Tag Archives: science

National Pollinator Week, June 18-24, 2018

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Here at our home, every week is “pollinator week.” It’s great to know that eleven years ago the U.S. Senate unanimously approved and designated a week in June as “National Pollinator Week.” Because our vital pollinator populations are declining at an alarming rate (down 25% since 1990), there is an international celebration of the contribution our bees, birds, butterflies, bats and beetles make to our ecosystems. Pollination makes our food supply possible. E. O. Wilson, in his introduction to The Forgotten Pollinators by Stephen L. Buchmann and Gary Paul Nabhan, said, “Every third bite of food you take, thank a bee or other pollinator.” Our kids can understand this a lot better when we tell them that we can’t have pizzas without bees and others to pollinate wheat for the crust and tomatoes and vegetables for the sauce and toppings.

Our great-granddaughter, Sydney, was fascinated watching bumblebees from our laps on the porch at six months of age. She quickly progressed to pointing, questioning, and learning the wonderful world just outside our back door. We have many adventure walks to observe nature and pollinators at work. She helps plant flowers in our garden to attract them, and helps harvest herbs and flowers we grow from our saved seeds each year. She knows this would not be possible without pollinators.

There are many websites with information and facts about every aspect of pollination. Just type a key word or two into the search bar of your device; “bees” or “pollinators” will get you to many interesting sites. My book, Lemon Trees and Bumblebees, was inspired by our own experience which is described in the November, 2011, blog post on this site.

The video below shows Sydney talking with me about one of her favorite subjects, pollination. She loves to play “teacher” and give me science lessons we have shared. We also cook together using the variety of foods that have grown because of pollination. She is always willing to eat what she has learned about and helped prepare. In these ways, Sydney is keenly aware of the importance of providing for and promoting our pollinators, and we hope your family will celebrate the addition to our lives and future that they bring.

Story Seeds

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Stories grow from the seeds of words. When I think of reading, though, I think in terms of more than words on pages. When I think of the broader meaning of “reading,” my writing is enhanced by these abstract ways of applying the idea of reading.

To me, reading is reading nature, reading people, reading everything in my environment, using all my senses. This began in early childhood, when my parents and grandparents filled our homes with what they read in the outside world, with all the experiences we shared. They brought nature, art and music indoors so that we were constantly surrounded and enveloped in a lush, sensorial climate. When they read to me or I read to myself, I could better envision the descriptions through experience, and I felt the need to translate and share my feelings in my own ways. This was how my stories were born. Now I’m always writing as I walk, see, hear, smell, feel – in other words, as I read my world.

Below are some photos of bird nests and other bits of nature collected from around our garden, walks, and travel, and brought inside to decorate tabletops and mantel. Many pieces of our furniture and art have nature themes. Framed family photos of generations, including the house in Germany where my maternal grandfather was born, and handwritten letters, give me stories and voices that told them to me. My hope is that you will read the world, and that your children will read it with you so that they will write it for their children. Story seeds are everywhere.

Wren’s nest on mantel

Wren’s nest on mantel

Paper and tape became part of this nest.

Paper and tape became part of this nest.

 

 

Unhatched Bluebird eggs collected from several nests

Unhatched Bluebird eggs collected from several nests

Chimney Swift nest

Chimney Swift nest

Bluebird nest

Bluebird nest

Nest in fork of our fiddle leaf fig tree

Nest in fork of our fiddle leaf fig tree

Nest under glass dome on side table

Nest under glass dome on side table

Wax myrtle berries

Wax myrtle berries

Bird of Paradise painting

Bird of Paradise painting

Shells collected at Sanibel and Captiva Islands, Florida

Shells collected at Sanibel and Captiva Islands, Florida

Antique mirror frame with leaf detail
Antique mirror frame with leaf detail

Partial wall of seven framed generations

Partial wall of seven framed generations

 

1929 letter written in German from great-grandmother to my mother

1929 letter written in German from great-grandmother to my mother

House in Germany where my maternal grandfather was born, and a group photo of his parents and siblings
House in Germany where my maternal grandfather was born, and a group photo of his parents and siblings

