Karen Latchana Kenney is Fascinated by Fungi

 by Sue Heavenrich

September is National Mushroom month and I am so happy to welcome Karen Latchana Kenney to the GROG this week so we can talk about Fascinating Fungi! Karen delves deep into this funky kingdom, writing about how fungi evolved and how we use them. And her book is filled with lovely photos of the beautiful, the odd, the delectable, even the killers that inhabit the world of fungi.

Welcome to the GROG, Karen. As a fellow fungus fancier, I wanted to know what inspired you to write this book, and how did writing for YA readers (11 and older) inform your structure and the topics you chose to focus on?

Karen: I always wondered how mushrooms seem to pop up overnight after it rained. How did they grow so fast? It was so strange! And then one day, after we moved from the city out to our home with a big, forested yard, I saw the weirdest thing. It looked like an abandoned volleyball, but then I found out it was a giant puffball mushroom. I watched it grow bigger and saw the spores it puffed out like wisps of smoke. It was so strange! And interesting. I wanted to know more, so I proposed the topic to Lerner and they loved it. And I think YA readers like to read about the unusual and strange too, so I structured my book to highlight those especially unusual aspects of fungi: ancient mushrooms that towered like trees, fungi that smell like corpses, and mushrooms that glow in the dark.

photo by Serah Sauser

Me: One year a stinky squid fungus came up in my tomato bed. It looked like a chicken’s foot poking up out of the dirt. So I was particularly drawn to your two chapters about beautiful and strange fungi. Talk about why you chose these particular mushrooms to feature.

Karen: I love those kinds of mushrooms, too! Last summer a bunch of golden stinkhorns grew in my garden – they’re called the Devil’s Dipstick. The colors, forms, and varieties of mushrooms that grow are dazzling. I chose to highlight as many different forms and colors that I could to show the immense biodiversity of fungi. And that way I could also explain some of the science behind their function. Some mushrooms have gills that rain spores, some shoot spores from prongs (like the violet coral), and some lure insects and animals with light and smell so that the animals can spread spores for them.

I take photos of the weird mushrooms I find! This is the Devil’s Dipstick that was growing in my garden!

Me: There’s a lot of talk about using psychedelics in mental health treatment. What makes these important to young readers?

Karen: I think there’s a lot we don’t know about fungi and how they can help humans medically. There is some fascinating research happening now, and findings that show how psychedelics can be safely used in the medical setting to help people with addiction and mental health issues. Staying open to these options and learning more about them could help someone heal, and so I think it’s important to understand the different kinds of treatment out there. I interviewed Dr. Jessie Uehling who is a mycologist and served on an advisory board in Oregon as they developed guidelines for using psychedelics in clinical treatment of mental health issues and addiction. Her reason for doing that work was inspiring—she lost a sister to suicide in a place where few mental health options were available. So, I think it is critically important to understand that there are different options for help and learning about whether or not they are right for you is an important first step in getting help when you need it.

Fascinating fungi throughout the book!

Me: I often hear folks refer to the underground mycelium network as the “wood-wide web”. Reading about Suzanne Simard’s research strengthens the ecological argument that everything is connected. What can we do to nurture and protect these connections – and how do they affect us?

Karen: Knowing that everything is connected somehow in nature can help us treat every part of the Earth with respect. Personally, I would never use harmful chemicals in my garden to kill one kind of plant or insect, knowing about the interconnectedness of organisms in the soil. I think we don’t even know how these connections affect us, but just because we can’t see fungal webs doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care about them. Learning more about fungi certainly helps too. The more we know about their fascinating abilities and uses, the more we will want to protect their habitats. And it can all start in your garden, in your community. What fungi live near you? 

Me: Last summer there were brain-like fungal growths on some mushrooms near my garden. The parasitic fungus has the delightful name of Collybia Clouds. And a couple years ago there were some mushrooms that folded up like tacos! That’s here, on Earth. But you mention mushrooms on Mars! 

Karen: Yeah, isn’t that so cool?! Mushrooms in space . . . such an interesting and smart use of fungi. Their spores are light enough to travel all that way in the limited confines of a spacecraft. They can also grow easily and have a wide variety of uses (glow-in-the-dark mushrooms for light!). I’m excited to see what scientists will continue to discover about these incredible organisms.

Thank you, Karen, for dropping by. You can find out more about Karen and her award-winning books at her website, www.karenlatchanakenney.com

SNEAKS-A Twisty Middle Grade Mystery: Interview with Author Amy Tern--By Julie Phend

Sneaks is a twisty middle grade mystery by debut author Amy Tern released by Holiday House this summer. I’m excited to interview Amy for the GROG blog.

Author Amy Tern

First, a little about the book:

Rook, a sheltered musical prodigy, couldn’t be more different from Valorie, the troublemaking daughter of his family’s cleaning woman. But their strengths complement each other when they team up to solve the mystery of a piano-playing child hidden in an apartment across the street. Spying from the balcony, Rook and Valorie are alarmed by the strange woman who goes out to buy pizza at the exact same time each day, a child’s simple piano tunes played only when the woman is gone, and a discarded doll whose head has been ripped off. Sensing danger, Rook and Valory try to alert their elders, but no one takes them seriously. As they investigate on their own, they discover important things about themselves, their families, and the assumptions they’ve made. 

This tightly plotted mystery keeps the reader guessing to the very end. Amy’s memorable characters and quirky humor make Sneaks a very fun, enjoyable read! 

We’re so glad to have you as a guest on the GROG Blog, Amy. Tell us a little about yourself and your writing career. 

