Art + Math = SYMMETRY!

The topic of symmetry was on my idea list for about a decade before I figured out how to present it in a picture book. There are so many beautiful examples to share from butterflies to quilt blocks to the Taj Mahal, it was often difficult to choose which ones to illustrate. Surprisingly few books for children about symmetry have ever been published, so this one should come in handy for young readers interested in math or art or (hopefully) both.

Booktalk:
What do horses and hub caps, boots and bugs, and snowflakes and stars have in common? How about Triceratops, a valentine, and the word “mom”? Like many animals and plants as well as objects made by people, they have symmetry. The examples of line and rotational symmetry in this book come from the natural world, artwork from many cultures, holiday symbols, machines, architecture, and more. Exploring symmetry provides a great visual way to learn about fundamental math concepts such as equality, measuring, patterns, repeats, and transformations. Once you know where to look, you’ll be seeing symmetry all around you!

Save the date! June 23, 2012 Nonfiction Book Blast 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

I’ve been asked many times what I, a white man, find so appealing about the civil rights movement. Some have even suggested that I should leave black history to African Americans and focus on my own history. My response has been, “This is my history, too.” I want to better understand what the struggle for civil rights was all about, and there is no better way to do that than by researching and writing about it.

As a former teacher who visits schools across the country, I’ve been surprised and a little amazed by how little is taught about the civil rights movement in many of the schools I visit. In those schools that do teach about this period in our history, a few—I suppose in an effort to save time because teachers already have so much on their plates—summarize the movement and in so doing sometimes end up misrepresenting it. This misrepresentation occurs at all levels from elementary school through college. It’s as if they reduce the whole movement to two names: Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rosa Parks. It’s as if to say that one day Mrs. Parks, tired after a long day at work, plopped down in a seat on that famous bus and refused to move. It’s as if to say that Dr. King organized a protest on the heels of Mrs. Parks’s arrest and conviction for violating Montgomery’s Jim Crow seating ordinance and mere days after he gathered a few of his friends to march in the streets, we arrived at this harmonious place where we are today. But those are not the facts and that is not the story. Dr. King and Mrs. Parks reputations stand upon the shoulders of workaday people—many of them barely known—who fought daily and bravely for societal change. These are the people—the workaday people—that I choose to spotlight in my books so that our younger generation will know that the civil rights movement cannot be summed up with the mention of one or two luminaries.

While researching Birmingham Sunday, the title that preceded Black and White, I was further struck by noting that three of the six victims of the violence that erupted in that Southern city in 1963 were about my age. Addie Mae, Cynthia, and Carole were each born in 1949, the year of my birth. They were only a few months older than me. This fact made me reflect on my life by comparison. Although both of my parents were born and raised in Birmingham, they’d moved shortly after their marriage. They’d protected me from the narrow views that surrounded them in their youth and provided me with a childhood amid a melting pot of races. I wanted to better understand what happened the year I turned fourteen and why my parents were so eager to leave the South behind them. It was while researching Birmingham Sunday that I realized two forces were at play in that city—David versus Goliath, Good versus Evil, Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth versus Eugene “Bull” Connor. These two men became the subjects of Black and White. So from one book sprang another.

Because I write books that rely on primary source materials—oral histories, newspaper accounts, FBI files, etc.—it is almost necessary for me to travel to the locale of my subjects to gather my information. I spent many weeks over the course of two years in Birmingham researching and writing Black & White. I became a fixture at the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute and the Birmingham Public Library’s Department of Archives and Manuscripts. I met with Reverend and Mrs. Shuttlesworth to listen to their experiences. I spoke with the son of an attorney who had prosecuted Bull Connor in the 1950s. Then a local history professor vetted my manuscript before I took it to my editor. Initially, my editor saw perhaps the forty-fifth or forty-ninth draft of the manuscript. I actually lost count, but many more revisions followed.

Librarians would likely be shocked at the condition of the books I use for reference. I highlight with a yellow marker any passages that I think might be useful to me later on. This is because I hate to take notes. When I’m finished with a book, it’s pretty much black and white and yellow all over. When I can’t acquire a text to own, then I photocopy and highlight the copy. It’s probably not the best “process,” but it’s one that works for me.

