Cooking for the Classroom

Last Saturday Helen Labun (Discovering Flavor) reviewed some new (and newish) cookbooks for kids that are also useful for teaching subjects beyond cooking. Here's a run down of what we discussed with notes and links to additional information:

Laboratory Science

Exploring Kitchen Science published by the San Francisco-based Exploratorium. This book focuses on scientific principles you can demonstrate via things in your kitchen. . . the experiments may be technically edible, but not all stuff you want to eat. It has lots of classics - the cornstarch solution that's solid under pressure and liquid otherwise, food coloring moved through celery capillaries, Mentos in Coke bottles - and short simple explanations of what's going on. Some experiments do require special equip, but mostly easy to order, inexpensive items. The Exploratorium also maintains a kitchen science section on its website, here.

Science Experiments You Can Eat by Vicki Cobb. This book has many of the same concepts at Exploring Kitchen Science, but with slightly longer explanations of what's going on and chapter-by-chapter groupings that lend themselves to lesson plans. It has more edible experiments than Exploring Kitchen Science but, again, they may not be things you want to eat (for example, cabbage water used in a Ph test). An old version of this book is out right now - an updated version with a more modern look is coming out this summer.


The Lemon Fizz:
(Experiment from Saturday)

Put 4 Tb confectioner's sugar, 2 Tb citric acid powder (available at Hunger Mtn Coop) and 1 Tb baking soda in a food processor and whirr to a fine, uniform powder. This is the British candy sherbet powder - like a Pixie Stick but with fizz (Wikipedia gives a nice run down of all the ways it's used). Added to lemonade or cider it makes a pleasant fizzy drink. It's a more fun version of adding baking soda to vinegar to watch it fizz up. You can take the experiment even further by making a Ph test using red cabbage juice to test for the base (baking soda) and acid (citric acid) and also the Ph resulting from the full reaction of the two. Just grate a red cabbage, let it soak in warm water until the water is well dyed, and pour through a sieve to remove the cabbage. The juice will turn color to indicate acid levels.

The fizzy sherbet powder also has historical tie ins. The search for fizzy water (and there are lots of ways to make water fizz) turns out to be an ancient one, as detailed in this BBC Food Programme episode.

Related Resources:

• Harold McGee's On Food and Cooking is the definitive science in the kitchen tome and would be an excellent reference for any adults working with kitchen science. 
• The Food Lab by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt is a new cookbook that reads like a textbook (that's a compliment), and also goes into the science behind the food. Lopez-Alt focuses on detailing experiments conducted to get a better outcome from his recipes. If you've ever read Cook's Illustrated and thought "I wish they went into even more detail on how they developed the recipe" then Food Lab is for you.

Social Science

National Geographic Kids Cookbook This book is full of little factoids on cooking and culture along with the recipes, arranged by year. The drawback is that it's primarily scattered factoids and difficult to use as an organized reference book, it's more of a skim-through book.

Fairy Tale Feasts by Jane Yolen. This book does a nice job of finding a diversity of fairy tales, some that are familiar and some that aren't, and retelling the story with a recipe to follow. More options than simply baking the gingerbread man. Another resource on using fairy tales in the classroom is our 2014 Author-Educator workshop by Meg Allison "Why Fairy Tales Still Matter"

Kids Cook French / Kids Cook Italian Dual language cookbooks for kids. Recipes are a good starting point for translation, since they're mostly a list of vocabulary words (aka "ingredients") plus simple sentences using a known universe of verbs. Learn culture, language, and cooking skills at once.

Related Resources:

• International Night by Mark Kurlansky - If you're looking for sample recipes and menus from around the world, this book shares menus (with recipes) that he prepared with his daughter - each country chosen by spinning the globe and cooking from the country her finger lands on. The book is for adults, but the recipes are designed to lend themselves to cooking with children's assistance. 
• The Best Recipes in the World by Mark Bittman - This book offers a large collection of recipes from around the world, with sample menus. Designed for cooks of all skill levels. It's currently out of print but I believe they're reissuing it (and of course you can order it used).  

Art and Nutrition
An unusual pairing, but it will make sense. . . 

The Forest Feast for Kids by Erin Gleeson. Erin Gleeson is known for her striking food photography and particularly the use of strong color. This artistic sensibility (you can see examples at her website forestfeast.com) lends itself both to arts instruction for kids and to embracing the nutritional advice "eat the rainbow." Gleeson makes the connection to nutrition clear in her introduction, and this book really does make eating a variety of healthy food look enticing. The Forest Feast for Kids comes out this spring and you can preorder it; the longer adult version Forest Feast is available now.

Cooking Experiments: One aspect of Gleeson's recipe style of highlighting one (sometimes two) high-flavor ingredient is that it makes it easy to try out variations on her foods. The Flavor Bible and The Vegetarian Flavor Bible make experimenting with recipes like Gleeson's particularly easy. These books' authors have interviewed well known chefs to find out what flavors they combine together, then they distill these into lists of amenable flavors. So, for example, if you look up "apricots" you'll get a list of ingredients that taste good with apricots and examples of menu items that use apricots in interesting ways. In the workshop we tried Gleeson's Rosemary Shortbread with the addition of powdered bay leaves. It tasted good. If I were to buy one Flavor Bible or the other, I'd choose the vegetarian version (everything goes with bacon! We know that already!)

Related Resources:

• I don't think there's anything out there right now that makes the case for "eating the rainbow" more enticingly than Gleeson's books. However, some nutrition education resources:
• Nutrition.gov - Central government nutrition website
• ChooseMyPlate.gov - Particularly this section on variety in diet.
• Let's Move! - Nutrition section
• Team Nutrition Resource Library
• Nutrition Topics from the CDC
• And for those of you looking for books related to food and gardening:
• Here is a link to a list of books Jane made for home or classroom use-- you'll see it is tacked on to the cookbook list that was handed out at the event 

Other posts on this website related to food and cooking in the classroom:

• "Cooking Experiments Preview"
• "Agriculture in the Classroom"

Addendum on Explorers: 

We promised the folks who were there on Saturday that we'd include these two explorer-related links:

• "Lobscouse & Spotted Dog" - Food that members of the British navy in the 18th & early 19th centuries might have enjoyed. 
• The Norwegian explorer in Antarctica who is very excited about Cheese Doodles

Now that you've read this far, it's time to change writerly hats-- this is Jane. And I'd like to give a HUGE shout out to the mastermind of these educator blogs, the woman of many hats, Helen Labun, who is moving on (and less quickly than she'd like to as we are so reluctant to let her go!) to make experimenting with food an actual job description. If you haven't yet heard about her new endeavor, be sure to check out Hel's Kitchen on Barre Street in Montpelier. Delicious international food for take-out and unique eat-in dinners with special menus each week. After last week's Indian feast we're hoping Helen will linger on Indian cuisine for a bit. We'll miss you, Helen! (but Jane will most of all!)