Even my sox have bluebirds

Even my sox have bluebirds

 

 

 

A Low-Tech Childhood Easter

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My brother, David, and I grew up when Easter preparations were more homemade than commercial. Iced Lebkuchen bunnies and chicks (honey and almond cookies) were nestled in baskets ringed with crepe paper ruffles. When we outgrew the riot of Easter egg hunts in her garden, one of our grandmothers raided her sewing box and our Grandfather’s ties for silk to cut, wrap, and dye eggs. Our other grandmother always dyed eggs wrapped in yellow and purple onion peels. They taught us with endless patience, and finally we couldn’t wait to unwrap our surprise masterpieces and compete for the “best egg.” There were days of cooking and baking, and choosing outfits for Easter Sunday church. But there was one thrill at the top of the list.

We could receive a brightly colored chick or duckling for Easter, before the age of political correctness, environmental fanaticism, and all the other recent catch-phrases behind which many masquerade. Looking as though they had just popped forth, sprightly and downy, from dyed eggs of rich purple, fuchsia, turquoise, and green, the chicks regarded us warily through shiny black dots and let out faint cheep-cheeps. As soon as the important choices of which color to claim and a name for each were out of the way, the new babies were gingerly carried home to a waiting pen in the back yard. We watched their daily progress while attending to the necessary aspects of feeding, watering, and changing paper. Caring for them taught us that pets are dependent, but have vastly different needs, one of which was that these little guys needed to be handled a little rather than a lot.

The soft round fluff matured into larger oval bodies with white feathers which would run on spindly three-toed stilts to meet our call and perch on our laps and shoulders. We understood that these pets lacked the devotion of a dog, but did not require the long-term commitment from us. Each animal was to be treated responsibly, was not a disposable toy, and had needs which sometimes required attention before our own. These values used to be called duty, pride of ownership, and delayed gratification – qualities that come in handy growing up and which seem natural when acquired early. We didn’t have to waste a lot of adult time feeling inadequate since we had practiced capability early in life.

Fortunately for our parents, our maternal grandmother raised chickens (as did many other women who began this practice during the Great Depression to help feed their families). We were taught that, just as with wild birds nursed in cardboard boxes from time to time, these little Easter chicks and ducks would eventually need to be freed with others of their kind so that they could lay eggs, have more chicks, and participate in life’s cycles. It was always a greatly anticipated event to pack a picnic and take the ducks to a farm pond or a park where we watched them claim their freedom. There we carried them flapping outstretched wings, melding into a blur of white, gliding effortlessly with others until, at last, squinting, we lost track of just which ones were the new arrivals.

The same was true for our chicks. We would run to our grandmother’s chicken coop and exercise yard for after-school visits until the last color left their fully feathered bodies, making recognition imperceptible. Now they were grown birds with duties of their own, and we were impatient for summer pursuits in our own “secret garden.” We played in sunny patches at the fringes of a huge oak planted from an acorn the day our mother was born. There were searches for that elusive four-leaf clover, pill-bug counting contests, and butterfly catch and release chases.  At last, we’d collapse into shady lawns to search out cloud animals drifting through blue above, our fingers aromatic and sticky with homemade fruit juice popsicles and grass. This was our Walden.

At day’s end, scrubbed and tired under cool white sheets, listening to crickets sawing sounds outside our open window, we were barely aware of a far-off train whistle as our heavy lids gave up their struggle to the peaceful dreams of a tender childhood.

Chicken Little and Big Isaac

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Sometimes Mother Nature overtakes the reading road as it did last week. Hurricane Isaac arrived on the seventh anniversary of Katrina. We no longer say “Hurricane Katrina” because she is famous enough to be known by one name. Once again, we had to decide whether to outrun a powerful weather event, or hunker down. “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!” I couldn’t shake the refrain from that old nursery story, Chicken Little. We heard it everywhere because we, along with countless others along our Gulf Coast, had lived through the utter devastation of Katrina. For those who may not be acquainted with this tale, Chicken Little got bopped on the head with an acorn, and started a comical chain of events. Everyone he met heard his extreme warning, “The sky is falling, the sky is falling!”Jim and I busied ourselves with preparations while keeping an ear to announcements of coordinates, tropical development, and water temperature. We knew what was coming.

