This week on the Nonfiction Book Blast blog: Deborah Heiligman on street lamps and horse poop. (I kid you not.)
Nonfiction writers, don’t miss her wise words!
Nonfiction Book Blast
I’m excited to be part of a panel of nonfiction writers sharing books with librarians at the American Library Association annual conference in New Orleans this summer. To give everyone a taste of ourselves and our books, we’ve started blogging together over at Nonfiction Book Blast .
This week’s featured author is the weird and wonderful Kelly Milner Halls.
Last week’s featured author was the multi-talented Shirley Duke, who is hard at work on a video trailer for our panel. (More on that soon. And, yes, I’m a week late getting this post up; I’ve been doing my taxes!)
The ladies of Nonfiction Book Blast will be blogging each week on Nonfiction Monday and I’ll be linking the posts here each week. Stay tuned.
Some Buzz in the Mailbox
On Saturday, our mailman delivered a package of vibrant, buzzy Thank You cards from students at Cluny School in Rhode Island. The stupendous weather, garlic plants bursting through straw mulch in the garden, long days outdoors, the Red Sox taking a couple from the Yankees, and those sweet cards made for a happy, happy weekend. Here are just a few of the smiles sent my way …
“You have inspired me to try and get over my fear of sharks.”
“I also learned what I should do if I run into a bee hive: calm down and get some smoke.”
“”If someone came up to us asking about bees, we could give them something to listen to.”
“The Hive Detectives is a very clever name.”
“Your scarf was so beautiful.”
“Come visit us again soon!”
Thank you, Cluny kids. I hope I can visit you again soon. In the meanwhile, Happy Spring to each and every one of you!
The Bears and the Bees
© Loree Griffin Burns
The White Oak Land Conservation Society‘s Wildlife Saturdays programming this spring has been dubbed The Bears and the Bees. On March 19, Laura Hajduk, Black Bear Project Leader for the Division of Fisheries and Wildlife, talked about her work with black bears here in Massachusetts. And this week, I’ll be giving a family presentation on honeybees.
Yes, admission is free.
Yes, you can buy local Worcester county honey at the door.
Come one, come all!
Wildlife Saturdays: Honeybees
A Family Presentation by Loree Griffin Burns
Satuday, April 2, 2011 at 11 am
Holden Senior Center
1130 Main Street
Holden, MA
Two for Poetry Friday
On Fridays, a cadre of bloggers in the kidlit world focus their posts on poetry. (A roundup of today’s explorations can be found here.) I don’t participate often, but this week I was inspired by these two poems from slam artist Taylor Mali. Watch, and enjoy:
“What Teachers Make” by Taylor Mali
“Totally, Like, Whatever, You Know?” by Taylor Mali, typography by Ronnie Bruce
Hello! How’ve you been?
© Benjamin Griffin Burns
How I wish I could find more time to blog! I’ve had some great adventures over the past few weeks, adventures that have taken me from Rhode Island to Massachusetts to California and back home again. I’ve met book-loving science teachers, chatted with science-loving librarians, spent time with writers just starting out, and talked shop with colleagues I admire a great deal. I even had dinner with one of my literary heroes.
(Yes, I managed to control my fan-girl tendencies. Sort of. Mostly.)
I’ve also been working on a book with my kids–not for publication, but for fun. We’ve been organizing years of wildlife images collected on our property, and the result is a pretty amazing record of the creatures that live here with us … all identified and organized by kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.
(Yep. Geeky. And truly interesting. We’ve seen black bears and hummingbird clearwing moths and a whole lot of critters in between. Right here in our barely-an-acre suburban backyard. And now, if you come over for a visit, we can show them to you.)
And then there is my upcoming book, which is starting to look like an actual book and my goodness I cannot wait to share it with you. And I’m about to begin intensive field research for an even newer project, the subject of which thrills and scares me. And I’ve got this pile of amazing books I’ve read recently and want to sing about on this blog. And … and … and …
Deep. Breath.