What I hope young readers will take away from my book is that we’ve arrived at this 2012 place thanks to the efforts of many foot soldiers that were out front, putting their lives and their livelihoods on the line for freedom and equality. I hope they realize that individuals making individual stands affected change, and that they, too, can be change-makers. We as a society have made great strides in race relations, but there is work still to be done.

Booktalk

In the 1950s and ‘60s, Birmingham, Alabama, erupted in violence, quickly earning the nickname “Bombingham.” At the heart of the conflict was the battle between equal rights and the ways of the Old South. Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Commissioner Eugene “Bull” Connor, key players in this struggle, stood defiantly on opposite sides: one a target of the Ku Klux Klan and the other its friend. It was the confrontation between these two powerful men that would cause immeasurable change—not only in Birmingham but throughout the country.

In Black & White: The Confrontation between Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth and Eugene “Bull” Connor, author Larry Dane Brimner captures the lives of both men and the times in which they lived. Using oral histories, FBI files, court records, archived newspapers, and other primary-source documents, he chronicles the clash between conviction and courage on one side and tradition and hatred on the other. He reveals how each man relied on the other to further his cause and how Fred knew Bull’s actions and opinions would eventually bring about equal rights for all.

Save the date! June 23, 2012 Nonfiction Book Blast 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Charles Dickens was born 200 years ago, on February 7, 1812.  Like, Lincoln and Darwin (both born three years before, on February 12, 1809) Dickens has transcended his time. Yet several recent reviewers of A Boy Called Dickens have questioned why John Hendrix and I would bother to create a fictionalized picture book based on the life of the 12-year-old Dickens, if kids aren’t going to read David Copperfield until high school.

Well, for lots of reasons, actually.  Dickens is not confined to high school reading lists, but is part of our culture. Kids may have seen Oliver, attended productions of A Christmas Carol, or even stayed up with a parent to watch superb BBC adaptations of Little Dorrit or Bleak House.

Dickens was a philanthropist and social reformer as well as a novelist. The issues of poverty and child labor Dickens addressed in Victorian London haven’t disappeared.  According to the World Literacy Foundation, 67 million children of primary school age do not attend school.

And, of course, I had personal reasons for writing about Charles Dickens: He is part of my childhood.  I was probably only ten or eleven myself when I first encountered Pip meeting the convict in that cold, foggy graveyard and the images formed from those early reading experiences have stayed with me.  Perhaps childhood is the best time to discover Dickens because, as we explore in A Boy Called Dickens, his own experiences of being a child never left him and permeated his work.

Now, a disclaimer about this book appearing as part of the Nonfiction Book Blast is definitely in order.  To purists (and I am most decidedly one) anytime an author puts words or thoughts in someone’s mouth or head that he or she didn’t say or think, that is fiction. A Boy Called Dickens is historical fiction, though I drew heavily on the famous “autobiographical fragment” Dickens left with his friend and biographer John Forster.  In the end, Dickens decided not to write an autobiography.  Instead, he transformed the stuff of his own life into fiction, and we find echoes of this fragment in David Copperfield.

Booktalk

“This is old London, on a winter morning long ago.”

In A Boy Called Dickens we step back in time to the winding, crowded streets of old London to search for one ragged child.  His name is Charles Dickens.

Who is he?  A skinny, hungry child living on his own because his father is in debtors’ prison?  Yes. A worker in Warren’s rat-infested boot blacking factory making six shillings a week?  That too. But Dickens is also a boy who loves stories and books.  He dreams of becoming an author someday.  It’s hard to keep your hopes alive when you work in a factory all day.  How does Charles do it?

Because he does make it.  And this year, in 2012, we celebrate the 200^th birthday of Charles Dickens, who grew up to become one of the greatest writers in the world.

Bottles like those that Dickens covered with paper at the Warren’s Blacking Factory.
Charles Dickens Museum, London. Photograph by Deborah Hopkinson.

Save the date! June 23, 2012 Nonfiction Book Blast 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

by Marc Aronson

All of my books start with questions, and I hope they prompt readers to ask questions of their own.

I find history history endlessly fascinating. It is the detective story that yields us as the answer.

