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

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!

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.

Radio Interview: T Love’s Energy Awareness

head shot of T Love
T Love, host of Ener­gy Awareness

A few weeks ago I was lucky enough to get to par­tic­i­pate in anoth­er fan­tas­tic radio inter­view to talk about Be a Change­mak­er, and it was a blast! I real­ly felt like the host and I just “clicked” and were on the same wave­length. I wish we weren’t on oppo­site coasts, because I think we’d have a great time hang­ing out together.
Please check it out here. Enjoy! 🙂

Radio Interview: Sister Jenna’s America Meditating

I had the great good for­tune to be on anoth­er radio show a cou­ple of weeks ago, this time with Sis­ter Jen­na on Amer­i­ca Med­i­tat­ing.
I come on at about 15:28, talk­ing about my writ­ing jour­ney, Be a Change­mak­er, and Emmanuel’s Dream.
I hope you enjoy listening!

Check Out Self Help Pod­casts at Blog Talk Radio with Amer­i­ca Med­i­tat­ing on BlogTalkRadio

 

Thank you to Sis­ter Jen­na and her assis­tant, Anto­nia, for the inter­view and also for their won­der­ful, pos­i­tive ener­gy through­out. It was a plea­sure to participate!

 

Interview with author Janet Lee Carey

Despite some recent posts about fic­tion pic­ture book New Shoes and its author, Susan Lynn Mey­ers, I typ­i­cal­ly try to stick to posts about non­fic­tion books and authors on this blog. I’m break­ing that self-imposed rule yet again, how­ev­er, because I’m thrilled to host my friend and agent-sis­ter, the amaz­ing author Janet Lee Carey, on her blog tour for her upcom­ing fan­ta­sy nov­el, In the Time of Drag­on Moon!
rsz_1in_the_time_of_dragon_moon_high_res_cover

About the Book:
Beware the dark moon time when love and mur­der intertwine
            All Uma wants is to become a heal­er like her father and be accept­ed by her tribe. But when the mad queen abducts her and takes her north, Uma’s told she must use her heal­ing skills to cure the infer­tile queen by Drag­on Moon, or be burned at the stake. Uma soon learns the queen isn’t the only dan­ger she’s up against. A hid­den killer out for roy­al blood slays the roy­al heir. The mur­der is made to look like an acci­dent, but Uma, and the king’s nephew Jack­run, sense the dark­er truth. Togeth­er, they must use their com­bined pow­ers to out­wit a secret plot to over­throw the Pen­drag­on throne. But are they strong enough to over­come a mur­der­er aid­ed by prophe­cy and cloaked in magic?

From the first time I heard about this book, I’ve been intrigued, and Janet has kind­ly agreed to answer a few of my ques­tions. Wel­come, Janet!

Portrait Janet Lee Carey
pho­to cred­it Hei­di Pettit

LT: Where did you first get the idea for this par­tic­u­lar book, and how did it end up grow­ing and chang­ing as you brought it to life?

JLC: The pas­sion to tell the sto­ry of an indige­nous heal­er formed when I flew to Hawaii for a “Maui Immer­sion” with indige­nous heal­ers Lei’ohu and May­deen. I was pro­found­ly changed by these women’s heal­ing prac­tices as I learned of ancient tra­di­tions and the pow­er of the earth’s heal­ing. I knew I want­ed to cre­ate a sto­ry around a female heal­er, thus Uma was born.

JLC: Jackrun’s sto­ry took shape at the same time. I knew they would meet and become embroiled in dan­ger­ous cas­tle intrigue involv­ing prophe­cy, mag­ic, and mur­der. The nov­el went through many trans­for­ma­tions. I wrote the first draft in both Jackrun’s and Uma’s view­point. Lat­er, tak­ing advice from my edi­tor Kathy Daw­son, I changed it to a sin­gle view­point to reveal more of Uma’s per­son­al jour­ney and increase plot tension.

LT: Oh, I love hear­ing the ori­gins of the female heal­er sto­ry! And it’s so inter­est­ing to hear about the view­point change. 

LT: On a relat­ed note, here’s a ques­tion from my old­est child (whom you know hap­pens to be one of your biggest fans!): “Why dragons?”