Amy: I grew up in Colorado, taking the mountains for granted. My heart was in other magical places, such as Narnia, snowbound Canada, Britain with its moors and tea, and that most wondrous place of all, the Past. Little did I know I was living in the old days myself—and deprived of computers and video games, I wrote and illustrated my own books, mostly featuring animal characters because I could draw them better. I continued to write fiction until college. There, I took a creative writing workshop where I was convinced by a bunch of creatively dressed classmates that my writing wasn’t very sophisticated. Experimental fiction was in style, and I didn’t fit in very well. After college, I mostly quit creative writing because I was distracted by having to earn a living. Much later, when I had my own family, I reconnected with my childhood dream of writing kidlit, but getting published was harder than I expected. 

How did you get the idea for Sneaks? 

Amy: When I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window with my two sons, I thought the premise might be good for middle grade. In Sneaks, twelve-year-old Valory and Rook sit on the balcony spying on the neighbors and notice clues that something fishy is going on in the apartment building across the alley. In Rear Window, the police don’t take Jimmy Stewart’s suspicions seriously. In my book, it’s the grown-ups who underestimate the sleuths and accuse them of having overactive imaginations. When Valory and Rook set out to solve the mystery on their own, they break a few rules and make a few bad choices, but they also learn about being brave and following their own consciences. 

Of course, Rear Window has been adapted many times. Hitchcock himself adapted it from a short story by Cornell Woolrich. My book isn’t even the first kids’ version—The Secret Apartment, by Natalie Fast, particularly influenced me. I made the story my own by recalling how my brothers and I used to love sneaking around as kids. When I was eight, my family went to Belgium for three months and lived in a five-story apartment building. My brothers and I explored that place from top to bottom. We couldn’t even watch TV or get our hands on many English-language books, so we spent our time spying on people and having adventures. I tried to capture that sense of exhilaration in the story.

The two main characters in Sneaks are very different. Rook is an introvert and a gifted pianist. Valory is a daring rule-breaker. You tell the story in both their voices. Was that hard to do? Was one character easier to write than the other? 

Amy: This was my first experience writing in dual perspective. It seemed to fit this book, which has two protagonists of equal importance. To me, the hard part was differentiating the voices, but it helps that the characters are such different personalities. Valory is mouthy (to use one of my mother’s favorite words), brash, confident, shrewd, and judgmental. Rook is thoughtful, musically gifted, proud, somewhat timid, and secretive. Valory has to learn to be less self-centered, and Rook to speak up for himself. 

One useful hack I discovered quite by accident. I started out writing Valory’s chapters in first person and Rook’s in third. But I changed my mind and decided that would be too confusing for young readers. After converting Valory’s perspective to third, I was surprised to find that the language had a certain tone—a sort of slangy bounce—that was different than if I’d written it in third person in the first place. The tone served to further distinguish the voices, very subtly. 

There were other devices I used: for example, Valory uses more hyperbole and gives everyone nicknames. Valory is into clothes—what Rook calls a hat, she calls a fedora. Meanwhile, Rook uses a lot of music metaphors and tends to reference science fiction and superhero movies. At an even more granular level, Valory says “anybody” and “somebody,” while Rook says “anyone” and “someone.” More importantly, they notice different things—Valory is visual, while Rook takes in the world through his ears. Valory is highly attuned to hypocrisy in adults, which she calls out and condemns. Rook, who is in awe of his successful parents, struggles to please and is sensitive to any sign of adult displeasure. 

While Sneaks is a story about growing up and speaks to problems common to middle graders—dealing with parents, speaking up, making and keeping friends—it’s also a mystery. Which came first: plot or characters? 

Amy: I guess I would say the plot came first, since I got the idea after watching Rear Window. But I always struggle to write until I have a good sense of the characters. The first clue to the mystery is piano music, emanating from a supposedly empty apartment. I wanted Rook to have a special connection to this music, so I made him a musician. As soon as I did that, his personality and family life all fell into place. As for Valory, I realize now she was partly inspired by The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson. I was very much a good kid (an “asparagus-eater,” as Valory would say) but Gilly’s rebelliousness thrilled me to my core. When I read about her blowing an enormous bubble in a social worker’s face, I think that’s when my own character of Valory started germinating in my mind. Valory is different from Gilly in many ways, but there’s definitely a family resemblance. 

What was the most difficult part of this story to write? 

Amy: The beginning is always hard because you need to hook the reader fast. Then again, the middle is where you have to keep raising the stakes, and that’s tough, too. Then again, the end is when the real pressure sets in. You know, it’s all pretty hard! 

That’s the truth! 

Old Town Books

Amy: But seriously . . . writing this book, I struggled most with the character of the villain—the Goblin Woman, as Valory calls her. At first, I set out to make her zany and completely evil, like Cruella DeVille in Dodie Smith’s marvelous 1956 novel, The Hundred and One Dalmatians. Maybe someday I’ll succeed in making that kind of dastardly villain, but I’ve noticed I tend to humanize my antagonists more with every subsequent draft. I start digging into why they’re so dastardly, and then I end up sympathizing with their motives. Which is no bad thing, but it’s tricky to get the balance right. Even if villains come off as realistic, even if they have a proper character arc, even if they make the reader laugh, they must also be dangerous enough to challenge the hero or heroes to the utmost. 

I think you got that just right, Amy. Ms. Smith, the Goblin Woman, is very creepy and sinister until we get a glimpse under that protective armor to the vulnerable woman inside. 

Tell us about your writing process. Are you a pantser or a plotter? 

