Getting to “I GET IT!”: Scaffolding in Nonfiction

Charlesbridge nonfiction editor Alyssa Mito Pusey talks about making complex ideas tangible to young readers. This article first appeared in two parts on Melissa Stewart's blog Celebrate Science on February 2 and 3, 2018.

The other day, my seven-year-old asked me what the Big Bang was. Inside, I panicked a little.

Explaining complex, abstract ideas to anyone is difficult. But it’s especially challenging when your audience is a child. Young children have limited prior knowledge, and they think very literally.

In Honor of Family

Photograph by David Schlatter

My first book, At Home in Her Tomb: Lady Dai and the Ancient Chinese Treasures of Mawangdui, describes a woman and her elaborate tomb─the memorial created by a grieving family. Writing this book was not only a fascinating intellectual endeavor for me, but also a personal journey of connection to my extended family and our ancestors.

After growing up in China, my parents immigrated to America in 1946. My brothers and I were born in the Northeast, and then we moved to the Midwest when I was three years old. So I grew up far from the land of my heritage. 

But every summer we drove from Kansas City to Toronto for reunions with our extended family. (My father's parents and siblings had also immigrated to the USA or to Canada.) There I was aware of belonging to a large family, a long history, and a complex culture beyond my everyday life. I was surrounded by my grandparents, uncles, and aunts chatting in Cantonese while I played with my cousins. I was introduced to dimsum—small plates of juicy dumplings, steamed buns, and other mouthwatering treats—plucked from carts rolling between a restaurant's giant round tables. I remember my grandfather giving me candy from a secret cache high on his closet shelf, but I also sensed that the entire family treated him as the most honored member.

When I was a mother with two young children, my own mother died. My parents always being there had been my secure foundation, but that shifted with her death, leaving a hole of grief and vulnerability in my life.

In November 1999, I traveled with my father to Taiwan and China. Serendipitously I stumbled upon a special exhibit of Han dynasty artifacts at the National Palace Museum in Taipei. This was the first time I had ever heard of the three tombs of Mawangdui, but I was immediately hooked on learning more about them. Who were the mother, father, and son buried in the tombs? Why would their family bury them with so many treasures, including personal items like the mother's cosmetics case, the father's signature seals, and the son's zither? 

The next week, we journeyed to the southern Chinese village where my father's family has lived since the late 1500's. Along with two dozen relatives living in or near the village, we visited the cemetery where four generations of our ancestors are buried. In front of their niches, we lit candles and incense, offered food and drink, and burned mock money and paper clothes—modern versions of rituals performed for thousands of years. I was struck by the realization of being connected to these people whom I'd never met, yet were literally part of me.

After lighting candles and incense, we set out food and drink in front of our ancestor's niches.

Three years later in June 2002, my father took me, my brothers, and our families to visit his homeland. We entered the Forbidden City, inspected the First Emperor's terracotta troops, sailed down the Yangzi River, and saw where my parents had lived and been schooled.  

I took a side trip to Changsha to see the Mawangdui tomb site and the many artifacts in the Hunan Provincial Museum. By then, I had studied enough about Mawangdui to be completely agog at seeing the silk-draped body of Lady Dai and the cavernous tomb of her son.

The following day twenty-one of us from America and ten of us from China met at the same cemetery I had visited before. My daughters, nieces, and nephews participated for their first time in the traditional rituals of lighting candles and incense, offering food and drink, and burning mock money and paper clothes. I marveled at the continuity of life that bound us together across centuries and continents: four generations of living descendants paying our respects to four generations of ancestors. As I watched the smoke from the burning paper rise into the sky, I saw an image in my mind of an endless queue of our ancestors winding across the cemetery.

It is believed that burning mock money and other paper goods sends them to the ancestors.

 

 
Through seeing artifacts from the Mawangdui tombs and performing rituals at my ancestors' graves, I could imagine the family of Lady Dai expressing their love and respect in creating an elaborate tomb for her. I could identify with her family through my experiences of missing my own mother and of honoring my ancestors. And through learning about Lady Dai and her world, I understand more of the history and meaning behind the rituals my family performs to commemorate our loved ones.

