Dipping a Toe into Marketing Waters

As a charter contributor to this blog, I’m really going to miss it.  I have gained so much from this participation, including the discovery of my “inner blogger” which lives on with my contributions to the Huffington Post.  I hope you will follow me, like me and comment. 

Mostly, I’m grateful for the wonderful community this blog has created.  It has expanded my horizons—I have read books by everyone who blogs, and more.  What an amazing group of writers!

However, this is NOT the end of iNK Think Tank, which is gaining a head of steam.   Last week, Dorothy talked about our new endeavor The Nonfiction Minute  It is a legacy of this blog.  What are its chances—this new communal brainchild—of making its way in this world successfully?

I decided to find out by sending out an email announcement to the iNK mailing list—people who are interested enough in children’s nonfiction to have registered in the iNK database of our books in print.  I wrote a personal email (we know that people are more likely to open an email with a name on it) rather than a press release or corporate announcement. I quoted Alex Siy’s concept for it and gave them the link to the seven Nonfiction Minutes we have published as a sample of what will come in the fall. 

Within seconds I had a letter of congratulations from Nick Glass, president and founder of TeachingBooks.net.  Then I started checking the stats page for the NM website. I watched with amazement as the graph spiked.  I ran a report on the mailing.  The average mass mailing has an open rate of 8%--This one is 11.89% with a 53% click-through to the site.  As of early this week there was a total of more than 1300 page-views.  Since the number of page-views exceeds the number of clicks from the mailing list, I conclude that people are sending the link around.   In addition, our Nonfiction Minute Facebook Page is open for comments and I received a lot of personal emails:

“I really enjoyed these Nonfiction Minutes.  I could definitely use them in my classroom.  I teach second grade and my district will not invest in a reading series.  This has it's good and bad points as you can imagine.  It is tough to write lesson plans when there are no materials.  Some supervisors want text in the kids hands which can be tricky without many books, especially nonfiction.”

“Wow is all I can say. I loved the stories and I know my struggling readers will too. I used to do ‘The Reading Minute’  and it took time to find the articles or write my own, but these are done for me. These will be great for writing constructive responses on theme as well.”

“These sound bites are delightful. They add information and satisfying detail to topics that should be of interest to all. I will recommend them in the upcoming presentation I will be giving at the Ohio Association of Gifted Children (OAGC) this fall, and to my elementary school teachers in my school district.”

“This is spectacular!! I love it! I just wrote a short piece about Stubby, the dog. Funny coincidence.Your work never ceases to amaze me.”

“I love this! I am a special education middle school teacher and can't wait for this to come out in Sept! The kids can read and hear and then see a picture to help them remember it. I would make up one or two test questions that would be on our standardized tests for each one.”

  “Love, love, love the nonfiction minute.  Great choices and thank you for the audible for each as well which permits all learners equal access. My students adore learning facts as relayed to them by talented storytellers. I am now thinking differently about each potato chip I eat.

"Thanks for being inspired and then actually executing your great idea.  I will share with my librarians and they will pass it on.”

The Nonfiction Minute is a blog for kids about the various aspects of the world the fuel our passions as authors.  It is our opportunity to show (not “tell”) the world why we win awards.  It will lead to interest in us as brands—people who write about the real world through the filter of individual minds rather than adhering to the text-flattening guidelines for textbook writers.  Feel free to spread the word.

This mailing was a tiny test of the marketing waters. The idea is to do a soft launch—build a buzz before we go live in September.  In August we have a marketing plan to reach 13 million teachers. I’m fastening my seat belt.  Stay tuned.......This is only a "see you again, soon!"

Starting a Movement

In late 2007, I received an email from Linda Salzman asking if I would contribute to an idea she had.  She wanted to start a group blog of nonfiction authors to talk about our work, our process, or anything else that was on our minds.  Why was she asking me? She said she was approaching the nonfiction authors she admired most. Hmmm....flattery certainly creates openings. I was definitely interested.  Naturally, my first question was, “Is there any money in this?”  When she said, “No,” I said, without hesitation, “OK, I’m in.”  You see, I thought she had a really good idea and my mantra for my life, whenever an opportunity arises, is:

1. I might learn something.
2. It might lead someplace.
3. It pays well.

If the opportunity met two out of the three criteria, I did it.  My first post “Information Is the Least of It” was published on the third day of this blog.  In many respects it is shameless self-promotion, but hey, I assumed that it was allowed, part of the deal.

Looking back, I realize how much courage is needed to start something and Linda certainly faced rejection early in her enterprise.  Recently I saw this hilarious and strikingly insightful video about what it takes to get something off the ground:.   