Amy: I guess I tend more toward the pantsy end of the spectrum. But oh, I wish I could be a plotter so much! Plotters tend to write their books much faster than pantsers. Sometimes I try to construct a proper outline, but it tends to spin out of control until I realize I’m outlining a 700-page book instead of a 200-page book. In the case of Sneaks, I was (very loosely) basing it on Rear Window, so that gave me some structure going in. Near the end of the film, there’s a great scene in which Jeff (Jimmy Stewart) watches helplessly from his window as Lisa (Grace Kelly) goes into danger. He wants to run and save her, but he can’t because he has the world’s most enormous cast on his leg. In my story, Rook doesn’t have a cast, but he’s trapped at home for reasons I won’t go into here. But I was always writing toward my own version of that scene—the going into danger scene—and that helped me keep my direction. 

About your road to publication: How did you find your agent and your editor? Any comments on the publication process? Surprises? 

Amy: It’s been a long road to publication for me: about twelve years of considerable effort. I wrote and queried several manuscripts before Sneaks, including two picture books, two chapter books, and two middle grade novels. I also read craft books and learned a lot about plot (the “p word” was never mentioned in those long-ago creative writing workshops). In the end, I think what kept me going through all the rejection was the support of my critique group. It was just really fun having people read my stuff every week. I learned a lot from their comments and from critiquing their work. After racking up about 200 rejections for my various manuscripts, I finally got a “yes” from an agent, who sold Sneaks within nine months. Unfortunately, my agent left the business not long after. So I’m back to querying again. 

Full disclosure here. Amy and I have been in the same critique group for years, and she’s right. Our wonderful group has been so encouraging. At the same time, the thoughtful, and often tough, feedback has helped us all to grow. 

Amy, though you’ve been writing for many years, this is your first published book. How does it feel to be a debut author receiving a lot of positive attention? How has your life changed since publication? Any hints about what’s next? 

Amy: Being a debut author is exciting. As an introvert, it’s a little nerve-wracking to be out promoting my book and connecting with potential readers. But it’s wonderful, too. I try not to get so distracted by book promotion that I neglect my writing. Ultimately, blowing your horn on social media doesn’t build your career nearly as much as working on your next book. I’m currently revising a previous manuscript, as well as embarking on a new project. Someday I would love to publish those picture books I wrote back in 2011! And maybe I’ll write a mystery for adults one day—who knows? 

The best thing about writing is that no one tells you what to do next. And the worst thing? No one tells you what to do next! But maybe that’s why we love it so much. 

Thank you, Amy! It’s been wonderful talking to you about your marvelous book Sneaks. 

Find it wherever books are sold. 

For more about Amy, visit her website at https://amytern.com/

Planting seeds for picture books with agricultural roots

 by Sue Heavenrich

 

  I love gardening. There’s something about the smell of fresh soil, dropping seeds into thumbprint holes, and the constant humming of bees and flies. Not only does my garden provide food for the table, but it serves as my science lab and recently inspired a book about pumpkins.  

 

 

 

Turns out a bunch of writing friends have their own garden-related books featuring cabbages, compost, nut trees and farm life – some of them award-winning titles! So I invited them over to the GROG today to relax in the shade, sip icy lemonade and chat about our books that celebrate agricultural connections. Since Chelsea's sitting right next to me, I'll start with her.

 

What inspired your story, and how did you decide to write it the way that you did?

Chelsea

Chelsea Tornetto (Seasons on the Farm): I grew up in rural southern Illinois with farm families on both sides, so the topic itself was very familiar to me.  At first, I thought it might be an overdone topic...seasons are a common theme in children's books, as are farms!  But I realized that the combination of the two allowed me to highlight how farmers see the seasons through a much more purposeful lens than "regular" people.  For them, being tuned in to even the most subtle signs of the changing seasons is essential to their success and their livelihood.  So, I decided to focus on that and help show kids who may not be familiar with rural life how the changing seasons are about more than just snow days and spring flowers.  

Peggy Thomas (The Soil in Jackie’s Garden): I had wanted to write about soil for a long time because I’m fascinated by all the magical things that happen underground. I struggled to find the right story structure until one day while I was teaching a writing class. I reminded my students that rather than reinvent the wheel they could try using one of the many traditional story structures like “The House That Jack Built.”  The moment I said it I knew it would be perfect for showing how everything begins and ends with soil. It’s the first time I took my own advice.  

Roxanne Troup  (My Grandpa, My Tree, and Me): While researching, I ran across a YouTube video of a farmer harvesting pecans and was thunderstruck by their methods. I grew up in a farming community and had some experience with agriculture and pecans, but no one I knew harvested pecans by tractor. And I had never considered how all those pecans would sound or look like falling from the tree like rain! It was dusty and noisy and not at all the way my family gathered pecans. This dichotomy provided the structure for the informational element of my book—comparing commercial pecan harvesting with at-home production—but I needed a story mechanism that could making interesting information meaningful. I needed heart. While brainstorming, the phrase, “But not my tree,” popped into my head and I immediately knew an intergenerational family would provide the necessary story wrappings (a.k.a. “heart”) for this tale.

Karen Greenwald (The Cabbage Seed’s Colossal Secret): The stories that grab my attention often involve an unlikely hero/es. When I found out about the nine-year-old girl who chose to give a local soup kitchen a 40-pound cabbage she grew, then started a charity to encourage children nationwide to do the same, it was an instant click—exactly the kind of story that I like to put a spotlight on. I often think good stories tell you who they are and how they want to be written. To me, taking a circular approach felt powerful. I wanted it to reflect the growing cycle, the giving cycle, and the sharing cycle this child initiated.

