books I’ve enjoyed.

Jingle Bells in Savannah? Who knew? John Harris, that’s who. On a visit to Savannah he learned the genesis of the popular holiday song, took scraps of history, added a bit of social commentary and ‘what if?’ and came up with Jingle Bells: How the Holiday Classic Came to Be, illustrated by Adam Gustavson (Peachtree.) The composer, John Pierpont, was a Yankee Unitarian minister in the 1850s, presiding over a congregation that included a few African Americans, so we get a brick through the church window to point out the atmosphere of the time and place. But overall this is a story of nostalgia and celebration.


How do you write a biography about someone who spends his life sitting around making up languages and writing fantasy stories? If you’re Alexandra Wallner, you elicit the help of your husband, illustrator John Wallner who creates a board game that runs through the pages filled with magical creatures, strange letters and words, and playing cards that portray the real and fantasy worlds of J.R.R. Tolkien (Holiday House.) The “game” is the life and books of the author, born on the South African veldt filled with scary animals, raised in the bucolic English countryside (think Shire,) and ending up as an Oxford don creating the vast world of The Lord of the Rings. It’s a good story, made fantastical by the artwork.

[Aside: Reading Tolkien’s wonderful Father Christmas Letters became an annual tradition in our house. These letters written over twenty years to the Tolkien children are filled with elves and goblins and the clumsy but lovable North Polar Bear. Tolkien illustrates them as well.]


The story of Belle, The Last Mule at Gee’s Bend, is told to a young boy in the voice of an older woman, Belle’s owner. It’s a poignant history of the people of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, and how Martin Luther King inspired them to vote and march for civil rights back in the 1960s. And Belle? When the sheriff closed the ferry that took the people to the polls, Belle and her colleagues hauled wagons the long way around. Then, in 1968, she pulled the cart with King’s coffin during his funeral procession. The voice here is slow and steady, just like Belle, and mesmerizing too. Belleis written by Calvin Alexander Ramsey and Bettye Stroud, illustrated by John Holyfield (Candlewick.)



The Christmas Coat: Memories of My Sioux Childhood, told in third person, is author Virginia Driving Hawk Sneve’s own story, illustrated by Ellen Beier (Holiday House). We enter the bleak frigid Midwestern winter world with children wearing drab clothes that don’t fit anymore, waiting for the “Theast” box of used clothes to arrive from New England at Christmas. We also see the joyful and colorful indoor life of these Sioux families, as Virginia’s family dresses up to dance to music on the radio, and young Three Kings wear Sioux feather headdresses in the Nativity play. Will Virginia get a new coat that fits her from Theast box this year – that beautiful silver fur, or a red one with a hood that she longs for?


How about this for a new twist on an old topic – Green Bible Stories for Children by Tami Lehman-Wilzig, illustrated by Durga Yael Bernhard (Kar-Ben.) The linkages are ingenious – Noah and biodiversity; Abraham, Lot, and sustainable grazing; God, Moses and crop rotation. The tone is colloquial: “One day God told Moses, “I’ve decided that the Sabbath is not only for humans.”” Activities are added to each story – sprouting seeds, recycling, saltwater experiments and more. Green Bible Stories illustrates that ecological problems and solutions have a long history.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Picture Book Month

There’s a new holiday in town. November is now Picture Book Month. Several picture book authors got together to create this event—and, good for them. As they said on their web site, Picture Book Month: A Celebration!, “We are doing this because in this digital age where people are predicting the coming death of print books, picture books (the print kind) need love. And the world needs picture books. There’s nothing like the physical page turn of a beautifully crafted picture book.”

I have written on this subject myself, a rebuttal to the attitude reported in The New York Times, of parents wanting children to leap past picture books to read chapter books in the quest to get them on the road to...what?

