Feed Your Brain: Eat Your Math! (A guest blog by Ann McCallum)

A guest post—with recipe!—by Ann McCallum, a pal of mine from the Children’s Book Guild of Washington, DC. Ann's latest book is Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds.

As a kid, I thought that math was bland—unappetizing worksheets and heaps of boring word problems. Those were the worst, the word problems: Disjointed scenarios that you had to sit with until you were done.

I fell in love with math after college. Not a case of love at first taste, it was more an awakening of the senses. A realization that there was pattern and meaning to all those seemingly random numbers. Like a well-made dish, the ingredients aligned so perfectly when I finally understood. The steps were meaningful, too—not a series of machinations to memorize, but a logical process of creating. With my new-found appetite for math, I knew I had to share.

Pairing food with math was a fluke, really. It started with a math project for my students (I was teaching 5^th grade at the time). It was nearly winter break, and I had my students make mathematical gingerbread houses. I didn’t provide many instructions—just, you know, make one of those graham cracker houses glued together with icing and be prepared to talk about how you used math. The results were far richer than I had anticipated. Students shared innovations such as polygon windows and doors, candy tessellations, the perimeter of roofs, and the length of icing pathways. I was so excited, I went home and made multiplication meatballs! Okay, maybe not right away, but the idea was there. Food, I figured, was a perfect medium for getting kids to love math.

What followed was a series of yummy experiments: Estimation Cookies, Fibonacci Snack Sticks, Variable Pizza Pi . . . Fun, oh fun! Finally, here was a connection to some of math’s tough concepts, but with a delicious new twist. It made so much sense to learn math by using food.

Eager to share this idea beyond my students, I sent a book proposal to an editor and was accepted—but not for a math cookbook. Instead, I was engaged to write “The Secret Life of Math” which is a history/project book about math for kids (I was allowed one recipe:

Mayan Number Cookies). I went on to write two math fairy tales, but I still kept coming back to the math cookbook idea. I tried again. This time, a second editor accepted my proposal for “Eat Your Math Homework: Recipes for Hungry Minds” and I was thrilled. I went back to the kitchen to perfect my math recipes.

   One of my favorite math authors, Theoni Pappas, says it best: “The joy of mathematics is that it is everywhere.” I’ll add to that: Even in cupcakes!

Happy eating—happy math!

Recipe→ Common Denominator Cupcakes

These math goodies have a common denominator. Before baking, place an Oreo cookie in each cupcake cup, and then spoon the dough on top. Bake, bite in, and work out approximately what fraction of the cupcake is the Oreo cookie.

What you need:

½ cups butter

1  ¼ cups white sugar

2 large eggs

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ cup rainbow sprinkles

Oreos (one for every muffin cup)

What you do:

1.     Cream butter, sugar, vanilla, and eggs.

2.     Mix in flour, baking powder and baking soda, alternating with milk.

3.     Stir in the colored sprinkles.

4.     Grease a muffin tin (or use cupcake papers) and place one oreo cookie in every muffin cup. Pour dough on top so that each muffin cup is ¾ of the way full.

5.     Bake for about 30 minutes in a 350° F oven.

 

Hands-On Activities = Interesting Nonfiction for Kids

A few months ago when I realized that my manuscript was due two days after my blog post date, I asked Kerrie (my fellow CRP-mate) to please guest blog for me this month. Thankfully, she said, "Yes."  Please join me in welcoming Kerrie Logan Hollihan for this month~~~ 

     My thanks to Anna Lewis for asking me to guest post for I.N.K….this is one wonderful blog! So many good authors to learn from. So much to share. And so little time…..

     Two years ago, “Electric Speed” social media guru Jane Friedman

(http://janefriedman.com/) talked to our local SCBWI group about how to blog effectively.  Most critical, she told us, is to blog only if we could offer something useful to our readers. Jane’s advice spoke volumes to three of us: Mary Kay Carson, Brandon Marie Miller, and me.  Among us, we’ve published 12 38,000-word books with Chicago Review Press Along with each we’ve developed something like 250 activities. Per Jane’s observations, we decided that our activities are “useful,” so we launched “Hands-on-Books” (http://hands-on-books.blogspot.com) in the fall of 2010. We rotate posts about our books, each one with a downloadable activity. 

     (Which leads me off topic for a moment…. Speaking of the value of networking for aspiring authors… I met Mary Kay and Brandon through SCBWI. One night they saw me leaving the library with books up to my chin about Isaac Newton.  They said their editor at Chicago Review Press was looking for a book on Newton… I got in touch, wrote my first proposal, and “the rest is history.”)