Sue, with Jarrahdale pumpkin

Me: The Pie that Molly Grew started as a response to a challenge from Susanna Leonard Hill. Write about pies, she said. I listed all the kinds of pies I’d ever heard of and circled pumpkin, which is my favorite. And I jotted down a line: this is the pie that Molly made. That line stuck in my head like an earworm, pestering me until I planted my pumpkin seeds and realized that it might be a book about how a seed no bigger than a penny can grow into a long, tangly vine that produces an abundance of pumpkins. 

So, do we all garden? Or tend to plants in some fashion?

Peggy: I love gardening, but I love wildlife even more, so I’m slowly replacing non-native flowers and shrubs with ones that grew in my area before Europeans arrived. These native plants like coneflower, milkweed and spicebush are the plants that insects, birds and other animals rely on, but they are disappearing due to habitat loss, climate change, pesticide use, etc. I can’t do much about the bigger picture, but I can make a difference at home by turning my yard into a little nature sanctuary.

Roxanne: I live in a high-altitude, semi-arid, suburban area; so what I can grow is limited. To make the most of our resources and provide pollinators with what they need, I focus on native flower gardens/landscape plants, herb gardening, and container gardens for my veggies. (I also have a variety of house plants—including an avocado tree, currently in need of a larger pot, that my son grew as a science experiment in middle school.)

Roxanne

Karen: I wish I could garden in my yard but as I look out the window most days (when I probably should be focused on my computer screen), the number of deer grazing in my yard is striking. Every time we've planted flowers, they were snipped at the bud. So, I am more of a viewer of nature!

Chelsea: I have a bit of a black thumb, but my husband is a huge gardener, and most of our backyard is covered in garden beds.  (see pic).  While I don't do the work, I certainly enjoy the fruits of his labor!  We have strawberries, cantaloupe, tomatoes, cucumbers, green beans, onions, figs, peas, and much, much more.  He also keeps my flowers alive for me!  :)  As shown in my first picture book, GARDENS ARE FOR GROWING, our kids have grown up in the garden, and I love watching them pick produce, help water, and just generally enjoy the outdoors with their Dad.  

Me: Every time I plant pumpkin seeds, I marvel how this humble fruit has fed families for thousands of years.  I cannot remember a Thanksgiving without a pumpkin pie. So I knew I had to include that connection of giving thanks for the earth and the sun, the rain and the seed, the flowers and the bees, and the gardeners and farmers who grow the food we eat.

What sort of connections did you want to emphasize in your book?  

Karen

Karen: I love a story where a community is formed, and where that community finds an unlikely or unimagined way to solve a problem. In this case, children all over the country have joined together, without even knowing each other, to make a dent in the food crisis. It’s a type of community that can grow exponentially, impacting an untold number of people’s lives. To me, that’s an incredible outcome. I also love that it teaches children to plant themselves somewhere or in something and nurture what they’re growing in both the Earth and within themselves—and as they increase their garden, hopefully their compassion, talents, and interest in protecting our environment will expand as well.

Chelsea: As I mentioned earlier, both sides of my family are farmers, and one thing I've realized over the years is how unique farming is as a job.  Other kids I knew growing up had parents who worked specific hours, had to schedule their "vacation" days, complained about their bosses, etc.  But a farm, as a family business, is more like a big, never-ending family project, and daily life is woven more naturally into the "job." The whole family has to work together and rely on each other to succeed...and it forces you to depend on each other more...which can build really close relationships.  There's also a special sense of pride in a family farm that's often been passed down from generation to generation.  A family farm more than just a source of income.  It's a part of your history.  I really love that.  

Peggy: It was important that my book be more than just planting a seed and harvesting a watermelon. That agricultural part of the story exists within and because of the larger web of organisms working to aerate the soil, release nutrients, pollinate flowers, and decompose dead things. Severing those connections weakens the entire system.

Roxanne: Like gardens, families come in all shapes and sizes. And family—whether the one we’re born into or the one we choose for ourselves—gives us roots. It provides us with support and fuels our growth. Even as families change (as gardens do throughout the seasons) the love we share doesn’t run out. It may look different in different seasons of life, but it is still there nurturing and supporting us.

Me: One of the things I hope readers take away from reading The Pie That Molly Grew is how a single plant can be part of a web that connects sun and soil, flowers and bees, and the food we eat. I hope it inspires kids to plant a seed, whether it’s pumpkin or carrots or spinach for their salads.

What do you hope readers take away from your book?

Peggy

Peggy: I hope that, after reading The Soil in Jackie’s Garden, young readers will want to be part of the soil cycle. It is so easy to do. By creating a compost pile, they become just as impactful as all the other animals working in the garden. Plus, it is so much fun to poke around in the compost and watch food scraps disappear.

Chelsea: I hope kids who aren't familiar with farm life will gain a new understanding of and respect for the lifestyle I show in Seasons on the Farm. I also hope that farm kids who read my books will see themselves and their lives reflected on the pages.  

Roxanne: When they reach the last page of My Grandpa, My Tree, and Me, I hope kids have learned more about where our food comes from – and the incredible about of work required to produce their favorite snacks. I also hope that they pick up on the subtle message that familial love, like the pecan tree, grows with time and care.

Karen: I hope readers, young and older, take away a sense of empowerment from The Cabbage Seed’s Colossal Secret, and a realization that, while there are great problems for us to solve, they can help be a part of positive change. Every tiny seed planted is another opportunity to make a difference!

Me: Thanks everyone. My glass is empty, so that means it’s time to head back to weeding – or writing.

