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Posts Tagged science

STEM Tuesday — Earth Day 50th Anniversary Celebration– Interview with Author Mary Kay Carson

By on April 28, 2020   /   Earth Day, STEM Tuesday  

 

 

 

I’m excited to turn the tables on Mary Kay Carson, who usually does these interviews and invite her to speak about her newest (really cool) book,

Wildlife Ranger Action Guide 

 

Be a Hero for Local Wildlife!

Birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals live all around you – and you can help protect them! Use the field guide pages to learn about which species you’re likely to see in your area. Then turn your backyard into a sanctuary by creating an animal-friendly habitat where wild residents can find food, water, shelter, and places to nest and raise their young.

 

 

Here is a spread of the inside of this awesome book:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A lot of the books you’ve written are about space or weather, how did you come up with the idea to write Wildlife Ranger?

Providing habitat for local wildlife is a real passion of mine. My husband and I live in the city, but chose to buy the 100+ year-old home we did fifteen years ago because of the acres of urban green space that surround it. We’ve been able to watch all kinds of critters take up residence as invasive plants has been removed, native plants encouraged and cultivated, dead trees left standing, and lawn abandoned! And I want kids to feel similarly empowered. To know that they can help wildlife right in their own backyards by providing one or more of the Big Four—water, food, shelter, and nests. Kids love animals, and presentations about how scientists are helping endangered animals are some of my most requested during school visits. And while kids are drawn to the well-publicized plight of pandas, tigers, and penguins, there isn’t a whole lot a young person in Iowa can do to help those faraway animals apart from raising awareness or donating money from a bake sale. But helping the wild animals that live all around us? That’s something anyone of any age can do.

I do love to write about space and weather! But biology is actually my background. My degree was biology (systematics and ecology), I served in the fisheries program as a Peace Corps volunteer, and I have quite a few animal books under my belt—Emi and the Rhino Scientist, The Bat Scientists, Do Sharks Glow in the Dark?, etc. But I’d have to say that it was my years of experience writing for Audubon Adventures that most inspired me to propose the idea of Wildlife Ranger Action Guide. I knew there were lots of fun projects out there for kids to do that would truly help wildlife.
 Was it difficult to do the research on each animal? Can you share something unexpected or unusual you learned about some of the animals.

Our home is filled with field guides, so I can’t say the research was difficult. I am embarrassed by how much I learned along the way, however. After all, these are animals I’ve seen most of my life. But somehow I never realized that green darners migrate nor knew that cottontails can have six litters a year. SIX! I’m ready for native wildlife trivia night!

Was it fun to write in this style, ie. more expository than narrative?
I like expository writing when it really speaks directly to readers. I try to imagine myself speaking to a group of kids thirsty for facts—but also a bit fidgety—when writing expository text. Clarity, brevity, and friendliness are paramount. I’m not a big fan of rambling, stream-of-consciousness, expository text for young readers.

 

This book seems to just beg for readers to take with them outside. Is that how you hope that readers use it?
This book should be filthy! Covered in dirt and warped from damp grass, smudged with paint and sticky with glue from projects. Seriously! A pristine copy of Wildlife Ranger Action Guide is just sad.

 

Can you give your readers tips on how to record data on animals they see or how to make journal?

Choose a format that works for you. Some kids are more likely to use something they’ve invested time into or personalized, like a Wild Notes Notebook. (Download template pages here.) But there are also apps for recording observations for the smart-phone savvy, too. In these times of global climatic changes, tracking when flowers bloom  and birds migrate has never been more critical.

Is there anything else you would like readers to know about the book?

My photographer husband, Tom Uhlman, did the photos of all the step-by-step kid projects. (A good number of the animal photos in the Field Guide sections are his, too.) Kudos to him for all the kid-wrangling of neighborhood and friends’ children! It was a fun challenge to think so visually. Not only how do I write up projects and information in ways that interest readers, but how (and what!) to show so they can successfully make a Paw Printer or Coffee Tub Nest Box by looking at the photos and text. Those photo shoot days were long and messy! Also, that’s our beloved cat, Shamu, on page 38.

