For Parents

STEM Tuesday — Deep Space and Beyond — In the Classroom

By on July 17, 2018   /   Common Core & NGSS, Cross-Curricular, Curriculum Tie-in, For Librarians, For Parents, Space, STEM Tuesday  

Let’s launch into nonfiction literacy with this month’s theme, Deep Space and Beyond!

Space is the star of the show this month. From asteroids to zero gravity, there are human interest and general STEM themes interwoven with this theme.  Have a blast as you explore the Solar System and beyond!

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Try a Trio.

Emphasize the human heart of science as you compare and contrast the stories in a trio of books: Team Moon (Catherine Thimmesh), Mission to Pluto (Mary Kay Carson), and Voyager’s Greatest Hits (Alexandra Siy).  Focus on the motivations, challenges, worries, and risks involved in reaching for big, ambitious goals that advance scientific and technological frontiers.  Students can consider which missions they find most interesting; which one they think they would most like to have been involved in; and where else they think humanity should explore. They might also write about what they see as the advantages and disadvantages of  human explorations compared to robotic ones.

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Elizabeth Rusch’s IMPACT! Asteroids and the Science of Saving the World focuses on professional scientists’ efforts to understand asteroids and their, er, impacts, both past and potential, on Earth. Then Rusch invites readers to get involved in citizen, or amateur, asteroid science. (After reading this book, who wouldn’t want to join the fun?) Page 64 offers resources to help engage your group, or just one motivated kid, in efforts to track asteroids, discover one, or even save the world from an asteroid! Rusch provides tips for meteorite collecting, but it might be easier to collect tiny micrometeorites. Their incredibly long adventures through space can end on rooftops and in downspout debris. They’re ready for pick-up by the well-informed, slightly lucky, prepared amateur with a magnet. Check out Popular Science’s DIY article for details. (Be sure to get all the appropriate permissions and scout only in safe areas when collecting!)

 

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Readers zipping through Dr. E’s Super Stellar Solar System  (Bethany Ehlmann with STEM Tuesday’s Jennifer Swanson) might appreciate the mind-boggling size of the solar system after they make and revise solar system models to various scales. Get started with a scale and relevant data for a football field-sized model, found on page 18. Before heading out to the gridiron, however, help students map out the model.

Begin by sketching the football field on cm-grid graph paper and locating the planets’ orbits on it. (Each cm represents one foot on the field and 5 million miles in real space.) At this scale, students will find the field is too small for all orbits; students will need to adjust the scale so all planets can fit. New map in hand, head outside. Students can position themselves at the scaled planetary distances from the Sun.

Reading on, as students find that the solar system extends farther than the planetary orbits, they can track distance data for all Solar System features mentioned in the book. At the scale students used before, where in the community beyond the field would these features have to be placed?

For more depth, consider the scale of the objects and other models.

  • Is the model of the Sun (an orange) the right size for this scale?
  • If not, what would be?
  • What are the strengths and limitations of various 3D and illustrated visual models of the solar system that students have encountered?

 

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Metaphors and imagery help scientists flesh out ideas for themselves. Piggy-backing new ideas onto ones we already grasp is also important in science communication, especially when it comes to fascinating but abstract, challenging concepts related to black holes.

Keep a class log of the metaphors, analogies, and other comparisons used by scientists and the authors—including Sara Latta, author of Black Holes: the Weird Science of the Most Mysterious Objects in the Universe and me, author of A Black Hole is NOT a Hole. You’ll find some, for example, on page 35 of Black Holes, where Latta quotes Neil deGrasse Tyson describing galactic (and black hole) cannibalism : “…the big galaxies get bigger; the little ones get eaten”. By contrast my book begins by challenging  such anthropomorphism (“monstermorphism”?); soon, starting on page 8, the text compares a black hole to a whirlpool.

  • What other examples can readers find of scientists or writers using metaphorical language to describe black holes and related ideas?
  • In what ways does each metaphor work as a model and in what ways does it break down? What metaphors do students come across in other science contexts?
  • Based on their own world experience, what metaphors can students develop for the science concepts they are learning?

 

Make It Your Mission. Just as it took 400,000 people—Team Moon–to launch humanity to the moon, it takes a big Team STEM Tuesday to launch kids into getting the most of their STEM and STEM reading experiences. We would love to hear from you.

  • What books on this month’s list do you want to bring to your young readers?
  • Which of this month’s suggestions intrigue you most?
  • What other ideas, thoughts, and questions around using space books with your young learners do you have?