     I admit it; writing activities is complicated, and our editor at CRP, the always-gracious Jerry Pohlen, helps when I get tangled up in writing directions.  But I have to say I find great delight in taking a subject -- Queen Elizabeth I for instance -- and sitting down to brainstorm a bunch of activities to connect my middle grade readers to Tudor England.  Granted, building a gibbet or teaching the art of pick pocketing wouldn’t sit well with our audience of parents and teachers, but it’s fun to think about how to show kids they can dance the pavanne, picture themselves as Tudor women or men, or set sail like the Spanish Armada with an umbrella and a skateboard.

     As I mentioned in a recent post, sometimes our activities take hits, as when Kirkus, which otherwise praised my new book Rightfully Ours: How Women Won the Vote, had this to say:

            The only downside is the activities, which range from slightly silly (dress up like an ancient Greek for suffrage!) to simply wrong (cake mix does not taste as good as a cake made from scratch).

That left me scratching my head. Yup, I rely on cake mix in an activity in Rightfully Ours. Readers can “Bake a Cake for Suffrage” iced with a recipe from the Woman Suffrage Cook Book (1890). But it was the reviewer’s take on the dress-up activity that made me wonder whether s/he had read the whole book. Suffragists did indeed dress up like Greek goddesses.  (Jump to our blog to see proof of that as well as the activity in question.J)

     We believe that hands-on-learning enhances a child’s nonfiction reading.  Some activities we write are very simple, but teachers say that even some seventh graders have trouble with directions and assembling small projects.   Other activities have long lists of materials and more complex directions -- again because we know there are kids out there who want to tackle them.

     I’d like to hear back from I.N.K. readers what you think about activities in kids’ books. Do you use them?  What’s your experience working with them in the classroom or at home?  What works for you?  What doesn’t?

           

            

Could It Be My Favorite Book?

I'm delighted to introduce author Ann Bausum, our second guest blogger of the week. As someone who was born in Memphis and still has strong family ties to the city, I'm especially fascinated by the topic she tackles in her latest book.

Ann writes:

Each year I visit frequently with middle school and high school students to talk about my work as a nonfiction author, and I don’t think a session has ever passed without someone asking: “What’s the favorite book you’ve written?”

Although I’ve explained numerous times that being asked to pick my favorite book is like being asked to pick my favorite child—in other words impossible—my newest publication may make me a liar. From start to finish I’ve felt absolutely captivated by the research, writing, and production of Marching to the Mountaintop: How Poverty, Labor Fights, and Civil Rights Set the Stage for Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Final Hours. (National Geographic Children’s Books will release the title on January 10.)

The biggest reason I may start calling this my favorite book is the history itself. I literally found myself exclaiming out loud as I worked with facts that leant themselves so well to the dramatic potential of narrative nonfiction. The historical characters, the setting, the chronology, the thickening “plot” would be the envy of any novelist. “Do the history proud,” became my goal.

I wanted to give readers the context for the death of Martin Luther King, Jr. Plenty of children (and even adults) don’t know that he died in Memphis. Few people of any age can tell you that he had gone there to advocate for the labor rights of the city’s sanitation workers.

Death not only concludes this history; it starts it, too. On February 1, 1968, two sanitation workers were crushed to death while riding inside the barrel of a garbage truck. Within days more than a thousand sanitation and street repair workers decided to strike for the cause of safer working conditions, better compensation, and union recognition. Their demands quickly led to a stalemate between the all-black workforce and the almost entirely white leadership of Memphis.

After police attacked peaceful strikers with clubs and tear gas on February 23, the workers rallied behind an expanded campaign for social justice. “I AM A MAN,” became their persistent assertion. The cause of the striking workers overlapped perfectly with King’s own spring objective: to highlight the burden of poverty by mounting a national Poor People’s Campaign.

Many of the men on strike in Memphis worked full time and yet still qualified for welfare. King visited them three times between March 18 and early April to support their cause. During his final trip, on what would become the eve of his death, he gave one of the best speeches of his life—an extemporaneous oration colloquially known as the “Mountaintop Speech.”

During two research trips to Memphis I studied documents and photos in the archives of the University of Memphis, spoke with eyewitnesses to history, and walked the same routes marched by protestors in 1968. I lingered outside Clayborn Temple, now shuttered but formerly the meeting spot for countless marches. I stood on the stage of Mason Temple, the place where King told audience members how he had gone “to the mountaintop” and “seen the promised land.” I visited the site of his death at the Lorraine Motel, now incorporated into the National Civil Rights Museum, and I observed the perch from which his assassin fired the shot that killed King on April 4, 1968.

