Life Changing Nonfiction...Literally

As other I.N.K. authors have mentioned, there wasn't a great deal of engaging nonfiction for kids in the not-so-distant past. So, we made do. Personally, I gave up on the official children's area of the public library at 8 or 9 and remember wondering if someone would stop me if I dared to enter the adult section. Nobody did, so for years I headed straight for the 636 shelves where all the animal books lived and branched out from there.

Sometime in the early 70s, these books appeared on the big shelf in our family room:

Until seeing this picture, I had forgotten the rainbow-like arrangement you could make with the binding colors of the LIFE Nature Library. There were 25 volumes in all—a few are missing from this photo. One of the great things about this type of collection is the serendipity...it was like browsing in the library but on a smaller scale. It was comprehensive, covering animal behavior, the poles, the insects, evolution, plants, even the universe!

Confession: I didn't read every word. There were many pages with a high text to image ratio, which has never been my favorite approach for this kind of material. Spare me the endless prose…just give me plenty of pictures, you know? Speaking of which, here are some relevant images:

Anyway, time and time again I examined every photograph, drawing, and diagram and read the captions as well as a fair amount of the pontification, ummm, long paragraphs. Despite that complaint, the books provided a remarkable breadth of knowledge of the natural world as did our subscription to National Geographic. The photographs from all over the globe inspired many a drawing by providing exotic models that were otherwise unavailable in suburbia in those pre-Internet times. Want to draw an ocelot or an orchid or a young Tuareg girl in the Sahara desert? No problem!

To zoom up to the present day, I'm still intrigued by anything to do with nature, past or present. The other night we watched The Hunter, a fictional tale about the last Thylacine (aka the Tasmanian tiger/wolf, actually a carnivorous marsupial). In reading more online about the animal afterwards, I came across this photographic comparison of Thylacine and wolf skulls that show a remarkable example of convergent evolution.

The last known Thylacine, Benjamin, c. 1933

Like many of us these days, I do more and more of my knowledge rummaging online, but of course it isn't necessarily very well-organized or presented. Guess that's where authors come in (whew!) Since we're talking about life-changing nonfiction, why not highlight a few books about how life has changed over the eons? In a previous post I made a list of mostly reference books about prehistoric life, from short and sweet to comprehensive in scope.

The newest book in Hannah Bonner's prehistory series is about the Triassic period when dinosaurs first emerged along with the first mammals. When Dinos Dawned, Mammals Got Munched, and Pterosaurs Took Flight: A Cartoon Prehistory of Life in the Triassic looks just as fun as her previous two books. In addition to the fascinating animals, she includes many prehistoric plants as well as liberal doses of humor. As a former Mad Magazine junkie, I love a helping of humor and/or satire stirred into my information soup. Her books are great for ages 8-12 (and older, if you ask me) and are published by National Geographic.

Nat Geo is also the publisher of the Little Kids First Big Book of Dinosaurs, written by Catherine D. Hughes and illustrated by Franco Tempesta. The image shown is not the cover, but I love that little microraptor gliding by. It has a gazillion facts, dino descriptions, fun questions, baby dinos, easy-to-comprehend pronunciations, tips for parents, and outstanding realistic artwork that transports the reader back in time. It is 128 pages and is for ages 4-8.

And one of mine is My Teacher is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts. It gives an overview the history of life in 48 pages, starting from the time when Earth was still molten. There are quite a few dinosaurs, but many, many other fabulous creatures including a few humans. 

In terms of approach it has some of the elements in common with the two books above...plenty of facts, humor, realistic artwork, and pronunciations of those jaw-breaking names...and also limericks, verses, and silly jokes. Several excerpts are shown in this post on my book blog. The age level is 8 and up.

Click image to go to download page

A printable teaching resource with three activities for my book can be downloaded at this link or click the image to the left.

I don't know of any modern equivalent of the LIFE Nature Library with its expansive coverage inside those matching volumes. Most of us compile our libraries piecemeal, which seems to work just fine. In any case, how information is organized and presented is important because different approaches will engage different readers. The prehistoric parallel is that wherever there is rich content for readers, an opportunity may arise to evolve in a new direction.

