Review: Who Gives a Poop?

Who Gives a Poop cover

Who Gives a Poop?
Sur­pris­ing Sci­ence from One End to the OtherWho Gives a Poop?

By: Heather L. Mont­gomery, Illus­tra­tor: Iris Gottlieb
Blooms­bury Chil­dren’s Books/October 13, 2020
Ages 10–14, 192 pages

Here’s what the pub­lish­er says:

This unique­ly craft­ed nar­ra­tive non­fic­tion invites read­ers to fol­low the author into sci­ence labs, forests, hos­pi­tals, and land­fills, as the author asks:

Who uses poo?

Poop is dis­gust­ing, but it’s also packed with poten­tial. One sci­en­tist spent months train­ing a dog to track dung to bet­ter under­stand ele­phant birthing pat­terns. Anoth­er dis­cov­ered that mastodon poop years ago is the rea­son we enjoy pump­kin pie today. And every week, some folks deliv­er their own poop to med­ical facil­i­ties, where it is swirled, sep­a­rat­ed, and shipped off to a hos­pi­tal to be trans­plant­ed into anoth­er human. There’s even a train full of human poop sludge that’s stuck with­out a home in Alabama.

This irrev­er­ent and engag­ing book shows that poop isn’t just waste-and that deal­ing with it respon­si­bly is our duty.

Here’s what review­ers have said:

⭐  “A well-stirred slur­ry of facts and fun for strong-stom­ached “poop sleuths.””  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
⭐  “Feces have lots of great sto­ries to tell… .” —BCCB (starred review)

And here are my thoughts:

OK, I have to con­fess: I had so much fun read­ing Who Gives a Poop?! Read­ing this book felt like I was walk­ing through the woods on an excit­ing adven­ture with a trust­ed friend. The author’s voice is unfail­ing­ly authen­tic, and each chap­ter con­tains a ton of real sci­ence along­side gen­uine human emo­tion and just the right amount of humor. I think what I loved most about it, how­ev­er, is how her pas­sion for sci­ence and her rev­er­ence for curios­i­ty comes through. She’s not afraid to ask ques­tions, and she takes us along on her research trips to get those ques­tions answered, as well as giv­ing us an up-close view of her hands-on observations.

Even if you think you know all you need (or want) to know about poop, I guar­an­tee you’ll take away loads of fas­ci­nat­ing facts as well as many mem­o­rable sto­ries about the sci­en­tists hunt­ing for them. Read­ers of Who Gives a Poop? will thor­ough­ly enjoy both the sub­ject mat­ter and the infor­mal approach. One cau­tion: I was pep­per­ing my fam­i­ly with ran­dom poop facts for days and days after read­ing this book. You’ve been warned! The foot­notes and author’s note are love­ly addi­tions, as is the rest of the back­mat­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed for ages ten and up!

More about the book:

This fun video from the author, shar­ing the first chap­ter of Who Gives a Poop?, is not to be missed:

Click here for a fecal pho­to gallery from the author to go along with Who Gives a Poop?!

For more books by this author, vis­it https://heatherlmontgomery.com/.
Facts First! Nonfiction Monday

 

 

 

*** Dis­clo­sure: I received a dig­i­tal pre­view copy from the pub­lish­er in exchange for an hon­est review. ***
 

Blog Tour: Growing Up Gorilla by Clare Hodgson Meeker

Growing Up Gorilla cover

Today I’m thrilled to be a part of the blog tour for Clare Hodgson Meeker’s new book, Growing Up Gorilla!

Growing Up Gorilla cover

GROWING UP GORILLA
by Clare Hodgson Meeker
Millbrook Press/September 3, 2019
Grades 3–6, 48 pages

Here’s what the publisher says about Growing Up Gorilla:

This heart­warm­ing true sto­ry chron­i­cles what hap­pened after a moth­er goril­la gave birth for the first time and then walked away from her new­born baby at Seattle’s Wood­land Park. The ded­i­cat­ed staff worked tire­less­ly to find inno­v­a­tive ways for moth­er and baby to build a rela­tion­ship. The efforts were ulti­mate­ly suc­cess­ful, as baby Yola bond­ed with her moth­er and the rest of the fam­i­ly group.

And here are my thoughts about Growing Up Gorilla:

This beau­ti­ful­ly pho­to-illus­trat­ed non­fic­tion is both metic­u­lous­ly researched and lov­ing­ly told. Meek­er does a fan­tas­tic job of bring­ing this true sto­ry to life in a very kid-friend­ly way, bring­ing us into the world of both the goril­las and their keep­ers in a way that keeps read­ers thor­ough­ly absorbed at all times. There is some­thing for every­one here, with plen­ty of dra­ma and sus­pense as well as heart-tug­ging emo­tion and (spoil­er alert!) a hap­py ending.
The book also con­tains a table of con­tents and exten­sive back­mat­ter, includ­ing an author’s note, fur­ther reading/websites/videos, glos­sary, index, maps, pri­ma­ry source quotations/images, side­bars, and more.

AND, here’s my interview with the author of Growing Up Gorilla, Clare Hodgson Meeker!

LAT: Can you describe your writing process? Did Growing Up Gorilla require any particular changes to how your typical process?

CHM: Nor­mal­ly I don’t start writ­ing a book until I’ve worked out the arc of the sto­ry from begin­ning to end and done enough research and inter­view­ing to feel ready to tell the sto­ry with excite­ment and con­fi­dence. Prepar­ing a pro­pos­al helps me orga­nize my thoughts — out­lin­ing the sto­ry with chap­ter sum­maries helps me think in scenes and how I’m going to thread in the fac­tu­al infor­ma­tion I think is rel­e­vant. Once I have that, I can begin writ­ing my first scene of the book and con­tin­ue chrono­log­i­cal­ly through the sto­ry. The only change in my writ­ing process with Grow­ing Up Goril­la was hav­ing to write a full draft before inter­view­ing the goril­la keep­ers who were direct­ly involved with help­ing Yola and her moth­er Nadiri bond. I was able to inter­view them once I had a pub­lish­er on board, which sat­is­fied the Zoo’s require­ments. How­ev­er, the zoo staff did give me some access to the Keeper’s Dai­ly Record book, which includ­ed their notes of what hap­pened dur­ing the first few months after Yola’s birth, to help me write the first draft.

LAT: What do you find most challenging about writing for kids? About Growing Up Gorilla in particular?

