STRANGER THAN FICTION

OK history buffs (or non-history buffs) - which of the following wild assertions just so happen to be true and which ones are false? Since I have to write about this stuff all the time, I actually know the answers and don’t have to look them up.  See how many you already know….TRUE OR FALSE: 

   

1) Ben Franklin invented the fan chair, which was a rocking chair with a fan on top to blow away flies.

2)  Ben invented a musical instrument that caused dogs to run away and hide and also made people think there were ghosts in their room.

3)  Pocahontas was bald.

4)  She taught her boyfriend, John Smith, how to smoke tobacco.

5)  Before being captured and enslaved, John Smith won a Turkish fortress by making a bunch of explosives and catapulting them into the Turks’ camp while they slept.

6)  George Washington always wore a white wig in public, even as a child.

7)  George Washington chopped down a cherry tree, and when his dad asked him about it, he said “I cannot tell a lie, pa.  I did it with my little ax.”

8)  George Washington had scars on his face from a duel.

9)  During the California Gold Rush, a single piece of paper cost $150 but you could get 12 shirts washed and ironed at the Chinese Laundry for $3.

10) During this gold rush, cooks regularly checked chicken gizzards for small gold nuggets.

11)  Frenzied gold seekers from 37 different countries rushed lickety-split straight toward California to seek their fortunes.

12)  Cowboys traveling on The Old Chisholm Trail used to cross the muddy rivers by running on their cows backs.

13)  The trail was finally closed by barbed wire.

14)  Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln were born on the very same day just a few hours apart, and they didn’t always get along with their dads.

15)  When Charles Darwin journeyed around the world by ship, he caught a giant octopus and sent it back to England for scientists to study.

16)   Charles Darwin used to ride on horseback with a wild Gaucho cavalry, ride on the backs of gigantic tortoises, and ride in a box on the back of an elephant in true Indian fashion. 

  

17)  In Salem Massachusetts, some people made medicine by combining boiled snippets of children’s hair, spirits of mummies, and the brains of young men who had died a violent death.

18)  During the Salem Witch Trials, nineteen people were burned for the crime of witchcraft.

19) During this time, people of all ages were accused of turning into a ball of light the size of a bushel basket, choking a woman with nails and eggs, stupefying a boy for 12 years, making a wagon plump down into a hole on flat ground, and killing victims with their evil “eye beams.” (A ghost said so.)

AND THE ANSWERS ARE:

1)  False, but he did have such a chair inside his house.

2)  True.  It was called the glass armonica, and before it went out of style for hurting dogs' ears and sounding spooky during seances, it was so popular that Mozart and Beethoven wrote music for it.

 3)   True.  Pre-pubescent Powhatan Indian girls shaved the tops of their heads, and Pocahontas was between 10 and 12 years old.

4)  False.  Of course she was way too young to be John Smith's girlfriend, and besides, he thought smoking tobacco was disgusting.

5)  True, all true.  He was also great at making fireworks.

6) False.  George hated wigs even though they were in style.  If he absolutely had to, he would powder his hair instead.

7)  False.  Parson Mason Locke Weems made up that fake story to get kids to tell the truth like their hero.  Oh, the irony.

8)  False.  The scars were from smallpox.

9)  All true.

10) True again. One time a chicken gizzard panned out at $12.80

11)  False.  They came from more than 70 countries and set off one of the greatest mass migrations in history.

12)  Yup, that's true.  Those guys had talent.

13)  True.  Barbed wire smarts if you're a traveling cow.

14)  True. Their dads didn't seem to think they'd amount to much.

15)  False, false, false.  He did uncover plenty of humongous fossilized bones from extinct giant animals though.

16)  True.  Darwin perched these various backs in Argentina, the Galapagos, and the Isle of Mauritius.  

17)True.  Guilty as charged.

18)  False.  They were hanged, not burned.  A 19th guy was pressed to death by stones.

19)  True.  People really did tell all of these bald-faced lies in court.  AND THERE ARE NO WITCHES!!!

Didn't I tell you truth is stranger than fiction?  So how did you do? Feel free to try this on your students, friends, and enemies, and if they get all the answers right I will send them a lollipop.  (False.)

How To Write Funny

My friend, Julie Winterbottom, writes funny stuff. She was editor-in-chief of Nickelodeon Magazine, and she has a new book coming out on March 19. Since I sometimes find it challenging to write funny, I thought I'd ask her to take my I.N.K. slot this month and explain how she does it.