Thanks so much for sharing your book with us, Mary Kay! If you’re interested in winning an autographed copy, please comment below or give this post a shoutout on Twitter and tag @mixedUpFiles and @marykaycarson.
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Author Jen SwansonScience ROCKS! And so do Jennifer Swanson’s books. She is the award-winning author of over 40 nonfiction books for kids. Jennifer Swanson’s love of science began when she started a science club in her garage at the age of 7. While no longer working from the garage, you can find Jennifer at her favorite place to explore the world around her. www.JenniferSwansonBooks.com Jennifer is also the creator and administrator of #STEMTuesday and #STEAMTeam2020
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STEM Tuesday — Earth Day 50th Anniversary Celebration– In the Classroom

By on April 14, 2020   /   Earth Day, STEM Tuesday  

 

It’s interesting that we’re celebrating Earth Day’s 50th anniversary in the midst of a pandemic that has much of the world shut down. As I write this post, my state is under a Stay-At-Home order, and has been for a while. While COVID-19 has been devastating for people, in a way, it’s been a gift to the Earth. With people taking a step back from their daily hustle and bustle, the Earth has breathed easier, and animals have felt safe to come out of hiding. Before the world restarts, it’s a good time to step back and take a look at our relationship with the Earth.

The books on this month’s list cover a wide range of topics, from inspiring environmental activists…

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One Earth: People of Color Protecting Our Planet
by Anuradha Rao
With stars from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly, this book profiles twenty environmental activists of color from around the world. Their individual stories show how they went from kids who cared about the environment to leaders in their communities.

 

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Friends of The Earth: A History of American Environmentalism with 21 Activities
by Pat McCarthy
A collection of inspiring stories about the women and men who had the foresight to preserve Yosemite, Mt. Ranier, the Grand Canyon, and the Florida Everglades. Through these stories, young readers form a picture of American environmentalism and conservation. McCarthy helps kids act with 21 eco-activities.

 

…to understanding the complexities surrounding environmental policy…

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Eyes Wide Open: Going Behind the Environmental Headlines
by Paul Fleischman
This Green Earth Book Award title offers a wake-up call for middle-grade and young adult readers as they try to make sense of the flood of environmental news. Readers discover there is more at work than merely wanting to help — money, politics, history, and psychology are all connected.

 

…to things you can do in your everyday life to help the Earth.

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Human Footprint: Everything you will Eat, Use, Wear, Buy, and Throw Out in Your Lifetime
by Ellen Kirk 
A powerful visual tool from Ellen Kirk and NatGeo that helps kids visualize the extent of their consumption. Did you know we each consume 13,056 pints of milk; take 28,433 showers; and eat 12,888 oranges, 14,518 candy bars and buy $52k,972 of clothes in our lifetime?

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Generation Green: The Ultimate Teen Guide to Living An Eco-Friendly Life
by Linda Sivertsen
Sure, we want to be eco-friendly, but how do we accomplish that? Siversten offers dozens of tips on how to shop, dress, eat, and travel with a lighter carbon footprint.

 

Even if you are quarantined and don’t have easy access to these books, you can still dig in to some activities that celebrate Earth Day.

Research How COVID-19 is Helping and Hurting the Environment

Practice your internet searching skills to find out how the COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the environment. (Be sure to look for reliable sources of information.) In some ways, it seems to be helping. Air quality has improved dramatically in many areas due to the lack of cars on the road. In other ways, it may be hurting. A lot of recycling has been suspended because of the Stay-At-Home orders. How else is the pandemic helping or hurting the environment?

On a more personal note, think about how you are living right now. What things are you doing (or not) that are beneficial to the environment? Are you doing anything that is more harmful?

Take Action In Your Own Life

Very few of us live a life that doesn’t impact the environment in negative ways. Often times, we don’t even think about how what we’re doing affects the Earth. One of the best gifts we can give to celebrate Earth Day is to make changes in our own lives to be more environmentally friendly.