Inventors Then and Now

This month, we INKers are highlighting books that influenced us. A Weed is a Flower by Aliki Brandenberg changed the way I read as a child and inspired the books I write today. 

I remember being riveted by the story of a small, weak boy named George Washington Carver, the son of slaves, who was kidnapped as a baby and orphaned. Plants and insects fascinated young George and he began observing life on the farm and in nature and asking questions.  This boy grew up to revolutionize farming in the south. George noticed that cotton depleted the soil and convinced farmers to grow peanuts by inventing clever uses for peanuts, including butter, paper, ink and shampoo. What a fascinating, quirky story, I thought.  Then I realized that this amazing story was all true. It was not made up! Yet I had never heard of George Washington Carver. How could that be?

A Weed is a Flower taught me, as a young reader, that there are many stories of fascinating, important people who we won’t read about in textbooks, who we won’t read about in newspapers and magazines, who won’t be on TV. But I could read all about them in books. I felt like I had discovered a mysterious, hidden world below or behind or under the worlds of school culture and popular culture.  I also learned that those books, called biographies, could be really interesting. Instead of just a list of facts or a boring summary, I could read a real story, a story as interesting and thought-provoking and gripping as A Wrinkle in Time or any of the other novels I devoured.

This is the very kind of book that I strive to write today. In fact, my newest biography, Electrical Wizard, just released two days ago, tells the story of another important inventor, someone whose ideas and inventions have transformed kids’ lives (and our lives) even more than peanut butter, if you can believe it.

When kids think of inventors, the first to pop into their minds is often Thomas Edison.  (Kids believe, because textbooks have told them so, that Edison invented the light bulb. But it turns out that Edison was just one of a number of inventors who contributed to the invention and development of the light bulb.)  I would argue that one of Edison’s contemporaries, a little known Serbian-American inventor named Nikola Tesla, has had a bigger impact on our lives.

After all, who invented wireless communication? Tesla.  Remote control? Tesla. Radar? Tesla. Neon lights? Tesla. The modern electrical motor? Tesla. The radio? Tesla. (Yes, textbooks are wrong. If you don’t believe me, ask the Supreme Court, which ruled that Marconi’s work was based on Tesla’s patents.)

Though Tesla has touched our lives in so many ways, Edison gets all the glory. A search on Amazon.com for Thomas Edison, under children’s science biographies, yields 115 titles.  The same search under the name Nikola Tesla yields just a dozen.  But one is not a book, it’s an Amazon page. In three books, Tesla shares billing with other inventors.  And FIVE of the books listed are actually biographies of Thomas Edison (I kid you not.)

I wanted to write a book that would begin to capture for young readers how Nikola Tesla has transformed our lives.  Tesla's most amazing contribution to our world, the thing that truly ushered in the electrical age, was so far-reaching and complicated that it would be hard to explain in a fun word or phrase like light bulb or remote control. It was an entire system of generating, transmitting and using alternating current to power EVERYTHING.* That’s right, we have Nikola Tesla to thank for having electricity in our homes, schools, and businesses.   But how could I distill Tesla’s mind-blowing electrical-engineering revolution into a story for young readers?

As a kid, I was always interested in what important adults did when they were young. So I started with Tesla as young boy. What inspired him? What did he invent or build as a kid? When did he get his first ideas about alternating current?  I wrote about Tesla watching lightning storms and wondering over the sparks he made while petting his cat. I showed him making water wheels and helicopters powered by bugs.  But I wanted kid to be equally interested in Tesla’s later work, too, so I employed the theme and language of wizardry to capture the magical quality of his genius. While sticking closely to the facts, I wove in words such as: conjured, enchanted, and entranced, miracle, magic, and mysterious.

All good stories have conflict, and Tesla’s quest to harness AC offered great fodder there. He faced poverty, anti-immigrant sentiments, and a popular, powerful enemy – Thomas Edison.  So those provided the rising tension in the story.

And Tesla won. He was a true underdog hero. His hard work and the power of his ideas overcame all the obstacles and provided a bright, brilliant climax and resolution. His AC system lit up the 1893 world’s fair, harnessed mighty Niagara Falls, and ultimately electrified New York City and the world.