 

portrait of author Carolyn Cinami DeCristofanoSTEM author Carolyn Cinami DeCristofano writes books for kids about space and other topics. Her lively author programs bring engaging science and writing experiences to readers.  As co-founder of Blue Heron STEM Education, she provides teacher professional development and creates curriculum resources for classrooms and other contexts.

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South Asian Awards for Children and Young Adult Literature : Author Interview with Uma Krishnaswami

By on July 11, 2018   /   Articles, Author Interviews, Book Lists, Cross-Curricular, Fiction, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers  

APALA is a professional library organization dedicated to cultivating Asian Pacific American leadership through mentorship and professional engagement, advancing social justice, and providing opportunities for dialogue and networking to promote the needs of Asian/Pacific American professionals and those who serve Asian/Pacific American communities.

Every year, the association (APALA) honors and recognizes individual work about Asian/Pacific Americans and their heritage, based on literature and artistic merit. This year, author Uma Krishnaswami won the award in the children’s literature category for her book, “Step Up To The Plate, Maria Singh”.

 

Today at MUF, Uma talks about her award, her writing life over the years,  and some of the key diversity issues in children’s and young adult literature.

 

Congratulations on the APALA award, Uma! What was it like winning the award for Step Up To the Plate, Maria Singh?

Uma: It’s a tremendous honor. Writing is such a solitary occupation. Even after all the work that goes into writing a book and nurturing it through successive revisions, through the editorial process and all the way to publication, you never know whether anyone’s going to pay attention to it. A book isn’t complete until readers have read it, and children can’t choose a book until some adult has first placed that book on a personal or library shelf. So the APALA award was a tremendous vote of confidence for my book. I’m deeply grateful.

 

In your interview at Cynthia Leitich Smith’s Cynsations Blog, you mention that there is a groundswell movement with organizations like We Need Diverse Books and independent publishers like Lee & Low Books, Cinco Puntos Press, and Enchanted Lion to draw attention to diverse books as well as international and translated books. What are some initiatives that make these organizations and publishing houses effective?

Uma: Lee & Low was founded with a mission of diversifying children’s books, long before diversity became trendy. Their blog called early attention to the diversity gap in children’s publishing. Cinco Puntos is more specialized with its roots on the border of the US and Mexico, and they too have beautiful books like All Around Us by Xelena González and Rudolfo Anaya’s Elegy on the Death of Cesar Chavez.

To me, WNDB represents the next generation of writers and activists pushing for change. They are doing terrific work. They offer grants and awards for writers, retreats, internships in publishing, mentorships, book giveaways and they have been a powerful force in the movement to diversify not only books for young readers but the range of voices engaged in the creation and publication of those books. They are fierce and committed and they remind us that we can’t get complacent.

 

To what extent does incorrect representation of culture in diverse children’s books harbor the danger of inauthenticity and marginalize people of color?

Uma: I think it’s about complexity—being aware of how easy it is to resort to a stereotypical depiction of characters or a simplistic view of history. We have to be willing to do the work as writers to go beyond that, whoever we are. And we have to be respectful of the people we’re writing about, and aware of what our relationship is to those people. We have to know where our own boundaries and limitations lie. That is the best way to get around issues of inauthentic work. I’ll give you an example. There was a time when it was considered fine for a white writer to write an array of books, each set in a different country, each using a particular “foreign” culture as the driving plot element. So you’d have books getting rave reviews (we’re talking back in the 1990s) with, say, spunky girl characters, and all the settings would feel like tourist videos. The reviewers never got that, so who would even know, right? Well, young readers from those places, or from immigrant communities with roots in those places, would know. Of course they’d know. And they’d want to duck their heads under their desks when those books were being praised in classrooms. This certainly happened with books set in South Asian countries, written by well-meaning writers who’d never set foot in the region.

It’s changing. Publishers are more aware of the pitfalls of writing culturally specific books. But we can’t take our eyes off that target of diversity because it will keep moving and there will always be pushback.

 

From your experience of writing and teaching at Vermont College Of Fine Arts for many years, do you think the lack of adequate diverse representation in children’s and young adult literature is part of a broader set of issues relating to inclusivity?

Uma: Absolutely. Until diverse voices get included at every level—in student bodies and faculty at writing programs and retreats and conferences, and at every level of publishing—publishing and marketing and distribution choices will continue to be made with a narrow view.