Every creature in the path of the 30-odd feet of rolling wave as Katrina made landfall has his own sensory and emotional memories of all that happened on August 29, 2005. Most of us have photos which can only begin to show the dimensions of Katrina’s effects. So many words have been put to paper that I have chosen to wait, to think deeply about it from the perspective of time elapsed. Now that we have felt the fear again, I can talk of it in relation to the way it is part of all nature rather than an isolated incident. A hurricane isn’t one malevolent tree in a dark fantasy forest; it’s one force of an entirety which drives the forest and all other systems around our planet.

The world’s cycles were here before us. They continue to prove that they are more powerful than all our advances. They catch us unaware, though we have the intelligence to expect them, put them into perspective. All the aspects of our lives that we treasure bow before the forces of nature. A hurricane is simply one way to know that we are not in control. Love and loss, joy and grief; these wax and wane throughout our years. The moments between the raindrops are triumphs, sparkling in their fleeting intensity. They remain in our subconscious alongside the terror. We store them, but sometimes forget to call them up when we are faced with another unknown. A hurricane is a time to remember, to listen, to see and feel more than what is obvious.

Certain Indians are known to have burned all their belongings every few years so that they would not become dependent upon material possessions. Hurricanes sometimes rid us of ours, because none of us would have the courage of the Indians. Of course, Indians didn’t have computers and TV’s and iPhones and, especially, all the photos which hold the faces we love and our best days. We assign such value to our possessions that we are forever in their service, often failing to live fully in each day. I know this, but am guilty.

I try to be thankful for the things I cannot control. They usually are things which make me realize how human I am, and how I would tremble to have complete control. I can see that there would be no right decision for all, and the weight of responsibility would seem unbearable. The best we can do is protect those within our reach, those we love, and those who need understanding. This example of forbearance is present in all of nature, so all we have to do is pay attention. When the howling, assaulting wind finally quieted on Isaac’s third day, and the rain became a silent silver sheet across the landscape, I looked up to see a lone seabird winging across the gray ceiling outside. It probably followed water farther inland than usual because of Isaac’s tumult. The bird was headed south toward the beach, so one more mile would offer it a more familiar place. Things would begin to look more as they had the week before.

And so the sky is not really falling, all you Chicken Littles. All signs of approaching autumn are murmuring that the annual cycle is undisturbed. Migrating hummingbirds zoomed through the heaviest downpours of the hurricane to circle the end of the back porch where their feeder, full of nectar, had hung. As soon as I was able to re-hang it from a climbing rose branch, their staccato chirps were in my ears. The Duranta, now more tree than shrub, dripping lavender flower clusters and golden berries, is host to a few dozen bumblebee drones – male bees banished from the colony once their job of fertilizing the young future queens is done. Now they fly and feed until they soon die. The female worker bees have died, and those fed, fattened and chosen to become new queens have searched under leaves and quiet sheltered places to hibernate until next spring. We hope that hurricane season is having its last hurrah of 2012. The moon is full, the silent drama is performed; the sky is not falling. It is full of stars.

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Snapshots two days post-Katrina from our golf cart:

A video clip of Isaac’s third day should appear as soon as I can complete edits.

WIK12 Blog Tour: Meet Jodi Wheeler-Toppen!

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It’s such a pleasure for me to introduce Jodi Wheeler-Toppen, the science teacher I wish everyone could have! You’ll understand when you meet her at WIK12 where she will be on the faculty sharing her love of teaching and writing. Go HERE to make plans to attend.

Don’t forget to ask Jodi about rockets, explosions, gushers, shooters and blobs – or you could just go to her website, www.onceuponascience book.com and read about her books. Our conversation is a preview of the excitement Jodi generates.

Jodi Wheeler-Toppen

Jodi, when did you first become fascinated with all things “science?” What area(s) of science were most compelling for you?

You know, it’s funny. I didn’t even like science until high school biology. I think I hadn’t had very good teachers. I only read fiction, and I went off to college planning on being an English major. Then I took a great zoology course my freshman year, and eventually even got fascinated with chemistry. I ended up a high school biology teacher, myself.