Materials Review: Early Chapter Books

At the end of last spring's middle grade materials review session we had a request for Early Chapter Books as the next topic. . . and started to get ready then and there with:

• Pinterest Board of Jane's Favorite Early Chapter Books Series

Last Friday, we took a closer look at both series and stand alone books in this category and also invited in early chapter book author Dough Wilhelm to share his perspective on creating these books. Here is a list of the books we read (not all were reviewed on the panel):

• Early Chapter Books Sorted by Author
• Early Chapter Books Sorted by Title

And here are the reviews:

• Reviewed on the Panel
• Three Additional Reviews

Plus, a list of recommended leveled readers - requested at the event:

• Leveled Readers

And notes from the discussion with Doug:

• Doug Wilhelm: Treasure Town

We're keeping track of all our Materials Reviews in the Author-Educator Series speakers list, under Bear Pond Staff (ie. the end of the list). 

Next up for the Author-Educator Series: Sunday, October 18th, 11:30 am: A short workshop on creating creative reading space, forts, and "Microshelters" with national small building expert Deek Diedricksen. Details here. 

Early Chapter Books: Panel Reviews

Thank you for everyone who joined us last Friday for the Early Chapter Books Materials Review. We're posting the notes in a few installments . . starting with short reviews for all the books discussed that are below. Next up we'll add notes from Doug Wilhelm's discussion of writing Treasure Town.

Goofy Humor:

The 13 Story Treehouse by Andy Griffiths (series): We needed to defer to some younger readers for parts of this review. . . "It's exactly what it looks like" according to Carrie - and her kids love it while she does not. It's about brothers who live in a treehouse and write books. As you might imagine from being 13 stories high, the treehouse has many elaborate features like a bowling alley, a marshmallow machine and dangerous "burp gas-bubblegum bubbles." It works well for reluctant readers, is funny, and does inspire readers to imagine their own fantastic treehouses and books to write.

The Yeti Files - Meet the Bigfeet by Kevin Sherry (Series): Along the same lines as the Treehouse series, the Yeti series is a funny book for reluctant readers. The premise for the first book in the series is that the Yeti is going to a family reunion with the cryptids - creatures that live alone and have sworn that they can never be seen by humans. It's heavy on illustrations, in a very simple cartooning style. Like the Treehouse series, these books have the potential to inspire otherwise reluctant readers / writers to start both reading and thinking up their own stories.

Bowling Alley Bandit: Adventures of Arnie the Doughnut by Laurie Keller (Series): Arnie is a doughnut, bought from the best bakery in town, not realizing that doughnuts are for eating. But he convinces the man who bought him to keep him as a pet instead. He happily goes bowling with his new owner. When something is amiss at the bowling alley, Arnie enlists Peezo, his best buddy (who happens to be a slice of pizza) to help him investigate. Illustrations play a big role in telling this story. It's most similar to Bad Kitty in style. It may be goofball comedy, but it's also smart, as Keller is known for her clever use of wordplay.

Quirky Humor:

Milo Speck: Accidental Agent by Linda Urban: One day, Milo is grabbed by his clothes dryer and sucked into the land of Ogregon filled with ogres that eat children. Milo discovers that his father, who he thought was a fence salesman, is really a secret agent in Ogregon. Now Milo has to foil the ogres' plot against children and he isn't sure he's the hero for the job. Jane describes this as zany, Roald Dahl-esque humor. Linda Urban is coming to Bear Pond Books with Melissa Guerrette on November 7th at 11:00 am to teach a workshop on revision - details are found here. Also, Linda has an upcoming series of early chapter books called "Weekends with Max and his Dad" that will be published in spring of 2016.

Harriet the Invincible by Ursula Vernon (Series): Harriet is a princess (also, a hamster) who finds palace life rather dull. She is also under a curse --at age 12 she will prick her finger and fall into a deep sleep. . . except what happens is that she pricks her finger and everyone else falls into a deep sleep and now she needs to find a Prince who will kiss a whole palace to wake them up. There are some big vocabulary words, but the story is funny enough that they're worth it, or skippable. Jane describes this hamster princess book as having a "sophisticated wit." If she was allowed to say she loved two books the best, this would the best (but as things stood, she only got one and it's Dory).

Dory Fantasmagory by Abby Hanlon: Another in the quirky, spunky kid category, but Jane says this book really does rise above the rest. Dory is a kid who has populated her world with elaborate imaginary friends. She drives everyone around her crazy. Her older siblings think she's too much of a baby to play with and they invent the story of Mrs. Gobblegracker who will come for her if she doesn't leave them alone - and so of course this new imaginary being joins Dory's world. Very clever and funny. If Jane is going to choose one book as her favorite, this one was it.

Extraordinary Warren: A Super Chicken by Sarah Dillard (Series): Warren, a little chick, is learning how to fly and he's searching for his inner super chicken. The author uses a graphic novel style in her chapter book, making it a good picture book / chapter book crossover. Jane says the medium works very well. There are two Extraordinary Warren books out in the series. The author and illustrator lives in Waitsfield.

Charming Books:

The Kingdom of Wrenly by Jordan Quinn (Series): A book that is easy to read, light, good for sensitive children as "nothing alarming happens and it wraps up neatly in a bow." The stories follow the Prince and a seamstress' daughter as they explore the Kingdom of Wrenly. Carrie says that it's "innocent and sweet and not very well written." But, she notes, the writing is not so far off the mark that kids are likely to care.

