Category: Blog

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Working

I am at this very moment working at the public library in Athol, Massachusetts. I spoke to students at the middle school this morning, and I will speak to adults here at the library later tonight. Rather than drive two extra hours back and forth to home, I decided to park my laptop here and get some work done. It is quiet, and no one has interrupted me in the two hours I have been here. Bliss!

But …

I am all dressed up—or at least more dressed up than I would ever be on a regular day—and it is very uncomfortable. How do people who work in the real world keep their shoes on all day?

Also? No tea pot. And no cookies!

I didn’t realize I was so high maintenance.

Back to work …

 

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Ready? Set? Go!


© Loree Griffin Burns

That there is my new bee hive. Cute, yes? Nobody lives in it; this is strictly an educational dwelling. In fact, at this moment it’s packed in the trunk of my car, waiting for me to load in the last of my school visit supplies, hop in, and hit the road. Together we’ll criss-cross Massachusetts, visiting fourteen classrooms, four schools, two libraries, and one Sustainability Fair over the next nine days. That’s a lot of hive demos!

I’m excited about this trip for so many reasons. I get to test out the new hive and, since I’m returning to school communities I’ve worked with before, to see some old friends. Add to that a stop in the city I grew up in (*waves to students and teachers in good, old Everett, Massachusetts!*), the classroom of one of my Everett High School field hockey teammates (*waves to Chrissy Lyons and her students!*), and even the library I shelved books at as a high school student (*waves to everyone at the Parlin Memorial Library!*), and you’ll understand why even the wintry mix in this morning’s forecast hasn’t gotten me down.

So.

Here I go!

See you soon …

 

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A Great Migrations PSA

© Ellen Harasimowicz

The hoopla around this Sunday’s premiere of the National Geographic documentary Great Migrations has got me nostalgic for my days in Mexico. Ellen Harasimowicz took this photo of me last winter at the top of Sierra Chincua, where the sight of tens of millions of monarch butterflies overwhelmed me to the point of exhaustion. All I could do was sit down, gaze up, and breathe. It was intense. Here’s a tiny glimpse of an idea of what I saw up in that bright, blue Mexican sky, but truly, a photo cannot do the experience justice:

© Ellen Harasimowicz

Intense.

I’d like to go back to Mexico one day, maybe to share those amazing monarch sanctuary experiences with my kids. But it’s hard to know if or when that might happen. For now, I’m going to pop some corn and plop us all down in front of the National Geographic channel on Sunday. Judging by this mini-trailer, it will be the next best thing.

Great Migrations premieres this Sunday at 8pm on National Geographic station. Find out all you ever wanted to know about the series here.

 

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Ya lo veremos!

© Loree Griffin Burns

Last week I handed the final draft of my next book—13,234 words and 104 images—over to my editor. Although most of the photos were taken by the talented Ellen Harasimowicz, I managed to slip a few of my own into the mix, including the wood frog above. I’m incredibly excited to see this project march off in the direction of publication, though I can hardly sleep for wondering how the design team will take my words and Ellen’s pictures and magic them into a book.

Oh, the waiting. And I am not a patient girl.

And so I’m trying to distract myself with more mundane things: planting garlic, painting the door to my office (said door having hung unpainted for TWO YEARS!), preparing for my November school visits (seven days, four schools, two libraries, and eighteen presentations!), learning Spanish with my kids, and reading like a fiend. I’ve also been wondering if this might be the month I finally get my act together and write up some of the stories behind THE HIVE DETECTIVES for this blog; they are long overdue.

Ya lo veremos! (We shall see!)

Buenos Martes! (Happy Tuesday!)

 

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Honey Bees and CCD

© Ellen Harasimowicz

If you read this recent New York Times article on Colony Collapse Disorder and honey bees, please take a moment to also read this Fortune online article about important information missing from the Times report.

Very. Important. Information.

And if you are at all confused, I’d highly recommend the original PLOS One article, which details the work in question. (Warning: this is pretty technical stuff.)

The bottom line is that we simply don’t know yet what is causing Colony Collapse Disorder. But we do know a lot more than we did four years ago, when the CCD mystery began to unfold. We know for sure that “our world is a dangerous place for honey bees, and that it will take a Herculean effort on the part of all humans–people who keep bees, people who study bees, and even people who read about bees–to see them through.”

Long live the bees …

Edited to add: The NYT article is apparently only available online to subscribers.

Edited further to add: That quoted bit is from THE HIVE DETECTIVES. But you knew that, right?

 

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AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prizes for Excellence in Science Books

I was tickled to find out today that THE HIVE DETECTIVES has been named a finalist for the 2011 AAAS/Subaru Science Books & Films Prize for Excellence in Science Books. This mouthful of a prize was created six years ago in order to “encourage outstanding science writing and illustration for children.” Here’s the complete list of nominated titles in all four categories:

Children’s Science Picture Book

Bones. Steven Jenkins. (Illus.) Scholastic, 2010.

Lizards. Nic Bishop. (Illus.) Scholastic, 2010.

Magic School Bus and the Climate Challenge. Joanna Cole. (Illus. by Bruce Degen; from the Magic School Bus Series.) Scholastic, 2010.

