Blog

What Makes It Tick?

By Mike Hays on April 23, 2021 / Articles, Book Lists, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, kidlit, Nonfiction

The creative mind is a wonderful and mysterious thing.

Serendipity. Déjà vu. That sweet feeling when one thing enters the equation and the answer snaps into place like pieces of a puzzle. The workings of the human brain are sublime. Humans have worked for centuries to define the nuts and bolts of how our brains work. The neurotransmitters, the ion gradients, the neurons, the processing centers, and the communication patterns are biologically understood. Understanding creativity, however, is a whole other thing. We can record Peter Brown’s brain activity but we fall short trying to understand exactly how his brain can take a shipwrecked cargo of robots, a remote island, and wild animals and then create the world of The Wild Robot.

A wonderful and mysterious thing, right?

What makes the creative mind tick? That’s a question I’m constantly investigating. From voice to style to structure to wild, unadulterated imagination, the facets of a creative mind are the gears that drive the bus to its destination. I find this creative engine that floats inside our skulls amazing and worthy of study. What makes 1000 writers come up with 1000 unique stories even after being given a fairly strict and narrow writing prompt?

I want to know!

Several months ago, while driving home from work, a memory of author/illustrator Bill Peet’s autobiography popped into my head. I remember reading it in the early 1990s after checking it out from the public library. I always liked Bill Peet’s illustration work so I enjoyed his illustrated autobiography immensely. That said, I hadn’t thought of the book in well over 20 years. The memory just popped out of nowhere and I made a mental note to see if the library still had a copy in circulation.

I made no mention of this to anyone and soon forgot to investigate further.

The weird, wild, and serendipitous part of the story is that last week, my wife came home with a certain author/illustrator’s autobiography she pulled out of the culled pile of books from the library at the elementary school she teaches at. As if it appeared from thin air, I stood, open-jawed, holding a copy of, Bill Peet: An Autobiography.

It is as good as I remembered. However, I’m still perplexed at the pure, blind fortune that resulted in the book resting on my shelf. Was my mind sending electromagnetic energy into the universe about Bill Peet’s autobiography? Was this simple luck and the coming together of unrelated events? The answer may never be known; at least not to my feeble brain.

The creative mind yearns to understand.

I’ve always had this blessing (or curse) to understand how things work. I’ve dissected everything from lampreys to cow eyes to dogfish sharks to learn anatomy and how it relates to function. I’ve set up elaborate experiments in attempts to figure out how infectious diseases work and how the host fights them. I’ve taken apart old furniture, radios, televisions, and computers in an attempt to understand their workings. The problem in my case is I’m not so good at putting these things back together properly. 🙂

Perhaps this is why I became a scientist and why I enjoy writing and studying the processes of how stories are built. Yes, part of being a writer is to understand how to build a story and then how to best build your stories. It’s akin to studying how Seurat, Van Gogh, or Kadir Nelson create their art masterpieces.

In short, in order to build a house, you first have to know what a house is and understand what the important bits are.

The creative mind is curious.

Confession time…

I like writing craft books. I own too many. I probably spend too much time reading and re-reading them instead of actually writing. I know many of you can relate. Writers also learn to read with a purpose. Reading a book with an eye on the author’s craft involved in creating the work. Reading to find out what made that story, that book, that graphic image effective. Kidlit-ology!

There’s also an often untapped resource out there to help understand what makes authors tick.

The kidlit creator autobiography.

As I hinted at above with my love of the Bill Peet book, I enjoy autobiographies. I really enjoy author autobiographies. They are often different from true biographies because they’re told through the lens of the person and not from a third party. The autobiography is told through a completely different filter. Author autobiographies are like taking mom’s sewing machine apart to see its workings; they are a peek into what made them the writer they grew up to be.

After an “extensive” internet search, which, in my case, is typing “children’s authors’ autobiographies in the search box, I unearthed an interesting list of kidlit author autobiographies. Some I own, some I’ve read, and many are new to me but are now on the TBR list.

