A Red Thread

I was born and grew up in a very small town in the west of Ireland. We were lucky to have a good library. I can't remember joining but I can't remember ever not being a member--so I guess I joined early!

I certainly remember using the library a lot--we didn't have a bookshop in town (though I think I remember the toyshop did stock some Enid Blytons--my mother used to buy me one if I was good at the dentist!) so, even though my parents were teachers and readers, we didn't have that many books.

By the time I was about 10, I had read every children's book in the library, some many times over, and the wonderful librarian, Mrs. Downey, suggested that if my mother approved, she would allow me to have an adult card. Surprisingly my mother said yes--probably knowing that Mrs. Downey would monitor everything I borrowed, which she did. But, in those days before teen and young adult publishing, the adult ticket provided an essential bridge to adult literature--and I did discover some wonderful adult writers like Liam O Flathairte who were perfectly accessible to a young reader. I also borrowed lots of craft books--I don't remember ever making anything, I just looked at the images and fantasised!

Reading was such a joy for me--an escape, an inspiration, educational and challenging, mind-blowing and thought-provoking. It was no surprise that I went on to study English at university and to specialise in Children's Literature as part of my post-graduate teaching studies.

After spending a few years teaching, like so many of my peers in the 1980s, I left Ireland to find work and spent the next 14 years working in children's publishing--starting out as a desk editor, working up to being a publisher, and eventually starting my own small publishing list in 1998. After a very painful takeover and redundancy, I found myself working freelance doing a mix of consulting, writing, editing and project managing.

I have a friend in Amsterdam who uses the expression 'red thread.' She says that a red thread connects all the little parts of your life--things that seem oddities while you're experiencing them often end up later to be significant steps on the way to somewhere else. Well, one of the things I did while I worked in publishing was some voluntary work for a group called the Working Group Against Racism in Children's Resources--how's that for a snappy title! It was made up of three groups--a book group, a toy group and a child development group (which looked at training materials for childcare workers and teachers). We met on Saturdays, developed training courses and materials we could offer to publishers, librarians and teachers; did training; reviewed books and published booklists and sets of criteria so professionals had guidelines pointing out things to look out for in order to both avoid selecting books which could offend or damage self esteem and to confidently select books which positively represented children from a range of backgrounds.

The Book Group was made up of a wonderful range of librarians, writers, illustrators, photographers, reviewers, editors, publishers, teachers and parents from a huge range of backgrounds. I made some fabulous friends during the seven years I worked with the Group and, even after I'd left, often consulted with them when issues arose on books I was developing.

Not long after I was made redundant, I was telling an old friend from this group (herself a librarian) about some work I was doing at a local school. She was surprised to hear I was working directly with children again after so long and asked if I would be interested in a position which had come up in her library.

The position was that of Community Librarian with the government's Sure Start programme (which is similar to the US Head Start). The job would involve doing a lot of outreach work with disadvantaged families and encouraging them to come to the local library--where I was to set up rhyme times and family reading groups. I applied, went for an interview, and in April 2003 became Sure Start Acton's Community Librarian.

Writing this, I can't believe how all the little bits of my life have come to connect--I think the red thread is one big knot now! I work three mornings a week for Sure Start--I don't need to do as much outreach now, so much of the time is spent running various groups in the library and other venues in the community. I read stories (many from books I've developed in the past), do crafts (all those ideas from my childhood must have been filed away somewhere) and sing nursery rhymes and songs. I find working directly with children in turn inspires my publishing work and I've been doing more and more writing, culminating last year with the publication of Lola at the Library--a pre-school picture book that is both inspired and made necessary by my library work.

I've learned so much from my work--learned to appreciate the opportunities I had as a child and especially the easy access I had to free books in my local library. I realise how much that easy access shaped who I am and enabled what I've managed to achieve. I've become evangelical about helping others to access this same wonderland. I will go anywhere there are mothers and babies or toddlers to sell my message--the local medical centre, the baby clinic, the free milk office...

I come across mothers who've fled warzones or catastrophies or poverty and who have no experience of books being freely available for small children. I have to work hard to persuade them that first of all, books are relevant to small children who don't yet read; then, to encourage them to take young children into the library and reassure them that they will be welcome. On the other side, I've had to work hard with my colleagues to identify and remove the barriers that parents face.