I was a little surprised when Sue asked me to write a guest post for I.N.K. because my forthcoming book, Pranklopedia, while technically nonfiction, is more likely to get shelved under “Humor.” But Sue’s invitation got me thinking about the role of humor in nonfiction. Humor can draw kids who don’t like to read into enjoying nonfiction as much as they enjoy short-sheeting a bed (well, almost). In fact, my hope is that kids will pick up Pranklopedia to learn new pranks and end up reading the many (nonfiction) sidebars about creative capers in history, art, sports, and the White House.

There was another surprise: I found myself thinking about something I don’t usually pay much attention to—the process of writing humor and more specifically, the techniques I use to get myself into a funny frame of mind. I thought I’d share them here. I learned most of them during my 12 years as an editor at Nickelodeon Magazine, where the humor bar was set high. Even the masthead had to be funny! At Nick Mag, we often wrote humor pieces in pairs or small groups. It strikes me now that most of my techniques bring collaborators—real or imagined—into the writing process.

1. Read Something Funny

When I’m not feeling funny, I read someone who is. While working on Pranklopedia, I often started the day by reading a few pages from How to Play In Traffic, one of Penn & Teller’s hilarious books of pranks for adults. It helped me find a devious, slightly conspiratorial voice that was perfect for writing about pranks. On days when my ideas seemed too tame, I would dip into Mad Magazine to unleash my more irreverent side. For those who are more literary, one nonfiction writer I know suggests reading P.G. Wodehouse to get into funny mode.

2. Live With Someone Funny (or have easy phone access)

My boyfriend Stephen should probably be listed as co-author of Pranklopedia. He isn’t a prankster himself, and he doesn’t know much about writing for kids. But he has a fine ear for what’s funny and what isn’t. Whenever I had doubts about something I wrote, I would run it by Stephen. He would not only nix the bad ideas, he would help me brainstorm better ones.

3. Ask Yourself: What Would Jim Do?

My friend Jim is a natural-born prankster. Where other people see a boring trip to the supermarket or another tedious day at the office, Jim sees opportunities for pranks. Whenever I got stuck trying to come up with new pranks, I would pretend to be Jim. I’d find myself looking at everything around me, from the eggs in the refrigerator to the houseplants in the living room, as potential prank material. This technique let me ditch the cautious editor inside me and come up with lots of crazy ideas—some of which actually worked. Who knew that the musical birthday card on my living room shelf would make an excellent prank when taped to the inside edge of a closet door?

4. Wait a Day

When you’re working alone, it can be hard to know if what you wrote is actually funny. One way to find out (besides asking Stephen) is to put the writing aside and read it first thing in the morning. You will know right away whether or not it is funny. This can be a very disappointing experience. I’ve spent whole days writing what I thought was hysterical material only to read it the next morning and cringe: It was forced, unoriginal, and definitely not funny. The good part is that when this happens, it usually leads me to write a much better replacement.

5. Pray for a Last-Minute Request From Your Editor

Some of the funniest pranks and sidebars in Pranklopedia are the ones I added very late in the game, after the book had been designed and there were holes that needed filling. There’s something about a tight deadline that produces superior comedy. I saw this happen all the time at Nick Mag: The humor piece that we wrote in two hours because an ad dropped out at the last minute was always the funniest. Of course it’s hard to employ this technique if external forces are not cooperating. Hmm…maybe I can get writers to hire me to impersonate their editors and then I will make last-minute requests for new material. Any takers?

Julia Child for Kids - Serious AND Funny

"True stuff doesn't have to be all solemn and serious and sedate," wrote Roz in her post last week about humor in nonfiction picture books. If ever there was a biographical subject who was NOT solemn and sedate, it was Julia Child, who would have turned 100 this year. Serious is another matter, however.

Fun in the kitchen

On TV, Julia had a natural, relaxed attitude that belied her seriousness about French cooking. Of crucial importance were fresh, high-quality ingredients, prepared with classic techniques that had been developed over centuries. Fortunately, Julia's serious approach was always tempered by an earthy sense of humor. At heart an educator, she knew that learning goes down easiest when you're having fun. Above all, she would say, are the pleasures of sharing a delicious meal with family and friends. For Julia, relationships came first.