Each day on this site, another picture book author writes an entry titled, “Why Picture Books are Important.” Here are some excerpts from the entries so far:

I believe our first stories become part of our DNA forever. -Samantha Berger

Picture books are important because they are with us for life…No matter how many books we’ve read since, they will always have a place in our hearts…and a relationship that, whether we realize it or not, has shaped our lives. -Dan Yaccarino

When my now 11 year old girl, Eliana, was a preschooler, we bought the book, In My World, by Lois Ehlert. The illustrations are simple. The text is sparse. And yet, there is a magic about this book that completely captured her. It could have been the exquisite die cuts or the bright colors… It could have been. But it wasn't. It was the wondrous way the words and the pictures were married. One could not work without the other. Every night, Eliana read that book to me, putting her little hand, which fit perfectly, inside the die cut hand of the book. And every night I would tear up knowing that I was experiencing a magical moment in my daughter's life… -Diane de las Casas

Picture books have a special kind of magic in the hands of children. They open windows of opportunity — glimpses of new worlds — in the safest of places: in the library, in the classroom, or in their very own rooms. Kids can sound out one word at a time, breeze through full sentences or skip the words altogether to build stories of their own based on warm, vivid illustrations. Anything is possible… -Kelly Milner Halls

I have a sixteen-year-old niece, Sarah. A year ago my sister-in-law, her mom, died suddenly. A friend of the family gave my brother a picture book called Tear Soup to help with Sarah’s mourning.
One night, he walked into her room with the book under his arm. She took one look at him, rolled her eyes, and said, “Yeah, right. You’re going to read THAT to ME?”
“Yes,” he said. “Move over.”
She argued – what teen girl wouldn’t? – but grudgingly made room. They cuddled up and read the book. A couple of days later, Sarah asked, “Dad, whatever happened to all my picture books from when I was little?” My brother pulled a box out of storage and the next night came in with Caps for Sale.
A new tradition was born. For months, every night, he’d read a picture book to her from her childhood.
Picture books heal. No matter your age. -Katie Davis

I have looked up some of the other created holidays for November—International Drum Month, Peanut Butter Lovers Month, Aviation History Month. In my book, this one beats them hands down.

Spread the word.


In celebration of picture books, I would like to recommend one. I’m cheating, though. This one is not nonfiction, but still, “pure genius” according to its Kirkus starred review.

Furthermore it was written by Lita Judge, an author whose books are mostly nonfiction including the lauded One Thousand Tracings and Born to be Giants.

Red Sled by Lita Judge is a whimsical dream of fun and magic. And that is a fact!

Wednesday, October 19, 2011

The life of a children's book…is it over when it's over?

The biography of a typical children’s book goes something like this:

The beginning
  • Author gets a fabulous idea and writes a manuscript or proposal
  • An editor likes it and contract terms are agreed upon
  • The ms is revised and edited (repeat as necessary)
  • Interior artwork (if applicable) is obtained, plus jacket art
  • Book is typeset, printed, bound, sent out into the world
  • Marketing happens
  • Reviews are written, hopefully rave
  • Orders are taken and fulfilled
  • Royalties are paid to authors and illustrators
  • As stock runs low, the book is reprinted
  • When orders decline, the book goes out of print
The end

Right?

Or not so much. Authors have always had the option of reprinting their book themselves. Boxes of books piled in the garage may be the result. Or so I hear, not having tried it myself. 


As everyone knows, things are different now because of the devices, digital book formats, and ebookstores now available. For quite awhile I’ve been wanting to put one of my out-of-print titles into ebook form and it's a thrill to announce that Tracks in the Sand is now available again on the iBookstore. Here is the trailer: Tracks originally had two printings and according to an inside source at the time was still selling several thousand copies a year when the publisher decided not to reprint. Perhaps they were more interested in selling their novelization of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie? (Just a theory.) My recent thinking is that Tracks is a good candidate for a digital version because, among other factors, sea turtles have been around for over 100 million years. Therefore, the basic facts of their life cycle story are not likely to change in the foreseeable future, barring oil spills and many other threats to their survival. My hope is that this book can now continue to serve as a tool to help young readers learn about these wonderful reptiles.

There are many pros and cons to the various digital options…iPad or Android app? Kindle book? NOOK book? I chose the iBooks format to start with for two main reasons:

  • The image quality is excellent.
  • There is now an inexpensive iPad app, Book Creator, that made the process relatively easy. Note: Book Creator is also great for students to make their own EPUB books.
One of the nice features of iBooks is that readers can download a sample to see how a book looks. Rather than allow a short automatic sample to be generated, I uploaded one with additional pages. More information about Tracks plus a coloring page can be found on this page of my web site.