Dragon banner by Jessica cropped final
(Art­work by Jes­si­ca L’Esperance)

JLC: Oh, I love this ques­tion. I didn’t start out wish­ing to write about drag­ons, only to write fan­ta­sy nov­els like the ones I’d grown to love only with my own spin. The first drag­on, Lord Faul, emerged from a win­ter of read­ing too many fairy­tales with per­fect princess­es and evil drag­ons. I want­ed to mix things up a bit, so I cre­at­ed a princess with a dragon’s claw, in Wilde Island book one, Dragon’s Keep, and a pow­er­ful frac­tious drag­on with his own par­tic­u­lar his­to­ry or rather, ‘hissssto­ry’. From there the drag­on char­ac­ters con­tin­ued to enter the books with their own majes­tic, intel­li­gent, wild, impe­ri­ous, stub­born, delight­ful, per­son­al­i­ties. Vazan flew into In the Time of Drag­on Moon with her own pithy opin­ions on the Eng­lish Queen who holds Uma’s tribe cap­tive on the south­ern­most tip of Wilde Island;

“This queen will leave the king’s sol­diers in Devil’s Boot. We’ll lose all our free­dom to these Eng­lish vermin!”

LT: Ha! I love that the drag­ons are enter­ing of their own accord. But speak­ing of Eng­lish queens… It seems like a bunch of research went into this book. Can you tell us about that? Was it dif­fer­ent from pre­vi­ous books? Were there any sur­pris­es or stum­bling blocks? Do you think you’ll reuse any of that research in future stories?

JLC: All the research I’d done on medieval life for the first two books helped this book enor­mous­ly. That said, In The Time of Drag­on Moon offered a brand new set of chal­lenges. This time trib­al med­i­cine had to play a vital role. I cre­at­ed the Adan’s med­i­c­i­nal approach from many sources start­ing with books about medieval med­i­cine, and expand­ing to books and arti­cles on trib­al med­i­cine, prefer­ably writ­ten by indige­nous heal­ers them­selves. I was also priv­i­leged to lis­ten to first­hand accounts of tra­di­tion­al heal­ing prac­tices. All these influ­ences quick­ened my imag­i­na­tion and helped me cre­ate the Adan’s close rela­tion­ship with plants, and his heal­ing phi­los­o­phy. The research also com­pelled me to help save the rain­forests, where plants vital to heal­ing are even now being destroyed. Help out here.

JLC: Final­ly, you asked if there were many sur­pris­es and stum­bling blocks. Yes! The good news is every stum­bling block is a cre­ative oppor­tu­ni­ty. Much as I hate stum­bling blocks, I’ve grown to love the sur­pris­ing results.

LT: Janet, you’re one of the most cre­ative peo­ple I’ve ever met, and that’s say­ing some­thing giv­en how many authors and artists I know! Can you give us a tiny peek into how your cre­ative process works?

JLC: Wow. Thanks for that, Lau­rie. We’ve talked a lot about cre­ative process in my nov­el writ­ing cours­es and the rule is always ‘Do what works for you,’ so know­ing my process may not be the same as yours or any­one else’s, I’ll share a bit about what’s worked for me over the years. I start each day as tab­u­la rasa as pos­si­ble, begin­ning with yoga, med­i­ta­tion, and prayer then mov­ing into short spir­i­tu­al read­ings from a few books, and jour­nal­ing — morn­ing pages right out of Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way. All of this read­ies me for cre­ative flow.

JLC: When the kids were school age I broke the morn­ing up, doing the yoga and med­i­ta­tion before get­ting them off to school, and the rest of the things after. Medi­a­tion clears my mind and read­ies me for jour­nal­ing which is “active lis­ten­ing” on paper. The jour­nal pages usu­al­ly drift toward what’s hap­pen­ing in the book so I move to the office and begin writ­ing. The process sounds time con­sum­ing but it works for me. Also, aside from my love­ly cri­tique group the Divin­ers, I belong to an artist’s group with fel­low authors, painters, musi­cians and sculp­tors called Artemis.