I try to write each book with the same care I would put into a novel, but with the same respect for truth as a judge in a court of law.

Master of Deceit: J. Edgar Hoover and America in the Age of Lies is coming out with Candlewick in April 2012.

Booktalk

“King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. . . . You better take it before your filthy, abnormal, fraudulent self is bared to the nation.”

Dr. Martin Luther King received this demand in an anonymous letter in 1964. He believed that the letter was telling him to commit suicide. Who wrote this anonymous letter? The FBI. And the man behind it all was J. Edgar Hoover, the FBI’s first director. In this unsparing exploration of one of the most powerful Americans of the twentieth century, accomplished historian Marc Aronson unmasks the man behind the Bureau– his tangled family history and personal relationships; his own need for secrecy, deceit, and control; and the broad trends in American society that shaped his world. Hoover may have given America the security it wanted, but the secrets he knew gave him — and the Bureau — all the power he wanted. Using photographs, cartoons, movie posters, and FBI transcripts, Master of Deceit gives readers the necessary evidence to make their own conclusions. Here is a book about the twentieth century that blazes with questions and insights about our choices in the twenty-first.

Save the date! June 23, 2012 Nonfiction Book Blast 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

By Kathleen Krull

I have a distinct memory of watching the Nixon-Kennedy presidential debates on TV.  I was throwing up violently (stomach flu), trying to get down some plain spaghetti with butter and parmesan, and maybe that’s why the memory sticks.  But even at age 8, I understood some of what was going on and its importance.  Presidents are just fascinating, even to kids.  in my mostly Republican neighborhood, a girl my age had just threatened to beat me up if I didn’t convince my parents to vote for Nixon.  Like I could do this– I already knew my mom and dad’s votes canceled each other out.

My interest in presidential politics never waned, and as a writer I wanted to encourage that in readers ages 8 to 12, for all sorts of reasons.  I wanted to do this without too much political baggage, not even using the words “Republican” or “Democrat” (concepts I didn’t really grasp until college).  I wanted to focus on our Presidents as human beings… and make the research as delicious as possible.

In 1998, the glorious artist Kathryn Hewitt and I made Lives of the Presidents the fourth book in our ongoing “Lives of” series (also known as the Big Head books). It has just been reissued, with a jazzy new jacket, to include our two most recent Presidents.

I look forward to sharing more about the book in Anaheim– along with the first mention of what the next two books in the “Lives of” series will be.

Booktalk

The President of the United States has always been in the public eye–but do we know these men as well as we think we do? What were they like as fathers, husbands, and neighbors? (Did you know that President Obama has read all seven Harry Potter novels with his daughters?) What were they like as children? (Did you know that George W. Bush got into trouble in the fourth grade for inking sideburns, a beard, and a mustache on his face?) What did they do for fun, what were their favorite foods, and how did they take care of their hair?

Other books focus on the historical achievements of those who have occupied our country’s highest office–Lives of the Presidents looks instead at their bad habits, silly nicknames, and strange pets, examining their high points, low points, and times in between. Even the most avid presidential buff may make new discoveries, and those who think the presidents are dull are sure to find some surprises.

To jump-start your election-year activities, visit here, here, and here.

Let’s talk more in Anaheim!

Save the date! June 23, 2012 Nonfiction Book Blast 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

This book began several years ago, when we were sitting on a stone patio in Jerusalem, and my husband’s cousin told us a fantastic tale of a relative whose personal history was intertwined with the story of beet sugar. I too had sugar in my family background, since my great-grandparents left India in the 19th century to work the sugar plantations of the West Indies. We were amazed that each of us, with ancestors from different parts of the world, was touched by this one substance. It then hit us that so many lives have been changed, transformed, and brutalized by this one ingredient. And so we went on the trail of history to find out more.

The writing of the book was a melding of our mutual passions and inclinations as writers: Marc’s adamant interest in telling the ‘big’, sweeping story of sugar, and my own interest in rendering it visceral and immediate, through a novelist’s eyes. Many asked how a husband and wife could work together, and if our marriage survived! For us, writing and editing each other’s work is a part of our home life–one we keep sane by working on separate floors in our house. We are used to running up and down, swapping ideas, running pages by each other. So this seemed a natural extension of our work and life.