*****

Posted by Christine Liu-Perkins, author of At Home in Her Tomb, which releases on April 8, 2014. Find out more about her at www.christineliuperkins.com.

Melissa Stewart's "Aha Moment"

It was 1996. My first children’s book had just been accepted for publication, and I was headed to East Africa with a group of scientists to do research for a second book. Life was good—or so it seemed.

As friends and family heard about my success, I received a flood of phone calls. They congratulated me, of course. But they also asked some unexpected questions.

“So now are you going to write a real book? You know, one for adults.”

“It’s nonfiction? That’s great. But wouldn’t you rather write fiction?”

These questions confused me. They made me wonder and worry. Was I headed down the wrong path? Was writing for children a waste of time? Was nonfiction less important than fiction?

Luckily, my journey halfway around the world gave me the perspective—and the answers—I needed. 

One night around a campfire at the edge of Tanzania’s Serengeti National Park, Ann Prewitt, an anthropologist and educator from the American Museum of Natural History, said she was fascinated by "aha moments"—seemingly small experiences that change the course of a person’s life. She asked the circle of scientists if they could recall such events from their own lives.  

When my turn came, I described exploring a wooded area in western Massachusetts with my dad and brother when I was eight years old. As we hiked, my dad asked lots of questions: 

“Why do stone walls run through the middle of the woods?”

“Why do sassafras trees have three kinds of leaves?”

“Why don’t chipmunks build their nests in trees like squirrels?”

He wanted us to think about our surroundings, and he knew a guessing game would be more engaging than a lecture. 

As we reached the top of a hill, my dad stopped and scanned the landscape. Then he asked if we noticed anything unusual about that area of the woods.

My brother and I looked around.

We looked at each other.

We shook our heads.

But then, suddenly, the answer came to me. “All the trees seem kind of small,” I said.

My dad nodded. He explained that there had been a fire in the area about twenty-five years earlier. All the trees had burned and many animals had died, but over time, the forest had recovered.

Why was that an "aha moment" for me? Because I instantly understood the power of nature. I also realized that a field, a forest, any natural place has stories to tell, and I could discover those stories just by looking.

As the firelight flickered across the African savanna and I described my childhood insights, heads nodded all around me. I was among a new group of friends, kindred spirits who understood my fascination with the natural world.

They knew why I didn’t write fiction.

They knew why children were my primary audience.

And suddenly, so did I. It was another "aha moment."

Now, 17 years later, I’ve written more than 150 children’s books about science and nature, including my newest title No Monkeys, No Chocolate (Charlesbridge, 2013). Some people still ask me why I’ve never written a book for adults. Others want to know if I’ll ever write a novel. But these questions no longer bother me.

 

I know that my personal mission, the purpose of my writing, is to give today’s children their own "aha moments" in the natural world—the same gift my dad gave me on that special walk through the Massachusetts woods.

Posted by Melissa Stewart, author of No Monkeys, No Chocolate. Visit her online at www.melissa-stewart.com. 

On Waterdogs and Renewed Faith

This is a story about a Hellbender. What the heck is a Hellbender, you might ask? It's a nightmarish creature, twisting, bending, writhing in your dreams, sent straight from that netherworld from which it gets its name.

Actually . . . it's a giant salamander. Cryptobrachus alleganiensis is its scientific name. That other, weirdish name comes from obscure origins. One explanation is that early settlers to the eastern foothills and mountains of the U.S., upon discovering the frightful-looking creature, looked to Biblical references for an appropriate appellation.

Full-grown Hellbenders can grow to over two feet long, head to tail, making it the largest salamander in North America and the third largest in the world (just behind the Chinese and Japanese Giant Salamanders).