You can find out more about our roundtable guests - and their books - by visiting their websites:

Chelsea minds the farm at chelseatornetto.com
Peggy turns compost at www.peggythomaswrites.com    

Roxanne sits in the shade of pecan trees at www.roxannetroup.com
Karen turns small seeds into giant stories at www.karengreenwald.com
Sue dreams about pie at www.sueheavenrich.com

Lindsay H. Metcalf Uses Verse to Write about STEM

by Sue Heavenrich

Today I’m chatting with award-winning author. Lindsay H. Metcalf. I was introduced to her writing through her nonfiction picture books about Beatrix Potter and indoor farming. This spring her newest book, Footeprint: Eunice Newton Foote at the Dawn of Climate Science and Women’s Rights, was released from Charlesbridge. Footeprint is written for teens and, unlike her previous books, is a novel-in-verse! I loved reading it so much that I knew we had to sit down and talk about her book, climate science, and women’s history.

Welcome to the GROG, Lindsay. The first thing I want to know is why you decided to write this book as a novel rather than nonfiction? 

Lindsay: I started writing FOOTEPRINT as nonfiction but ran into roadblocks with few sections I didn’t have answers for. When I began researching Eunice Newton Foote’s life, there were no traditionally published books about her. Here was a woman who had discovered something groundbreaking—that excess carbon dioxide warms the atmosphere—and she had been largely forgotten after her 1856 experiment was published. I became determined to piece together a birth-to-death story of her life, just to get it all on the record. 

The vast majority of the book is factual and documented in the book’s extensive bibliography. In a few places, I hedged to access the emotional core of the moment. Take, for example, the poem where Eunice learns about the upcoming 1848 Women’s Rights Convention in her town of Seneca Falls, NY. The poem says she learned of the convention by reading an article in the Seneca County Courier. It’s true that Eunice attended the convention and got involved, and it’s true that the newspaper ran an announcement. I can’t prove that she read it. There are a few other examples of this kind of “light fiction” throughout the book. Generally, I stuck as closely to the facts as I could. 

Me: That makes sense. Can you tell us how you decided to use verse as the means of telling Eunice's story?

Lindsay: Verse was an extension of my desire to stick closely to the facts while also pulling emotion into the story. With verse, I could use the conventions of poetry (metaphor, simile, white space, etc.) to invite the reader to bring their own emotion to the story, rather than me assigning feelings to Eunice:

Eunice isn’t sure what to expect, 

but she is drawn to this women’s convention

like a magnet, 

or like gravity. 

Another advantage with verse was the nature of the poems themselves. Each one captures a moment, and the breaks between them represent the passage of time. During my research I created a timeline of Eunice’s life, but there were gaps of months or years where I had no idea what Eunice was doing. Instead of making anything up, I could transition with a poem about what was happening around her or a more thematic poem to set tone. These helped place her firmly in the period of industrialization and contextualize why her experiments and women’s rights activism were important.

photo: Lindsay,  standing next to statues of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Frederick Douglass at the Women’s Rights National Historical Park in Seneca Falls, NY where she presented a program about FOOTEPRINT on April 18.

Me: That’s a brilliant reason to use poetry to tell a story! The combination of poetry and Eunice’s story engaged me more than I expected. The story is from the 1800s, but the battles Eunice faced – to be taken seriously as a woman in science and to be acknowledged for her contributions – continue. In one poem, Eunice wonders: how can any group advance while holding back any other? I get the feeling that this book is informed and inspired by our current time.

Lindsay: I was absolutely inspired by current politics. We are living through a time of extreme contradiction. Scientists have proven that climate change is real, and yet so many world powers are failing to heed their calls to action. And not just failing through negligence, but in the case of the United States, actively erasing documentation of human-caused climate change, first by scrubbing federal websites (1) and documents of climate-change references and data, and last winter, by taking steps to shutter the National Center for Atmospheric Research.(2)

Eunice’s story fascinated me because she and her family’s storyline intertwined with many consequential events of the mid-nineteenth century. She and her husband, Elisha, were inventors, and he went on to be the US patent commissioner in the late 1860s during the height of industrialization. His department approved patents for many of the first machines to use fossil fuels—the cradle of human-caused climate change itself.

Me: Can you talk about word choice? I especially like how you describe Eunice’s birth as being born “kicking the glass ceiling" and, later, describing the women’s convention as “the convention to defy convention”. Do you think verse opens up to this sort of word play more than straight nonfiction?

Lindsay: For me it does! I love to play with language—the way it sounds, feels on the tongue, and looks on the page. This applies when I write picture books, but verse especially opens up the latter, with line breaks emphasizing certain words visually. I wrote most of FOOTEPRINT in free verse, but I often toyed with tabs and white space to echo a poem’s theme, sometimes veering into concrete poetry. All of that brings a distant story more into the visceral present.

photo: Lindsay points to a tiny portrait of a woman who she believes is Eunice Newton Foote. The painting is "Dudley Observatory Dedication, August 28, 1856,” by Tompkins Harrison Matteson, 1857. It’s held at the Albany Institute of History & Art, where Lindsay talked about FOOTEPRINT and her suspected presence in the painting on April 19.

Me: What are some of the challenges you faced writing about climate science, and the experiments Eunice undertook? Did the complexity of the science sway you toward YA?

Lindsay: The science was one of the easiest parts for me to write, because it was fully documented. Eunice’s experiment, “Circumstances affecting the Heat of the Sun’s Rays,” was published, so I could write in detail about how she conducted her experiment by placing test tubes filled with different gases in the sun and measuring their temperatures over time. I could quote Eunice’s words and conclusions. The understandings of the scientific community of the mid-1800s were also well documented, so I could readily understand that she sought to understand why the world was warmer when dinosaurs lived.