Piper Green and the Fairy Tree by Ellen Potter (Series) A "lovely" (per Carrie) book in the tradition of the Clementine series. Piper Green lives on an island in Maine. She is struggling because she misses her brother, who left for boarding school, and she doesn't get along with her new teacher. It's a funny book but also deals with real issue. Well written. There are two books in the series so far.

Cody and the Fountain of Happiness by Tricia Springstubb (Series): It's the first day of summer vacation and while not much is happening in Cody's house, she's enthusiastic about inventing her own entertainment. The story is very Ramona Quimby-like. Cody's mother is feeling stress about a new job, her father is gone for long stretches as a truck driver, her teenage brother is moping over a girl, and there's a new kid in town staying with his grandmother and missing his parents. It's not wildly inventive but it's also perfectly enjoyable, which is just fine.

The Year of the Book by Andrea Cheng (Series): It's a "quiet, book lover's book" according to Jane. The protagonist, Anna, is the child of Chinese immigrants. She's having trouble navigating her social life. She's embarrassed by her mother's efforts to introduce Chinese culture into her daughter's American life. Anna decides that it's easier to find her friends in books, not people. She slowly learns to deal with friendships.

Princess Pistachio by Marie-Louse Gay (Series): Pistachio believes she is a princess, and when a mysterious crown arrives for her birthday she becomes truly convinced. Ramping up the spolied princess act isn't exactly popular with everyone around her. Jane found that, unlike other books where the main character drives the people around her crazy while being entertaining on the page, Pistachio was not. The words "sassy and entitled" were used, and not in a complimentary way. Jane recommends the author's picture books instead.  

Mystery Books:

The Diamond Mystery by Martin Widmark (Series): Two kids open a detective agency and this is their first case, of diamonds missing from a jewelry store. It's a classic whodunit structure: a client presents a mystery, there is a defined set of suspects each with reasons why they might have been the ones, and after a brief investigation of each person the real thief is revealed. Helen wonders if something was lost in the translation from the original Swedish - the language can read a bit like a vocabulary lesson. Also, she is disappointed that the publisher didn't work with the author and illustrator to convey more of Sweden in the book. The only geographical reference implies that the book is taking place in an American suburban town.

Smashie McPerter and the Mystery of Room 11 by N. Griffin (Series): When the classroom hamster goes missing, Smashie (who didn't really like the hamster in the first place) decides to solve the mystery. This is a good book for problem solving and vocabulary building. It's also a good reading aloud book. The author is coming to Bear Pond Books on October 24th at 11:00 am to do a workshop on teaching problem solving skills. The workshop details are here.

Books with Clear Teaching Tie Ins (History, Science)

Tales from Maple Ridge: Logan Pryce Makes a Mess by Grace Gilmore and Petra Brown (Series): This series tells the story of a farm in 1892. The father needs to take a job off the farm because it is struggling, and the young son, Logan, is looking for ways help keep the farm going. It's very relatable and would appeal to Little House on the Prairie fans. There are two books in the series currently available, with two more slated for publication.

Ranger in Time by Kate Messner (Series): This series follows a search and rescue dog who failed his exam by chasing a squirrel. Through a little magic Ranger is transported back in time to the Oregon trail where a young girl has gone missing. The writing is solid and the conceit of the series lets history lessons be folded into the narrative. The author is local and has led workshops at Bear Pond before. We wrote an article on writing exercises based on Kate's workshops "New Ideas - Creative Jumpstarts that Work in the Classroom"

Frank Einstein by Jon Scieszka (Series): The first in a series, this book follows a familiar plot line of a genius scientist with a brilliant creation (an antimatter motor), stolen by a bad guy, and in need of being re-acquired. This book builds from ideas in science that are entryways to pretty sophisticated stuff (self-teaching artificial intelligence or the large hadron collider for example) but are presented in the context of madcap adventure and goofy humor. The book hits the gold standard of conveying that reading is A. fun and B. full of big ideas that change your understanding of the world. It wasn't Helen's sort of storyline, but that's personal preference, and her one "I love this book" went to Frank Einstein.

Totally True Adventures: The Race Around the World by Nancy Castaldo (Series): This book tells the story of reporter and adventurer Nellie Bly in simple language suitable for a classroom with children at different reading levels. It's neither creative nor fun, but it's probably useful - combining history, biography, and reading skills. The book promises additional materials online that connect to the classroom and common core but Helen gave up on finding them after a fair amount of searching. When she finally tracks down these promised materials, they'll appear here. For now we're giving up. This book is part of a series of Totally True Adventures.

Strong Read Alouds:

Emma and the Blue Genie by Cornelia Funke: Emma frees a very small blue genie who needs help getting his nose ring back so he can have his powers restored. It's a stand alone book. The reading level is on the challenging end of early chapter books. This author has many solid books, including Inkheart, The Pirate Pig and the soon-to-be-published Ruffleclaw.  

Appleblossom the Possum by Holly Goldberg Sloan: A book by the author of the DCF-nominated Counting by 7's. Carries summarizes this book as "delightful imaginings of what possum family culture would look like." Appleblossom goes out into the world and falls down a chimney into a human home, and her brothers launch a rescue mission. The story is enjoyable for both kids and grown ups.

Firefly Hollow by Alison McGhee: Carrie was allowed only one book to say she "loved" and this was it. The book chronicles the firefly who dreams of flying to the moon, cricket who dreams of being Yogi Berra, Vole who is the last of his kind and dreams of sailing his father's ship (but there is no one to teach him) and Peter who is a Miniature Giant who will grow up to be a Big Giant. The book plates are beautiful. It's a good read aloud for any age.

Diva and Flea by Mo Willems & Tony DiTerlizzi: A Lady and the Tramp-esque story of a dog and cat in Paris. Diva is a dog who has never ventured into the big world of Paris, but who meets Flea, a streetwise cat "flaneuring" about the alleys of Paris. This book has a lovely classic feel and tremendously vibrant line drawings.

