When Reptiles Had Whiskers

More on the theme of “great discoveries while researching…”

If you read the I.N.K. blog, you’re undoubtedly better-informed than most, but did you know…

No dinosaurs swam in the sea or flew in the air because true dinosaurs lived only on land.
I’ve always enjoyed learning about prehistoric creatures, but research for a current book project has improved my often out-of-date knowledge base. Those soaring pterosaurs and frightening marine monsters such as ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs were reptiles, but not dinosaurs. Of course, it’s widely accepted that birds evolved from dinosaurs, so at least their descendants flew. And recent findings suggest that many or perhaps most dinosaurs had feathers. Many readers aren’t aware of even basic facts about prehistoric life, but prehistory has much to teach us.

Petroleum was derived from marine plants and animals, not dinosaurs.
Coal was formed primarily from land plants. However, according to data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, Saturn's orange moon Titan has hundreds of times more liquid hydrocarbons than all the known oil and natural gas reserves on Earth. The hydrocarbons rain from the sky, collecting in vast deposits that form lakes and dunes. Hmmm, either Titan has life or there are other geological factors at work. But anyway…

A barrel of oil = 42 U.S. gallons.
The unit is a holdover from the early days of oil drilling when oil was actually transported in wooden barrels. These days, other chemicals and food are often transported in 55 gallon barrels, which leads to some confusion. More importantly…

One barrel of oil = 25,000 hours of human labor(?)
I’ve asked many friends and random passersby to guessimate how many hours of manual human labor is replaced by one barrel of oil. Most people don’t begin to guess as high as 25,000 hours. While estimates vary and it’s hard to pin the number down exactly, the point is that fossil fuels are a remarkably concentrated source of energy, very difficult to find substitutes for. Since fossil fuels are not renewable, replace them we must or we’ll return to the Stone Age. It must be added that living in the middle of a very risky experiment to add vast quantities of extra carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases to the air from burning substances that had been underground for millions of years is at the very least, unsettling.

As of 2005, one third of American homes had no personal computer, while 22 percent had two or more refrigerators and 43 percent had three or more televisions.
At a neighborhood party the other night, one gal told me she had three refrigerators. That seems excessive for a couple with no children in residence, doesn’t it? Another neighbor has two stand-alone freezers, again for two people. While working on a picture book about energy, I’ve become alert to such anecdotes that help reveal why our use of energy has become such an enormous and intractable problem. Another statistic that you may have suspected when seeing new housing developments with their gargantuan single-family houses…

The median size of new homes has increased from about 1,500 square feet in 1970 to over 2,200 s.f. in 2005.
The 1.6 million homes built in 2005 have one trillion extra square feet that must be heated and cooled compared to 1970-sized houses. (700 s.f. X 1.6 million new homes.) One fifth of those new homes had garage space for 3 or more cars. Such increases require much more energy to build and maintain for years and years to come. Though the current recession has slowed things down somewhat, the prevailing “wisdom” and policy objectives seem to be to try and rev it all up again to recreate the model of year upon year growth in GDP. Hasn’t anyone heard about the limitations of exponential growth? Remember that fable about doubling rice on a chess board? No problem, we’ll just move to another planet. Which brings me to…

The Permian Extinction resulted in the loss of 95 percent of marine life and the death of the 70 to 80 percent of land animals.
The cause(s) of that devastating mass extinction 250 million years ago are still being debated, but it’s just one of many extinction events that have taken place in Earth’s history. Asteroids, changes in ocean currents, toxic gases, volcanoes, climate change, loss of habitat… all have been factors at various times in the past and may be again. The famous quotation by George Santanyana comes to mind:
Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

The story of life on Earth can be told in terms of how each individual strives to capture energy, whether directly from the sun or indirectly from plants or other animals. It was a fundamental issue for prehistoric life and it remains one today. On the brighter side, every one of us is descended from the first primitive life forms that wriggled around, found food, and whose progeny somehow managed to survive it all until today, so there’s still room for optimism!

About that whisker-faced prehistoric critter…Thrinaxodon is its name and it was an intermediate form between reptiles and mammals. The cat-sized animal was an egg-layer but had pits in its skull that indicate the presence of whiskers and thus fur, since whiskers are specialized hairs. Who knew that whiskers went so far back?

“Lots of kids who think they hate reading are actually avid nonfiction lovers”

**A Summer Repeat from Kathleen Krull**



First of all, can we all get t-shirts made with the above quote? Credit for it, along with the prize in our INK contest, goes to Lelac Almagor, the inspirational English teacher at the KIPP DC: AIM Academy of inner-city Washington, D.C. Every day that my package to her procrastinated on my desk, I added another book for the amazing KIPPsters.





