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

Students Take On International Wildlife Issues

As part of our author-educator event series, we're excited to have author Laurel Neme coming to the store on Saturday, January 24th at 11:00 am to talk about creating global connections from the classroom. As with all events in this series, this workshop is free and open to the public. There will be coffee and light refreshments. 

Author Laurel Neme tackles many big, global problems in her journalism about wildlife. You can see many of these issues on the website Mongabay.com and in National Geographic. She wrote about international crimes against wildlife in her adult book Animal Investigators and her recent picture book Orangutan Houdini profiles a real life orangutan whose behavior helped give new insight into how these primates think.

While the story of Orangutan Houdini doesn't deal directly with current threats to orangutans in the wild, Laurel does connect the story with these current issues when she speaks about the book. One particular problem is the loss of habitat due to palm oil production. She also addresses these topics in her Teacher's Guide to Orangutan Houdini (available on her website here).

One of the questions Laurel gets asked -- from students, teachers, and parents -- is "what can kids do?" if they're concerned about global issues like the ones discussed in her writing. Part of the answer is to connect with organizations dedicated to addressing whatever the particular cause may be. These organizations have resources dedicated to researching the problem and possible responses, as well as to coordinating campaigns with a global reach. They often offer "What Can I Do?" answers that cover a range of possible responses. For example, Laurel works with the Sumatran Orangutan Society on the palm oil issue.

We asked Laurel if she has good examples of kids and / or classes working on wildlife issues that she has come across in her recent work. She's got a lot of examples and sent us a few:

• Youth Action - Examples from Orangutan Outreach
• Profile of Allie Boyer as Orangutan Outreach Youth Ambassador,  including information on Purses for Primates and the video she created that started her orangutan advocacy.
• Wired article on the Runescape (online multiplayer game) campaign for rhino
• In Hong Kong, Kids Take Action to Stop Illegal Ivory Trade
• A Young Voice for Elephants: Celia Ho
• Girl Scout Cookies & Palm Oil: Rhiannon Tomtishen and Madison Vorva
• Caretakers of the Environment - And international network of secondary school teachers and students

To learn more, come join Laurel at Bear Pond Books on Saturday, January 24th at 11:00 am!

For other posts related to this event, check out this Q&A with Laurel and this list of recommended reading.

Laurel Neme - Orangutan Houdini & Creating Global Connections

Laurel Neme travels around the world to learn about, and write about, animals. She is a contributor to National Geographic, host of "The WildLife" podcast, and author of the book Animal Investigators about the world's first wildlife forensics lab to investigate poaching, smuggling and other wildlife crimes. In 2014, Bunker Hill published her first picture book Orangutan Houdini. On January 24th, she will be at Bear Pond Books at 11:00 am speaking to educations about animals, conservation, and making global connections from Vermont classrooms.

In preparation for her workshop, we sent Laurel some interview questions, which are answered below. She also gave us a list of her favorite wildlife-related books for kids, which are linked here (with some added ideas from us).

Come join us on Saturday, January 24th. As always, this workshop is free, open to the public, and coffee and snacks will be served. We have certificates of attendance available for educators who can use these workshops towards continuing education credits.

How did you first get interested in wildlife and wildlife protection?
I suspect it was a confluence of people and books that first got me interested in animals. My mother was a science teacher (and later a writer), and as a kid we’d watch Jane Goodall and Jacques Cousteau television specials. In third or fourth grade (it was a multi-age class), my teacher, Mrs. Savitt, fostered that love through reading and writing. She “published” her students’ stories. Mine was “Zeebie the Zebra”.  She also encouraged us to read fun books. My favorites were Doctor Doolittle and James Herriot’s All Creatures Great and Small, which allowed me to dream about a career helping animals.

You've written about many animals, what stood out about orangutans that made you choose them for your first picture book?

Their intelligence and similarity to humans. They’re problem solvers, like us, and they thrive on challenging themselves. Fu Manchu is probably the most famous orangutan escape artist, but there are several others who easily could have been the subject of this story. They also have a sense of humor. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet some very special, and devious, orangutan individuals myself – and the more I get to know them, the more I’m enchanted.

I’ve always been interested in primates. Like many young women, I wanted to be the next Jane Goodall, and even studied primatology in college. But while researching my first book, ANIMAL INVESTIGATORS (on wildlife forensics), I discovered the prevalence of orangutans in the illegal pet trade. They’re incredibly cute when young, so people want them. But because mothers won’t relinquish their infants, poachers typically kill them to get the babies. It’s a sad story. Even worse, their forest habitat is being cut down to make way for palm oil. That has two impacts: it’s easier to find them (for pets) and they no longer have their homes.

