TRACKING TRASH fans will be interested to know that Captain Charles Moore has returned to the Garbage Patch … and this time he is sharing the experience with the world via his blog.
And, hey, if you don’t know who Captain Moore is, READ THE BOOK!
Fairwinds to Captain Moore and the entire crew of the Ocean Research Vessel (ORV) Alguita…
The winners of the Siemens Competition in Math, Science, and Technology were announced recently, and for the first time in the history of the competition, girls took the top honors. You can read all about it in this New York Times article*.
The winner in the individual category, sixteen-year-old Isha Himani Jain, studied bone growth in zebra fish and has won a $100,000.00 scholarship for her work. In the team competition, Janelle Schlossberger and Amanda Marinoff, both seventeen, split a $100,000.00 scholarship for creating a molecule that helps block the reproduction of a drug-resistant bacteria. Check out these descriptions of the research conducted by all ten high school finalists. Impressive stuff!
I first read about this story in a recent issue of NSTA Express, an online newsletter of the National Science Teachers Association, in an article titled: “Apparently Girls Can Do Science”.
Well, duh.
*Note: FREE registration required to access the New York Times article.
Thursday!? How can it be Thursday?
I have books to blog about–a little Sherman Alexie, a not-so-little J.R.R. Tolkien, lots of holiday favorites we re-read every year–and I really, really want to tell you about them. But there’s this writing project …
… a writing project that makes me giddy, that completely absorbs me and warps time so that my days feel like hours and my hours like minutes. It is unstoppable, this new writing project of mine.
And it needs to be finished by January 8.
!
I could totally rock this deadline if not for, well, you know, the other things happening this month.
!!
Okay. Back to writingwritingwriting.
It’s been all bees all the time around here … until this week. This week I am preparing for a course I’ll be teaching to third through fifth graders next month. The course is called Citizen Science and I am one hundred percent totally and completely stoked about it. The kids and I will be exploring real science projects that everyday men, women, and children (people like YOU!) can participate in.
First project?
My six year-old is excited, and she isn’t even in the class:
PS. If you ever wondered what ladybugs think about, take a gander at the thought bubble above the beetle on the tree. He is thinking about BLUE and PURPLE. I asked about this and the artist told me that it gets boring being red all the time. Who knew?
ORANGE PEAR APPLE BEAR
Written and Illustrated by Emily Gravett
Simon & Schuster, 2007
Category: Picture book
Clever. Perfect.
These are the only two words I need to describe Emily Gravett’s four word picture book masterpiece. There is just nothing left to say.
BECKY’S CHRISTMAS
By Tasha Tudor
Viking Press, 1961
Category: Illustrated story
The holiday season overwhelms me, what with Christmas carols being played in October and mall traffic jams mucking up travel during November. The crush of images—in print, online, and everywhere in between—meant to define the perfect holiday are just so far from where I live that, well, I get grouchy. Thank goodness for books. This weekend BECKY’S CHRISTMAS cheered me up.
My copy of this out-of-print classic was a gift from my friend Jane. (That in itself makes me feel better. Jane, you rock!) The story is classic old-time Christmas … complete with real candles and greens, hand-made advent calendars and gingerbread ornaments, siblings who share chores willingly and make gifts for one another secretly. One might argue that this vision of Christmas is as far from where I live as those I try so desperately to escape this time of year. To which I would respond with a cold, cold glare: “Yes. You’re right.”
But striving for Tasha Tudor’s vision stresses me less than striving for decorative perfection (inside and out), greeting card impeccability (to say nothing of timeliness), and season-long, over-the-top domestic flawlessness.
So there.
Happy Holidays!
LESSONS FROM A DEAD GIRL
By Jo Knowles
Candlewick, 2007
Category: Young Adult Fiction
As you will recognize from my earlier post, today is a thinking day. In addition to thinking about my personal Everest and my favorite nonfiction first lines, I am thinking about this amazing book. I read it over the weekend in two intense sittings. And it is one of those books—one of those rare and unforgettable books—that makes you think.
Laine McCarthy and Leah Greene were childhood friends. Unlikely friends—Laine was quiet and awkward, Leah was popular and beautiful—but friends nonetheless. When the book opens, Leah is dead, and Laine (brave, beautiful Laine!) is not sure how to feel about it. After reading their story, I don’t know how to feel about it either. I am left wondering about cruelty and secrets and resilience. Especially about resilience. (Why are some people instinctually resilient and others not? Why? WHY?)
LESSONS FROM A DEAD GIRL will break and heal your heart at the same time. It is hard to read and impossible to put down. It is sad and liberating and scary and comforting all at once. It will make you think.
There is a discussion going on over at Roger Sutton’s blog (Read Roger) about a writer’s Mount Everest. That is, the one mountainous project that each individual writer feels she must conquer in order to consider herself a success. Yes, yes, I’ve got one of those. It is there, on the horizon, snowy-peaks and all. I’m still building up my strength, collecting and testing my tools, recruiting sherpas. I think I will need a lot of sherpas …
And over at Nonfiction Matters, Marc Aronson is blogging about the importance of beginnings in nonfiction. He has challenged readers to submit their favorites, and the openings and discussions to date have got my gears turning…
Who says my time on the bloglines could be better spent writing? THINKING ABOUT THE WRITING is just as important to me, and blogs like these remind me to do that. (Yes, I actually need reminding.)
EMI AND THE RHINO SCIENTIST
By Mary Kay Carson
Photographs by Tom Uhlman
Houghton Mifflin, 2007
Category: Middle Grade Nonfiction
I know that my singing the praises of “Scientists in the Field” books is not likely to mean much anymore. I mean, I’ve written one and I am working on another; of course I like them! Even still, I just read the latest and I have to mention it here …
Emi, a rare Sumatran rhinoceros, was orphaned as a baby calf, rescued by conservationists, and brought to the United States in hopes of breeding her. Terri Roth is a wildlife reproduction specialist who helped her become a mother. (It was not easy.) Readers follow their story through intelligent text and stunning images, beautifully arranged, as always.
Congratulations to author Mary Kay Carson and photographer Tom Uhlman on a book well done!
FOLLOWING THE BLOOM
By Douglas Whynott
Stackpole Books, 1991
Category: Nonfiction for Grown-ups
I’m still neck-deep in bees … and will be for a while. THE HIVE DETECTIVES, my next “Scientists in the Field” book, won’t be published until Spring 2010. That’s right, dear blog reader, there are literally years of bee books ahead of us. Buckle up.
FOLLOWING THE BLOOM is a literary road trip: Across America with the Migratory Beekeepers. In it, Whynott introduces readers to a cadre of quirky and irresistible people—almost exclusively men—who spend their lives amongst bees. They keep bees in hives, truck them across state lines, rent them to commercial growers for pollination purposes, wax poetic about their indispensability, collect and sell their honey. The beekeepers I met in Whynott’s book, like those I have met in person, are passionate, fascinating, and a bit out there. Stepping into their world is thrilling; being a bit out there myself, I find I fit right in.
