How easy is it being green?

Energy is in the news these days, so perhaps some of us can share ideas about the changes we’re making as we try to live more sustainably as authors, illustrators, readers, and citizens of this planet. I’ve previously posted about whether paper or electronic books are the greenest. What about other practices, whether easy or a little more complex?

Keeping it Digital

I haven’t printed out a photograph in ages; send PDFs to editors so manuscripts or book dummies don’t have to be printed out; compile lists and reference material such as images on the computer.

One habit that’s been hard to break is festooning my desk and monitor with sticky notes that build up like barnacles. There is a widget on my new Mac that allows me to post virtual notes on a special alternate desktop (forget what it’s called). But alas, the paper ones are so tempting....

Other Office Tips

Recycle ink cartridges; use rechargable batteries; properly recycle or dispose of e-waste; combining errands; use recycled paper; reuse paper printed on only one side (great for running declog cycles on my printer!); save oddball non-recyclable items such as plastic lids, scrap mat boards, and anything else usable as part of an art project to give to schools, Scout groups,etc.

One thing to be happy about is that as a freelancer working at home for over two decades, I’ve avoided using a pretty large quantity of gasoline. Or buying a lot of dressy clothes and shoes... sweatpants last a long time! The Planet Green site has tips specifically for authors that address book production and other relevant topics. One interesting tidbit was the percentage of Americans who want to write a book... a survey came up with 81%, which would be about 250 million titles!

Writing about Green Issues

The first book of mine on an environmental topic was The Great Trash Bash, which tells the story of a town with too much garbage and how they tackle the problem together. The Shocking Truth about Energy (available Spring 2010) addresses the pros and cons of various forms of energy from fossil fuels to wind, solar, geothermal, and plant-based. There are also two spreads of energy-saving tips for kids and parents such as banishing energy “vampires” (e.g. adaptors).

But even books that aren’t primarily about an environmental topic may have room for some relevant connection. Have you seen ”green“ worked into a book in an agreeable way, or done so in your own writing?

Show Kids the Possibilities

How about inspiring a young person to consider a green career? This should be a growth area for years to come unless we somehow have chlorophyll genes directly inserted. We had a solar water heater installed on our roof about a year ago and it works extremely well.

Careers in Renewable Energy: Get a Green Energy Job

by Gregory McNamee

2008, 208 pages

Lists careers opportunities in energy, green building, and management as well as the education needed, schools with suitable programs, and web sites with job listings.

If you have some ideas that don’t usually show up on the usual green tip lists, please share it with us. TIA!

Keeping Your Audience in Mind, Just Like Darwin Did

We authors write about what we're interested in and want to learn more about. We write to make a point or to share a passion. We write for ourselves, for the child inside of us. But that doesn't mean we don't have our audience in mind as we research and write our books. When I write a book, I write for the child inside me who is the age of my intended audience. I also always keep in mind the adults who will be reading my book to a young child, or handing my book to an older child or teenager. Writing is, after all, communication. And you want to make sure you are communicating in such a way that your reader will listen, absorb, learn, and perhaps even change.


When Charles Darwin was working on his great book, The Origin of Species, whose 150th anniversary is next week, November 24, he had his audience in mind at all times--which made him hold off on publishing for decades. He knew that his theory of evolution by natural selection was going to rock the English religious boat, and he was not someone who wanted to rock any boats at all (least of all one he was on--prone to seasickness as he was). But he had an idea he believed in and wanted to share. So he did two things when he wrote the book: He worked very hard to make his argument airtight. And he wrote it in a tone that would not offend. Because not only did he have his audience in mind at all times, he had the perfect representative of a good part of his audience right there on the sofa next to him. His wife Emma.

Emma Wedgwood Darwin was extremely intelligent and well-read, and she was also religious. She was just the reader who might have trouble going down the path with Charles. He knew that if he could make his argument airtight enough, Emma (and the audience she represented) just might be able to set aside her reservations about the religious implications. And if he wrote his book the way he spoke--respectfully and politely, with his audience's feelings in mind--perhaps he would not offend. If you look at The Origin of Species I think you will see what I mean. It is a beautifully-written book, well-argued, polite, and intimate in a way. You feel as if he's talking to you. He even has a chapter called "Difficulties with the Theory" stemming from Emma's questions after reading an early draft. "A great assumption!" she wrote in the margins next to his description of the development of the eye.

