Blog

Reading and Writing Resolutions for 2022

By on December 29, 2021   /   Articles  

The new year is almost here, and it’s time for us at The Mixed-Up Files to share our reading and writing resolutions with you. We hope some of our aspirations will inspire you to make your own such resolutions. And we’d love to read about your hopes and dreams in the comments section so you can inspire us as well.

Here’s to a Happy New Year filled with joy and good reading!!

 

Andrea Pyros is the author of Pink Hair and Other Terrible Ideas and My Year of Epic Rock

Writing Resolution: “I am in the middle of writing two books. I’d like to finish first drafts of both in the next six months, which feels (I hope!) realistic and doable.”

Reading Resolution: “I feel guilty when I put a book aside instead of finishing it. I’m going to cut myself a break and stop if a book isn’t grabbing me after giving it a shot. Sometimes you’re the wrong reader at a particular moment, and that’s okay! It’s no fault of the book or the author, and there’s no shame in my saying, ‘Not right now’ if I can’t seem to finish something.”

 

Melissa Roske is the author of Kat Greene Comes Clean (Charlesbridge, 2017) and the short story “Grandma Merle’s Last Wish,” which will appear in the forthcoming Jewish middle-grade anthology, Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories (Albert Whitman & Company, 4/19/22).

Writing Resolution: “In 2022, I vow to write every day, even if it’s just for ten minutes. The pandemic made sticking to a regular writing routine extremely challenging, but—to quote Gene Autry (and Aerosmith)—it’s time to get back in the saddle!”

 

 

Donna Galanti is the author of two middle grade series—Unicorn Island and Joshua and The Lightning Road.

Writing Resolution: “Since moving myself to a new area, my son to Hawaii, and my dad to assisted living this year—I completely lost my writing routine and motivation. My goal in 2022 is to find inspiration and order again. I want to create and follow through on a daily routine of writing that involves meditation, free writing, and crafting a new story close to my heart that involves autoimmune disorders. Also, as an added bonus, it would be a boost to complete two unfinished manuscripts.” 😊

Reading Resolution: “To read during the day—not just that fifteen minutes before I fall asleep! This mean setting aside focused, daily reading time to dive into more heartfelt, contemporary middle grade.”

 

Samantha M. Clark is the author of The Boy, The Boat, and The Beast, Arrow (Simon & Schuster) and American Horse Tales: Hollywood  (Penguin)

“2021 was a very busy year for me, and I didn’t have much time to stop and smell the roses. I want to make that time in 2022, to focus better, to relax better, and to read more. Reading more should always be a priority.”

 

 

 

Patricia Bailey is the author of The Tragically True Adventures of Kit Donovan.

“My reading and writing resolution for 2022 is the same—to be more playful.”

 

 

 

 

Mindy Alyse Weiss writes middle grade novels and picture books with humor, heart, and hope.

“My writing resolution is to write and/or revise something every day.”

 

Julie K. Rubini is the author of critically acclaimed biographies and recently served as the editor of Virginia Hamilton: Five Novels, published by the Library of America.

Writing Resolution: “I want to continue to be open to whatever opportunities the universe provides for my next writing projects. I’m hopeful that includes the sale of my latest proposal about an inspirational woman!”

 

 

 

Heather Murphy Capps’s debut novel, Indigo and Ida (Lerner/Carolrhoda Lab), will publish in spring of 2023. Capps is an upper MG author of color and is dedicated to supporting and creating equity in education and publishing.

Writing Resolution: “I am thrilled to be able to say for the first time that my resolution for 2022 is to complete edits on my debut novel by early spring, plus finish drafting my newest novel.”

Reading Resolution: “I have a TBR pile on my bedside table that is always threatening to topple from its sheer height. My resolution is to make a dent in that before buying new books. It’s very hard to resist the lure of the bookstore because so many fabulous books come out every year!”

 


Sue Cowing is a poet and author of middle-grade fiction.

Writing Resolution: “To go to the page every day with deeper attention and joy.”

Reading Resolution: “My resolution is to be clear about what I really want to read and write, not what I should.”

 

 

 

Dorian Cirrone writes fiction and poetry for all ages. Her most recent novel is The First Last Day (S&S/Aladdin).

Writing resolution: “I’m almost finished with the book I vowed to finish last year. It’s been fighting me to be longer and more complex, so this year, it’s on!”

Reading resolution: “Keep reading widely but not beat myself up if I don’t want to read a particular genre.”

Back to Top

STEM Tuesday– Award-Winning MG STEM Titles– Your Turn: A Wish for 2022

By on December 28, 2021   /   Award-winning MG STEM Books, STEM Tuesday  

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the last Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Normally this would be the time of the month when I would choose an author from a list identified by our STEM Tuesday team and conduct an interview. This month’s theme was award winning books but I’ve been on both sides of that equation. So I decided, as we head into 2022 to do something different. I want to issue a call to action for those who don’t get awards instead.

