Making Multimedia Connections with Books

Recently I was invited to present at a conference of the Northwest Association of Independent Schools on connections between books and technology. Perhaps because I’m a writer married to a technology guy, I see the potential for a rich marriage between books and multimedia resources on a given topic.

For one thing, because of the Internet, students can get a behind-the-scenes view of the research and writing that went into a book.  Websites, Facebook pages, and blogs can (miraculously, I think) connect students directly with authors. Many authors have websites (try the author’s first and last name.com or do a google search by using the author’s name and the word “author”). Author websites also often contain links that can deepen students’ understanding of a book or topic. 

For example, after reading Muckrakers by Ann Bausum, they can stop by her website and click on the "photo research" link for an interactive tutorial on how to conduct photo research using the online collections of the Library of Congress.

After reading Bausum’s Unraveling Freedom, they can visit the page for that book and click on the "political cartoons" link to begin an interactive session about decoding political cartoons, using six cartoons from World War I.

Many authors also have Facebook pages which can give readers insights into the on-going life of writers, updates on developments related to their books, and play-by-play descriptions of their current work on new writing projects. (I’m just getting mine going at https://www.facebook.com/authorelizabethrusch). Some even write blogs or contribute to group blogs like this one. (Try googling the author’s name and the word “blog,” or check author websites, which will have links to their blogs.)

Many nonfiction authors write about current topics that are still unfolding after the book has been published. The internet can continue the story.  For instance, after reading Loree Griffin Burns’ The Hive Detective, students can watch a TED talk about the plight of the honeybee or learn about pollinator conservation at the Xerces Society’s website. Likewise,

after reading Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different by Karen Blumenthal, students can check out what’s happening with the company now at http://www.apple.com/hotnews/ or read recent articles about the company at www.techspot.com.

After reading my book, The Mighty Mars Rovers: The incredible adventures of Spirit and Opportunity, students can explore what the rover Opportunity is up to now (10 years after landing!) at JPL’s website, which includes regular mission updates, press releases, photos and videos; and follow the newest rover Curiosity, too.

And after reading one of my volcano books—Volcano Rising; Will it Blow? or Eruption! -- students can learn more about current on-going eruptions at Earthweek; Volcano Discovery, which includes a map of recent eruptions and  webcams at active volcanoes; and Smithsonian’sGlobal Volcanism Program, which has both weekly updates of volcanic activity and an amazing searchable database of past and current eruptions.

Think this only relates to current events? Think again.  Fascinating additional reading and other resources such as audio, films and websites related to American history, 1492 and onward, can be found on the website of the Zinn Ed Project, which is searchable by theme, time period, document type and reading level. You can also search by book. For instance, the entry for Gretchen Woelfle’s Mumbet’s Declaration of Independence, (https://zinnedproject.org/materials/mumbets-declaration-of-independence/) links to actual court records from the lawsuit Mumbet brought against her owners to win her freedom.

Multimedia experiences can bring a book to life. After reading A Home for Mr. Emerson by Barbara Kerley, students can visit thehome online. They can view a slideshowfrom the New York Times about the caretaking of the home, which Emerson bought in 1835; the site includes interior shots of the home, including the rocking horse in the playroom and Emerson's hat, hanging on the wall. To dig even deeper into Emerson’s life, readers can go to an online exhibit by the Concord Free PublicLibrary with photos and essays about Emerson, which also features many primary source documents.

If you want to offer your students a multimedia experience, most likely you don’t have to do the research on the best resources yourself. Many nonfiction authors include a list of the best multimedia resources in the back matter of their books or on their websites. Check them out – and send your students to them, too. You’ll both be enriched by the experience.

Elizabeth Rusch

www.elizabethrusch.com

https://www.facebook.com/authorelizabethrusch

www.vivascriva.com

A School Where Science (and Non-Fiction) Rule

It’s hard to imagine a teacher prouder than Maria Martinez, or second graders happier with what they're learning and how they're learning it in her classroom. The best part is that I can say the same thing about the other teachers and students I met at Sci-Tech Academy at Knights Landing, in California's Sacramento Valley. They are the Sci-Tech “Robots” at this public charter school where the mascot is not a ferocious animal and the motto is “Hands On—Minds On.”

         In 2009, the Woodland Joint Unified School District closed Kings Landing's only school, Grafton Elementary. The rural community's population was under 1,000 and the district knew it could save $s by shutting the school door and sending students eleven miles to Woodland. It’s a scenario that has befallen rural communities and urban neighborhoods across the country, and usually the teachers and residents sigh and bear it. But a cadre of dedicated teachers in the Woodland district, including Ms. Martinez, came up with another plan. They would form a K-6 charter school focusing on science and technology, and they would petition the district to let them use the Grafton building. After just one year in mothballs, Grafton Elementary was reopened as Science and Technology Academy at Knights Landing. Local parents started enrolling their children as did others from communities nearby, and still others from outside the district  — even some from Davis, 20 back-road miles away, an acutely eco- and education-minded small city boasting blue-ribbon schools and a University of California campus with renowned science programs.