One of the reasons I was drawn to Nikola Tesla’s story was that he was not trying to become rich and famous.  He worked for the betterment of humankind. George Washington Carver’s gravestone reads: “He could have added fortune to fame, but caring for neither, he found happiness and honor in being helpful to the world.” The same could be said of Tesla.

Thank you Nikola Tesla for powering the lights and tools of my life. Thank you Aliki for inspiring me to write stories that have been overlooked by school and popular culture.  And last, but not least, thank you to whomever invented peanut butter. When I reread A Weed is a Flower, I noticed that Aliki never said that George Washington Carver invented peanut butter. So I looked it up. Turns out peanut butter was likely created much earlier by the Aztecs. Different processes for making peanut butter were patented by several other inventors. So now I'm wondering, where did the peanut butter inventor myth come from? Why do people persist in thinking that Edison invented the light bulb and that Marconi invented the radio? How many more books do we need to get the record straight?

* Technically, AC doesn’t power everything. Generally, AC powers things that are plugged in while DC dominates battery-powered machines. But computers and rechargers and the like have AC-to-DC adapters, so they, too, can get juice from the AC system.

Books That Spark Scientific Paths in Life

When I think of life-changing nonfiction books, I think of my uncle Tom, quoted here from when I interviewed him about his childhood:

“Right after Pearl Harbor, the government decided they needed all the pots and pans, especially aluminum, that you could find. So I took the wagon around the neighborhood collecting aluminum pots for the war effort. Then, the big change in my life came when the government decided they needed books for all of the young men being drafted into the service and in the army camps training.  Somebody decided they should have books they could read. So, once again I took my little wagon around the neighborhood collecting books. So, of course, I looked at all the books before I passed them in. So, there was a chemistry book. Oh boy! (Tom says this with a rather delicious tone.) An eleven or twelve year old boy with a chemistry book is about the most dangerous thing you can get . . . !”

The follow up anecdotes to his finding that book are hilarious and rather, um, explosive.  As he says, “It was a different, less safety-conscious time.” Fortunately he survived his mischief and ultimately studied engineering, worked in electrical engineering/invention and later founded Delta Education, a science kit company, in his basement. 

Not to be outdone, my Mom founded a small company in our basement when I was growing up: a company entirely dedicated to book correlated with SCIS, ESS, and other science curricula.  We’d get calls from educators all over the country and we’d pull books from the shelves. 

As I pulled, packed, and made catalog cards for each book, I occasionally read them. So I was reading picture books and middle grade nonfiction way into my tweens/teens. I knew the name Vicki Cobb, of course. (Science Experiments You Can Eat.)  I loved the Let’s Read and Find Out series. (Someday I’d love to write one just so I could come full circle on that.) I knew Aliki’s books, such as Green Grass, White Milk. My favorite, though, was Water for Dinosaurs and You, by Roma Gans.  That book was one that showed me the big connections you can make, perhaps planting seeds for my big idea books such as Stars Beneath Your Bed: the Surprising Story of Dust.

A lot of the important nonfiction of my childhood, though, was adult nonfiction. My first chemistry text was our cookbook, Joy of Cooking.  My mom had a field guide to mountain wildflowers so I learned about them as we wandered the mountains near Banner Elk, NC.  My grandmother and mother each had a copy of Peterson’s Field Guide to Birds of North America. Although we had Golden Guides, which were fun to flip through, I was pretty soon into the adult field guides. To this day I am obsessed with field guides and 90% of my nonfiction purchases are field guides. (Years ago I even got to meet Roger Tory Peterson who authored that guide.)

Last year, this generation’s Roger Tory Peterson, author Kenn Kaufman, asked my husband Jeff Sayre to coauthor a field guide to the nature of the midwest. (Kenn and his wife Kim Kaufman are writing a regional series for Houghton Mifflin.) Jeff is a native plant expert. So we've been traveling all over the Midwest studying and photographing plants, insects, and habitats for the guide. The experiences are spinning off into my own books. 

So, what more recent books could I recommend in the spirit of these books?

I think every school library and family library needs some adult field guides to feed the most curious kids. The Kaufman Guides, of course. My favorite is the

Kaufman Field Guide to Insects of North America. 

