Posts Tagged children’s bookstores

STEM Tuesday– Tectonics: Volcanoes, Ring of Fire — Interview with Author Katie Coppens

By on November 23, 2021   /   STEM Tuesday, Tectonics/Volcanoes  

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

Today we’re interviewing Katie Coppens, author of Geology is a Piece of Cake. It’s a “truly delicious, hands-on way to study science in action,” says Kirkus Reviews.

Mary Kay Carson: Tell us a bit about Geology is a Piece of Cake. How did the book come about?

Katie Coppens: I’m a middle school science teacher who uses analogies to help my students understand concepts. One of the analogies my students have enjoyed is learning the difference between a rock and a mineral through cake; where minerals are like the ingredients for cake and the cake is like the rock. Year-after-year, I kept expanding cake examples to a range of concepts in geology, such as fossil formation and plate tectonics. My students benefited from these analogies and the ideas kept coming. Then, I thought of the title for a possible book, Geology is a Piece of Cake, and it all went from there. I started writing, baking, taking photos of cakes, and developing recipes for kids to do that have geological thinking embedded into them. Using this hands-on method is fun and helps concepts resonate!

MKC: Care to share a favorite research experience?

Katie: My children were two and four years old when I wrote the book. For months, I was baking and testing recipes and my kids and I developed a love of baking together. They also became accustomed to having cakes for dessert because it was important to taste test the cakes that had recipes in the book. When I finished writing, my kids were disappointed that the daily desserts stopped. They were delighted when I wrote the companion book Geometry is as Easy as Pie, which teaches math concepts through pie and pie recipes.

MKC: How would you describe the book’s approach?

Katie: Cake is a great hook for kids (and adults!)! It’s a hands-on, delicious way to better understand geology. In addition to teachers’ use in the classroom, parents have also enjoyed making the recipes with their child and learning together. Out of all of the cakes, I think the extrusive molten lava chocolate cake (at left) is the most fun. It represents an extrusive igneous rock and when you cut into it, the chocolate lava flows out!

MKC: To whom did you imagine yourself writing to while drafting the book?

Katie: I was imagining my 6th grade students with every step of writing, which is why I dedicated the book to them! I kept thinking about the questions they ask and they were my inspiration behind writing the book in a question and answer format. One of my favorite moments as an author is when readers reach out to me and with this book, I’ve received emails with photos of the cakes kids have made with their geological thinking! I have a YouTube channel that includes a fun video that some of my students made when they baked a cake from the book.

MKC: Do you choose to write about STEM books?

Katie: I’ve been a teacher for 20 years and have written eight STEM-themed children’s books. I’m also an advisor of my school’s STEM club. My favorite part of STEM is that it encourages creative and critical thinking!

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Katie Coppens is an award-winning middle school science teacher who lives in Maine with her husband and two daughters. She’s written eight STEM-themed books for kids and writes a column for the National Science Teaching Association’s Science Scope magazine called “Interdisciplinary Ideas.” Her goal in both teaching and writing is to encourage curiosity and make learning fun. For more information on her books, go to www.katiecoppens.com or follow her @Katie_Coppens on Twitter.

Win a FREE copy of Geology is a Piece of Cake!

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!

Your host is Mary Kay Carson, author of Wildlife Ranger Action Guide, The Tornado Scientist, Alexander Graham Bell for Kids, Mission to Pluto, and other nonfiction books for kids. @marykaycarson

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STEM Tuesday — Animal Superpowers — Book List

By on October 5, 2021   /   Animal Superpowers, STEM Tuesday  

 

Who needs superhuman heroes when there are animals with their own superpowers? This list gives readers an opportunity to explore all of the ways animals use their skills for surviving in the wild and even help us humans out as well!  

Animal Zombies! And Other Bloodsucking Beasts, Creepy Creatures, and Real-Life Monsters by Chana Stiefel  

Some may call these creatures creepy, but others will marvel at their special skills.  