It’s surely the nonfiction event of the year—David Macaulay’s The Way We Work: Getting to Know the Amazing Human Body. No wonder he won a “genius grant” from the MacArthur Foundation, which in part allowed him to complete this 336-page event, I mean book. Really, all you can say is “wow”—at the structural magnificence that is the human body and at Macaulay’s dramatic, clear drawings conveying every detail. Like a 21st-century Leonardo da Vinci, though presumably without the real corpses, he gets inside us and dissects like mad, and not for his own edification (like Leo), but ours. This tome has tremendous amounts of info, boiled down to its essence, and obviously thoroughly vetted by experts. Kids who persist with the somewhat textbook-y text, co-written with Richard Walker, will learn how we pick up an apple, breathe, think, blink, digest, reproduce, and everything else the body does. To me the most interesting of the seven chapters was “Battle Stations,” about the way we try to fight off flu and other threats. I would think this book would be of special interest to kids who have had anything go wrong with their bodies, but it's also a gift for budding biologists, and anyone who likes to browse (Walter Lorraine/Houghton Mifflin, ages 10 and up).





I love everything about this next book except the title: Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat. Edited by distinguished poet Nikki Giovanni, stylishly illustrated by various artists, and with a genuinely collectible CD of great poets reading their own poetry, this is another nonfiction Event. Alas, the title seems clunky, I don’t know what it means, and as Kelly Fineman points out, not all of the 51 selections have much to do with hip hop. Most of all, the title misses the boat in trumpeting what a rare jewel this is—a treasury and history of African-American rhythms. The anthology honors poets of the past (W. E. B. DuBois, Gwendolyn Brooks), more current voices (Maya Angelou, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Jr.), and up-to-the-minute stars like Queen Latifah, Lauryn Hill, Kanye West, and Tupac Shakur. A teeming treasure that has something for everyone and will get any kid dancing—and rhyming (Sourcebooks, ages 7 and up).





A third book for browsing around in is The Raucous Royals. After delighting us with her first book, Who Put the B in Ballyhoo?, Carlyn Beccia here collects a motley crew of famous historical figures suspected of weirdness. Was Prince Vlad Dracula really a vampire? Was Napoleon all that short? Did King George III indeed go mad? Did Marie Antoinette actually say, “Let them eat cake”? Plus a big bunch of rumors swirling around Henry VIII and his relatives. A book with wickedly appealing art and layout, little quizzes, juicy historical tidbits. It even attempts a moral, with specific tips about how to play “history detective” and sort out fact from rumor. But really this is a frothy book for fun, educational fun, all about one of my favorite things—gossip (Houghton Mifflin, ages 8 and up).





And who is this kindly gent glowing against this startlingly green background? Except for excelling as a husband and dad, he pretty much failed at everything until the age of 44. His mother-in-law threw up her hands—but also prodded him to write down those unusual tales he spun for his four beloved sons each night. So was born The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, the Harry-Potter-like sensation of 1900. And here is the author’s little-known story in my newest book, The Road to Oz: Twists, Turns, Bumps, and Triumphs in the Life of L. Frank Baum. The beautiful paintings are by Kevin Hawkes, and do look for a piece of his original art at the Society of Illustrators show, opening this week in NYC (Knopf, ages 6-10).

How Amazing is That?

Continuing on the theme of “great discoveries while researching…”

I have found so many weirdly wonderful facts while researching that I don’t even know where to start. Some are hilarious; some are profound. Some are both. Think about this one, which I discovered while writing The Truth About Poop: When they are upset, chimps who have been taught sign language (but not in this context) indicate their frustration by making the sign for poop.

But perhaps the most amazing thing I’ve discovered while researching kids books and magazine articles from my previous career is that just about everything is interesting. Everything, as long as I can understand it. There have been many times when I started a project (especially assigned ones) thinking ho, hum. But once I started looking around, asking questions, sinking into that world—it was fascinating.

Iris breeders not only know all about genetics and beauty, they also have a microcosm as complete as any society with the conservatives and the radicals and the innovators and the ideologues and all the feelings that past between them. Allowing hunters to cull herds of bison or elk might actually be the most humane thing people can do to prevent disease and starvation. A bunch of guys got together in Philadelphia a few hundred years ago and, by cherrypicking an idea here from Rome and there from France, managed to create the principles of a nation. We all know how hard it is to research an idea and come up with a decent book. How did they pull that off?

Once you look at something, really look at it, it is fascinating. No matter how big or how small, the whole world is in it.

How incredible is that?

An Unexpected Hero

Continuing the theme of “great discoveries while researching…”

One of my enduring memories of college is sitting in a big lounge chair in a t-shirt and cut-offs, reading Walt Whitman’s poetry instead of doing my homework.

Unlike some other poets who seemed to live in a rarified world instead of the real world, Walt was right there in the thick of things: milling around with the other passengers on the ferry boat and tramping down the road in his great big boots.

There was something so elemental and relatable in his imagery and language; I could feel the person behind the poem.

It’s not surprising, then, when I began to write picture book biographies years later, that I would return to Walt Whitman as a long lost friend. But while I’d read and loved his poetry, I’d never actually read much about his life. I came to the research for Walt Whitman: Words for America expecting to write a book about a rambling man, hungry for new experiences, living his life with vigor and making myriad friends along the way.