In my new picture book, Minette's Feast: The Delicious Story of Julia Child and Her Cat (Abrams), all these facets of America's most beloved chef and cookbook author are on the table. The challenge for me as an author was to find the right balance of seriousness and playfulness, and to do it in a way that kids would enjoy.

Flowers for Julia Child's
80th birthday party,
complete with kitchen whisk.

A Julia fan since childhood, I'd wanted to write a book about her ever since we met when I designed the flowers for her 80^th birthday party, at the Rainbow Room in New York. But I struggled to find a way to make the subject child-friendly. Would six-year-olds really be interested in fancy French food?

Then I learned that Julia got her first cat, Minette, when she and her husband Paul lived in Paris in the late 1940's. This fortunate French feline ate meals lovingly prepared by the future Queen of Cuisine. In return, Minette brought Julia little tokens of affection—in the form of fresh-caught mice!

This contrast in taste provides tension in the plot of Minette's Feast. As Julia's studies at the Cordon Bleu progressed, she whipped up ever-more enticing meals for Minette. The question is, could Julia's concoctions ever compete with live mouse?

Julia Child famously loved to eat, and her cat did, too. But they had different ideas about what kind of food was most appealing. Since Julia wrote about Minette in her letters and memoir, I was able to find plenty of primary source material and luscious quotes for my picture book. Then I played with language as Julia played with ingredients, mixing and experimenting until I had just the right recipe of words. And Amy Bates' scrumptious illustrations bring Julia, Paul and Minette to vibrant life.

"And so Julia and Paul adopted Minette, a mischievous, energetic poussiequette with a lovely, speckled coat.
Or, shall we say, Minette adopted Julia and Paul." Illustration © Amy Bates 2012. 

"She frisked and flounced, darted and batted.
She tiptoed and hopped, danced and pranced.
She jumped and rolled, curled and stretched, raced
and ran, gurgled and purred.
And then she licked herself all over and took a nice long nap."
  Illustration © Amy Bates 2012.  

After the kitchen shortcuts of the 1950's (casserole with canned cream of mushroom soup, anyone?), Julia Child was a breath of fresh air. As we celebrate the 100^th anniversary of her birth in this era of fast food, it's important to share with kids the serious things Julia taught us about food, as well as the humor she brought to all her endeavors.

Julia and Paul Child in the tub.
Valentine's Day card, 1956.

Teachers can use Minette's Feast to introduce students to Julia Child, for units on picture book biography and nonfiction writing, and also to spark classroom discussion and activities around food and cooking.

Jan Interviews Bravo's Andy Cohen

Andy Cohen is Bravo TV’s executive vice-president of programming and development and the mastermind of such hits as Top Chef and the Real Housewives franchise. He also hosts a fast-moving, outspoken talk show Watch What Happens. What is wonderful about Andy is that, despite his success and friendships with “stars,” he is still the same funny, friendly kid who hung out at our house in St. Louis with our daughter Jackie, loves his family (especially his Mom), and keeps up with all of us. Andy grew up knowing he was gay and keeping it a secret until his senior year at college. His new memoir Most Talkative: Stories from the front lines of pop culture tells that story, but also chronicles his meteoric rise in the world of T.V.

As a student at Boston University, Andy began to follow his dream to be a journalist. A hilarious chapter describes a hard won interview for the school newspaper with his all time idol Susan Lucci. Most Talkative gives a candid, inside view of life in television, as well as a poignant and often funny account of his life as a teenager in the Midwest. Several of us, including Sue Macy, Karen Romano Young, Cheryl Harness, Susan E. Goodman, and Gretchen Woelfle, have written posts about the need for nonfiction books for kids about growing up gay in America. I hope Andy Cohen’s memoir will fill this gap.

Jan: The text reads just the way you talk- funny, honest, anecdotal and fast-moving. Most Talkative is an apt title. How did you come to it?

Andy: I WAS VOTED MOST TALKATIVE IN HIGH SCHOOL AND IT SEEMED SUCH AN APT TITLE WHEN I LOOKED BACK AT MY LIFE AND HOW MY MOUTH HAS NOT ONLY GOTTEN ME IN A TREMENDOUS AMOUNT OF TROUBLE OVER THE YEARS, BUT HAS ALSO HELPED ME ACHIEVE MY PROFESSIONAL DREAMS.

Jan: Your descriptions of growing up in St. Louis were so vivid and immediate. Did you keep a journal all those years?