While orangutans are endangered, there is a lot we can do to help them. However, the first step is to care. I wrote ORANGUTAN HOUDINI not only because it’s a funny story but also because when a reader gets to know an individual animal, they start to care. I hope that when children and their parents meet Fu (admittedly, one very special ape), they’ll come away with a love of orangutans.

What are some ways that you've seen kids and / or teachers get involved in conservation? Any examples from Vermont?

There are many things kids and their parents can do to help protect orangutans and other endangered species. Most important is to create awareness.

There are many ways you can do that: school projects, sharing articles on social media, or writing letters to local newspapers. You may have heard of Madison Vorva and Rhiannon Tomtishen, two young women I know and admire who, when they were in middle school, gained national media attention for trying to get Girl Scouts cookies to use more sustainable palm oil in their cookies. What’s interesting is that their campaign started very small, with a school project and sharing information with friends.

Another girl I know, Allie Boyer from California, started raising awareness when she was just 9-years-old. She created “Borneo Bob”, a flat cutout of an orangutan that she sent to friends along with a letter explaining the plight of orangutans, similar to Flat Stanley.

You can get creative. For instance, after I spoke at Moretown Elementary School in central Vermont, a group of third graders decided to wear orange to show how much they loved orangutans.

You can also write to policy makers or companies, or raise money to support specific organizations. But remember, it doesn’t have to be about orangutans. You can have an impact on whatever you care about. You can do that very effectively by simply sharing your passion.

If you want more information, I have a wonderful Teacher’s Guide that was developed in collaboration with educators and scientists that you can download free from my website. In addition to activities for language arts, mathematics, science and social studies, it contains a number of ideas to help students take action to help orangutans or any other species.

What animals / issues are on your mind right now for future writing projects?

I’ve got several writing projects underway right now, including more picture books and several articles for National Geographic. My son and I also volunteer at Outreach for Earth Stewardship, which rehabilitates injured birds of prey (like owls, hawks and peregrine falcons), and I’m planning to tell some of their stories.

Laurel Neme is speaking at Bear Pond Books on Saturday, January 24th, from 11:00 - noon.

Year(s) in Review - Part 2

The many authors and educators who have spoken in the children's room naturally didn't stop doing interesting things after they visited our Children's Room. (The Bear Pond talk was undoubtedly a high point, though).

Here are some updates about previous speakers. . . .we'll get to everyone eventually, but for now let's start with these:

Duncan McDougall - Boys & Books (2014)

Duncan spoke with us about a year ago about the work of his organization, the Children's Literacy Foundation (CLiF), to engage more boys in reading. CLiF works with children, parents, and communities across Vermont and New Hampshire through a variety of reading programs for low income and at-risk children. This year, we're supporting CLiF with our Book Bears program. Purchase a book to donate in the month of December, and you'll receive 15% off the price (and we'll deliver it to CLiF). Read more in the Latest News from the Children's Room.

Tanya Lee Stone - Combining Passion & Research (2013)

Tanya recently celebrated a contract for publication of her 100th book, Girl Rising. We posted about that event in October. This post includes information on the creation of her book Courage Has No Color, which she had recently completed when she came to speak at Bear Pond. Courage Has No Color is on this year's Dorothy Canfield Fisher list and VPR profiled it this month in their Dorothy's List series.


Linda Urban - The Center of Everything (2013)  

Linda Urban came to Bear Pond Books for a launch party, with donuts, for The Center of Everything. The Center of Everything is on this year's DCF list (Linda's Dorothy's List profile will air this March). Kate Messner, another Bear Pond series speaker, reviewed The Center of Everything for the Nerdy Book Club last March, and Linda appeared again in the Nerdy Book Club pages just last week. Her book Hound Dog True provided part of the original inspiration behind Nerdy Book Club, which celebrates children's literature with daily posts by hundreds of contributors. And right now (in December) Linda is organizing folks for Write 30 Daily - a month of meeting daily writing goals. It's a great framework for writers of all varieties to practice writing and making time for creative work in their daily lives. You can check out posts on her blog (lindaurbanbooks.com/journal) and/or look for #Write30Daily on Twitter. 

Gail Gibbons & Abbie Nelson - Agriculture in the Classroom (2013) 

Another Nerdy Book Club related item - we recently contributed a post called Top 10 Books for Making Lunch, that offered a list of food related picture books, inspired by a visit from Gail Gibbons and Abbie Nelson last November.

Rebecca Rupp - Nonfiction with Personality (2013)

Staying a little bit longer on the food theme . . . we've enjoyed following Rebecca Rupp's series of articles for The Plate, National Geographic's food blog. Her combination of food, history and science has covered everything from how to eat like a pirate to why a pea might possibly have once kept a princess awake. Also, in a non-food-related update, her book After Eli appeared on last year's DCF list and was profiled by VPR in April. Now that we're on our third reference to Dorothy's List, we hope it is clear that we're very happy VPR started to produce this series.