However, there were a few disputes: the section which opens “Welcome to Hell” involved some tussling. I, as a novelist, saw this as the second act and wanted to enter right in the middle of the action–that is the brutal, physical reality of plantation life. Marc wanted to offer the segueway of how we got to this moment of tremendous settlement in the Caribbean. I think we ultimately came up with a solution that melded both our approaches. Too, we both claim authorship for one significant and dramatic line–”His name was Christopher Columbus.” He claims he wrote that line; I claim I did. We still don’t know the truth–perhaps not so different from writing history itself?

Finally, the making of this book is also a story, one that also includes many other voices. For two summers, as we were developing the material for this book, we gave a seminar for New York City school teachers at New York University’s Center for Teaching Excellence. Their input was invaluable as we honed our ideas and presentation. As the book was moving out of the production tunnel, we created on another enhancement to the book: a music website that featured music from ‘sugar culture’—all the songs and rhythms that grew out of this experience in places such as the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Trinidad.

Booktalk

“Sugar created a hunger, a need, which swept from one corner of the world to another, bringing the most terrible misery and destruction, but then, too, the most inspiring ideas of liberty. Sugar changed the world.”

Marc Aronson and Marina Budhos each have sugar in their family histories. Those intriguing tales inspired the husband and wife team to trace the globe-spanning history of the essence of sweetness, and to seek out the voices of those who led bitter sugar lives.

As they discovered, the trail of sugar runs like bright band through world history, making unexpected and fascinating connections. Sugar leads us from religious ceremonies in India to Europe’s Middle Ages, where Christians paid high prices to Muslims for what they thought of as an exotic spice, then on to Columbus, who brought the first cane cuttings to the Americas.

In America sugar was hell, for cane – not tobacco or cotton — drove the bloody Atlantic slave trade and took countless African lives. And yet the very popularity of sugar gave abolitionists in England the one tool that could finally end slavery. Planters then brought South Asians to work in the cane fields, just as science found new ways to feed the world’s craving for sweetness. Sugar moved, murdered, and freed millions.

Using songs, oral histories, and over 80 archival illustrations — including a kind of filmstrip-in-a-book depicting all the stages of sugar work – Marc and Marina put a human face on this vast pageant. Here is the story of one product that allows us to see the grand currents of world history in new ways.

Save the date! June 23, 2012 Nonfiction Book Blast 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

by Susan Stockdale

My interest in animals and nature as well as my love of color and rhyme began in my formative years. I grew up in sunny Miami, surrounded by lush vegetation, flowers and skittering lizards. I loved visiting an attraction called the Parrot Jungle, where I was enchanted by the birds’ bright, bold colors and feathered patterns. I also spent a few childhood years in Ireland. The Irish landscape was green and sparkly, filled with cows, horses and other animals I’d never seen in tropical Miami.

Throughout these years, my mother, a published poet and author, instilled in me a love of words. She used to rhyme them together in a casual, playful way, showing me that words were joyful and to be celebrated. My favorite was “Shake and shake the ketchup bottle; none will come and then a lot’ll!”

After graduating from college as an art major, I exhibited my paintings of fantasy landscapes and animals. I also freelanced as a textile designer for the clothing industry, giving me an opportunity to express my love of pattern and color, which are still hallmarks of my artwork in children’s books.

The idea for Fabulous Fishes emerged during a snorkeling trip that my husband and I took to Belize. I was astounded by the diversity, shape and color of the fishes I saw beneath the water. My most memorable moment was when our snorkeling guide pulled back a rock to reveal a porcupine fish, looking right up at me like a big balloon.

When frightened, the fish puffs itself up so that it appears too large to fit into a predator’s mouth.

At that moment, I knew I wanted to create a book about the amazing world of underwater creatures. I returned from our trip, sat down at my computer and began writing:

“Round fish, clownfish,

fish that like to hide.

Striped fish,

spiked fish,

fish that leap and glide.”

I spoke the words out loud as I wrote them to see how they sounded. Once I completed my draft, I headed to the library to begin my research. I had invented all of my lines with no certainty that these fishes actually existed. (They did!) I vetted my information with ichthyologists at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and the Shedd Aquarium.