For a fun classroom extension, check out the Tour de Turtles, a project by the Sea Turtle Conservancy that uses satellites to follow individual sea turtles as they roam around in the ocean. Here is a post with many additional resources.

Not every OP book is a candidate for a digital version…some complex layouts don’t shrink down well to the screen size of a tablet, for example. However, I anticipate that many books that have otherwise been relegated to file cabinets will soon find a new life. So, maybe when it's over, it's a new beginning instead.

If anyone has questions about the overall iBooks publishing process, here is my post on E is for Book with many details and links. Or, feel free to leave a comment with a specific question and I’ll try to answer it.

Loreen

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Taking the Plunge - to Mexico and Jupiter in a Submarine!?



Carolyn Marsden, award-winning author of fourteen middle grade and young adult novels -- twelve out, two on the way -- has opened a new chapter in her career. She has turned from creating stories about children of other cultures, often in countries outside the U.S., to write about and illustrate her own bizarre multi-cultural past, and how it led to her literary present. Here’s how she describes her latest book.

MEXICO, JUPITER, SUBMARINE: How I Became a Writer

Exploding volcanoes! Harrowing escapes! Ouija Boards and Gong Gong on Jupiter. UFOs, auras, and fairies. Jules Verne’s submarine, under the sea and on Mars. The Beatles as a Communist plot. And the way all of this led to my resplendent writing career.

As I began MEXICO, JUPITER, SUBMARINE, I tumbled into the unknown. With big pieces of paper, scraps of this and that, found objects, cheap paint, and glue, I set out to write and illustrate my odyssey. I loved the trial-and-error, the feeling of free fall. What I created made me laugh.

What made you want to write a memoir?

As a writer I always wanted to somehow make use of my wild and crazy childhood. But whenever I tried straight-out writing about that early life, the writing came off as self conscious.

Then I saw a trailer for David Small’s graphic memoir, Stitches, and thought AHA! that’s the way to go. Right away the idea of doing an illustrated memoir clicked for me. For years I’ve loved playing around with collage and it was natural to combine my art and my writing.

How was this experience – writing and illustrating -- different from writing a novel?

Writing a novel is a very serious and often tedious undertaking. There’s angst involved. Creating MJS was pure fun—lots of lightness, lots of humor. I worked quickly, constantly improvising and using my intuition.

Why did you decide to publish it as an e-book?

MJS is an odd and quirky project. There’s nothing like it out there. Basically, I’m not famous enough for a publisher to take on the expense of something so risky. Plus I wanted to adventure into the world of online self-publishing.

What's the format?

It’s a fairly simple book—90+ collage panels that, with few words, tell the story of events in my childhood that directly and indirectly led me to become a writer. The collage is funky and made up of a wide variety of materials.

How will you market it?

I’m going the social networking route with Facebook, Twitter, Google +, while hoping to get some word of mouth support. I’ll attend an author event next month and will make a nice big poster with info about the book.

Any plans for more memoirs?

Yes, in fact, I’m working on another, called Every Mile a Miracle. This second collage memoir tells the tale of a wacky trip to Belize where I picked up an exotic Land Rover that my husband shipped from Holland. My 86-year-old mother, brother, and I traveled in this dysfunctional vehicle through Belize, Mexico, and the summertime desert of Arizona. We passed through the lands of the Mexican drug lords with a Category 5 hurricane at our backs. Making the collages is quite a journey in itself!

Where can one buy Mexico, Jupiter, Submarine?

MJS is available only in digital format. It can be purchased through i-Books for your Apple device.




Tuesday, September 20, 2011

Searching for Sasquatch




Hello, everyone! Happy almost autumn! I hope you all had a great summer. I did. I read (but not as much as I said I would), I wrote (put the finishing touches on my first YA novel, out next summer) and I went to the Galapagos. I will write about that amazing trip next month. Before Galapagos I went to New Orleans and ALA where I checked out the most important cultural sites:

and was on a panel with a group of stellar authors. One of them, Kelly Milner Halls, agreed to "sit down" for an interview with me about her latest book IN SEARCH OF SASQUATCH, which will be out in a hot minute.