 

What are some common misunderstandings and incorrect assumptions about South Asian characters in North America? How do you see South Asian literature developing in the US in the foreseeable future?

Uma: I wrote about that years ago, but to tell you the truth, I haven’t studied a bunch of books lately to see if those trends persist. Do Americans still think Indian kids go to school on elephants? I have no idea.

But as to your second question, relative to literature for young readers, I see some very exciting new work coming out from talented writers. I’ll mention just a few: Sayantani DasGupta’s middle grade novel, The Serpent’s Secret. Book 2 in that series is out next year. It’s a wonderful mashup of mythic fantasy drawn from Bengali traditions, rollicking adventure, and utterly contemporary kid sensibility. Ahimsa by Supriya Kelkar is historical fiction set against the backdrop of India’s independence movement. Nidhi Chanani’s graphic novel, Pashmina, takes on immigrant identity and the silence between a mother and a daughter with a fresh and genuine energy. I think what makes these books ring so true is that they come from deep, personal roots. In each, the author cares deeply about context and worldview, culture and connections. And so each is complicated, as all cultures are, but they’re not explained by the text. In each, the story comes first.

Not so much what I see but what I’d like to see: more YA, more humor—oh please, more humor! More stories for younger readers. Chapter books. Fantasy. Fewer oppression tales about girls fighting unjust societies.

 

What do you wish someone had told you when you were starting out as a writer?

Uma: What a good question. I had to think about this.

At first, I often felt misunderstood. Early on, someone once asked me why I didn’t just write about “regular” kids instead of always focusing on kids with Indian connections—as if that was somehow “irregular!” And the opposite as well—a few in the Indian community were affronted that I’d put a divorce into my first novel, Naming Maya, as if that reflected badly on us as an immigrant group or something. So I sometimes wonder if it would have easier if those criticisms hadn’t cropped up. But I don’t think so. They gave me something to push against, and in all they strengthened my resolve to keep going.

If anything, I wish no one had given me any advice at all. Much of the advice I did get about conflict, character development, story structure, and so on never fit any of the stories I was writing, which led to a lot of wasted time while I tried unsuccessfully to make my stories fit into boxes that weren’t built for them. In the end I did best when I dumped a lot of it and paid more attention to my own instincts.

To learn more about Uma and her books, visit her website at https://umakrishnaswami.org/.

 

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Interview with MG author Mary Winn Heider

By on July 9, 2018   /   Author Interviews, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, New Releases  

I had the privilege of meeting and working with Mary Winn Heider at a Highlights Foundation workshop this spring. Mary Winn’s debut MG novel, The Mortification of Fovea Munson was released last month. This delightful story features talking heads in a cadaver lab, a Grandma who will leave you in stitches, losing friends and making new ones. Mary Winn took time from her busy book tour to offer insight into her writing and her work with the Barrel of Monkeys theater program in Chicago.

The setting of The Mortification of Fovea Munson is a cadaver lab. I know you worked briefly at a medical university lab. Can you tell us about that experience and how it played into your story? Did you meet any talking heads?  ?

Ha! I didn’t meet any talking heads, thankfully! I did meet the non-talking kind, despite the fact that my job was ostensibly just to be the receptionist. My responsibilities (like Fovea’s) definitely became a little more involved during my time there!

The lab itself was both very inspiring and very weird, which is sort of a sweet spot for me. On one hand, the stakes were super high: every day that I went to work, I found myself considering my own mortality. And my grandparents donated their bodies to science, so it felt somehow extra personal. On the other hand, the whole thing was really absurd—I was making signs to remind people not to wear flip-flops while they practiced surgeries. I was ordering body parts online. Minor spoiler: in the book, Fovea accidentally orders 600 legs. I totally did that. So there I was, at this intersection of super high stakes and total absurdity—and it felt so perfectly like my experience of middle school. Deadly serious. Completely bananas. Totally right.

And then aside from the ordering…er…snafu, I drew on the details of the real lab a lot, especially the day-to-day logistics. We’d order the parts, keep them frozen until they were needed, and plan ahead so they could thaw for however long they needed to thaw. There was a bit of a scandal with one of our suppliers at one point, and watching that play out helped me think through the ramifications of the (very different) trouble in the fictional lab.

I loved all the humor throughout especially the anatomical references, and the Grandma, oh my goodness, what a hoot! Tell us a little bit about your inspiration for the humor in your characters.