I wrote CHARLES AND EMMA for the tween/teen that I was, and still am inside. Back when I was just realizing there was a world outside of my small one, I wanted desperately to read about people and their life stories. I felt sure I could find answers in this way. I was obsessed with the big questions of religion and death and love and meaning. I still am. I believe most children of a certain age are also. And I think many adults as well. Like Charles, I also did not want to offend; but I wanted to tell the truth. I hope I struck that balance.

When I write my books for younger kids, like HONEYBEES, for example, I write for my younger self, or for that third grade boy in the second row in my assembly who needs me to grab his attention. The one who will perk up when he hears how a honeybee passes the nectar she has gathered to the bee who will store it in the beehive. She regurgitates it into the other bee's mouth! Boy did I have my audience in mind when I shrieked upon reading that fact. O.K., I thought it was exceedingly cool and gross (in a good way), too.

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(By the way, as I finish this post I am in Japan, here for the Kyoto Prize festivities. But since we can write these ahead of time, when this posts, I will be in the middle of the National Book Award festivities. I had incredible jet lag coming to Japan a few days ago, I can only pray it is not the same going home. I would hate to sleep through it all.)

Letters...We Get Letters

This week many of us have been writing about the questions kids ask. Maybe you are tired of the subject, but frankly, I can’t help myself. To add a little variety, I’ll change up and talk about some of the letters and emails I’ve received from students.

Furthermore I’ll begin by quoting my favorite email from a kid, one which wasn’t even sent to me. I’ve asked Lois Lowry if I could borrow it for this blog entry and she graciously sent me the exact wording. It read:

I am working on a research paper and in my thesis statement I have to identify you. Would you be considered a 19th century author? Please let me know ASAP.

Okay, on to me. I love the thank you notes that teachers assign after I’ve made a school visit. Certainly my mother would have approved. Here’s an excerpt from one letter that came from a school where I talked about Ultimate Field Trip 1: Adventures in the Amazon Rain Forest, illustrated by my frequent collaborator, photographer Michael J. Doolittle.

Dear Susan Goodman, I’m one of the many people who were in your second grade group. Here’s one question I wanted to ask you: Is your photographer Michel Dolittle related to Dr. Dolittle?

Here’s another note that asked a question (name changed, mistakes included).

Dear Susan, Will you please dedicate a story to my bear Oatmeal and me. My name is Mary Jones. I am very happy to meet you. I admiare you a very lot. I have read 4 of your books. I am a big fan on yours. It would be a great honor to have one of your books dedicated to me. Please word it like this. I dedicate this book to Mary Jones and her bear Oatmeal because she admiars me so very much. Sinserly Mary

I couldn’t resist. I had a book going to press and my husband ended up sharing his dedication, although I did invoke poetic license and changed her suggested wording.

Last one for this post, although I keep going. One Sunday evening, I happened to be online and received a desperate email from a young lady with an assignment due the next morning. She asked me if my underlying reason for writing Ultimate Field Trip 4: A Week in the 1800s was…and then gave me two alternatives. I immediately wrote back saying that neither answer was right and then explained the message I was hoping to convey with the book.

Moments later I got another email, this time from her mother. She explained that her daughter was filling out a multiple-choice assignment created by the textbook company that had excerpted my book. And she provided me with all four possible explanations for my motivation. I studied them and decided the answer was E, none of the above. I wrote back and suggested her daughter bring this email chain between her and the author who explained her real intent to class. Who knows, maybe she’d get extra credit for taking some initiative.

HA! A week later I received an email from the mother who thought I might be interested in the upshot. Her daughter didn’t get any credit for the question, the answer was B.

As a lover of irony, I suppose this email exchange should be my favorite. But it’s just so wrong on so many levels. We can talk about: A) the issue of textbooks in general (although I’m grateful that this one used my writing as a good example). We can talk about: B) making children limit or reduce their interpretations of what they read to previously digested categories (which may well be wrong). We can talk about: C) the fact that assignments should help kids learn to think on their own rather than letting others tell them what they think (perhaps wrongly). We can talk about: D) not rewarding initiative and imagination.