Hellbenders are in that "extra-ordinary animal" category, which so fired-up my imagination as a kid. It shares the company in my mind with the likes of the newly discovered (thought to be extinct) prehistoric fish, the Coelacanth (See-la-canth), the Black Rhinoceros (relatively unchanged since Miocene times--a living prehistoric animal), and the rare, jungle-dwelling Okapi (in appearance, half-zebra/half-giraffe). The living Hellbenders today are relatively unchanged since they first evolved millions of years ago. They represent those transitional creatures, halfway between fish and mammal, when Life was just getting a foot on the ground...so to speak.

Three years ago, my wife and I bought a little property in Etowah, North Carolina, near the French Broad River. Etowah gets its name from the tribe of Native Americans who once lived and prospered in the southeastern United States. Each morning I get to watch my kids run up to catch the bus with lush, green mountains towering in the distance. On our little stretch we have a donkey farm, a cow pasture, and a meadow full of goats--a long, long way from Brooklyn.

But I have to admit, with all my talk of finally "living the good life," I was starting to get restless. I began to miss the excitement of New York and started to get depressed. Worse still, the recession hit and my new-found career in children's books took a huge hit. I lost a major contract. Seemingly, the rug was pulled out from under me overnight.

I wasn't so happy about the turn of events, but I tried to make the best of it. To bring in more income, I began teaching as an adjunct professor of drawing at Brevard College, a wonderful school near the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, of which Pisgah Forest is part. I also began teaching art at Blue Ridge Community College. With very little illustration work coming my way, I returned to my "first loves" of painting and sculpture, which brought some much needed relief.

One day in late summer, as feelings of boredom and depression started to creep back in, I listlessly went on the internet and began to research my newly adopted community. I came across our Etowah Chamber of Commerce page and found a little pdf document listing natural resources, land development proposals, etc. There, I came across a list of native animal species. Going down the list, I stopped short at one entry. I stared intensely at the computer screen . . .

Cryptobranchus Aleganiensis - Status: threatened species. Location: local streams. Common name: Hellbender.

I let out a holler of delight. Here was something I could hang my imagination on! Out there, right in my own new "backyard" in fact, was an extraordinary creature. I just needed to find it. I looked at local maps, trying to discern where in the environs of Etowah one would start looking. There were swampy sections on private land. How would I get to them?

I decided I would enlist the aid of a local naturalist. I called up the Western North Carolina Nature Center. Yes, there were indeed Hellbenders around, they informed me. It was illegal to catch one--if you were lucky enough to find one. Once in a while, local fly-fishermen hooked one accidentally. They called them "water dogs." They mistakenly think that Hellbenders are a threat to their fly-fishing--they aren't. The Nature Center had special permission to keep one in an aquarium at the center. I was welcome to come by and have a look at it. I passed on the offer.

I scoured the internet for more information on Hellbenders, getting a better idea of the type of environment they preferred. Rocky streams with clear running water were ideal. Hellbenders have lungs, but primarily breathe in oxygen through fleshy folds of skin that stick out from their sides. There were a lot of clear running streams in Pisgah Forest, just down the street from us.

Prime Hellbender territory

As October arrived, I held an open studio, inviting new acquaintances and friends to view my latest paintings and sculpture. Talk went from discussing my artworks to the terrible economy, at which point I nudged it over to Hellbenders. To my surprise, a son of one of my neighbors had indeed seen one: "One summer we saw a couple of them, over by the fish hatchery." The fish hatchery, along the Davidson River, supplies all the brown and rainbow trout to the mountain streams for the local fly-fishing--considered some of the finest in North Carolina. It was October, but the cold weather had yet to hit us. And I had read in my research that Hellbenders could handle cold weather.

So one day in late October, Christopher, Sarah, and I hopped into the car and headed over to the fish hatchery. "We're going on a Hellbender hunt!" I declared with gusto.

Trampling through the undergrowth, we found a promising spot, stepped gingerly into the icy Davidson, and began our search. Because of their size, Hellbenders need big rocks, under which they make their home.

After carefully lifting a half dozen good-sized boulders, my back started to give out. This business of Hellbender hunting was not going to be easy. Through chattering teeth, I called off the search. I was forced to cough up a couple of hot chocolates for the lost time and frozen toes.

