Inviting Curiosity, Inciting Wonder, by Kimberly Ridley

In the middle of a packed school assembly for my debut picture book The Secret Pool, a second-grader asked a question I couldn’t answer.

“Why are the yellow-spotted salamander’s spots yellow?”

I froze. I didn’t have a clue, despite the many hours of research I’d done on vernal pools and the salamanders and other animals who depend on them. The question hadn’t occurred to me. 

The second grader and her 400-plus schoolmates waited for an answer. I stared at the sequined rainbow glittering over a blue unicorn on her t-shirt, glanced at the gymnasium clock.

“I…don’t…know,” I stammered.

Silence.

But in that pause, mercifully, a lightbulb went off. 

“Let’s see if we can find out.” I said. 

When we gathered at the end of the day to celebrate the creative nonfiction stories the kids had written in my workshops, they were exuberant. Not only about what they had accomplished in their writing, but that they had found the answer to the second grader’s question. The salamander’s spots are yellow to warn predators such as raccoons that they’re poisonous. When a predator attacks, the yellow-spotted salamander oozes a bitter toxin from glands in its skin.  

Who knew? 

In the hundreds of school programs I’ve done with my children’s books since, I always write down kids’ questions on a big flip chart if I don’t know the answers, and we follow up later in the day. I also tell them that scientists might not yet have discovered the answers to their questions. This thrills them.   

As the author of nonfiction science and nature books for children (and their grown-ups) I think this is my most important job: to invite curiosity and incite wonder about the astonishing world right outside our door. It’s also my passion.

All of my books, including my latest, The Secret Stream arise from my own curiosity, often stemming from questions I’ve carried since I was a kid myself. Where does my favorite brook begin and end? What are these small, wriggly creatures clinging to the rocks underwater, and how do they not wash away in the current? Do fish live in here, and whose paw prints are these in the mud? 

As for wonder, I stumble upon it at every turn as I observe, interview scientists, and read mountains of material for each book. Researching The Secret Stream, I fell in love with our smallest waterways all over again—not to mention the extraordinary creatures who inhabit them. For example, I’ve become smitten with caddisfly larvae, who protect themselves from fish and other predators by building exquisite “cases” around their bodies with pebbles and grit or plant materials stuck together with their remarkable silk.   

Again, who knew?

We walk or drive by these amazing beings and places every day, often without a clue. But this is where wonder resides. All around us. Every day we have abundant opportunities to reconnect our kids and ourselves with the rest of the teeming, surprising and still vibrant world around us. That’s why I want to invite curiosity and incite wonder with my books and school programs. 

When I recently told a friend about my mission, however, he was skeptical.

“You can’t incite wonder,” he said. “Wonder is soft and childlike.”  

I beg to differ. To me, wonder is a birthright and a survival skill. There’s nothing soft about it. Wonder is clear-eyed, wild, and necessary. Which brings me to the words of Rachel Carson, my heroine since I learned as a kid that she once summered in my home state of Maine. 

photo: Jean Fogelberg Photography

Carson wished for every child to be granted at birth “a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life, as an unfailing antidote against boredom and disenchantments of later years, the sterile preoccupation with things that are artificial, the alienation from the sources of our strength.”

At the end of my school programs, I ask students if they want to help the wild places and creatures in their communities. Hands fly up, a resounding “yes.” And so I invite them to tell some-one at home at least one cool thing they’ve learned in our time together. This sharing, I tell them, will ripple out and inspire other people to learn about and together care for their patch of the planet.

This is how we incite wonder. This is how we cherish the intricate, fragile, and mysterious web of life that connects and sustains us all, every living being. This is a way to live in joy.

Kimberly Ridley is a science writer, essayist, editor, and children’s book author who writes about nature, science, health, and the environment. I reviewed her newest book, The Secret Stream here. You can find my review of her first picture book, The Secret Pool here, and my review of  Extreme Survivors, Animals the Time Forgot here. To learn more about Kimberly Ridley and her books, check out her website at www.kimberlyridley.org.

Museums are More Than Collections

 What do you imagine when you hear the word "museum?" Walls covered with paintings? Dinosaur skeletons? Ancient agricultural implements?

Sure, museums are a repository of the stuff of our natural - and cultural - world. But they are way more that just places where researchers can examine collections.

