Life-changing Nonfiction Sparks Your Imagination

I hope all of you have been following along this month as the INK authors share the Life-changing Nonfiction from their childhood. While reading about each author’s background, I had to dig through the cobwebs to recall my own early nonfiction experiences. It found it fascinating that, as adults, all the INK blog authors now write about areas that we were drawn to as children.

During my author presentations, I share with the students my childhood and how I loved making things. I grew up sewing stuffed animals for my brother, designing Barbie clothes, making puppets, putting on shows and creating anything. I believed that every child did this. Fast forward several years where I found myself working at one of the largest toy companies in the world designing stuffed toys --- with my office right next to all the Barbie designers.

Thing is, I also would secretly write stories in my bedroom closet. I loved to read. Each week, my mom would drop me off at the Mount Washington Public Library, while she shopped at the local Krogers. By the time she came back to pick me up, I had a nice selection of titles to take home and explore. 

Here are a few of my favorite books that made a lasting impression on my life:

Toymaker's Book

by C. J. Maginley

Harcourt Brace and Co., New York, NY, 1948

Fun for one - or two: 200 activities for boys and girls

by Bernice Wells Carlson (Author) , Raymond Abel (Illustrator)

Abingdon Press, January 1954

Make it Yourself! Handicraft for Boys and Girls

by Bernice Wells Carlson

Abingdon Press, 1950

Better Homes and Gardens Junior Cookbook

by Editors of Better Homes and Gardens  January 1963

To be honest, I was fascinated by the little pear animals and the ice cream cones with sprinkles.

Nowadays, parents and kids can get a cornucopia of craft and recipe ideas on the internet. My daughter spends hours looking up things to bake and make on Pinterest. In fact, after searching everywhere for the vintage books that I listed above, my best source was Pinterest.

http://www.pinterest.com/abebooks/vintage-craft-books/

Today, most publishers have craft books that are very focused on one particular craft, such as, popsicle stick characters or rubber band bracelets. Toy and craft companies create kits where children make what is in the kit with all the materials provided for the project. There seems to be a connection missing somewhere. The creative component has been left out of the equation. Where is the experimentation? Where are the mistakes? Where is the trying of new ideas?

For several years, I have taught a Winter After School Enrichment class called Summer Arts and Crafts. Everything we make incorporates recycled items. Everything the students create is very open ended. I explain all the many ways that they can create projects using other recyclable materials from around their own homes.

The current craft nonfiction books that children can choose are well and good. I just think that there should be a few more books that lead students to think about what they want to create, rather than just telling them what to make.

A few new titles that I love are:

Martha Stewart's Favorite Crafts for Kids: 175 Projects for Kids of All Ages to Create, Build, Design, Explore and Share

by Editors of Martha Stewart Living
Potters Craft June 2013

Show Me a Story: 40 Craft Projects and Activities to Spark Children's Storytelling 

by Emily K. Neuburger
Storey Publishing August 2012

Made by Dad: 67 Blueprints for Making Cool Stuff 

by Scott Bedford

Workman Publishing Company May 2013

An Old Dog on New Tricks

I knew that my web site was outdated years ago.  What had been cool at the turn of the millennium was looking shopworn.  Furthermore the infrastructure of my site was so arcane that I had to hire someone if I wanted to add a school visit to my schedule page.

I finally pulled it together and started looking for someone to hire.  Being a nontechno type who wanted to remain so, I couldn’t imagine anything else.  I approached people I knew.  Busy.  I asked the people I knew for people they knew.  Busy.  How could this be?  It’s a bad economy. 

Then I thought of a former MFA student who came to Lesley University to learn more about writing for kids, but was already an accomplished illustrator, photographer, animator (http://bryanballinger.com/).  Bryan graciously replied that I couldn’t hire him, but that he would mentor me through the beginning steps of building a site.  Damn, it was that old “teach a man to fish” line.  I had really just wanted to go to the fish market or, better yet, ordered my meal at a seafood restaurant. 

Wait a second, I thought.  One reason I wanted the new site was so I could be more self-sufficient.  If I knew how to build the thing, maintaining it would be a snap.  Many normal people seemed to be doing it. And I’d been blogging for a few years; I knew how to insert pictures into text, would bad could it be?