It's not enough to put the multi-lingual 'welcome' poster on the wall and think that does the job. We've had to review our forms and expectations of what kind of ID it's reasonable to expect people to provide.

For example, I recently heard a co-worker explain that she hadn't allowed a woman and her child to join the library on the grounds that "she couldn't be the child's mother--what mother doesn't even know her child's brithday?" Obviously, this worker did not understand that some mothers have children in situations where they don't know what day it is (they quickly learn to invent a birthday to suit the demands of bureaucracy). My experiences have taught me that some mothers don't know when they themselves were born. This is to say nothing of cultures that use a different calendar, making it difficult for people to work out a date of birth that fits our calendar.

We've also learned to be sensitive to signs that a mother can't write. Faced with a complex form, some parents suddenly find they have to rush away with reassurances that they'll bring the form back tomorrow, never to be seen again. However, we've also learned not to assume that providing materials in community languages is the answer--some women learn to read and write in English only, and handing them a picture book in their own language "to read with their children" can be less helpful than we believe...

I could go on, but that would be boring--we all have individual stories and anecdotes we could share. All we can do is try to be alert and sensitive and do our best. What I did decide to do was to write a story about a little girl who loves going to her local library. A picture is worth a thousand words, and this could not be more true in this instance--Rosalind Beardshaw has done THE most gorgeous illustrations and perfectly captures the little girl's enthusiasm. Now I use this book to do some of my work for me--it seems appropriate to have come full circle--everything for me begins and ends with a good book!



Posted by Anna McQuinn, author of Lola at the Library and Lola Loves Stories

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.

Readers at The Tobin School love Charlesbridge

About a month ago, Charlesbridge received some great feedback from the readers whose opinion matters most--children! Ms. Rosalind Pelletier's third and fourth grade classes at The Tobin School in Natick, MA had some wonderful things to say:

Dear Charlesbridge,

I am Erin and I want to say we love your books. I am in third grade at The Tobin School. The books I liked that you published are Different Just Like Me by Lori Mitchell and Diary of a Would-be Princess by Jessica Green. I am inspired by your editing, clear prints, and illustrations. I also like how the books were written. I loved how in the book Different Just Like Me everyone was different and it was okay. I loved Diary of a Would-be Princess because it was hilarious and it taught me a whole lot! I also was surprised when Jillian got the school citizenship award.

You guys and gals have excellent talent.

Sincerely,
Erin

_________________________

Dear Charlesbridge,

Hi. My name is Drew. I am in third grade at The Tobin School. My teacher loves your books! My favorite books are Diary of a Would-be Princess by Jessica Green, Alice and Greta by Steven J. Simmons and illustrated by Cyd Moore, and Our Seasons by Grace Lin. I like them because they're funny, cool, and adventurous. I hope you have a fun time in business!

From,

Drew

_________________________

Dear Charlesbridge,

My name is Amelia. I go to The Tobin School. I am in 3rd grade and I'm 9 years old. I loved the way you guys published Diary of a Would-be Princess by Jessica Green. Happy publishing!

From,

Amelia

_________________________

Dear Charlesbridge,

My name is Gus. I am in fourth grade. I go to The Tobin School. My teacher Ms. Pelletier really likes your books. My favorite book that you have published is Diary of a Would-be Princess by Jessica Green.

From,

Gus

P.S. I loved the book because it was funny.

_________________________

Dear Charlesbridge,

I am Jared. I am in third grade and I go to The Tobin School. Thank you for publishing all these great books. My favorite one is Dairy of a Would-be Princess. My favorite part is when she wins the speaking contest. Thank you!

From,

Jared

_________________________

Dear Charlesbridge,

I am in 4th grade at The Tobin School. Thank you for publishing all those wonderful books. I especially like Alice and Greta by Steven J. Simmons. I love it because it's so funny and teaches a good lesson. Thank you again.

From,

Sophie

_________________________

Dear Charlesbridge,

My name is Shidong. I am 9 years old and I am in 3rd grade. I go to The Tobin School in Natick, MA. My teacher loves your books. We read a book that you published called Diary of a Would-be Princess by Jessica Green. We also read a book called Many Biomes, One Earth by Mr. Collin [Sneed B. Collard III]. What I liked about Diary of a Would-be Princess was it was so hilarious. I thought the book Many Biomes, One Earth was very educational about what the biomes look like and animals' habitats. I hope I can see some of your other books!!