Books You Might Have Missed:

Some great series have been around for a while, but are still being newly discovered. Here are a few:

• Anna Hibiscus by Atinuke - Anna lives in Africa and these books are a good introduction to new cultures. Jane (who is a big fan) describes them as "sweet as the day is long". They can be hard to find but call the Children's Room and Jane will track them down.
• Matter of Fact Magic by Ruth Chew - These books are now being reprinted. They're a collection of stand alone stories about kids and magic. You can read the books' summaries on ruthchew.com
• Tashi by Anna and Barbara Fienberg - An Australian series, filled with the tall tales of a gnome-like imaginary friend named Tashi. Always popular during the holidays.

Hold This! - Q&A with Carolyn Scoppettone

Last Friday while we were reviewing early chapter books (more on those tomorrow), Kellogg-Hubbard Library was hosting a launch event for the publication of Hold This! a debut picture book by Montpelier author Carolyn Scoppettone. Hold This! recounts a walk through the woods with a daughter discovering many treasures - or "treasures" - to share with her father.

Earlier this month, Islandport Press published a short written Q&A with Carolyn about the origin of the book, linked here. Now, she has nicely taken the time to do another round for our educators blog. 

This is a playful book describing exploring the outdoors, how did you approach finding the right text to prompt the feeling of "playfulness", which we usually think of as an impromptu emotion?

The inspiration for “Hold This!” came directly from my own children. When they were little, we walked in Hubbard Park frequently. I loved their irrepressible desire to explore the outdoors through their senses. They wanted to look at nature, of course, but they also wanted to hear it, smell it and touch it. So, I knew that I would need sensory language to capture the story I wanted to tell. From the earliest drafts, fun, sensory words like “splash gurgling” and “swissshing” appeared.

In addition to those Hubbard Park walks with my own children, I had plenty of experience exploring nature with other young kids. As a volunteer educator for the Four Winds program at Union Elementary School, I led outdoor nature lessons for many years. It struck me that the children were most deeply engaged when they were having fun. The experience of playing opened the door to forming a connection with the natural world. I wanted my main character to find joy in the woods. That joy bubbled up into playful language.

We've had authors in our educators series before speak about the sense of play and wonder as an important part of engaging kids in learning - looking a little beyond the text on the page, do you have thoughts for inspiring the feeling of play in planned activities, like you would find in a school setting?

At the end of “Hold This!,” Mika builds a fairy house. For young children, building small structures like these engages the imagination as well as the senses. Handling bark, leaves, stones, and other natural materials gives a child a chance to notice shape, texture, and fragrance, among other things.

While you might not build a fairy house in a classroom, natural materials can come into school to be used in crafts and art activities. I especially like art activities that highlight the complexity and beauty found in nature. Leaf rubbings, natural collages, shoe box dioramas, and many other activities allow children to create something beautiful out of things they find in nature.

There are also many crafts that highlight certain properties of natural objects. For example, when studying snowflakes in Four Winds, we would have the children cut out paper snowflakes. This is a simple but beautiful craft that reinforces the concept that the shape of each snowflake is unique.

 Puppet shows and felt board activities are always great, as well. In the Four Winds program, we would start each lesson with a puppet show that introduced the learning objectives. For a unit on camouflage, for example, the puppet characters blended in with the background. When I do an author visit with a preschool audience, I bring along a felt board version of “Hold This!” Children love helping me find the various natural treasures that Mika asks her father to hold. There are a wide variety of games, as well. Memory games, for example, work particularly well with a nature theme.

- Do you have any examples of school-based play and learning from your own time as a student? 

 

I grew up in San Diego where it was easy to be outside all year. My mother was a preschool teacher who loved nature.  So, from an early age I was encouraged to approach any excursion into the outdoors as a chance to truly observe the natural world. I don’t recall specific school-based play and learning from that time, but I’ll never forget how Mom would plop down on the ground to show me tiny flowers, “belly flowers” she called them, or how she would point out a swallow’s nest tucked in the eaves or a sparrow’s distinctive song.

 

When I was a kid, I loved scavenger hunts. There was an undeveloped canyon right near my house and I spent every afternoon playing imaginative games or combing the canyon for treasures. The shark’s teeth I found told me that the desert landscape I was exploring used to be an ocean. The horned toads, rocks and chaparral spoke to the changes the landscape had undergone over eons.

 

Despite the difficulty of getting children outside during the school day, I think it is crucial to do so on a regular basis. Just the experience of being outside is valuable. Any game that is played in nature allows a child to form a connection to the natural world. In a time when so much of our learning is indoors or on the computer, getting outside is even more important.

 

Interested in reading more about the theme of discovery, nature, and learning? Check out this earlier set of articles about author / illustrators Dierdre Gill and Jason Chin "Picture Books that Explore Nature"

Pre-Review - Early Chapter Books

It's a pre-review, not a preview, because these are some books that aren't on our list to for the Early Chapter Book materials review next Friday - so we reviewed them early.