Pretty bad.  Mainly because I not only had to learn this foreign language and skill set, I had to get over my resistance and fear of doing so.  Bryan opened an empty Wordpress site for me, gave me a Skype tutorial and then it was the first day of the rest of my life.  I found something I thought I could do and did it.  Hooray.  I crept along until I came up against a wall, metaphorically speaking, with no idea of how to remove it or get around it because I had no idea why it was there.  I simply Xed out of the site—for a week.  Bryan sweetly got me back on track, but sometimes the problem of asking for explanations meant not knowing enough to understand the answers.

Here we go again, I found something else I could do and in doing so, figured out that first problem.  Happiness!  Hours went by as I slowly learned why what I designed didn’t look the same once the page was in view mode or how to line three photos up across the page.  My new skills kept growing.  Rescaling picture sizes, using Skype to get tutorials, learning enough html to do sidebars, too many colors on one page are too distracting, saturated colors make print vibrate uncomfortably against a black screen, have patience, have patience.  Writing affords you many words and choices to produce a desired result.  Html—just one—so what did I do wrong?  Obsession, then another block and shutdown once more.  For two weeks.  Again and again I’d inch my way back in.

Ultimately I guess this is how we learn most things.  If they are easy for you because you have the aptitude or temperament for them, the push/pull isn’t so painful—or noticable.

Thank you Bryan, and thank you Tim John (http://boismierjohndesign.com/) who stepped in at the end to add the banners, programming, bells and whistles far beyond my pay grade.  Yes, it took an absurd amount of time to make this web site.  But maybe not so long to learn a new lesson about learning.

I proudly present to you www.susangoodmanbooks.com.

Five Finger Frustration

What is the sound of one hand typing? 

Plunk, plunk…plunk……………plunk…oops, backspace.

What is the sound of two hands typing?

In my case, it’s been:  Ouch!  Ouch!  Ouch! Then, after a while, a retreat downstairs to the couch.

About six weeks ago, I had a bad car accident and broke all the bones in my left forearm and carpel (I guess I now have my own version of carpel tunnel syndrome). I feel lucky I wasn’t hurt more severely and that I’m right handed.  Two operations and several casts later, I’m slowly on the mend.

So how has this affected my writing?  Well, I’m glad I could confine what little writing I did in the early days to email.  Back then, painkillers and only one useful hand made the keyboard feel like a wilderness to be conquered. I am a touch typist and have found that using one hunt-and-peck forefinger means a lot more hunting and less pecking than I imagined. My fingers know the keys much better than my visual memory does.  It doesn’t help that my emotional attachment to a decade-old keyboard means many of the letter symbols have worn off the keys.

Yes, I know that I can just compose longhand, the way I used to hammer out all my articles when I first started my career as a magazine writer.  But technology changed a long time ago.  I made the switch and my brain has too.  I am so used to my hands being able to keep up with my thoughts that I’m no longer trained to hold the upcoming words --long phrases or a word picture--in my mind for that length of time.  Tap, tap, tapping of the forefinger creates the same problem.  

Dragon, the voice recognition software?  Thought about it, bought it, returned it unwrapped.  Maybe it would have been a godsend for email.  But, for me, there are essential components to thoughtful writing it just wouldn’t satisfy.  The process isn’t all that different, but dictation feels distracting, moor less, as if the words I really want, their order and the meaning I want to make of them could just float away. When typing, words and ideas go from the mind through the hands, then via the eyes back to the brain to continue the process.  Mind, hands, eyes—three parts, each with its own job to do, which includes freeing the others to do theirs.

I know Steven Hawking has managed just fine using a different system.  And, he’s hardly the only one.  If my injury had been worse or permanent, I would work to rewire my creative circuitry.  Seems a little daunting, though.  So, even though I’ve given serious thought to a book I’m gearing up to refashion, something tells me it will stay on simmer until my cast comes off.

Where Does He Get His Ideas?

Like so many New Yorker subscribers, I am always months behind. They pile up week by week, screaming their silent rebuke. Sometimes I hide them in a corner; rarely, I become defiant and throw them out without a glance of what I might miss. Keeping up with this magazine is the best (only?) reason I can think of for commuting to a job on the subway instead of just carrying my coffee upstairs in my pjs.

I’m glad the November 14, 2011 issue didn’t end up unseen and in the recycling. Yesterday I read an article by John McPhee, one of the greatest nonfiction writers around. In “Progression,” he discussed the evolution of many of his ideas, when he lets his subject matter dictate the structure of his piece, and the few times (just two in a very full career) he chose a structure and searched for a subject to fit it.