His bird books, too. Kenn paid to have his bird book translated into Spanish to make bird knowledge available to more people. I’d like to see these books in every community. So I think that book should be widely available as well: 

Guia de Campo a las Aves Norteamérica by Kenn Kaufman

Among children’s books, I think some that would spark young minds would be:

The Animal Book by Steve Jenkins

The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins.

Here’s a great curriculum tie-in post I found for that beetle book:

http://classroombookshelf.blogspot.com/2012/03/beetle-book.html

I love wide-ranging thought books, such as A Drink of Water by Barbara Kerley.

Then there’s the recent Citizen Scientists by Loree Griffin Burns.

Anything in the Scientists in the Field Series would be a great inspiration to kids.

The Frog Scientist by Pamela S. Turner.

The Tarantula Scientist by Sy Montgomery, photographed by Nic Bishop. (Love just about anything that duo creates.) 

Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World's Strangest Parrot by Sy Montgomery/Nic Bishop.

Nic Bishop also writes some of his own book texts to go with his gorgeous photos. Like Steve Jenkins, he is a person with a dedicated interest in science. 

I’ll stop here. There are so many great scientific nonfiction books for kids published these days. It’s a feast. I can’t imagine where my mind would roam if I’d grown up with them. For the plant- and kitchen-inclined mind, perhaps one could throw in my just released book, Let’s Go Nuts! Seeds We Eat. It'd be tasty for the youngest to think of beans, nuts, spices, and grains they eat as living seeds. Celebrating diversity in plants, animals, and nonfiction books is so much fun. Thanks, INK community!

Life Changing Almost Nonfiction

   The nonfiction book that changed my life was Daniel Defoe's A JOURNAL OF THE PLAGUE YEAR.  Okay, okay, I know.  It's not really a book of nonfiction.  But when I read it at age 12, I wasn't much of a reader and didn't really care about the distinction between fiction and nonfiction.  What I knew was that I took a fancy to the notion of a gooey mega-disease killing off thousands of people, read the book and found myself wandering the streets of London with the narrator, tentitively entering shops and bars with him to see if anyone was still alive, and wondering how many dead bodies might be clogging the alleys off of Coleman Street.  Defoe and his narrator put me in the middle of a disaster and it changed my life.
   How?  To start I began reading everything I could about the Black Plague.  Not just the 1665 one that Defoe chronicles.  All of them and in any and all countries.  Right now I'm happily reading Ole J. Benedictow's (what a great name!) THE BLACK DEATH 1346 -- 1353.  Now aside from a history paper I did as a freshman in college, I've never written anything about the plague, but I can recommend a wonderful children's book entitled WHEN PLAGUE STRIKES: The Black Death, Smallpox, AIDS by James Cross Giblin.  He looks at how the arrival of these diseases created great fear and prompted nasty and sometimes hostile responses to vicitms.
   But Defoe's book also changed the way I approach my own writing.  After writing a couple of standard nonfiction books, I decided I wanted to do something a little different.  I wanted to put young readers into the middle of whatever historical event I was investigating, much as Defoe did.  But with a major difference.  He was free to invent things; I'm not.  Still, I was sure that with enough research and thought I could fashion nonfiction that read like a story (and slip in lots of important details and information and historical analysis along the way).
   How have I done?  Well, the results vary according to the subject being explored.  Some topics are information rich (especially with firsthand accounts); others not so.  One I'm particularly fond of is my AN AMERICAN PLAGUE: The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793.  Because no one back in 1793 had any real scientiific knowledge of the disease I decided to write the book as a medical mystery (telling readers precisely what doctors knew about the disease in 1793 and holding back our current understanding of yellow fever until the last chapter).  I wanted kids to experience this plague just as people back then did and let them come up with their own opinions and ideas along the way.
   One example is how to view Benjamin Rush.  At the time, he was the most famous and powerful doctor in the United States, but his notion of a cure (massive amounts of bleeding and purging) probably harmed more people then it helped.  I let readers see how he came up with his cure, its impact on his patients, how he tried to bully other doctors into using his methods, and how other doctors viewed him -- all without trying to influence readers as to whether Rush was a hero or a monster.  It's one of the many instances in this book where I hope readers use critical thinking skills to form an opinion about an individual or situation.  
   Doing nonfiction books like this isn't easy (and I usually end each day with a headache as a result).  Sometimes I grumble that Defoe did this to me; most days I just sigh, thank Defoe, and see this curse as a kind of blessing.         
      