CHM: I’ve taught writ­ing in the schools to chil­dren for many years. When we talk about plot and what makes a sto­ry inter­est­ing, kids agree that there needs to be a prob­lem that has to be solved and a main char­ac­ter they can relate to who wants some­thing and/or has to solve the sto­ry prob­lem. In writ­ing a book about a baby goril­la whose moth­er ini­tial­ly refused to care for her after her birth, my chal­lenge was to get chil­dren to relate to these char­ac­ters and care about their prob­lems. Children’s books should be action-ori­ent­ed and avoid too much descrip­tion or flash­back. I had to choose care­ful­ly the places where I slowed down the action to describe a scene in more detail — like the night Nadiri went into labor where I want­ed to show the close rela­tion­ship between Nadiri and the infant care spe­cial­ist who had hand-raised her at birth after Nadiri’s moth­er reject­ed her. I don’t believe in writ­ing down to a cer­tain grade lev­el or lim­it­ing word choice to a grade-appro­pri­ate list. I think about pre­sent­ing the sto­ry in the most nat­ur­al way I can as though I am telling it to the read­er sit­ting next to me.

LAT: What authors and or books do you most admire, and why? Did you have any specific mentor texts that you looked at for Growing Up Gorilla?

CHM: Kather­ine Applegate’s mid­dle-grade nov­el The One and Only Ivan and her pic­ture book Ivan: The Remark­able True Sto­ry of the Shop­ping Mall Goril­la are fan­tas­tic exam­ples of a goril­la char­ac­ter and sto­ry that chil­dren can relate to and empathize with, in both a fic­tion­al ver­sion and in a more con­densed non­fic­tion format.
CHM: I am also a big fan of Sy Mont­gomery, who has writ­ten many of the Sci­en­tists in the Field series books pub­lished by Houghton Mif­flin Har­court. Her voice is so dis­tinc­tive as she takes you on an adven­ture shad­ow­ing biol­o­gists and nat­u­ral­ists who are study­ing ani­mals in the wild around the world and weav­ing in fas­ci­nat­ing facts about them.

LAT: Outside of the writing itself, what kinds of things do you do that you feel help your writing career?

CHM: I am a life-long learn­er. I love tak­ing class­es in dif­fer­ent writ­ing gen­res, from poet­ry and pic­ture books to essay and nov­el writ­ing. Hugo House in Seat­tle is a won­der­ful place to take class­es, get inspired, and meet oth­ers in the writ­ing and read­ing com­mu­ni­ty. I also enjoy writ­ing con­fer­ences where I can get tips on writ­ing and the busi­ness of writ­ing lis­ten­ing to edi­tors and talk­ing with fel­low children’s book authors.

LAT: What advice would you give to someone who is interested in writing nonfiction for kids?

CHM: Children’s non­fic­tion is a very pop­u­lar genre today, espe­cial­ly STEM sub­jects (sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, engi­neer­ing, and math). My advice is to choose a top­ic that you are excit­ed about and will­ing to immerse your­self in, so that you can feel con­fi­dent writ­ing a sto­ry that kids and pub­lish­ers will love. Think of cre­ative ways to present your book idea, like Lau­rie Ann Thomp­son did in her Two Truths and a Lie series. It also helps to include themes that reflect the cur­rent ele­men­tary sci­ence or human­i­ties cur­ricu­lum stan­dards so a pub­lish­er can mar­ket your book to schools and libraries.

LAT: Wow, thanks so much for that shout out, Clare! And thanks so much for including me in the blog tour for Growing Up Gorilla and for taking the time to do this interview for us.

Please check out the rest of the Growing Up Gorilla blog tour stops on the schedule below!

blog tour schedule

Review: EAVESDROPPING ON ELEPHANTS

Zoo Scientists cover

Eavesdropping on Elephants cover

EAVESDROPPING ON ELEPHANTS
by Patri­cia Newman
Mill­brook Press/August 1, 2018
Grades 4–8, 56 pages

Here’s what the pub­lish­er says:

Can under­stand­ing how for­est ele­phants com­mu­ni­cate help sci­en­tists find ways to pro­tect this vul­ner­a­ble species? Researcher Katy Pane and oth­ers involved with Cor­nell University’s Ele­phant Lis­ten­ing Project believe it can. Patri­cia New­man takes read­ers behind the scenes to see how sci­en­tists are mak­ing new dis­cov­er­ies about ele­phant com­mu­ni­ca­tion and using what they learn to help these majes­tic animals.
Fea­tures: Author/Illustrator biog­ra­phy, Bibliography/further read­ing, Glos­sary, Index, Maps, Page Plus, Pri­ma­ry source quotations/images, and Reviewed

And what the crit­ics say:

  • A Junior Library Guild Selection
  • “An invit­ing intro­duc­tion to biol­o­gists at work.” —Book­list
  • “…this book does an excel­lent job of trans­port­ing read­ers and pro­vid­ing a clear, mul­ti­fac­eted pic­ture of African for­est elephants…“The more you lis­ten to wildlife, the more your mind opens up to new ideas about why the world is a place worth sav­ing.” VERDICT A great pick for mid­dle school non­fic­tion col­lec­tions.” —School Library Journal
  • “Fas­ci­nat­ing for earnest con­ser­va­tion­ists.” —Kirkus Reviews

And here are my thoughts:
Patri­cia New­man does it again, with anoth­er engag­ing piece of nar­ra­tive non­fic­tion! This is a high­ly engag­ing read about the less well-known African for­est ele­phants and sev­er­al of the sci­en­tists who study them. The sci­ence here–bioacoustics–is quite inter­est­ing and the human sto­ries give it a per­son­al touch. I always appre­ci­ate when we get to see how sci­en­tists real­ly work, and it’s espe­cial­ly reward­ing to get a peek at how they col­lab­o­rate with one anoth­er on their sep­a­rate-but-relat­ed research projects. The book also men­tions some of the con­ser­va­tion aspects involved and even how kids can par­tic­i­pate if they’re so inspired. An added bonus is that most of the sci­en­tists in the book hap­pen to be women, which is so impor­tant for show­ing young girls that they can indeed have an impor­tant career in the sciences.
Final­ly, watch the trail­er to see–and hear–some of the ani­mals from the book!