A couple more fruitless searches left me feeling quite discouraged. I began to give up hope of ever seeing one in the wild. Giving in at last, I headed over to the Nature Center to have a look at their specimen. In the small aquarium display was the object of my passion--hiding in an artificial log (Hellbenders are primarily nocturnal animals). Its long tail hung out limply, like a swollen, wagging tongue saying, "Nah, Nah, Nah, Nah--that's all you're gonna get!" I left . . . even more discouraged than before.

Winter came and I abandoned my search and thoughts of ever finding my fabled creature in the wilds of North Carolina. Besides, I had taken on four courses in two separate colleges--I was busy. The recession, seemingly, was just getting started, and was showing no signs of letting up. My wife and I were doing everything we could to keep our house. Others less fortunate were losing theirs.

Spring finally came, and visions of my kids splashing around in a local waterhole came to mind. During one of my drawing classes I asked some of the local students where the best waterholes were for swimming. One student, with the delightful name of Rainbow, had a secret spot that only the locals knew about. She gave me a description of how to get there: "And there's this big, wonderful cave to explore," she added. With images of new exploration in mind, thoughts of Hellbenders naturally rose up and I asked about them. "Oh sure, we've seen one there," Rainbow replied.

So with my wife and kids in tow, I resumed my Hellbender search. But I must have gotten my location info from Rainbow mixed up--no big cave, no Hellbenders, lots of climbing over rocks, more hot chocolates. Next class I clarified my "intel" with Rainbow. We went over the landmarks again, slowly this time. "Give it another try," she consoled.

This time, only Sarah and Christopher were game--probably eager for more hot chocolate. We found what looked like the spot along the river and trotted down through the undergrowth. This spot seemed to be different. There was a very nice feel about it. The steep rock walls coming down to the shallow Davidson were covered with a pleasing green moss. The water was crystal clear in parts, and a deep green where it went deeper. "This must be the water hole," I thought to myself. There was a magical feeling about the place.

"There it is, Daddy!" hollered Sarah as we walked along the river. On the opposite side of the river was a rocky precipice that jutted out like a natural arch, more at home in Utah's Arches National Park than the Blue Ridge Mountains. We took off our shoes and socks off and rolled up our pants. Holding hands, we made our way over the slick stones underneath us, in the swiftly running water of the stream. "I wouldn't call this a cave," I thought to myself, "but very impressive, Rainbow."

After exploring the arch and crossing back over, we examined the stones in the clear, shallow sections of the river. I looked long and hard--but no Hellbenders. Sure did seem like the ideal spot, though.

So the spring blossoms came out early this year, and I found myself feeling rejuvenated. "As rough as the past few years have been," I thought to myself, "I'm going to keep my spirits up and keep my positive attitude. God, I'm up for whatever you have to offer next."

I was showing my paintings and sculpture at Asheville Regional Airport and had been enjoying teaching. The school year was wrapping up nicely. I said my goodbyes to my students. I thanked Rainbow again for the waterhole tip.

This past Sunday afternoon it was just Christopher and myself at home. "Why don't we go out for a drive?" I offered. We headed out towards the Blue Ridge Parkway. I was really craving that "majestic view" feeling. Christopher, on the other hand, wanted to stomp around in the river. I shrugged off my "craving" and off we went to the river. By this time, the "secret spot" had become our chosen destination. We waded across, as usual, to the arch and sat in its stony crevice. We watched in wonder as all sorts of critters trooped up and down its mossy sides.

Stepping back into the river, Christopher's long pants had slipped down into the water. I implored him to keep them up, to no avail. He laughed with delight as step-by-step he became completely immersed in the cool waters of the mountain stream. Surprisingly, the water wasn't nearly as cold as one would have thought--it was overcast that day.