The spotlight on Memphis became so intense following King’s death that the city’s anti-union stance wavered and collapsed. Workers gained their collective bargaining rights, wage increases, and improved worker safety in a strike settlement on April 16.

When it came time to start writing, current events created a backdrop that rivaled the power of the Memphis history. I wrote Marching to the Mountaintop from my home in southern Wisconsin at the same time that public employees began demonstrating in nearby Madison. The juxtaposition of the two campaigns for collective bargaining rights became surreal. Immersed in writing about labor rights all day, I emerged to hear each night of fresh labor history in the making.

The book’s subsequent production process became equally riveting. Marty Ittner, a guest blogger on I.N.K, designed Marching to the Mountaintop using the same creative talents that she employed with my 2006 title Freedom Riders and every title I’ve published since—not to mention books by I.N.K. writers Sue Macy and Marfé Ferguson Delano. She transformed dog-eared black and white photos by employing dramatic silhouettes, bold color washes, and retro photo essays. She exploited every possible design element, even the quotation marks.

I dedicated Marching to the Mountaintop to my fourth-grade schoolteacher, Mrs. Christine Warren. I had entered her classroom the year integration reached my childhood home in Lexington, Virginia. Although many white parents quietly opted out of having their children placed in classrooms led by African Americans, my parents did not. Thus I became one of the few white students in Mrs. Warren’s class and spent the year celebrating her love of books. King died the next year while I was in fifth grade.

A storm raged in Memphis the evening of King’s final speech. (Consider this element one of the many facts which prompted my thanks to history.) He spoke that night of the promised land, a place he could visualize of equality and justice and respect. Where no one would have to declare “I AM A MAN” to be treated like a human being. Where students of all colors learned from teachers of every color. “I may not get there with you,” King said that stormy evening. “But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land."

“Many people leaped to their feet, shouted, and clapped their hands. Others sat sobbing, consumed with emotion,” I wrote in my book. “As people drifted away from Mason Temple, they walked under unexpectedly calm skies”—(I did not make this up)—“and their excitement from the remarkable speech mellowed into a satisfying confidence about what lay ahead.”

Could Marching to the Mountaintop become my favorite book? I think it already has. (Don't tell!)

Will the Real Maria Anna Mozart Please Stand Up?

It's my pleasure today to share a guest blog post by friend and fellow critique-group member, Elizabeth Rusch.

Elizabeth writes:

Will the Real Maria Anna Mozart Please Stand Up?

A critique of the French film Mozart’s Sister

Soon after my newest nonfiction title for young readers, For the Love of Music: The Remarkable Story of Maria Anna Mozart (Tricycle Press/Random House, 2011) was released, I began getting emails from friends telling me about a French film on the same subject called Mozart’s Sister. The film finally came to Portland, and I was invited to do a Q&A after the show on opening weekend. Thank goodness, because whether I was invited to or not, I would have wanted to stand up in front of the audience and set the record straight.

What Is Accurate: The Mozart family did indeed tour Europe for three years, traveling by carriage for more than 3,000 miles, giving concerts in 88 cities. Maria Anna, older sister of Wolfgang by five years, was a child prodigy, a gifted virtuosic pianist. She composed music, and indeed, her music has been lost.

What I Loved: The depiction of the Mozart family relationships, their affection, dedication to music, and the silliness that bordered on bawdiness (especially when Leopold and the two children stand at the bathroom door while the mother tries out the bidet) captured visually what I read in the Mozart family letters. There were other gorgeous moments in the movie that probably came from primary source material. Maria Anna writes in her journal from the European trip about watching the waves come in and out at Calais. And there it was, the beautiful Marie Féret, hair fluttering in the wind, staring dreamily at the ocean. Wolfgang loved canaries, and there he was poking one with a violin bow.

What Is Inaccurate, Misleading, and Troubling: Soon after establishing the Mozart family on their journey, a carriage wheel breaks outside Paris. Broken carriage parts are mentioned frequently in the family letters, but here the movie jumps off a solid foundation based in fact to a completely fictional account that is not only inaccurate, but also blatantly contradicts what we know about the Mozart family and their daughter.