Facts First! Nonfiction Monday

2018 CYBILS Round 1 judge

2018 Cybils Round 1 Judge logo
2018 CYBILS, here I come! I’m excit­ed to share that I’ll be a CYBILS judge again this year. The CYBILS Awards rec­og­nize authors and illus­tra­tors whose books for chil­dren and young adults com­bine both lit­er­ary mer­it and pop­u­lar appeal. In the past, I’ve always helped with judg­ing the younger non­fic­tion cat­e­go­ry (Non­fic­tion Pic­ture Books in 2011 and 2012, and Elementary/Middle Grade Non­fic­tion in 2014). This time around, how­ev­er, I’ll be a Round 1 Judge in the Junior/Senior High Non­fic­tion cat­e­go­ry, along with the fol­low­ing tal­ent­ed bloggers:

Nom­i­na­tions will open on Octo­ber 1st, and our short­lists will be due in Decem­ber. There are usu­al­ly around 70 entries, so I’ll be doing a LOT of read­ing in the com­ing months. (And hope­ful­ly a lot of blog­ging, too–get ready for those reviews!) Final­ists will be announced in Jan­u­ary, and win­ners are announced in February.
2018 Cybils logo
 

Interview with Patricia Newman and Annie Crawley

#ProtectOurWorld challenge poster

Last week I post­ed a review of ZOO SCIENTISTS TO THE RESCUE here. Today I’m hon­ored to fol­low up on that post with an inter­view with both of the book’s cre­ators, author Patri­cia New­man and pho­tog­ra­ph­er Annie Craw­ley, as part of their blog tour. Enjoy, and be sure to check out the rest of the stop in the blog tour, too!  (See below for a com­plete list.)
LAT: How did you first become inter­est­ed in doing a book about zoo sci­en­tists in gen­er­al, and about these three in particular? 
Patricia headshotPatri­cia: When my niece was in fifth grade, she told me about a per­sua­sive essay her teacher assigned. The top­ic was zoos—are they good or bad? Only the teacher didn’t pro­vide a bal­anced look—most of the lit­er­a­ture she shared with the kids was anti-zoo. As the moth­er of a zookeep­er, I knew my niece—and kids like her—needed the oth­er side of the sto­ry. That expe­ri­ence plant­ed the seeds for Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Rescue.
Patri­cia: Dur­ing my ini­tial research, I learned that zoos tack­le con­ser­va­tion using three basic approach­es: vis­i­tor edu­ca­tion; cap­tive breed­ing and rein­tro­duc­tion pro­grams; and in situ study, or study­ing wildlife in their native habi­tats. I searched for sev­er­al months, con­duct­ing brief phone inter­views with peo­ple at var­i­ous zoos to find the best match. Not all zoos are large enough to have research depart­ments, and the largest zoos often charge an hourly fee to inter­view their sci­en­tists. Some even charge hefty licens­ing fees to write about their “intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty.” But final­ly, the pieces slid into place only slight­ly dent­ing my bank account. I found three charis­mat­ic species (orang­utans, black-foot­ed fer­rets, and black rhi­nos) and three sci­en­tists will­ing to speak to me who address the three main ways zoos pro­mote con­ser­va­tion. And this was all before I’d writ­ten a word!
Annie headshotAnnie: I was born and raised in Chica­go, Illi­nois. Lin­coln Park Zoo con­nect­ed me with nature on a very deep lev­el. It is open 365 days a year and it is free, so for a Mom with four kids that was impor­tant. All sum­mer long we would go to the zoo in the morn­ing and North Avenue Beach in the after­noon. We would get to know the ani­mals. In 5th grade I learned that all of our Great Apes need­ed pro­tect­ing. I signed up for a spe­cial Behind the Scenes pro­gram for stu­dents. This pro­gram had us work­ing with the sci­en­tists, keep­ers, and access to so many wildlife lead­ers. Zoos had a great impact on my life and the way I choose to live my life. When Pat­ti approached me to work with her on Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Res­cue, I was all in. It is vital for kids/teens to con­nect with nature and con­ser­va­tion and I believe Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Res­cue will inspire many fam­i­lies to pro­tect our world.
LAT: I so agree. As a zoo lover myself, it was real­ly heart­en­ing to read such a thor­ough, well-researched (and gor­geous!) look at the good work that zoos are doing. Besides me, what kind of read­er do you think ZOO SCIENTISTS will appeal to?
Patri­cia: I write for the kid who asks ques­tions about ani­mals and our world; the kid who wants to pro­tect wildlife; the future sci­en­tist; the future writer with a pas­sion for the envi­ron­ment; or the vora­cious read­er. But way at the back of my mind, I write the kinds of books I would have liked to read as a kid.
Annie: Sim­i­lar to Plas­tic Ahoy! Inves­ti­gat­ing the Great Pacif­ic Garbage Patch, this book is tar­get­ed to 3–8 grade stu­dents. I have had pre-sale copies and shared it with many… and young and old tru­ly love this book. Every time I read it, I am even more inspired into action. It will appeal to nature lovers, zoo enthu­si­asts, sci­en­tif­ic minds, and any­one who wants to learn more about our world. More impor­tant, I think any­one who reads Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Res­cue will want to help our world!
LAT: I think it’s hard to read this book (or Plas­tic Ahoy!) and not come away with an enhanced pas­sion for sci­ence, the envi­ron­ment, and doing what we can to help. What was your favorite part of mak­ing ZOO SCIENTISTS? 
Patri­cia: I love to get to know the sci­en­tists. They always inspire and amaze me, and I hope they will inspire young read­ers to fol­low in their foot­steps. I keep in touch with the sci­en­tists I inter­view to find out where sci­ence takes them and how their research grows and develops.
Annie: Get­ting kissed by Maku, a black rhino!
Annie: My favorite part of mak­ing this book was trav­el­ing togeth­er with Patri­cia and being able to be a part of all of the inter­views so that I knew the kinds of images (both pho­to and video) that would be impor­tant to tell the sto­ry. My favorite trip was of course trav­el­ing to Chica­go and to doc­u­ment black rhi­nos and Dr. Rachel San­tymire at the Lin­coln Park Zoo. Cur­rent­ly I live in Seat­tle, so to be able to cre­ate a book fea­tur­ing a sci­en­tist from a zoo that helped shape who I am, and one where I spent hun­dreds and hun­dreds of hours of my youth was very excit­ing. We got a tour of the back area of the rhi­no exhib­it and then worked with Maku’s keep­er in the exhib­it so that I could get some great pho­tos. It’s the shoot we did that the cov­er of the book came from. Dur­ing the shoot, the keep­er would work with him and feed him snacks. She let me give him one and the next thing I knew Maku kissed my hand.
LAT: That is so cool! It sounds like it real­ly was a treat for both of you to work on this project. What was the hard­est part of the mak­ing ZOO SCIENTISTS, and how did you deal with that?
Patri­cia: For me, the hard­est part was lin­ing up the three zoos. After the zoos, the ani­mals, and the sci­en­tists fell into the place, the rest of the book was a breeze in comparison!
Annie: Time is the hard­est part of mak­ing any book. Shoot­ing with Jeff Baugh­man at the Cheyenne Moun­tain Zoo was very chal­leng­ing pho­to­graph­i­cal­ly on many lev­els. We were giv­en per­mis­sion to shoot at the breed­ing facil­i­ty, but there were many points to con­sid­er. Their main goal is to breed black-foot­ed fer­rets to rein­tro­duce into the wild. BFFs are noc­tur­nal, soli­tary ani­mals that do not do well with stress. They also need dim light­ing. So not know­ing any of this in advance, I had to work very effi­cient­ly in low light to cap­ture these charis­mat­ic animals.
LAT: I can cer­tain­ly under­stand the dif­fi­cul­ty of the research and logis­tics to line up the three zoos and their projects, Patri­cia, and I’m so glad it worked out. But I can’t even imag­ine how you came up with such great pho­tos in that kind of envi­ron­ment, Annie. Hats off to both of you! Dur­ing your research, did any­thing sur­prise you, catch you off guard, or make you change your planned course for mak­ing ZOO SCIENTISTS?
Patri­cia: I didn’t come across any sur­pris­es that made me change course, but I’m always sur­prised by the cool­ness of the sci­ence and how sci­en­tists solve prob­lems. The sto­ry of black-foot­ed fer­rets being saved from the brink of extinc­tion, not once but twice, is tru­ly astonishing!
Annie: We fea­ture Mered­ith Bas­t­ian from Smithsonian’s Nation­al Zoo­log­i­cal Park. We were able to inter­view her while Patri­cia and I were in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., accept­ing a Green Earth Book Award for Plas­tic Ahoy! We had a very lim­it­ed time with the sci­en­tist and only were grant­ed per­mis­sion the day before we arrived. In our allot­ted one hour, we inter­viewed her, but had no time to pho­to­graph her with the orang­utans nor did we have access on a lev­el that we were giv­en at the oth­er zoos with the ani­mals. It was also a very cloudy/rainy day so the orang­utans were not very coop­er­a­tive! Because I knew we need­ed to get orang­utan images for the book from oth­er zoos, I start­ed hang­ing out at my local zoo in Seat­tle, the Wood­land Park Zoo, to cap­ture images. In addi­tion, I was trav­el­ing to Aus­tralia and made a point to go to the Mel­bourne Zoo. Their orang­utan exhib­it is phe­nom­e­nal and real­ly helps edu­cate peo­ple on how farm­ing palm oil can be so destruc­tive to our environment.
LAT: I was aston­ished by the sto­ry of the BFFs, too. And, as a Seat­tleite myself, I love vis­it­ing the orang­utans at the Wood­land Park Zoo. How neat to know that they are pic­tured in ZOO SCIENTISTS! I’m always curi­ous about oth­er writ­ers’ and illus­tra­tors’ (includ­ing pho­tog­ra­phers’!) research process­es. Can you tell us about yours? Did you plot the basic out­line first, then fill in the blanks with research? Or did you immerse your­self in the research first, then feel your way into the struc­ture? I see you did a lot of email and phone interviews—did you have to go back and forth to com­plete the sto­ries? Were there any fun facts that got cut that you were sad to see go? 
Patri­cia: When I write for Mill­brook Press, I have to sub­mit a for­mal pro­pos­al which pro­vides a basic overview of the idea, describes the chap­ters, and gives the acqui­si­tion com­mit­tee an idea of where this book would fit in the mar­ket. In order to com­plete the pro­pos­al, I con­duct short infor­ma­tion­al inter­views with the sci­en­tists by phone. Dur­ing these inter­views, I try to find out the broad strokes of their sto­ry and whether they are will­ing to com­mit the nec­es­sary time to lengthy in-per­son inter­views, clar­i­fi­ca­tion ques­tions, and vet­ting the final man­u­script. Once I have a scientist’s buy-in, I can craft the pro­pos­al and hope­ful­ly give my edi­tor some idea what my nar­ra­tive thread might be.
Patri­cia: When the acqui­si­tions com­mit­tee gave me the go-ahead on Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Res­cue, Annie and I made three trips to the three dif­fer­ent zoos to inter­view the sci­en­tists and photograph/film them at work. We braved a spring bliz­zard, backed away from a charg­ing rhi­no, and laughed when a chat­ter­ing black-foot­ed fer­ret told us exact­ly what he thought of our intru­sion on his space!
Patri­cia: And as for cut­ting fun facts, nev­er! I re-word and re-imag­ine before I cut any­thing fun. The writ­ing was all about the fun. Why wouldn’t I share that with read­ers at every opportunity?
Annie: Patri­cia and I trav­eled togeth­er for all of the inter­views. She shared with me many of the papers the sci­en­tists had writ­ten and we dug deep into who they were. Being able to doc­u­ment with pho­tos and videos always takes research because the more you know about your sub­ject, the more knowl­edge you can bring to your cre­ative approach. Once the first draft was writ­ten, I knew I had to doc­u­ment many oth­er ani­mals. At this time, I became a zoo stalk­er with my cam­era. I spent weeks at the Wood­land Park Zoo in Seat­tle get­ting to know the ani­mals so that I could look for spe­cial moments. A pho­tog­ra­ph­er also has to wait for light for the sub­jects. Ear­ly morn­ing and lat­er after­noons in the fall gives you a gold­en light.
LAT: Oh, I love get­ting that insight into the process. What was your larg­er goal, i.e. what were you try­ing to give read­ers of ZOO SCIENTISTS as a takeaway?
Patri­cia: A Sene­galese forestry engi­neer by the name of Baba Dioum pre­sent­ed a paper at a 1968 meet­ing of the IUCN. In his paper he said, “In the end we will con­serve only what we love; we will love only what we under­stand; and we will under­stand only what we are taught.” When I write books like Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Res­cue or Sea Otter Heroes or Plas­tic, Ahoy!, I want read­ers to come away with a new­found respect for our con­nec­tion to the nat­ur­al world. Our habits mat­ter because they cre­ate rip­ples across the globe. So, whether we con­serve ener­gy to reduce cli­mate change, learn to appre­ci­ate the role an apex preda­tor plays in its ecosys­tem, reduce the amount of sin­gle-use plas­tic in our lives, or buy prod­ucts that use sus­tain­ably-sourced palm oil, we choose to cre­ate pos­i­tive rip­ples that help pre­serve the breath­tak­ing abun­dance of bio­di­ver­si­ty on our planet.
Annie: When photographing/filming I always want to doc­u­ment and help view­ers see what a writer/script needs to tell a sto­ry. Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Res­cue cap­tures what peo­ple are doing to help save endan­gered species and their envi­ron­ments. I’m hop­ing that all of our read­ers feel inspired into action to help pro­tect our world.
LAT: Well said, and I do think you suc­ceed­ed. In addi­tion to teach­ing some­thing to our read­ers, I believe every book teach­es us some­thing new–about the world, about
our­selves, or about the craft of cre­at­ing. What have you learned as a result of mak­ing ZOO SCIENTISTS? 