Andy: I KEPT JOURNALS FROM 1987 THROUGH '98, SO THIS WAS AFTER I'D GRADUATED HIGH SCHOOL BUT CERTAINLY DURING THE PERIOD WHEN I WAS WRESTLING WITH COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET AND THEN THE AFTERMATH OF THAT DECISION. THE JOURNALS WERE PAINFUL TO READ - AS THEY ALL CAN BE - BUT PROVIDED ME WITH SOME VERY SPECIFIC DETAILS ABOUT MY FEARS ABOUT COMING OUT, AS WELL AS SOME HILARIOUS COLOR COMMENTARY DURING MY TIME AT CBS NEWS.
Jan: You are a people person. You are known as a TV talk show host and you appear as a guest on other interview shows. As a writer myself, I know how much alone time it takes to write a book. Was writing the memoir difficult for you to do in terms of time, concentration, or the writing process?

Andy: WRITING THIS BOOK WAS SUCH A CHALLENGING AND ENERGIZING EXPERIENCE. I HAVE NEVER FELT MORE ACCOMPLISHED ABOUT ANYTHING I'VE DONE IN MY LIFE THAN I DO ABOUT THE BOOK. I AM VERY DEADLINE ORIENTED, AND I HAD A TIGHT, ESSENTIALLY FOUR MONTH DEADLINE FOR THIS ENTIRE BOOK TO BE WRITTEN AND EDITED. (I STARTED IN LATE AUGUST AND IT WAS DUE JAN 1.) PLUS I HAVE TWO JOBS (EVP OF DEVELOPMENT AND PRODUCTION AT BRAVO AS WELL AS HOSTING 'WWHL'). I CAN'T BELIEVE I DID IT BUT I SPENT EVERY MINUTE THAT I WASN'T WORKING - AND MOST ESPECIALLY EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND NONSTOP - WRITING NEW PAGES AND EMAILING CHAPTERS IN VARIOUS STAGES OF EDIT BACK AND FORTH TO MY PHENOMINAL EDITOR AT HOLT, GILLIAN BLAKE. I ALSO SPENT 30-60 MINUTES DAILY ON THE PHONE WITH GILLIAN, USUALLY FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, TALKING ABOUT EVERYTHING RELATED TO THE BOOK - NEW IDEAS, THEMES THAT WE WERE SEEING ABOUT MY LIFE, DIFFERENT WAYS TO TELL MY STORY, HOW TO CONNECT THE PUZZLE PIECES OF MY LIFE IN A WAY THAT WAS FUN FOR THE READER. THE TWO THINGS IN MY FAVOR WERE THAT I KNEW EXACTLY WHAT STORIES I WANTED TO TELL, AND I FEEL CONFIDENT WITH MY VOICE AS A WRITER, AND I'M NOT AFRAID TO WRITE. I JUST KNEW I HAD TO GET IT DONE, THAT I HAD TO BE HAPPY WITH IT, AND THAT I WOULD SUCCEED. AND I DID!

Jan: The reason I wanted to interview you for I.N.K. about Most Talkative is that I think this is a crossover book. It will appeal to adults but junior high and high school kids will find it interesting, amusing and moving, as well. What is the most significant message you might hope kids will get from reading your book?

Andy: I THINK THE BIGGEST MESSAGE, WHETHER IT'S SAID DIRECTLY OR JUST INFERRED, IS TO BE YOURSELF AND FOLLOW YOUR PASSION. I HAVE BEEN LUCKY ENOUGH TO KNOW FROM A YOUNG AGE THAT I WANTED TO WORK IN TV, AND THIS IS ON ONE HAND A HOW-TO OF HOW I DID THAT, BUT ALSO A ROAD MAP OF MISTAKES I MADE ALONG THE WAY. I WAS ALWAYS A BIT FEARLESS, FOR BETTER OR WORSE, AND THAT SEEMS TO HAVE WORKED FOR ME. I HOPE PEOPLE FIND IT FUN AND FUNNY, AND ALSO REALIZE IT TAKES A LOT OF HARD WORK AND CONFIDENCE TO GET WHERE YOU WANT TO BE.