Check out the pre-review books below and then join us on October 2nd at 9:30 am for an Early Chapter Books materials review with reviews, updates on popular series, refreshments, giveaways, and a bit of the author's perspective from panelist Doug Wilhelm (Treasure Town, Choose Your Own Adventure). Event details are here. These are always a fun event, lots of time for conversation and to check out new and upcoming books. We hope you can join us upstairs in the Children's room next Friday!

~~~~~~

Humphrey’s Really Wheely Racing Day by Betty G. Birney

published by Puffin, paperback series, $4.99

Friday is always an exciting day for Humphrey, the class hamster. That's when he finds out where he will spend the weekend away from his usual home at Longfellow School. This time it will be Mandy's house, and her own hamster, Winky, has his very own hamster-size car. Humphrey falls in love with driving the first time he's behind the wheel --with a familiar nod to some of our favorite literary characters-- and wishes he had his own car to race Winky. Lucky for him, the teacher in Room 26 is able to make his dream a reality. Humphrey is a sweet protagonist who makes amusing observations about the students. This title has the same characters, humorous action, and gentle tone of the original Humphrey books for older kids, but the large print, short chapters, and numerous cartoon-style illustrations make this series perfect for readers brand new to chapter books.

Leroy Ninker Saddles Up by Kate DiCamillo

published by Candlewick, paperback series, $5.99

DiCamillo has incorporated characters from her popular Mercy Watson series into this slightly lengthier spin-off. Leroy Ninker is a concession stand worker at the local drive-in movie theater with dreams of being a real-life cowboy. (“Yippee-i-oh, that is the life for me! A cowboy is who I was meant to be.”) One day he discovers a horse for sale-- Maybelline, a horse who responds to generous and poetic praise. Part cowboy story and part pet love story, this multi-layered tale beautifully balances comically exaggerated details and true spirit. DiCamillo is a master of creating fully developed characters and plotline while retaining accessibility for emerging readers. Yee-haw!-- we give it a definite thumbs up.

The Princess In Black by Shannon Hale

published by Candlewick, paperback series, $6.99

The authors of "Rapunzel’s Revenge" and "Calamity Jack," writing here for a slightly younger audience, successfully turn the typical princess genre on its ear, offering beginning readers a clever, adventurous, and self-reliant heroine who is equally at home in black or pink. Princess Magnolia’s superhero identity is top secret; Duchess Wigtower must not find out. The Duchess snoops around her castle, always looking for evidence of the princesses' imperfections. Short sentences, a simple vocabulary with the occasional challenge, a manageable length, and a near picture-book level of illustrations give this chapter book immense accessibility-- for boys and girls both.

Space Taxi-- Archie Takes Flight by Wendy Mass & Michael Brawer

published by Little Brown, paperback series $5.99

This sci-fi adventure introduces an engaging character, Archie Morningstar, who can’t yet appreciate his last name, even though ‘Morning Star’ is the nickname for the planet Venus. When the action begins, it is Take Your Kid To Work Day and Archie doesn’t know about his father’s secret identity as an intergalactic voyager who pilots a space taxi. Soon Archie himself is being tested as a navigator who can expertly spot wormholes, with the help of a furry deputy named Pockets. A zippy plot propels the reader through a galactic adventure that never overdoes it-- the surprises are gentle, and the humor is always on target for a young demographic.

Learning About Neighborhood Sharks with Katherine Roy

Many Vermonters will be familiar with Katherine Roy's work through her illustrations for the popular fiction series The Expeditioners by local author S.S. Taylor. Katherine also works in the nonfiction realm and was one of the first authors added to the new David Macaulay Studios imprint at Macmillan Publishers. Her first book with this imprint, Neighborhood Sharks, recently won the a Sibert Honor Award for informational children's books (you can read reviews of Neighborhood Sharks in this earlier post).

On February 7th, Katherine spoke at Bear Pond about how she combined visual storytelling skills and careful research to tell the story of sharks. You can see how carefully she makes information relevant to young readers from the start of the book:

"Every September the great white sharks return to San Francisco. Their hunting grounds, the Farallon Islands, are just 30 miles from the city. While their 800,000 human neighbors dine on steak, salad, and sandwiches, the white sharks hunt for their favorite meal."

These sharks live in a particular place, next door to humans, and are, in fact, the "Neighborhood Sharks" for San Fransisco area where Katherine grew up.

"From sunup to sundown sharks circle the shores, stalking their unsuspecting prey."

The sequence of illustrations show quiet circling, quiet circling, until the shark leaps from the water to catch the seal in sudden, furious movement.

The question then is: how do they do it?

It's a launching question that lets Katherine get into the biology and ecology studied by shark scientists. Answering how sharks eat includes answering why they're hunting elephant seals, where and when they visit the hunting grounds, how they identify, catch, and consume their prey, and how this all fits into the functioning of the Farallon Island ecosystem . . . and along the way it answers misunderstandings and myths about sharks, because the "how" of their hunting also includes reasons why they don't hunt humans. (For one thing, we don't have enough blubber).

Careful reading of Neighborhood Sharks shows how Katherine pulls together picture, story, and fact to bring us through learning about great white sharks. Not as obvious is the process that went into creating that final book. We got a glimpse into that on Saturday.

Research

Katherine learned quickly that running a simple Internet search for sharks turns up a lot of incorrect or incomplete information. Books for kids about sharks reflect this to some degree - there are many more books of shark stories than books of shark facts.


Research for Neighborhood Sharks began with "binge watching shark movies" plus reading stacks of scientific papers. Katherine discovered that a large congregation of breeding pinnipeds (sea lions and seals) at the Farallon Islands draws so many sharks to the area for feeding that it's known as the "Red Triangle" and the high time of feeding, fall, is "Sharktober" when scientists congregate to study the otherwise-elusive great whites. Katherine looked for the scientists who published papers most frequently from that San Francisco area, and contacted them with questions. This research, which began in fall of 2011, gave her enough information to create a dummy of a picture book to send to the editor at David Macaulay studios in February of 2012. When the editor decided to buy the book, then the hands-on research began.

In the fall of 2012, Katherine flew out to San Francisco to go out on the water with a team of scientists studying great white sharks. She was nervous contacting the scientists, who get many requests from people interested in accompanying them on the water, but they were enthusiastic about having a picture book that tells the real, complicated, story of how sharks eat.

The next phase of research for Neighborhood Sharks included traveling on the water searching for sharks (some of which were longer than the boat), luring sharks to the surface with a seal-shaped carpet and chunks of blubber, inspecting shark jaws and their bite patterns (on a surf board . .  used to getting bite patterns on purpose), and dissecting fish to get an up-close look at gills. You can see photos from this trip on her website if you scroll down this page.

This is not a stock photo, it's a pile of Katherine's notes.

Creating the Book