Museums can inspire and exercise your creative mind. They are a place where you can learn something new. And they even provide opportunities for socializing. Not that you're going to engage strangers in conversation (though you can if you desire), but when you go with family and friends, a museum visit offers jumping off points for discussion. And, according to some research, going to a museum makes you happy.

 

At least it makes me happy because, let's just face it: museums are fun! Which is why, a couple weeks ago, I announced to all gathered at the breakfast table that we were headed up to the Museum of the Earth in Ithaca, New York. It's filled with fossils and all things paleontological - but right now, and through the end of the year, they are featuring a fantastic exhibit about insects. And you KNOW I just LOVE insects!

 

 

 

The cool thing about insects is that there are so many kinds of them. An amazing diversity of bugs from beetles to butterflies, wasps to walking sticks, and everything in between. 

Not only is there great variation between species, but also within species. Take paper wasps, for example. Their size can vary depending on where they live. Their markings can vary, too - which is why they have learned to recognize individual faces. Cool, right? Check out this paper by Miller et.al. on cognition in Polistes fuscatus. Looking at the collection of pinned Polistes I could not tell them apart ... But I digress.

Then there is the diversity of adaptations to avoid being eaten. Some bugs disguise themselves as plant parts: twigs, thorns, leaves. Some use color to blend in with their surroundings, while others use design and color - such as eyespots - to frighten off potential predators.

Some bugs mimic scarier insects. Think of all those yellow-and-black flies and beetles that look like bees and wasps. Who wants to catch them!

And then there are the beetles and moths and caterpillars that pretend to be poop. Seriously - Best. Disguise. Ever!

And then there are the hands-on things to do: videos to watch, recordings of insect sounds, specimens to examine under magnification, a kid's corner with mazes and coloring sheets and books to read ...

And this is just one small part of the museum! Yes, I could spend an hour just chilling with the bugs - but there are fossils to find, extinction events to explore, and a very cute blue-legged hermit crab climbing a chunk of coral in the salt water tank.

Did my morning at the museum inspire my creative mind? Absolutely. 

Did I learn something new? Yes!

Did we talk about the exhibits later on? How could we not!

Six-Legged Science will be on display through December 2022. You can find out more about it at www.museumoftheearth.org/six-legged-science

 You can find out more about the role of museum collections in biodiversity conservation at this post, www.priweb.org/blog-post/insects-under-threat-the-role-of-natural-history-collections-in-biodiversity-conservation

And you can probably find me checking out the insects in and around my garden this fall, at least until it gets too cold for them.

Writing Begins with a Question ~ by Roberta Gibson

What does it take to write STEAM books for children?

First, it takes curiosity. 

Almost every day, a question pops into my head. Can you grow the seeds inside a kiwi fruit you buy in the grocery store? Do ant larvae make sounds to call to the workers inside the dark nest? What causes iridescent clouds?

Then it takes effort.

Many times other people have had the same question and the answer is a mouse click or trip to the library away. For example, iridescent clouds — which glow with pastel colors like the surface of a soap bubble —show up when clouds are full of small, uniform ice crystals or water drops that diffract light waves. 

eventually one may sprout!

Sometimes the answers aren’t clear, but the questions are too expensive or time consuming to investigate. I recently found a scientific article about Myrmica ant pupae that can make noise by stridulating. At this moment, however, I’m not in the position to test whether the larvae different kinds of ants can stridulate. Perhaps someday I’ll interest an expert in this question. 

The lucky few are questions that beg for an experiment or test. If you are curious about kiwi seeds, save some seeds from a kiwi fruit and try to germinate them. If that doesn’t work out, get some commercial seeds —for a control to show that your method works— and design an experiment. 

I wondered recently what happens when you drop bird feathers one by one from the second floor. Do tail feathers sail differently from wing feathers than soft down feathers? Turns out that wing feathers tend to helicopter. Cool!

I absolutely love this hands-on fiddling aspect of STEAM and youngsters do, too.  

Now here’s the secret sauce:  keep a journal. 

Every time you have an idea, or do an experiment, write it down. Draw illustrations to help you remember what you did and what happened, plus take tons and tons of photographs. 

When the question or idea leads to more and more questions, and if the topic just won’t go away, then the journal entries may grow into a book. 

 

Nothing is better than that.

 

Thank you for joining us today, Roberta.  Last year I reviewed Roberta's picture book, How to Build an Insect. We also got together to chat about bugs over on the GROG Blog. You can visit  Roberta's website here and make sure to drop by her wonderful blog, Growing with Science.