My tip-off to something special going on at Sci-Tech came during my first presentation to primary grade students. I showed my book on animal camouflage, Where In the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed… and Revealed. The word “camouflage” is often understood by primary grade students but I’d never before met second graders who used the word “adaptation” when describing it.

“We just finished a unit on animal adaptations,” explained Ms. Martinez when we chatted later. The M.O. at Sci-Tech is that science units define the entire curriculum. A unit on adaptations means that students read a range of non-fiction books about ways animals have evolved to meet the demands of their environment. “We do our reading to fit our science units, and everything else comes out of that,” she explained. They explore the vocabulary they find in their reading. Writing, discussions, further explorations ensue. Math gains relevance by being tied to the science units.

Modern digital technology is important in supporting the inquiry-based classroom at Sci-Tech, but not at the expense of low-tech. Not only do print non-fiction books abound, but so do animals in captivity  — live ones, not virtual pets on a smartphone. Every classroom has them. “The students learn what it means, and what’s required, to take care of animals,” says sixth grade teacher Glen Lusebrink, “and we also use the animals to get to other areas of the curriculum.” His room has fish tanks populated by a variety of cichlid species. “This one is from Africa,” he tells me, “and these are from South America.” So we get out the maps, the globes, the books and we learn about Africa, we learn about South America.

         Because of my presentation schedule, I did not get to see any classrooms in action, but I learned about some of the action over lunch in the staff lounge. In all of the conversations, teachers were buzzed about their students' latest hands-on discoveries. First graders had been sifting rocks into size gradations (there’s a math lesson there along with the science) and Kindergarteners had just finished distinguishing between water and identical-looking salt and sugar solutions by testing various properties of the liquids, including taste. “Oh, I wish I’d videotaped them,” said their teacher. “When they were tasting that salt solution—you would have loved the looks on their faces.” And the impressions on their minds.

         Clearly, the hands-on approach touted by the school’s motto is more than a marketing phrase. And it is even more than an impassioned approach to science and the rest of learning. For some students, it’s a matter of do or (academically) die. “Our school makes learning possible for children who do not thrive in an environment of seatwork and workbooks,” says Principal Barbara Herms who holds the view that when hands and bodies are active, so are minds. “And our success is showing.” I asked if she was referring to test scores. “Yes, that among other things.” I’m heartened to know that test scores are up but I’m even happier to know that here tests aren’t the only measure of student success.

         Parents are often the most vociferous critics of schools, so I looked up Sci-Tech Academy on www.greatschools.org and found five (out of five) five-star reviews by parents. One will suffice: “All the teachers, staff, parents and children are excited about learning! This school’s atmosphere is all about helping each child reach their full potential. My children do not even like missing one day of school.”

         Need I say more? Probably not, but I will anyway. A curriculum connected to close readings of non-fiction texts sounds like it has the Common Core State Standards written all over it. But Sci-Tech has been doing it since before those four words were ever strung together.

Hold the Phone

Did you know that Steve McQueen’s first screen performance was in the 1955 film, Family Affair, about the benefits of extension phones? Or that before George Wendt found fame as Norm on Cheers, he starred in a silent film called You Always Hurt the One You Love, about workplace safety? These are just a few of the tidbits I discovered this summer, when I took a break from my own projects to immerse myself in the treasures that are the AT&T Archives.

Starting in the late 1920s, AT&T produced hundreds of films on everything from telephone etiquette to the newest innovations from Bell Labs, the company’s research and development arm. Some of the films were shown to the public in venues such as movie theaters. Others were made to inform employees. Today, many are available for viewing online. I was hired to research the back stories of some of them and write scripts for “Bonus” introductions to be filmed at the AT&T Archives and History Center in Warren, New Jersey. The online host, George Kupczak, is the wizard who runs the archives, keeping track of more than one million documents, another million photographs, and 15,000 artifacts from the Bell System’s history.

During my three months at AT&T, I wrote about telephone service in early 20^th-century Cuba, the cultural impact of party lines, the operators at World War II military telephone centers, and the introduction of modular plugs and jacks for telephones in the 1970s. I learned a great deal about telephone cables, specifically those laid from Florida to Cuba in 1921 and 1950, across Newfoundland during World War II, and from Washington State to Ketchikan, Alaska, in the 1950s. That cable to Alaska caused all sorts of problems. There were 1,600 miles of it, with the shortest piece measuring about 200 miles, and it had to be transported from the manufacturer in New Hampshire all the way to Seattle. The story of how that happened, involving a decommissioned Liberty ship rented for $385,000, is the focus of my Bonus script.