Insect Superpowers: 18 Real Bugs that Smash, Zap, Hypnotize, Sting, and Devour! by Kate Messner, illustrated by Jillian Nickell

 Messner explores the super talents of bugs in this fun title.  

Stronger Than Steel: Spider Silk DNA and the Quest for Better Bulletproof Vests, Sutures, and Parachute Rope by Bridget Heos, photographs by Andy Comins

Can you believe that delicate little spiders can create something with such amazing strength that might someday be used to repair or replace human ligaments? Read all-about it in Heos’ Scientists in the Field title.  

Superpower Field Guide: Moles and Superpower Field Guide: Eels by Rachel Poliquin, illustrated by Nicholas John Firth

Discover the extraordinary skills of moles and eels in these two guides. Then explore the rest of the series. Poliquin and Firth have two other titles about beavers and ostriches.

Superpower Dogs: Disaster Response Dogs by Cosmic  

Dogs have some of the best noses in the business. Learn how they help in disasters.

Super Sniffers: Dog Detectives on the Job by Dorothy Hinshaw Patent  

Explore how dogs use their super sniffing detection skills to help humans.

101 Animal Super Powers by Melvin Berger and Gilda Berger

Discover lots of extraordinary animals with this collection of animal superpower stories.  

Photo of DESERTS author Nancy Castaldo

Nancy Castaldo has written books about our planet for over 20 years including, SNIFFER DOGS: How Dogs (and Their Noses) Save The World, so she knows first hand about animal superpowers. Her books have earned the Green Earth Book Award, Junior Library Guild Selection, and other honors. Nancy’s research has taken her all over the world from the Galapagos to Russia.  She strives to inform, inspire, and empower her readers. Nancy also served as Regional Advisor Emeritus of the Eastern NY SCBWI region. Her 2020 international title about farm and food is THE FARM THAT FEEDS US: A Year In The Life Of An Organic Farm. Visit her at her website, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Instagram. 

Sibert Honor author Patricia Newman shows young readers how their actions can ripple around the world. Using social and environmental injustice as inspiration, she empowers young readers to seek connections to the real world and to use their imaginations to act on behalf of their communities. One Texas librarian wrote, “Patricia is one of THE BEST nonfiction authors writing for our students in today’s market, and one of our MUST HAVE AUTHORS for every collection.” Titles include: Planet Ocean (new); Sibert Honor book Sea Otter Heroes; Green Earth Book Award winner Plastic, Ahoy!; The NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book Eavesdropping on Elephants; California Reading Association’s Eureka! Gold winner Zoo Scientists to the Rescue. Visit Patricia online at her website, on Twitter, on Facebook, and on Pinterest.  

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STEM Tuesday — Reptiles — Interview with Author Sneed B. Collard III

By on September 28, 2021   /   Reptiles, STEM Tuesday  

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

Today we’re interviewing award-winning author Sneed B. Collard III, author of One Iguana, Two Iguanas: A Story of Accident, Natural Selection, and Evolution. In its starred review, Kirkus declares the book a “fresh and accessible approach to an important scientific concept.”

Mary Kay Carson: Tell us a bit about One Iguana, Two Iguanas. How did the book come about?

Sneed B. Collard III: Being a reptile nut, I had been thinking about marine iguanas for a long time, and even devoted a section to them in my book Sneed B. Collard III’s Most Fun Book Ever About Lizards, which has garnered a surprisingly large following over the years. When my family and I got to visit the Galápagos in 2016, seeing these unique animals instantly became one of the highlights of my life. Besides their incredible adaptations, the animals’ fascinating history intrigued me as a beautiful example of how new species arise from accidents and evolution, and I wanted to share that story with both children and adults. Coincidentally, a fairly recent scientific paper had used genetic markers to establish the timeline for when marine iguanas and Galápagos land iguanas split into different species, and I thought it would make a great story for young readers. I sat down to write the story and my editor at Tilbury snapped it up.