Sincerely,

Shidong

_________________________

Dear Charlesbridge,

My name is Emily, I am in 4th grade and go to The Tobin School. Thank you for publishing all these great books!! My favorite was In My Own Backyard by Jud Kurjian. We used it for social studies. Please write back soon.

From,

Emily

P.S. I liked the book because it shows how the earth changed.

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.

A Poet Makes A Laughing Sound

In honor of National Poetry Month I would like to write a bit about how my poems come to be. I have always loved words, and I have written poetry since I was fairly young. I remember writing poems in fourth grade, probably my first conscious attempt to be a writer. I think they were about horses.

Here is a poem I wrote in high school that got published in our literary magazine:

Well

Deep, dark, damp, and dank
Smooth stone on smooth stone;
Hollow cylinder, receptacle of Earth's tears.
Hairy beard so sopped with ooze
Dripping, dripping, dripping, dropped.
Ringed rings rolling, rolling
Strike the mossy walls with silence.
Deep, dark, forgotten, lost;
Stones of earth laid by man
Worn and worn and worn again,
Cold, rejected, forgotten, hidden
at the base of trees' naked roots.
Home of rat, spider, and dead mole.
Dripping drops of liquid rock
Dark, forgotten cylinder, receptacle of Earth's tears.

Reading this poem now it reminds me of how much I like the feel, the taste of words. I must have just discovered alliteration as a poetic device. I wrote with rhythm, and I was thinking in images. My poems today are not a whole lot different--I look for rhythm. I taste the words and feel the flow of the words physically as I write them. I think about images.

The poem "The Robin Makes A Laughing Sound" grew out of a walk. I was walking home on a March evening, listening to the bird sounds. A funny noise, soft, yet sudden, made me stop. It reminded me of my neighbor's guinea pigs, the sort of noise they make. I looked around and spotted a robin. I began to think about how to describe the sound the robin had made. This was not its song. This was a kind of call, perhaps a warning. The best I could come up with was a laughing sound. "The robin makes a laughing sound. " Those words fit with the rhythm of my walking. By the time I walked all the way home I had four lines, the beginnning of a poem:

The robin makes a laughing sound
Reminding me to look around
At buds on twig tips swelling big
And swelling worms which robins dig.

The words came naturally as I thought about what I had just experienced. I wrote them down in my journal.

A few days later I came back to the idea. More lines came to me as I revised my first thoughts:

The robin makes a laughing sound
It makes me stop and look around
To see just what the robin sees--
Swelling buds on twigs of trees--
A nice high branch on which to rest
A nice safe ledge to hold her nest.
The robin makes a laughing sound.
I always stop. Look around!

a little kitten says meow
the robin isn't laughing now.

Sparrows in a privet hedge--

Seagulls like dumps and garbage and hang out at the mall

About here I realized I was getting sidetracked, but I had found a rhythm I liked. So I abandoned the last four lines that digress from the idea of the robin. My poem was almost complete. I had circled the two uses of the word "nice" in my journal. Nice is a pretty generic word unless you are trying to make a point about the word nice. What kind of branch would a robin like? What kind of ledge? Also, the line "Swelling buds on twigs of trees" seemed difficult to say out loud.

Here is how the poem looked when I submitted my manuscript:

The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound

The robin makes a laughing sound.
It makes me stop and look around
To see just what the robin sees--
Fresh new leaves on twigs of trees--
A strong high branch on which to rest--
A safe, dry ledge to hold her nest.
The robin makes a laughing sound.
I always stop. Look around!

My poem was almost complete--there were just a few editorial changes: the punctuation was changed to make the poem easier to read. And the last line shifted slightly. Instead of ordering my reader to look around, I kept the line within my own experience--"I stop. I always look around."

The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound

The robin makes a laughing sound.
It makes me stop and look around
to see just what the robin sees--
fresh new leaves on twigs of trees,
a strong, high branch on which to rest,
a safe, dry ledge to hold its nest.
The robin makes a laughing sound.
I stop. I always look around.

"The Robin Makes A Laughing Sound" took only two drafts to reach its essential shape. Other poems were harder to get at.