Jan: Writing a memoir can be a tricky business. I don’t mean the kind of exaggeration and outright lying that sometimes occurs in so-called memoirs. I’m talking about the challenge to make the work authentic, as well as compelling. Reading Andy’s memoir, I couldn’t help noting that even when the writer tries to give an honest account of events in his/her life, memory can be an unreliable witness. Several of the incidents he describes I am familiar with, but, from my point of view, they happened quite differently. To read about myself from Andy’s perspective was difficult. I wanted to shout, ”Hey wait a minute. It didn’t happen this way.” That said, Most Talkative is engaging and heartfelt, a fun read that offers many insights, not only for Andy’s many fans but also for young readers.

IF YOU ARE NOT A PICTURE BOOK JUNKIE FREAKAZOID LIKE ME, DON’T READ THIS ARTICLE. REALLY.

Oh.  Hello, remaining freakazoids.
 
Check out these blockbuster award-winning best-selling top-flight PICTURE BOOKS for short people:  Don’t let the Pigeon Drive the Bus is funny. So are Knuffle Bunny, The Stinky Cheese Man and other Fairly Stupid Tales, The Stupids Step Out, The Beast of Monsieur Racine, I Want My Hat Back, and Everything on It. Those 3 miniature females named Olivia, Madeline, and Eloise are funny too.  And Click, Clack, Moo, Joseph had a Little Overcoat, Frog and Toad are Friends, It Could Always be Worse, and everything Dr. Seuss ever wrote in his entire life are even funnier.  

 
Funny is fun.  I love funny…..who doesn’t?  But do you notice something weird about this list? Of course you do.  These hilarious picture book blockbusters are all FICTION! I know there must be funny blockbuster roll-on-the-floor-laughing nonfiction picture books out there, but where ARE they? 

 
Well, let me see….John, Paul, George & Ben is funny, and at the end it tells you which parts were fiction and which parts were nonfiction.  Does that count?  So You Want to Be President? is funny too.  Can you guys think of any other hilarious blockbuster nonfiction picture books that I left out?  I hope so. True stuff doesn’t have to be all solemn and serious and sedate, you know.

 So let's make this post short and sweet.  Of course the truth ain't always funny; far from it. And of course picture books don’t always have to be funny either, any more than they have to be all pompous and self-important. But funny stuff is all around us everywhere we look.  It's good for our health.  I even think the daily news is funny after I stop crying about it.  (Or maybe all the stuff they say in the news is fictional anyway.)  Oh well.  Funny can work in nonfiction.  I'm sure of it.  So why not write more of it? 

 
Well truth be told, I personally try to plunk funny pictures and stories into my books all the time, and so do some of our other INK authors, even when our main topics are serious.  A little humor that just so happens to be true can bring real people and events to life, and lots of famous people in books had a great sense of humor or had funny things happen to them.   But a little humor may not be enough.  I’m seriously contemplating making a 100% funny nonfiction picture book so that I can be seriously funny if that's possible....who can say?  And what it will be about I have no idea. I can't wait!!!

QUOTES

In days of yore, people wrote volumes of long newsy letters to far-off friends and loved ones, and these missives might travel for many moons and endure a series of perilous journeys by land and sea before ever reaching a recipient. So it's no surprise that letters tended to be treasured and saved by their readers.

It was also common practice in some circles to pen daily journals, transcribe trial testimonies and political debates, dream up scandalous pamphlets and outrageous slogans, or write out speeches on onion skin paper or on the backs of envelopes. Naturally, these items were stored away as well. And it’s a good thing for me that so many have survived, because whenever I write about history, they turn out to be the most colorful and entertaining and revealing sources I use. So today I thought it might be fun to serve up a few short outtakes showing how people dealt with some troublesome matters.

Take the gold miners during the California Gold Rush, for example. They were a bunch of jokers.


“I hate to desert. I am almost crazy, as I have the gold fever shocking bad.”
B. P. Kloozer, a California soldier


“The big excitement swept all Tennessee like a fire in prairie grass. Some men that was tied with families actually set down and cried ‘cause they couldn’t go.” J. H. Beadle


Here's what a couple of guys said on board the sailing ships headed for the gold fields:

“The water is becoming bad. I don’t mind it much. I have a way of killing the bugs before drinking them.” Anonymous

“The ship gave a lurch and threw me down. I rolled and pitched and tumbled against one side of the room and then turned two or three somersets and struck my shoulders against the other side.” Horace C. Snow


The journey by land wasn't much better:

“Hail exceeded anything I ever saw, being as large as pigeon eggs. There may be fun in camping, but we haven’t discovered any.” Elisha Douglass Perkins