Indeed, I couldn’t help but notice that this was a company that often marshaled massive resources in the pursuit of progress. A case in point was the subject of another script I wrote, about the DEW Line, or Distant Early Warning Line. This chain of radar posts north of the Arctic Circle extended some 3,000 miles from Alaska through Canada. Built by AT&T’s Western Electric Company at the height of the Cold War, the DEW Line would give the U.S. and Canada four to six hours warning if the Soviet Union launched a bomber attack toward North America. Close to 5,000 Bell System employees spent months on end in the frozen north from 1955 to 1957, building ersatz towns as well as radar installations with help from the U.S. and Canadian militaries. The cost of the project was estimated to be as much as $1 billion.

As someone who often writes about more modest achievements, I was a bit awed by the scale of AT&T’s impact on the world. After all, this is the company that invented radar, as well as the transistor, the laser, the Telstar satellite, and so much more. It was beyond cool to be able to spend time in the archives researching various aspects of the company’s history and reading the letters and notebooks of those who made it happen. If you want a taste of that history, check out the Archives videos. My Bonus introductions are still in the editing bay, but there are plenty of others to look at right now.

An Old Dog on New Tricks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I proudly present to you www.susangoodmanbooks.com.

Focus

I'm been thinking lately a lot about FOCUS. It's my New Year's Resolution. I try to come up with one word that says it all to me. One word because then maybe, just maybe, I'll remember what it is. Once in a while it's a phrase. But it has to speak to me and usually somewhere around December 30 it just comes. Last year it was ENJOY (as in, life can bring you hard times, so you really should enjoy the good ones!). The year before it was INTENTION (as in, be truly present for every moment). Each year I don't give up the one from the year before because, theoretically, anyway, I should have figured out over the course of the year how to follow that resolution, and so each year I'm adding on to the ones from the years before. This is the goal, anyway.

So this year's resolution and goal is FOCUS. As in--keep your eye, your heart, your mind on what you have set out to do. Be a bird charting your own course, not a bird who is buffeted this way and that by this breeze, or that change in the wind. Sometimes when I say it to myself I add Hocus Pocus. Focus Hocus Pocus. Because it sure is going to take some real kind of magic to focus, isn't it?!

Focusing in 2012 is not so easy.  There are so many distractions, both external and internal. I know this is true for writers and other artists. I know it's true for teachers and librarians as well. We have so many demands on our attention and our time. We have way too much input from media and social media and supervisors and guidelines and trends and children and parents and readers and it's just so hard to....

That's my arm, by the way. It's a temporary tattoo my friend Rebecca gave me because she knows my resolution. She gave me two. I might have to order some more. Because this is going to take a lot of reminding, and some real Intention. I have a huge nonfiction book to research and write, another one to finish, and a novel that is calling me and demanding I pay attention to it (and I want to!). I have a new book coming out in August, which will mean a lot of external input threatening my focus. Before that I have to update my web site. And then there's life. 

As I write this I know that every single person who is reading this feels the same way. The particulars may be different, but the problems (and I imagine the occasional moments of panic) are the same. 

I'm writing this on Friday morning, and was inspired to write it right now because of an article I read in the New York Times. Did you see it? The story about a cell phone disrupting the last, beautiful, very quiet measures of Mahler's Symphony No. 9? 

Can you imagine? The man was sitting in the first row, and his cell phone went off--the marimba alarm tone. When you read the article, you'll learn that it was a new phone, an Iphone, that his company had given him, and he had silenced it, but he didn't know that his alarm was set. (Yes, your alarm goes off even if you've silenced your phone. I know this from napping. If you do it on purpose, it's a good thing.) 

There are a few things that I like about this story. One is that the conductor, Alan Gilbert, stopped the performance. That sound was disrupting his focus, the focus of his musicians, and, of course, the focus of the audience. We were in London in 2005 at a performance of The History Boys, and the same thing happened. Front row. Awful noise. A crucial scene. Third time. One of the actors, Richard Griffiths (a large and scary man at this particular moment), furiously stopped the scene and said, "I can't compete with these electronic devices." He ordered the man to leave and we all applauded. He then started the scene again, he said, for the second and last time. It was a memorable play and a memorable experience. I imagine the Mahler the other night was, too. I don't think Mr. Gilbert yelled, but he did stop the performance and ask that the phone be turned off. He respected the need for focus, and for the purity of art. 

According to the article the man whose phone it was felt just awful and didn't sleep for two nights.  Venom was spewed at him all over the internet. According to the Times he was a 20-year subscriber to the New York Philharmonic, and has often been irked by noises in Avery Fisher hall--coughs, people who clap at the wrong time, and cell phones.  "It was just awful to have any role in something...so disturbing and disrespectful," he told the Times. When someone from the Philharmonic called him the next day (having figured out who he was) and asked him politely not to do it again, he agreed, of course, and asked if he could apologize to Mr. Gilbert. They talked by phone and the conductor said to him, "I'm really sorry you had to go through this" and accepted his apology. Don't you love it? 

But what I also love is what Patron X (as he is called) said. He said that this underscored (pun intended?) "the very enduring and important bond between the audience and the performers. If it's disturbed in any significant way, it just shows how precious the whole union is." 