Which do you think wins the “most wrong” award—A, B, C, or D? Give me your answer. But don’t forget that there’s always E, none of the above.

Where Do You Write?

My husband and I are getting ready to move to Portland, OR. We’ve been in the same home in California for 10 years, and for all that time, I’ve worked in the same space: my little office.

In Portland I’ll be setting up shop in the corner of a too-big-for-us master bedroom (in a too-small-for-us condo.)

The space will be different, but it will still be quiet, with an empty table for my stacks of notes and a bookcase for my references. I’ll put my favorite things up on the walls—a goofy picture of my family, a perfect Dilbert cartoon, posters of my books, and artwork that my daughter has produced over the years, dating back to her Kindergarten attempt at a ladybug, when all the dots ended up on one side. I will make this new space into my space.

I know many authors who take their laptop or their pad of paper and venture out into the world, to write in coffee shops, library corners, and park benches. I’ve never been like that. I may scribble notes here, there, and everywhere, but I write in my office. For me, the sense of place helps me shift gears, quiet myself, and focus. It helps me tap back into where I left off, the day before.

I’ve been thinking a lot about writing space ever since I began work on The Extraordinary Mark Twain (According to Susy.) For much of the year, Mark wrote in his home in Hartford, CT. But in the summers, the family went to visit his wife’s sister on her farm in Elmira, New York. And there, every morning after breakfast, he took a winding path up twenty stone steps to a special, octagonal study built just for him.

“To keep away the large number of sight-seers who come…to his sanctum,” the New York Times reported, “Twain has posted on the door the following novel sign: ‘Step Softly! Keep Away! Do not Disturb the Remains!’”

Mark did some of his best work in the little octagonal study. “It sits perched in complete isolation on top of an elevation that commands leagues of valley and city and retreating ranges of distant blue hills,” Mark wrote to friends. “It is a cosy nest, with just room in it for a sofa and a table and three or four chairs—and when the storms sweep down the remote valley and the lightning flashes above the hills and beyond, and the rain beats upon the roof over my head, imagine the luxury of it!”

It was, he concluded, “the loveliest study…you ever saw.”

Mark had his octagonal study. I’ll have my quiet space filled with my favorite things.

Where do you write?

For Veterans' Day

“The children know. They have always known. But we choose to think otherwise: it hurts to know the children know.”

-- Maurice Sendak, preface to I Dream of Peace (UNICEF, HarperCollins l994)

This blog is about two books: one a picture book (fictional) and one a photojournalism essay (nonfiction).

Philip Caputo’s book 10,000 Days of Thunder: A History of the Vietnam War (2005, Atheneum) is, to me, a standard in nonfiction writing for children, and a gold standard in writing for children about war. Caputo served as a marine lieutenant in the Vietnam War. Later, in 1973, he shared a Pulitzer Prize as a reporter for the Chicago Tribune. His 1977 memoir of his service, A Rumor of War, is considered a classic in adult literature.

And Maurice Sendak’s book Where the Wild Things Are is – I’ll just tell you what I really think – the top of the top, best ever. There’s even a movie out now. (Have you heard?) The book – like all Sendak’s books – are infused with shadows from the Nazis and their war.

In just 124 pages, Caputo answers the questions underlying ever key word or phrase you might think of in association with Vietnam. Through short chapters and strong, dramatic, thoughfully-chosen photographs Caputo covers events such as the Tonkin Gulf Incidents and the Tet Offensive, describes the role of settings such as the Ho Chi Minh Trail and The Tunnel War, delves into personal issues through such chapters as “The Nurses’ War” and “Prisoners of War,” demystifies talking points such as Agent Orange and the Pentagon Papers, and brings readers up to date by explaining the continuing focus on those Missing in Action (MIA). He pays a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, and goes back to Vietnam to talk about what it’s like there today.

I was four in 1964, the year Where the Wild Things Are was published. In that year the U.S. was sending troops to Vietnam. My dad (deaf in one ear) didn’t go. He had served in the army, was on duty in Germany Berlin Wall was raised, and when JFK was assasinated. By the time I was 13, I was babysitting for kids whose father had come home with shrapnel in his legs. I read them Where the Wild Things Are, which, for a work of fiction, sure felt true.