Collecting a lot of information, especially a lot of firsthand information and original research, prepared Katherine to write with authority about great white sharks. But she had to turn those facts into an interesting story.

One thing where the details of the research show is in the details of her drawings. Maybe no one would notice but the scientists who were there, but she can still draw true to the experience of studying sharks in this particular place. In one scene she shows a receiver that communicates with the shark tags; it's anchored on the ocean floor with a train wheel, and Katherine knows its a train wheel because she was there when the scientists dropped it. She populates her pictures with backgrounds full of moon jellyfish because the videos the scientists took underwater were full of moon jellyfish images. Elephant seals have bright red blood - it's an unexpectedly vivid shade, likely because extra hemoglobin helps them in long, deep dives (if you want to see it, here's a link). Katherine's illustrations gain depth from the number of details she can include.

Katherine brought her visual art skills to providing more easily understood representations of the scientific information contained in journal articles. Her book includes diagrams that can be easier to read than the typical illustrations to a scientific paper, meant to supplement data or detailed technical descriptions. Katherine also uses visual metaphors. For example, a shark could be described as moving through the water like a bullet, torpedo or jet plane - and so Katherine draws a shark-shaped jet plane in that section. In another place the rich, diverse ecosystem of the Farallon Islands becomes a "soup."

Even if you aren't a visual artist, you can see how this image-based context helps. Take a tape measure and pull it out across a room (or rooms) for 21-feet, the length of an adult female great white shark, and you can appreciate how a shark would not just fill but burst out of the average living room.

As she puts together these images, Katherine uses her cartooning skills to arrange them in a way that tells a story. She thinks about sequence, where the page turns occur, how a reader takes in the picture (where the eyes go first), and how much information can be layered into the drawing. She draws thumbnails, sketches, pages arranged on her wall, and many (in this case, eight) dummies of how the final book might look.

The process of executing final drawings includes sketching, scanning, planning out pages and color values on the computer, tracing, and a final water color. Katherine provides a lot of detail about this process in a recent interview from the Picturebooking Podcast. She talks about how she uses both her classical art education and digital tools to create her books. You can also see her at work painting a spread in this time-lapse video on her website.

The shark scientists who helped Katherine with her research also signed off on the final text. . . making particular changes so that, for example, the text would not read "the largest great white sharks" but instead the more accurate (if less precise) "some of the largest known great white sharks." Finally, everyone -- author, scientists, editor--was happy with both the accuracy and the interest level of the book.

 Following Sharks. . . Elephants

Neighborhood Sharks is the first of three books Katherine will be publishing with David Macaulay Studios. She's already well into the research phase of her second book How To Be An Elephant, which follows a baby African elephant as it grows up.

The research process for this book is different from Neighborhood Sharks. For one thing, there is simply a lot more information out there about elephants and that means there are scientists doing more highly specialized fields of study.  For Sharks she found a group of scientists focused on sharks visiting a particular island ecosystem. . . for the elephants, researchers have specialties like "seismic communication." Also, the elephants she's studying live in Kenya, a lot more difficult to reach than San Francisco. She did travel there recently and you can read about her trip on her "7 Amazing Highlights From My Trip to Kenya" blog post.

If you're interested in how the process of researching and creating How to Be An Elephant unfolds, you can follow along on Katherine's website www.katherineroy.com. She also has a regular e-mail newsletter, which you can sign up for on the site. 

From Katherine's Blog Post: The Very Beginning

The third book (in case you're wondering) will be a longer one about reproductive biology. The things you can learn about barnacles are. . . astounding.

Related Links

• Katherine Roy's Website: www.katherineroy.com
• Earlier blog post on Neighborhood Sharks
• Center for Cartoon Studies: http://www.cartoonstudies.org - You can check here for public exhibits, talks, and workshops for anyone interested in learning more about cartooning, visual communications, and sequential art. 
• Jason Chin, who visited the store in November with Deirdre Gill, also spoke about field research for nature- and science-focused picture books. You can read about his workshop here.

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.

One Orangutan = Lots of Things to Learn (with Laurel Neme)

Writer Laurel Neme has investigated a lot of wildlife stories over her career, and written for a diverse range of outlets, from the environmental news site Mongabay.com to her podcast The WildLife to a new picture book Orangutan Houdini.

Laurel's interest in writing a picture book after writing for an older audience began with the influence books about animals had on her when she was young, sparking an interest in this topic. Laurel channeled this interest in animals and wildlife into writing, but sees how an initial spark of interest can lead in many directions. For example, she says, "wildlife forensics [her primary focus]. . . is a new science, which means that there are a lot of discoveries to be made, a kid today who gets interested in this [field] will have many chances to make a new discovery."

The idea of a starting spark of curiosity begetting more curiosity and branching out into new discoveries informs how Laurel presents her work to classes and educators.

On January 24th, Laurel talked educators through one network of exploring across many subject areas starting with the example of her book Orangutan Houdini. This book tells the story of Fu Manchu, a real life orangutan who lived in a Nebraska zoo. Fu traded treats with an older orangutan for a length of wire she could pull from the light fixture in her cage. He could use that wire to pick the cage locks whenever he felt like roaming outside. The zookeepers knew he used something to pick the locks, but never could find what it was because Fu hid the wire in his mouth. When he was finally moved to a more secure enclosure and his keepers admitted they couldn't figure out his trick, he showed them where the wire was hidden. He never tried using that trick to escape again. As Laurel says "Once he knew the jig was up, he was done."

Fu Manchu wasn't alone. Laurel has heard a lot of orangutan stories like Fu Manchu's. There was Ken Allen, an ape at the San Diego zoo, who liked to escape so he could hang out with the human tourists (the zookeepers brought in Swiss mountaineers to figure out what handholds he might be using). Another orangutan enjoyed the trick of unlocking all the other orangutans' cages at night so they could switch places before the zookeepers returned to let them out in the morning.

This stories aren't just about particularly interesting orangutans. They show orangutans' ability to plan, to use tools, to anticipate what the zookeepers will think or do so that they can hide their tricks, and that they enjoy a challenge. These stories are part of the larger mystery of animal intelligence.