Why Do Elephants Need the Sun? Robert E. Well. (Illus.) Albert Whitman & Company, 2010.

Middle Grades Science Book

The Hive Detectives: Chronicle of a Honey Bee Catastrophe. Loree Griffin Burns. (Photographs by Ellen Harasimowicz; from the Scientists in the Field Series.) Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

Kakapo Rescue: Saving the World’s Largest Parrot. Sy Montgomery. (Photographs by Nic Bishop; from the Scientists in the Field Series.) Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

The Secret of the Yellow Death: A True Story of Medical Sleuthing. Susan Jermain. Houghton Mifflin, 2010.

The Story of Snow: The Science of Winter’s Wonder. Mark Cassino and Jon Nelson. (Illus. by Nora Aoyagi.) Chronicle, 2009.

Young Adult Science Book

The Case for Pluto: How a Little Planet Made a Big Difference. Alan Boyle. Wiley, 2009.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of Elements. Sam Kean. Little Brown, 2010.

Every Bone Tells a Story: Hominin Discovery, Deductions, and Debates. Jill Rubalcaba and Peter Robertshaw. Charlesbridge, 2010.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. Rebecca Skloot. Random House, 2010.

Hands-On Science Book

The Book of Potentially Catastrophic Science. Sean Connolly. (Illus.) Workman, 2010.

Insect Detective. Steve Voake. (Illus. by Charlotte Voake.) Candlewick, 2010.

Nature Science Experiments. Sudipta Bardhan-Quallen. (Illus. by Edward Miller; from the MAD Science Series.) Sterling, 2010.

You Are the Earth: From Dinosaur Breath to Pizza from Dirt. David Suzuki and Kathy Vanderlinden. Greystone, 2010.

Happy dancing in the Burns house today!

 

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Six Things on Saturday: San Diego Edition

This past week I took my first-ever trip to southern California. We had lots of touristy adventures, but my favorite photos were of the nooks and crannies variety …

All photos © Loree Griffin Burns

Edited to add: No idea why the sixth photo won’t post. I’ll try again tomorrow; its a shot of Pacific Ocean spray!

 

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The Songs of Insects

THE SONGS OF INSECTS
By Lang Elliott and Wil Hershberger
Houghton Mifflin, 2006

Category: Nonfiction for Adults

Friends, this book is a treasure.

I know, I know. You think you don’t need a field guide to the most common crickets, katydids, grasshoppers and cicadas of eastern North America. But consider this delightfulness:

The Music of Nature

Now, tell me … if you could find a field guide that felt like visiting that website, wouldn’t you want to own it? A book chock full of images so stunning that you are both mesmerized and curious? A book that reminds you to slow down and consider sounds that are so common you’ve almost forgotten they are there?

Yes? I thought so. Well, both book and website are part of the creative vision and inspirational mission of Mr. Lang Elliott: to promote the understanding and appreciation of “nature near at hand.” And both are worth exploring thoroughly.

THE SONGS OF INSECTS is the perfect resource for naturalists-in-the-making, and although it is written for adults, it has mega kid-appeal. My nine-year-old daughter spent hours with it this past summer, consulting its sights and sounds as we puzzled out players in nighttime choruses from Massachusetts to Maine. A word of warning: your child will discover in the pages of this book that there are some singing insects whose songs become harder for humans to hear as we age. And if your kids are as fresh as mine, one night soon, as you are outside listening to the sounds of nature together, this may happen:

Fresh Daughter (stopping and cocking her head): Mom! Shhhh! Do you hear that?

Me (stopping and cocking alongside her): No.

Fresh Daughter: There it is again. Sort of high pitched. You don’t hear it?

Me (listening harder): No. I can’t hear anything.

Fresh Daughter (now giggling uncontrollably): Oh. Sorry. It must be one of those crickets that old people can’t hear.

She finds this endlessly amusing. And to be honest, so does her mother. What’s not to love about a moonlit adventure inspired by a book and decorated with the sounds of insects singing and your child giggling?

A treasure, I tell you. A treasure.

 

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Five Things on Friday: New York City Edition

1. I spent two days in New York City this week, meeting up with my agent, editors, and writer friends.

2. My grandmother used to say I was like a linen suit: I don’t travel well. But Nana would have been proud of me this week as I hailed cabs, navigated streets, and even mastered the subway system.

3. On the teeny balcony of my tiny hotel room fourteen floors above East 42nd Street, I met a massive New York City dragonfly. I can’t believe I didn’t have a camera.

4. My friend Deborah Heiligman gave me an 18-inch square copy of her book FROM CATERPILLAR TO BUTTERFLY for my daughter, and I dutifully carried it around NYC, protecting it from the hustle and bustle of Manhattan pedestrians. Deborah, if you see a spike in sales of that book this week, it is because I was a walking billboard for two days!

5. I am still thinking about the group of five men and women I saw meditating in Madison Square Park yesterday. In that small green space, surrounded by city oceans of people and pets and automobiles and electronics, they managed to sit down, turn off the noise, and breathe themselves to a quieter place. (I have trouble doing that in my empty living room!)