What sort of childhood did you have? Did you live in a city, the country, or what was your environment like?

I grew up in Savannah, Georgia, which is a great place to enjoy nature. My high school biology teacher passed on her love of the salt marshes, and all the wonderful life inside. I still long for that pungent, salty smell as I drive around Atlanta.

Besides your biology teacher, were there other adults, a family member, or particular books that had an influence upon you?

My high school biology teacher, Jacqueline Baker, was wonderful, but I also had a college professor, Larry Davenport, who helped me see how to join my interest in science with writing. He’s a botany professor at Samford University, and he also writes a nature column in the Alabama Heritage Magazine. He shared some of his columns in class, and they were excellent models for merging science and human interest. He’s also has a book out now, and I was touched that he sent me a copy when it came out.

You have said that you began writing nonfiction in college. Did you write in other genres earlier?

Yes, I started proclaiming a desire to be an author in elementary school. Of course, then I always assumed it would be fiction. I have done some fiction, and I had a fiction story published in Spider magazine a few years ago, but at some point I decided I wanted to focus on one thing and do it well. Science writing seemed like the logical place to settle. I don’t rule out doing more fiction later in life, but I’m passionate about this, and enjoy it.

I agree with you that kids need the “WOW!” factor when learning about science. How do you teach science teachers to help kids become excited about the natural world without realizing they are “learning?”

The biggest thing I push is to let kids have the hands-on experience first. Traditionally, teachers lecture or assign reading first, and then have the kids do a lab to “see what they were talking about.” It makes such a difference for kids to explore the actual stuff first, and then they are ready to learn all the vocabulary and principles afterwards.

Please talk a bit about your work with special needs students.

As a teacher, I just ended up as the go-to science teacher for placing a lot of the special needs students in my school. Later, working for the University of Georgia, they needed someone to teach a course for teachers titled, “Teaching Science to Students with Special Needs.” I volunteered to supplement my experience with more research, and took over the class. It was very fulfilling.

Do you feel that many students are generally unprepared in reading comprehension, or do you think that science literature presents special reading challenges?

Science reading is my area of research; I often do staff development with teachers on this topic, so I could go on and on about the reasons students struggle to read science. One huge problem I encounter when reading with students is that they don’t have the background knowledge that the text assumes. So the writer starts explaining something, but starts the explanation way ahead of what the reader knows, and the reader never has a chance to understand. Now that I’m in writing, I know a lot of times editors cut that crucial background information in the interest of word counts or keeping the writing energized. But it’s hard on struggling students.

Please share some of your favorite authors/titles.

I read a lot of preschool books with my children right now, and I recently came across a wonderful piece of non-fiction for preschoolers, MY GOOSE BETSY, by Trudy Braun. It managed to entice even my fiction-only daughter. I’m terribly jealous of Vicki Cobb’s work. I especially love her book, I FALL DOWN. I also love an old middle-grade novel that’s out of print now, WHERE THE RIVER BEGINS, by Patricia M. St. John. But, of course, my favorites change with whatever I’m reading.

If you could invite people from the scientific world, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be and why would they interest you?

Right now, I think it would have to be Michael Welland, the author of SAND: THE NEVER ENDING STORY. He’s a geologist who has poured his lifetime of studying sand into this densely-packed, beautifully written book. It’s truly a work of love. I mean, there just can’t be an enormous audience for a book on sand, so he wasn’t after fame and fortune! But he has mixed fascinating history tales and complex scientific discussions with some fabulous, literary-quality writing. It must have taken years to research and write, and I’d love to meet the man behind the passion.

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Thanks for your thoughts and words, Jodi! “Passion” is a great final word in our conversation, because that is what you convey in your pursuit of science, and that is what you are inspiring in your students who will need to understand the world they will inherit.

Meet more of the wik12 faculty by following their blog tour!