On My Shelf List

Bill Peet: An Autobiography by Bill Peet
Boy: Tales of Childhood & Going Solo by Roald Dahl
When Stars Are Scattered by Victoria Jamieson and Omar Mohamed
Writing Radar: Using Your Journal to Snoop Out and Craft Great Stories by Jack Gantos

Ones I’ve Read List

El Deafo by Cece Bell
Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson
Becoming Kareem: Growing Up On and Off the Court by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
Dead End in Norvelt by Jack Gantos (Not exactly 100% reality but as the description says, “Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional…”)

The TBR List

Knots In My Yo-Yo String by Jerry Spinelli
26 Fairmount Avenue by Tommie DePaola
A Girl From Yamhill by Beverly Cleary
Gone To The Woods: Surviving A Lost Childhood by Gary Paulsen
Smile by Raina Telgemeier
Knucklehead: Tall Tales and Almost True Stories of Growing Up by Jon Scieszka
The Abracadabra Kid: A Writer’s Life by Sid Fleischman
It Came From Ohio!: My Life As A Writer by R.L. Stine

Have you read any of the books on the list?

Do you have other kidlit author autobiographies to share? I’m particularly interested in reading and studying more autobiographies from diverse creators, especially Native and Indigenous creators. If anyone knows of any, please share these books in the comments. I’d be very interested in adding them to the TBR list!

Learning and growing. That’s what a writer does. Writing is a constant, ever-shifting process. Each piece is different in its own, unique way while carrying a core consistency that’s coined as “voice”.

The mind is indeed a weird and wonderful thing. A writer’s mind is doubly so. A middle-grade writer may triple or quadruple that!

Have a creative spring and then carry it over into summer. Take inspiration and knowledge from those who came before us. Be a source of inspiration and knowledge to those who will come behind us.

Learn and grow. Every day.

You got this, friends.

Read. Write. Repeat.

The Beekeepers: How Humans Changed the World of Bumble Bees: An Interview with the Author

By Natalie Rompella on April 22, 2021 / Author Interviews

Honey bees seem to always get the spotlight as pollinators, but bumble bees are important pollinators, too. I am excited to share my interview with Dana L. Church, author of The Beekeepers: How Humans Changed the World of Bumble Bees. This book is chock-full of fascinating information on bumble bees. Be sure to enter the raffle at the end of the post for a change to win a free copy of her book.

About the Book

Hi Dana! Thank you for sharing The Beekeepers: How Humans Changed the World of Bumble Bees with me. Before I begin my interview, I have to share a copy of the ARC I received:

Sometimes when I read nonfiction, I like to mark things I want to return to later. Sadly for me, I ran out of my little tabs! So many good nuggets in this book! I am teaching summer school this year and plan to share it with my class. I have not used a middle-grade-length nonfiction book before as a read aloud and am really excited about it.

Oh my gosh, this photo makes me so happy! I am thrilled to see the book bulging with tabs. (I love those tabs, by the way. Very colorful and they look like a nice size. I’ll have to find some of my own.) And I am so excited that you will be sharing my book with your class. Thank you!

Can you give us a short summary about the book?

Sure. The book is about the relationship between humans and bumble bees over time, and how we have influenced their existence on the planet. For instance, humans brought them to countries where they never existed before, and we have been breeding them on massive scales and shipping them all over the world to pollinate food crops. This has big consequences, such as spreading disease to wild bees. The book also takes a look at what bumble bees are and some pretty cool things that they are capable of. For instance, did you know that bumble bees can learn from other bees, they show evidence of emotion, and they might even be able to imagine pictures in their tiny little brains? I also show that some species of wild bumble bees are in big trouble and what some scientists are doing to help them. Some of these strategies are pretty creative, like using sniffer dogs to find bumble bee nests. Finally, I give readers ideas for little things they can do to help wild bumble bees.

When does it come out?

The book is available now! It was officially released on March 2 of this year.

Tell us who would especially enjoy this book (as it’s more than just people who enjoy insects!).

I think anyone who enjoys nature will enjoy this book, as bumble bees are a big part of the natural world. Anyone who loves animals will enjoy it too, because although it focuses on an animal that is not quite as popular as lions or sharks or wolves, I think it makes you reflect on our relationship with animals as a whole. And if you are interested in nature and animals, the book shows how scientists go about studying those things.

The book begins with a quote and story from Dr. Henry Lickers, an Elder of the Seneca Nation, Turtle Clan, Haudenosaunee. Please share a little bit about this story with us.