Then and Now

As regular readers of this blog may have noticed, there is a theme for September. We I.N.K. bloggers are recalling important — perhaps life-changing — nonfiction books from our childhood. We are also contributing to a list of noteworthy contemporary nonfiction titles that will be compiled at the end of the month.

     Important nonfiction books from my own childhood are notable, mostly, for their absence. An exception is All About Strange Beasts of the Past, by Roy Chapman Andrews.

     This was perhaps the single most important volume of my childhood (an endpaper is shown — the cover was loved off). This book was probably responsible for launching my early career as a rock and fossil collector, a preoccupation that lasted into my teens.

Of course, memory — or the failure of it ­— is part of this story. I recently came across this photo of myself at a tender age “reading” what is clearly a picture book about animals, though I have no recollection of it.

But if, as far as I can recall, I had access to few illustrated stand-alone volumes about the natural world, I did have encyclopedias and field guides. The serial nature of these publications probably made an impression. My parents bought each volume of the Golden Book Encyclopedia at the grocery store as it was published (weekly, I think), and I eagerly awaited each new book. What I remember most clearly is the cover illustrations, but the interior graphics and information were fascinating as well, and quite sophisticated for the time.

I spent many hours with the Book of Knowledge, a more formal multi-volume children’s encyclopedia, and remember being particularly taken with the endpapers.

 I also owned a collection of Golden Nature Guides (Kelly Milner Halls describes her love affair with the Reptiles and Amphibians volume in her I.N.K. post of September 5th), which allowed me to identify many of the insects, snakes, field mice, and other creatures that I caught and kept in my room.

Today there are dozens of beautifully illustrated and/or photographed single-volume encyclopedias about the animal world. A few of my favorites (some of these books are written for adults, but the illustrations and photos make them accessible to young readers as well): National Geographic Animal Encyclopedia, Dorling Kindersley Encyclopedia of Animals, and Smithsonian Super Nature Encyclopedia.

My own modest contribution to this genre, the Animal Book (October 2013) is a little different. At 208 pages, it’s an encyclopedia of sorts, but the entries are more eclectic and reflect my personal interest in the animals I included in the book.

There are still field guides, of course, but also related to those Golden Nature Guides, at least in spirit, are some excellent contemporary series by single authors, often focusing on some particular aspect of math, science, and the natural world.
David Schwartz has authored several of these series, including How Much Is a Million and related books intended to illustrate large quantities; the Look Once, Look Again series, which focuses on various biomes and animal parts; and the Life Cycles series. 

Loreen Leedy’s Mission Addition, Subtraction Action, Fraction Action, and other titles dealing with math and measurement provide playful, non-threatening introductions to basic math concepts.

And April Pulley Sayre’s quirky chant series, including Trout, Trout, Trout — a Fish Chant; Ant, Ant, Ant — an Insect Chant; and Rah, Rah, Radishes — a Vegetable Chant are hilarious, infectious, and full of accurate information about their subjects.

This is by no means a complete list of nonfiction picture book series, but it covers a lot of ground.

A Girl and Her Critters -- Life Changing Nonfiction

As a kid in Friendswood, Texas, I grew up chasing snakes, frogs, toads and lizards – dodging dance class and piano lessons.  I was a whirlwind of a little girl, knee deep in activities traditionally earmarked for boys.  When I walked into the public library and the library at school, finding books I thought were “for me” was nearly impossible.  

Copy #2 of my first life-changing book.

Even so, one book I did find, literally changed my life – A Golden Nature Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians. 

We moved to the Houston suburbs just before I started Kindergarten.  When I wasn’t at school, I practically lived outside, but so did every poisonous snake in North America.  Tying me down was not an option, so knowledge was my only defense. 

My parents bought me the little book.  They poured through the pages with me, ceremoniously circling the venomous snakes with a red Magic Marker. 

“Don’t touch THESE snakes,” they would tell me, making it clear what they were called and what markings identified them.  