Another example of orangutan intelligence is how some of them learn language. They can't vocalize in the way humans do, but can learn to understand what we say and respond using symbols. For example, Rob Shunaker (currently at the Indianapolis Zoo) has worked for decades with Azy, an orangutan who communicates using symbols on a computer screen. You can see a video of the two working together that Laurel uses in classroom presentations here. Another example is Chantek, an orangutan who uses sign language and has other skills including making jewelry (for fun) and (according to Wikipedia) giving the directions to get from his home at the research center to the nearest Dairy Queen. Chantek is known for inventing words when he doesn't know the exact symbols, for example "tomato" plus "toothpaste" = ketchup.

Laurel has discovered that younger children particularly enjoy seeing how the orangutans learn language because it mirrors how they study parts of speech (Azy, for example, knows nouns and verbs) and also connecting symbols to words (known in human parlance as "reading").

How did orangutans get so smart? 

One theory is because they spent a lot of time sitting in trees and thinking. Orangutans are the only fully arboreal ape. They don't have many natural predators, and they pretty much sit up out of reach anyway. That gave their ancestors time to look around and ponder.

Fully Rotating Hips - Picture of a Sumatran Orangutan from Wikipedia

Whatever the connection to trees and thinking, you can see clear evidence how the orangutan's body matches its tree-to-tree existence. They have an arm span that is 1.5 times their height - or about the same as an NBA basketball player's arm span. They also have fully rotating hips, in addition to rotating shoulders. Laurel's teacher's guide to Orangutan Houdini includes examples of building math lessons from these measurements.

In addition to looking at the engineering of an orangutan's body, you can also study their movement patterns - and how these patterns suggest a different personality than other great apes (Gorillas, Chimpanzees and Bonobos). In this YouTube clip, movement coach Terry Notary demonstrates the differences.

Apes have no tails. Monkey have tails. Curious George? No tail

Tree top life is only one component of the orangutans' habitat. These trees grow in the rainforest of only two islands: Borneo and Sumatra. The peat swamps common on these islands help explain some of the orangutan's color. They create a muddy, orange-ish color that reflects up from the ground, while the sunlight filtering down through the trees' canopies reflects green and absorbs some of the orange colors . . . making muddy orange an excellent camouflage. Laurel's teacher's guide includes activities for discussing the rainforest ecosystem.

Orangutans play an important role in the traditional cultures in the places where they're found. The name "orangutan" means "Man of the Forest" in the Dayak language of that region. These cultures have strong beliefs about protecting orangutans, which are not necessarily honored by others. Like many animals adapted to habitats that cover only a small area, the orangutans face threats from loss of those habitats due to human activity.

Palm oil production is one major factor in destroying the places where orangutans live. Palm oil is very common in food manufacturing. In some ways it's a great oil to use - it's plant-based, stable, and the oil palm trees require relatively little land to grow. However, orangutan habitat is being cleared and peat swamps burned to open space for planting the oil palms. Burning or draining the peat swamps additionally releases large amounts of carbon (20 times more than with neighboring forests not on peat according to Mongabay). A switch to "deforestation-free" palm oil that focuses on using land that has already been disturbed instead of clearing new land is one solution. "That's a harder story to tell," Laurel notes, "It's easier to say 'no' to palm oil. . . but the goal is really sustainable oil production."

Other concerns for orangutans are the capture of babies for the illegal pet trade and treatment of animals in the entertainment industry.

A lot of Laurel's writing has to do with the threats facing wildlife. She's found that kids can take an active, effective part in advocacy. We have an entire post focused on kids and advocacy, which we've updated with new information following Laurel's talk.

That's a snapshot of some of the things you can learn from the starting point of one story about an orangutan playing a trick on its keepers. Laurel has more ideas written out as classroom activities in her Teacher's Guide for Orangutan Houdini found on her website www.laurelneme.com. She encourages any feedback teachers have to offer.

And get ready for our next workshop with Katherine Roy, author / illustrator of Neighborhood Sharks. Find out how she does her research and how she turns that research into storytelling, Saturday, February 7th, 11:00 am.

Laurel signs copies of Orangutan Houdini

Top 10 Books for Making Lunch

We're excited that the Nerdy Book Club featured a Top 10 List that was a joint collaboration with Helen & Jane this past Saturday:

Top 10 Books for Making Lunch

This post is based on our 2013 November Educators event for Agriculture in the Classroom Month, when we were joined by Abbie Nelson (of VT-FEED) and Gail Gibbons (picture book author). You can read an article on their workshop here.

The Nerdy Book Club offers a new post every day on the topic of books for children and young adults. It's maintained, and contributed to, by people who love reading! (That sentence felt like it needed an exclamation point, for no particular reason). Today they turned three and have a new post about the experience of the last three years that's a good introduction to the site if you've never visited before.

We'd like to point out that local author Linda Urban's book Hound Dog True helped inspire the creation of the Nerdy Book Club blog. The blog's founders thought that Linda's book, like many books they personally recommended to readers, didn't receive the recognition they deserved . . . so they set up a place to talk about those books. They also award the Nerdies every year to favorite books. And it's time now to nominate books for the next Nerdies. The ballot is open until December 20th if you have titles you'd like to nominate!

Deirdre Gill & Jason Chin Part II: Activities

On Saturday, November 15th, the author-illustrators Jason Chin (Gravity, Redwoods, Island, Coral Reefs) and Deirdre Gill (debut picture book Outside) joined our author series to talk about how they're inspired by nature and in turn translate that inspiration into picture books that encourage young readers to explore the outdoors. See Part I here.

Many parts of the processes author-illustrators Jason Chin and Deirdre Gill follow to create their picture books also translate into activities that work for students, teaching writing and drawing skills, as well as science.

Making Visual Analogies
 
The last post discussed how Jason worked to find visual comparisons to help his readers understand  unfamiliar places and things, such as comparing the statue of liberty to a redwood tree to describe the tree's height. When he visits classrooms with his books, he often sees that they've taken their own visual approaches to conveying information about the places described in his books.

In one school, a class turned the entry to their classroom into a redwood trunk - both a fun project and also a chance to show how wide a redwood grows, as they measured off the diameter of their constructed tree. Other classrooms used Jason's Coral Reefs, which describes the different parts of a coral reef, as the foundation for projects. One teacher built a representation of the reef structure, and students used clay to first create creatures that you would find in a reef, and then put their figures in the appropriate parts of the larger reef. Another class did the same but with a mural of a reef where students illustrated different sections. Taking time to recreate this ecosystem also gives time to ask questions about it and wonder (then discover) how the different parts fit together.

Practicing Close Observation through Drawing

On the topic of creating creatures, Jason brings both a sketch book and camera on all his research trips. Photos capture details to be examined later, but drawing is a way to observe closely and build rich memories of what he's seeing. Plus, it doesn't have to be great art - he's learning through the process of creating the pictures. Anyone can use drawing to focus themselves on careful observation of an object or place. For another example, check out these sketches (sets one and two) from Katherine Roy, made in the Museum of Natural History. Katherine, author of Neighborhood Sharks is coming to talk more about research + drawing in February.