I did not expect to discover that he was also a true hero.

For several years during the American Civil War, Walt tirelessly volunteered in the Civil War hospitals of Washington D.C. He was not trained as a medical professional, and yet his sheer presence brought comfort and cheer to thousands of wounded soldiers.

Walt kept notebooks filled with reminders of “little gifts” he could bring to ease the soldiers’ long days:

David S. Giles—Company F 28th New Jersey Volunteers—wants an apple
Janus Mafield—7th Virginia Volunteers—2 oranges
Henry D. Boardman—Company B 27th Connecticut Volunteers—wants a rice pudding, not very sweet

He read to soldiers. He wrote letters home for them. Sometimes he simply sat quietly with a dying soldier so he would not have to die alone.

Walt called this experience “the greatest privilege and satisfaction” of his life, and yet the effort took at permanent toll on his health—by war’s end, he was exhausted and never regained the health and vigor he had enjoyed before the war.

A picture book biographer, constrained by the physical limitations of the genre (these books are short!), looks for a theme to carry the book, a simple concept to give focus and clarity to a complex life. Walt’s wartime experience—displaying his generosity of spirit, his care for others, and his love of country—did just that.

Don't Take My Word For It

Don't Take My Word For It

Teaching history to kids is a challenge. First, the events are so distant, so remote in a child's concept of time. Second, the people who helped shape these events are also very remote. In order for history to come alive for kids, it has to seem real. It has to be tangible. As an author, my voice carries some authority. But I don't want kids to just accept what I write, or what they read in other history books. So I decided to change my approach starting with my book World War II for Kids, published back in 2002 by Chicago Review Press.

I thought back to my days as the editor of my college newspaper, and came up with a plan.I interviewed a variety of people who were alive during the war, including homefront heroes, Holocaust survivors, and soldiers. I let them tell me about a particular incident in their own words, and then I included that quote (or a summary of it) in a sidebar in the appropriate chapter of the book. I also included excerpts from actual letters written during the war, to give a contemporaneous perspective on the war. The other aspect of my approach was to ensure representation of people who lived in various countries during the war. I got anecdotes from Japanese, Russian, Italian, German, American, Austrian, and Hungarian war survivors. While I am proud of my narrative about the war, I am the first to admit that the interviews are what brings the book to a new plane.

When it came time to write Our Supreme Court (Chicago Review Press, 2006), a history of the Court and its biggest decisions for kids ages 10 and up, I had modest ambitions. I wanted to use the same approach on to some degree...but what began innocently enough turned into an obsessive quest to interview a wide range of political figures and participants in key cases. Again, with a potentially "dry" subject such as the Supreme Court, I felt this would enliven the text.By the time I was done, I had interviewed more than 35 people, including several former Attorneys General and Solicitors General. I also interviewed participants in some of the landmark cases of the 20th century, including Jane Roe (of Roe v. Wade) and participants in the major flag-salute cases of the 1940s. I was able to interview the lead attorneys on both sides of Bush v. Gore. I felt fortunate and certain the book would be an excellent resource.

Now, with World War II for Kids, the interviews made the book somewhat longer than the publisher bargained for, and I had to cut a bit, though it was still longer than the rest of the books in the series

Not only was it long, it was way too long.

Though I resisted cutting it (I think it rang in at 107,000 words, if I remember correctly, on a book that was supposed to be about 50,000 words), in the end I had to trim it back to about 67,000 words. This was a painful process. Some interviews were trimmed, others eliminated. Between the narrative, the text of the case decisions, the interviews, and the activities (the books are part of a series that includes activities), there was just too much there. I got excited to realize the possibilities of including first-hand material in my Supreme Court book...perhaps a little too excited. I was on a roll, finding one important person after another to interview. I forgot that in publishing, length is always a concern. Cost is a bottom line. The bigger the book, the higher the price, the fewer copies will be sold, the smaller the audience I will reach.

It's all a compromise. In creating something I felt would be exciting and informative, I had to also realize that there can be too much of a good thing. Looking back, I still wish I had been able to include more of Rudy Giuliani's interview, to have Floyd Abrams' take on free speech in the book. But I also realized that maybe I'd gone a bit overboard. Maybe I'd been overzealous and too thorough, too inclusive. The interviews were threatening to become the dominant force in the book. I had to recognize that kids wouldn't want to read a book of interviews alone. They wanted to hear my voice, my summary, my take. I was still the author, and I had to write the book, no matter how many people I interviewed. I still had to weave a narrative. The Supreme Court book came out very nicely in the end, but left me spent. I still have a huge file full of uncut interview transcripts, and looking back I have no idea how I did it all.