That book literally changed my life.  It gave me knowledge, freedom and even expertise.  As the years flew past, the neighbors  who once saw me as an odd little  fish out of water, turned to me for information. 

“Run get Kelly,” they said.  “She’ll know what this snake actually is.” 

Copperhead snake

If I said it was safe, they let it go.  If I said it was a danger, other measures were taken.  I begged them to let those venomous snakes go, too, but I didn’t always win their release.

That little book gave me direction, sure, but it also gave me purpose.   That little book even made it okay for me to be exactly the kid I was born to be.  I was a little weird, especially as a little girl of the early 1960s, but that was okay – thanks to the power in the facts of that book. 

There is not a doubt in my mind I became a nonfiction writer because of that book, and the absence of others like it.  I write now for the kid I used to be.  

Today, there are dozens of exceptional books for young readers on nature and animals – dozens of books I would have loved to check out and own, had they been around when I was a child.  But the diversity of author voices is as important now as it ever has been. 

Weird and proud of it!

You may not write or read the books I write and read, but the topics you do love will give comfort to young readers – the kids waiting to discover they are not alone in their “weird” and wonderful interests.  When they find the right books, they also find the safety of kinship. 

 

If you’re really, really lucky as a writer, parent, librarian or teacher, you’ll feel the kinship, too.  When that happens, anything is possible.  

A wise man once told me, everything in life is about human connection. The right books reveal the paths to human connection, and those books change lives every day.  When an adult shares the right book with the right kid, magic is not only within reach, it is unstoppable.

                                            -- Kelly Milner Halls

I would have loved Marty Crump's amazing book as a kid.

Another stellar option by Seymour Simon.

Reading to Do

               Welcome back everyone.  I hope you’re looking forward to the new school year where the focus is on nonfiction.  Here’s where you can learn how it can enhance your life and your students' from the people who eat and breathe it on a daily basis.

                How do you learn best?  When you know the answer to this question you have the secret to life-long learning and a rich life of discovery and skill acquisition.   There is, perhaps no more important knowledge for each individual to acquire.  I wrote a post about my process.  Since this blog's  theme this month is "Life Changing Nonfiction: Past and Present," I’m going to discuss one very important way of learning, the way I LOVE to learn and that’s by doing. I am the product of a progressive elementary school that emphasized experiential learning.  It carried over to my life at home as a parent, as a teacher and as a nonfiction author.

               

First, the past:
               When I was a kid, my mother made me stay in bed when I was sick.   I didn't mind because I loved to read, but more importantly, I loved to do projects.  The book I remember most was called Junior Fun in Bed and it was edited by none other than Virginia Kirkus, who started the "Kirkus Reviews."  I remember thinking that the title was odd.  Why did they have to put in the word “Junior,” which wasn't all that common back in those days?  Why didn't they just call it “Fun in Bed?”  Childhood back then was definitely more innocent!
                 You can still find it on Amazon where it now has the subtitle:  Making a Holiday of Convalescence that is absent from the original title and the jacket art.  But the original description is still there:  “….You'll discover that the authors have crammed the pages with pleasant ways of passing the time. There are dozens and dozens of magic stunts, puzzles, riddles, mazes, and indoor games, most of which you've never played before. There are limericks and cartoons and question-and-answer tests. There is a whole section devoted specially to hobbies and to the really useful things you can make indoors when you find time lying heavy on your hands…”

                This book  kept me busy.  The best things were the activities where I made something. In the process, I learned how to read to follow directions, an important life skill.

                Fast-forward to young adulthood:
                As a  mother of small children, I retired from teaching, and scrambled to earn money at home writing nonfiction for children.  My first books were literally First Books—on Logic, Cells, and Gases.  I had also written a book on economics: Making Sense of Money and navigation: Sense of Direction: Up Down and All Around.  Now, thankfully, all of them are out of print; I use them as excellent examples of  bad traditional writing. 