So I read that this morning and I thought--same here. If we let cell phones and other "electronic devices" get between us and our focus on our art--whether we are writing, reading, researching, or teaching, then we are violating a sacred bond. 

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

My friend Carole Horne, general manager of the Harvard Book Store in Cambridge, MA, told me a story about this man who came into her bookstore last summer to browse. He thumbed his way through their “recommended” section, then came up to the cashier seemingly empty-handed. Nope. He put a five dollar bill on the counter and said that he was going on a trip and would download his books but had spent a lot of time browsing and felt like he owed the shop some money.

The story is definitely a mixed bag, but there still is a measure of good in it. The guy recognized the intrinsic worth of the local bookstore. This time he forewent its paper products that would weight down his luggage. But he did value the expertise of independent bookstore buyers, the taste of those who curated that special section of books worth his attention, the opportunity to look into familiar books to see if they appealed and browse unknown ones to find a treasure. And at least it translated into some value for the store as well.

A worse story. This week I was picking up a book and a calendar (yes, I still write down my appointments in little white squares) at nearby Brookline Booksmith and noticed a shopper jotting down titles on a list next to people’s names. Wanna bet that list is going home to a computer and amazon.com?

The WORST story. Quite simply, the Amazon app. For those of you who haven't heard or read about it, Amazon has created an app called, “Price Check.” People go into stores, enable the app’s location feature, scan products using their phones and are immediately offered 5 percent off 3 identical Amazon purchases for up to 5 dollars. In other words, the app is turning brick-and-mortar stores into unwilling showrooms where consumers can check out the product and leaf through a few pages before they click a button to save five bucks (plus, don’t forget, the sales tax!)

Right now, Price Check (or as I see it, the Death Star) is using consumers as its foot soldiers to do reconnaissance on products like electronics, toys, music, sporting goods, and DVDS. Then, with a click, it sucks up this market. How long before books, the product that defined Amazon, will follow? Then how long before all our favorite bookstores will no longer exist?

People in all parts of the book business know something about death by a thousand cuts. But writers—especially kids’ book writers, especially nonfiction kids’ book writers—know that losing local bookstores is more like the Sword of Damocles. The pricelessness of booksellers has been written about so often, I’ll just print the keywords and you can fill in the blanks: know their stock, standards, take chances, word of mouth, hand sell, actually read, actually care.

Let's not lose all those beautiful keywords for five dollars and some sales tax.

Come on everybody, it’s the Christmas buying season. There will be one more next year and the year after that. Let’s always have a place to browse; surely that worth a lot more than five bucks.

WHAT'S UP IN THE MEDIA CENTER

This month I’m lending my INK blogspot to Meribeth Schenk, author and librarian. We hear a lot these days about how books, reading, and learning are lighting out for the Territory – new and yet-to-be-discovered Territory. Here’s how one school is doing it.

I am a Mac lover, as are elementary students at Miami Country Day School in Miami Shores, Florida where I’m one of the Media Specialists. A recent installation of twenty-two beautiful new Mac computers transformed the Lower School Library by merging it with Technology programming, and streamlining the book collection into a renamed Media Center.

During the previous school year and continuing into this year we’ve acquainted students with not only the expected OSX and Windows platforms and Microsoft Office Suite (PowerPoint, Word, Excel), but also with several other wonderful programs like Pixie and Frames (Tech4Learning.com), Paint, and the iLife Suite (iMovie, iPhoto), offering inventive opportunities for students to create their own work. Also, students and faculty are becoming accustomed to specialized databases and subscription based websites such as, Accelerated Reader (AR), Learning.com, World Book online, IXL.com, etc.

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE

Presenting both traditional and non-traditional storytimes, we share websites like ericcarle.com with kindergarten and first grade classes where the video of the author/illustrator himself reading The Very Hungry Caterpillar mesmerizes students. Then, we offer these same students a chance to increase their mouse skills by designing their own multi-colored caterpillars, using the tools on Pixie, a subscription-software designed to promote creativity, organization of ideas, and story webs.

We invite second and third graders to choose (from books written and/or compiled by Douglas Florian, Karma Wilson, Jack Prelutsky, Kristine O’Connell George, Lee Bennett Hopkins, Karla Kuskin, Shel Silverstein, to name a few in the Media Center’s collection), practice (at home in front of a mirror) and read (or memorize) a poem to share in front of their classmates. Students are filmed, for later use of combined videos, to create a poetry slam presentation during April -- poetry month -- when students also share poems they have written.

Third, fourth and fifth grade students become familiar with labyrinths by way of stories, and search engines. A labyrinth is a spiral path, leading into the center and back out. Often effective as a meditation tool, a labyrinth can be used for balancing mind, body and spirit. Searching for labyrinths in a country of their choice, students also use globes, atlases, and webquest to discover labyrinth locations around the world. By tracing mazes and labyrinths, students begin to discover differences (mazes have dead-ends and blind alleys to confuse, labyrinths are single paths allowing one to be reflective).