I wrote and the story poured out without me giving much thought to where it would appear on the shelf. I had a half-formed belief that the book might be middle-grade, but I wasn’t sure. It didn’t feature a child protagonist because I didn’t know much about Eunice’s childhood. My editor at Charlesbridge wisely read what I had written, considered the language level, and placed it in the YA category. 

Me: Before writing for children, you worked as a journalist. How did that experience inform your approach to writing for kids and the topics you choose?

Lindsay: I started out covering education in a suburban bureau of The Kansas City Star newspaper, so I was always in the space of thinking about what kids learn, and how decisions made by adults affect that learning. My favorite assignments were both investigative and narrative, layered with emotion. Those stories departed from the daily churn I had to produce after attending school board or municipal meetings. 

With writing for children, I get to cherry-pick my favorite parts of journalism—the heavy, archival research and the reveal of the universal human experience through empowering narratives. There was a learning curve to go from writing for a daily newspaper to working on a project alone, on spec, for months or years at a time. But I am still having fun as I attempt to reveal stories that help people think about the world in a new way. 

Me: What do you hope readers take away from your book?

Lindsay: On a personal level, I hope readers see Eunice’s resilience and feel inspired to chase their dreams, no matter what obstacles they face. Eunice lived during a time when women could not vote or own property, intellectual or real. She wanted to practice science and share her inventions with the world. To achieve that, she had to join a movement to fight for her right to do so. 

Zooming out, I hope readers think about the what-ifs of today. When I talk to young people about Eunice, I ask them to consider the butterfly effect. How would our present time have been different if the world had listened to Eunice? What about the future and the paths before us? What if we don’t listen to the scientists of today? 

Thank you, Lindsay! You can find out more about Lindsay at her website, lindsayhmetcalf.com.

Read more about Eunice Foote, the scientist that history forgot at 

https://www.charlesbridge.com/blogs/news/the-brilliant-climate-scientist-history-forgot

The Sixth Annual GROG Arthropod Roundtable

hosted by Sue Heavenrich

Welcome to the Sixth Annual Arthropod Roundtable! Grab your cuppa, pull up a chair, and please help me welcome our guests. 

Laura Gehl is a former science teacher and scientist who is now a full-time children’s book author. So it almost makes sense that most of her books center around science and nature themes. Her newest board book is Odd Bugs , the third in a series that includes Odd Beasts and Odd Birds. 

“When I was doing research for Odd Beasts, I came across a lot of fascinating bugs and couldn’t wait to give them their own book,” says Laura.

Melissa Stewart is a science writer, children’s book author, and avid nature lover. Her new picture book is Monarch and Mourning Cloak: A Butterfly Journal. While visiting schools to take about her earlier butterfly book, A Place for Butterflies (published in 2006) she noticed that many students raise monarchs. She also noticed that they thought all butterfly species have similar lives and habitats. 

“Butterflies are an incredibly diverse group of insects,” Melissa points out. “So, in 2008 I began writing a book called Two Butterflies, Two Lives to help kids understand the variety of foods butterflies eat, the different habitats they call home, and the many ways they survive winter weather.” Over the years, that book evolved into Monarch and Mourning Cloak!

Karen Jameson is a retired elementary school teacher and author of lyrical, rhyming picture books. Insects have found their way into several of her books (including the beetles and dragonflies in It's Time to Shine). There’s even more bugs in her newest book, Who Nests Here?

“Insects have such unique ways of nesting,” says Karen. “I spotlight gall wasps, mole crabs, scorpions, and devil crayfish in my new book. And who wouldn’t thrill to see a termitarium – a giant termite nest?!

Katherine Hocker is a science illustrator, naturalist, and educator with an inordinate fondness for aquatic insects. Her new book, When You See Us, takes us on a field trip into the mysterious and fascinating world of aquatic insects. 

"They are some of the most watchable wildlife I know,” says Katherine. “They live pretty much everywhere on Earth, and are easy to find and observe. When you consider that they live double lives as some of our most familiar winged insects, such as dragonflies and mosquitoes, everyone should know about them!”

Jenni Walsh writes novels for kids and adults. She confesses that she didn’t know how cool bugs were until she was researching their defense mechanisms for her middle-grade tale of mystery and thievery, The Bug Bandits. 

“My book is inspired by a real heist that occurred at the Philadelphia Insectarium," says Jenni. "Over $40,000 worth of rare insects were stolen – and I found this utterly fascinating. In the book, we call it a buglery.”

I’m joining in this year because 13 Ways to Eat a Fly is celebrating its fifth birthday! Before writing books for kids, I taught science and also worked as a newspaper reporter. One afternoon I was covering the opening of a nature preserve. People were standing because there were “small bees” perching on the sun-warmed metal chairs. Those “bees” were actually flower flies – awesome little pollinators! That’s when I realized that too many folks have no idea about the diversity of flies buzzing around them. 

Initially I wrote 13 Ways to Eat a Fly as a backyard field guide. Bo-oring! It took a few years (and many revisions) before I came to the idea of making it a backwards counting book. You know: starting with a bunch of flies that disappear one by one as each hungry critter (or plant) grabs a snack. I added a brain-eating fungus, because who can resist zombies! I got to wondering... 

... why did other folks chose the format they did?