Patri­cia: Every time I write a book about an aspect of the envi­ron­ment, I’m remind­ed that sci­en­tists find new con­nec­tions all the time between humans and the plants and ani­mals that share our plan­et. I guess that’s job secu­ri­ty for me, but it’s also a wake-up call for young read­ers. With­out a clean ocean will there be enough food to eat or oxy­gen to breathe? With­out preda­tors like black-foot­ed fer­rets or sea otters, how will their respec­tive ecosys­tems thrive? And with­out large ani­mals like orang­utans and black rhi­nos, will the small­er ani­mals also dis­ap­pear? Despite what our cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion seems to think, humans are not “enti­tled” to use and abuse the world’s nat­ur­al resources with­out giv­ing back. We have to con­serve for the future.
Annie: Zoos are real­ly impor­tant places in our world for con­ser­va­tion, edu­ca­tion, inspi­ra­tion and so much more. If the habi­tat of the orang­utan dis­ap­pears because of our need for palm oil, the orang­utans dis­ap­pear. If black rhi­nos are killed to extinc­tion because of poach­ers, then the human pop­u­la­tion has failed to pro­tect the ani­mals in need of our pro­tec­tion. There is so much destruc­tion hap­pen­ing all around need­ing to be doc­u­ment­ed, shared, and reversed. I’ve learned we all need to raise our voic­es togeth­er and do every­thing pos­si­ble to pro­tect our world.
Annie: Cli­mate change is real and our ocean is the great reg­u­la­tor of our plan­et. The weath­er affects all the regions of the world. Peo­ple always look at our plan­et from a peo­ple point of view… and I have always looked out for the ani­mals. We told the sto­ries of these three ani­mals and their envi­ron­ment through the lens of peo­ple help­ing them… while oth­er peo­ple are try­ing to destroy the very same animals.
Annie: This is the sec­ond title Patri­cia and I co-cre­at­ed with edi­tor Car­ol Hinz and entire Lern­er Pub­lish­ing design/marketing crew. It rein­forced how much I tru­ly appre­ci­ate the team effort to take a book from your imag­i­na­tion into one you can hold in your hands and share with oth­ers. It was Mar­garet Mead who said, “Nev­er doubt that a small group of thought­ful, com­mit­ted cit­i­zens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” With this book, we are hop­ing to inspire peo­ple into action to pro­tect our world!
LAT: Thank you for shar­ing those impor­tant lessons with us. What are you both work­ing on next?
Patri­cia: Annie and I have are mulling over a few pos­si­bil­i­ties for our next book, but you can bet we’ll come up with some­thing. In the mean­time, I have two books com­ing out in 2018: a pic­ture book called Neema’s Rea­son to Smile (illus­trat­ed by the tal­ent­ed Mehrdokht Ami­ni) which tells the sto­ry of a Kenyan girl who yearns to be more, and anoth­er mid­dle-grade non­fic­tion sci­ence book called Eaves­drop­ping on Ele­phants which fol­lows sci­en­tists who study for­est ele­phants sim­ply by lis­ten­ing to them. I’m extreme­ly excit­ed about both of these titles because they held kids become glob­al cit­i­zens in very dif­fer­ent ways.
Annie: Although Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Res­cue offi­cial­ly launch­es in Octo­ber, we still have so much to do! We just fin­ished our trail­er and are hop­ing schools and orga­ni­za­tions will wel­come us to come inspire and speak. We are plan­ning a 30-Day Chal­lenge for every­one to do one thing every day that will help #Pro­tec­tOur­World
Annie: My Uncle Al always said, “Annie, have your fin­gers in 12 dif­fer­ent project ideas…” As I’m writ­ing this, I am on my way to film whales in Ton­ga. Three days ago, I was in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Belling­ham, WA, doc­u­ment­ing the envi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter of the Cooke Salmon Farm net cat­a­stro­phe which released 300,000 farmed Atlantic Salmon into the Puget Sound/Salish Sea. In June I was in the Arc­tic Cir­cle. And I’m also lay­ing the ground­work on a larg­er project I’d like to work on with Patricia.
LAT: These projects all sound so excit­ing! I’m look­ing for­ward to hear­ing more about them all when the time comes. Is there any­thing you wish I would’ve asked you but didn’t? 
Patri­cia and Annie: You were very thor­ough, Lau­rie, and asked us great ques­tions! Thank you so much for par­tic­i­pat­ing in the blog tour. We are very grate­ful to you for want­i­ng to write about us and share our sto­ry with your read­ers. Per­haps we can close with a statement:

We tru­ly hope our sto­ry and read­ing the book Zoo Sci­en­tists to the Res­cue will inspire oth­ers to act. The orang­utans, black rhi­nos, and black-foot­ed fer­rets would not be with us today if it were not for peo­ple giv­ing them a voice. Yet, they are endan­gered because of peo­ple. We all need to raise our voic­es togeth­er, take an action every day, and share with your friends, fam­i­ly, and col­leagues what you are doing and why. We need to work togeth­er to #Pro­tec­tOur­World.

LAT: I think that’s a great way to close. Thank you so much, Patri­cia and Annie, for answer­ing my ques­tions and for your ded­i­ca­tion to bring­ing great books like ZOO SCIENTISTS into the world. I am sure YOUR actions will have many rip­ple effects around the world. 
Catch up and fol­low along with the rest of the blog tour here:

To down­load posters with infor­ma­tion about the 30-day #Pro­tec­tOur­World jour­nal chal­lenge, click here.

#ProtectOurWorld challenge poster #ProtectOurWorld challenge journal

Thanks for visiting!
Facts First! Nonfiction Monday

Author interview with Sarah Albee

A few weeks ago, I reviewed POISON: DEADLY DEEDS, PERILOUS PROFESSIONS, AND MURDEROUS MEDICINES, by Sarah Albee. Today, I’m excit­ed to host Sarah for an inter­view with the author! Read on to learn more about how she wrote this par­tic­u­lar book and much, much more…