Your website is um, weird, Kelly.

“As a freelance writer, I often got paid for being weird,” she admits. “And it’s still true for many of my books and definitely true for my elementary and middle school visit presentations.”

You told me that with many of your books including IN SEARCH OF SASQUATCH you aim to engage reluctant readers. Which I'm sure you do! Where did the book come from? How did it move from an idea to a book?

I wrote a book called TALES OF THE CRYPTIDS in 2006 – an exploration of the evidence for and against the creatures of cryptozoology; mysterious animals that may or may not be real. Many of the legends seemed unlikely to be real, but a few were surprising in that credible evidence did exist to support the possibility of their being true, undocumented new species of animals. Sasquatch, also known as Bigfoot, was one of those surprises. I had limited space to share that evidence in CRYPTIDS so I set out to write a new book about it, and Erica Zappy at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt made it possible.

What was your process in researching and writing it?

I had done some great preliminary research for CRYPTIDS so my main aim was to talk to the best experts in the field of investigating Sasquatch. I went to the scientists, including Dr. Jeffrey Meldrum, and other credible experts. I read their books, I sat through their lectures, I interviewed them first hand, I mirrored their search techniques and really got a sense of how and why these serious people were searching for Sasquatch.

What was the hardest thing about writing this book?

Knowing what to include and what not to include was the hardest part of writing this book. There are so many elements we didn’t have room to include, in a relatively short book for young readers. I was fascinated by the topic, and I hope that shows in the end product. I hope kids will be as fascinated as I was.

Seems to be a common problem in writing picture books as people have talked about recently here on I.N.K. So what was the most satisfying thing about this project?

When I was a kid, I was one of those squirrel-y kids who asked WAY too many questions. The adults in my life did their best to help me with that curiosity, but answers were hard to come by. The most rewarding part about this book -- and all my books -- is having the license to actually ask the experts, not just for myself, but for all of those kids LIKE me. I do my best to anticipate what THEY might want to know, and reflect that in my final work.

What do you hope for the book?

I love to hear kids tell me they were engaged by the books I’ve written. And I am so lucky that they very, very often do. Kids who don’t normally read get lost in the projects I put together for them, and nothing could be more fulfilling. Our community, the world of children’s writing, is an eyes-open endeavor. We know we may not collect material wealth, beyond having our basic needs met. But we are incredibly rich of heart. What more could anyone want?

Well, that and a country house with a full staff. But maybe that's just me. What’s next for you?

IN SEARCH OF SASQUATCH will be released on October 25, 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and I am so excited to see how it will be received. But my first fiction work, a YA anthology called GIRL MEETS BOY, will be released by Chronicle in January of 2012. My next nonfiction book, ALIEN INVESTIGATION will be released by Millbrook in April of 2012 and HATCHLINGS: LIFE SIZED BABY DINOSAURS will be released by Running Press, also in April of 2012.

You're a slouch, aren't you, Kelly?

Kelly? You still there?


I guess she's back to work. Go, Kelly, Go! And thanks for talking with all of us here at I.N.K.!

To find out more about Kelly, check out her website.

Friday, September 9, 2011

“Where Do You Get Your Ideas?”

Hi, Everybody. It’s great to be back blogging on I.N.K. for another school year. I thought I’d start off the year by answering the most frequent question people ask me when they learn I write books for a living, “Where do you get your ideas?” The short answer is that sometimes my editors suggest my book topics, but more often they come from me, usually after percolating for quite a long time. They can spring from anywhere: a book, magazine, or newspaper article; a TV show; a conference I attend, even a conversation. Sometimes, the topic of one book I write suggests an idea for another book.

Specifically, the inspiration for my earliest book, A Whole New Ball Game, came from an item about the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League in the book First of All: Significant “Firsts” by American Women by Joan McCullough. Having grown up a baseball fan and studied women’s history in college, I was amazed that a professional women’s league had existed for 12 years and I’d never heard of it. I’d been working on Scholastic’s news magazines, writing one article or more per week, and I was anxious to find a subject I could research in depth. When I met with an editor about possible books I could write, she said she could hear the excitement in my voice as I spoke about the league. It wouldn’t be altogether wrong to say that the topic chose me.