Over the past two years authors I interviewed for STEM Tuesday have taught me about spider silk made from genetically modified goats, women who were denied a spot in the astronaut program despite performing better than their male counterparts, and implicit bias in archeology that may skew what we know about ancient civilizations. One author/illustrator judged an MIT contest showcasing implausible scientific ideas. Another learned to dive with a photographer in order to better understand the nature of ocean conservation. And while the world knows about the women showcased in Hidden Figures, one author published a book about fifty additional African American women whose STEM contributions changed the world.

If I were to ask you to name the above authors, would you be able to do it without looking at my interviews? That’s my concern in a nutshell. A select few of these authors have been recognized with awards, but most have not. Nonfiction is a staple for helping young readers develop executive functioning and learn more about the world around them, but the authors are not often celebrated in proportion to their contributions to children’s literature. Even with awards, most authors are still struggling to become household names let alone achieve financial stability.

Writing STEM is hard. The research often rivals an academic research paper. Many of us write for magazines, textbooks, trade publishers and educational publishers. What is often true is that authors need to log a lot of hours in the library, speaking to experts and researching in the field to determine how to best present the subject matter in a way a student can understand. In a sense, we have to do a deep dive to understand the material before we can explain it coherently to someone else. Unique to children’s publishing there are additional rules to follow. There’s an art to working within those constraints. I’ve been asked to do planet books of 4,000 words for upper elementary students and recast those same facts for a beginner readers using only 300 words. It’s not just the word count but the choice of words. For instance, with younger students we have to be mindful about sentence length, how many multisyllabic words in a sentence, and words common for that reading level and Lexile range.

After the books are printed and in circulation, awards are tricky. For every author that receives recognition, there are many equally skilled authors that don’t. And remember, the industry celebrates winners, not runners up. A different committee, on a different day, might have picked a different book entirely from the same pile. I know, because I’ve been on a number of awards committees. There are epic battles and painstaking discussions before a consensus is reached.  I’ve also noticed that the attention paid to award winning fiction authors is sustained much longer than for nonfiction authors. Those awards often translate into more work for fiction authors and higher compensation but not necessarily for their nonfiction counterparts.

I’ve been luckier than most of my peers in this respect. I’ve published more than 90 books for children and have more under contract. So I wanted to raise my voice to challenge the readers of this blog to change the nature of the game. The industry pays attention to where the money is flowing. Publishing pays attention to social media chatter and reviews. You can help my STEM peers by doing the following.

Once a month:

  1. Check out a book (or two) from the library. If you need a place to start, we have great recommendations on our STEM Tuesday site. Books that are checked out stay in circulation longer.
  2. If you’re in a school district, consider adding a book to the school library or classroom. I know budgets are small, but even one book is a boon for that author.
  3. Write a review. It only takes five minutes. Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes and Noble.
  4. Give a shout out to an author whose work you admire. Try to pick someone who isn’t getting a lot of marketing support from publishers. The ones the awards committees didn’t announce. I’m all for boosting underdogs. That shout-out will make an author’s day.

 

Win a FREE copy of the book of your choice.

It’s the holiday season so let’s do something positive to start 2022.

This month, instead of me telling you who I found fascinating…this time you tell me.

What nonfiction book have you loved?

What’s next on your wish list?

Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below.

The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good luck!

 

Christine Taylor-ButlerYour host is Christine Taylor-Butler, MIT nerd and author of many nonfiction books for kids. You can read about her philosophy  on STEM in this article for the Horn Book. Christine has recently finished a short story for a speculative anthology on Marie Curie’s teen years (2023), a children’s afrofuturism book for Benchmark Publishing set in the Trappist-1 solar system (it exists, look it up!), and a new nonfiction series not yet announced. She is also the author of the middle grade sci-fi series The Lost Tribes. Follow @ChristineTB on Twitter and/or @ChristineTaylorButler on Instagram

 

 

 

Back to Top

STEM Tuesday’s New Year’s Celebration 2021

By on December 27, 2021   /   Articles  

STEM Tuesday’s New Year’s Celebration 2021

2021 is in the books. It was a strange kind of year. I heard it described best a few weeks back when my wife, who is a first-grade teacher, came home on a Friday night and said that the week in her classroom had been the slowest fast week in recent history. She said looking back, the previous weekend seemed like it just happened but the day-to-day timeline at school seemed to drag on and on and on. I get that. 

100%. 

That’s 2021 to the core. 

It seems like the STEM Tuesday team was just posting the 2020 year-end celebration posts, yet the month-to-month, week-to-week, day-to-day progression of 2021 seemed like crossing an ocean pedaling a paddleboat.