I liked the line and the idea of seagulls hanging out at dumps and malls. I live in the Midwest, near Lake Michigan, but 1,000 miles from the ocean. Yet I see gulls all year round. I see them most often when I drive down North Avenue, past mall after mall. The gulls are everywhere, perching on street lights, soaring over the parking lots. Why are they here? I began to think about my experience with gulls. Gulls are hard to identify so I used the not quite proper term "seagulls" which encompasses many different species. I wanted to emphasize how out of context the gulls seemed. This was one of my early drafts:

Seagulls

Seagulls like dumps and garbage.
They hang out a the mall.
There is no ocean here for a thousand miles.
But there are lakes an rivers that run to the sea.
And garbage and dumps and malls.

Seagulls make loud noises--
They're not shy. They are the teenagers of birds--
Showing off, making noise,
Traveling in packs. But always competing.
Just like the boys in junior high who hang out at the mall.

One reader suggested that I concentrate on the secon stanza and develop the idea of seagulls as the teenagers of birds. Although I like the idea of gulls living so far away from oceans, I felt it was a good suggetion for bringing some unity to the poem. Here is the version that I submitted in my manuscript:

Seagulls

Seagulls are the teenagers of birds.
They hang out at he mall,
Scrounging for French fires and scraps of burgers.
They laugh. They swoop. They're not shy.
They travel in packs, squawking, playing at tug of war over crumbs,
Just like the boys from middle school,
Who hang out at the mall.

I like the poem and I really liked the comparison of seagulls to kids, but I felt the poem was too literal, too direct, lacked style. I continued to work on it as the book went into production. My "ah-ha" moment was when I realized that I did not need to tell the reader that seagulls are the teenagers of birds--the poem shows that comparison through it's actions. So I dropped the first line and opened with the second. I played with the order of the lines and images until I had simplified the poem. My editor suggested that all the verbs used should be able to apply equally to kids and birds, so "swoop" was out. "Strut" replaced it. The final suggestion, which I am still second-guessing, was to eliminate the last line. It has a repetitive, plaintive note that I like and that my editor and my writer's group felt was unnecessary and did not contribute to the poem. I still miss it.

Seagulls

Seagulls hang out at the mall.
They laugh. They squawk. They strut.
They're not shy. They travel in packs,
fighting over french fries
and scraps of burgers--
just like the kids from middle school.

What do you think? Should this poem end with the lines "just like the kids from middle school/who hang out at the mall."?

Posted by Sallie Wolf, author/illustrator of The Robin Makes a Laughing Sound.

Spotlight on: Mary Corcoran

With a new book out this spring, Mary Corcoran is finding herself the object of TV interviewers affection. Yesterday she was a guest on Better Connecticut, a local TV program on WFSB Channel 3. The former seventh grade science teacher talked about her two books with illustrator Jef Czekaj, The Quest to Digest (2006) and The Circulatory Story (February 2010). Click here to see the full interview.

Praise for The Quest to Digest:

"This is a well-illustrated book that both kids and adults will enjoy. The Quest to Digest is an easy, fun, interesting, accessible, entertaining account of the digestive process."
-- Science Books & Films

Praise for The Circulatory Story:

"An irresistible invitation to go with the flow."
--Booklist

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!

The Day-Glo Brothers Recognized Again!

It's hard not to notice The Day-Glo Brothers--that bio/science book about the two brothers who invented Day-Glo colors and changed the world. So, naturally, the bloggers of the kidlitosphere--an intelligent and talented bunch of writers--noticed not just how the colors pop, but how human this story really is: two brothers, a couple of dreams diverted, and an accident and what you get? A Cybils Nonfiction Picture Book Award.

Sally Derby Launches Kyle's Island

On February 2nd, Sally Derby launched the release of Kyle's Island at The Blue Marble Bookstore in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Dave Richardson, of The Blue Marble, said, "It was fantastic... and even though things were crowded, no one complained."

Enjoy these pics:

Every Boy Needs an Island

At the outset, let me acknowledge that I have no research to back up the statement above. No scientific studies to cite; I haven't even taken a poll. My only authority comes from my having raised seven boys, all of whom, I'm glad to say, are happily married, gainfully employed, and still speaking to me on a regular basis. (I am also the mother of a lovely, intelligent daughter, but her story will have to come at another time.) I acknowledge, too, that not everything I say here will be true of all boys, and that some of my observations will apply to girls too. Still...