Listening to Dr. Lickers share his Traditional Knowledge with me was one of the highlights of writing this book. Besides making scientific research accessible to readers, I also wanted to show that there is a wealth of knowledge about our natural world that exists with the people who are originally from our land. Dr. Lickers shared his story of how he discovered bumble bees as a young boy by stumbling upon a nest in a bale of hay. He wanted to know more about them, so he approached his grandmother, who shared with him the traditional way of how their people interact with bumble bees, and how the lives of humans and bumble bees are closely interconnected.

About the Author
Please give a short summary about your writing journey. Did you enjoy writing as a child? Did you plan on writing middle grade nonfiction, or did you start out writing something else?

Photo by Stephen Kingston

As a child I loved writing little stories and making little books of my own. Then, in high school English class, we had to make a children’s picture book. I was hooked! (My book was about a pig who always rolled in the mud and got dirty but his friends loved him anyway.) I wrote fiction for children here and there, but I didn’t pursue it seriously until after I finished university. I tried really hard to get my fiction published, and I came really close a few times, but in the end, I had no luck. I have a science and research background, so I tried my hand at writing a nonfiction article for a middle grade children’s magazine (Odyssey: Adventures in Science. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s in print anymore). The magazine published it! I wrote another, and it was published in Highlights for Children. I knew I was on to something, so decided to start writing middle grade nonfiction books. For whatever reason, I am just most comfortable writing at the middle grade level. Making science accessible for young readers has become my passion.

Were you always interested in insects? What made you focus on bees (and more specifically bumble bees)?

Not at all! As a kid I loved animals but I was quite scared of insects. When I was in university, I got a summer job as a research assistant for a professor. She studied bumble bees and kept some in her lab. I was tasked with looking after the bees and running experiments with them. I was terrified. I thought, Am I crazy? Why did I apply for this job? I’ll get stung every day! But I was desperate for summer employment.

It wasn’t long before I realized that bumble bees are not bloodthirsty stinging machines. They will let you watch them if you don’t breathe on them (they don’t like the blast of carbon dioxide when you exhale). Their nests are such amazing little hubs of organized activity. I saw “undertaker bees” drag dead bees out of the nest. I saw new bees hatch from their wax cocoons. These new bees were covered in soft, grey fur that would turn the distinctive black and yellow after a couple of days. I saw some worker bees sitting on wax cocoons to keep them warm, and I watched other bees fly tirelessly back and forth between nest and flowers, gathering food. I was no longer terrified. I was fascinated. I was so fascinated that I stuck around to study bumble bees for my PhD.

And you know what? I was never stung.

Research/Writing
How did this book come to “bee”? Did you send a proposal or were you approached to write something on bees?

Originally, I had planned to write a very different book. It was about a fictional 12-year-old girl whose mom was a professor who had a bumble bee lab. The 12-year-old girl helped her mom run the lab and told the reader a whole bunch of bee facts. My editor at Scholastic, Lisa Sandell, suggested, “How about a book about the relationship between bees and humans?” I thought that was a pretty interesting idea, so I started researching and I realized Lisa’s idea was excellent. I wrote a proposal for The Beekeepers and Scholastic signed me up. It ended up being a much better book. I also discovered that I had a special opportunity, through writing this book, to let readers know that bumble bees are in trouble and that we can help them.

Although you have a first-hand experience with bumble bees, what kind of research did you still have to do?

When I first started writing The Beekeepers, my area of expertise was bumble bee behavior and cognition—learning, memory, and problem solving. Chapter Seven of The Beekeepers, which is about bumble bee “smarts,” was easy for me to write. On the other hand, I didn’t know much about other stuff like population ecology, which I had to dive into in order to see how humans have impacted bumble bees. I also knew that there is a whole industry devoted to breeding and selling bumble bee colonies, but I had no idea of the extent of it. Same with pesticides: I had a very surface understanding of their impact on bumble bees and other pollinators, but I needed to learn many more details in order to write about it. I had to do a lot more research.

Most of my research for The Beekeepers involved searching university library databases for scientific journal articles and reading those articles. But sometimes I had questions and I also wanted scientists’ perspectives, so I ended up interviewing a number of scientists, too.

What would you say most of your research entailed: reading scientific journal articles or interviewing experts?