Many of us here have written about such matters already, but I find the topic endlessly fascinating. I thought I might pluck a few points from the article that could hopefully spur some conversation in the comments section from my fellow bloggers and some of our readers.

1. McPhee said he once listed all the pieces he had written in decades and realized that 90 percent of them were related to subjects he had been interested in before he went to college.

Is that true for you? I’m not sure it is for me. I really liked biology, but I’d never have predicted I would write so much about science. Is that because I was a young girl at a time when females considered other types of careers? Or is it that I didn’t understand then that there is a poetry in pure science that is as lyric as Shakespeare's?

2. McPhee said that his readers aren’t shy with suggestions, then noted these ideas are often closer to the readers’ passions than his own. Yet he did end up using two of their proposals.

Anybody here ever turn an suggested idea from a reader or a kid into a book?

3. McPhee mentioned that “new pieces can shoot up from other pieces, pursuing connections that run through the ground like rhizomes.”

I bet so many of us have written books or articles this way. I’ve already talked about one of mine in an earlier post (http://inkrethink.blogspot.com/2011/02/on-and-on-and-on.html). Have you met a minor character while researching one story who demanded a book of his or her own? Or turned an idea on its ear for another go-round?

4. And finally, what about McPhee’s ultimately successful attempt to tame a potentially disastrous idea: trying to find the right subject to fit within a pre-set structure. His result turned out to be the classic Encounters with the Archdruid.

Anybody else give this a try?

THE SHAPE OF THINGS

Dresses! Evening gowns! Shoes! Accessories! What does fashion have to do with YA nonfiction? Read on, my lovelies. For, like Stephen Colbert’s segment, The Word, it all comes together in the end. Hint: think the shape of things.

Toward the end of summer I was deep into a new book project. My interviews were transcribed and the chapters pretty close to a final draft. Follow-up questions were written in red. The photographs were cued to match the text. I could see what was missing and knew how to get it. That’s what I would call a fine month’s work.

This all came together in a lovely rented home in Columbia County, New York, where I had nothing more to do but write, eat delicious food, write, drink chilled wine, write, and watch magnificent sunsets. No TV. Infrequent Internet. We were miles away from newspapers, bills, and arguments over the debt ceiling. Writing does have its perks.

But, and there’s always an anxious “but” with writers. My “but” was I couldn’t find a shape to my book. It was a burlap bag of information. Where’s the beginning, how does it end, and when does that ubiquitous arc we know and love show its beautiful arabesque? My editor, agent, and writer-friends told me not to worry, “It will come, just keep working.” I agreed that it would happen, but when? I wanted to see it now. No, not now, yesterday. And so I returned home to the city, home to all-of-the-above mentioned annoyances that keep creativity from a fevered pitch.

Meanwhile, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Alexander McQueen show, Savage Beauty, was winding down. It had been on view for months, and to tell the truth, I had little interest in visiting a crowded fashion show. As the lines at the museum grew longer and longer, the hype louder and louder, I panicked. Am I missing one of the biggest shows in the history of the Met? Then again, do I really want to schlep all the way uptown and stand in line for hours to see clothes? I can do that just as well at Bergdorf’s. Friends whose taste I respect insisted, “It’s not fashion, it’s art!”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Really.” Finally, societal pressure got the better of me, and two days before the show closed I gave up my BEST writing hours to see fashion – I mean art.

By 9:30 the lines stretched from the second floor, around the halls, down the staircase, out the door, down the grand steps, around the block and into Central Park. But members could go right in. Although I’m a curmudgeon when it comes to viewing art en masse, I took advantage of my membership and went in. Savage Beauty was fascinating – stunning. I learned that Alexander McQueen began a new collection with a concept, and that he laid his work out on a storyboard. Hmmm. Writers do that. The concepts were based on nature, history, cultures, poetry, Darwin, primitivism, and “the dark side of life.” Writers work with these ideas, too. Instead of expressing these themes in writing or painting, he used ostensibly incompatible materials and the female shape. There was a McQueen quote that particularly resonated with me: “People find my things sometimes aggressive. But I don’t see it as aggressive. I see it as romantic, dealing with a dark side of personality.”