Most recently, with Franklin Delano Roosevelt for Kids (Chicago Review Press, 2007), I was able took a more balanced and focused approach. I interviewed about 10 people who had known FDR, who'd met him and spoken with him. But I made sure these stories didn't threaten to overrun the narrative or make the book 30% longer than it should have been; rather, they enhanced and complemented the text. I could have just done straight narrative, especially after the exhausting experience with my Supreme Court book. But I felt I was still onto something; it was important for kids to hear some of these voices tell their Roosevelt memories before they were gone forever. Since it was published, several of the people I interviewed have died, reinforcing the importance of my approach.

During my years of college journalism, I must have written well over 100 articles. I was a journalist first, and only later a writer of history books for kids. Those journalistic instincts apparently never leave. Achieving the right blend of journalism and narrative writing is a goal for which I will continue to strive in my future history books, with the goal of making social studies more appealing to kids.

POURING ON THE SALT

Continuing July's theme of "amazing discoveries made while researching our books"

Whenever I write nonfiction, I always use the Meat and Salt Method. The Meat is what sticks to your ribs and raises kids' SAT scores. It includes the very most important facts in a book; names of major players, pivotal events, and the dates and places where the action is. But I ask you...what good is Meat without any Salt? Salt lets me sprinkle in all the spicy little surprises that flavor a story and vault its characters to life. While digging up research material, I'm regularly blown away by Salty bits that no one seems to know yet. Here are a few favorite examples:

TWO FASHION STATEMENTS AND SOME MOSQUITOES
During his exploration of the American West, Meriwether Lewis wrote that the Chinook Indians flattened their infants' heads so much that they measured only 2 inches from front to back and were even thinner at the top. (Head flattening didn't lower the babies' intelligence one bit....but don't try this at home.)

Grownups had to look good too. Chinook women made their legs look fashionably fat by tying cords so tightly around their ankles that the circulation was cut off and their legs swelled right up.

And Lewis's co-captain William Clark may have been a brilliant explorer, but he was a terrible speller. I counted 17 different ways he spelled the word "mosquito" in his journal, and sometimes he spelled it 2 or 3 different ways on the same page.

FIREWORKS FOR FUN AND PROFIT
The fireworks you saw this weekend aren't just for 4th of July celebrations. Back in 1601, they helped John Smith become a Captain. Way before he ever sailed to Colonial Jamestown, he was a young soldier in a small outmanned Austrian army. To beat the huge Turkish army, he set off a long string of fireworks atop a ridge. This noisy trick lit up the skies and fooled the Turks into thinking that thousands of Austrian soldiers were firing guns at them. They charged the fireworks by mistakes and John Smith's army ambushed them from behind. For thinking up this winning maneuver, John Smith was made the captain of 250 horsemen.


WHAT A GUY!
Ben Franklin never patented his inventions because he wanted everyone to use them for free. One time his house was struck by a tremendous bolt of lightning, but it didn't catch on fire. His greatest free invention, the lightning rod, had saved his family's bacon, and nobody even knew it until years later when Ben was having some work done on his roof and discovered that the nine inch copper point on the rod had melted almost entirely away.

SALTY STORIES ABOUT WATER
Charles Darwin found that flamingos in South America actually thrive by drinking saltwater, and he discovered toads in the middle of a desert that can "drink" dew through their skin.

As gold seekers headed to California during the great Gold Rush of 1849, they ran into plenty more problems with drinking water. A woman sailing from New York via a shortcut through Nicaragua joked that "The water was of the very poorest kind. We called it 'Alligator Soup.' " I've mentioned this when commenting on an INK blog before, but after another passenger's ship rounded Cape Horn, the water had become so bad that he had to find a way of killing the bugs before drinking them. And when all food and water ran out as folks herded cows across Death Valley, another woman reported that "The old man traveling with us had a straw mattress. A small portion was dealt out to the cattle to keep the poor things from starving.

Speaking of cattle, when there was way too much water, cowboys on the Old Chisholm Trail used to cross muddy rivers by running on their cows' backs.


NOT A BLITHERING IDIOT
Proper patriots certainly didn't agree that God gave King George III the divine right to rule America. But the guy was never the stupid insane tyrant that my teachers and the Declaration of Independence said he'd been during the American Revolution. That's pure propaganda. Fact is, G III was the most well educated male ruler England had ever had! My research also revealed that he gave an enormous amount of his own money to charities, disguised himself as a peasant farmer so that he could secretly hand out gold coins to the poor, and worked to improve their education to boot. He opened his excellent free library to scholars, had a powerful telescope built, practiced cutting-edge scientific farming, and set up a Royal Academy of the Arts. Even though he usually agreed with them, it was the British Parliament, not King George, that made the laws and levied the taxes Americans hated. And although George had inherited a rare disease called porphyria that would rob him of his sanity in his old age, his mind was basically just fine during the Revolutionary War. Like his one-time enemy George Washington, G III was even admired by his countrymen as "the Father of the People."

See what I mean? It's all about the Salt.