Most of my research involved reading, reading, and reading some more. But I love reading! I did spend quite a bit of time interviewing experts, though. Fun fact: I had never interviewed anyone before I wrote The Beekeepers, so I was quite nervous at first. But I quickly learned that scientists love talking about their research and they are excited when someone shows interest in what they are studying. I met so many cool people. Now I’m not nervous at all when I interview experts and I have come to really enjoy it. You never know what interesting, funny, or fascinating nugget of information scientists will share.

What was the most fascinating tidbit you researched?

Hmm…probably research that used sniffer dogs trained to find bumble bee nests. I didn’t know that dogs can be trained to sniff out all kinds of different endangered species. Dogs are a clever way to find bumble bee nests because the nests are usually underground and very hard for people to find.

Did you go anywhere interesting as part of your research?

Unfortunately, no. But I didn’t have to go far to see bumble bees because they visit our backyard garden. We even had a bumble bee nest underneath our shed! We could tell because bumble bees kept flying in and out from one spot hidden in the grass by the base of the shed.

What ended up taking more time than you anticipated when researching/writing/revising?

Probably editing or revising. No matter how many times I read my writing, there’s always something I want to change or add. I eventually have to tell myself to STOP.

Since there were so many interesting things in this book, pick one of these topics to explain to us: sonication, bumble bees as pollinators, bee tagging, or string-pulling task.

How about bee tagging? In The Beekeepers, I feature research that required scientists to keep track of the behavior and movements of individual bees in a nest. The scientists cut out teeny-tiny squares of paper with a QR-type code on them and glued one to each bee’s back. A computer can then track each bee.

This bee tagging technique is quite different from when I tagged bumble bees in school years ago. To tell bumble bees apart, I had to glue tiny, colored, numbered, plastic discs to the back of each bee. (Yes, you can buy bee tags! Some honey bee keeping supply companies sell them.) When I was done, I could identify each bee by a color and a number: Yellow 5, Blue 7, Red 36, etc. To glue the disc to their back, I used long tweezers to hold the bee by her back legs, I placed her on a soft sponge, and then I glued the disc to her back. I did all of this under a red light because bees can’t see red very well, so if they escaped there was less chance that they would fly up and sting me. When I was done, I placed them back inside their nest, which, in our lab, was a wooden box. The tags didn’t affect the bees’ flight or movement at all. I guess it is sort of like wearing a backpack.

I enjoyed tagging bees. It is certainly a skill. I was certain that if I was relaxed while I tagged them, the bees were more relaxed, too.

I wonder what bee tagging techniques will exist down the road as technology advances?

For Teachers
Any suggestions for ways to use The Beekeepers in the classroom?

Teacher guides for The Beekeepers are not ready yet, but the book can certainly be used to spark conversations about how we can help protect and conserve bees, even in our own backyards, whether you live in a city or in the country. What are students’ favorite bee facts? What other wild bees besides bumble bees exist out there? How are they the same or different from bumble bees?

Are you doing school visits related to this book? Tell us more!

Yes! I would love to do school visits. Probably grades 4-7 are best, since The Beekeepers is aimed at readers aged 8-12.

I actually have my first virtual school visit coming up in less than a month. I can talk about science, bees, writing, or all of the above. And most of all, I can answer students’ questions! I love to hear what students are curious about.

How can we learn more about you?

My website is www.danachurchwriter.com, and I’m on Twitter: @DanaLChurch. I post a #BeeFactFriday on Twitter each Friday. You can drop me a note or ask questions by email, too: dana@danachurchwriter.com.

Thanks for your time, Dana.

It was my pleasure! Thank you so much, Natalie. This was fun.

Dana L. Church will be giving a copy of The Beekeepers: How Humans Changed the World of Bumble Bees to a lucky reader. Enter the giveaway below for a chance to win a copy. (U.S. addresses only)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Beekeepers: How Humans Changed the World of Bumble Bees is available here:

bookshop.org

amazon.com

The Counterclockwise Heart: Cover Reveal and Excerpt

By Jennifer Swanson on April 21, 2021 / Articles

The Counterclockwise Heart Cover Reveal

It’s always a great day when we get to reveal a brand new book cover … artwork means a book is one step closer to reaching readers. Today, we have an extra special treat: an excerpt from THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART, by Brian Farrey, set to publish in February 2022 from Algonquin Books.