If you missed the show, as I almost did, here’s a link: http://blog.metmuseum.org/alexandermcqueen/about/

All in all this was a most pleasant morning. Now the time had come to return home and face my own kind of shape, one that did not include feathers, aluminum, velvets, and tulle. Deep into the bowels of the subway, onto the C train, I sat staring into nothingness the way New Yorkers do when riding in a crowded, drab tunnel.

All of a sudden, and for no reason, I stood up and said, “I’ve got it! I know the shape of my book.” [No one even looked up, which is a good thing about New York subway riders.] Everything came together: the opening paragraph, the ending, chapter order, and even that pesky little arc. It was all there, oozing from my brain, filling my eyes with images, tingling my soon-to-be typing fingertips. How did this happen?

Visiting Alexander McQueen’s exquisite dark side somehow sparked my own creative juices in a fresh way. Intangible, enchanted flashes of recognition, often by way of osmosis, somehow inspire other artists, writers, and poets. How? Perhaps my science-writing colleagues have a theory? That’s why Alvin Ailey would arrive at rehearsals with piles of art books instructing his dancers to find a shape that best portrays the reasons behind their steps in a ballet. That’s why Uta Hagen would send budding actors to the zoo to watch an animal that best reflects their roles in a play. Art seems to be one big blob, connected, disconnected, transformed into individual ideas. [Note to the Department of Education: this is one reason why you cannot eliminate music, art, and creative writing classes. The loss is greater than the cost.]

I arrived at my stop, raced up the stairs, my head still bursting with new ideas. A quick stop at the corner stand for strawberries and bananas – head in clouds – uneven sidewalk – trip – fall – crack a rib. Writing can be painful but that’s the subject for another blog. My body was in bad shape – but not my book. And that’s the shape of things.

Happy New Year, 5772,

Susan

Creativity--On the Couch

This past Saturday, I attended a seminar at the Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute called Three Poets on “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.” It was a blockbuster lineup: Poets Gail Mazur, Robert Pinsky and Louise Gluck (two of them Laureates) and Sigmund Freud, who was abundantly present in spirit, within the audience of 60-odd analysts and in his essay, “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming.” Each poet read a poem and talked about how his or her writing related to points made by the Master in this essay about creativity.

Evidently Freud was both fascinated and puzzled by artistic invention. The program notes said creativity was “a mystery he admired, and likely envied as well. Freud wrote that poets had always known what psychoanalysis had discovered, and that it just fell to him to systematize and theorize it.”

And theorize it he did in this essary that searched for its underpinnings. As best as I could tell, Freud believed that creativity's roots lay in childhood (Duh. Where else did he ever look?). Specifically in childhood play. The child constructs a fantasy world in which the elements of the real world are reordered to please him, in part by defusing or dealing with unsatisfactory realities. And since the child is the father of the man, the adult writer continues on the same path.

Here’s the problem, Sigmund. This hypothesis—right or wrong—addresses the poet, novelist and playwright. What about the writer of creative nonfiction? Our job is to deal with, often even embrace the realities of life, not avoid them. And to do it creatively. Take the facts and make something new of them—or why bother?

So do we get our own developmental theory?

Is the creative nonfiction writer born as the kid who is just burning to know? Maybe she watches the first snowfall and wonders what happens to the butterflies. She asks her father who changes the subject because he doesn’t know and induces trauma by answering NO questions. Then she gets sent to a shrink who asks the little girl TOO many questions instead of answering any. Then she asks a librarian who hands her a copy of Under the Snow by Melissa Stewart. Just like Goldilocks, everything is finally just right. Anxiety over. That feeling of relief and its cause is imprinted upon her psyche and determines her future.

Or maybe he started on the Freudian track, building a world filled with purple dragons. Then he discovered that once the world was home to animals called dinosaurs. Everything changed. Yes, yes, he’d say dismissively, I know dragons can fly. Pterosaurs can too—and hey, did you know that a T Rex had teeth the size of bananas? The idea that dinosaurs once walked the Earth, that his wildest fantasies could be REAL, is what fueled his creativity.

Maybe one of these children grows up and asks another question. This time she can search for the answer herself, talk to people who’ve spent their lives wondering about the same thing. She asks enough and they know enough so she can know enough too. And she finds the way the world works so beautiful that when she explains it, she makes music.

Or when he seeks the truth, he finds a sliver of a story that manages to tell the whole thing. His creativity is to hone in. His tale uncovers the core and it echoes and reaches so far that questions his readers don’t even know they have get answered.