I.N.K. News for July

From Sue Macy: I will be speaking on "Intimate Portrait: The All-American Girls Professional Baseball League" at the Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ, on Saturday, July 18 at 1 p.m. Besides looking at the triumphs and challenges of the pioneers who played in the league, I will talk about the long-awaited recognition they enjoyed in the 1980s and 1990s, as well as their hopes for the future of women's baseball. The talk is in conjunction with an exhibit, "Linedrives & Lipstick: The Untold Story of Women’s Baseball" that will be at the museum through August 9.



From Tanya Stone: The 2009 Boston Globe-Horn Book Awards for Excellence in Children's Literature were recently announced. Tanya Lee Stone's ALMOST ASTRONAUTS: 13 WOMEN WHO DARED TO DREAM is one of two Honor titles in the nonfiction category! There will be an awards ceremony at the Boston Athenaeum on October 2nd. The other Honor title is The Way We Work by David Macauley. The Award title is The Lincolns by Candace Fleming.
In other news, Tanya Lee Stone's picture book about Elizabeth Cady Stanton, ELIZABETH LEADS THE WAY, was just named a Minnesota Comstock Award Honor Book. Stickers!



Barbara Kerley's latest National Geographic title, One World, One Day, was selected by Indie Booksellers for the Summer 2009 Kids' List.



Deborah Heiligman has a number of speaking engagements this fall, including: the Princeton Children's Book Festival, September 12, 2009, where she will be talking about CHARLES AND EMMA: THE DARWINS' LEAP OF FAITH, and signing books.

Finding Relna

Continuing the theme of “great discoveries while researching,” started yesterday by Vicki Cobb….

I’m not sure which was the more amazing discovery: finding Relna Brewer’s pictures or meeting her in person. I found her pictures in 1995, when I was doing photo research for my book, Winning Ways: A Photohistory of American Women in Sports. In those days, one could rummage around in the backroom of the Bettmann Archive in New York City for long-forgotten news photographs. I spent an afternoon looking through banks of file cabinets, opening every folder whose label had anything to do with sports. In one file—I forget which—I found two exquisite black-and-white photographs of a bathing beauty flexing her biceps for the camera. I immediately put them in my pile of photos to be copied.

Besides the Bettmann I.D. number, there was only the sketchiest of information on the backs of the photos: “Strongwoman Relna Brewer, Venice, Ca 11/22/37.” In the days that followed, I searched high and low for more information on Relna, to no avail. (This was three years before Google was invented. Searching for information was a much more time-consuming and frustrating process back then.) Meanwhile, my publisher suggested that we colorize the photos and use them on the front and back covers of the book. I agreed. I thought they represented a breakthrough in the image of American women, co-opting the traditional “bathing beauty” pose to emphasize the appeal of a female athlete’s muscles and strength.

When the book was published in 1996, I still had not found Relna. But then fate intervened. Author and book reviewer Kathleen Krull (now a fellow I.N.K. blogger) received a copy of Winning Ways to review for the Los Angeles Times, and she was surprised to see her husband’s aunt on the cover. Kathleen contacted my publisher, informing them that our cover model, now Relna Brewer McRae, was alive and well and living near San Diego. We sent her an autographed book and a few months later I traveled to San Diego, where we spent a few days together and did a joint book signing.

Meeting Relna was such a thrill. I spent so many hours staring at those photos, imagining her story, but her life turned out to be infinitely more interesting than I envisioned. At the time the pictures were taken, she was one of the pioneers at Muscle Beach, the plot of sand in Santa Monica, California, famous for launching the careers of bodybuilders, gymnasts, acrobats, stuntpeople, and at least a few Olympic athletes. Relna’s brother, Paul Brewer, was one of the men who staked out the beach in the early 1930s, and Relna was the first girl to perform there. But that was just the beginning. She later became a weightlifter, a trapeze artist, a swimmer, and a skater with the Ice Follies. She also did stunt work in the movies and even served as a decoy for Marilyn Monroe, helping the actress slip away from the omnipresent news media.

Today, Relna is still alive and well, just a few months shy of her 90^th birthday. She is the mother of three and grandmother of four, and this weekend, she will be the newest inductee in the Muscle Beach Hall of Fame in Venice, California. According to its Web site, the hall recognizes “individuals who have inspired, informed, entertained and advanced the art, sport and the science of bodybuilding and physical culture.” On Saturday she will join the ranks of other Muscle Beach immortals, including fitness guru Jack LaLanne and Joe Gold, founder of Gold’s Gym. It's a long way from the backroom of the Bettmann Archive and a fitting honor for a genteel woman who newspapers once labeled "Pretty as a Picture and Stronger Than Most Men."

Great Discoveries While Researching

When it comes to kids’ hands-on science activities I’m like a well-seasoned cookbook author. It’s hard for me to find a procedure I haven’t seen before in some incarnation or other. I own a library of kid’s activity books going back to the 19th century. I’ve scoured children’s magazines and the internet collecting files of printouts for future use. And of course there is my own extensive experience of prowling up and down supermarket aisles looking for products that could reveal some scientific principle other than the consumer objectives they are designed to meet. Often, at schools, kids will share the science tricks they know with me. So far, thousands of tricks later, there have been no surprises. So when I come across something simple to do and very revealing about a familiar subject that I have never known before, it is a true “Eureka!” experience, which I figure is worth the price of the book. Here are a few of them.