To start, you need to be aware of how you impact the Earth. Take a look at how you use resources. You can make it simple or you can track your usage over a period of time – a week or two or even a whole month. Resources to look at include food, water, fuel (including gas for your car and energy for your house), clothing and other items.

Here are some questions to help you think about how you live.

  • How many resources do you use? How much of each?
  • Where do your resources come from?
  • How much do you waste?
  • What do you do with resources when you are done with them?

Once you’ve taken a look at how you use resources, think about things you can change to live a more environmentally friendly life. Here are some examples.

If you notice a lot of your food is being transported from across the country or world, commit to getting more of your food from local farms. Look into participating in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

How much of the food you buy gets thrown away? Think of ways to reduce your food waste. In our family, that often includes planning meals for a week and having leftover nights to eat food that didn’t get eaten the day it was cooked. You can also look into composting. Instead of throwing out potato peels and apple cores, throw them in a compost bin. Use the resulting compost to improve the quality of soil in your gardens.

Do you throw out clothes when you are done with them? If so, look into alternatives. You can pass them along to a friend or relative. There are also lots of opportunities to donate them to charities. You can even hold a clothing drive where you can help people recycle their clothing and earn money for a school or service organization.

There are lots of resources that can help you find ways to live a more Earth-friendly life. This includes several of the books on this month’s list.

Help Your Favorite Animal

Perhaps you’d like to do something further afield. What’s your favorite wild animal? Do some research. Where does it live? What environmental issues does it face? Are there charitable organizations that are working to help these animals? Once you know what issues there are, you can come up with some ways to help.

Perhaps that means donating to an organization dedicated to helping that animal. To help even more, ask for people to donate to that organization rather than giving you birthday presents. Or run a fundraiser to collect money to donate.

Maybe you can participate in a citizen science project that will help the animal. Enlist your friends and family, too. Here are a few resources that can help you investigate what citizen science activities are out there:

https://www.citizenscience.gov
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/idea/citizen-science-projects 
https://www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Citizen-Science

No matter what you’re doing these days, I hope you’ll take some time to celebrate the Earth. Wishing you, your family, and the Earth peace and good health.

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Janet sometimes helps out with conservation projects – here she’s helping cut reeds to stock an insect hotel.

 

Janet Slingerland loves learning about science, history, nature, and (well) everything, which she then turns into a book. She has spent many hours helping out on environmental projects, including transforming her yard into a native plant oasis (a work in progress). To find out more about Janet and her books, check out her website: janetsbooks.com

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New STEM Book Release – Interview with Author Karla Valenti and a giveaway

By on April 8, 2020   /   Articles, Author Interviews  

I’m so excited to welcome author Karla Valenti to the Mixed Up Files blog!

 

 

 

 

Karla has written the first book in a new series called My  Super Science Heroes published by Sourcebooks.

The first book, Marie Curie and the Power of Persistence, uses a novel storytelling approach to bring this historical figure to life for readers, both young and old. Written and illustrated as a dynamic superhero story, this book introduces children to Marie Curie as an important scientist whose greatest achievement was not the discovery of radium and polonium, nor having earned two Nobel Prizes, but rather for her extraordinary power – the power of persistence.

Booklist says, “A fun, engaging take for kids who may not realize they’ve got the power to be science lovers.”

Kirkus — “This is a fact-filled, admiring examination!”

 

This looks so FUN, Karla, how did you come up with idea to give scientists “superpowers”?

I responded to a call for submissions put out by the Marie Curie Alumni Association (a global nonprofit association of researches and scientists). MCAA wanted to partner with an author to create a book about Marie Curie. The idea was that the book would be a source of funding for the science association’s many research initiatives. I was very excited about the proposal and the work MCAA does, and I wanted to find a way to partner with them on this initiative. So I began by doing extensive research about Marie Curie. The more I read about her life, a common theme began to stand out: what made this woman so remarkable was not just what she accomplished, but more precisely how she achieved what she did.