In hindsight, I see that I was a first follower of Linda.  But, in July of 2009, I became the shirtless dancing guy when I woke up one morning with the idea of organizing the community of authors who contributed to the I.N.K. blog into a company called  iNK Think Tank.  The mission of iNK Think Tank is to get nonfiction literature into classrooms; to educate the world about our genre. To this end we provide a free database, which helps teachers and others find books on subjects that can fit into curricula.  Last month, without promotion, we had 500 new registrants for the database and the site is averaging about 5,000 visitors a month with a high of 8,000 last November..

But our books are still excluded from most classroom work. There are all kinds of reasons for this.  Some of them include the fact that there is the hegemony of textbooks as the source of content, the notion that the quality of writing doesn't matter as long as the subject is “covered,” and that efficiency in education means that everyone is literally on the same page often at the same time. (A text book is not the Bible!) Teachers do not know our work by our name and it would help if we defined ourselves by brand..  In fiction, the author’s name becomes the “brand” because the name is used to catalogue and shelve the books.  In nonfiction, we are cataloged and shelved by subject matter. At a time when the CCSS require that 50% if all reading in elementary school and 75% in high school be nonfiction, teachers still don't know about our books.  And, according to Roger Sutton, this demand for nonfiction reading is not translating into more nonfiction publishing.  iNK is  not going to take this situation lying down.

Alexandra Siy gave us an idea on how to get our literary foot in the classroom door. Again, I’m in the familiar role of first follower taking Alex's lead.  This summer iNK is launching a program for students, called the Nonfiction Minute, of very short (400 words max), stand-alone entries, which teachers will be able to use in their classrooms to introduce students to top nonfiction authors.   The writing will showcase the many voices and topics that fuel our passions.  For the moment, we will offer the Nonfiction Minute free.  I have every confidence that we’ll learn a lot and it will lead someplace.

I'm still walking the path Linda Salzman started me on so many years ago.  As this I.N.K. blog becomes an archive, I can only say a heartfelt thank you to Linda. iNK Think Tank would not exist if not for you.

Eating Dessert First

The whole idea of traveling is to learn about new places and new people.  You can buy tours where the itinerary is planned by someone else.  But for me, the best trips are the ones where I start the process that will create a trip to research a new project.  Make no mistake; it takes time and attention to plan such a trip.  This winter I made two trips to research my next book How Could We Foil a Flood? I’m particularly interested in the engineering aspect of flood control because more than forty percent of loss of life and property from natural disasters comes from flooding, and because we’ve been engineering to prevent flooding for at least 1000 years.  Most other natural disasters have had little to no engineering applied to controlling the phenomenon—we’re struggling hard enough learning how to predict them.

So the first question I ask, after reading extensively on the subject, is, who knows about this?  It is always useful to start looking for contact information through tourism or government sources.  So I made contact with the Mississippi Army Corps of Engineers (ACE) who connected me to the ACE in New Orleans, where they’re putting the finishing touches on an enormous post-Katrina resiliency post-flooding  project.  (It is no longer politically correct to call it “flood control.”) 

Lexi poses next to the new West Closure Pumping Station
--the most powerful pump in the world.
It can fill an olympic-sized swimming pool in 5 seconds.

Next, I contact the tourism people and tell them where I plan to visit and ask if I can get media rates on accommodations, freebies, etc.  Since New Orleans, a tourism mecca,  was on the itinerary, I was booked into a great hotel in the French Quarter at an affordable price.  My nineteen-year-old granddaughter, Lexi, had approached me last fall, “Please, please, please Gran, I’ve never been anywhere or seen anything.  Take me with you.”  How could I resist that gift?  My response,  “Okay, but you’ll have to work.  I need you to listen to all the interviews, take photos and videos, and keep track of all my contacts.”  And so the deal was struck.  It took a good three months to make the arrangements.

Here I am in front of some major sluices that keep the North Sea from flooding
the lowlands.  It was cold and windy with wind turbines everywhere.

The second trip I made was to the place where they know more about keeping the sea at bay than any other nation—the Netherlands.  Here, a peculiar serendipity  (not unusual for these amazing trips) played a role.  Over Thanksgiving my son had new guests—his wife’s mother’s first cousin from Scotland and her Dutch husband, Wim—were visiting from Canada. I told Wim I was planning to visit his country, so he offered the help of his brother Giovanni and his wife, Mechtild, who lived in the Hague.  Giovanni was a recently retired diplomat with time on his hands.  They stepped up and offered me a place to stay and would drive me to all my venues. In effect, they would do the job Lexi had done.  (I had been planning to take Lexi along, but she’s in her first year of college/nursing school with a heavy schedule and prioritized well.  She couldn’t take the time to come.  I’m proud of her for that.) 

