Archive for the ‘building my website’ Category

I have been planning this post for some time, but several things (scanner down, computer down) conspired to keep it from going up until now. And I’m glad. Earlier today, I learned that Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator had been named a Theodor Seuss Geisel Honor Book by the American Library Association. The award recognizes authors and illustrators of beginning readers “for their literary and artistic achievements that demonstrate creativity and imagination to engage children in reading.” Here’s the committee’s description of Wolfsnail: “An exciting nonfiction look at the carnivorous wolfsnail trapping and devouring its victim, this science book uses bold block type against a white background to enhance the ease of reading. The magnified, detailed photographs and playful, informative text will amaze and attract readers.”

The above picture shows a young reader, named Jackson S., who read Wolfsnail in the first months after it was published. He sent me my first (and only) fan letter. I will quote from it here, keeping his invented spellings:  “I like your book because the plot helps me learn about woulfsnails in a fun way! Are you going to write any more books? Maybe you could write about spiders or lizards. I would prefer lizards.” He also told me about the wolfsnail he and his older brother found in their yard. “I let go my wolfsnail because I was afraid it was goining to die. It ate about one snail evre two days. I got its food off our brick wall! It staid in its shell about an hour and then it would come out and search for food. We named it wolfy!”

I telephoned my editor, Andy Boyles, when I heard the award news and he suggested one of the reasons I won was the fact that I take children seriously. I do. The chair of the Geisel committee, Joan Atkinson, told me the panel liked the fact that the book had a story arc, that it included some suspense. Though some of the language seemed at first glance a little more advanced than in your typical beginning reader (“toothy tongue”), it was appropriate to the story and well supported by the photographs. The above photograph shows me signing my book for a beginning reader who at age four negotiated “toothy tongue” and the rest of the text just fine. (This photo was taken at the 2008 Children’s Book Festival in Hattiesburg. See previous post.) I am so glad these kids are diving into books like Wolfsnail and discovering the wonderful world of reading and the joys of nature.

Update I visited St. Therese Catholic School in the fall and the librarian wrote a tribute post today. I feel so honored.

Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator appears on three new lists: a national magazine’s holiday gift guide, a blogging librarian’s best new nonfiction list, and a children’s literature consultant’s best books of the decade list. I am excited to see Wolfsnail make these lists.

Check out Natural History Magazine’s Gifts for Budding Scientists. Diana Lutz, a freelance science writer and editor, compiled the list. She writes: “Told in larger-than-life photographs, the story has a nice narrative arc and more drama than you might expect. Young children will warm to the snail, which has comical handlebar mustaches (mouthpiece extensions that help it track prey), and shares their predicament of being very small in a big world.” Other books Lutz recommends for young readers are: Pale Male: Citizen Hawk of New York City and Living Sunlight: How Plants Bring the Earth to Life.

Gwen Vanderhage is a librarian who blogs at Your Friendly Librarian. She’s put together a list of best new nonfiction books “for those sometimes reluctant readers who are really intrigued with facts and amazing nature photos.” Wolfsnail is in company with Trout Are Made of Trees (April Pulley Sayre), The Black Book of Colors (Menena Cottin), Wild Tracks (Jim Arnosky), and Nic Bishop’s Frogs.

Kathleen Baxter, a children’s literature consultant, included Wolfsnail on her best books of the decade list. This is a list she keeps updated for a popular workshop she presents for librarians and teachers. As she notes, “Creating a list like this for a fairly brief talk is almost absurd!  Estimates of the number of new books published in the U.S.A. every year range from 15,000—29,000, so no wonder we all feel behind.  I thus selected a healthy dose of fine 2008 titles and some that I doubt everyone knows from other years.”

I found the list, which includes 108 books, on the website of the Central Massachusetts Regional Library System. Baxter notes that lesson plans and activities are available online for many of the books on the list. Click here to see a teacher’s guide for Wolfsnail.

I’ve written before about creating educational materials that can be used with Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator.  I thought some of you might be interested in the process. Many writers of children’s books come from among the ranks of teachers and librarians; they certainly know how to create educational materials. Those of us who came to this business via other paths have some things to learn.

Creating the coloring page was easy — Richard had already done a nice (electronic) pen drawing of a snail and I used Adobe’s Photoshop, InDesign, and Acrobat to size it right and to add labels for the parts. During some school visits, I project the coloring page with labeled parts while the students color and label the parts on their coloring pages.

The second set of educational materials was different. I created three different sets of classroom activities: Introduction to Snails, Using Photographs to Prompt Story Writing, and Telling Stories Through Photographs: Write Your Own Caption Activity.

The first step in the process was to look at the curriculum. I chose to look at Mississippi’s since, at least initially, most of my visits will be close to home. In most states, the k-12 curriculum is available online. I reviewed the objectives in science, language arts, and visual arts.

Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator meets science curriculum objectives in all elementary grades, but it is a particularly good match in first and second grades when students learn to identify living things that are indigenous to Mississippi, discover that plants are a food source for living organisms, and begin learning about the food chain.

For example, here are the relevant competencies and objectives for first grade:

1. Explore the basic patterns of living systems. (L)
c. Observe and sequence the life cycles of plants, insects, and animals.