Melissa Stewart

Melissa: Because butterflies are so beautiful and graceful, I thought free-verse poetry would be the best way to share information. Initially, I wrote a series of poems in two voices, but the first-person point of view wasn’t working. Over the years, I continued to revise, writing draft after draft and receiving rejection after rejection. The book’s design pays homage to this process by showing each poem atop a stack of papers. Finally, in 2023, I decided that perhaps the book needed an additional conceptual layer that tied into the art and design. So I sent the manuscript to my friend, illustrator, and past collaborator Sarah S. Brannen. I let her know what I was thinking and invited her to go on a hike to brainstorm. A few hours later, we had a vision for what the book could be—a nature journal bursting with art, poems, and informational notes.

Jenni: I wrote The Bug Bandits for my 10-year-old so middle grade was the perfect age group for him. He’s a reluctant reader but I’m pleased to say he couldn’t resist a heist book that is Night at the Museum meets Home Alone.

Laura Gehl

Laura: I love writing board books because they can serve as a child’s first introduction to a topic—in this case, really weird and amazing bugs!

Karen: Lyrical, rhyming picture books are my jam. It feels natural to write this way in the main text - a style which is brief and accessible to younger readers. Science concepts in the back matter are written in prose for those who wish to explore the topic in more depth.

Katherine: I wanted the story to be told in the voices of the insects themselves—a kind of song they sing to reveal their secrets. That called for a more lyrical approach.

Me: As a kid, I was fascinated by ants. They lived in sidewalk cracks and in our garden, often working together to carry bits of dead beetles to their homes. Plus they have queens! Being a fairy tale-reading second-grader, how could I resist? I wondered ...

... what was the gateway arthropod for other authors?

Katherine Hocker

Katherine: Caddisflies! I remember discovering them as a child—these tiny crawling underwater beasties that built themselves homes out of grains of sand or tiny twigs. We used to call them “stick bugs.” It was many years before I learned that they have a winged adult form.

Laura: I read about a poop-shooting caterpillar when I was in grad school, and one of my first-ever published pieces of writing was about that caterpillar. I’ve been hooked on bugs ever since!

Karen: I am obsessed with dragonflies! Not only are they beautiful, but they’re symbolic of joy, good omens, and transformation.

Melissa: I’ve been a lover of all creatures big and small since childhood. I was fortunate that my parents owned 10 acres of woods, and we had a national forest across the street from our house. My brother and I spent most of our time outdoors—immersed in the natural world. Some of my long-time favorite insects include walking sticks, lightning bugs, and of course, butterflies.

Jenni Walsh

Jenni: I’ve always loved butterflies. When we visited the insectarium the book is based on, my family and I loved walking through the butterfly pavilion. We also hatched them at home and had a release party. It inspired my main character, Liberty, to have a butterfly releasing business in The Bug Bandits!

Me: Today is Earth Day. What can we – and the kids we write for – do to help make our backyards and neighborhoods better places for bugs?

Jenni: There are certain native plants that encourage bug-life, such as butterflies. I encourage everyone to find out what plants/flowers are bug friendly for your area!

Karen Jameson

Karen: I include a Nesting Site Conservation section in the back matter of Who Nests Here? Here’s a few tips: 1) Pick up trash and keep waterways clean. 2) Leave rocks, shells, pine cones and other natural elements where they are, as they may be someone’s home. 3) Don’t poke sticks into nests or move them to another site.

Laura: This is pretty easy for me, because my husband and I don’t have the time or energy to keep our back yard neat or tidy! Having a messy yard with leaf litter, brush/wood piles, clover and dandelions, and sections of longer grass is great for bugs!

Katherine: Aquatic insects need water to survive. Many, such as caddisflies, stoneflies, and mayflies, need water that’s very clean and cold. We can help them thrive by protecting our ponds, lakes, streams, and rivers.

Melissa: Grow native plants is the most obvious answer. But Earth, our precious planet, is one big interconnected system. Anything we can do to lessen pollution and climate change, and to preserve natural areas is going to help every living thing—including us.

your host, Sue Heavenrich
looking for spiders

Me: To these great suggestions I’ll add that using natural mulches, such as dried leaves, grass, and straw creates the perfect habitat for spiders. Also, my lazy gardening provides other benefits. All those dried, hollow flower stems that I never remove turn out to be great homes for native bees. 

We could talk bugs all day long… but I’m out of coffee. Check out our author websites, drop by our blogs, and remember to head outside and watch some bugs!

Laura Gehl at https://lauragehl.com/

Sue Heavenrich at https://www.sueheavenrich.com/

Katherine Hocker at  https://katherinehocker.art/

Karen Jameson at https://karenljameson.com/

Melissa Stewart at   https://melissa-stewart.com/

Jenni Walsh at https://www.jennilwalsh.com/

Christy Mihaly writes about the power of Music and Silence

by Sue Heavenrich

Today I’m talking with GROG’s own Christy Mihaly about her book, Music and Silence: The Passion and Protest of Pablo Casals, illustrated by Mariona Cabassa. It will be released next month by‎ Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Christy and I have been critique partners for nearly as long as she’s been working on this book, and it’s been a wonderful journey to watch it grow up and, now, hit the shelves. 

When Christy began working on her story that would become Music and Silence, she was at the beginning of her writing journey. She had just returned from a year of living in Spain (her husband was on sabbatical). 

Christy: When our family moved to Seville, I left my job as a lawyer in Vermont and resolved to spend the year evaluating whether I could start a new career as a writer for children. 

in Cordoba

During that year, I encountered fresh inspiration on every corner. Everything I did and saw felt new and unfamiliar. Everywhere I went I thought, “This would make a fun story for kids.” So, I wrote and sold an article to AppleSeeds magazine about the Pinzon brothers, Spanish sailors and navigators that all Spanish schoolchildren know about and without whom Columbus wouldn’t have succeeded. 

