Katherine Roy's Neighborhood Sharks - February 7th, 11:00 am

We're excited to have author, illustrator, Center for Cartoon Studies graduate, and NYC resident Katherine Roy coming to the store next Saturday (February 7th). She will be here at 11:00 am as part of our author-educator series. Katherine's debut picture book Neighborhood Sharks vividly recreates a day in the life of a shark and reveals why sharks are essential to our ecosystem and deserve our protection. She'll share behind the scenes information on how she researched this book on the water with Bay Area shark scientists and show how she turns information into storytelling and creates a book from start to finish.

We're excited about this event for several reasons.

Bonus New Reason (as of 2/2/15): Neighborhood Sharks is a Sibert Honor Book. The Robert F. Sibert Medal is awarded annually by the American Library Association to the most distinguished informational books. You can read a description of the medal here.

1. Katherine is a really talented author and illustrator. You may have seen her illustrations before in local author S.S. Taylor's Expeditioners series. Her debut picture book, published under David Macaulay's new imprint at MacMillan, is getting a lot of attention. It uses the feeding patterns of great white sharks to explore biology, ecosystems, and how scientists study key species. The illustrations are just as engaging as Jaws ever was.

Here's a short list of some of the press Katherine has received:

• Bear Pond Books Fall Materials Review (really the only review anyone needs)
• A Fuse Eight / School Library Journal Review (possibly a better review than ours, not that it's a competition) 
• Short review of Neighborhood Sharks in Horn Book - Neighborhood Sharks was on their Calling Caldecott nominee list, as was Gravity by previous Bear Pond Books speaker Jason Chin. 
• Short review in Kirkus Reviews, which named Neighborhood Sharks one of the best informational books of 2014.

 

2. Katherine is dedicated to sharing information about how she makes her books and giving readers, students, and teachers resources for learning more about both her subject and her process. Her website (www.katherineroy.com) is worth serious exploration, full of blog posts, pictures, and videos. Here are some examples of Katherine talking about her research and how she makes her books:

• School Library Journal profiles Katherine's hands-on research 
• An interview with Katherine about her picture book making process on The Picturebooking Podcast
• Three part blog post / conversation with Sarah Stewart Taylor about creating the Expeditioners series. 
• You can see new books emerging via her blog - check out Katherine's elephant project that's starting to fill the site (and you can look back on the emergence of Neighborhood Sharks via her blog archives)

 

3. Katherine is bringing elephant videos from her next project, and last week's speaker Laurel Neme already has us primed to be fascinated by studying wildlife around the world.

4. Katherine is a Center for Cartoon Studies graduate, and we just think that's very cool. 

5. We're getting in some new baking cookbooks and need to try out recipes. There will also be something healthy, but that's less exciting.

Katherine's work is truly interdisciplinary, capturing the best of scientific research and visual storytelling. If you have an interest in science, ecosystem studies, drawing, stories, or just ideas about communicating information in an engaging way, please join us on Saturday, February 7th at 11:00 am! The event is free and open to the public.We provide certificates of attendance to educators who can use these workshops for continuing education credits. And we always offer 20% off books purchased for school classrooms and libraries.