Artemis photo
Left to right, author Janet Lee Carey, visu­al artist Hei­di Pet­tit, artist/sculptor Jill Sahlstrom, author Kather­ine Grace Bond, not pic­tured; sculp­tor Lisa Sheets, author Dawn Knight, author/musician Mar­garet Kellermann.

JLC: When Artemis gets togeth­er, we take turns shar­ing about our cre­ative process. I learn as much from the visu­al artists and sculp­tors as I do from fel­low authors. These ses­sions siz­zle with cre­ativ­i­ty. Pho­to below of our year­ly Riv­er Rock Cer­e­mo­ny. We throw stones in the riv­er with our wish­es, plans and dreams. Hours of ker­plunk­ing fun!
Artemis river photo
LT: Ah, wish­es, plans, and dreams… the per­fect segue to my next ques­tion: When­ev­er I’m not writ­ing, I feel like I should be; but when­ev­er I am writ­ing, I feel­ing like I’m neglect­ing oth­er impor­tant things in my life. What tricks have you learned for bal­anc­ing your writ­ing with the demands of keep­ing up with the indus­try, pro­mot­ing exist­ing work, tak­ing care of your home and fam­i­ly, per­son­al recre­ation and self-care, etc.?

JLC: I once made the mis­take of con­fid­ing this very thing to a soc­cer mom and she looked at me like I was off my rock­er! Here’s the thing. I think writ­ers feel com­pelled deep down to write. When we neglect it for a while, we get the nig­gling feel­ing that some­thing is wrong. When we neglect it for too long, we feel depressed or angry. Once we give in to the urge and actu­al­ly sit down and write, we feel a great deal bet­ter. But then as we write, the laun­dry piles up and the dust bun­nies gath­er foment­ing war under the beds, and our chil­dren want a real­ly decent din­ner and we feel guilty for hav­ing tak­en so much time away to write, so we go back to our dai­ly duties (the ones oth­er peo­ple under­stand). Then we begin to neglect our writ­ing and start get­ting that nig­gling feel­ing that something’s wrong all over again. There is No solu­tion Lau­rie T. and I’m not even going to go into tak­ing nec­es­sary time to stay in shape or keep up with the indus­try and launch your books once they’ve been writ­ten. The only thing you can do is to be kind to your­self and your fam­i­ly and to accept that things will rarely feel in bal­ance. Bot­tom line your chil­dren will sur­vive and you will get some writ­ing done before you die.

LT: “Bot­tom line your chil­dren will sur­vive and you will get some writ­ing done before you die.” Words to live by. Thank you, Janet! 
LT: One more ques­tion for you: 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?

JLC: So well said, Lau­rie! Craft wise I chal­lenged myself to leap and loop. To leap into new scenes and briefly loop back and catch the read­er up to any­thing impor­tant that hap­pened between scenes that affect­ed the char­ac­ter emo­tion­al­ly. I’m still try­ing to per­fect this fab­u­lous tech­nique. As to what I learned from the book, I think Uma’s per­son­al strength as she’s try­ing to heal Queen Adela’s mad­ness taught me some­thing vital about love, accep­tance and the kind of deep heal­ing that women often do which is over­looked or tak­en for grant­ed. As Uma’s med­i­cines fail, she sim­ply bathes the queen, combs her hair, and sings to her. Uma sim­ply stays by the woman’s side, for as Uma says, “Joy and sor­row are songs women have long known.”

LT: Breath­tak­ing­ly beau­ti­ful, Janet.  Thank you so much for answer­ing all of my questions! 
Are you hooked yet? Here’s some more infor­ma­tion about Janet and the book…

Book trail­er:

Reviews:

  • In the Time of Drag­on Moon is a sto­ry of courage and romance that read­ers will not soon for­get.” ~VOYA
  • “The author’s world-build­ing is detailed and fas­ci­nat­ing … This is a must-pur­chase for libraries own­ing the ear­li­er install­ments and a great choice for where teen fan­ta­sy is pop­u­lar.—School Library Journal

 