Then, drawing labyrinths using seed patterns, and creating their own labyrinths using the computer program, Paint, extends the experiences in preparation for walking a canvas labyrinth as a culminating event. When students share their impressions through drawings, writings and comments after the labyrinth walk, the insights are often moving, profound, and surprising.

Additionally, fifth grade students use a storyboard template to guide their planning as they prepare to share their favorite book using Frames. This simple program works like a flipbook, as students create an animated movie, generating illustrations, and adding sound and music to enhance their book trailer.

THE RESULTS

Some examples of the great work our students have done include:

• creating a rap about Accelerated Reader (AR), which they performed, filmed, edited, and presented to their classmates;

• demonstrating for parents the use of a shared wiki from their Egypt project;

• student/ grandparent pairs sharing in an interview -- WIWAB/WIWAG (When I Was A Boy/Girl) -- using questions the students had prepared in advance, talking together on PhotoBooth, discovering each other in new ways, and honoring the legacy of shared experiences.

These few sample activities give a flavor of a new curriculum as it develops: an integration of trade non-fiction and fiction with texts and classroom lessons, supplementing with cameras, internet, and computer programs, helping to expand educational opportunities for our students.

We’re excited by the enthusiasm we see:

• increasing activity in the Media Center;

• more parent involvement with books and computers;

• greater numbers of books checked out;

• deepening interest in non-fiction (especially poetry and folktales, but also sports and animals);

• strengthening teacher use of classroom computers;

• expansion of assignments using both books and computers to maximize learning potential.

Final products are often available on a loop, displayed on screen in the Media Center during parent open house and conference sessions, and at years end. Students regularly bring their families to “show off” the Media Center. They want their families to view what they’re imagining and producing -- a satisfying moment for all participants.

*****

Meribeth Shank is a Florida native who writes for children, reviews children’s books for Family magazine in Miami (www.familymagazine.biz), teaches occasional classes on Writing Books for Children, is a certified Labyrinth Facilitator, and earned her BA in Elementary Education from Goshen College (IN), and MFA in Writing for Children from Vermont College. You can also find her on the web at: http://meribeths.blogspot.com

To Market, To Market

Twelve reactions to my latest nonfiction work:
• “[This] made me quite teary. [I]t’s a beautiful [story], and very nicely told”
• “A great conversation piece, and I think boys would particularly like it”
• “I have to say, I think the story is fantastic”
• “Not only is [the] story an interesting, little-known slice of history, but the writing is quite lovely as well”
• “We all had very positive reactions to it overall. What we all really loved, and what I am sure appeals to you, is that it is a war story but it’s one about reconciliation. That’s really both a lovely and unusual notion”
• “I have read the story several times, and it is an unusual one with lots of good themes and excitement”
• “[A] lovely paean to peace coming out of war”
• “I was very moved”
• “Compelling and well told”
• “I was fascinated by this story of forgiveness and redemption. It’s so touching!”
• “Haunting”
• “There’s no question this has some compelling marketing hooks—and it’s a pretty unbelievable story in the first place”

I would be proud to say that these twelve comments were reactions to MY latest nonfiction work. But this is actually the way that Marc Tyler Nobleman started off a very thought-provoking post at his own blog.

A little later in the piece, he revealed that each reaction came from a children’s book editor—who was rejecting his manuscript. It wasn’t that they were afraid to take a chance on a newcomer; Nobleman has written many, many books including the highly lauded Boys of Steel: The Creators of Superman. So, why? Doubtless many reasons, but he was often told that nonfiction—especially nonfiction about someone who is not a household name—doesn’t sell.

Okay, it’s no news that the economy is in trouble and if that weren’t affecting publishing, the changes in technology still would be. No news at all. But Nobleman's post isn’t whining about it. Instead he created his own news—and hopefully a bit of buzz to pitch and call attention to the story he loves and wants to tell in print.

He turned to illustrators—some kids, some old pros with hundreds of books among them. He asked them to create covers for his book. There are twelve on his blog (interestingly, the same number as listed rejections). You can go to the link below to see them all. Since I’m just picking one to share here, I'm loyally going for the cover by Tim Bush, who illustrated my own All in Just One Cookie.

I'll let Marc tell the rest of his own story at the link below. But at the end, he closes with two questions:

Librarians: Is this a book you can see adding to your collection?

Editors: Is this a book you can see?

For me, Marc’s post, http://noblemania.blogspot.com/2011/09/picture-book-for-sale.html, also raises many more:

What about the stories that need to be told precisely because they are about people, who aren't household names but perhaps should be because they came out of mist to be heroes or do the decent thing? People like, say, you or me or the kid that is reading the book?

What is the author’s changing role in these crazy transitional times? First it was just creator; now our roles are equal parts promoters and “publisizers.” The Internet also gives Marc and all of us a platform for another additional role. But what is that role and what will it entail?

