A Warm Winter Tail - Blog Tour

Welcome to day 3 of the “Warm Winter Tail” blog tour. Today: an interview with author Carrie Pearson.

It’s been rainy and gray here in upstate NY and on days like this I really wish I had a warm fuzzy tail I could wrap around me. This is a great book for grabbing a cup of hot cocoa, snuggling up in quilt and reading aloud to your kids. Even the illustrations will warm you.

A Warm Winter’s Tail

By Carrie A Pearson

Illus. by Christina Wald

32 pages; ages 3-8

2012 Sylvan Dell

Carrie: Yes, Christina Wald is an amazing artist. Although she lives in Ohio, the illustrations look like they were drawn in my backyard in upper Michigan!

Archimedes: I read somewhere that this book was inspired by a deer you saw while out walking in your woods.

Carrie: Yes, I was walking through the woods in the middle of winter when I locked eyes with that deer. I’ve seen hundreds of deer in the woods over my lifetime, but on this day I saw curiosity, not fear, in his eyes. He stared at me for the longest time, and when I reflected on what I was wearing (hat, mittens, fleece scarf – it was freezing cold!), I decided he must think me a most strange animal. When he leaped away, I started breathing again and my imagination began to work. I could envision a baby deer asking its mama how people stay warm. As soon as I returned home and peeled off my layers, I sat down and began to type on my keyboard.

nature walk inspires book!

Archimedes: The book is written from an animal’s point of view.

Carrie: Yes, my background is in early childhood, and I’ve parented three amazing girls … so it seemed natural to believe that a baby animal would view the world from its perspective, just as a human child does. I didn’t spend too much time thinking about dialog from the animal’s point of view; I was more concerned about getting the science right.  And making sure the meter and lyrical structure fit the story. Over time the story evolved from a cozy bedtime read to a nature story.

Archimedes: Talk about the sort of research you did for the story.

Carrie:  I started with what I knew from observing animals in nature and information gleaned over years of reading. Then I listed several animals I wanted to learn more about and began reading articles and books. Eventually I chose one animal to represent each adaptation strategy: foxes have a tail that they use like a blanket.

Archimedes: Writing a book is only the beginning… can you talk about the process of getting your book from idea to print?

Carrie: I fiddled with the first draft from February 2008 to October 2008….and then submitted it for a “first pages” review at a writing conference. Even with good reviews I knew I had more work to do; I revised many times and started sending it the following year (fall 2009). Sylvan Dell picked it up in May of 2011.

Archimedes: As a homeschooling parent I always loved it when books included “back matter” - additional information, resources, things to do.

Carrie: Because of my background in education and teaching experience, I contributed quite a bit of material for the back pages. I thought about what I would like to have at my fingertips as a teacher, and a parent, who wants to extend the book into other directions. Editor Donna German created a lot as well; it was definitely a team approach. In fact, one of things that drew me to Sylvan Dell is their emphasis on educational fiction. They were ahead of their time in this respect.

Remember to post your comments at each stop on the blog tour – and get entered for an autographed copy of the book and a plush animal (one featured in the book). Tomorrow Tiffany hosts stop #4 over at Tif Talks Books.And you can find the entire blog tour schedule at Carrie's site.

Tiny Creepy Critters - Read All About 'Em

A couple weeks ago I was digging up potatoes and found lots of worms. One was so big I thought at first it was a skinny snake! As noted a couple weeks ago, worms are good guys in the garden: they help aerate the soil and break down plant material so it decomposes.

Worms aren't the only garden soil dwellers that help turn dead leaves into nutrients for plants. There's a whole bunch of "yard monsters" that are too small to see. Trillions of them. All at work in your yard right now - at least according to Karen Leet. She would know; she wrote an entire book about them.

There are fungi and bacteria, spider mites and compost critters. She's even got a chapter titled, "poop, pets, and pests"! While some of these too-small-to-see creatures are helpful, others are downright dangerous, disease-causing dirt-dwellers.

Invisible creatures don't just lurk in your yard - they hang out in your home, too. Jennifer Swanson writes about uninvited guests you might find in your kitchen or bathroom, in your bedroom and even living in your carpets. From bread mold to carpet beetles, from fleas to bed bugs she'll have you re-thinking your aversion to vacuuming - not to mention scratching your ankles.

These two books are part of Capstone's new "Tiny Creepy Creature" series. Two other books, Food Intruders and Body Bugs round out the set. They're written with third and fourth-graders in mind, but at a level that will interest older children. Each book manages to cram a lot of useful info and close-up photos into 32 pages.

Check out other STEM Friday resources here.   Review copies provided by the publisher.

Bees Don't Need Maps!

I love maps. I may even be a "maphead" - and in fact am reading a book by that very title by Ken Jennings (Maphead: Charting the Wide, Weird World of Geography Wonks). Bees, apparently, don't need maps - though they do use landmarks. Instead, they do some back-of-the-antennae figuring that optimizes their routes. You can read about it here.