About the Author:
Janet Lee Carey grew up in the bay area under tow­er­ing red­woods that whis­pered secrets in the wind. When she was a child she dreamed of becom­ing a mer­maid (this nev­er happened).She also dreamed of becom­ing a pub­lished writer (this did hap­pen after many years of rejec­tion). She is now an award-win­ning author of nine nov­els for chil­dren and teens. Her Wilde Island Chron­i­cles are ALA Best Books for Young Adults. She won the 2005 Mark Twain Award and was final­ist for the Wash­ing­ton State Book Award. Janet links each new book with a char­i­ta­ble orga­ni­za­tion empow­er­ing youth to read and reach out. She tours the U.S. and abroad pre­sent­ing at schools, book fes­ti­vals and con­fer­ences for writ­ers, teach­ers, and librar­i­ans. Janet and her fam­i­ly live near Seat­tle by a lake where ris­ing morn­ing mist forms into the shape of drag­ons. She writes dai­ly with her impe­ri­ous cat, Uke, seat­ed on her lap. Uke is jeal­ous of the key­board. If Janet tru­ly under­stood her place in the world, she would reserve her fin­gers for the sole pur­pose of scratch­ing behind Uke’s ear, but humans are very hard to train. Vis­it her web­site here.

Thanks again to Janet Lee Carey for appearing!

In which I make my podcast debut on The Artist Rolls!

As I’ve men­tioned before, I love lis­ten­ing to pod­casts. One of my favorites is The Artist Rolls.
The Artist Rolls logo
On The Artist Rolls, Sean and Jamie ask their cre­ative guests to fill out a form loose­ly inspired by char­ac­ter sheets from role-play­ing games like Dun­geons and Drag­ons. They use these char­ac­ter sheets to help explore and dis­cuss how each guest divides their time across the many dif­fer­ent roles cre­ative peo­ple must take on, what medi­ums they use to do their work, what their per­son­al work style is, and how they view their own skill set. They incor­po­rate dice to ran­dom­ize the con­ver­sa­tion, graphs to help visu­al­ize it, and humor and heart to bring it to life. It’s a fun way to learn about oth­er peo­ple’s cre­ative process­es and challenges.

Sean and Jamie, the hosts of The Artist Rolls
Sean and Jamie, the tal­ent­ed hosts of The Artist Rolls

I was intro­duced to The Artist Rolls by my good friend (and amaz­ing col­lage artist!) Liz Ruest. Since then, I’ve enjoyed lis­ten­ing to and learn­ing from many of their chats with oth­er cre­ative types, so it was a thrill to be able to par­tic­i­pate in one myself, made even more excit­ing by the fact that it was my pod­cast debut! I revealed much of my nerdy nature and con­sis­tent­ly rolled well below aver­age, but oth­er than that I don’t think I embar­rassed myself too bad­ly. Check it out for your­self by click­ing below:

The Artist Rolls, Episode 26 — Lau­rie Thomp­son Reminds Us to “Do Unto Others”

Interview w/Matthew Winner of the Let’s Get Busy podcast!

Every now and then I stum­ble on some­thing so won­der­ful that I want to add it my own list of “My Favorite Things” and share it with the world: the Let’s Get Busy pod­cast from Matthew Win­ner is one of those things. Whether you’re an author, illus­tra­tor, teacher, librar­i­an, agent, edi­tor, bookseller–if you have any­thing to do with chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture at all–this show is too good to miss. Think you don’t have time for pod­casts? I lis­ten while I’m in the car. Or while I walk the dog. Or while I clean the house. And, believe me, all of those tasks are way more enjoy­able when you have Matthew and his guests with you!
Matthew recent­ly record­ed his 100th episode of the pod­cast, and he put togeth­er a mas­sive blog and pod­cast tour to cel­e­brate. Here’s where he’s been so far:

And I’m thrilled that today is my turn to host! Matthew was kind enough to answer a few of my ques­tions, so we can all get to know him better.
LT: Hi Matthew, and wel­come! I’ve already gushed to you about how much I love your pod­cast, but I’m curi­ous to learn more. How and when did you first become inter­est­ed in doing a pod­cast like Let’s Get Busy? How did you get started?
MT: I lis­ten to a lot of pod­casts. I mean, a whole lot of pod­casts. All the time. When I’m dri­ving to work. When I’m wash­ing the dish­es. When I’m shelv­ing books. When I’m mow­ing the lawn. It’s the pri­ma­ry media I con­sume. The idea for doing a pod­cast of my own and, specif­i­cal­ly, a kidlit pod­cast just sort of popped into my head one day, took up camp, and then would­n’t leave. But it took a con­ver­sa­tion with Travis Jonker (of 100 Scope Notes) to nudge me into actu­al­ly start­ing it. He and I were talk­ing one evening dur­ing an ALA con­fer­ence in Chica­go about how much we love the insights but also those mem­o­rable vignettes that inevitably stick in your brain when­ev­er you’re in the com­pa­ny of authors or illus­tra­tors (or any­one who has some­thing to say, for that mat­ter). Travis asked me what my next big project would be and I told him that all I could think about was this idea of cap­tur­ing these sorts of con­ver­sa­tions through a loose­ly for­mat­ted pod­cast. Then he basi­cal­ly asked me when I was start­ing, and that was all it took.
LT: Some­times we just need the tini­est nudge, don’t we? (Thanks, Travis!) You sure have been busy since then. I can’t believe you start­ed less than a year and half ago, and you’re already up to 100 episodes! 
LT: How much time do you spend on the pod­cast over­all, and what’s the break­down of how that time is spent (lin­ing up guests, record­ing and edit­ing, pro­mot­ing, etc.)?
MW: Eeep. Let me try to make this as inter­est­ing as possible.
MW: I shoot for 30-minute record­ings so that I’m able to post twice a week (or 8 episodes per month). A lot of this is based on band­width lim­i­ta­tions and the cost of main­tain­ing a sub­scrip­tion on Lib­syn, a pod­cast host site. I usu­al­ly talk with each guest for about an hour total and we spend the unaired time lock­ing into a com­fort­able can­dor (or going on tan­gents and then say­ing, “Shoot! I should be record­ing this!”). Edit­ing and prep­ping the accom­pa­ny­ing blog post takes any­where between 30 and 60 min­utes. And coor­di­nat­ing sched­ules and review mate­ri­als and record­ing logis­tics over email can take upwards of 30 min­utes per sched­uled guest, but that might be over a series of weeks.
MW: So, let’s see. That’s 25 minus the cir­cum­fer­ence of Y, car­ry the 3 and sub­sti­tute 7 for X… about 2–3 hours per guest from first con­tact to pub­lished and pro­mot­ed episode.
LT: That’s a big com­mit­ment (but less than I thought–you’re fast!). What then is the hard­est part of doing the pod­cast, and how do you deal with that?
MW: The hard­est part for me is ask­ing new peo­ple to come on. It seems like every­one and their moth­er has a pod­cast nowa­days, but I’m often the first pod­cast my guests have ever appeared on or, in some cas­es, lis­tened to. And also, many of them have no idea who I am. That gets in my brain and makes me think all sorts of wonky things and then I start to psych myself out over send­ing that first con­tact email. I’ve coped with it by ask­ing each of my guests, fol­low­ing our own con­ver­sa­tions, to rec­om­mend a friend or col­league whom they think my be a good fit for the pod­cast or this inter­view for­mat. It’s worked pret­ty well for me and my guest list now reads like one great big fam­i­ly pho­to album with all sorts of zigzag­ging con­nec­tions between each of the faces.
LT: That is real­ly neat to envi­sion. So much of what we do is built on per­son­al rela­tion­ships, isn’t it? I don’t think you have any­thing to wor­ry about, though. First, kidlit peo­ple are the best peo­ple in the world, don’t you think? And sec­ond, I’m sure most authors and illus­tra­tors are thrilled by the oppor­tu­ni­ty to chat with you: you’re inter­est­ed in our work, and you give us a chance to talk about it. Just remem­ber: we’re nice, and you’re doing us a favor. There’s no need to psych your­self out! 🙂
LT: What has sur­prised you most about the podcast?
MW: Every­thing sur­pris­es me about the pod­cast. Some­times the thing that sur­pris­es me most is know­ing that any­one’s actu­al­ly lis­ten­ing. I learn some­thing new with each new per­son who comes on and by rule of thumb I allow myself space to won­der, to be excit­ed, to nerd out over process, and to ask what­ev­er comes to mind. That approach has served me well and has led to a good deal of sur­pris­es when our con­ver­sa­tions take unex­pect­ed turns. It’s how I learned that Lau­rie Keller (Arnie the Dough­nut) plays ban­jo, that Nick Bru­el (Bad Kit­ty) used to work at Books of Won­der, a land­mark chil­dren’s book­store in New York, and that Steve Light (Have You Seen My Drag­on?) works with PreSchool students!
LT: I love that every episode feels like a casu­al con­ver­sa­tion between friends, rather than an inter­view, per se. In fact, it’s my favorite thing about lis­ten­ing to them! What is your favorite thing about doing them?
MW: So, I have a blog called The Busy Librar­i­an. I start­ed it as a sort of advo­ca­cy blog for all of us teacher librar­i­ans who are all just so busy all the time. On Octo­ber 10th, 2010, I pub­lished my first post. Here is the text in its entirety:

This is a blog for busy librarians.
For those of us who feel, well, overwhelmed.
It’s a place of com­fort and, hope­ful­ly, a source of inspiration.
Here you will find the oppor­tu­ni­ty to inter­act glob­al­ly and to impact locally.
We’ll syn­er­gize moments, ideas, and activ­i­ties that will enable us to become more effec­tive librar­i­ans, more effi­cient in our libraries, and more ener­getic with our stu­dents, with­out feel­ing like things are careen­ing out of control.
So, let’s get busy!

It made per­fect sense to me to name the pod­cast as an exten­sion of the blog itself. Hence, Let’s Get Busy. My very good pal Sher­ry Gick, teacher librar­i­an at Rossville Con­sol­i­dat­ed Schools in Rossville, IN, and author of the Library Fanat­ic blog, and Nik­ki Ohs Barnes, fel­low Nerdy Book Club mem­ber and co-founder of the Vir­tu­al Book Club, met me at ALA where, just one night pre­vi­ous, Travis and I had talked about pod­cast­ing. Super excit­ed to share, I told Sher­ry and Nik­ki that I was going to start a pod­cast and that I decid­ed to call it Let’s Get Busy after my blog. They both imme­di­ate­ly broke into what they decid­ed would have to be the pod­cast sound effect… a sort of BOW-CHIKKA-WOAH-WOW that I have not to this day been able to get out of my head when­ev­er I’m about to start an inter­view. Car­ry­ing those sorts of mem­o­ries around every­where I go is def­i­nite­ly my favorite thing. And with 100 episode behind me, I’m def­i­nite­ly car­ry­ing around a lot of stories!
LT: I’m sure you are! 
LT: How do you feel your oth­er activ­i­ties (teach­ing, pre­sent­ing, writ­ing, blog­ging, Twit­ter, par­ent­ing, etc.) make the pod­cast bet­ter? And, vice ver­sa, how does the pod­cast con­tribute to those oth­er facets of your life?
MW: Oh my word! Every­thing and I mean EVERYTHING goes into the pot when it comes to mak­ing these record­ings. Books from my pic­ture book guests are typ­i­cal­ly already bed­time sta­ples with our 4‑year-old son. Teach­ing and being a teacher librar­i­an is the best and comes up over and over again on our chats because I like to share the way that the guests’ book is reach­ing kids and sup­port­ing read­ers in ways that I get to expe­ri­ence first­hand. Twit­ter is my pro­fes­sion­al learn­ing com­mu­ni­ty, but it’s also where I get to nerd out with friends over great kidlit and meet very cool peo­ple cre­at­ing very cool books in the process, many of whom I’ll invite on the pod­cast because their work sticks with me.
MW: Doing the pod­cast brings me pure joy and is or has become a part of my iden­ti­ty. And I’ve got­ten to meet a ton of real­ly cool peo­ple in the process. I’m thank­ful that our son is grow­ing up in a house sur­round­ed with beau­ti­ful pic­ture books, both on our book­shelves, and in frames hang­ing up through­out our house.
LT: Oh, I love that. Why have I nev­er thought of fram­ing pic­ture books?  (Hmmm… just in time for Christ­mas, too!)
LT: I’ve always said that I will know I’ve made it when I receive one let­ter from one child say­ing that some­thing I wrote made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in his or her life. How do you define suc­cess? Do you feel like you’ve achieved it? If not, what’s left on your to-do list?
MW: I lis­ten to my guests and I lis­ten to my lis­ten­ers. The pod­cast suc­ceeds when the guests feel like they’ve found a home in our con­ver­sa­tion and when the lis­ten­ers feel like they’re in the room with us. I also try to take in the kind things peo­ple are say­ing about Let’s Get Busy or about me per­son­al­ly. Sey­mour Simon once told me that he thinks of me “like a son” and that he’s proud of me. I achieved all I ever want­ed when I pub­lished the very first episode of Let’s Get Busy. And I’m thank­ful that so many peo­ple feel moved to tell me how the pod­cast is con­nect­ing with them. Suc­cess to me is know­ing that one per­son cares about the thing you’re mak­ing, or say­ing, or cre­at­ing. And I’m one per­son that cares a great deal about what I myself am mak­ing, say­ing, and cre­at­ing. So with every episode I get to share, I’ve already achieved suc­cess before a sin­gle down­load occurs.
LT: What a won­der­ful atti­tude, Matthew! I care a great deal about what you’re mak­ing, say­ing, a cre­at­ing, too. Thanks so much for shar­ing it with us ! 