                              

        The book that put me on the map  was the sixth book I wrote: Science Experiments You Can Eat. It was my first activity book. As a NY State certified high school science teacher, I knew enough settled science to take a very creative approach to research—prowling up and down supermarket aisles and reading labels to invent experiments.   I did every experiment in the book, some of them several times to make sure that they gave results and to hone the procedures.  The purpose of this book is to teach basic science—chemistry, physics,  and biology—through  food and food preparation. It was an instant hit with its outside-the-box title and has had proven staying power because it is strong on content and stays true to its purpose. Published originally in 1972, it was revised once and has never been out of print. That's 41 years!  In preparing this post, I  read some of the recent reviews on Amazon from  many people who remember this book as a child and are sharing it with their grandchildren! There were also reviews by teachers who are still using it in class. 

                  I'm proud that it is still very relevant and providing as much fun as ever.  But it is not a book  just to read.  It's a book that calls the reader to do.

  

NEWS YOU CAN USE

Hi everybody-

Whilst trying to think up a different way to welcome you back to I.N.K., I thought you might like to hear a secret inside writing tip from a famous editor. She once told me that when writing nonfiction books, you should begin by saying something of specific interest to your readers that cries out for immediate attention.  OK……....all of your cars have been stolen.

Noooooo!!  That’s not right AT ALL!  We actually DO have news you can use this season—a new series of blogs that are of specific interest to you. 

Our I.N.K. bloggers couldn’t help but notice that our two most popular topics are lists of cool books, and anything to do with the Common Core State Standards. Alert the media, ladies and gentlemen, because with that in mind, here’s the drill so far:

1) Every month except this one, a single blogger will discuss a specific and (of course) 100% spellbinding new topic that showcases the very best nonfiction books in a particular category. And at the end of each month, a list of these books will be compiled and posted in a permanent Recommended Book List on its own page.

BUT! In hopes of starting September off with a bang, each of our bloggers will write about this season's first recommended-books topic: Life-Changing Nonfiction: Past and Present.  This  month you’ll discover all kinds of surprising tales about nonfiction books that actually changed our authors’ lives when they were kids. Then each author will spotlight newer books related to the ones they loved before. And beginning on September 30, all of these books will be posted in our Recommended Book List. 

2) In October, we've decided to devote each of our posts to the Common Core State Standards.  Since we’re all so incredibly different from each other, everyone will present a different take on this subject.  Look out for just about anything, from highly specific lesson plans to scholarly contemplations of a particular CCSS standard to discussions addressing educators’ concerns about implementing and testing these nonfiction standards in schools. So please be sure to chime in.

Uh-oh. Now I’ve just about filled my allotted space and I still have to talk about nonfiction I used to read as a kid that changed my life.  Right now I can conjure up a whole armload of fiction that I loved back in the day, but nonfiction?  I must be reeeeallly ancient because the only nonfiction we ever read in the olden days was a bunch of atrocious book report bios that were dry as dust and full of lies and platitudes about famous people. 

Unless you include the World Book Encyclopedia, that is.  I cannot tell a lie - I actually used to sit around and memorize it, even as a young kid.  And I particularly loved the pictures; a certain complicated painting by Pieter Bruegel the Elder come to mind, as do some hideous cars of the future, cutaway views of sailing ships, photos of tropical fish and tarantulas, flags from around the world, and the later transparent plastic overlays that showed what’s inside the human body. 

  

When I was in elementary school, I used to press autumn leaves inside the appropriate pages, and that started a trend of mine.  Before anyone could use the internet but while I was making my living as an illustrator and then as an author, I used the encyclopedia as my filing cabinet for storing thousands of the very best images and published material I could collect as research for anything—ANYTHING—I might ever want to draw or write about.  All that stuff I collected is generally a whole lot more useful than most things I need to wade through online because my collections were so selective to begin with. 

Of course I can’t help but put this vast collection to regular use in the nonfiction books I write and illustrate, and the very first one of them is right here:

How We Crossed the West: The Adventures of Lewis and Clark.

I used a zillion sources as research for this book, just like the World Book Encyclopedia did. Besides the words I wrote, the encyclopedia also taught me to make sure every picture I painted was as accurate as humanly possible—the famous faces, the soldiers’ uniforms, the different ways the Indians dressed and the dwellings where they lived, the ever-changing scenery, the explorers' wintertime fort, everyone’s different weapons and boats, and all of the wildlife along the way had to be just right. 

OK…..that’s my small contribution to the list.  Now I’m done, and we all hereby place our hands upon our hearts, salute the flag, and cordially invite you to stay tuned.