Perhaps they even answer yours, Dr. Freud.

Agents--Agents of Change?

I’m in the market for a new agent, a slightly bizarre experience for so many reasons. It feels a bit like picking your marriage partner from one of those speed dating sessions where you talk to someone for eight minutes and then shift to the left. Of course, if you hook up with an agent and it doesn’t work out, breaking up isn’t as bad as a real divorce. You do end up sharing custody, though. At least until your joint children go out of print.

So I called friends for suggestions and reviews of agents they know. Then began studying up online. I’d read through an agent’s client list, past triumphs, future wants. I’ve found several candidates I want to pursue, but a surprising number of times, a disturbing number of times, I came upon one of the following phrases:

--Submit middle-grade or YA fiction only
--Submissions of picture books are not welcome at this time
--Our current policy on picturebooks is that we do not solicit either texts or illustrators, but do represent picturebooks by authors whom we have already taken on for their older, longer work. Additionally, we are not looking for non-fiction.
--No nonfiction or poetry collections.

I don’t want to hyperbolic -- but I’m reminded of signs saying “Jews and Irish need not apply” and “Colored waiting room around back.”

I’m not entirely surprised. We all know that the books are a strange alliance of art and commerce and, lately, commerce rules the day. We also have a bit of a population trough in the picture book age group, schools and libraries are budget poor, picture books are expensive to produce in paper form and the technology to sell them as E-books is just enough behind their novel format cousins that it further suppresses the market. Nonfiction books, many of them picture books, can have the same problems. And don’t get me started about the backward notion some parents have about starting their kids on chapter books asap so they can get into Harvard.

I’m not really blaming these agents either. Some of them may have never had any interest in these genres. Fair enough. YA fiction is hot and everyone needs to make a living, and wants a good one at that. Also fair. But here’s my two cents to anyone listening.

*Trends change, populations ebb and flow. It pays to stay flexible.

*There will always be younger kids in greater and fewer numbers. There will always be schools and libraries. There will always be the need to learn about the world and everything in it. It pays to stay flexible. Furthermore, for agents and publishers who can attract quality voices to nonfiction to turn their backs upon it is a disservice not only to children but to our society as a whole.

*When technology changes, its costs tumble, then it will be our turn to shine. Affordable picture e-books will be widely seen in their full double-page spread glory. Nonfiction changes will be stratospheric with books about butterflies clicking onto caterpillars timelapsing quickly into monarchs and a bio of Martin Luther King building up to the “I Have a Dream” speech. Ah, the cyber-sidebars and back matter. And the possibility of a 39 Clues-type book with mysteries that teach kids who are reading/playing them everything from history to forensic science. Hence, it pays to stay flexible

*Many agents wrote on their wish list that they were looking for someone who will reinvent their genre. Well, that doesn’t just happen in dystopian fiction. Vision and innovation can be anywhere—and, when it happens, the market responds. Look at Shaun Tan or ABC3D by Marion Bataille. And so, it pays to stay flexible.

*The market also responds when anyone talented has a great take on a great idea—in any genre.

Guess what? It pays to stay flexible.

Barbie - Interesting Nonfiction for Kids (of all ages)

This month, Tanya Lee Stone launches her new book, The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie: A Doll’s History and Her Impact on our Culture.  In this month's post, Come on Barbie, Let's Go Party, Tanya shared with I.N.K. the details of her launch party.

Involved with the toy industry for over 25 years, Barbie has been near and dear to my heart. At Mattel, I originally interviewed for the position of Barbie accessories designer. Finally landing in the Girls Dolls and Plush Department, my office was next to the Barbie designers, who became my good friends.
At first, I was worried that the book was going to be another Barbie bashing or, on the other side of the spectrum, full of Barbie fluff.
After reading The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie, I have to say "Bravo" to Tanya Lee Stone!  The message that stands out to me is that girls can do anything. And, I believe that exact phrase was a Mattel advertising tagline one year. Ruth Handler persevered in so many ways - by making things work when everyone said no, by crushing the stereotypical '50s housewife image, by recognizing the new TV advertising medium, etc.

March of last year, Barbie turned 50 and on my blog I wrote about my own personal love of Barbie. Regarding Barbie's negative stereotype:
Grandma cut off some of her own hair and glued it onto Barbie's private parts. Yup. This is how an adult saw Barbie - a grown-up mature woman. To me, Barbie was years of the best play imaginable. The creation of Barbie's life in my mind was priceless.