As you can see from above, Matthew calls him­self “the busy librar­i­an” for good rea­son. Here are some of the places you can find more from him:

And be sure to fol­low the rest of the Let’s Get Busy podcast/blog tour, here:

Interview: Chris Barton, author

On Mon­day, I reviewed a new alpha­bet book, ATTACK! BOSS! CHEAT CODE!: A GAMER’S ALPHABET, writ­ten by Chris Bar­ton and illus­trat­ed by Joey Spi­ot­to. Today, I’m thrilled to intro­duce you to Chris!

Chris Barton head shot
Chris Bar­ton

Chris was kind enough to answer a few of my ques­tions about writ­ing ATTACK! BOSS! CHEAT CODE! Read on for the interview:
LT: I have a sort of love-hate rela­tion­ship with video games. I enjoy play­ing them, but have to watch my ten­den­cy to get obses­sive. I sus­pect my growth is per­ma­nent­ly stunt­ed from spend­ing my teen years play­ing Cav­erns of Mars on my Atari when I should’ve sleep­ing. In col­lege, I could spend whole week­ends play­ing Civ­i­liza­tion. Now, I strug­gle not to play too much soli­taire, Can­dy Crush, or Tick­et to Ride, and I have to mon­i­tor what my kids are play­ing and how much time they’re spend­ing at it, as well. 
LT: Tell me about your own video gam­ing expe­ri­ence, past and present. What kinds of games do you like to play? How has your game-play­ing changed over time? 
CB: Hon­est­ly, there’s a lot more to say about my past expe­ri­ence than my present expe­ri­ence — and, even then, there’s not a huge amount. Gam­ing has nev­er been as big a part of my life as it is in the lives of my kids.
CB: But I do have some vivid mem­o­ries from when I was grow­ing up: of my great-aunt and ‑uncle giv­ing my broth­er and me Pong one Christ­mas, and of us hook­ing that up to the black-and-white TV in his room; of cel­e­brat­ing the 12th birth­day of my friend Ty (to whom Attack! Boss! Cheat Code! is ded­i­cat­ed) by play­ing a lot of Ms. Pac-Man at Mal­ibu Grand Prix and then going to see Tron in a the­ater; of final­ly mov­ing up from Pong by buy­ing Ty’s Intel­livi­sion con­sole, on which I espe­cial­ly loved play­ing Pit­fall!; and of the thrill of play­ing Spy Hunter at the Aladdin’s Cas­tle arcade when­ev­er I got to go the mall 80 miles from my hometown.
CB: I still real­ly enjoy play­ing arcade games — that over­all sen­so­ry expe­ri­ence is a sure­fire way to bring out the 13-year-old in me. Being big fans of the Bea­t­les, Jen­ny and our kids and I love play­ing Bea­t­les Rock Band togeth­er on our Wii. And I high­ly, high­ly rec­om­mend the game Gone Home, a first-per­son game in which you’re a col­lege stu­dent return­ing from a year abroad only to dis­cov­er that all sorts of things are not right at the house your fam­i­ly moved into dur­ing your time away. Recent­ly I was strug­gling to remem­ber the name of the YA nov­el I had read that got me all choked up at the very end, but then I real­ized it had­n’t been a nov­el at all. It had been Gone Home.
CB: I would undoubt­ed­ly spend more time play­ing games — and watch­ing TV, and going to the movies — if it weren’t for all these books I’d like to write. I can’t do it all.
LT: Yes! That’s what keeps me off of them, too… most of the time.