Aug. 15                Sharon Pegram at Writers and Wannabes (http://www.writersandwannabes.com/)

Aug. 16                Sarah Campbell at Alison Hertz’s blog, On My Mind (http://www.AlisonHertz.blogspot.com/)

Aug. 17                F.T. Bradley at Laura Golden’s blog (http://authorlauragolden.com/blog/)

Aug. 20               Chuck Galey at Elizabeth Dulemba’s blog (http://dulemba.blogspot.com/)

Aug. 21                Jo Kittinger at Bonnie Herold’s blog, Tenacious Teller of Tales (http://tenacioustelleroftales.blogspot.com)

Aug. 22               Irene Latham at Robyn Hood Black’s blog, Read, Write, Howl (http://www.robynhoodblack.com/blog.htm)

Aug. 23               Vicky Alvear Shecter at S.R. Johannes’ blog (http://www.srjohannes.com/)

Aug. 24               Doraine Bennett at Cathy Hall’s blog (http://cathychall.wordpress.com/)

Aug. 27               Virginia Butler at Bonnie Herold’s blog, Tenacious Teller of Tales (http://tenacioustelleroftales.blogspot.com)

Aug. 28               Jodi Wheeler-Toppen at Diane Sherrouse’s blog, The Reading Road (www.thereadingroad.com)

Aug. 29               Ellen Ruffin at Sarah Frances Hardy’s blog, Picture This (www.sfhardy.blogspot.com)

Aug. 30               Donna Jo Napoli at Writers and Wannabes (http://www.writersandwannabes.com/)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Black Bears to Bumblebees

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In an earlier post, I said that one thing always leads to another along the reading road, a.k.a., my life. Mental meandering has so often become fascination, so “over the river and through the woods” from black bears to bumblebees seems natural. Good science requires time and patience; getting to the last page isn’t exactly instant gratification. It’s more like a treasure hunt where you have to dream, delve, and, often, literally dig in the dirt. Complicating all this is the fact that I have a family, with all the maintenance, surprises, holidays, advice given and taken or not, and daily love which often present detours around any other project underway. During all the stirring of pots and bandaging of bumps, thoughts and curiosity tug and won’t leave, ever.

A few years ago, I returned to academic life and jumped into a course in environmental literature. While reading and researching, I began to think about black bears with their history and their present state. Their decline affects so much more than the bears, themselves. A phone call put me in touch with a wildlife biologist who introduced me to a couple of experts studying bears in other states, and we began a five-year discourse, including particular details of radio-collared bears and others in the wild. I tried not to be side-tracked by more creatures, like birds and bees, but habitats in two states were a big playground/discovery center for me. I couldn’t know that this would lead to a rare invitation to accompany biologists into the field one summer to capture a black bear. Armed with hundreds of facts and years of study, I joined them in Tensas National Wildlife Preserve in northern Louisiana. My husband, Jim, carried my cameras and field equipment, and off we went.

Our ATV rumbled along through dense brush beneath towering old giants of oak, American elm, green ash and sweet gum. Palmettos had been grouped to form a path to a brush-covered foot snare that would not harm the bear. A nearby paw-paw tree yielded its melon-shaped fruit as well as a sack of raspberry scent (visible in the photo below). The coup de maître were honeybuns hung from trees and scattered in the brush just beyond the snare. With five traps laid, would luck be with us?

Anticipation was palpable that early morning. After finding the first trap empty, we moved on toward the second a few miles away. We found bear tracks crisscrossed with raccoon tracks parallel to a row of randomly bent corn stalks and nibbled cobs along a corn field bordering the woods. Around a bend, suddenly, “There she is!” A female black bear had flattened a 15-foot circle of brush permitted by the length of her snare attachment and sat in the middle registering typical displeasure by an intermittent snapping of the jaws and blowing with the lips. Then noises in the brush directed us toward a huge elm about 20 feet into the dense embankment above a crook of a tributary of the Tensas River. We watched a fuzzy cub heed its mother’s guttural signals and scamper to a vantage point on a limb about 25 feet up the trunk. A small, solid black head would alternately peek and retreat behind the limb, tiny ears at attention. We judged it to be about five months old, and approximately 15 pounds – about the size of a cocker spaniel.