2. Investigate the diversity of living things. (L, P)
a. Classify plants and animals according to external features (scales, feathers, fur, etc.).
b. Identify plants and animals indigenous to Mississippi.
c. Compare plants and animals in Mississippi with those found in the jungle, desert and arctic regions.

Introduction to Snails outlines some activities students can do with snails in the classroom to meet these teaching objectives.

Using Photographs to Prompt Story Writing and Telling Stories Through Photographs: Write Your Own Caption Activity are activities that address competencies in language arts. In particular,

2. The student will apply strategies and skills to comprehend, respond to, interpret, or evaluate a variety of texts of increasing length, difficulty, and complexity.

For the third set of educational materials, I set up an account with an online puzzle creator to create a crossword puzzle and two word searches: one for first graders and one for third graders.

All of these are available as downloadable pdfs on my website. Click on About Sarah and click on Educational Materials.

I hope you will let me know what you think about these educational materials — especially you teachers and moms out there who decide to use them with your students or children.

Richard and I were asked to record short audio webcasts for the TeachingBooks.net author name pronunciation guide. Click Sarah and Richard to listen.

I am going to look into getting some of the educational materials I’ve created for Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator listed with their book guides. I’ll keep you posted when I find out how that works.

Update:

Dankia Morphew-Tarbuck, the Web 2.0 Content Producer, for TeachingBooks.net got in touch with me about the educational materials. I’ll be submitting what I’ve created to the TeachingBooks.net Information Manager for review. I’ll let you know what happens.

I learned recently that the illustrators gallery show I participated in earlier this year has been chosen to be a traveling exhibit through the Southern Arts Federation. Elizabeth Dulemba, the illustrator coordinator for the Southern Breeze region of SCBWI, put the show together and shepherded it through the SAF selection process.

This is a new experience for me — never having had my photographs shown in a gallery setting before. I am learning about giclee prints, about framing, about procuring prints for sale along with the exhibit, etc. I have also put together a 10-page packet of educational materials for use with Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator. All the time I spent working alongside teachers at Davis Magnet School sure came in handy as I developed activities to meet language arts, visual arts, and science curriculum objectives. I’ll be posting the new materials to my website soon.

The exhibit will tour for two years and we have been told to expect opportunities to talk about our work and sell our books. I am grateful to Elizabeth (and to Liz Conrad who helped hang the original show) for her work on this project. Elizabeth continues to act as our organizer and general adviser.

We approached this latest WordPress update with a little fear and trepidation because last time we updated, we lost all previous posts and I had to manually re-enter them. This update went much more smoothly — though there was about an hour in there where I thought we would be down for an undetermined length of time. Richard persevered and prevailed!

Once again, I invite you to visit our new and improved website. Since I last blogged about it, we’ve posted reviews for Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator and filled in the page about my work helping students create their own books. Find the “Creating With Children” page under the About Sarah tab.

Richard and I have been putting some time into updating my website. You can now listen to my Creature Comforts radio appearance through my website — either in streaming audio or as a podcast. Click on the Books and Stories tab and then click on the line below the book’s cover that offers more.

We’ve also added the educational materials I’ve developed in the last few months as I’ve taken Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator around to bookstores, libraries, and schools. You can find these in the About Sarah section. We’ll be adding more in the next few weeks so stop by from time to time to see the new features.

My uncle called last night to tell me he saw a blurb about Wolfsnail in Science News. He read it to me and promised to send it in the mail. I never expected the book to get reviewed much. My editor called a week or so back and said that Kirkus Reviews had given us a positive review and I just saw on the Boyds Mills‘ website that Booklist reviewer Hazel Rochman liked it, too. Wow! I am very excited.

Richard is updating the website to include excerpts from the reviews.

Sorry for the long absence. We’ve been working behind the scenes to re-design the blog and to figure out how to re-do the entries we lost when we updated the WordPress software. And, honestly, I was a bit deflated by the hugeness of the task. In the meantime, we also have added a computer so I am working on a different machine (not the new one; that went to the techie in the family). It’s good to be back at the blog.

This is a photograph of Nathan and Douglas from 2001, the year that Nathan found the first wolfsnails in our yard. In the photo, he’s three and Douglas is two. Douglas is holding his earthworms. The marigolds in the background are Nathan’s. He loved to quote the line from Sarah Stewart’s The Gardener, “We gardeners never retire.”

I dug this up because I am working on a slide show for my website to tell the story behind, “Nathan’s Pet Snails,” and Wolfsnail: A Backyard Predator. For a good visual take on how much time has passed, I’m posting a recent photo of Nathan.

Another image from the early work file. This photograph won third (or honorable mention) in a PTA art contest, titled “What Makes Me Smile.” I took it as a 10th grader when my team (the Port Gibson High School Lady Waves) won the district finals. My sister Emilye is #14. We lost to the state champs that year (1982), but it was a great run. This was taken in the dressing room at Mendenhall. We beat Madison-Ridgeland. Francene (front right) and Emilye went on to play college ball at Macalester and this photograph appeared in an alumni magazine article (spring 2003) about women in sports.