While researching one of my newest books, Your Body Battles a Cold, I was speaking to a children’s cold researcher, Dr. Birgit Winther, at the University of Virginia. She told me that the nose is like a computer. If you breathe down on a mirror, your nostrils will leave two circles of condensation, one larger than the other. That’s because one nostril is dominant and taking in more air than the other one. If you do this several hours later, the other nostril will be dominant. In other words your nostrils take turns, alternating the one that takes in the most air and you don’t even know it! I had a dentist appointment on the day I learned this delightful factoid so I was I excited to share this discovery with her. She was equally delighted to learn it because she looks a people’s nostrils all that time and had noticed the discrepancy in size. Now she knew why.

Whenever possible I’ve learned there is nothing like first-hand research. So I visited a Herr’s potato chip factory while researching Junk Food. Proper packaging is the secret to giving potato chips a shelf life. To stay fresh, chips must be protected from light and oxygen. (If you want to see for yourself, just leave a bowl of chips in sunshine for several hours and then taste them. ) So they are sold in foil-lined light-proof bags filled with nitrogen gas, which also cushions them against breakage. “Aha!” I concluded. Since nitrogen doesn’t support combustion I figured that you can extinguish a flame with the gas in a bag of potato chips. The procedure for doing this is in the book.

Interviewing scientists at the Monell Chemical Senses Center, I discovered that you can taste hot peppers with your wrist! Here’s a video I made to prove it. This past weekend I edited yet another video to prove that you can toast a marshmallow with a nut. And here’s one that shows the difference between regular and diet sodas as measured by density. Most of the time I don’t include the scientific explanations in the videos but in this one, I thought I could take one small step in fighting childhood obesity. My book We DareYou! is full of such discoveries.

The great joy in my work is stumbling across new insights about the nitty-gritty of daily life that most people never stop to think about. I learned how to do this in elementary school. As an adult I recreate what I loved most about school for myself on a daily basis. There are more of these unique discoveries in my books than I can count. I love that I can share them with my readers and I hope my writing conveys my enthusiasm with the implicit invitation: “You gotta try this!”

More Ask the Author

You have questions. We have answers. Two I.N.K. bloggers readily agreed to answer this question from AMD:

What advice do you have for writers interested in breaking into this field?

Barbara Kerley responds:
Much of my experience in nonfiction has been writing narrative nonfiction—nonfiction that tells a story. Like any story, it needs a beginning, middle, and end, and a strong central character(s) who drives the story. The added challenge, of course, is that everything in the story needs to be true. The first step in writing a narrative nonfiction book is to determine if your idea fits into the story framework.

If it does, then you need to determine what kind of story you'll be writing: a nonfiction article, a picture book, or chapter book. I think about the age-appropriateness of the ideas underlying the story, to determine if it works for a young or an old audience. As for article vs. book, I think it has to do with the heft of the story—if the idea is meaty enough that a kid would want to read it more than once—and also, its illustration potential (this is especially critical for picture books).

I have to say that selecting the right story to tell, then, is crucial to breaking into the field. I have abandoned many ideas, sometimes after days or weeks (or, when I was first starting out, months) of research, when I realized they wouldn't work as a story. (They might work beautifully as a different kind of nonfiction book, however, so if you love the idea, don't abandon it—just figure out the right format to present the information!)

Once you've identified a promising idea, check around to see how it's been covered by other authors. The easiest way to do this is to search on amazon and see what's in print. Think about how your approach will be different/fresh/necessary—you'll need this info when you submit your manuscript to editors.

Next, you have to be willing to put in the time to do your research. Seek out primary sources. Interview experts. Read read read. Triple-check your facts as you write. (I like to use the footnote feature in Word to note which sources I used for each fact. I don't submit a final draft with these footnotes, but there are very helpful during the writing and revising stage when you have to keep tabs on a lot of material.)

After you have a solid draft, get some feedback. Join a critique group if you can, find a trusted reader(s), or see if one of the experts you interviewed would be willing to read the manuscript.

Revise revise revise until you have the best manuscript you can write. Then, spend some time in the library and in bookstores, identifying which publishers publish books like yours, and send your story off. Celebrate a job well done and then, while you are waiting what seems like forever to hear back, start something new :)

Vicki Cobb responds:
I broke into this field many years ago by answering an ad in the NY Times for teachers to write instructional materials. If you have expertise in a field, that is still available and there are many companies that produce teachers guides, workbooks, etc that hire freelancers. Times have changed, however and the children’s book business is difficult to get into. My suggestion is to join SCBWI. They offer a lot of regional networking, as well as conferences where you can meet editors and hear their concerns.