I also inhaled 10,000 Days of Thunder, and wish it had been around when I was younger. Reading it, I realized that, for me, living through this war – hearing the daily casualty count, reading the headlines, watching the news – placed a focus on details that blurred the major stories. Caputo’s book brought me back visually to the on-the-ground dramas between soldiers and villagers, auditorially to the choppers and the radio songs (There’s a chapter called “We Gotta Get Outta This Place”—Music of the Vietnam War), and viscerally to the stories – so many stories, enough to make you proud of our servicemen, to make you grateful for their sacrifices, and to break your heart a thousand times.

Through his structure, Caputo is able to control his material, to mete it out in details no more bearable for being brief, without melodrama or politics. His presentation shows an enormous respect for today’s kids, who are themselves living through two wars. Knowing the way a publishing schedule works, I think it’s highly likely that some of the kids who were middle schoolers – this book’s audience – while Caputo was writing it – may well be heading out to Iraq or Afghanistan. Daily media reports on the realities of war can hardly escape the notice of the most sheltered children. But, like the reports I heard as a child during the Vietnam war, this coverage is built on an adult framework of experience and understanding.

I hope kids have someone they can rely on to translate, even if they can only pose their questions in the indirect way that I did, when I woke from a dream that green-uniformed soldiers had surrounded our house. And I hope that they walk into libraries and see 10,000 Days of Thunder on display. I bet it will get picked up, taken out, and read from cover to cover. I bet parents will notice it and take a look. And I believe that this important nonfiction book will help everybody understand – with respect, and without obfuscation – what war is really like.

Curious Questions

Sue Macy's post of 11/6/09, My Favorite Students, prompted me to think about some of the more surprising questions I've been asked during school visits--questions that had very little to do with the subjects of my books.

I was once speaking to a class of fourth graders about Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso, my biography of the 19th-century pianist and composer. Now granted, Clara's life was full of tragedy. Her husband, composer Robert Schumann, died when she was only thirty-seven, leaving her to support and raise their seven children. And several of those children pre-deceased her. But while these events are included in the book, the real focus is on the inspiring story of how music sustained Clara in the face of life's challenges.

When I talk to kids about Clara Schumann, they're usually interested in her relationship with her father (who was also her piano teacher and manager), and in her achievements as a child prodigy. Still, I suppose I shouldn't have been so surprised when one student peppered me with questions about death. "What did Robert die of?" "How did Clara die?" "How come so many of their children died?"

Clara's death was unremarkable--she passed away at the ripe old age (for the time) of seventy-six, following a series of strokes. But Robert suffered from bipolar illness and died of syphilis after spending the last two years of his life in a mental hospital. I hadn't come prepared to explain manic depression and venereal disease to fourth-graders, much less how those illnesses were understood and treated in the 19th century. But neither did I feel I should sidestep the questions.

So I did the only thing I could do--I improvised, based on the knowledge I had, sharing information in a simple, straightforward way and on a level that I thought nine-year-olds could understand. Which is, after all, what I strive to do when I write my books. The student seemed satisfied with my answers, and I later found out from the teacher that there had been a recent death in that student's family.

Another surprising--and much less serious--question came during a school visit for José! Born to Dance, my picture-book biography of the Mexican-American modern dancer and choreographer, José Limón. After leading a group of K-2 students through a dance/movement experience, sharing a slide show about my life as a dancer and writer, and holding up manuscripts in different phases of revising, editing, and production, I invited questions.

"Did you ever have a dirt bike?" a boy asked.

"No," I said, grinning. "But I bet dirt bikes are really fun."

At that, the boy beamed. It didn't matter to either of us that the question wasn't about José or dancing or books. A child had made a personal connection with an author. And isn't that why we visit schools in the first place?

Connecting with Colleagues

Every two years, a group of dedicated teachers and librarians, some retired, bring about 20 authors to the Eureka, California, area to join some local authors in The Author Festival, when we make presentions to area schools and offer books for sale at the library.

On one day I visited Trinity Valley School, out in the countryside, a place that doesn't get that many outside visitors. The children created this poster to welcome me. It's always great for children to meet "real" authors; it gives them a deeper appreciation of books and sends them right to the library shelves.