MKC: Care to share a favorite research experience?

Sneed: After reading about marine iguanas for so many years—and watching nature shows about them—just seeing these lizards dive into the ocean sent chills up my spine. Another thing that made a deep impression on me is that the Galápagos had recently come out of an El Niño year, in which warmer waters surround the islands and the lizards’ favorite marine algae dies back. This often leads to widespread starvation, and as we walked one island we found dozens of marine iguana skeletons littering the coastline. Since climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and severity of El Niño events, the skeletons were a sobering example of how urgent it is for we humans to cut our global CO2 emissions immediately.

The highlight of my visit down there, however, happened on our last day of snorkeling. My daughter, son, and I had just climbed back into a zodiac boat after swimming with sea turtles when another snorkeler shouted that a marine iguana was feeding underwater right next to him. I quickly pulled on my mask and snorkel and leaped back into the water. I swam over there just in time to see a large iguana grasping a rock about three feet below the surface, using its teeth to scrape algae off of the rock. It is a sight I will never forget!

marine (l.) and land (r.) iguanas

MKC: How would you describe the book’s approach?

Sneed: To me, evolution is one of the most remarkable stories on earth, and so for One Iguana, Two Iguanas, I just wanted to tell the story of how the marine iguana came to be. The recent genetic research made that fairly easy. I just imagined that first pregnant female lizard (scientists think it was a kind of ctenosaur lizard) somehow floating on a raft hundreds of miles when dozens—perhaps hundreds—before her had perished at sea. Somehow, though, she made it to the Galápagos, and turned a brand new species loose. After introducing the lizards, I just launched into the story of how the islands were created, how new life reached them, and then used our best understanding of evolution to recount how that new species established itself on the islands and eventually split into the two species of iguanas we have today. This approach allowed me both to use my best story-telling skills and slip in the science of it all at key moments. Sidebars and other excursions allowed me fill in the rest. It ended up being one of the favorite books I’ve ever written!

MKC: To whom did you imagine yourself writing to while drafting the book?

Sneed B. Collard III is an award-winning author of more than 85 children’s books, including his newest titles, Waiting for a Warbler and Beaver and Otter Get Along . . . Sort of. He is a popular speaker and has spoken at schools and conferences in 46 states and four foreign countries. To learn more about him and his books, visit his website www.sneedbcollardiii.com. Also follow the birding adventures of him and his son at fathersonbirding.com.

Sneed: Actually, both of my parents were on my mind while I was writing. Both were biologists who had unfortunately passed away before their time in the years before my visit to the islands. I knew how much they would have loved to visit the Galápagos, but they never did. I could almost feel them smiling over my shoulder as I worked on the story, though. Another huge inspiration was Dr. Jack Grove, a scientist, Galápagos guide, and former graduate student of my dad’s. Jack and I have developed a special friendship over the years and he has shared many Galápagos stories with me. I dedicated the book to him, and he actually provided a number of its outstanding photographs.

MKC: Do you choose to write about STEM books?

Sneed: When I write, I don’t think, “I am writing a STEM book.” STEAM and STEM, after all, are just artificial constructs that, I think, sometimes mask the fact that this is a really great book or this is an amazing story. I simply set out to write about things that interest me and that I think will help get other people excited about this incredible planet we live on. I don’t want only a science teacher to pick up my book. If I’ve done my job well, I want everyone to read it without partitioning their interests according to the academic categories we’ve been taught. I’ve worked with and mentored a lot of young people, and whenever I can I tell them, “Take an interest in everything. We only get one life. The more you learn, the more you will appreciate what a remarkable journey we are on.”

Win a FREE copy of One Iguana, Two Iguanas!

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!

Your host is Mary Kay Carson, author of Wildlife Ranger Action Guide, The Tornado Scientist, Alexander Graham Bell for Kids, Mission to Pluto, and other nonfiction books for kids. @marykaycarson

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