Life in California's boom towns wasn't altogether user-friendly either:

“In Stockton we slept on barrel stays with scanty blankets and well filled with athletic and courageous and determined fleas.” Horace C. Snow

Here’s an excerpt of some testimony in 1692 that convinced a panel of judges to hang Bridget Bishop, a woman from Salem who was accused of being a witch:

“ I did see a black thing Jump into the window & stood Just before my face…the body of itt looked like a Munky only the feete ware like a Cocks feete w'th Claws… I strook at it with a stick butt felt noe substance … then it vanished away and I opened the back dore and Espied Bridget Bushop in her orchard goeing to wards her house. I Againe did see the creture … itt sprang back and flew over the apple tree flinging the dust w'th its feet against my stomake, upon which I was struck dumb…” John Louder

Go figure.

When America’s 13 Colonies wanted to break away from British rule, colorful oratory abounded. Benjamin Franklin always had a way with words. Upon signing the Declaration of Independence, he told his compatriots:


“We must all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”

And when the war finally ended and he helped work out the peace treaty, he said “There never was a good war or a bad peace.”


When the American Revolution was heating up, Patrick Henry famously said:

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God!—I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

Samuel Johnson, the greatest English writer of his day, made this response:

“How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty from the drivers of Negroes?”

(There were slaves in all 13 Colonies)

Scientist Charles Darwin was vehemently opposed to slavery, and during his journey around the world as a young man, he decried the practice in his journal every chance he got:

“How weak are the arguments of those who maintain that slavery is a tolerable evil! The Corcovado is notorious for runaway slaves. We met three villainous looking ruffians armed to the teeth. They were slave-hunters & receive so much for every man dead or alive whom they may take.”

And finally, Lewis and Clark overcame dangers galore, but this ever-present danger wasn't their fave or their most glam. Here’s William Clark on June 17th 1804 (note the different spellings) :

"The ticks and musquiters are verry troublesom"

and on July 26: "the Boat roled in such a manner that I could do nothing & was Compelled to go to the woods and combat with the Musquetors"

and on September 7: " 8 falloe deer & 3 Buffalow killed today. Muskeetors verry troublesom."

On July 15 1806, Meriwether Lewis said: "the musquetoes continue to infest us in such manner that we can scarcely exist ; for my own part I am confined to my bier at least 3/4ths of my time. my dog even howls with the torture and we frequently get them in our thr[o]ats as we breath."

Sorry, Lewis and Clark, but I love this stuff.

Time for prehistory

My earliest memories of learning about the prehistoric era include an orange plastic Triceratops and the Flintstones. A few years later when a set of Time Life books about paleontology appeared on our shelves at home, the real story began to take shape in my mind. We didn’t have much instruction on the topic during my years at school, but I kept a casual interest going over the years by reading an article or book here and there.

When my longtime editor, Margery Cuyler at Marshall Cavendish Children, suggested doing a book of dinosaur jokes, that seemed like a fun project. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what happened, but let’s just say things escalated a bit. After browsing through a few books, it became clear that I had missed out on a lot of wonderful fossil discoveries and insights made in recent years. (For a post about some of the resources used, click here.) 

An aspect that jumped out at me was the number of books available and what topics are covered. Here are some very simple “infographics” to illustrate. In general, most nonfiction (and fiction) books take place within the context of recorded history, right?

Fine, now let‘s compare the quantity of Prehistoric time vs. Historic time:

Obviously these are not mathematically accurate proportions, but it conveys the idea. Prehistory is far bigger than History, in terms of the sheer number of years.

Then, when we look only at prehistoric time, the dinosaurs showed up 250–200 million years ago, then dominated the Earth for a relatively small chunk of Earth’s entire 4.5 billion years (minus 65 million years since the asteroid fell.)

However, when we look at the actual books written about prehistoric topics for children, it looks more like this:

This is my (perhaps long-winded) way of saying that there are a heck of a lot of books about dinosaurs, but the rest of prehistory? Not so much. I felt compelled to include the whole shebang in my book, or at least the highlights that would fit into a mere 48 pages. Without any further ado, here is my fall book, My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts...

It begins with the newly-formed Earth under a hail of comets and asteroids, then deluged by millions of years of rain. The next spread shows the era of volcanoes, huge tides, and a moon so large it would almost require sunglasses (moonglasses?) Life appears in the form of microorganisms, with cyanobacteria being the most important because they made oxygen. Many pages and many incredibly diverse lifeforms later, the book winds up in the Ice Age.