In the movie, Maria Anna develops close friendships with a daughter of Louis XV and the crown prince. The second relationship is struck while Maria Anna cross-dresses to deliver a letter, and plays violin and sings for the prince. Maria Anna begs to stay in Paris while her family continues on the musical tour. When they leave, she continues her relationship with the prince, studies composition at a Paris academy dressed as a boy, and writes a violin concerto.

The critique: Oh, where to start! Maria Anna was closely chaperoned by her parents at all times, did not stay in Paris alone as a young, single 15 year old, developed no relationship or romance with French royalty, didn’t cross dress, or even play violin! While there are references in letters to Maria Anna singing, they usually entail Wolfgang teasing her about her singing voice. Maria Anna’s singing was not her genius, her harpsichord playing was.

The movie depicts Maria Anna burning her violin concerto and claims that she never composed again, had only one child, and that she died blind and poor. Yet later letters from Wolfgang praise Maria Anna for her compositions, she eventually married a baron enabling her a comfortable living, and she had three children, only one of whom died in childhood.

The Story the Movie Missed: In the end, Mozart’s Sister seems more obsessed by the weird court of Louis XV than in its title subject matter. So much rich, dramatic material about Maria Anna Mozart’s life was distorted, misrepresented or ignored.

Here’s what I find amazing about Maria Anna’s story: She was a child prodigy, thought to be a better pianist than Wolfgang – and all the other pianists in Europe. She was Wolfgang Mozart’s closest musical collaborator, and, as I explore in a recent Smithsonian magazine article, was probably an important musical influence. There’s an incredible scene from Maria’s life that the movie skips completely. While in London, Leopold falls ill and the children have to be very quiet – they can’t even play their instruments. So together, Wolfgang and Maria Anna write what is known as Wolfgang’s first symphony. But it is in Maria Anna’s handwriting.

After the three-year musical tour, the family returns to Salzburg. But when Wolfgang sets off to tour Europe with his father and later with his mother, Maria is left home. While he learns composition and is exposed to the stimulating musical life of Italy, Maria oversees the cook, gathers herbs, and mends clothes. But she also continues to practice for hours each day, teaching herself harmony, modulation, interpretation -- and composition.

She falls in love, and she and Wolfgang share a dream of the family reuniting in Vienna, where she would be married to her love, teaching music and giving concerts. Sixteen months later, Maria Anna is married off to a baron who is twice widowed and already has five children. But she continues to play three to four hours every day – even when her instrument goes horribly out of tune and can’t be fixed for more than two years. When her husband dies, Maria Anna returns to Salzburg where she teaches music and gives private concerts.

At the age of seventy-eight, Maria died. Two weeks before she died, though she was blind and has lost the use of one hand, she asked to be carried to the piano that she and Wolfgang play on together as children. Found on the piano were scores from her brother’s operas Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute, probably the last music she ever played. On their childhood tour, Wolfgang often played blind to astonish audiences. At the end of her life, his sister Maria Anna also played blind, and with only one hand, for the sheer love of the music.

What bothers me most about Mozart’s Sister is that the film used Maria Anna to get to the Louis XV court and then ignored her and who she really was.

Maria Anna Mozart’s story is one of not only musical genius, but also of undying musical passion and commitment. There is a beautiful film to made, but Mozart’s Sister is not it. Maybe I should write it ☺

Elizabeth Rusch

Meet Alexandra Siy

Alexandra Siy is a new member and wonderful addition to the Ink Think Tank roster of Ink Thinkers and database contributors. She's on a mission to amaze and engage kids by taking a closer look at nature by using their own eyes. See for yourself.

Exploring Hidden Worlds

By Alexandra Siy

One of my earliest childhood memories is of a summer nature walk around a small pond near our home. The sound of frogs and songbirds, the smell of wildflowers and water, and a thousand shades of green are still alive within me—inspiration for my work as an author, photographer, and educator. Books, both fiction and nonfiction, can draw children into exciting and alien worlds—while helping them understand their own world. Ever since looking through a simple magnifying glass as a small child, I have been fascinated by the microscopic. Several of my books reveal the microscopic world, including my newest title BUG SHOTS: The Good, the Bad, and the Bugly. Illustrated with electron micrographs by my collaborator Dennis Kunkel, our books introduce children to the beautiful and fascinating microscopic worlds that are part of our every day lives. Yet I believe that books should be just part of a child’s relationship with the microscopic world, helping to form a context for real life experience.