I think Barbara Kerley covered the writing aspect of this question very well. I think it’s helpful to know that publishers are not looking for books. They are looking for suppliers of books. If your submission doesn’t fit into their editorial program, you will be rejected and it has nothing to do with your work. So think of your submissions as calling cards. Your writing can make an impression even if it’s not a buy. Be pleasant about a rejection and offer something else. Ask editors what they’re looking for. Read catalogues of publishers to get a sense of their editorial thrust.

Be prepared to pay your dues. I wrote a curriculum for cosmetologists, legends for the backs of a series of blown up photos, teachers’ guides, and manuals before I got my first book contract yet the topic was assigned by the editor. Is there a recipe for success? I love Dolly Parton’s answer, “I never quit trying and I never tried quitting.”

We’ll answer more questions at the end of July and at the end of future months, so keep let us know what’s on your mind. We want to discuss the topics that interest you most!

Ask the Author

Thanks to YOU, our loyal I.N.K. readers, we have lots to talk about today and tomorrow. For the rest of the summer, we will be setting aside the last couple of days of each month to answer questions you have left us in the comments.

Today, we’ll start off with a question from Melody: How closely do you need to connect with your subject matter to write about it? Do you need to be female to write about amazing women? An environmentalist to write about Rachel Carson? Do you lose all your credibility if you're writing about African-Americans and you're not African-American?

Three I.N.K. bloggers were excited to answer this interesting question:

Susan Goodman responds:
Melody, thanks for the question. It’s especially interesting to me because I just finished a manuscript about a young African-American girl from the 1840s. I do think that nonfiction writers have an easier time with this issue than fiction writers since we don’t have to have to inhabit our characters or imagine them in quite the same way. Nevertheless we have to inhabit their worlds and understand what their frame of mind was during a different time in history. The answer in part--research, research, research.

In my case, I had to learn about the specific African-American people in my story--who they are, what they looked like, what they did and, hopefully, what they felt and said about those feelings. But I also needed to know what their world was like and how their attitudes, assumptions, and expectations were different than ours today. That said, I also had to learn the same about the white people in my story. Can white people of today write about white people in times so different than our own? In a lot of ways, it is the same question.

But this hasn’t really addressed your question directly. It’s hard because it’s so complicated. I guess I’d say that anyone who writes and is interested in not only including facts, but also truth, in a project probably has something to add. But we writers have to be sensitive and careful. And we have to be just as willing to research and fact-check our own attitudes and predilections as our information.

Let me give you an example. My story takes place from 1847-1850 and there were obviously times I had to mention that someone was African American. But I hesitated to use the term “African American” because it wasn’t in use back then and I was trying to create and be true to a sense of place and time. It felt jarring and anachronistic to me. But, what to do? In my draft, I tried using the word, “black.” It was in usage back then and, since it was the preferred term a few decades ago and acceptable today, it felt like my best bet.

I had enough doubts, however, that I decided to consult with a prominent African-American historian and the director of the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American Culture and History. They both answered my email with long considered responses within hours. They both were clear—use “African American.” Basically they said that by using African American I was making a direct link between some of my contemporary readers and their ancestors. They could see themselves in the people of the 1840s. I also wasn’t accepting the designations imposed on people of African descent by the dominant group.

Needless to say, I changed the word throughout and felt good about it. But I don’t know what I would have ultimately decided on my own.

Gretchen Woelfle responds:
History books are soooo much more interesting these days, thanks to outsider historians and subjects. I'm finding African American history is full of great topics and subjects--way beyond the usual suspects of the civil rights movement. Keep at it, Sue!

Ten years ago the issue of who can tell whose story was extremely controversial. The controversy seems to have died down a bit, but important points were made. Get it right! I believe that anyone can write about anything if s/he gets it right. What does right mean? Obviously factually accurate. And skillfully written. But also with sensitivity to the subtleties of the subject matter and the readers.

I give my manuscripts to experts to judge if the facts and the tone are right. In writing about another culture, I would ask several members of that group to critique my work. I, a white woman, am working on African American history now, following such white authors as Doreen Rappaport, Larry Dane Brimner, and Ellen Levine. Of course we all owe much to Virginia Hamilton, Julius Lester, Andrea Davis Pinkney, and many other African American authors who led the way.

Why would I choose to write about African American history, rather than examine my own German and English heritage? Passion. I’ve found a particular topic that I’m intellectually and emotionally passionate about, and I think that I can tell the story in a compelling way. I’m determined to get it right.

I’ve got more to say about this, including my experience several years ago, of a wonderful workshop led by Ellen Levine. To be continued in my INK blog message of July 22.

Rosalyn Schanzer responds:
Most of my books focus on famous people from history, and I feel very strongly that it doesn't matter one whit about the authors' sex or race when they pick a person to introduce to their readers. As long as a biographer is a terrific writer who's willing to do thorough, unbiased, and accurate research, all is well. After all, it's not a bit unusual that I'm a female who doesn't need to be a guy in order to write about men, so why should a woman be portrayed only by another woman?