I also continued with my cello lessons, and I decided to learn more about Pablo Casals. So we visited Barcelona and went to his birthplace and museum. The more I learned about him and his life, the more I admired and appreciated him, his ideals, his activism, his pacificism, his principles, and his passion. I started thinking I’d like to write a book for kids about Casals. I realized lots of people in the U.S. didn’t know his story, but I thought maybe they should!

 dressed for la feria

Sue: With all that inspiration, you wanted to write something for children. Can you share your navigation from story idea to writing a book?

Christy: When I returned from Spain, I attended a workshop at the Highlights Foundation about writing nonfiction for kids. I learned a huge amount and started seriously on the path to becoming a nonfiction children’s author. 

Sue: We met at that workshop!

Christy: And that was the beginning of our years-long collaborative friendship. In 2014 I took an online writing class and wrote an initial draft of the Casals book. I was still researching the life of Pablo Casals, viewing videotapes and movies about him, listening to recordings, and studying the co-written memoirs he left as well as biographies and press articles. I studied mentor texts. I explored possible themes and put together musical word lists. I shared drafts with critique partners and revised. I also started, prematurely, sending the manuscript out to editors. Editors under a certain age didn’t know who Casals was, so they didn’t understand why people would want to know read about him. Clearly, I had more work to do.

Sue: One of the things we’re told as writers is to come to our story from different angles. 

Christy: Yes. I changed the focus and tried different approaches. Some of my drafts included direct quotations from Casals, in boxes. I loved this; the editors, not so much. I laid out the page turns and tried to squeeze Casals’s whole life into 12 spreads - thankfully, the final book is much longer than the typical 32 pages! I cut down the words about his childhood and then put them back in. I cut pages from his later years. One time, I received a thoughtful critique from an editor and, at her invitation, edited and re-submitted. But that revision was rejected.

I must have revised my story more than twenty times that year, and I continued working on it into the next year, 2015 when I sold my first picture book, Hey, Hey, Hay! – a rhyming picture book about making hay. That was a thrill, and an educational process. 

signing the contract with Erzsi

And then, in 2016, I submitted the Pablo Casals story to literary agent Erzsi Deak, who loved it enough to offer to represent me. Yay! At last! Erzsi had a couple suggestions, so I tweaked the manuscript and then she started submitting the story. But nobody bit. 

Meanwhile, the political winds in the U.S. were shifting, and Erzsi and I discussed bringing more emphasis to the anti-fascism theme in Casals’s story. I made more revisions while also trying new approaches to the story. In one draft Pablo’s cello narrates, and another draft is told in verse. I didn’t end up with any of those versions, but each one informed how I eventually wrote the story of Casals’s life. 

In 2018 we started a new round of submissions. The story felt more timely than ever. After about a half dozen rejections, we received an offer from Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. Over the next seven years the story wended its way through the publishing process, getting delayed for a bit by Covid. In 2022, when the search for an illustrator started, I knew I wanted an illustrator from Catalonia, Casals’s homeland. I pushed for Mariona Cabassa, whose work I knew because she had beautifully illustrated my 2021 book, Barefoot Books WATER: A Deep Dive of Discovery. It took a while, but it was worth the wait. I am so glad she brought her gorgeous art – and love of Casals – to this project.

Sue: Fourteen years is a long time to keep believing in a book. What words of wisdom might you offer to kidlit writers who are having a hard time getting an editor to love their stories? 

Christy: Write the story that is in your heart. Because that’s what writing is about. Don’t get distracted when people tell you what the market wants, or how to sell to a certain editor – unless those are stories your heart also wants to tell. Editors and agents love to read work in which they can sense the author’s passion and commitment, stories that are animated by the author’s love of the topic, the characters. If you don’t love what you’re writing, write about something you do love writing about.

Sue: You started playing the cello as an adult. What advice might you offer to folks who want to learn how to play a cello – or any instrument – later in life?

Christy on the cello

Christy: First, accept that you’ll never be a brilliant player. Or, you won’t develop the level of competence you would have if you’d started young. So let go of that expectation. Do it for the joy of making music, for the pleasure of learning a new skill – that’s what keeps us young.

Second, you must practice. A lot. But don’t overdo it, because you do not want to injure yourself. (I speak from experience.) Take breaks. 

And third, find others to play with. My cello teacher organized a group of students to play together. I love making music in a group, together with other (older) musicians. I also loved playing duets with my daughter, who was taking violin lessons and who is  a better player than I’ll ever be. What a joy! You might look for a local community orchestra or band to play with. Or draft your family members and friends.

Sue: I should probably have asked you this first. What is it about Pablo Casals’s music that absolutely gobsmacks you?

Christy: I love the emotion that permeates his playing. I love that he isn’t afraid to show us his passion through his musicianship. His technique, obviously, is lovely, and he produces a gorgeous, mellow tone. But what I love most is that when he makes his cello sing, you can hear the music of his heart.

Thank you, Christy, for sharing your book love and your lessons on how to courageously dive into new things! 

Christy Mihaly has written books on topics from civics to sunlight, and math to moose, including a picture book about making hay when the sun shines! You can find out more about Christy’s books and writing life at her website, www.christymihaly.com. 

And if you'd like to preorder Music and Silence here, (OR Christy's book coming out in May, America's Founding Myths ... And What Really Happened here), her local indie, Bear Pond Books, is taking orders online. Christy will sign your book before it goes out. You can specify how you want it personalized .... or call the bookstore and let them know. Thank you!