We decided to stay in the river a while longer, making our way back across the slippery stones. The water was only about a foot deep and was crystal clear. I looked back at Christopher as he dunked his head completely under water and lifted it back up with a spray of water and a yelp of delight. When I turned back to continue on, I caught something in the corner of my eye and froze in my tracks. There, directly in front of me, barely camouflaged amongst the stones at my feet, was a Hellbender. Like the old saying goes, "Just when you least expect it . . . "

I was mesmerized. I couldn't believe what I was looking at. For one brief but lasting moment, I was catapulted into another time and world. I imagine if I had stumbled across a living dinosaur, the feeling would have been the same. Its wrinkly skin-folds waved in the flow of the stream. The color of its skin was extraordinary, a golden ochre with greenish tint, speckled with brown. The creature was snuggled, form-fitted to the stones, unmoving. I made out large claws helping it cling to the stones. It was huge. I'd estimate about sixteen inches long (head to tail), and it was plumper than I had imagined--very sturdy looking.

"Chris! Come over quick!" I hollered. Now I had a witness--this wasn't a hallucination. Christopher gasped and stepped back. I told him not to be frightened, that the Hellbender was harmless. They have a toxic slime covering them, but that's about it. (I didn't realize until I checked my facts again that Hellbenders actually can inflict a painful bite!) It remained unmoving as the clear water glided over its skin-folds. I decided to give it a prompt . . .

Grabbing a stick nearby, I gave it a little nudge. That was all it took. The Hellbender began slowly moving across the stones, grabbing with its formidable claws and pulling itself along. Each time it settled, it blended right in with the rocks, having near-perfect camouflage. Its head could easily pass for a large stone. The long, fat tail, set in vertical alignment to its body, was a very efficient rudder. A Hellbender's diet consists mainly of crayfish, minnows, and aquatic insects which it hunts amongst the river stones. They live underwater all their lives.

For a number of minutes, we watched as our Hellbender slowly made its way to the deeper part of the river. Then came the moment when it pulled itself up into the swift current of the stream. Using its strong tail and undulating body, it hovered in mid-stream, directly in front of us. Then it relaxed its efforts and descended into the murkier depths. Chris and I looked at each other and smiled--mission accomplished.

As I described the experience to friends, I could see that same light start to sparkle in their eyes that I get from the young ones. We all agreed: a little something special is needed every once in a while to keep us young at heart. For some, it's seeing a shooting star. Others, like a good friend who's a meteorologist, it's chasing thunderstorms and tornadoes. For my father, the mere mention of the extremely rare (now considered extinct) Ivory-Billed Woodpecker lit up his eyes and set him to find one. Alas, he didn't live to make his discovery.

For me, one of the moments was my recent encounter with a rare, giant salamander, remnant of a bygone era. My Hellbender "set things right again" for me--renewing my faith in the wonders of this planet, making life an adventure and a pleasure.

Portrait of a Hellbender

P.S. Like all amphibians, Hellbenders have been "the canary in the coal mine" for how pollution and chemical run-off affect our clear running streams. Fortunately, our Hellbender showed no tell-tale signs of deformity. Healthy Hellbender = healthy river. If you find a Hellbender, have a wonderful, gentle encounter with them, but then please leave them to their river world.


Posted by David Sheldon, author and illustrator of Into the Deep.

Going to Mars

It was the summer of 2007 and I had a book to write. The time had come--no more stalling: "Let's wait a little longer and see what happens up on Mars." That had been my excuse for two years. The Mars Exploration Rovers had landed in January 2004, their mission planned to last ninety days. Then I was to write the book. But the rovers didn't break down or even stop, and the mission went on, and on, and on, and on (and it's still going as I write this in 2010).

In 2007, I had plenty to write about. Tens of thousands of images and an immense amount of scientific data had been sent to Earth, and scientists were forming a detailed geologic picture of the planet. All along I had followed the mission, checking in on the progress of the rovers via NASA's websites, press releases, and publications; reading scientific and technical articles; and devouring the latest books by Jim Bell and Steve Squyres (the main guys behind the mission), calling them at their offices at Cornell University.