Those of us who participate always enjoy the various events, but one especially rewarding aspect of our days there is the time we have to connect with one another. Some people call writing a lonely profession; I prefer to say we are alone when we write, not lonely. In either case, many of us have little opportunity for contact with other authors. We may belong to critique groups, which can provide regular interaction with a very limited group of colleagues. Events like the Author Festival give us a chance not only to catch up on personal lives but also to learn of possibilities for our own careers--publishers that are still bullish on nonfiction books, for example, or a new way of connecting with our readers.

This year, I learned that the practice of video presentations by way of skyping and iChat is already being utilized by some authors instead of physical school visits involving energy-inefficient airplane travel, costly hotel stays, and so forth. Living in my own 'shell' in Montana, I didn't realize that this distant-learning kind of work that our INKTHINKTANK company is jumping into already has its pioneers. This realization only increased my excitement about what we're launching, creating an "everybody wins" situation among authors, schools, librarians, and teachers.

My Favorite Students

We’ve been focusing on how our books are used in the classroom on I.N.K. this month, so I thought I’d pay tribute to some of the more memorable students I’ve met in my role as an author over the years. I’ve given them nicknames to ensure their anonymity, but I can picture each of them to this day. Remembering their innocence, their curiosity, their disarming comments keeps me humble and reminds me why I love writing for young audiences.

The Straight Shooter: When talking about Bull’s-Eye, my biography of Annie Oakley, to third graders at a suburban New Jersey public school, I met a girl who confidently stood up and asked, “Since rifles have a greater range than shotguns, why did Annie Oakley use shotguns in her performances?” Mind you, I hadn’t told the class that rifles shoot farther—she just knew that. In third grade! I asked how she had come upon that particular fact and she answered that she’d learned it from her brother. Hmmm. By the way, the reason Annie used shotguns when she performed in outdoor arenas with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show is that she didn’t want any shots that missed her targets to travel beyond the arena and hurt people or damage property. Plus the collection of pellets from one shot of her shotgun had a greater chance of hitting the target than the single bullet emitted at the pull of a rifle's trigger.

The Doubter: During an author Q&A at a middle school in Iowa, I explained that I had written my book, Winning Ways: A Photohistory of Women in Sports because I love sports. A boy in the class looked me up and down, incredulous, and finally asked, “But aren’t you too old to like sports?” I was 43 at the time.

The Dedicated Swimmers: As part of the events surrounding my presentations on women’s sports history at a private girls’ school in New Jersey, the elementary students were invited to dress in the equipment of their favorite sport. Kids had a great time wearing soccer uniforms, softball cleats, and basketball jerseys, but the ones who I remember best were those swimmers who walked around in impossibly tight bathing caps all day long. Ouch!

The Intrepid Historian: Finally, there is the sixth grader from Los Angeles who chose the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League as the topic for her National History Day presentation. It’s a popular History Day choice; the experiences of the women who played baseball during and after World War II seem to resonate with kids, especially girls. But this enthusiastic teenager and I shared a six-month correspondence as she worked on her project. After an initial telephone interview, during which she asked me some basic questions about the league, she updated me on her progress via e-mail and occasional phone calls just about every week. Not surprisingly, she won $50 and a bronze medal for “having the most phone and email interviews out of 750 students!” In her last e-mail, on March 16, 2009, she wrote, “Thank you very much Sue Macy. You have no clue how much you have helped us win.” I kind of miss her.

Reading, Reading, Reading

I’ve been out of the office a lot lately, so I haven’t been writing much. But I’ve still been reading. Reading really is an important part of writing—just as important as sitting down at the keyboard and typing away.

Since I write nonfiction books, I read a lot during the research phase of any project. I read kids books and adult books on the topic. I read magazine articles and scientific journals too. This reading provides me with background information, which I can then round out by interviewing scientists working in the field or with my own experiences.

But I also read children's nonfiction to learn from the masters. I love the way April Pulley Sayre and Dianna Hutts Aston craft language. I love how Steve Jenkins and David M. Schwartz play with format and design. I’m a huge fan of the voice that runs through Vicki Cobb’s books. She really knows how to make science fun. And I’m in awe of how Deborah Heiligman synthesizes information is new and exciting ways.