Female black bear secured by foot snare. Note raspberry scent sack in tree.

Black bear cub

We needed to work fast so Mother Bear could return to nursery duty. We tranquilized her with a dart, examined, weighed and measured, and then outfitted her with a radio collar for tracking and further research. Care was taken to allow for any weight gain before the collar would wear away in a year or two. A glance up to the leaf canopy revealed a fast-asleep cub stretched out full-length, squirrel-fashion, belly flush and four legs limply dangling from either side of the limb. I knew there were yet a couple of fleeting minutes for me to rub the head and back of this wild creature in repose — silent minutes eloquent enough to convey to the most skeptical the value of preserving its kind, indicator of the well-being of so many other species of our forests and, ultimately, man. There is much more about this day, and my longer account was published in the Louisiana Conservationist magazine.

Me, with female black bear

Not letting go of black bears, and that one special black bear, fast forward a few years through new technology and new ways of communicating and publishing. One sleepy spring morning along the Mississippi Gulf Coast, I opened the back porch door and was overcome with the fragrance of blossoms, the incessant hum of an undulating halo of bumblebees around our Meyer lemon tree, the music of water spilling over the fountain bowls. I forgot breakfast, grabbed my camera, and that’s how my first ebook was born. The words wrote themselves in my head, and I forced myself to turn back to the house to write the story for children, to help them understand. They need to know that without these quiet, ongoing activities underfoot, out of sight, on the wing, here and gone in the space of moments, we would not exist. It really wasn’t such a stretch from black bears to bumblebees. It was logical/magical.

I hope you’ll let yourself enter the world with new eyes. Grab a book about what catches your imagination, really see, walk and hunt, poke under things, ask questions and find answers. There are friends connected to those answers. You will be comforted, surprised, thrilled. It works. Whether black bears to bumblebees, or anything else, you’ll see how everything is truly connected. You’ll make sense of your happy unlikelihoods!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Surprise for the Eyes

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It’s said that a picture is worth a thousand words. A writer must create pictures in the minds of readers, so exacting word choice is vital. For a long time, I have kept these words taped to my desk space. I do not know who wrote them, but they’re great:

         The written word is clean as bone,

         Clear as light,

         Firm as stone.

         Two words are not

         As good as one.

Some early mornings, I walk a garden path to find my word-pictures. My cameras go with me, and the surprises found out there often give me the words and the illustrations.

I look high into the wax myrtle and meet the gaze of an eye on me. She wants me to move along, but I return when she flies to the courtyard for a sip from the fountain.

The pine straw shifts slightly in the flowerbed, and a familiar shape is lapping rainwater in a brick crevice. He has a rival in one of the many garden turf wars. I am usually the loser in the assault on leaves and blossoms, whether we meet face-to-face, or I catch a mere glimpse of the offender.  

Doves and turtles share resting space in their pine straw bed, co-existing peacefully with other species.

The copper and brown of the wood thrush melds with the woodland floor or leafy undergrowth where he forages. He zooms out to scritch, scratch with with one foot and then the other, like a comical chicken, and turns over leaf after leaf to find insects. Then he races back under the shrubbery to hide. Perched on a limb, he looks a lot like the bark.

Here’s a fledgling wood thrush, but he’ll watch Mom and Dad and learn quickly.

Green on green is hard to be seen!

Whether fledging or spinning, the smallest creatures must find their way quickly to avoid predators.

I don’t know why this little chickadee looks so forlorn, but he finally seemed to find some purpose.

Wolf snails are cannibalistic and devour other snails, and even each other. They move much faster than other snails, and it’s not hard to imagine that they could terrify their prey with those “horned” heads.

A hummingbird snugs down over her two white pearl-sized eggs in the hanging cradle she has woven around a plant stem.

This walking stick and her offspring have found a perfect hiding place in a woven basket beside my back door. Their camouflage can get them into trouble if I don’t see them before I drop yard shoes into the basket. They are there often, so I look out for them now.

Back inside, I’m ready to write, but my garden friends have a little more to say before they leave me. I can’t resist a few more shots of them from my side of the windows.