I think I’ll start with this: Hello! How’ve you been? Is spring springing where you live? Because the air is warm and the sun is shining here in New England, and I am heading outside with my camera to breathe it all in, and to see if I can find the elusive pileated woodpecker that has been hanging around this winter. How about you? Have you been outside lately? Seen anything wonderful? Do tell.
And check back soon for details on, well, everything else.
NSTA 2011
I’m heading to the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) annual conference … in San Francisco, baby! I’m excited at the prospect of all those science teachers to mingle with and learn from. Sunshine and warmth? Total bonuses.
At the conference, I’ll join Professors Susannah Richards and Jeanelle Day, and my colleague Alexandra Siy, to talk about practicing science in childhood, in the field, in books, and in the classroom. Ours promises to be a lively and informative discussion; please join us if you are at the conference. Here are the details:
Buzzing About Science:
Behind the Scenes with Scientific Trade Books that Invite Inquiry
Thursday, March 10, 2011
3:30pm-4:30pm
Hilton San Francisco, Union Square
Golden Gate Room 8
My Friend Caleb
Photo courtesy Tracy Gandy
The 2011 March Into Reading festival weekend was stupendous. In addition to talking trash and writing with students at Pennfield School, tools with students at St. Michael’s School, and bees with students at Cluny School, I got to hang out with book lovers of all ages, including my new friend Caleb. He is six, and he gave me the handmade honey bee you see in the picture up there. How cute is that bee? How cute is that boy?
Thank you, Caleb.
And thank you to author escort extraordinaire Tracy Gandy, conference organizer Kitty Rok (and her many, many co-organizers), booksellers Judy Crosby and Jenny Williams, photographers Gloria and Richard Schmidt, Julie the Announcer (!), all my author and illustrator colleagues, and every single person who wandered through Saturday’s Enchanted Garden of Books at Salve Regina University. You all sure know how to throw a book party!
© Gloria Schmidt
Springing
© Benjamin Griffin Burns
The bright side of all this snow on the ground in central Massachusetts is the ease with which one can, say, track a porcupine in the woods. The prickly fellow in the photo above, for example, lives behind our house, and we find him most afternoons perched thirty feet above the melting slush, chewing bark and branches in the sun. Seeing him reassures me that spring is on the way, although I don’t believe porcupines are generally considered harbingers of spring. (February in New England can make one see spring everywhere. This I know for sure.)
Other (equally dubious?) signs of spring ’round here include a sudden burst of online activity related to THE HIVE DETECTIVES:
I was a guest blogger at Cynsations yesterday; you can read my post and join the conversation about nonfiction genres here.
Mary Quattlebaum at Washington Parent compiled a nice list of books to help us all welcome the growing season and warmer weather, and she included THE HIVE DETECTIVES. You can her full list of titles here.
And Ricklibrarian posted this nice review at his blog.
I’m heading south for Newport’s March Into Reading literacy festival this weekend. I’m betting I’ll see actual grass down there. And maybe crocuses?
Marching in to Reading …. Again
© 2008 MIR photos courtesy Gloria Schmidt and Jenny Williams
Back in 2008, I attended the March Into Reading literacy festival at Salve Regina University in Newport, Rhode Island. It was one of my first major speaking events, and I was moved by students and starstruck by colleagues at every turn, as evidenced in my excessive blogging during and after the event. (See, for example, this, and this, and this, and this.) At the very end of my very last March Into Reading blog post (yes, there is one more here), I mentioned how much I’d like to go back to Newport one day. And guess what? This week, I’m going back.
Hooray!
I’ll be visiting with students in Newport area schools all day on Friday, and on Saturday I’ll join authors Melissa Stewart, Wendy Watson, Clara Silverstein, Jane Bregoli, and Laura Backman at one kickin’ book festival. The O’Hare Academic Center on the campus of Salve Regina University will become an Enchanted Garden of Books from 9:30am until 1:00pm, with children’s discovery rooms, author and illustrator workshops, book sales and signings, and even a petting zoo. You’ll find a complete schedule of workshops and events at the official event webpage.
Hope to see you in Rhode Island!