Then I set out to create the images for my book dummy. Reference photographs helped me determine which characteristics I wanted to dramatize in each animal, whether it was the bold pattern on a blue-spotted stingray or the brilliant pink stripe on a rainbow trout. I conferred with my fish experts again to insure the visual accuracy of my images. I love the challenge of interpreting the unique quality of each animal in my own style while staying true to its anatomy – an approach I consider stylized realism. As with all my picture book images, I played visually with every color, shape and pattern until my eye was satisfied.

I created many sketches, sometimes as many as 20, before arriving at the image I wanted to illustrate for each fish. Once I selected a final image, I revised its sketch into a detailed drawing and then traced it onto paper. Then the painting began. For each color, I applied three or more layers of acrylic paint, giving the images a flat, almost silkscreen-like appearance. To produce such fine detail in my work, I used small brushes and a very steady hand.

People often ask me why I create books exclusively about animals. To me, they are the most beautiful, elegant and outrageous of subjects, and I love to paint them. Their quirky individuality provides me with the perfect opportunity to express my passion for color, pattern, and design. To learn more about my books and me, visit my website at www.susanstockdale.com.

Booktalk:

Fabulous Fishes come in all sorts of interesting shapes, sizes, and colors – and many of them can do amazing things as well. Can you imagine:

Fish that leap and glide? Fish that crawl on land? Fish that flash lights?

They’re all real!

In Fabulous Fishes, author-illustrator Susan Stockdale introduces young readers to both exotic and familiar fishes in simple, rhyming text. The bright bold colors and crisp, clear lines of Stockdale’s fishes, depicted in their natural habitats, can’t help but grab your attention. An afterword identifies each animal and tells a little bit about it and where it lives.

Save the date! June 23, 2012 Nonfiction Book Blast 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

Happy New Year, everyone! It’s time to introduce the Nonfiction Book Blast panel for 2012…

• Marc Aronson
• Larry Dane Brimner
• Marina Budhos
• Tom Greve
• Deborah Hopkinson
• Kathleen Krull
• Loreen Leedy
• Susan Goldman Rubin
• Seymour Simon
• Susan Stockdale
• Anastasia Suen
• Ginger Wadsworth

Beginning next Monday, these twelve nonfiction authors will be sharing booktalks and activities for your classroom and library. On Nonfiction Monday through the winter and the spring, they will take you behind the scenes of their new books. Each author will share twice, so this series will last from January 9th to June 18th. On the first day of summer, the big event arrives…

The American Library Association will hold its 2012 Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA from June 21–26. I’m happy to say that ALSC has invited Nonfiction Book Blast: Booktalks and Activities for Your Library to be on the program again this year!

Save the date! June 23, 2012 Nonfiction Book Blast 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

In 2012, the American Library Association will hold its 2012 Annual Conference in Anaheim, CA from June 21–26. I’m happy to say that ALSC has invited Nonfiction Book Blast: Booktalks and Activities for Your Library to be on the program! We’ll be speaking on Saturday, June 23, from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m.

We’ll be working behind the scenes for the rest of 2011. The blog will be active again after the ALA 2012 Midwinter Meeting in Dallas, January 20–24, 2012.

~Anastasia Suen
Nonfiction Book Blast moderator

What a Sunday morning it was! I want to give a public thank you to everyone on my Nonfiction Book Blast: Booktalks and Activities for Your Library panel for going above and beyond:

• April Pulley Sayre
• Carla Killough McClafferty
• Carla Mooney
• Christine Taylor-Butler
• Darcy Pattison
• Deborah Heiligman
• Kelly Milner Halls
• Loree Griffin Burns
• Shirley Duke

The talks flowed seamlessly from one to the other. As one librarian said to Deborah Heiligman, “It was so wonderful to see all those really smart women at the front of a room!”

Our program is over but that doesn’t mean you can’t see these really smart women again. Click on their names above to visit their webpages and invite them to come to your library for a program. Download a copy of our 60 page Nonfiction Book Blast booktalks and activities booklet and use it in your library.

We all want to give BIG thank you to ALSC for making this program possible. Thank you, thank you, thank you all!

~Anastasia Suen
Nonfiction Book Blast moderator