Music for - and with - the birds!

Today kicks off the Great Backyard Bird Count - you can find out more about that here. Meanwhile,  I can't think of a better way to celebrate than to share a book that includes birds!

Beatrice and the Nightingale 

by Patricia Newman; illus by Isabelle Follath 

48 pages; ages 6-9

‎Margaret Quinlin Books, 2026

theme: music, biography, birds

 No one knew Beatrice would make history.  

Beatrice grew up surrounded by music and learned to play instruments. When she was nine, her mother brought home a cello, and Beatrice dreamed of sharing its music with the world. And she did. Then one night when she was playing her cello in the garden, she heard a nightingale echoing the notes she played. Beatrice played some more notes, up and down the strings – and the bird followed. She wanted to share this miracle like she had shared her cello performances. And then she had an idea: broadcast her cello-nightingale duets on the radio.

What I like about this book: The language is luscious. When Patricia Newman is describing the music surrounding Beatrice, she uses similes like “Violin as lively as a butterfly.” I like how Patricia shows Beatrice figuring out how to share this miraculous musical connection with the world, and some of the logistical problems she had to overcome. And I like the back matter: a timeline of notable moments in Beatrice’s life, and a look at the early days of radio and the controversy over the recording – some people claimed it was a hoax.

Patricia has written many books about STEM topics, from picture books to YA. I wanted to know more about what drives her to write, so I asked her One Question.

Me: What is your favorite thing about writing nonfiction?

Patricia: Nonfiction has the power to change people’s minds and call them to action. I love to connect readers to true nature stories with happy endings. Our news media tends to focus its energy on negative environmental headlines, and our children are listening. The people in my books, whether present-day scientists or historical figures like Beatrice Harrison, inspire hope in readers. In Beatrice and the Nightingale, Beatrice celebrated birds through her musical gift. But she didn’t stop there. She shared her passion with the world, and by doing so, connected millions of people to the miracle of nature. I call Beatrice and the Nightingale a Teach the Hope book.

Beyond the Books:

Come up with some similes to compare the sound of a musical instrument to something in nature. Patricia Newman used “violon as lively as a butterfly” in her story.

Spend time listening to one kind of bird. Try to learn one of its songs. If you play a musical instrument (like a recorder) try to repeat the bird song on that. Then sing – or play – the bird song you learned outside. How do the birds respond? I used to play loon calls on my recorder, and the loons would sing back to me!

When you listen to birds singing, how does it make you feel? If you don’t have any songbirds around, you can listen to a nightingale here. Try to capture how the birdsong makes you feel by painting or drawing or writing poetry or moving…

Patricia is a member of the STEAM Team Books group. You can find out more about her at her at her website www.patriciamnewman.com. You can find more about recently released STEM and STEAM at www.steamteambooks.com

Today we’re joining Perfect Picture Book Friday. It’s a wonderful gathering where bloggers share great picture books at Susanna Leonard Hill's website. Review copies provided by the publishers.

Once in a Hundred Years Pi Day

Tomorrow - Saturday, March 14 - is a historic day. It's Albert Einstein's birthday for which, if he were still alive, he'd have 136 candles on his cake.

It's also Pi Day. March 14.
3.14. Get it?

But this year, Pi Day is extra special because it's 2015, which means tomorrow is 3.1415. And if you chow down on a slice of pizza at 9:26 and 53 seconds - either for breakfast or a bedtime snack - you get even more Pi: 3.141592653.

You won't see that again for another hundred years.

Celebrate Pi day! Here's How:

Have a Pi Picnic: Fill your picnic basket with Pi food. Pie, of course - apple, cherry, key lime - but there are other kinds of food that qualify. For example: pizza, pineapple, pickles, pita triangles with pinto bean dip and picante sauce, pistachios, or pierogis.

Play Pi games: like Pictionary, pitching horseshoes, pick-up sticks, or swinging at a pinata.

Run: a Pi marathon of 3.14 miles. Or 3.14 laps around the track. Unless you're still buried beneath eight feet of snow, in which case, pull out your snowshoes or skis ...

Go on a Pi hunt: Pi is tricky to find. It is the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter. In math language, Pi = c/d. To find Pi, you need a tape measure, a ruler, a pencil and paper, a calculator, and lots of round things: cans, cocoa mugs, pizza.... Measure the distance around an object (circumference) and divide that by the object's diameter (distance from one side to the other through the center). If you get anywhere close to 3.14 you're doing great.


Speak a Pi language: Pirate, pig latin, or pi-thon (you can find out how to speak like a snake here).

Write in Pi-ku or Pilish. Here's an example of pi-ku:

Preheat, roll the dough
Add sauce and cheese and garlic ~
Pie are round, not square!

To learn more about writing poetry in \Plish, go here.

Compose a piece of Pi for Fano or piccolo. Here's some inspiration.

For a real challenge, memorize Pi to the first million digits.  Or at least to the first 100 because, after all, this is a once in a hundred year event.

Today is STEM Friday. Head over to the STEM Friday blog to see what other bloggers are talking about.

Happy Pi Day    ~   3.1415

Celebrate Pi Day

Today is an excuse to play with math. After all, it’s Pi day – or at least as close as our calendar can approximate it: 3/14. 

That's because we don't have any dates that begin 3.14159265358979323846264 and just keep going and never end. That's what pi does. If you want to see the first million digits, go here.  

Pi is a perfect number to contemplate on this blog because back in 250 BC my hero, Archimedes worked out that the value of pi is greater than 223/71 but less than 22/7. He did this by approximating the area of a circle using the area of a regular polygon inscribed within the circle and the area of a polygon within which the circle was circumscribed. He started with a hexagon and worked his way up to a 96-sided polygon, getting really close to the approximation of pi.

So – what do people do on Pi day? They make pies - all kinds: apple, cherry, blueberry or pepperoni, sausage, extra cheese. Or all of them.

They calculate pi. You can do this too - just grab a pie and measure its circumference (around the edge) in centimeters. Then divide that number by the diameter and you've got pie pi.

They might make pi-dyed T-shirts, speak pi-thon or scribble poetic lines of pi-ku. Like like haiku, it's composed with three lines: 5 syllables/ 7 syllables/ 5 syllables.

            Preheat, roll the dough

            Add sauce and cheese and garlic

            Pi are round not square

Speaking of Pie and Poetry, here’s a new book to check out. The first poem, “Edgar Allan Poe’s Apple Pie” wants to know how many cuts give 10 pieces. And though there is no pi for Poe, you might want to bake an extra pie to test your answers. Regardless of what the answer key says, you can indeed use four cuts for 10 pieces – if you don’t care about divvying up your pie equally.

The poems make you think about math outside the the pie tin. I particularly like “Robert Frosts’s Boxer Shorts”, inspired by “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” and “William Carlos Williams’s Pizza” which – like certain plums – was just too inviting to resist.

Edgar Allan Poe's Pie is by children’s poet laureate and pie-eater, J. Patrick Lewis,and illustrated by Michael Slack. It's got 14 poems, each a reimagined classic poem spiced up with math, and should be on bookstore shelves by beginning of April. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (review copy from publisher).

If you’re still up for a slice of pi - and who isn't - drop by Vi Hart’s video on why “Pi is (still) wrong”

To find out what pi sounds like, check this out.