I always thank the people I interview with a signed book and
an acknowledgment when the new book is published

The arrangements and schedule of what I’d see and who I’d interview was done by Arjan Braamskamp of the Dutch Consulate in NYC.  It was an amazing, exhausting and rigorous schedule.  I was wished “bon voyage” in person by Rob de Vos, the Consul General who happens to be a friend of Giovanni (talk about a small world!)

My one day to relax was two weeks before the tulips so I settled for
tiptoeing through the crocuses in the Hague.

These trips are like eating dessert first. Now comes the hard part of sifting through all the material and crafting it into something new, which will ignite the desire to learn from my readers.

Join the Resistance

My “inner blogger,” which I discovered six years ago when Linda Salzman started this blog, is now in full flower at the Huffington Post.  Since September I’ve tried to post twice a week.  My initial mission was to add my two cents to the national discussion on education.  But a second mission has emerged—to shed light for the general public on our genre, children’s nonfiction literature.  To that end I’ve requested that my colleagues send me their most recent books.  I read them and write posts that show a book’s timeliness to current events or where it fits into the curriculum.  I am not a book reviewer as all of my posts are unabashed cheers for the brilliance of these authors.  As an author, myself, there is a conflict of interest for me to act as a critic.  But I have no problem endorsing the creativity and insights of my fellow authors. 

The adoption of the Common Core State Standards has created an opening for public awareness of our genre.  It has helped to create a readership for this blog.  When I first read the CCS standards, I saw them as an opportunity for teachers and educators to bring their own passions and creativity to classrooms through, among other things, the use of our books.  Children need to know there are many voices out there so they can develop voices of their own.  But this opening for diversity has been hi-jacked by standardized testing and the demand that teachers constantly document how they are meeting the CCSS—yet another chore that competes with instructional time.  One of the more absurd examples of the implementation of the CCSS is the lesson on close reading of the Gettysburg Address by focusing on text only, with no background knowledge of the Civil War.  

Diane Ravitch is leading a movement against the CCSS.  I’ve been a faithful subscriber to her amazing blog (she posts 5,6,7 times a day!) and she and her followers are gaining traction.  Meanwhile, NY State, for example has a huge contract with Pearson for their textbooks and their texts.   Granted, they and McGraw Hill and other textbook publishers are buying rights to our books to excerpt in their publications (and/or in the tests themselves) along with lesson plans making nice, convenient packages for harried teachers and furthering the notion that their books are the only books kids need to read to pass the tests, although their ethics in this are currently being questioned (in the example I've linked above).

My intent through my Huff Post blog is to join Diane's fight against the huge corporations that have dominated classroom reading for many years, the standardized teaching and testing and their ties to teacher evaluation.  Instead of emphasizing the horrors of turning teachers in to robots, all teaching the same page at the same time, I want to show the exciting alternatives that our genre offers. So I invite the readership of this blog to join me.  This means you need to use social media to spread the word. So "follow," "tweet," "share," and "like." It's the way business is being done these days.  So many people out there are still unaware of our existence.  This is one positive way we can all  help save public education.

I’m showing you the covers of the books I've given a shout-out to, so far.  The titles below the images are links to my posts.  Please join the "resistance" and spread the word. 

Thinking and Reading about Football 

A Volcanic Eruption Can Lead to an Eruption of Learning

Woman Pilots of WWII: Soaring Above the Glass Ceiling

A New Story for Black History Month

An Early Lawsuit in Pursuit of Liberty

True American Grit

A Post-Halloween Teachable Moment

Gender Identity Is Not What's on the Outside

Celebrating 10 Years.....

...of Road Trips on Mars

George Washington's Dilemma

Art Can Save Education and Lives

The Unnoticed Passing of an American Hero

The Second Smartest Animals on the Planet

Arousing a Sense of Wonder

In the post that went live last Thursday (Here Come the HUMPBACKS!), I featured April’s three recent picture books.  I gave a shout-out to all of us who write for this blog and on the iNK website.  Keep those (virtual) cards and letters coming!!!