Well, broadly speaking, I wanted to have the most fun possible in this world that was (in theory, anyway) all about death and dying. Also, I’ll admit that once you start with the anatomy puns, it’s like you actually can’t stop—I don’t understand what force of nature that is, but it’s so real. So real.

Fovea initially struggles with her parents’ occupations, and yet, the plot involves Fovea trying to save them from ruin. I think it’s a perfect reflection of that awkward time in child/parent relationships. One minute a child doesn’t want anything to do with you, and the next they are defending you as a parent. You credit your parents as “being the coolest” in the acknowledgements. Did you ever experience the tug and pull in your relationship with yours?

For sure—I think maybe it’s impossible to avoid completely? And that that’s a really good thing. We test the waters of independence and maybe they’re a little intense or not intense enough, and then there are all sorts of feelings on both sides. But inch by inch, we grow up that way. My parents and I were lucky and didn’t have a lot of straight-up conflict—more like the occasional growing pains.

Fovea’s friendships are at the core of the story. Did you have an Em or Howe in your life?

The summer before sixth grade, I had a friendship that ended before I was ready. Every part of it was more nuanced (and less gross!)—but at heart, I’d say it was the same dance. I lost a friendship, found myself and found other friendships. Just…sans heads.

Your imagination is incredible! I found myself marveling at the solutions you provided for Fovea for the many challenges she came up against in helping Andy, Lake and McMullen. Especially the scene in making their way to the recording studio, which brought forth one of my fondest stories from my childhood. Care to offer any insights as to where you came up with such creative scenes?

Oh, I love that the trip to the studio managed to do that! That makes me so happy!

One of the things that I really dig about writing for this age is the constant negotiation between what middle schoolers can do on their own and what they can’t. So in some ways, it’s just about necessity being the mother of invention: in that scene, Fovea can’t drive, but she’s got to cover some serious ground to the studio.

And actually, early on, there was a very complicated subplot about getting to the studio (involving a kid with seven stepmothers who each had their own food truck—I’m rolling my eyes at myself even as I type this). A writer friend graciously clued me in that it was super distracting. So I cut the whole thing, and in the process, discovered Grandma Van, who adds so much more to the story. So I find when I try to be outrageous, I get in my own way. When I’m just problem-solving within some slightly oddly-shaped given circumstances, the internal logic of the story guides me. So I think I’m saying that I have nothing to do with it? That’s probably right.

I know you are a graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts Writing for Children and Young Adults. Did Fovea’s story originate while you were pursuing your master’s degree?

It did! I got the cadaver lab job toward the end of grad school. Then I realized I should be writing about the lab just in time for my last workshop at VCFA, so they got the first twenty pages. They were fantastic, and asked me all the questions I needed at that early generative stage.

I’d love to hear a bit about your writing process. Do you write every day? Where? Home? Coffee Shop? Cadaver lab? Theater?

All of the above! I try to write every day, although I don’t really succeed. But I’m generally doing the artist hustle, so I write wherever I can, which has definitely included at home, in coffee shops, at the cadaver lab, and backstage in theaters all over Chicago. Sometimes even in costume between shows. I have a harder time writing when I’m memorizing lines—my brain isn’t great at learning other people’s words and building my own sentences at the same time, but once a show is up and running, it gets a little easier.

Please tell us about your experiences with the Barrel of Monkeys theater program!

Yay! Barrel of Monkeys is the best. It’s a Chicago-based theater company. We go into Chicago Public Schools, teach six-week writing residencies, and then adapt what the kids have written and perform it for them in their own schools. The program gives the kids space to be expressive right at a time when they’re getting slammed hardest with state testing. And then we reflect back to them what creative rock stars they are by treating their work the way we’d treat professional writers’ work.

I’ve been in the company for about ten years—it’s made up of professional actors and educators all over the city. And the kids are endlessly inventive and inspiring. A month ago, I was in a show and got to play a reckless, heart-broken volcano, a metal-singing devotee of a potato chip god, a monster drawing come to life, and, as part of a reinterpretation of A Wrinkle in Time, played Mrs. Mild Sauce alongside Mrs. Ketchup and Mrs. Honey Mustard. The kids are where it’s at.

Finally, I know you’ve been involved in some interesting work situations in addition to your work at a cadaver lab. Are any of these roles playing a part in your next work?

I’ve had a pretty strange run of jobs, but at the moment, no! Well— none of my work as an adult, anyway—I’m currently drawing on my very influential time as second chair French horn at Hand Middle School.

Thank you so much for your time!

Thank YOU!

 

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