Marie faced a tremendous amount of challenges throughout her life (starting from a very young age). While most of her biographies ultimately focus on her great discoveries, it seemed to me that the more interesting story was her remarkable persistence in battling these many difficulties. Her persistence almost seemed to be a ‘super power’ without which she wouldn’t have accomplished anything! I immediately knew this would be my focus – not what she did, but who she was and how that trait enabled her to succeed. This also struck me as an exciting way to bridge a connection between a famous scientist and a young reader embarking on the study of STEM for the first time. In other words – the link was a key trait that both Marie and the readers have in common: persistence.

By framing this narrative as one of a super hero, I was able to to leverage a number of familiar storytelling tropes and structures that children know and enjoy. It was also a compelling way to show (vs tell) the antagonistic forces she faced in her life and how she ultimately defeated them. For example, her nemesis: Mr. Opposition, starts off quite large and intimidating (he has yellow eyes and fangs). As the story progresses and Marie persists, Mr. Opposition shrinks and loses his frightening characteristics. Children do not need to be told that she vanquished him, for they can see the transformation happening directly. All in all, it seemed fitting that such a strong and accomplished woman should be deemed a super hero.

Thus was born, the My Super Science Heroes series.

I proposed the story to MCAA and my proposal was selected as the winner. I began working with the science association and the incredible illustrator – Annalisa Beghelli – to put together the book. Initially, we were going to crowdsource the book but before the campaign was even over, Sourcebooks had found out about the series and wanted to partner with us to bring it to life. On April 7th, 2020 the book was born and we couldn’t be more delighted about this tremendous collaboration.

 

 Since you are using a fictionalized story, how much of your book is based in fact?

Everything about Marie’s life in the book is true, including the opposition she faced in reaching her goals. The only part that is fictionalized is how we represent that opposition.

 

How did you get involved in writing about science? Do you have a background in it? Or have you just been interested in science for a long time?

Though I am keenly interested in many scientific areas of study, I have always felt very intimidated by STEM and never though of myself as scientifically-capable. Indeed, this was one of the reasons I wanted to write a book that made it easy for young readers to relate to scientists. I wanted them to see that one didn’t need to be a genius or Nobel-prize worthy in order to love science. Rather, traits like persistence and curiosity are the hallmarks of scientists around the world.

 

What would you love kids to take away from this series?

Thank you for asking this question. There are a few things I would love for children to take away form this series:

(1) What defines us isn’t what we ultimately achieve, but who we are in the pursuit of our dreams. Marie is a super hero not because she discovered Radium and Polonium, but because she was persistent.

(2) Stories can be told in many ways. We do not need to be constrained to one particular “narrative.” For instance, just because Marie was a scientist doesn’t mean her life story must be told as a non-fiction biography. It can also be told as a super hero tale! In the same way, we get to decide what kind of story we want our life to be.

(3) We all battle antagonists throughout our life. It helps to know that even our heroes have struggled with the same challenges we face and, more importantly, that we share the same ability to overcome those challenges.

 

 Is there anything else you would like to share?

The Marie Curie Alumni Association has been instrumental in bringing this book to life. A portion of all proceeds go to help support the many research initiatives run by the MCAA. Also, they have created a wonderful 40-page Experiment Guide which can be found on my site, here, as well as a page dedicated to the My Super Science Heroes series.

Check out Karla’s website here

One last thing – stay tuned for the next book in the series: Alan Turing and the Power of Curiosity where Alan Turing faces off against his nemesis: Miss Enigma (Jan. 2021).

That sounds amazing, Karla. What a STEM-tastic series! Thanks for being on the blog. 

And for you lucky readers, Karla has offered to giveaway one signed copy of her new book. To enter, just leave a comment below or Tweet about this post and Tag @mixedUpFiles  and Karla (@KV_Writes) on Twitter. The more times you tweet, the more chances you have to win! 

 

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Mission Statement

From the Mixed-Up Files is the group blog of middle-grade authors celebrating books for middle-grade readers. For anyone with a passion for children’s literature—teachers, librarians, parents, kids, writers, industry professionals— we offer regularly updated book lists organized by unique categories, author interviews, market news, and a behind-the-scenes look at the making of a children's book from writing to publishing to promoting.

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