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

History and Finding Out What is True ~Christy Mihaly

As we approach the 250th anniversary of the nation's founding, I'm excited to say I have a semi-quincentennial book coming out on May 26. It's America's Founding Myths ... And What REALLY Happened!, illustrated by Marta Sevilla and published by Barefoot Books. It's intended as a book that kids will enjoy, even as they learn that they've been lied to. 

The Barefoot Books team, Marta, and I worked to create a lively, kid-friendly book that would engage kids while letting them know that some of the history they've been told was wrong. Marta's art incorporates historic images, photographs, and comic-like art. We have sprinkled cartoons, jokes, and humorous asides throughout.

The image below shows how each of the fifteen main spreads begins by stating a myth:

The spread features a large gatefold flap on the left-hand side. A myth is briefly restated on the front of this flap. The reader then lifts the flap to the left to open the full spread, revealing the true story. Here's an explanatory graphic from the book:

And here's what the full spread looks like with the flap opened. On the reverse of the flap on the left is an explanation of "Where did the myth come from?" then the true story is summarized in the remainder of the double-page spread: 

The book debunks some of the central myths that kids have been told for generations, from Columbus to the First Thanksgiving to Paul Revere's ride and beyond. I also sought to elevate unsung heroes including important female, Black, and Indigenous people. 

Crucially, the book shows readers that to learn about history, we have to ask questions and question assumptions. The introduction starts by asking, "Where does history come from?" -- pointing out that history is messy and that stories change. It proposes other questions for readers to ponder as they read, such as why people tell these myths and what we can learn from them. 

While hoping to make kids laugh, we also model critical thinking and asking questions. Each of the main spreads includes a provocative question related to the myth discussed. For example, on the Boston Tea Party spread, we ask, "Do YOU think it is ever okay for protesters to break the law?" For the myth of Columbus, "How do YOU think celebrating something with a holiday changes the way we think about it?"

In addition, we offer resources on information literacy. A section in the back matter asks, "How do I know what is true?"

This material gives kids tools to use and questions to ask when confronted with new information. It empowers them to evaluate the truth of what they're told. 

Christy Mihaly

I hope America's Founding Myths inspires many conversations among kids and adults about what really happened in our history and what it means for the nation's present and our future. Such conversations are critical to help young people develop the skills they need to be active participants in a vibrant democracy. 

For the educators among you, Barefoot Books has provided a discussion guide for the book, with activities and a Junior Myth Buster certificate for readers who complete the activities. As an aside, the book is "officially" for the 8 to 12 year old age range, but younger kids can use it to learn the true stories early, and high school students as a starting point for further research. 

If you're interested in more new books for young readers centering untold stories of the Revolution, check out author Beth Anderson's blog series, #AmericanRevolution250. 

Happy reading, and happy semiquincentennial!

A Biography to Inspire Future Astronauts!

by Sue Heavenrich

Our very own Fran Hodgkins has a book coming out in January! The title, She Went to Space: Maine Astronaut Jessica Meir is self-explanatory. The book is 32 pages, written for ages 5-8 and published by ‎Down East Books.

Astronaut Jessica Meir hails from Caribou, Maine, the second-largest city in Aroostoock County and just 12 miles from the Canadian border. The county itself is huge, about the size of Rhode Island plus Connecticut, and well-known for potatoes, timber, and tourism. Now Caribou can add “birthplace of an astronaut” to its list. 

Not just any astronaut. In 2019, Jessica and her partner-in-space Christina Koch made history completing the first spacewalk made solely by women. They spent more than seven hours outside the International Space Station replacing a broken power unit. You can watch the NASA video here.

Writing a biography about a famous astronaut wasn’t something Fran had on her to-do list, but when the editor of Down East reached out to her about working on this book, Fran said yes. 

“It sounded like it would be a fun project,” Fran said. “and I was interested in writing about Jessica for a couple of reasons. Unlike a lot of famous people, she hadn’t yet been the subject of a book yet, and I wanted to show how someone who grew up in such an unlikely place as Caribou, Maine could reach for the stars.”

Becoming an astronaut is not the sort of goal kids from rural Maine normally aspire to. “Sometimes when you’re in a rural area, you face limits because the people around you kind of impose their own limits on you,” muses Fran. “Fortunately, Jessica’s parents were well-educated and very supportive of education. That opened up possibilities.”

At the core of writing nonfiction is research. Fran began by doing a general search for basic information. “The internet has made finding information easier, and because she’s a celebrity there’s an incredible amount of information out there.” Fran had no trouble finding articles in Maine papers, the Boston Globe, and other media. 

“Jessica had done video interviews with TV stations, and there are videos about her on YouTube,” Fran says. “Not only that, she has published scientific papers about oxygen use in birds during high-altitude flight and articles about deep dives. She’s one of those people you could research forever and never feel you know everything!”

One especially valuable source for Fran was the transcript of an interview Jessica had with an archivist at the Brown University’s Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. 

“What a treasure trove! Because it had been conducted by an archivist, the interview was very thorough and professional, covering everything from Jessica’s family to her experience aboard the ISS.” Finding that interview, Fran explained, saved her weeks of research.

A lot of research is digital, but Fran still likes her old-school methods. “I have files downloaded and printed out. I guess having a stack of paper makes you feel like you've done your homework!” Fran also has about fifty PDFs of online sources on her hard drive, “though not as organized as they could have been,” she admits. But they allowed her to highlight particular facts she wanted to include in Jessica’s biography, and easily locate them in a search.