After completing a project that was so meaningful to me, I had a hard time choosing what to write next. So I decided to get some perspective by putting together a timeline of women’s sports history. When I was done, I realized the timeline was actually a terrific outline for a book. Winning Ways: A Photohistory of American Women in Sports (published in 1996) looks at the relationship between women’s participation in sports and changing ideas about women’s roles in society from the mid-nineteenth century to the 1990s. As I was writing it, I wished I could take a deeper look at some of the topics I covered. Ultimately, I did, writing three other books whose content grew directly out of Winning Ways: My first picture book, Basketball Belles (published in 2011), looks at the first women’s intercollegiate basketball game, between Stanford and Cal Berkeley in 1896; Wheels of Change (published in 2011) examines the impact of the bicycle on women’s lives in the 1890s; and my as yet untitled second picture book, due to my editor very soon, will look at the phenomenon of Roller Derby in 1948, focusing on star skater—and notorious villain—Midge “Toughie” Brasuhn.

If someone else suggests a book topic, I’m willing to consider it, but it’s got to resonate with me in some way. Back in the late 90s, Nancy Feresten, Editor-in-Chief of National Geographic Children’s Books, asked if I’d be interested in writing a book for their photobiography series. We discussed a number of subjects, but Annie Oakley was the one who clicked. At the time, I didn’t know anything about Annie beyond what was presented in the highly fictionalized musical, “Annie Get Your Gun,” but the more I researched, the more fascinated I became. I learned that it’s definitely possible to “own” a book topic that comes from someone else as long as I can find a personal connection to it. Besides piquing my interest as a pioneering sportswoman, Annie had spent 10 years living in Nutley, New Jersey, which shares a border with my hometown of Clifton. I was very curious to learn more about this “Jersey girl.”

Likewise, it was my editor at National Geographic, Jennifer Emmett, who suggested that I write a history of the Olympic Games. I came to own that topic so thoroughly that I was convinced I had come up with the idea for my two Olympic books, Swifter, Higher, Stronger and Freeze Frame, until I found Jennifer’s e-mail wondering if I’d be interested in the topic.

Of course, a viable book idea needs to be marketable as well as meaningful to the author. Some of that marketability grows out of the author’s reputation and passion for the subject, but these days, that’s not always enough. As the world of children’s publishing changes, I’m finding that there’s a bit more negotiating between author and editor before settling on book topics. But that’s a matter for another blog post.

I’ll be back next month on I.N.K. In the meantime, check out my personal blog on my Web site, suemacy.com, or follow me on Twitter at @suemacy1.

Friday, July 1, 2011

When Icons Collide

This month, I.N.K. bloggers will be rerunning their favorite posts from the 2010-2011 school year. To start off, though, I'm presenting one of my favorite posts from my personal Web site. Somehow, I think it will have a larger audience on I.N.K. than it did on my site, though on July Fourth weekend, you never know. I'll be blogging on my Web site in July and August, so stop by when you get the chance. And have a great summer.



History collided with the present on Monday, March 28, when I had the opportunity to give one feminist icon a copy of a book that was inspired by the musings of another. The book, of course, was Wheels of Change, which developed out of Susan B. Anthony’s declaration that bicycling did “more to emancipate women than anything else.” The contemporary icon was Gloria Steinem, the speaker who capped off an impressive celebration of Women’s History Month at Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey. I was on a panel about women in sports at the college, which entitled me to an invitation to a reception for Steinem before her very well attended talk.

It’s safe to say that most people Steinem meets don’t ask her if she rides a bicycle, but how could I not? She said she did ride all the time when she was a student at Smith College, but now she lives in New York and the problem with riding there, besides the competition with cars, is that you have nowhere to leave your bike when you get to your destination.

Beyond that all-important question, I also mentioned that I had once attended another lecture she gave, way back in 1972. I was a freshman at Princeton on one of my first assignments for the school paper. Steinem said she actually remembered speaking there because the school had recently gone coeducational, which put it on her radar. But I remember her visit for another reason. The article I turned in was full of her brilliant words, but little else, and my editors pointed out that reporting meant more than just repeating. A certain amount of observation and conclusion also was necessary. It was a pivotal moment in my writing career, and while I still love to use quotes to tell stories, I make sure to use them judiciously and place them in context.