But enough--surfing, reading, talking, thinking--it was time to write! Trouble was, I had just experienced a major life change that was only going to get more challenging. In June 2007, my family and I moved to New York State after two years in Anchorage, Alaska. My father was terminally ill and needed care. The moment I stepped off the one-way Alaska Airlines flight into Newark, I became his primary caregiver. (Did I mention that I had four children--ages 8 to 18 at the time--who were not thrilled about the move?) Before confronting the overwhelming task of registering children in new schools, organizing medical care, and learning everything there is to know about catheter bags, my family and I went to the beach for a one week vacation. I brought along my Moleskin© with the idea of beginning my book. This is what I wrote:

I am on an island, on a beach, fishing. The sun has set, but the sky is still pink on the edge. A bell rings constantly from the point of the land that curves into the sea. People line the shore, some wade into the channel, casting into the darkness. Behind me the Moon is up, a crescent in the sky, and nearby a bright dot shines steadily--Venus, I think. Mars is somewhere out there, too. I am trying to imagine myself there, on a distant land, where there is no ocean and where the daytime sky is always pink. If I were there, I'd be bundled in a spacesuit with no chance of actually touching the land with my fingers, or feeling its bitter dry wind in my face. So, how do I write about this distant place--my only reference the postcard photographs taken by little cars that carry cameras and rove its surface? How do I write about a place where I have never been, where no one has ever been?

S0 the next day, while sitting on the beach, these words popped into my head: cars on mars. That was it, of course! That was the title--it was so obvious, yet it had taken more than two years to materialize in my mind. Suddenly, I had something familiar to work with. . .the rovers were like cars on a road trip. And I'd had a lot of experience with road trips--Colorado to New York, New York to California, California to New York, all of Ireland, and the biggie--New York to Alaska on the Alaska Highway, through British Columbia and the Yukon.

As one always does before a road trip, I made lists:

things to take on a road trip
good tunes for a road trip
snacks and drinks for a road trip
signs encountered on a road trip
things to do before leaving on a road trip
famous phrases containing the word "road"
things people say when on a road trip

I sketched out a book dummy, complete with talking rockets, signs, arrows, and a new-car sticker (now that was shocking). My Moleskin© was filling up.

But when we returned home from the beach I was immediately confronted with the enormity of my task (my father, not the book). My father, although 86 years old, gravely ill with prostate cancer, heart failure, kidney failure, and dementia, informed me that he was not planning on dying.

Writing Cars on Mars became my escape from the demands, complexities, frustrations, fatigue, anger, and grief of caring for my father. When I sat down at the computer, I felt like I was buckling my seat belt and leaving everything behind. What a grand road trip it was! Spirit and Opportunity were my cars, my personal ride. We traversed another world, discovering rocks and soil named after girl baseball stars from the forties (my father was the one who taught me to love the game), climbing hills (my father was the one who taught me how to drive a stick), and descending into craters (he also taught me how to ski). I spent three weeks in a coffee shop (no kids, high speed internet, and endless coffee) pouring over the astonishing high-resolution digital photos taken by the rovers to the soundtrack of The Grateful Dead, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and The Rolling Stones (just like a real road trip).

I worked on the manuscript into the spring of 2008. I'd transported my father to the hospital and doctors' dozens of times for falls, catheter bag complications, heart failure, and blood transfusions. On the way home from one appointment I pulled into the grocery store and ordered him to stay in the car (he never liked being told what to do). I handed him a copy of the manuscript and told him to read it. I knew he would get bored quickly and then get out of the car and wander into the road, so I raced through the store. When I returned he was still buckled in his seat reading. "Did you write this?" he asked. When I said I did, he asked again, "Did you write this?" (Dementia is like that.) Then he said, "This is fantastic. You wrote this? This is amazing. I hope you get paid for this."

When I was eighteen my father told me I couldn't be a writer. "They don't make any money," he had said. It took me a few years to accept that I didn't want to be a doctor or a lawyer (like he was)--but to be a writer, as I had dreamed. Cars on Mars: Roving the Red Planet was published eight months after my father died. It was my fifteenth book. But I will always think of it as the book that made me a real writer--in the eyes of my father. That means a lot.