LAT: Wel­come, Sarah, and thanks for agree­ing to answer my questions! 
LAT: You know how much I love your new book, POISON. The whole time I was read­ing it, though, I kept won­der­ing… how did you first become inter­est­ed in writ­ing about poisons?
Sarah Albee author photoSA: I’ve been fas­ci­nat­ed with poi­son ever since I was a young kid, from the first fairy tales that were read to me, to sto­ries that I read myself as I got old­er. Snow White, Sher­lock Holmes, Agatha Christie, Shakespeare—I want­ed to know if those poi­son­ings from lit­er­a­ture were pos­si­ble in real life, and if they were, I want­ed to know what was going on at the mol­e­c­u­lar lev­el of a per­son who’d been poi­soned. The idea of writ­ing a book about poi­son occurred to me a few years ago, as I was research­ing my book, Why’d They Wear That? Asso­ci­at­ing poi­son with fash­ion may sound odd, but my inter­est was piqued as I learned more about how arsenic became wild­ly pop­u­lar in the 19 th century—it was everywhere—at every apothe­cary shop, in arseni­cal green fab­ric, in paint pig­ments, even in edi­ble arsenic com­plex­ion wafers (!). The his­to­ry of poi­son just seemed like a per­fect way to link so many things that intrigue me—mysteries, detec­tive sto­ries, human pas­sion, alche­my, art, pol­i­tics, social his­to­ry, and the his­to­ry of medicine.
LAT: And that link­ing of so many dif­fer­ent top­ics is one of the biggest rea­sons I enjoyed read­ing it so much! Besides geeky non­fic­tion authors, what kind of read­ers do you think this book will appeal to?
SA: I hope it will have what pub­lish­ers call “crossover appeal,” which for me would be kids who think they pre­fer to read only fic­tion. I per­son­al­ly love know­ing the “back sto­ry,” no mat­ter what genre I’m read­ing. I find that I still ask myself: “Could that actu­al­ly hap­pen in real life?” I hope the book will appeal to sci­ence-ori­ent­ed read­ers, his­to­ry lovers, and to kids who love mysteries!
LAT: I think it will. Your pas­sion for the sub­ject comes through on every page. What was your favorite part of the book to research and/or write?
SA: At the risk of sound­ing hokey, every part of the research was fas­ci­nat­ing. Poi­sons in the ancient world, poi­sons in the Renais­sance, poi­sons in the 19th cen­tu­ry and the rise of forensics—I mean, there was lit­er­al­ly nev­er a dull moment. I loved vis­it­ing a poi­son plant gar­den and see­ing in per­son all the poi­so­nous plants I’d been read­ing and writ­ing about. I loved talk­ing to muse­um cura­tors and get­ting spe­cial, pri­vate access to amaz­ing col­lec­tions of bones and body organs and
artifacts.
LAT: Sounds like fun! What was the hard­est part of the research and/or writ­ing for you, and how did you deal with that?
SA: The hard­est part was fig­ur­ing out how to nar­row down my top­ic. Ear­ly drafts of the book were, well, in need of a firm edi­to­r­i­al hand. Luck­i­ly I have won­der­ful beta read­ers and a fan­tas­tic edi­tor, and with vary­ing degrees of gen­tle­ness and can­dor, they informed me that I need­ed to cut, cut, cut. Thank god for editors.
LAT: Hear, hear! I can relate to that one. Did any­thing dur­ing the research phase sur­prise you, catch you off guard, or make you change your planned course for the book?
SA: Yessir­ree. See above re hav­ing to nar­row down my top­ic. In an ear­li­er draft, I’d includ­ed a pret­ty exten­sive his­to­ry of anes­the­sia. It is SO COOL. Prepar­ing a patient for surgery in ancient times ranged from hav­ing the patient inhale fumes from a soporif­ic sponge soaked in man­drake and opi­um, to bonk­ing him over the head with a mal­let. Which unfor­tu­nate­ly led to many patients nev­er wak­ing up. The dis­cov­ery of ether and chlo­ro­form total­ly trans­formed the way sur­geons per­formed oper­a­tions. But my edi­tor and I final­ly decid­ed we need­ed to cut most of that out, which pained me as much as bod­i­ly cuts with­out anes­the­sia. (Ha ha, not real­ly!) Although many types of poi­sons were used as both anal­gesics and anes­thet­ics, I had to acknowl­edge that they didn’t quite fit in a book about nefar­i­ous poi­sons. (Side note: I now have the most pro­found respect for anesthesiologists.)
LAT: Per­haps it’ll come in handy for anoth­er book, some­where down the line. I can image you col­lect­ed a TON of inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion along the way. How do you man­age all of your research for a book like this? What’s your sys­tem? (Tell me, please, because mine feels woe­ful­ly amateurish!)
SA: Ha! I wish I could tell you that I’m super sys­tem­at­ic about my research, but every time I begin a new project it’s a big, blob­by mess. For this book, I began by read­ing widely—biographies about the Bor­gias, Roman emper­ors, Cather­ine de Medici, Empress Wu. I read ear­ly med­ical jour­nals, up-to-the-minute schol­ar­ly arti­cles, and pri­ma­ry sources like trav­el­ogues and diaries. I took an online course in chem­istry, and anoth­er in foren­sics. I inter­viewed tons of peo­ple, and became a pest to my sci­ence-teacher friends (“explain to me again what an alka­loid is?”). The one god­send was I knew what my struc­ture would be—the book would be chrono­log­i­cal, from ancient times to the present, so I was able to lump my top­ics and my poisoners/victims into their respec­tive his­tor­i­cal eras.
POISON cover
LAT: Wow, that’s an impres­sive research list! Did you do all the pho­to research for the book too? Can you tell us a bit about that process?
SA: The first time I did my own image research, many books ago, I was over­whelmed, and total­ly clue­less about how to go about it. Image research is a steep learn­ing curve, but now, many books lat­er, I absolute­ly love that phase of the process. I did a cou­ple of guest posts on Melis­sa Stewart’s blog about image research for stu­dents here, and for pro­fes­sion­al writ­ers here, if peo­ple would like a bit more detail.
LAT: You’ve helped me come up to speed in that area as well, and I’m eter­nal­ly grate­ful for your gen­er­ous advice!
LAT: I think every book teach­es us some­thing new, about the world, about our­selves, or about the craft of writ­ing. What have you learned as a result of writ­ing this book?
SA: I try not to get too polit­i­cal in my books or on social media, but the more research I have done about the hor­rors of poi­sons and envi­ron­men­tal tox­ins peo­ple used to be exposed to, the more hor­ri­fied I have grown by the cur­rent trend in our coun­try to roll back hard-fought reg­u­la­tions for clean air and clean water, and to defang agen­cies such as the FDA and the EPA. When you know the his­to­ry of the way things used to be, you shud­der at what could hap­pen once again.
LAT: I had the same thoughts when I was read­ing your book. I’m glad that myself, and all the oth­er read­ers out there, will have this broad­ened per­spec­tive going forward. 
LAT: What oth­er writ­ers do you look up to and why?
SA: I have so many kidlit writ­ers that I look up to and love, both fic­tion and nonfiction—but this answer would be way too long if I tried to list all of them. So I’ll stick to just a few writ­ers of adult books I admire. Mary Roach is a favorite of mine. I love her sense of humor and her off­beat sci­ence topics—I like to think that our mis­sions are aligned. I love P.G. Wode­house. I love his­to­ri­ans who can write, and write well. It’s like a breath of fresh air when you find a schol­ar­ly, well-researched book that’s also beau­ti­ful­ly writ­ten for a reader’s enjoy­ment, with grace and style and wit.
LAT: What are you work­ing on now?
SA: I’m work­ing on sev­er­al projects right now and I wish there were more hours in the day because I’m so excit­ed about all of them! I have a book about the human/dog rela­tion­ship com­ing out next March with Nation­al Geo­graph­ic, called Dog Days of His­to­ry. And I’m work­ing on a book that’s a col­lec­tion of quirky biogra­phies, as well as a series of biogra­phies for much younger read­ers, and a new Amer­i­can his­to­ry series for upper ele­men­tary kids, which will prob­a­bly be called “What Were They Think­ing?
LAT: Gosh, you’re busy! Is there any­thing you wish I would’ve asked you but didn’t?
SA: You’ve done a darn good job cov­er­ing the bases, Lau­rie. But hmmm. Kids often ask me what my favorite part of my job is. And I joke about how great it is to be able to work at my bed-desk, but hon­est­ly, one of the best parts of this job is when I vis­it schools, and meet the kids I work for. Let’s face it: for a non­fic­tion writer, fic­tion can be stiff com­pe­ti­tion, not to men­tion the myr­i­ad screen-time options vying for kids’ atten­tion. So my goal is to write fas­ci­nat­ing, enter­tain­ing, and accu­rate books that kids choose to read. I want them to see how amaz­ing his­to­ry can be.
LAT: Well said. I feel exact­ly the same way. I’m so glad you could vis­it, Sarah, and thank you for answer­ing all of my questions!