Since I wasn’t covering Steinem’s most recent talk as a reporter, I have only a few bon mots to share. She started out by acknowledging that this was her fourth college lecture in a week—Women’s History Month sure keeps feminists busy—and that she is happiest at community colleges because of their inclusive nature. She spoke of the success of social justice movements since the 1980s and the consequent backlash; the importance of vertical history—our connection to the native peoples who stood on the same land in the past as we do today; and her observation that women tend to get more radical and rebellious and activist as they get older, while men tend to get less so with age. She assured one questioner that ”it is very unlikely” that Sarah Palin will be elected president and pointed out that her approval rating is currently below that of BP. [Note: This was back in March.] And she talked about the need to reassess history and create a universal community that is not divided by race or gender, which she called “made-up political fictions.” All of which reminded me that while women rode the bicycle to many freedoms in the 1890s, we’ve still got miles more to go before the journey is complete.

Photo Courtesy of Seth Litroff Photography


Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Biographies Galore: Doing My Homework

I’m teaching a children’s writing workshop this quarter at UCLA Extension, where I cover all genres and all elements of story, give massive reading assignments as well as writing exercises, writing their stories, and critiquing their classmates.

Sidebar: In the past I used a textbook – Anatasia Suen’s terrific Picture Writing, which is now, sadly, out of print. It is the only one I’ve found that gives equal time to writing fiction and nonfiction. (Most textbooks give one chapter to nonfiction). Suen relates every topic and genre – plot, character, picture books, middle grade, etc – to both f and nf. Now I don’t use a textbook, but rely on my lectures and web essays, including some from INK. Even though nearly all of my students write fiction, I still discuss nf when talking about each genre (pb, early readers, middle grade, etc.)

Rather than the obligatory one class, I devote two weeks just to nonfiction, including one on biography. Students choose a person and read three biographies of him or her – picture book, middle grade, and YA – then discuss how authors, illustrators, and book designers treat the subject differently.

Prompted by two new picture book biographies on Jane Goodal, I decided to do this assignment myself. She is a perfect subject for children: pioneering woman scientist, animal lover, environmental activist. The LA Public Library lists fifteen children’s biographies of Goodall going back to 1976, but no picture book biographies.


Me…Jane, written and illustrated by Patrick McDonnell (Little, Brown: 2011) is for younger children and beginning readers. It describes Jane as a child, bonded to Jubliee (a toy chimpanzee,) observing squirrels and spiders, drawing animals, (the author shows Goodall’s actual drawings), climbing a favorite tree and reading Tarzan of the Apes. We see Jane sitting in a chicken coop for hours, to see a hen lay an egg. I confess a bias for picture books with very few words – and this one is a stunner, with 228 words. The ending, stretched over six double page spreads, is superb:

Jane dreamed of a life in Africa, too…

A life living with, and helping, all animals.

At night Jane would tuck Jubilee into bed, say her prayers,

and fall asleep

to awake one day…

to her dream come true. [photo of grownup Goodall and chimp in the forest.]

This biography shows that the child is the mother of the woman. It leaves out all sorts of intermediate stages, but communicates clearly to a young child that dreams can come true. The subdued watercolor illustrations are accompanied by old engravings of leaves, flowers, animals, and such, which hint at Goodall’s scientific bent. All in all, a beautiful book.

Jeanette Winter’s The Watcher: Jane Goodall’s Life with the Chimps (Schwartz & Wade:

2011)begins with the chicken coop incident to establish Jane as a “watcher.” We see her favorite tree, her reading, then follow Goodall to Africa where “She knew she was Home.” Many pages show her working with chimps, watching, waiting, and taking notes. We learn of deforestation, the killing and kidnapping of chimps, and Jane’s work to save the land and the animals. Winter ends the book with a return visit years later, by Goodall to her beloved forest where she “opened a window for us/ to the world of the chimpanzees.” Most of Winter’s story takes place in the forest with Goodall as an adult. The stylized colorful paintings portray the lushness, density, and color of the landscape and the charm of the chimpanzees. This book, though it has more information than McDonnell’s, can be read by young readers who will find Jane’s and the chimps’ lives equally compelling.