Kate Messner - Writing Workshop (2014)  

Why even bother to try to stay current? Every time we turn around Kate has a new teacher's resource, an important project (like the Great Greene Heist Challenge) that she's rallying folks behind, and of course (happily) a new book of her own. We recommend her blog and website at www.katemessner.com. She has a new middle grade novel All The Answers coming out this winter. As part of the book tour, she will be giving workshops at local schools that include not only reading from the book, but also a look at the process of writing it. We'll be interviewing Kate about All The Answers, and her work with schools, for an in-depth article to post in February.

S.S. Taylor - Writing Workshop (2014) 

Sarah Stewart Taylor visited just the other month to lead a writing workshop at Bear Pond. . . and yet we already have an update. Sarah and her illustrator Katherine Roy have a new three-part post / article "Behind the Scene" about how they created three scenes from the Expeditioners. In case you've missed just how much the book making process info on Katherine's blog tickles us, here is a good place to start. Even better - Katherine is coming the store on February 7th to talk about her own series of science-related picture books and the larger topic of visual learning. That's at 11:00 am in the Children's Room and all calendars should be marked right now.

Year(s) in Review Part I

We're open to (occasionally demanding of) feedback on our author-educators series at the Bear Pond Books Children's Room. One result of last year's input is a greater emphasis on possible activities to use in the classroom. You'll see in our write up of Jason Chin & Deirdre Gill's presentation on Pictures Books Inspired by Nature that we split the article between a general summary and one focused on learning activities. 

We'll continue to experiment with this emphasis in future blog posts. Retrospectively, we bring you this round up of earlier talks with quick notes on the information they contain related to activities you might create in your own classes, programs, or personal study of different subjects. 

Meg Allison - Why Fairy Tales Still Matter (2014)

• Building stories from the common elements of Fairy Tales . . . these elements provide the foundation for a lot of the stories around us, not only fairy tales.
• Exploring the stories behind the doors of Moretown, as inspired by the many doors and doorways that caught Meg's eye as she traveled through the fairy tale locales of Europe

Grace Greene - Picture Books & Early Literacy (2012); Dorothy Canfield Fisher List (2014)

• Using picture books to learn about how stories are structured - includes using critical analysis of picture books for teaching older students.
• Resources for using the DCF list in the classroom.

David Martin - Picture Books & Early Literacy (2012), Bad Jokes & Early Learning (2013)

• Using rhymes, poems, silly songs to help kids play around with words and anticipate what word is coming up.
• Turning books into games / acting books out in the classroom.
• Background resources on learning through play

Duncan McDougall, Dan Green, Derek Cote - Boys & Books (2014)

• Links to many resources for strategies to engage more boys in reading.

Kate Messner & Jo Knowles - Writing Workshop (2014) 

• Overview of tools Kate uses in her revision process, including different types of timelines and maps.
• Jo's technique of using storyboards to review the pacing, character appearances, focus, overall storyline of a book. 
• Writing prompts
• Writing exercise for generating new topic ideas

Abbie Nelson & Gail Gibbons - Agriculture in the Classroom (2013)

• An overview of resources from organizations participating in Food Education Every Day, which emphasizes combining cafeteria, classroom and community as students learn about food.
  

Rebecca & Josh Rupp - Nonfiction with Personality (2013) 

• Developing a voice for nonfiction (versus voice-less technical writing) in the middle grades 
• Using writers' notebooks to build a world of ideas, with context for each idea, then cut down ("cut until you can't cut any more") to reach the essence of a story.
• Handout on writing exercises.

Leda Schubert - Picture Books & Early Literacy (2012)

• Prompting questions to lead through research of a subject. . .  and then lead from that research to stories.
• Examples of good use of citations / resources / references in picture books (. . . which led to our later soap box speech in the October 2014 Materials Review about nonfiction books that do not include these elements).

Tanya Lee Stone - Combining Passion & Research (2013)

• Choosing topics for writing (ie things you care about)
• Examples of tracking down new information, looking in new places for information as part of research behind a writing project.
• This earlier post about Tanya discusses taking a critical eye to what a writer can really say for certain about a topic and what is conjecture. 

S.S. Taylor - Writing Workshop (2014)

• Exercise for imagining characters, situations, and tensions that lead to stories.
• Experimenting with the opening for a book / story.
  

J&P Voelkel - Successful Author Classroom Visits (2013)

• Resources for effectively using author visits as part of lesson plans. 
• An author visit checklist for a smooth event.

Natalie Kinsey Warnock & Jenny Land - Family and Place (2013)

• Using historical objects as story prompts - including a handout of sample questions.
• Classroom-wide projects to learn local stories and history, includes research that goes back to original sources.
• Introduction to Natalie's Storykeepers curriculum.
• Bibliography of resources for researching family and place history in Vermont.

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!