Along the way, each spread has cinquain poems and/or longer rhyming verses, silly but topical jokes, riddles in the form of limericks, fun facts, and of course, full-color artwork of the fantastic array of plants and animals that once populated this planet, or in some cases still do. (Such as the coonties growing in our yard, a cycad plant whose ancestors grew during the Permian period.)

The poems include:
The Bad Old Days
Plant Pioneers
The Fish That Wanted Legs
Reptiles on the March
How to Stay Alive
Did Hadrosaurs Quack?
Doodlesaurus
A Warning from the Mammals


About the poem My Teacher is a Dinosaur...there was some opposition from the publisher about using it for the book’s title (too young? too insulting?) so just to be sure I read it aloud to a group of reading teachers. My editor did the same, and both groups overwhelmingly urged us to keep this title, so yay! While I intended the title to sound a little subversive, the poem itself negates the idiomatic meaning of dinosaur (i.e. old or outmoded) and favorably compares teachers to various dinosaurs. The first couple of lines should make it clear:

My teacher is a dinosaur, but I’m not sure which one—
could she be Gallimimus, who was always on the run?...


It took much more time to create this book than I originally expected, but (with all due modesty) it turned out to be unique, entertaining, and informative. My hope is that it will entice reluctant readers to explore its pages as well as enlarge the perspective of dinosaur-loving kids (aren’t they all?) For a peek at a spread featuring Brachiosaurus and Archaeopteryx, click here. To preview and download a coloring page of Allosaurus, click here.

Happy back to school, everyone!

This Post is a Joke

For some odd reason I recently began writing riddles and jokes about invertebrates, among other creatures:

Q. Why are anemones so popular?
A. The anemone of my anemone is my friend.

Q. Why are tubeworms so shy?
A. They‘re introvertebrates.

Time travel came up... temporally, at least:

Q. What’s the most common way to time travel?
A. Throwing the alarm clock at the wall!

Q. Why is time travel so confusing?
A. I already told you that next week!

Astronomy tried to take on a starring role:

Q. What do you call a mean meteor?
A. A nasteroid!

Q. How does the Earth say good-bye to the Moon?
A. Later, crater!

If there‘s an award for awful jokes, I hope to win it. It’s been about twenty years since I last grappled with similar material, and then to do just the illustrations for David Adler’s The Dinosaur Princess. So, how do you write a riddle or joke, anyway? Here's one method:

1. Choose a subject, let‘s say mammoths. List words that describe how they looked, their behavior, their habitat, and so on.
hairy trunk trumpet tusk snow ice huge big bones big teeth, etc.

2. Think of rhymes, similar-sounding words, and/or words that contain the word:
HAIRY scary contrary fairy canary very necessary Larry
SNOW go know no slow slowpoke snowflake
TRUNK junk chunk clunk skunk truncated

3. Use these ideas to write a rhyming, nonsensical, or goofy possible answer:
a scary hairy fairy
a snowpoke

4. Make up a question that gives a hint of the answer:

Q. Why were baby mammoths afraid of losing a tusk?
A. Because of their hairy scary tooth fairy!

Q. How fast did mammoths walk in winter?
A. They were snowpokes!

5. Try variations on classic joke formulas:

Q. How many mammoths did it take to change a light bulb?
A. None because there were no lamps in the Ice Age!

Wording the question and answer carefully will maximize the effect. For a real challenge, once you get good at writing regular riddles, try incorporating one into a poem or limerick. (I’d show a sample, but have to save them for the book.)

One book for kids about how they can write their own jokes is Funny You Should Ask: How to Make Up Jokes and Riddles with Wordplay by Marvin Terban. He has written over thirty books for kids about various types of wordplay.


I ran across This Book is a Joke by Holly Kowitt in a used book store, and find it especially funny for some reason. It covers a ton of topics from pets to school lunches to the eight types of classmates. Mostly text, it does contain a few delightfully goofy cartoons. Note the award seal on the cover which proudly proclaims: This Book Won Nothing.

The world of nonfiction has a lot of potential gold for the enterprising humor prospector... because you have know some facts about a topic in order to be able to make fun of it. And that’s no joke!

Disclaimer: It’s possible somebody has already thought of some of these jokes/riddles... I came up with them on my own, but people have been kidding around for a long time!