There were great things in the STEM world throughout 2021. Vaccines and their logistical rollout, fantastical feats on Mars, the James Webb telescope (fingers crossed for continued success!), giant leaps in making routine space travel a thing, and the advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence were noteworthy, if not a little scary.

All in all, 2021 was a good STEM year. 

I look for STEM 2022 to be just as awesome.

STEM Tuesday Theme for 2022

Start by knowing nothing and then ask the right questions.

I’m one of the luckiest people alive. I know this and appreciate it every day. One of the things I’m most grateful for is getting to see my grandkids almost every day. The past year has been particularly awesome as my oldest grandson turned three years old. We hang out a lot which means I get to experience the world in a whole new light through his fresh eyes. 

He’s noticing the world around him more and more. Shining a flashlight under a leaf while playing outside in the dark, gathering and counting cicada molts from the front porch, planting marigolds and vegetables in the garden, eating raspberries off the bush, and figuring out what projectiles can be successfully launched from grandma’s leaf blower. He’s also blessed with a curious mind so we get a lot of questions. 

Wonder and curiosity make a magical combination. I’ve been reminded of this throughout 2021. I think the magic of wonder and curiosity might be the number one thing the human race has lost as we wade into the digital age.

Wonder and curiosity. 

Gifts from the gods.

That’s where our 2022 STEM Tuesday theme is rooted. Wonder and curiosity. Start by knowing nothing and then ask the right questions.

Museum of Trinity College Dublin, Illustration in History of the University of Dublin (1819), William B. Sarsfield Taylor, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Knowing nothing

In elementary school, they grouped our class into three divisions by levels. Group 1, 2, and 3. Although it was never outrightly expressed, every one of us knew these divisions were grouped according to level. I, for better or worse, was placed in Group 1. It was probably a coin flip of whether to put me into this group over the second group. I struggled to read. I was a left-hander in a right-handed world of parochial school. I was, without a doubt, the dumbest kid in the smart group. Right or wrong, the system was what it was in the 1970s.  The system and closed classroom environment had their consequences but at that moment, being the dumbest kid in the smart class did one thing to me. It made me feel dumb.

I had to scramble to keep up. While my classmates appeared to be leisurely strolling through the lush academic park, I was sprinting blindfolded through a dense academic forest constantly running headfirst into tree trunks. I don’t really know if this was a reality or just a version of reality that existed inside my head. It doesn’t matter because it permanently imprinted on my psyche even to this day. The default inside my head always starts with, “You know nothing, idiot.”

What may seem a curse (and at times, i.e. report card time, it was) being a default idiot inside my own head has turned into a blessing. First of all, I don’t like being an idiot. I didn’t like being the dumbest in the smart group. Not wanting to be an idiot, though, I had one choice, be curious and then do the work to satisfy that curiosity. 

So I learned to ask the right questions but, being an introvert, I mostly asked them inside my own head.

All the Right Questions

  • Are we there yet?
  • Is dinner ready?
  • Where’s the restroom?

No, just kidding. Although these questions are vital in my own mind, they aren’t really the three important Right Questions. Those are:

  • Why?
  • How?
  • What if?

Three good questions. Three questions that, as we start a new year, can help define the future us. We can use the Right Question to tell the story we want to tell. We can use the Right Questions to define the story of who we are and what we want to be. 

Tell the story

Being a scientist (molecular microbiologist) by trade, we incorporate the Right Questions all the time.

  • We make an observation and ask why it happened.
  • We attempt to define how it happened.
  • We investigate what happens to the observation if a variable in the original observation was changed. 

Science moves forward when we start by knowing nothing and then asking the right questions. Why? How? What if? The stories we want to tell also start in the same place with the same questions. They form the foundation of the story, give it color and life, and then point the way to what happens next.

One final thought. Recently, as the holidays approached, my grandson awarded everyone in the family a revered spot on The Nice List. I don’t know if this was because he was struck with holiday spirit or if he was normalizing his sometimes onerous behavior to keep himself permanently established within the parameters of The Nice List. Either way, I’m grateful for the opportunity to be a part of such a prestigious and rewarding company. 

He would like to extend an invitation to each one of you to hop aboard The Nice List. It’s a pretty cool place to be.

But, like all things worth having, The Nice List is a responsibility that requires work and effort.

Accept the challenge and do everything you can to live up to the honor.

Happy New Year! The STEM Tuesday team and the entire From the Mixed-Up Files…of Middle-Grade Authors family wish you and yours the very best in 2022. We appreciate your support more than you can ever imagine.

Have a safe and productive 2022!

Start by knowing nothing and then ask the right questions.

Illustration from Scenes of wonder and curiosity in California by James Mason Hutchings, 1870.

 

 

Back to Top