Rock Snot, You Ask?

A little more on my recent fascination with nonfiction:

My latest submission to my educational publisher was one I wrote on spec—a  book about invasive species. My curiosity first was piqued when I saw a full-page chart of alien flora and fauna in my local newspaper. It featured something called “rock snot.” My initial thought was, “Ah, there’s a name that would tickle a bunch of fourth graders.” But as I read, I discovered this nasty algae is choking streams and lakes all over the world. 

The next week I read about a badly damaged boat that had washed up on the Oregon coast—flotsam from the tsunami in Japan in 2011. The boat was filled with millions of sea creatures—mussels, oysters, starfish, crabs, and fish—never before seen in our waters. They had hitchhiked 4,800 miles! That marine life is now quarantined in an Oregon aquarium, considered by Northwest environmentalists to be potential invasive species.

Then I remembered a TV news report last fall about the flooding in Houston. It showed huge rafts of fire ants floating in the floodwaters. I was bitten by fire ants when I lived in Texas, and their bites hurt like hell. Where had the fire ants come from? Ah ha, another invasive species.

As I began to dig, I learned about cane toads and kudzu, Burmese pythons and feral goats. A book began to take shape, one filled with creepy creatures and amazing statistics. Did you know that a bicycle leaning against a fence in the south can disappear in four days, covered by kudzu!

All I can say is, I’ve changed my mind about nonfiction. It’s all in the telling. I have to remember that.

Truth is Stranger than Fiction

The quote,"Truth is stranger than fiction," is often attributed to Mark Twain, but he borrowed it from Byron. Regardless, these days I couldn't agree more. If anyone had ever told me I’d be writing nonfiction children's books in my retirement, I would’ve called them crazy. I have always preferred a good story to a factual account. As a primary teacher, my classroom library was (sadly, as I see now) eighty percent fiction and twenty percent nonfiction. When I read aloud to my kids, it was always a story—Pippi Longstocking, Charlotte’s Web, My Father’s Dragon. (I know, I’m dating myself, but they’re still good books.)

The nonfiction books I had in my room were mostly about space, animals, sports, and biographies of famous men. (Very few women made the list in those days.) However, I can’t recall ever reading any of those books aloud to my students. Nor to my daughter, once she came along.

And yet, here I am, writing nonfiction for kids--eight books so far. And on my personal list of recently read adult books are Radium Girls, Devil in the White City, The Soul of an Octopus, and Killers of the Flower Moon—all fascinating nonfiction. Heck, I may even tackle Astrophysics for People in a Hurry! What has changed? The world? School standards? My tastes? Whatever it is, there's no denying the growing popularity and diversity of creative nonfiction--for both children and adults.

True stories that read like fiction can be eye-opening. In recent months, I've learned about an arctic explorer whose toes broke off from frostbite and about the  deplorable working conditions of children in our mines and mills at the turn of the last century. Then there was the serial killer who used the 1893 Chicago World's Fair as his hunting ground, and the factory girls who naively painted their lips and eyebrows with radium paint so they could glow when they went out for the night. These "stories" are every bit as amazing or horrifying as any imaginary tale.

I once was asked to write a book for second graders about some of the peculiar things animals do. The editors said, "Like about mating behavior, BUT without mentioning mating!" Well, I discovered a few things while doing my research. First, sex is the motivation for probably 99% of the strange things animals do. Secondly, many of those behaviors are X-rated, like porcupines urinating on the female they choose as their mate and how garter snakes have orgies. But I also learned some fascinating facts that were more PG. The male bower bird, for example, builds a "seduction parlor" (I call it a nest in the book) on the ground and then decorates the area in front of it. Usually, these decorations are all the same color--flowers, pebbles, bottle caps, even plastic drinking straws. Female bower birds choose as their mates the male they think has the most attractive front yard! (This book became Animal Show-offs.)

The secret seems to be in finding a remarkable true story to tell and capitalizing on drama of that reality.

Have you read any riveting nonfiction lately?

Resurrection on the Playground

Many years ago, my first teaching job was in a small Catholic school. It only had an asphalt play area, so the children in the primary grades had permission to spend their recesses in the shady, green back garden of the convent next door. The garden had been the location of a somber funeral service the first graders had performed in early December for their classroom turtle. It seemed that he had died, so under the supervision of the rather naïve young nun who taught them, they dug a hole in the convent flowerbed and buried him. Then they all held hands and prayed and sang together for the soul of their beloved pet. 

One warm spring day, several months later, a group of little ones came tearing around the corner of the school building during recess, screaming and shouting. “He’s come back to life, just like Jesus,” they cried. As they gathered around me, lo and behold, one was holding the classroom turtle in his hand, and the creature truly was alive. “He’s been resurrected!” they all rejoiced. It was time for a science lesson on hibernation.

Long story short, that’s what my blog has been doing—hibernating. But unlike the little turtle, it’s been in that mode for much longer than a few months. Rather than suggesting that, like Jesus, it’s been resurrected, I prefer to picture myself doing some mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on it. Maybe along with a few chest compressions. The blog is now gasping, choking a bit, and sucking in big lungfuls of fresh, 2018 air.

I once heard an agent at a writer’s conference say that a blog that wasn’t current was “just plain creepy, like a ghost town.” Well, people have moved back in, and the place is under renovation. I invite you to stick around or come back often to see what’s going on. Lots of things have happened while my creepy ghost town was hibernating.