You can find out more about Sarah Albee at her web­site, and be sure to check out POISON: DEADLY DEEDS, PERILOUS PROFESSIONS, AND MURDEROUS MEDICINES!

Review: POISON by Sarah Albee

POISON interior

POISON cover

POISON: DEADLY DEEDS, PERILOUS PROFESSIONS, AND MURDEROUS MEDICINES
by Sarah Albee
Pen­guin Ran­dom House/September 05, 2017
Mid­dle Grade (8–12), 192 pages

Here’s what the pub­lish­er says:

Sci­ence geeks and arm­chair detec­tives will soak up this non-lethal, humor­ous account of the role poi­sons have played in human his­to­ry. Per­fect for STEM enthusiasts!
For cen­turies, peo­ple have been poi­son­ing one another—changing per­son­al lives and the course of empires alike.
From spurned spous­es and rivals, to con­demned pris­on­ers like Socrates, to endan­gered emper­ors like Alexan­der the Great, to mod­ern-day lead­ers like Joseph Stal­in and Yass­er Arafat, poi­son has played a star­ring role in the demise of count­less indi­vid­u­als. And those are just the delib­er­ate poi­son­ings. Med­ical mishaps, greedy “snake oil” sales­men and food con­t­a­m­i­nants, poi­so­nous Pro­hi­bi­tion, and indus­tri­al tox­ins also impact­ed millions.
Part his­to­ry, part chem­istry, part who­dunit, Poi­son: Dead­ly Deeds, Per­ilous Pro­fes­sions, and Mur­der­ous Med­i­cines traces the role poi­sons have played in his­to­ry from antiq­ui­ty to the present and shines a ghoul­ish light on the dead­ly inter­sec­tion of human nature … and Moth­er Nature.

The pro­fes­sion­al review­ers have weighed in favorably:

“[Albee’s] light tone makes this mor­bid, well-researched study a sin­is­ter indul­gence.“—Book­list starred review

A com­pelling, enter­tain­ing, and infor­ma­tive intro­duc­tion to a sin­is­ter aspect of human his­to­ry.” Kirkus Reviews
“There’s plen­ty of mate­r­i­al here to delight fans of [Geor­gia] Bragg’s pop­u­lar How They Croaked.” —The Bul­letin
Ide­al for read­ers, includ­ing reluc­tant ones, who delight in the sci­ence and scare fac­tor of poi­sons or grotesque med­i­cine.” —School Library Journal

And here are my thoughts:
This book is deli­cious­ly dark fun! Sarah Albee’s POISON is the per­fect mix of sci­ence, his­to­ry, mys­tery, and enter­tain­ment, and read­ers of many dif­fer­ent gen­res will be thor­ough­ly engaged by this book. I know I was! From ancient times to today (and beyond!), Albee shows us how poisons–both nat­ur­al and man-made–have affect­ed humans lives and cul­ture. The facts are shock­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing, but bro­ken down in a way that makes them acces­si­ble. There’s also a ton of humor to bal­ance the heavy sub­ject mat­ter, with puns and sar­casm galore, espe­cial­ly in the titles and cap­tions. And all of it is tied togeth­er with a com­pelling design fea­tur­ing side­bars, pull­outs, pho­tos, and illus­tra­tions. There are also some seri­ous non­fic­tion fea­tures, includ­ing a table of con­tents, author’s note, acknowl­edge­ments, notes, select­ed bib­li­og­ra­phy, research guide, index, and more. A high­ly rec­om­mend­ed mid­dle-grade nonfiction!
Here are some inte­ri­or views to give you a bet­ter sense of what you can expect:
POISON interiorPOISON interior 2 POISON interior 3 POISON interior 4POISON interior 5POISON interior 6
And yes, if you’re won­der­ing, this review is per­fect for Labor Day! One of my favorite fea­tures of the book was the “Nice Work if You Can Sur­vive It” side­bars, which told of var­i­ous pro­fes­sions through­out the ages where peo­ple were actu­al­ly poi­soned by their jobs (did you know mad hat­ters were mad because of the chem­i­cals used for felt­ing?). Sober­ing, to say the least. And it made me even more grate­ful for reg­u­la­tions that pro­tect work­ers from unscrupu­lous busi­ness owners!
Be sure to check out Sarah’s oth­er great books, too!
Why'd They Wear That? cover BUGGED cover POOP HAPPENED cover

Upcoming appearance: Nonfiction Writing Workshop for Tweens

I’m busy doing lots of pri­vate talks and appear­ances at schools and con­fer­ences this spring, but here’s one that is open to the pub­lic (espe­cial­ly tweens)!

On April 20, I’ll be pre­sent­ing a work­shop on non­fic­tion writ­ing for tweens (ages 8–12) in Both­ell, WA. Here’s the description:

Where do you find ideas and how do you decide what to write about? How do you get from there to the fin­ished prod­uct? This work­shop, pre­sent­ed by award-win­ning non­fic­tion author Lau­rie Ann Thomp­son, will answer those ques­tions and more! Thomp­son will explain the process of writ­ing com­pelling non­fic­tion, includ­ing research, plan­ning, draft­ing, revis­ing and edit­ing. The pre­sen­ta­tion will be inter­ac­tive and all par­tic­i­pants will have a chance to craft an engag­ing non­fic­tion piece of their own.

For more infor­ma­tion and to reg­is­ter, please vis­it the King Coun­ty Library Sys­tem’s event page. I hope I’ll see you there!

Great news for TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE!