Consider this: There's no such thing as a modern historian who was alive 200 or 300 or 400 years ago, yet without ever having lived in, say, Colonial Jamestown or Victorian England, our best writers are somehow able to make the people who lived in those days spring credibly to life. If we can jump that hurdle, then why can't we write just as well about people who are different from ourselves in other ways too?

Thoughtful outsiders put fresh and worthwhile new spins on stories all the time. And even though there are editors and readers who heartily disagree with this philosophy, there are plenty of examples of award winning books that prove my point. Here's a very short list of just a few of them:

Russell Freedman, a white male, won the 2005 Newbery Honor Medal and the Sibert Award for The Voice that Challenged a Nation, which tells the story of Marian Anderson, a black female. He also wrote many notable books about American Indians. This brings to mind Paul Goble, a white Englishman who won the 1979 Caldecott Medal for The Girl Who Loved Wild Horses, a book about an Indian girl. In fact he wrote about Indians all the time too.

Another white American male, James Rumford, won a 2005 Sibert Honor award for Sequoyah (the famous Cherokee Indian), and he wrote books about Polynesian and Iraqi people as well. And a white female, Ann Bausum, wrote the Sibert Honor book Freedom Riders, which tells about black and white male and female activists during the historic Civil Rights Movement, thereby covering every base we've just discussed above.

Look for answers to another question tomorrow. And by all means, keep those questions coming. We want to discuss the topics that interest you most!

Great Backseat Books for Summer Vacation

On Good Morning America Talk Radio yesterday, the discussion was all about alternatives to watching DVDs on long car rides. I was driving somewhere and caught the end of the segment. There was an interesting divide between parents who loved the electronic babysitter and the parents who didn’t want their children’s brains to go to mush on the drive.

The most interesting part of the conversation was callers sharing their wonderful memories of long car rides when they were little. No air conditioning, no DVD player, no radio – just kicking their little brother the whole way to Florida. Whoops, that last one was my memory.

Parents shared how much fun they had with simple car games. The car license plate game, roadside bingo, and animal, vegetable or mineral were just a few of the activities that helped pass time and had the family interacting.

As I continued driving, I got wondering about what nonfiction books would be great to take along on family vacations. My kids and I tend to get carsick so deep novels wouldn’t be a great choice for us. (Though, my daughter kept us entertained on a car ride from Georgia to Illinois a few years ago. She decided to read Wuthering Heights and got stuck on a word about every minute or so. So, I spent about ten hours trying to define desolation, resolution, soliloquize, stunted, abode, slovenly, squire, impertinence, attribute, parry, inhospitable, churlish, pigeon-cote, peat, ferocious, countenance, venture, conjecture, condole, listless, morsel, sobriety, preposterous, endeavor, suppress, kindle, blubber, compel, interloper, wheedle, grievously, curate, plague, threshold, degradation, reprimand, vociferous, throttle, expostulate, flog, fiend, prognosticate, infernal, coquette, poignant, fidget, quiver, wretch, perdition, imprecation, annihilate, delirium, esteem, munificent, concession, degradation, aversion, obstinate, covetousness, deplorable, avarice, feign, discourse, saucy… )

Here are a few nonfiction books that would be great travel companions. Hopefully these books will entertain kids in the backseat or airplane seat, get the family talking and laughing, and make trips to whatever destination more enjoy able.

Have safe and wonderful travels wherever you may go this summer!

National Geographic Kids Almanac 2010
Nations Geographic Childrens Books May 2009








Kid’s Travel Fun Book: Draw, Make Stuff, Play Games, Have Fun for Hours!
Loris Bree (author) Marlin Bree (author)
Marlor Press April 2007
Kids Travel Series



Also,
Kid's Trip Diary: Kids! Write About Your Own Adventures & Experiences!
Loris Bree (author) Marlin Bree (author)
Marlor Press September 2007





Backseat Books Series
Rand McNally Kids’ Road Atlas
Kristy McGowen (author), Karen Richards (author), Chris Reed (illustrator)
Rand McNally Publishers
March 2003





Coast-to-Coast Games
Rand McNally Publishers
March 2003






Are We There Yet?
Karen Richards (author), Steven Mach (illustator)
Rand McNally Publishers
March 2003






Miles of Smiles: Travel Games & Quizzes to Go
Laurie Calkhoven
American Girl Press Inc May 2007







I Wonder Why Series
I Wonder Why the Sea is Salty: And Other Questions About the Oceans
Anita Ganeri
Kingfisher April 2003







I Wonder Why Planes Have Wings: And Other Questions About Transportation
Christopher Maynard
Kingfisher August 2003







Carschooling: Over 350 Entertaining Games & Activities to Turn Travel Time into Learning Time
Diane Flynn Keith
Three Rivers Press 2002

Looks like the book is no longer being published by this publisher (and the used copies are garnishing a high price tag). You can find out more information from the Carschooling Website.



Shameless Plug:
Next week I'll be posting a related article over on my National Children's Toys Examiner Page:
Great Backseat Toys for Summer Vacation.
I'll add the link after it is posted.