Exploring hidden worlds with a child is both exciting and rewarding. It is also a simple and inexpensive activity that you can do again and again. The only equipment required is a small hand lens or jeweler’s loupe and your wide-open eyes. It is truly astonishing what is revealed while looking closely at everyday objects. Flower petals, blades of grass, a seashell, grains of sand, even the skin on your hand, become larger than life. Upon seeing things up close, a child’s mind is expanded and new ideas unfold.

The experience of looking closely is greatly enhanced by using the methods developed by “

The Private Eye.” This remarkable program is designed to “accelerate thinking skills, creativity, literacy and scientific literacy across subjects, K-16 through life, all levels.” I have used The Private Eye Guide to Developing the Interdisciplinary Mind as well as The Private Eye loupes and other materials with children of all ages. (Check out my review of some their products on geekmom.com.)
A few simple questions form the core of The Private Eye experience. While looking at a specimen through a magnifying loupe ask yourself: What else does it remind me of? What else does it look like? Why did it remind me of that? Why is it like that? The answers to the questions lead to analogies, comparisons, and metaphors forming material for creative writing, scientific discovery, inventions, problem solving, and more.

This summer spend some time outside with a child exploring hidden worlds. You may be surprised by what you discover about your world, and about yourself in the process.

Voice, Verse, Veracity

I'm delighted to introduce today's guest blogger, my friend Debbie Levy, whose wonderful book The Year of Goodbyes has been tagged fiction by some, nonfiction by others. Debbie has a blog of her own, and she's also created a very cool Poesiealbum Project, which invites readers to create and contribute their own "poesies." This would be a great class project. And now to Debbie...

Voice, Verse, Veracity

After years of trying to find a way to write my mother’s story of living as a Jewish girl in Nazi Germany in the 1930s, the universe gave me a gift: the discovery of Mom’s poesiealbum from 1938. A poesiealbum (po-eh-ZEE album) is like an autograph book or friendship book. Poesiealbums were popular among European pre-teens and teenagers in the mid-20^th century.

This wasn’t one of these up-in-the-dusty-attic discoveries. No, my mother herself brought the poesiealbum out of her bedside table when she got together with six of her childhood friends from Germany for the first time in 62 years in 2000. (You can read about how that reunion came to be here.) I was there, too. Without even knowing what the poesiealbum entries meant—they’re mostly in German and Polish—I was moved by this beat-up little book full of handwritten poems and proverbs from my mother’s friends and relatives that she brought across the Atlantic Ocean when she left Germany at the end of 1938.

I had the album translated (some entries more than once), studied it, and laid out photocopies of the pages on the floor. What I found was that each entry contained a truth or sentiment that related directly to the goings-on around my mother, from January through November of 1938. And so, nearly every chapter in The Year of Goodbyes (Disney-Hyperion 2010) opens with a poesiealbum entry. Arranged chronologically, these poesies give shape to that one fateful year in Nazi Germany and in my mother’s life.

Now here comes, from the I.N.K. perspective, the interesting part: I wrote the book in my mother’s 11- and 12-year-old voice, narrating the last year of her life in Germany. In this, I was fortunate to have my mother—who has an outstanding memory—and I have her still, as a living resource behind the book. And I wrote the book in free verse. An introduction explains the book’s “voice” and structure. Back matter tells what happened to those who make an appearance in the poesiealbum, includes a timeline, photographs, and other historical information, and discusses my research.

What with the free verse and the first person and the poesiealbum excerpts, the book has been categorized in a variety of ways. It’s been called “historical fiction” by some, including the good people who gave it a Parent’s Choice Award. It’s been called a “verse novel” by some reviewers. It was nominated in the “poetry” category by the ALSC Notable Children’s Books Committee. But Kirkus included it on its list of best children’s “nonfiction” books of 2011, and many others also refer to it as nonfiction.

I, too, say it’s nonfiction. The book tells a true story, based on scrupulous and redundant research. (I believe in redundancy in airplane safety systems and in research.) This is not simply my mother’s memoir channeled through me. The events, interactions, people, places, and documents are not made up or dramatically enhanced. But I’m not distressed by the variety of labels attached to The Year of Goodbyes—so long as readers understand that the book depicts actual events, and is not an invention “based on,” “inspired by,” or “adapted from” them.

Recently, I’ve read thoughtful articles here on I.N.K. and elsewhere sparked by the Horn Book’s March/April 2011 issue, “Fact, Fiction, and In Between.” I’ve read about “new” and “old” nonfiction,” “speculative,” “straight,” and “creative” nonfiction. What resonates most for me in this debate is Tanya Lee Stone’s description in her Horn Book article of the work of nonfiction writers:

“We balance the role of historian and storyteller by making sure we don’t interject tension or emotion or events without thorough knowledge. We do it by employing fiction techniques without ever making a single thing up.”