And, what will happen when the iPad (RIP Steve Jobs) and its equivalents make illustrated books a realistic digital commodity; how will that shift the roles of publishers and authors even more? What are some of the best case scenarios?

Come on guys, do we have a shot at a discussion here?

A Book By Any Cover?

Happy Passover! And almost Happy Easter!

I am taking this day to talk about something related to my post last month: art. This month it's about covers, and specifically the covers of two of my books--Celebrate Passover and Celebrate Easter. First of all let me just say this is not some sneaky way of getting you to buy my books. Since Passover has already begun and Easter is just days away, it's too late for this year. If I were a truly savvy marketer I would have written this post a month ago. But I'm not that savvy. Not even slightly. This came about because I took out the books to bring them to the family seder (o.k., just one of the books, guess which one?) and remembered that they changed the covers before they put them in paperback. Can you guess why?

Above is the cover of the hardcover edition of my Passover book.

Below is the cover of the paperback edition, out about a year later:

Why the change?

Here's a hint, by way of my book about Easter. Hardcover:

And the paperback:

First of all, although National Geographic was amazingly great to work with on these books, and I had a lot of input on the photographs inside (Lori Epstein, the photo editor, is a genius, so she didn't need much of my input at all!), they changed the covers without telling me.

That's fine, really it is, because they know what they're doing.

The hardcovers were mainly marketed to grown-ups--teachers, librarians, parents. And the softcovers to kids. So the covers reflect that marketing. This just brings home once again that the job of writers and publishers of children's books is different from the job of those who make books for grown-ups. We are aiming at more than one audience at a time. In this case the wizards at National Geographic decided to kind of split the market with the different editions.

Which makes me wonder, what's next? How will the new technology affect the way publishers design the different editions of our books? Will e-books look different graphically than paper books? What about books for Ipads and Iphones vs books for Kindles and Shmindles? I think this is an especially interesting question for nonfiction books and especially for us--the writers, publishers and gatekeepers of nonfiction for children.

I think this is one of those cases when technology will change the way books are written. We've known for a while that once electronic books are the norm we will no longer need picture books with a certain number of pages. But what about the look of these books, from the covers on in? What do you think?

By the way, I am part of a panel at ALA this summer called the Nonfiction Book Blast. Other I.N.K.ers are on it, too. I wrote a post yesterday for that panel's blog that might interest you. You can go here to see it.

Agents--Agents of Change?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Guess what? It pays to stay flexible.

Marketing 2.0

As we begin the second decade of our century, I’m still back in the first decade, technologically speaking.

I did enter the blog world several years ago thanks to this esteemed blog. And I’m making progress: on my recent author trip to Africa I finally abandoned my old acetate overheads for powerpoint. I now trust the software and hardware not to fail, and they didn’t.

But my publisher wants more for my new book, due out April 1. [Full disclosure: it’s middle grade fiction: All the Worlds’ a Stage: A Novel in Five Acts (Holiday House.)] Their Author Appearance Questionnaire asks for the old-fashioned contact information, like email and websites, but also wants my facebook, twitter, and personal blog addresses. Their Note About Social Networking is actually a whole page of information about things like book trailers and linking all the abovementioned data to all those accounts, both mine and the publishers’.

I signed up for facebook a while ago but have ignored it. Until now. I don’t have a personal blog. And I don’t tweet. But I do have a film editor friend who has offered to help me create a book trailer as an upcoming birthday present.

So here’s where I stop telling you stuff, and ask questions to you authors, editors, librarians, teachers, and general readers. I would love to know your habits and preferences for using social networking to find out about children’s books and authors.

• Where do you look first to get information about authors and their books – their websites or facebook pages?

• Do you friend authors to find out more about their books?

• Do you prefer to look at an author’s general facebook page, or would you prefer a page dedicated to each of his/her books?

• Do you use twitter to give and receive information about books?

• Do you look at book trailers and do they influence what books you will read?

• Do you read more group blogs or individual blogs?

End of quiz.

JANUARY TRAVELOGUE

This month I traveled to ALA in San Diego where I attended a Holiday House reception, and roamed the exhibits, meeting and greeting editors and authors, and filling a wheelie suitcase with ARCs (advance reading copies.) In the evening I met fellow INK blogger Sue Macy (see left) and we talked shop, until Nancy Feresten, VP of Children's Books at National Geographic, showed up whereupon we shouted shop over salsa and chips in a noisy Mexican restaurant.

The following weekend I attended an SCBWI writing retreat at the Santa Barbara Mission. Four grateful editors from the frozen north talked more shop for two days in the warm California sunshine. I spent a day in workshops with Brenda Murray, Senior Nonfiction Editor at Scholastic, and her message to every writer was the same. And it was the message I had gotten the night before from Nancy Feresten at Nat Geo.

To sell these days, nonfiction books must be tied to curricula. So check the state curriculum standards, (e.g. http://www.cde.ca.gov/be/st/ss/) and be sure your content is written for the appropriate level. Perhaps things will ease up in the future, and we can write whatever we like for whatever level we like, but the economy dictates the boundaries these days.