Fran wrote the book during 2023, and each time she sat down to work on it she asked herself: “If you wanted to be an astronaut, what are the things that would eliminate you?” She focuses on some of these challenges throughout the book – even providing some interactive moments for readers to find out if they have what it takes to become an astronaut.

“I wanted to write a book that kids from anywhere can see themselves in,” says Fran. “Books were important to me as a kid. They inspired me. That’s why I write for children.”

In addition to writing books for kids and posts for the GROG, Fran was previously guest at our Annual Arthropod Roundtable and is a member of SCBWI. You can read her profile and see some of her books here.

Celebrating Women's History in Picture Books

by Sue Heavenrich

It’s Women’s History Month and Calkins Creek has a bunch of wonderful women’s biographies for kids. These picture book biographies are aimed at the 7-10-year-old crowd and range from 40 to 48 pages. The women featured in these stories followed their passions and curiosity. They met with challenges and persevered. Some helped create something new; some raised awareness about an issue; all will have you asking: why haven’t we heard their stories before?

The Fabulous Fannie Farmer: Kitchen Scientist and America’s Cook, by Emma Bland Smith; illustrated by Susan Reagan (released January) 

I grew up with The Fanny Farmer Cookbook on a kitchen shelf, so what a pleasant surprise to see this book celebrate her life. When you want to make a stew or bake a cake, the recipes in your cookbooks list how much of each ingredient you need: a cup of flour, a teaspoon of baking soda… But back in the 1800, when Fannie was learning to cook with her mother, recipes were often “cloudier than clam chowder, and the measurements could be downright silly,” writes Emma Bland Smith. A recipe might call for a “suspicion” of nutmeg, a “pinch” of salt, or enough yeast to make the bread “light” – whatever that means.

As Fannie cooked food, something revolutionary was simmering in her mind. You see, she was a scientist, and she noticed (through trial and error) that consistent and precise measurements made a difference in the outcome of cakes and other foods. So she created a cookbook with recipes written so that no matter who cooked them, the result would be the same. 

One of a Kind: The Life of Sydney Taylor, by Richard Michelson; illustrated by Sarah Green (released February)

This book is about books, writing, and an author driven to write her stories because she didn’t see her family and culture mentioned in the books she read as a child. Sydney Taylor didn’t set out to become an author; she simply began writing stories for her daughter. Stories about growing up Jewish, about celebrating the holidays, about family life. She never expected her stories would see publication, but they did – and they appealed to a broad range of readers. More than that, they won awards and inspired others to write their stories. Perhaps you have heard of the Sydney Taylor award, presented for books that authentically portray the Jewish experience. 

Pedal, Balance, Steer: Annie Londonderry, the First Woman to Cycle Around the World, by Vivian Kirkfield; illustrated by Alison Jay (released February)

Annie Londonderry wanted to cycle around the world to win a prize - $10,000! That would really help he pay the bills… but first, she’d have to learn how to ride a bike. So she signs up for lessons from a local bicycle academy and began pedaling. 

“Neighbors scoffed. Strangers sneered. But Annie persevered.” Author, Vivian Kirkfield introduces us to this intrepid adventurer using lyrical language, teasing us with internal rhymes and alliteration. She layers in the details, such as how Annie took off from Boston with only one extra pair of underwear. And she includes important stuff, like how Annie took only a single pair of extra underwear with her – tucked into a pocket. And then there’s the delicious repetition of “pedal, balance, steer.”

Cactus Queen: Minerva Hoyt Establishes Joshua Tree National Park, by Lori Alexander; illustrated by Jenn Ely (released this month)

What if you knew a place that was filled with thorny, spiny beauty and dainty wildflowers, but all other people saw was a wasteland? In the early 1900s that’s how people thought of the Mohave desert. It was a place where you could dig up Joshua trees and yucca plants to put in your garden, and the trees provided wood for furniture. But it was so desolate. There was nothing there.

What if you noticed that, after a few years, the desert plants didn’t grow back? The wild animals, having lost their homes, moved away? If you were Minerva, you’d find a way to help the desert recover – even if it meant going all the way to Philadelphia or Washington to show others how important the desert is. This is a great story about a desire to save an iconic desert area – Joshua Tree National Park.

Bird Girl: Gene Stratton-Porter Shares Her Love of Nature with the World, by Jill Esbaum; illustrated by Rebecca Gibbon (releases next week)

Geneva loved birds. After feeding the chickens, she’d head out to watch the birds around her family’s farm (even the hawk family that occasionally snacked on chickens!). She watched nests and wrote stories about birds and their behavior. And when an editor said they’d publish her stories, Gene was excited – until she learned the illustrator would use stuffed birds as models to draw from. Nope! She wanted photos, and that meant getting a camera and learning to use it. And then lugging the 40-pound beast through brambles and hip-deep swamp water. This book may inspire the young birders in your family!

Skybound: Starring Mary Myers as Carlotta, Daredevil Aeronaut and Scientist, by Sue Ganz-Schmitt; illustrated by Iacopo Bruno (releases in April)

When Mary grew up, young girls were expected to marry, have children, and “stay tethered to their homes.” But not Mary. She dreamed of flying. Even when she did marry, she didn’t settle into the kitchen. Instead, she began researching aeronautics and meteorology. She and her husband developed a fabric for making hot air balloons, and also designed balloons. But Mary had questions: which balloon shape performs best? How do currents and weather affect them? She became an aeronautical science, going up into the air to answer those questions – and more.

What stories do YOU want to share with your children, your friends, your students?  Why not write them down?

Calkins Creek provided copies of these books for review. They are an imprint of Astra Publishing. You can learn more about their books - and check out activity guides - at their website here.