I also read fiction written for kids and adults. I read poetry too. As I read fiction, I pay close attention to how the writers pull readers into their story, how they build scenes and develop narrative arcs, how they use language to create mood, and how they achieve the kind of pacing their stories need. All of these elements of craft can enrich nonfiction writing too.

Sometimes I discover clever new techniques that I can modify for my own purposes. Sometimes I come away with a solution to a problem I’m having with a particular manuscript. And sometimes I’m just plain old inspired. That’s important too because writing can be hard work, and sometimes I just need a reason to keep on going.

Growing Lifelong Learners Through the Library: A Conference

When I write, I treat my brain like a computer. I give it instructions, tell it what I have to write about, put in information about the topic, and give it plenty of time. Much to my delight, sooner or later my brain comes through with an angle or slant, a way into a topic. Since I want to write about what happened today, my brain hasn’t had much time to process the angle part. So I’m writing this off the cuff.

Four of us INKers. Susan Kuklin, Deborah Heiligman, Sue Macy and I, spoke at a conference in Brooklyn, NY today sponsored by the NYC School Library System. The theme of the conference was “Growing Lifelong Learners Through the Library” and our session was entitled: "Keeping Kids Curious: Nonfiction Authors Share Their Secrets." Although we all write in different subject areas and we didn’t really know each other before this blog came into existence, it’s amazing how we’ve all adopted pretty much the same work habits. So we decided to divide up our subject to prevent repitition. Susan Kuklin talked about networking to find the people to interview who have first-hand knowledge of her subject. Deb spoke about her approach to doing research. She tackles subjects she knows nothing about and starts by reading and reading. She doesn’t begin writing until she feels she’s read enough and learned enough. Deb willl write a blog on how she takes notes. Sue Macy likes to put herself physically in the environments she writes about even if the subject of a biography, for example, is no longer alive. So she’ll visit Annie Oakley’s hometown or go to reunions of a long disbanded women’s baseball league to make her writing come alive. I do all those things, too but when I write hands-on science, I make sure that I do it from first-hand knowledge. I have performed every experiment in my books. Deborah Heligman, Sue Macy, Susan Kuklin, Vicki Cobb



The classroom we presented in was standing-room only and we did get a conversation going with our attendees. One woman said that she was the only teacher in her school to teach nonfiction. Another said that there was very little communication between the library and the classroom. Still another told me that teachers are so pressured with paperwork and teaching to the tests that they have no time to take advantage of the resources available in the library. We asked, “How can we help to bridge this abyss?” We’ve got a few ideas but we need to get a dialogue started. Any suggestions from you, out there in cyberspace, are welcome.

When I go to a conference I like to hear the main speaker. Today’s keynoter was Dr. Ross J. Todd who gave his vision of the library of the future, which will be designated a “knowledge center,” not an “informational place”. School librarians will help students using guided inquiry and build collegial relationships with teachers so they can tap into the many sources of thought available in the library from books to Web 2.0 tools. BTW, I learned a new phrase “Web 2.0,” which means blogs, diaries, wikis, multimedia downloads, videoconferencing, etc. With this blog, we’re already doing it and I didn’t even know it had a name. (So I learned something new today! Yay me!)

Technology is changing our world. We want to teach our students to have productive “habits of mind.” For all of us, teachers, authors, parents, librarians, there is no way to keep up with the changes unless you learn new skills. We authors ARE life-long learners. We can bring our hard-won knowledge and ability to show how we got there to the digital age. We're doing it now on this blog. Fasten your seatbelts, everyone. Prepare for an exhilarating ride!

The Best Stories of all Time. Really!

Somehow October’s chorus about using our books in the classroom didn’t come everyone's way on the guitar until November, so kindly bear with me for a minute while I wrap up my part of this song with one last verse.

I hated history when I was a kid. The way we were supposed to learn everything was by memorizing a bunch of boring names and dates and battle sites. To me, the people in history were a lot like George Washington on the dollar bill; old and green and wrinkled and dead.