From Katherine Roy's sketch book - her next picture book is about elephants

Taking a Creative Look at Common Objects

Deirdre's work writing Outside included more than thirty drafts and thousands of sketches. It also offers a great example of combining unfettered creativity and critical thinking about the craft of writing and illustrating.

One core part of Deirdre's work was transforming familiar objects outside into something magical. In this case the snowy landscape, but the same could be done for any month of the year. And you don't need a few thousand sketches to simply play around with this concept of making something magical from something ordinary. In fact, it doesn't even need to be drawing - the snow castle in Deirdre's book began as clay and her book launch party included crafting snow creatures from soap.

 

  
Using Pictures to Plot a Story
 
Deirdre's work figuring out the story for her book echoed what we've heard in earlier writing workshops. For example, she began with two ideas: remembering what she loved from playing in the snow as a child and the character of a boy who wants to get his family's attention. The boy wanting to get attention provided tension, which she knew propelled the story, but it became distracting from what she wanted to accomplish with providing a sense of wonder and that ". . .the quiet possibilities of playing outside are endless. . .there is magic in being outside." Hence the many drafts as she found the right balance for her starting concept.

Deirdre used sketches to figure out the balance and rhythm of her story. Some of her drawings were practice in creating the images she wanted, some were quick thumbnails figuring out the pacing of the book. We've seen that use of sketches for pacing even in books that include no pictures at all. For example, last spring Jo Knowles shared her exercises for plotting her own young adult novels using  pictures. Her example also demonstrated you don't need to be great at drawing to benefit from the practice of drawing scenes from your story (Jo said that, not us, we're sure she could be a great illustrator if she put her mind to it. . . )

All of the authors who have spoken in our series have their own take on tools to connect with kids to help them both remember information and feed the curiosity to discover more. They all share common elements of telling stories and creating emotional connections. We'll collect everyone's ideas next month in our end of year review blog posts.

Don't forget, our author-educator speaker series starts up again in 2015 with Laurel Neme (Orangutan Houdini, Animal Investigators and contributor to National Geographic) on January 24th at 11:00 am talking about creating global connections in the classroom.

Deirdre Gill & Jason Chin - Creating Stories that Explore Nature

On Saturday, November 15th, the author-illustrators Jason Chin (Gravity, Redwoods, Island, Coral Reefs) and Deirdre Gill (debut picture book Outside) joined our author series to talk about how they're inspired by nature and in turn translate that inspiration into picture books that encourage young readers to explore the outdoors. 

Deirdre Gill's first picture book, Outside, tells the story of a bored little boy who can't convince his family to pay attention to him and so he goes outside. . . where he creates adventures for himself. Her one-sentence summary "A lonely boy steps outside to play in the snow and finds magic, in the end his brother joins him and the adventures start anew."

She began her book with a memory of how it felt to play outside in the snow when she was a kid. The W.B. Yeats quote in the opening pages, which she kept at her desk while creating the book, captures the spirit of that memory:

The world is full of magic things,

Patiently waiting

For our senses to grow sharper.

Deirdre wanted to communicate the emotions of being outside through her pictures - filling notebooks with over 5,000 sketches as she explored characters, setting, and how that setting transforms in the boy's imagination to a land of snow creatures, dragons, and castles. She used photographs, a clay model of the castle the boy builds, and a lot of just trying out different approaches to create the world of her book.

Actual tree

Actual Tree

Snow Creature Tree

The feedback that Deirdre is getting from teachers, and from educators in our audience Saturday, is that the idea her book captures of kids' free time to go outside and just explore the natural world is essential to overall learning. Sometimes that free outdoors time becomes lost in our daily schedules.

While Deidre began with a familiar place for her wintertime landscape, Jason's books have focused on places far away from his childhood experience, like the redwood forests, Galapagos Islands, and coral reefs. (Technically the gravity in Gravity was part of his childhood experience). That meant he faced the challenge of starting with a topic that interested him but that he didn't necessarily know much about, traveling to that place and learning about it, then translating that back to children who probably have never visited those places themselves.

Jason got the idea for his first book from reading about scientists studying the redwoods. He was reading an article on a NYC subway train - the boy in his book has a similar experience, finding a book about redwoods on the subway. But when the fictional boy steps out of his subway stop, he's been transported to the redwood forest. After Jason got a contract for this book, he and Deirdre traveled west to visit the redwoods. Their campsite flooded and in the morning, after the rains, the forest was filled with mist and felt mysterious and ancient and magical. Jason tried to capture those feelings in the illustrations of the book, alongside descriptions of the science.

When Jason visits a place, he absorbs the details through both taking photographs and drawing observations in his sketch book (a sketch from the Galapagos Islands is featured below). The sketch book isn't a place to create a perfect picture of what he sees - the process of drawing means that he's paying close attention to his environment and developing a rich memory of it.

To communicate these experiences back to his readers, Jason looks for ways to connect to kids' broader experience. So, for example, he used the Statue of Liberty as a visual comparison to the height of a redwood (FYI - the tree is six stories taller). That analogy offers a specific, concrete connection. The framework of  Redwoods - the book within a book - also establishes a connection with any child who reads about a place and imagines they're there. For his book about the Galapagos (Island) Jason built the framework of the island as a character. The book then follows that character through birth, childhood, adulthood and old age. He says he knew he'd succeeded in connecting with his readers through that parallel when one student explained how sad he felt when the Island sank.

The strategies Jason uses to create his books add up to an ability to not only talk about a specific place, but also explain larger theories. The ages of the island, for example, help kids (and adults) conceptualize 6 million years. His newest book, Gravity, tackles a truly abstract scientific idea while it uses pictures of a series of objects falling (or not falling) to tell a visual story. Readers can follow the objects from a starting scene of a child on a beach through the pages (and through outer space) to the final scene of children at a lemonade stand.

Many of the tools that Jason and Deirdre use to create their stories can also translate into activities that anyone can learn from. We pick up that part of the story in Part 2 of this post. 

Previous articles about this event provide more background information on the work of Jason and Deirdre, and a list of recommended picture books that are inspired by nature.