It’s wild kingdom where I live, and I’ll return with more photo stories about my adventures. I agree with Thoreau that I can never learn everything in just my own square mile!

A Gift for Teachers and Librarians

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I’m very happy to tell teachers and librarians that Apple has allowed me to offer a code for a free copy of LEMON TREES AND BUMBLEBEES until April 20! The book is available through the Apple bookstore, iBooks, and can be viewed on Apple devices which include the iPad, iPod Touch, and iPhone.

To purchase (or download free using a code), you may go to iTunes on a Mac computer, and click “iTunes Store” and then “Books.” Type the book title into the search bar to get a purchase page. At the bottom of the page you can click “Redeem” to enter your code and download the book free of charge. After April 20, the book may be purchased for $5.99. If you wish to purchase or download on your iPad, just click the iBooks icon on the iPad screen, and type the book into the search bar.

Please leave a comment here on the site, and e-mail me your private, public, or homeschool affiliation so that I can send your code. After you see the book, I’d love to hear how you are using it in your teaching, and what your students are saying. With permission, I’ll print some of the kids’ comments (the good ones)! Some “classics” have already come to me regarding the audio/video clip, and the bumblebee recipe; and I have been excited about how young children are using the glossary words, such as “entomologist.”

This is a one-time promotion for authors from Apple; so let me hear from you, and I’ll be looking forward to sending your code!

 

 

Crossing the Bridge

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Welcome to the launch of The Reading Road website! Actually, my real reading road was launched long ago. There may have been detours and sinkholes, but there have been bridges to rare adventures, too. The Reading Road and the writing life are like fraternal twins; so it often happens that I cross a bridge from one to the other.

One thing always leads to another. Days spent observing and photographing bees led to a seed of an idea for a children’s book. Dale Carnegie’s words, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade!” came to me. Life in the form of a lemon tree literally gave me lemons; so I decided to tweak the famous quote’s meaning and write about the connection between pollination and that delicious tart/sweet summer drink. Then there was the leap to a USDA lab; but I’m getting ahead of myself. Maybe you would like to follow the progression, winding and circuitous as it has been, to the first digital book I have compiled from endless curiosity and countless hours learning new science and technology. This is the sharing of an experience – of a light-bulb moment which affects us all in a fundamental way. We all love to eat, and eat to live; and this is how my book began.

It happened again this past spring when I left the laundry, the phone, the correspondence on my desk, and other urgencies to heed the siren call of our courtyard. Out there in the lushness, the wings of my imagination unfurl. Some satellite beams connections, and I start to write in my head. Why there? It’s because the air constantly telegraphs sounds and scents. New sights, new colors appear like the turns of a kaleidoscope, and I rush to capture them somehow. The whip of a tail, the snap of a jaw, and a satisfied chameleon has rid my roses of another thrip. I practically trip over a regiment of ants working in sync, like ancient Egyptian slaves hoisting stones to their destination.  Only, their burden is actually an expired chameleon, not so lucky as the one a moment ago. All this life circling and circling, mindless of me, focused, driven, accepting of their lot! And then I hear the buzzing, and I’m drawn to it.

It’s early morning when the white and pale lavender of mint and basil blooms are still dripping dew. Bumblebees, like fuzzy, fat dirigibles, bump into one another, zooming in and among the herb pots with a drone that can be heard above the bubbling fountain. Our blooming lemon tree sports an undulating wreath of bees. They often collide, quickly maneuver backward before re-directing flight, then alight to take long sips of nectar, dipping into each bloom head along each stalk. All this crawling and positioning, right-side up, upside-down, frantically buzzing and drinking as though this might be their last meal, gets me running for my camera. As I’m there on the ground, recording this rhythm, the title and first lines of my book, Lemon Trees and Bumblebees, write themselves. These little buzzers are just being greedy in slurping up nectar to feed themselves and their colony, but they’re really doing us a huge favor. This seems magical, the more I think about it. I remember the excitement of our grandson, Brock, who at three couldn’t wait to tell us, “I have discovered the best food in the world! It’s honey! Have you ever tasted it?” I really need to explain this miracle of pollination for children.