When my first child was born, I was disconcerted to learn, as I swam groggily to consciousness, that I had given birth to a boy. Of course, I'd known this was theoretically possible, but since I had no brothers, no neighborhood boys to play with as a child, and had gone to a woman's college, I kind of assumed that God would know I wasn't equipped to be the mother of a boy. Let alone another boy. And then another, et cetera, et cetera, until my sons numbered five (I'll get to the seven part later).

As my sons grew older and their number increased, I made some interesting observations. Number one: No matter what the intended purpose of a toy might be, a boy would immediately consider it something to take apart, to use as a hammer or a drumstick, or to convert into some sort of military weapon.

Number two: Boys are incapable of holding still. I am convinced that as grade-schoolers, were such diagnoses then available (along with their pharmaceutical remedies), my boys would all have been labeled hyper-active, overly distractible, and possibly of below average mentality. In view of their later achievements and those of a number of boys I have tutored, I've come to the conclusion that boys should always start school a year later than girls, and that they should never be expected to sit quietly for more than ten minutes at a time until they reach the age of maturity, which is usually about forty-six. (Sometimes older)

Number three: Boys occupy at least twice as much space as girls do. Watch a group of three or four girls. They can entertain themselves for hours just sitting on the top of a stoop with books or crayons or dolls. During the same amount of time, boys will need the front and back yards of four or five houses, preferable furnished with trees for climbing, bushes for hiding in, and one or two areas where digging is allowed.

My oldest son was thirteen and my youngest two when I realized that these boys were not meant for suburbia. They needed space to stretch their burgeoning wings. I thought a house surrounded by four or five acres of woods would be just about right. Unfortunately, acreage of that size in or close to Cincinnati was more than our budget could handle and I couldn't convince my husband of the advisability of a move to Australia where there was still that whole lovely Outback to explore.

We compromised by selling our five room ranch-style house at a loss (something IRS agents found unbelievable - obviously none of them had ever seen what five boys can do to a house), and moving to a three-story Victorian on the other side of town.

For a while, exploring a new neighborhood provided sufficient outlet for the boys' need for adventure, particularly after they realized that they could tell me they were going to a perfectly acceptable park where, unknown to me, a slight depression under the fence allowed them access to the siding of a railroad in active use.
(Just an aside: I've written a middle grade novel in which the young protagonists engage in a few of the hair-raising escapades I've since learned the boys somehow miraculously survived...Editors, envisioning I suppose, hundreds of letter from horrified mothers, have told me that such activities are far too dangerous for suggestible young readers. What I feel is that it's hard to suggest something dangerous and exciting that boys haven't already thought of.)

What drove this need to explore, to test limits, to court danger? Were my sons so very unusual? I worried about this for years until through a series of freakish occurrences, two more boys joined our family. They were brothers, one twelve at the time, the other fourteen - ages that fit nicely into the middle of the boys. It was only a matter of months until, as a foster mother, I realized it wasn't a lack of parenting skills on my part that made my sons bundles of curiosity and adrenalin. It had something to do with the drive that long ago had propelled one particular sperm to beat the others in the race to the egg.

So what has this to do with boys and islands? In Kyle's Island, I have tried to show that boys need an unexplored place beckoning to them. For Kyle, if he can explore the island, he can satisfy his need to find a place not already known, defined, and reduced by grown-ups. The nondescript island in the middle of a small lake in Michigan is Kyle's Bali Hai, his Shangri- La, his Ultima Thule.

This restlessness of boys, this drive to explore, to master - I've seen my sons wrestle with it. I've watched some inner-city boys turn sullen and hopeless because they could see no island on their own horizon. My heart aches for them and for the boys whose only outlet for their restlessness consists of overcoming obstacles to attaining a higher level on a video game.

I know we can't go back to the days when unexplored frontiers were part of every boy's landscape. I know that not every boy can realistically hope to become an astronaut, a mountain-climber, or a deep-sea diver. But I hope that parents and teachers will recognize, honor, and try to accommodate the inherent restlessness that is part of every boy's make-up instead of trying through discipline or medication to transform boys into "well-behaved" counterparts of their sisters.

Let's watch and applaud a young boy's search for his own island, no matter how different it is from what we dreamed of for him. And if we are lucky, some day he will come back and say to us, "Hey! I want to show you what I've found!"



Posted by Sally Derby, author of Kyle's Island.