But first, the moment we’ve all been waiting for (drum roll) … THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART:

The Counterclockwise Heart Cover Artist

Stunning, isn’t it? The cover artist is Rovina Cai, from Melbourne, Australia, who says, “I love creating haunting, poetic imagery, and believe that one of the most valuable things an illustrator can offer is their unique and personal perspective. I have meticulously crafted my distinctive style to reflect this.” (From her website)

Visuals of the Story

MUF had a chance to get Brian’s reaction to his new book cover; here’s what he had to say:

MUF: What do you love about the cover artwork?

Brian: What I love most about the cover artwork is that it’s nothing like I imagined. I love watching illustrators add their own special stamp to how they see the visuals in the story. And that is ALWAYS better than anything I imagined. I also love the sheer scale of the cover and how it captures one of my favorite characters. IT’S GORGEOUS!

MUF: What do you feel you did differently in this book as compared to your other works?

Brian: With The Counterclockwise Heart, I wanted to attempt something epic in just one book–a stand alone–that involved lots of moving pieces, characters in conflict with each other and with themselves, and challenged readers to question their own assumptions and perceptions.

We’re all about books that allow us to question our assumptions and perceptions! Here’s a taste of THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART, which publishes in February 2022.

Excerpt from THE COUNTERCLOCKWISE HEART:

The Boy Who Talked to Stone

It was the coldest winter morning ever on record in the empire of Rheinvelt when the people of Somber End awoke to find the Onyx Maiden in their tiny village.

The night before, they’d gone to bed, fireplaces blazing to ward off the bitter chill, safe in the knowledge that a statue of Rudolf Emmerich stood watch over the village center. Emmerich, Somber End’s long-deceased first burgermeister, was a beloved figure in the town’s history even to that very day.

So you can imagine the distress when dawn broke and the shivering residents scurried across the roundel in the village center on their way to work, only to find chunks of Emmerich’s statue everywhere. A hand here, a kneecap there. Clearly, there would be no repairing the venerated idol, as much of its considerable girth had been ground into dark-gray powder.

Where Rudolf Emmerich had once stood, gazing wistfully over the town he’d helped settle, something far less reassuring now held reign: As tall as a two-story house, a maiden made entirely of rough, dappled onyx loomed over the roundel. Adorned in armor, she appeared to be in the midst of a battle. Her right arm was thrown back, ready to strike with a cat-o’-nine-tails covered in rocky spikes. Her wild hair, blowing in an unseen gale, reached out in all directions, like a demonic compass rose. Most terrifying of all was her face—frozen in a permanent angry scream.

“Who could have done this?” some villagers murmured. The empire’s most contentious neighbors, the mysterious denizens of the Hinterlands, were unlikely culprits. No one had ever seen these creatures (they were, again, mysterious). But the feral howls that rang out from the barren landscape to the west didn’t come from anyone who might deliver an arguably symbolic statue.

“How could it just appear?” others asked. If the statue was the height of a house, it must have weighed twice as much. Moving it would have been tricky at best. Few ventured theories, because the most obvious answer—given the fate of the Emmerich statue—was that the Maiden had simply fallen from the sky.

Still other villagers asked a far wiser question: “Why did this happen?” These were the people who understood that sometimes whos and hows didn’t amount to nearly as much importance as whys.

When the rulers of Rheinvelt, Imperatrix Dagmar and her wife, Empress Sabine, received news of the Maiden’s mysterious appearance, they sent emissaries throughout the land, seeking answers. Master scholars pored over ancient tomes but found nothing. The Hierophants— keepers of the most mystical and arcane knowledge—had recently fled Rheinvelt, it was rumored, afraid to speak the terrible truths they knew. Soothsayers far and wide cast bones and consulted the ether. They all offered the same dire warning: One day, the Maiden would waken and bring a terrible reckoning. Not just to Somber End, but all throughout the empire.

###

Thanks for letting us have a peek into your new book, Brian, and for sharing your new cover with MUF readers. Congratulations!

Brian Farrey is the author of The Secret of Dreadwillow Carse, winner of the 2017 Minnesota Book Award, and the Stonewall honor book With or Without You. He knows more than he probably should about Doctor Who. He lives in Edina, Minnesota, with his husband and their cat, Meowzebub. You can find him online at brianfarreybooks.com and on Twitter: @BrianFarrey.

Blog