What a waste! The real George Washington wasn’t anything like that portrait. Just between you and me, our boy George was a stud. He was so tall that most other men only came up to his shoulder. He was a great athlete and his hands and feet were enormous—what a basketball player he might have made! This terrific horseman, dancer, and card player was also so fearless in battle that even when his horses were shot out from under him and bullets ripped through his coat, he never left the front lines. You can’t make this stuff up; it’s all true, and if I had known things like that about the dead people in my history books, well of course I’d have wanted to hear more.

So how can teachers make history spring to life for kids? Here are three of the ways.

1) The Storyteller’s Voice- One of the main reasons that so many stories from history are still around is that they’re really the best stories of all time. I hated history because all those moons ago, my own teachers didn’t know how to tell a great tale. But if teachers can teach by using a storyteller’s voice, you can bet your boots that kids will beg to listen in. The best nonfiction books can show you the way and can add in fabulous pictures to boot. (And forgive me for mentioning that our INK THINK TANK has these books in spades.)

2) Tie-Ins- If you can get kids to relate directly to something in a book about history, you’ve got it made. Here are some examples from my book talks—no reason why with a little extra imagination teachers can’t do this kind of thing too. In one school, the students put on a wonderful play about Lewis and Clark based on my book How We Crossed the West and invited me to watch. When I visited their classrooms the next day, I surprised each actor and actress by telling them some incredibly happy and sad and funny things that happened to their own characters after the journey ended. This new information was a huge hit. When I presented the same book another time, we were able to bring a real Newfoundland dog (like Seaman, the one Meriwether Lewis brought on the journey) into the room. Bingo! I got to tell about all the funny and even life-saving adventures the dog had on the trip. Trust me—dogs are attention grabbers all the way. And during a previous Presidential election, an older group did a great job of comparing the gigantic role propaganda played in promoting George Washington vs. King George III back in Revolutionary times with the role propaganda played in that particular presidential election.

3) Lights, camera, action!- Younger audiences like nothing better than to sing, laugh, make funny noises, and wear costumes. As it turns out, these qualities are great tools for teaching history too. I love to use my book The Old Chisholm Trail; A Cowboy Song as a fun intro to those famously difficult cattle drives from the wild west. Very Short Version of how this works: I dress up as a cowboy and briefly explain how hard that trip must have been. Then I invite 3 volunteer cowboys onstage, where they don huge paper moustaches, and I give 3 more volunteers stuffed longhorn cattle to hold. As I (badly) sing funny verses from the real song, the cowboys and cows make appropriate cowboy and cow sound effects when I point to them after each verse, and the audience sings the chorus in their turn. It is hilarious, it’s the BEST teaching tool, and it all comes from a book. Try it!

Preparing to put on our costumes

I.N.K. News for November

Barbara Kerley's book, What To Do About Alice?, won the 2009 Washington State/Scandiuzzi Children's Book Award in the picture book category. The book is illustrated by Edwin Fotheringham, a Seattle resident.


Gretchen Woelfle will speak on Reading and Writing nonfiction: A Study in Serendipity at the California School Library Association Conference in Ontario, CA on Friday November 20. She will also sign books at the Author and Illustrator Brunch on Sunday, November 22.


From Deborah Heiligman: CHARLES AND EMMA: THE DARWINS' LEAP OF FAITH is a Finalist for the National Book Award. Award ceremony is Novemer 18 when the winner will be announced. But I am thrilled to have my book be a finalist.


Helen's Eyes: A Photobiography of Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller's Teacher by Marfé Ferguson Delano was named a 2009 Jefferson Cup Honor Book. Presented by the Virginia Library Association, the Jefferson Cup is an award that honors biographies, historical fiction, and American history books for children.


Sue Macy will be signing copies of her new book, Bylines: A Photobiography of Nellie Bly, on Friday, November 6, at the American Association of School Librarians (AASL) conference in Charlotte. Stop by the National Geographic booth from 3:30 to 4:30 to pick up a book and say hi. And don't forget to mention you heard about it on I.N.K.!



From Jan Greenberg: Christo and Jeanne-Claude Through The Gates and Beyond is on Booklist's Top Art Books of 2009 list. I will be at NCTE on November 20 in Philadelphia signing Side by Side at Abrams booth 1:30-2:15pm and attending the Notables awards for Language Arts session at 2:30. Hope to meet some of you there.