Our lemon tree had given us many dozens of lemons; and what child doesn’t like cold lemonade on a hot summer day? I had my title, as well as the beginning and ending of the story. Back in my study, I pulled books from my shelves; among them, Henry Thoreau’s Faith in a Seed, Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, Mark Winston’s Nature Wars, Stephen Buchmann’s and Gary Nabhan’s The Forgotten Pollinators, and others. The internet also provided much rich research. Most children really have no idea how they get the foods they love (other than at WalMart, as one little boy said), or how much science is involved in things we take for granted daily. This book HAD to be accurate, with a complex concept introduced to early elementary children in easily understood language, and in a way which might spark lifelong interest in science and nature. Above all, it had to be fun! If it would appeal to the natural curiosity of children and make them ask questions, it would meet my goal.

To verify my practical observations and research behind my writing, it was time to phone a county extension agent to be sure my horticulture references were on track. Then I asked if he had any suggestion for an entomologist who might discuss the lives of bees with me. That’s when he gave me the name of Dr. Blair Sampson, a research scientist with the USDA. Within five minutes of the first phone call, I knew the project was off and running.

Blair listened to my ideas for the book and then “knocked my socks off” when he said, “It just so happens that I’m also an illustrator.” And what an illustrator! But would a scientist/artist who had published and illustrated scientific literature be able to make the leap to entertaining children’s book images? We met over lunch at my house, and he brought me one of his paintings of baby otters, part of his renderings for family and friends. His animals are drawn with great detail in playful activities, with just the happy expressions needed for my book. I soon learned that he had grown up in Nova Scotia and had considered university study in art before deciding upon a scientific career.

Blair has taught me more about many species of bees, their anatomy, their habits, and their origins, than I could have learned in many weeks of reading. His research focuses on long-term bee studies in the wild as well as in controlled laboratories. He has shown me his on-going lab work, patiently and enthusiastically answering my dozens of questions about the intricacies of pollination, and the interaction and interdependency of bees and plants. He is one of those academics who radiates wit and contagious passion for his stewardship and study of a process which is vital to our survival long-term.

Many conversations followed our first meeting, with each of us trading sketches and ideas about how best to interpret my manuscript. For instance, I wanted the first pages to picture the “magic” of something taken for granted by most; so we had some fun with a magic act as well as a pirate bee on his ship, hunting for the “buried treasure” within the lemon trees. Also, I wanted the lemons to “grow” on a branch from page to page to show color and size changes. Blair interpreted my vision as quickly as I expressed it. One page shows an Orange Dog caterpillar (larva of a giant swallowtail butterfly) looking very pleased and proud of himself. Little details in the illustrations ideally tell as much of the story as the words themselves. Images and text in any children’s book should be as symbiotic as the relationship of bees and lemon trees in this story.

My resulting children’s book presents an early introduction to the process of pollination, with Blair’s colorful illustrations which are anatomically correct, except for their irresistible smiles and big bright eyes. From lemon blossoms to lemonade, the ending is one which everyone from kindergarteners to senior citizens will recognize. To encourage talks, there are pages with more about trees and bees, an audio/video clip, a glossary of new words from the story, and recipes for lemonade and edible “bees.” Lemon Trees and Bumblebees is available on the Apple iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble NookColor, and Kobo readers.

Here are a couple of illustrations from the book, developed from the first thumbnail sketches. The black and whites show the initial sketches, and the colored drawings are some of the finished pages waiting for me to place the text.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Other books, both fiction and non-fiction are in the works. Here with all of you, day by day, I will share their development, as well as inspiration, writing and marketing methods, and resources which have helped me. I welcome writers of all ages to read my struggles and successes in order to navigate your own book ideas and progress. Comment and let the rest of us know; we’re all roving reporters discovering features along the reading (and writing) road.

What are the odds that the connection with Blair would have taken place just as I was polishing my manuscript? I have to think that it was just meant to be. There have been other lucky forks in the reading road which I have taken to chase bears or rescue migrating birds, but these are tales for another day. For now, I am excited to talk about bees who make honey while they are flying, along with other amazing feats – and maybe share a glass of lemonade with some of my readers!