By writing The Year of Goodbyes in the first person, I intended to make the reader feel as close as possible to the tension, emotions, and events experienced by my mother as a pre-teen. I wanted the reader to experience this real-life person as someone with a young person’s voice. I think this is consistent with nonfiction. I’m not sure I would have felt comfortable doing this if I had not worked in close collaboration with my mother. But I was lucky enough to have her at my side.

As for the technique I employed—writing in verse—this was a way of mirroring and honoring the poesiealbum entries. I also think that free verse excels at capturing something essential about the way we think and react, especially under stressful conditions. And I think that verse is perfectly compatible with telling a true story in which nothing is made up.

I didn’t write The Year of Goodbyes the way I did for the sake of novelty. I just tried to find the most immediate and accurate way to depict my mother’s last year under the Nazi regime, which in turn, I hoped, would illuminate the shared experience of others who have been persecuted.

Fellow nonfiction writer Cathy Reef recently shared with me this wonderful pithy quotation from V.S. Naipaul:

“Great subjects are illuminated best by small dramas.”

Some of those dramas will be nonfiction. Some will be fiction. And we writers will keep on parsing the two forms because of a shared commitment to bring our readers truth (as we understand it) as well as also art.

Designing Wheels of Change

As the reviews for my recently published book, Wheels of Change, have started to come in, I've been pleased to see that many mention the book's beautiful--one reviewer said "flawless"--design. Rather than write about the process of designing this book myself, I invited Marty Ittner to blog about it. Marty has designed all five of my books for National Geographic, and she was a true collaborator on Wheels of Change. (She's also in the process of redesigning my Web site, suemacy.com. More on that next month.) So take it away, Marty....

Why, thank you Sue. Having an author request my design for their book is a great compliment (and good for business). What’s not to love about Wheels of Change? As Sue discovered, folks go bonkers over bikes. I can vividly remember my own exhilaration the first time my father let go of my 2-wheeler seat and I sailed off on my own. And Sue does her homework. She’s that smart kid you hope to sit next to in the back row with the A+ essay and all the test answers.

Wheels of Change ironically describes our design process. It was my first project with National Geographic director of design Jonathan “Jono” Halling and art director Jim Hiscott. The digital revolution has forced us print designers to create more dynamic visuals. It is simply not business as usual. From the get-go, Jono and Jim conveyed the new mandate for Childrens Books: they’ve got to be fun, colorful, lively and engaging. J+J wanted to visually push the concept of how the simple circle of a bicycle wheel enabled women to bust out of their domestic confinements.

Looking back, my first sketches were as constricted as a corset. I was concerned about leaving enough room for the text. Each round of style chapter proofs inched out a little further, but still were not “there.” Finally, Jono drew a REALLY big arc that shoved aside everything in its path. It finally sunk in that the wheel shapes dominated the design. Even my coveted type would have to conform to the big circles. Once the boundaries had been broken, the rest was finesse: the color palette, the shading on the wheels and just the right modern handling of the old newspaper stories that Sue included in every chapter. I was particularly pleased with the folio treatments, a solution that took four or five rejected ideas to achieve. (Thanks, Jim!)

So while the interior of the book was an uphill slog, we practically coasted into the cover. It helped that both Sue and I are night owls—some of our most productive exchanges happen between 10 pm and midnight. We had a few covers going, nothing too exciting. I was actually a bit concerned: this book was supposed to feel fun, and the cover comps were due the next day. Round about 10:30 pm, an e-mail pops up from Sue. She had just arrived home from her trip to DC and the Library of Congress with a new photo: nattily clad actress Madge Lessing balanced on a bicycle with one hand, the other held a tooting horn to her lips. Ka-CHING! We have cover.

For the type, Fontfont’s Disturbance font struck just the right note between modern and traditional, with one hiccup. No one liked the original “g” in “Change.” Rather than jettison the ideal typeface, I crafted a new “g” from...guess which font? The first person who posts the answer here gets a free copy of Wheels. I’m fond of filling the holes in letters, and the orange popped against the teal. The interior drop shadow which clinched the deal started off as happy mistake. Okay, enough shop talk. One could say I am as passionate about typography as Sue is about sports. Which is why I didn’t squawk when a certain member of the design team changed a certain body text font at the 11th hour. It was the right call to propel Wheels to “flawless.”

—Marty Ittner