Road Maps to the Common Core

Sometimes I get the feeling that any change in educational policy doesn’t matter to the providers of educational materials as long as change is mandated. Publishers of texts and testing products make money no matter what.  The objective of No Child Left Behind was basic literacy for all, period.  So the emphasis was on decoding skills.  It set the bar very low and generated lots of new materials to teach phonics, etc.  Now we have the Common Core State Standards which redefine an educated person as someone who can read a text and figure out the main idea, how it was put together by the author, and how knowledge and ideas are integrated.  Moreover, students are supposed to incorporate these standards into their own writing.  The pushback from the educational community is that now the bar is set too high; especially in light of the new standardized tests that show kids failing as expected.  Veteran educations shake their heads in bewilderment.  They know better than most that there is no single panacea for delivering high quality education.  Just ‘cause you state it as policy, doesn’t mean it will happen.

Vicki Cobb and Lucy Calkins

One such veteran educator is Lucy Calkins of Columbia’s Teachers College who is the founder and director of The Columbia Reading and WritingProject. She is an outspoken champion of the CCSS.  She sees it as an opportunity to introduce students to a wealth of nonfiction literature about the real world and she spoke about it at a TC event last week, which I attended.  After decades of imposing rules and packaged lesson plans on teachers, of bashing teachers as the primary problem with education, of sucking the joy of learning out of the classroom, and of attempting to standardize teaching as if children were widgets in a factory, some of us see the CCSS as an opportunity to bring creativity, collaboration, and autonomy back to the teaching profession.

Let’s hope it’s not too late.  Enter the realityof a teacher’s day.  The stress is enormous and now they have to do a great deal of paperwork to justify exactly how they are meeting the CCSS.  Their jobs are now dependent on how well their students perform on the standardized test. Many gifted teachers are speaking up  or throwing in the towel.  Lucy Calkins sees the CCSS as an opening for many approaches to instruction and a diverse curriculum—the opposite of standardization.  Since businesses now say they want creative, self-starting, innovative workers, we have to allow teachers to go back to being creative innovators themselves.  We also have to experiment with different approaches and ideas with the understanding that some will prove better and others and that not everything that is done will be a home run.  In other words, educators, themselves, need room to learn and grow. 

The Columbia Reading and Writing Program states, " ‘the Standards define what all students are expected to know and be able to do, not how teachers should teach’ (CCSS, p 6). What's needed is an all-hands-on-deck effort to study how best to create pathways to achieve the Common Core. There will be no one 'right answer' to the question of how a school or a district needs to shift its priorities and methods so as to bring its students closer to the expectations of the Common Core, as schools and classrooms will come from different places and will have different resources to draw upon.”

Teachers need interesting, well-written materials for the curriculum subjects they teach.  They can also teach reading and writing skills through “mentor” books that are about content.  In addition to books, teachers also need strategies for using books that don’t come with lesson plans.  They need support from curriculum people and from each other.  If the skills of the Common Core are our destination, (and there is no question that we’d have a very well educated nation if everyone met them) we need ways to implement them and try them out.  In other words, we need time to develop road maps through uncharted territory and stop asking, like an annoying  passenger, “are we there yet?”  

Elementary Science Fairs in the Era of STEM and the Next Generation of Science Standards

As an author of science activity books for children, I've attended my share of elementary/middle school science fairs.  I cannot recall ever being surprised by a project or display that was particularly clever or original.  Mostly the exhibits are the predictable volcano models, electric circuits, acid-base changes detected by red cabbage juice.  Parent fingerprints are all too often all over the display and when I've asked the student about their work, they show little background or knowledge of the subject.  The “fair” aspect of the event is far more important than the science. I’d like to help change that.    Since most science fairs take place in March—two months away—NOW is the time to start.

First, there is a coming shift to looking at science as a process.  Juliana Texley, president-elect of the National Science Teachers Association, told me:

“The Next Generation Science Standards emphasize the practices of science. With respect to science fairs, the first six are most crucial: 

1. Asking questions (for science) and defining problems (for engineering)

2. Developing and using models

3. Planning and carrying out investigations

4. Analyzing and interpreting data

5. Using mathematics and computational thinking

6. Constructing explanations (for science) and designing solutions (for engineering)

 Tomorrow's science fairs will place less emphasis on winning, more on cooperation and on the pathways that were used to get to the products.”

I like the idea of kids working together.  After all, the body of knowledge we call “science” comes more from collaboration than competition.  When I researched my biography of Marie Curie, I was impressed with the eagerness she exhibited when a new journal came in the mail.  She couldn't wait to go to her own lab and repeat the experiments of colleagues in other parts of the world.  Science is the original wiki—a communal body of work. 