Now, please take my quiz (above) and leave comments, not on facebook or twitter, but right here.

Thanks.

We've Gone Global

This past month I attended an international education convention. There were 63 keynote presentations and 370 sessions from 62 countries. How many different people attended for at least part of the week? 15,028! The total number of session hours (people attending X time in session)—8,372! I met a scientist who studies polar bears with a webcam showing two males frolicking in real time as he spoke! I attended sessions by prominent educators with global themes, leaders in their fields. I met some new people who share interests with me. And I did all of this without leaving my home!!!!! How? It was the first online conference of its kind—The Global Education Conference and it is a glimpse into the future.

All you needed to attend was a computer and access to the internet. The platform for the conference was Elluminate, which allows individual attendees to participate in the sessions and, best of all, records all of them. Staging this conference was an enormous undertaking, the brainchild of Steve Hargadon and Lucy Gray. They produced the conference with the help of over ninety partner organizations and 219 volunteer moderators. Amazingly, it was FREE!

Web 2.0 technology means you can participate from anywhere. I felt that it was very important for Ink Think Tank, to be a presence at this conference. Since the theme of the conference was globally-connected education activities and initiatives two of our authors, Dorothy Hinshaw Patent and April Pulley Sayre, discussed how to cherish nature and the planet. Their session was called, “Everything Is Connected,” and they presented with Dorothy in Hawaii and April in Indiana. I few of us attended the session from our various locations. All I can say is that they did us proud! Their presentation was a perfect follow-up to Steven Amstrup’s earlier session describing the plight of the polar bears that are the “canary in the coal mine” alerting us to the perils of global warming. And if you’re interested in what education needs for the future, I strongly recommend tuning into Dr. Howie DiBlasi speaking on Education, Innovation and Creativity. [Note: to view these sessions you have to download Elluminate software, which runs on Java. (It comes up automatically when you click "play" on the session.) If your cookies are blocked, it will ask you to allow it to be downloaded. I had no problem doing this repeatedly. Also, it takes a few minutes to load a session, so be patient.] The conference website is up permanently and if you click on “Sessions” on the homepage you can see the threads and descriptions to find sessions that interest you. Then you can go to the Recordings page to listen. Not only will you hear some terrific people but you’ll become familiar with the possibilities of net 2.0 for professional development and for students.

I sat in on a number of sessions and went through the catalog carefully. Interestingly there was almost nothing on reading materials for the classroom. There were many sessions about collaborations between students of different countries. At the sessions I attended, I asked the presenters specific questions about what they gave their students to read about the countries they were interacting with. I discovered that it doesn’t occur to them to give their students anything to read besides the assigned textbook (which I was reminded would soon be digital) or magazines. Several presenters had no clue that nonfiction literature for kids even existed!!! (They know about it now :-).) I did find one presenter (Dr.Cris Crissman) who conducts a book club for her graduate students in education on children’s literature (mostly fiction) in Second Life, an online virtual game. We “met” at the conference and followed up later when she gave me a tutorial in Second Life where my Avatar, Vicki Lamplight, chatted with hers, 2B Writer. Avatars can chat via message or audio. (We did both). I am literally entering another world.

At the beginning of each session of the Global Ed conference, the moderator put up a graphic of a map of the world. Attendees could put a dot on the map to show where we each lived. It was extraordinary to watch flashing dots appear all over the world and to be able to hear people speak in real time as if they were in the room with you. As you might imagine, a lot of the sessions were on technology and on collaboration between people all over the globe. It was about possibilities that still have to develop. This kind of interactive global communication technology is a tool and we have yet to see what its impact will be. I make no predictions but if history has taught us anything it’s this: advances in technology do not end war or poverty or ignorance by themselves and they can also be used to the detriment of the human race and the planet. But they don’t go away. Once the genie is out of the bottle, only those who participate have any influence on its use. I am happy to say that we are part of that conversation.

The Internet and My Brain

When I was a kid I could read nonstop all day long. I became so engrossed in a story that my mother could take me shopping and try clothes on me while, all the time, I had my nose in a book. Not any more. Although I can still focus quite well and be oblivious to my surroundings, I can’t seem to do it as long without a break. And the breaks seem to be pretty frequent, every half hour or so. Maybe it’s age. But after reading The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, by Nicholas Carr, I’m convinced otherwise. All the time I spend at my computer is taking its toll.

Nicholas Carr makes a compelling argument about the perils of increased internet use as a cautionary tale, citing scientific studies for all of his premises. Here’s what he says in a nutshell:

1. The brain is plastic. It changes depending on how it is used.
2. Over the history of mankind the brain has developed different skills at different times and has lost some of the skills it previously had.

For example: Before there were books and writing, memory and recall prevailed. Once writing was available, individual recall and memory became less important but books became very important. Books encouraged the skill of deep reading, necessary for following the thoughts of an author who was practicing deep thinking about a topic.