Two Truths and a Lie cover
Two Truths and a Lie cover Junior Library Guild Selection seal

I’m thrilled to be able to share that the first book in the TWO TRUTHS AND A LIE series, IT’S ALIVE!, has been cho­sen by the Junior Library Guild as a Fall 2017 selec­tion for the Ele­men­tary Non­fic­tion cat­e­go­ry (for grades 2–6).
This is very excit­ing news, because it means the book will be head­ing to libraries across the coun­try for kids to check out and enjoy!
It’s also real­ly encour­ag­ing, because, accord­ing to their web­site, the JLG edi­to­r­i­al team reviews over 3,000 new titles each year and selects only around 800 for the pro­gram. The Junior Library Guild Selec­tion des­ig­na­tion is unique in that it is typ­i­cal­ly award­ed far in advance of pub­li­ca­tion. As one of the first awards giv­en through­out the life of a book, it is often viewed as a bell­wether of future suc­cess, with more than 95 per­cent of JLG selec­tions going on to receive awards and/or favor­able reviews!
So, keep your fin­gers crossed. Here’s hop­ing for even more good news yet to come!
 

Interview: Luke Reynolds on SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL

A cou­ple of weeks ago I reviewed SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL by Luke Reynolds. As you may recall, I LOVED it! Today, Luke was nice enough to let me inter­view him so I could get a few of my ques­tions answered (and let you get to know him a bit bet­ter, as well!). If you haven’t read my review yet, please go take a quick peek now so you’ll know a bit about what we’re talk­ing about in the inter­view below.
Luke Reynolds headshot
LAT: Wel­come, Luke! Thanks for agree­ing to answer my questions!
LR: LAURIE!!!
LR: You are so kind and thought­ful and what a won­der­ful sur­prise! I real­ly appre­ci­ate it! Indeed, I would be hon­ored and thrilled to have an inter­view on your blog. THANK YOU!!!!! And thank you so much for shar­ing the book: you rock!!!
(Ed. note: See what kind of guy he is? I ask him to do work so I have con­tent to put on my blog, dur­ing the month of Sep­tem­ber when he’s busy set­tling in with a new class of stu­dents as well as run­ning the par­ent­ing gaunt­let him­self, and he thanks me for it, in the sweet­est way pos­si­ble. Plus, he loves excla­ma­tion points as much as I do!!! OK, back to the interview…)
LAT: You say you did­n’t know this stuff in mid­dle school, so… just how old were you when you final­ly fig­ured it all out? (As I said in my review, I did­n’t get it until I was in my 30s. This book could’ve saved me an awful lot of time and trouble!)
LR: I think it was yes­ter­day that I fig­ured it all out! 🙂 Truth­ful­ly, I haven’t fig­ured out all that much, but what I want­ed to do in the book is to remind myself and my stu­dents about what real­ly mat­ters in life. One of the things I say to my 7th grade stu­dents almost every day is that I AM STILL GROWING AND LEARNING, and I always promise them that any­thing I chal­lenge them to do, I try to do too. So, much of the book is from what my own 7th grade stu­dents have shown and taught me in their own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and joy and pain and hope and humor.
LAT: I love that! I AM STILL GROWING AND LEARNING should be tat­tooed onto all of our fore­heads, I think. Maybe we’d final­ly achieve world peace, or at least get a lit­tle clos­er than where we are now.
LAT: Through my school vis­its, I am lucky enough to meet with kids from preschool to high school. I love them all, but mid­dle school­ers are my favorite kids to work with. Yes, there is so much vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and joy and pain and hope and humor all jum­bled togeth­er in them, and they’re try­ing so hard to make sense of it all. I’ve heard teach­ers say mid­dle school­ers are the hard­est to teach, but I sus­pect they may be the most reward­ing, too.
Surviving Middle School cover
LAT: After read­ing SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL, I want to make your book required read­ing for every kid every­where who is about to start mid­dle school (so they don’t make all the dumb mis­takes I did). Then I felt bad, because I have con­flict­ing feel­ings about required read­ing at any age. I imag­ine that you prob­a­bly have sim­i­lar­ly mixed feel­ings. As an author, it prob­a­bly sounds pret­ty good to you! But… as a lan­guage arts teacher, how do you feel about required read­ing of that type?
LR: You are so kind! I am a big believ­er in let­ting kids choose which books they want to read. Even for SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL, I would try to do what I do with oth­er books and students–I’d show them the book and let them read the first few pages, and if it does­n’t res­onate with them, I’d want them to find some­thing else. Any­time we force stu­dents to read only cer­tain kinds of books, I think we turn them off to read­ing in gen­er­al. Not to say that we should­n’t chal­lenge our stu­dents to read a vari­ety of books–but we should always encour­age kids to find books that are absolute­ly IRRESISTIBLE to them–books they love so much they’d want to smoth­er them with ketchup and eat them if they could. I tried my best to make SURVIVING a smoth­ered-in-ketchup kind of book, but if a kid does­n’t think so, I would say to not read it and find some­thing else! 🙂
LAT: OK, then I hope every kid who is about to start mid­dle school any­where wants to smoth­er SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL with ketchup and eat it! 
LAT: Speak­ing of eat­ing… I have a gluten sen­si­tiv­i­ty, so I can’t eat gar­lic bread any­more. I sore­ly miss its but­tery good­ness, which, frankly, made your book a lit­tle hard to swal­low at times (I had to give all of mine to the space gnomes!). What can you rec­om­mend as a gluten-free alter­na­tive to gar­lic bread that I can avoid giv­ing to the space gnomes?
LR: Great ques­tion! Our fam­i­ly is attempt­ing to go most­ly gluten-free, and while at first I was ter­ri­fied of miss­ing out my food­ish soul-mate, I found out about some tru­ly sub­lime gluten-free breads. Rudi’s is a com­pa­ny that makes AMAZING gluten-free gar­lic bread. So even the space gnomes can’t steal the gar­lic bread from those of us who need to or want to live gluten-free! (Here’s the link to Rudi’s Prod­ucts: http://www.rudisbakery.com/)
LAT: Awe­some! Thanks for the recommendation!!
LAT: Final­ly, if you had to con­dense your whole book into one short para­graph, what would you want mid­dle school­ers to know most of all?
LR: One thing: YOU MATTER. Your pres­ence here on this earth and in your school and in your fam­i­ly MATTERS. You belong, even when you feel like you don’t. You have a beau­ti­ful pur­pose, even when you feel like you don’t. Just because you might feel weird or strange or like some­body is con­stant­ly stick­ing pret­zel sticks up your metaphor­i­cal nose, IT WILL GET BETTER. I promise.
LAT: Beau­ti­ful, Luke. I hope they hear your message.
LAT: Thank you again for stop­ping by and shar­ing your thoughts with us today and for doing what you can to make the world a bet­ter place, one mid­dle school­er at a time.
LR: Thanks so much Lau­rie, and huge hugs and much peace your way!
What a great guy, huh? For more great writ­ing from Luke Reynolds, be sure to check out his oth­er books, as well as his blog.

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