The Good, the Bad, and the Barbie is a five-star interesting nonfiction read for girls of all ages. The flow of the book is seamless from the beginnings of Ruth Handler's imagination, through the process of Barbie's rising star.  This includes the impact of the revolution of plastic manufacturing, the embracing of diversity, Barbie as an art form, and, of course, the controversies - peppered with fabulous, thought-provoking quotes from Barbie fans and critics. 

As a child, my Barbie play was a treasure-trove of stories and adventures. Barbie's house and town was a mixture of the family couch and lots of blocks and boxes. Barbie's clothes fascinated me - I loved her bright, blue patent leather coat and neon go-go dress. And, as for my self image, my mom told me that I was prettier than all the girls on her soap operas.

Toy and doll history can be used in the classroom to support curriculum in Social Studies, and American and European History. Kids can relate to toys and dolls.  Last November in my Play and Creativity in the Classroom presentation at the Chicago Toy and Game Fair, I shared with teachers how to combine toys and play with social studies, science, and math curriculums. In my I.N.K. post last year, Interesting Nonfiction and Toys, I shared a variety of toy-related nonfiction books.

Last year when my ten-year-old son was having a difficult time picking an appropriate book for his class nonfiction unit, I handed him Toys! Amazing Stories Behind Some Great Inventions by Don Woulffson - now his favorite book. 
I say, give them something that they can relate to - and I know most kids can relate to toys... and Barbies.

Speaking of fun...
Have to mention that I was recently asked to act as Consulting Editor for Appleseeds Let's Play Issue. I'm also writing some extremely fun articles for the issue... almost doesn't feel like work.  And, isn't that what it's all about? Having fun with whatever we do?

Happy Halloween!!!

Imagination in All Things

We nonfiction writers often puzzle over the prejudice many teachers have against nonfiction. Sometimes these are so strong that they won't even allow a child to read a nonfiction book for credit or use one for a book report. One reason for this makes sense at first. Most of the school day, they will say, the children are reading fact after fact as they study math, science, social science, and grammar. They need a break. They need reading that will stimulate their imaginations.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Let's give the kids something to read that's different from what's required of them. Facts aren't all that matters in a good education; exercising the imagination is also important, and novels are what do that. But wait a minute--what's wrong with this picture? For one thing, where do the ideas for fiction writers come from? They come from the real world, from real events, things that really happened. And think about science fiction--it's a wonderfully imaginative genre that takes its inspiration from real scientific discoveries and inventions.

Some people prefer to call nonfiction books "informational books." I agree that the word "nonfiction" can have a negative sound to it--it says what our books are not instead of what they are. But "informational" sounds plodding and boring, and our books are far from that.

Reading exciting history, such as the recounting of the adventures of great explorers, for example, can really get children imagining. Take this tidbit from my book, The Lewis and Clark Trail Then and Now, describing the journey ahead:
"For more than two years, your diet will be limited to a few items.......You will work so hard that you can easily gobble down a meal of nine pounds of meat. Many times you will go hungry. You will be completely out of touch with family and friends except for one chance to send, but not receive, letters after the first winter."

A mathematically inclined reader might think for a moment, then realize--wow! Nine pounds of meat--that's 36 Quarter Pounders! The child who is constantly visiting his Facebook page and texting on his cell phone may wonder--how could I survive not being able to contact my friends? These kinds of reactions stimulate the readers imaginations to take them places mentally and emotionally that they have never been before.

Good nonfiction writing can also take something that seems mundane, like dust, and transform it into something magical. Here's a sample from April Pulley Sayre's book, Stars Beneath Your Bed The Surprising Story of Dust:
"Dust can be bits of unexpected things--a crumbling leaf, the eyelash of a seal, the scales of a snake, the smoke of burning toast, ash from an erupting volcano.......Old dust stays around. Dirt that made King Tut sneeze is still on Earth. It might be on your floor. That dusty film on your computer screen might have muddied a dinosaur." Now that's writing that will stimulate any reader's imagination!

One final point that has been brought up before in our blogs--there are children out there whose imaginations are more stimulated by nonfiction than fiction. They may even put down fiction as "just made up stories" and only be interested in reading about "real" things. If one goal of education is to help children develop a love of reading, then not allowing these children to read the kind of books that they find interesting can only work against this goal we all share.