The internet fosters multitasking and develops an addiction for distraction. Memory or the ability to write well, according to protocols of standard English, is no longer as important.

Carr says: “A personal letter written in, say, the nineteenth century bears little resemblance to a personal e-mail or text message written today. Our indulgence in the pleasures of informality and immediacy has led to a narrowing of expressiveness and a loss of eloquence.” ;-)

3. The internet makes all media available at all times through single devices. The genie is out of the bottle. But it may come at a huge price.

Carr says: “The Net grants us instant access to a library of information unprecedented in its size and scope, and it make it easy for us to sort through that library—to find, if not exactly what we were looking for, at least something sufficient for our immediate purposes. What the Net diminishes is ….. the ability to know, in depth, a subject for ourselves, to construct within our own minds the rich and idiosyncratic set of connections that give rise to a singular intelligence.”

4. At first people thought that the Internet would foster learning through hyperlinks. But they were wrong. Carr says: “Many studies comparing straight reading to reading the same material with hyperlinks have shown over and over again that more is retained by straight reading. Links get in the way of learning.” (Note the absence of hyperlinks in this post.)

Students who had access to the internet while at a lecture, even if some of the sites visited during the lecture were on the same topic, retained less of the lecture than students who just listened. The human brain seems to be hard-wired to respond to distraction—probably a survival skill from the prehistoric days of hunting and gathering when paying attention to the unexpected had real survival value. It is the ability to focus and think deeply that must be cultivated and practiced. (Hence the danger implied by the title "The Shallows.")

Carr is afraid that what may be sacrificed in attributing too much power to this tool is the kind of thinking that is most human: the calm attentive mind, empathy and compassion.

This makes me think that, more than ever, in order to educate our kids, they must read about the real world through the stories and points-of-view of the best thinkers and writers available to them. They must read books that embody coherent thought, not snippets of information patched together without any conceptual framework. Let’s hope that enough people understand this before it is too late.

Personally, I’m glad I still have enough of those old-fashioned literacy skills left in me to read and absorb the brilliant thinking of Nicholas Carr. Gotta go, my email just dinged.

Finding books and more by (yes) tweeting

I should resolve to never say never and avoid any future dining upon my own verbiage. Anyway, I joined Twitter in September on a vague impulse. It soon turned out to be a fun way to find all sorts of links to interesting things and interact with people that might be difficult to find otherwise. As a newbie there’s a great deal I don‘t know, but already Twitter is  proving to be an excellent way to find the “headines” and online resources in my interest areas. Tweets may be queries, requests, announcements, observations, mini-rants, or whatever else people want to say in 140 characters or less. 

A few examples (from early October...had to write this post in advance):

Saskateach I am hunting 4 fiction, non fiction books about math. If u have any great books to share I wld appreciate it #mathchat #edchat #elemchat

readingrockets My People: Our video interview with poet, writer & photographer Charles R. Smith, Jr. http://ow.ly/2PER9 #kidlit

RBLib The Cybils, a literary award given by kidlit bloggers, is accepting nominations until October 15: http://www.cybils.com/

thompseg The #elemchat Daily is out - read this Twitter newspaper on http://bit.ly/cHmitK (30 contributions today)

ChildWillRead Vote for the 2010 Educators Tool of the Year (all tech of course!) http://bit.ly/avmGGF #edtech #elemchat #edchat #parenting #lrnchat

The abbreviations and hashtags (such as #edchat) can be off-putting at first, but they serve a purpose, especially the latter. Though you can follow people (receive their tweets on your home page), you have the ability to find anyone talking about particular topics by searching on terms and/or hashtags. For example, a search on alligators brought up this intriguing tweet:

NatGeoSociety What's transforming Florida alligators into mindless #zombies? http://on.natgeo.com/cxHQch #weird #video

Hashtags are abbreviations for a topic area that allow users to find tweets in an instant about, say, education. You can search on multiple tags to narrow down the results. A few of the books and education hashtags I’ve seen so far include:

#authors

#classroom

#ece               early childhood education
#edchat          education chat

#edtech          education technology

#education
#edubk           books about teaching
#elearning      electronic learning
#elemchat      elementary education chat
#elemed         elementary education

#k12
#kedu             kindergarten education
#kidlit             children’s literature
#lessonplans

#librarians

#literacy

#nonfiction

#pblit              picture book literature

#PLN             personal learning network
#STEM          science, technology, engineering, math          

#teacher

#titletalk         about books

#yalit              young adult literature 

Chats such as #edchat are a scheduled event during which bunches of Twitter people chime in on a particular topic. Recently I participated in a #mathchat on the topic “Does ‘mathphobia exist - how do we deal with it?” that garnered quite a few participants. I get the impression that some people use the “chat” hashtags all the time, whether a chat is actually going on or not.

If you haven’t already taken the plunge, try Twitter and see how it may fit into your online experience. And please feel free to follow me @LoreenLeedy.