Playing with nature, asking testable questions, taking an initially informal, experiential approach to curiosity are the scientific behaviors that elementary students should be doing.  The formalization of experiments and the “scientific method” can be learned after there is some experience with just playing around.  My approach in my own books has always been to bring science into the world of children; let them learn something new about something familiar before subjecting them to the abstract, rigorous generalizations or laws of science that are the result of cumulative knowledge. One problem in elementary school science is that most teachers do not understand it well themselves.  They need to learn to listen to the questions of children so that they become aware of the questions that can be answered by doing something. 

The best science activity books for children give a reason or motivation for doing an experiment that goes beyond a “wow!” or a “so what.”  So if you’re looking for help, here are two books to get you started:  Prize-Winning Science Fair Projects for Curious Kids by Joe Rhatigan and Rain Newcomb. This book is a collection of experiments actually done by kids for science fair project that answer kid-friendly meaningful questions and show dramatic changes in otherwise ordinary items. 

My own book:  See for Yourself: More Than 100 Experiments for Science Fairs and Projects.  Projects are rated according to “challenge level” so there are quickies and then there are more ambitious projects. 

Here's a suggestion: since science touches every aspect of our universe,  find out what a child is interested in and Google it along with the word “science” and see what you get.  Experiment with other word combinations but always attach the word “science.”  Bring imagination and curiosity to the inquiry. If a question occurs to you or the child, don't dismiss it; think about it.  You just might be led down a path of creative discovery that shows you why scientists love science.

Note: I’m collecting a list of terrific science books to be published here on the I.N.K. blog at the end of January.  Please send your suggestions to me along with the link to the Amazon catalog page, a brief description of the book and an image of the cover:  email@vickicobb.com.

What’s In It for Me? A Book for Whatever Interests You

Over the past two weeks I have attended two very different education conferences.  One was AASL—The American Association of School Librarians; the other was NYSCATE—New York State Association for Computers and Technology in Education.  If I had just attended the first one, I would have thought we authors were doing really well. Many people recognized me from my nametag—a heady experience.  (Although not everyone recognized my name, a sufficient number did, so I felt like I’ve made some progress over these years.)  At the second conference, I was anonymous although my session:  “Authors Collaborating with Teachers and Students” was particularly well attended.  Obviously, librarians know about and value authors.  Technology teachers have a lot to learn.

This conclusion was not news to me.  Four or five years ago, I did my very first videoconference (Skype-type visit) with a school in Pennsylvania.  I had been hired by the tech teacher who was looking for something of educational value for her classroom-teacher colleagues.  Although my presentation wasn’t about any particular book  (it’s called “Science Surprises”) I did mention that some of the tricks we were doing were in my book We Dare You!  The tech teacher’s evaluation of my presentation was not a rave. She said something like, “I didn’t hire you to do a book commercial.”  When I explained that writing books was what I did, she countered that she wanted me to present material that wasn’t in my books.  I mentally sputtered a protest:  “But my best stuff is in my books..”   My take-away is that you have to set up the proper expectations for a program, especially for people who don’t get what authors are about.  And there are a lot of them out there.

According to the Jenkins Group, a book publishing services firm, only 30% of Americans read books.  Less than 15% read books on any regular basis.  One third of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.  Forty-two percent of college grads never read another book after college.  Eighty percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year and 70% of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years.  Fifty-seven percent of new books are not read to completion and half of those are not read past page 18.  I would be curious to know how much teachers read.  If a child asks a question on a subject that the teacher doesn’t know the answer to, does the teacher suggest that the child look up the answer on Google or get a book on the subject?  When it comes to teaching content, does the teacher rely on a textbook or explore the availability of other books for children on the same subject?  We authors and readers of this blog live in a bubble.  Books are so ingrained in our lives we can’t imagine living without them.  But if we are going to produce a generation of college and career ready students, as per the CCSS, we are going to have to sell our non-book-reading colleagues on the value of books. Here are a few suggestions:

Technology teachers and their students might want to read:

Technology by Clive Gifford

Physical education teachers and their students might want to read:

Fourth Down and Inches by Carla Killough McClafferty

Social workers and students who have anger issues might want to read: 

Peace by Wendy Anderson Halperin

A music teacher might want every member of the school orchestra to read

The Young Musician’s Survival Guide by Amy Nathan

An art teacher might want students to read: 

Action Jackson by Jan Greenberg and Sandra Jordan.

Orthopedists and school nurses might want to include my book, Your Body Battles a Broken Bone in their waiting rooms. 

For every situation, discipline, or topic, there may exist a wonderful children’s book that will not only shed new light on the subject but also foster an interest in learning more.  It’s time we left our own echo-chamber and became a part of the national education conversation.  Books not only answer questions but open up possibilities for every individual.  It’s time they were rediscovered.