Jane Goodall: Legendary Primatologist, by Brenda Haugen (Compass point Books: 2006) is part of their solid Signature Lives series for middle grade readers. Here we read about Goodall’s English childhood, and the Alligator Club she started with three friends to study nature. We hear of her various jobs before travelling to Africa at age twenty-three. Winter’s book shows Goodall alone in the forest. Haugen’s tells us that she was accompanied at first by her mother, a cook, and two game scouts. We learn about her PhD studies at Cambridge, her two marriages and her son. We hear about human and animal epidemics, about her unsavory discoveries – she saw chimps make war on and eat each other. We learn details of environmental destruction, a horrible (human) kidnapping incident, her non-profit foundation, and her Roots & Shoots children’s organization. We get a full picture of her accomplishments and her difficulties in the bush and in the world at large. Many quotes from Goodall’s writings, black and white photos, and sidebars enhance the text.


The Chimpanzees I Love: Saving Their World and Ours by Jane Goodall (Scholastic: 2001) is a

first hand account of her work, written for young adults. While not a full-blown biography, the first chapter describes her life, including the anecdote of four-year-old Jane in the chicken coop. We learn that her mother had called to police to report her missing! We also learn that her mother was the only person who never laughed at her childhood dream of Africa. This large-format book, filled with color illustrations of chimps describes her work in Africa, as well as her efforts to improve the lives of chimps in zoos and science laboratories. Her passion shines in describing setting up chimp sanctuaries in Africa and humane conditions beyond. Back matter includes facts and resources about chimps, Goodall’s books, and her work.

Goodall’s life and achievements are well-served by the new picture books and the more comprehensive books for older students. As a biographer, I found this assignment enlightening, showing several different ways to tell a life. I look forward to seeing what my students come up with next week.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

What I Can't Do (And Tom Yezerski Can)






Before I start my blog post, a quick announcement: Tonight, March 15, at 7:30 I will be on a panel at Boston College with Susan Goodman (who INKed yesterday) and Lorree Griffen Burns talking about NARRATIVE NON-FICTION, called TELL ME A STORY AND MAKE IT TRUE. If you are in the area, please come! Here's the link.

Now back to our regular programming...

I’ve written a bazillion nonfiction picture books. (Yes, that’s accurate, a bazillion.) And a few fiction picture books, too, by the way.

I have illustrated nary a one. I tell the kids who ask me at school visits that if I did my own illustrations no one would buy my books. Ha ha. It's so true. I also have not sung in public since I was the only girl not to make the chorus in sixth grade. (Would it have been that hard to put me in there, in the back? Really?) Wait, this isn’t my therapy session? Sorry. But my point is this: When I write nonfiction picture books they are either illustrated with photographs or by the deft hand of someone else. Right now I am eagerly awaiting sketches from a brilliant illustrator for my book about a mathematician. I know she is going to bring much more to the book than I ever could, or could ever imagine.

Yes, I am in awe of illustrators and forever grateful to those who illustrate my books. I got to wondering recently what it would be like to create a book from start to finish as others here on I.N.K. do, (I bow down to you who do) and just as I was thinking about that, a lovely new book landed on my desk. A book that I wish I had written, and yes, illustrated. Meadowlands by Thomas Yezerski. (FSG)

Tom is a friend of mine and I asked him if he would share his process with us so I could live vicariously. I asked him which came first, the words or the pictures.

My illustration process usually begins with the words. Actually, it begins before that. It begins with my being interested in something. In this case, it started with getting lost somewhere in the Meadowlands! After I found my way out, my curiosity led to taking a guided hiking tour and a pontoon boat tour of different Meadowlands areas. I talked to a few experts and got their take on the story. For this book I went to the Meadowlands Environment Center and asked if I could go along on some class field trips. This also helped me see how kids might learn about the complicated issues in the book. Then I drove to more out-of-the-way parts of the Meadowlands (it's big; 23 square miles) myself and walked around (under the turnpike, around industrial areas). A story starts to form in my head based on what I've seen.

And are pictures already forming in your head?