Posted by Alexandra Siy, author of Cars on Mars, Sneeze, Mosquito Bite, and Footprints on the Moon.

The Recipe for an Ocean Soup

Once a park ranger, always a park ranger. Fresh out of college, I worked as a National Park Service ranger. I loved "teaching" or interpreting natural history to park visitors.

One August almost ten years ago, our Vermont family piled into our beat-up Toyota Previa van and drove the six hours to the coast of Maine. We landed in a tiny coastal harbor in a village called Blue Hill. The rental cottage overlooked a narrow tidal inlet. We would be there for the week. E.B. White, the author of many books including Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and Strunk and White's Elements of Style, lived in Brooklin, Maine, just up the road.

The tide pools at the edge of this little Maine cape would provide the inspiration for one of my children's books many years later. A half-mile section of tide pools spanned our front yard, less than 100 feet from the deck of the rental house. At low tide, mid tide, and high tide, I would go exploring. I'm a Vermonter. We have no ocean. So this was like Disneyland for a naturalist.

I'd often take our two daughters, Hayley, 12, and Devon, 10, to investigate the pools. We'd creep over the rocks and peer into the still water. The life in the quiet, salty pools fired my imagination. It was like looking into someone's living room. Everyone was home: anemones, barnacles, starfish (now called sea stars), crabs, sculpins, sea urchins. For five days I watched their comings and goings, prying into their private lives. I scribbled notes. I took photographs. I stayed long after the girls got bored. I'd studied tide pool ecology in a Field Biology course in college a million years ago, so this felt like meeting up with old friends.

As a writer, you have to be ready for inspiration when it shows its face. We returned to Vermont, shook the sand out of our sneakers, and stored our beach gear in the barn. And then every morning for the next two weeks I woke at five, went to my desk, and wrote poems about tide pool creatures. I browsed field guides. I stared at the shells we'd collected. Sniffed the salty carcass of a sea fan. And with the promise to myself that I would keep B.I.C (Butt In Chair) until I had written something, I began to hear the voices of the tide pool inhabitants.

I wanted Ocean Soup to work on two levels: poems that were entertaining and educational, and solid factual information that would enlighten and expand awareness about a beautiful and threatened habitat. Besides a glossary and further resources to explore, I wrote brief factoids about each critter.

I don't know exactly how and when Ocean Soup became poems rather than straight nonfiction text, but the writing emerged as poems right from the start. And I knew that they had to be funny. I wanted the creatures to speak for themselves. A starfish with attitude. A sea urchin proud of its spines. A blue mussel tired of being pushed around. I envisioned the sculpin first as Fagin in Oliver! and I just knew that Hairy Doris, a sea slug, was Mrs. Doubtfire.

Shortly after completing the book, I began "performing" some of the Ocean Soup poems in conferences around the country. They were so well received, I thought there might be an opportunity to take it further. During a conversation with my savvy and tech-loving nephew, an idea was born to videotape me performing the poems in an actual tide pool. So on a warm weekend in late August, we drove three hours to Odiorne Point in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.


The filming of the Ocean Soup videos was a total blast. My wife, Heather, held the cue cards and boom microphone and my nephew, Sasha, filmed the action with an HD digital camera. I dressed as a pirate, and English school boy, a well-endowed hussy, a nightclub performer. I poked around thrift shops and found a dapper white and blue seersucker jacket. We filmed in morning and late afternoon light. The staff at Seacoast Science Center were a great help suggesting locations to shoot and even providing us with some "tame" tide pool critters.

I feel like this book, these poems, have taken on a life almost all their own. I love Mary Peterson's colorful and playful illustrations. They complement my text perfectly. And to cap it all off, I'm very proud of the dynamic and whimsical website we've developed at www.oceansoupbook.com. So from the first time I peered into a marine tide pool all those years ago, to the creative energies I poured into the writing, performing, and promoting of the tide pool poems, what a long, fun trip it's been.


Posted by Stephen R. Swinburne, author of Ocean Soup.
Watch Steve's Ocean Soup videos here!