LT: What was your favorite part of A!B!CC! to research and/or write?
CB: Oh, it was def­i­nite­ly the page at the end where I use all 26 gam­ing terms in a sin­gle sen­tence. Fig­ur­ing out how to do that was not only a fun puz­zle to solve, but also a good test of how well I knew my ter­mi­nol­o­gy. I sus­pect that page will also be my favorite part of the book to read aloud, though I’m going to need a big­ger set of lungs if I’m ever to get through it in a sin­gle breath.
LT: That’s funny–I would’ve expect­ed you to say that was the hard­est! It was indeed impres­sive. What, then, was the hard­est part of the book to research and/or write?
CB: “I is for Instance,” by far. The usu­al sus­pects in an alpha­bet book — Q, X, Z — weren’t all that chal­leng­ing. But “I” had sur­pris­ing­ly few terms that seemed like great can­di­dates, espe­cial­ly since I avoid­ed brand names or names of spe­cif­ic games or char­ac­ters. I was hap­py to include “Instance,” as I think it’s an impor­tant con­cept for under­stand­ing why your screen isn’t over­run by oth­er avatars when you’re play­ing a mas­sive­ly mul­ti­play­er online game, but get­ting the def­i­n­i­tion just right — cor­rect, yet easy to under­stand — took a lot of effort.
LT: Inter­est­ing! It cer­tain­ly would­n’t seem like “I” would be one of the tricky let­ters. I can see how instance would be a tricky one to explain, though, and you’re right about it being an impor­tant con­cept. Great choice!
LT: Were there any sur­pris­es along the way?
CB: Sure. I began the project with a desire to show some of the rich­ness and depth and breadth of gam­ing cul­ture and his­to­ry. But I was still tak­en aback by the pas­sion and thought­ful­ness and sin­cer­i­ty of oth­er writ­ers, com­men­ta­tors, and gam­ing pro­fes­sion­als who have ded­i­cat­ed them­selves to this field far more exten­sive­ly than I have. And I’ve been espe­cial­ly intrigued by the cur­rent par­al­lels between the gam­ing and chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture worlds as both strive to make them­selves more diverse and inclu­sive, to allow more par­tic­i­pants and con­sumers from more back­grounds to take part in these fields and rec­og­nize them­selves in the work that’s created.
LT: I’ve noticed those par­al­lels, too, and it’s def­i­nite­ly a good thing. 
LT: One last ques­tion… 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?
CB: I’ve got a new appre­ci­a­tion for what a great tool an alpha­bet book can be for orga­niz­ing infor­ma­tion about a top­ic, and for explor­ing a top­ic beyond what you’re already famil­iar with. It’s a for­mat that forces you to dig deeply and employ some cre­ative research skills and weigh why one con­cept might be more impor­tant to include than anoth­er. I’d rec­om­mend that oth­er writ­ers of all ages give it a try. I myself expect that I’ll return to this approach soon­er or later.
LT: Great advice! And I look for­ward to see­ing what you do with it next time. 
LT: Thanks for stop­ping by and shar­ing your thoughts, Chris. I had a great time, and I wish you the best of luck with ATTACK! BOSS! CHEAT CODE!

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