Yes but the words come first. On rare occasions, I may think of a spectacular image and then find a way to get it into the story, but it works better if the picture is part of the storytelling. When I start with the words, I already have the text divided into 32 pages so that each spread is a "scene" or "message" that can stand alone. Then I read my text and decide if there's a concept I should show in the picture because it should be explained to the reader or, better yet, I look for one sentence that will make a dramatic illustration. I focus on that one sentence and draw a few different tiny sketches with different ways of showing the idea I want to draw. I try different points of view and different distances from the subject. I think of it as a camera moving around the scene. For this book, I liked drawing many of the pictures from the eye level of the animal depicted; it was important to me to give the reader the feeling of being on the same level as these other members of our environment.

Wow. That is so cool. I love the idea of you being a camera and an animal as you look around. So you spent a lot of time in the Meadowlands?

A lot of time! The best way to illustrate a book is to go to a place that is either where the story actually happened or looks a lot like where it happened. Real-life locations ALWAYS show me something I wouldn't have considered. Maybe I didn't realize the different angles that a particular plant grows or I didn't know how a bridge actually rests on its supports. I take lots of pictures to answer any question I might have while I'm drawing.

This is a photo Tom took of the New Jersey Eastern Spur, heading to Newark. Tom referenced this when painting this beautiful picture of the dragonfly:


What if you can't get a photograph of something you need to draw?

If I can't get my own pictures of what I want to draw, I use books from the library or I do a Google Image search. In a lot of cases for this book, I had photos of the setting, but I never actually saw the animal I wanted to draw, even though I knew it lived there. So I would gather a bunch of pictures of, say, an egret, and draw a composite of those pictures. It's important NEVER to copy somebody else's art. With enough different angles of something, whether it be an egret or a truck, I can pretty much figure out what it would look like from the angle I want to show it. Sometimes, when I start drawing the details, I come up with some questions, like "Do ruddy ducks build nests here or do they only stop by during migration?" or "When ruddy ducks are here, is it summer or winter?" Pictures show a lot, so an illustrator has to know a lot. Hopefully, by this time, I have an open line of communication with an expert, so I can just ask her. Illustrating a book is a good way to make a friend!

I love making friends with experts. And I think they enjoy helping a book come to be, too. Back to the illustration process: so you make drawings first and then paintings? When do you show your editor what you have?

I make my final drawings the exact size of the final paintings. Sometimes while I am drawing, I realize I need more reference and have to go back. Or the picture doesn't look right, and I'll realize I need a different illustration altogether. Back again! Just like the benefits of storyboarding a movie, a lot of early planning means fewer trips out to take pictures. The final drawings are very finished, because I want to be sure they will make good paintings before showing them to an editor. I don't want the editor to approve a rough idea that it turns out is a bad picture or impossible to paint. If the editor is surprised by something that later shows up in a painting, she could easily tell me to do the whole thing over again.

I'm thinking that it's now that I would see the drawings if I were the author and you were the illustrator. (A girl can dream.) But I guess after you and the editor talk it all over, you're ready to paint?

Once a sketch is approved, I carefully measure the dimensions of the page onto a piece of Arches 90 lb. hot press watercolor paper. I put the sketch on a light table and the watercolor paper over that. I trace the drawing lightly and quickly. Then I use the markings of the tracing to finish the drawing. That can take a couple of hours, because for my style of painting, the drawing is the most important part. There is a lot of erasing. When the drawing is penciled in, I use a quill pen to draw black ink lines over my pencil lines. After I finish the drawing, I tape it on all four sides down to a plastic drawing board, so it stays flat while I paint. I color it with Windsor & Newton Artist's Watercolor. I use paints with the simplest pigments, so they are more predictable and less muddy when they mix together. When the paintings are done, I pack them up and send them off to the publisher with crossed fingers. Hopefully, they won't come back!

I'm sure your editor was thrilled. The paintings are gorgeous and expand the text beautifully.

I asked Tom one last question. Did you have fun? The answer was YES! Not only did he have fun running, walking and canoeing in the Meadowlands, but he also fell in love and got married while working on the book! Eleni went with him to the Meadowlands a lot.


Congratulations to Tom on a gorgeous book. And wishes to both of you for a long life of exploring together!