Some Pleasing Embellishment

By Claire Eamer

Last fall, my sister visited the Galileo Museum of Science in Florence and sent me a photo of a plaque that hangs on its wall. (Of course, I'd rather she had just sent me a ticket to fly over and join her, but I suppose you can't have everything.)

The plaque carries a quotation from Eusebio Sguario, who wrote the first book in Italian about the science of electricity. It was published in 1746 -- and I presume this quote is taken from it:

"In this century of ours, it is an iniquitous crime... to treat matters that bore us to tears. Hence science... should receive from the industrious ingenuity of the writer some pleasing embellishment and entertaining discourse."

Leave aside, for the moment, the slightly archaic phrasing and think about this: almost 300 years ago, someone said that science deserves to be explored and expressed just as gracefully and entertainingly and with just as much artistry as any other subject. And that to give science less than its due is "an iniquitous crime."

(I actually quite like the idea of charging writers of boring science texts with Criminal Iniquity, but I probably won't get much support in Parliament for adding that to the legal code.)

In some ways, Sguario's time was not too different from our own. Science was blossoming, coming up with new information and new approaches to understanding almost faster than people could absorb them. Astronomers were peering at the heavens through better and better telescopes. Naturalists were exploring, sorting, and cataloguing the natural world. Microscopists were staring in wonder at living things so tiny that no one had suspected they existed. And people like Sguario were applying the still-revolutionary ideas of Sir Isaac Newton to the physical world.

Much of that new knowledge was unsettling. It challenged people's understanding of their world and humans' place in it. For some, that was thrilling. For others, terrifying. But information, facts, knowledge -- they're all hard to get rid of once they've been released into the wild. So it's better, as Sguario said, to use a bit of industrious ingenuity to convey that knowledge in a way that pleases and entertains as well as informs.
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For some excellent science writing for adults, take a look at:

• Hakai Magazine -- a free online magazine with beautifully illustrated and beautifully written stories about the world's coasts.
• Ed Yong's online science stories in The Atlantic -- well-researched and always entertainingly written.
• Richard Flanagan's moving lament in The Guardian for Tasmania's transformation under climate change.

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Today, scientists are producing information even more prodigiously than were the scholars of Sguario's day. Much of that information is vital to the future of the world as we know it -- perhaps even to our survival as a species. How much more important is it, then, to employ all the industrious ingenuity we writers can muster and spread scientific knowledge through entertaining discourse and with pleasing embellishment, so that everyone can understand the forces that will determine our future? We owe it to science and -- more importantly -- to the world.

So what's that got to do with writing about science for kids, you ask? After all, that's what this blog is about. Well, kids' science writers, like the ones who write for this blog, are all about entertaining discourse and pleasing embellishment. We write about science in ways that are funny, exciting, tantalizing, often gross, and sometimes beautiful. And we apply our industrious ingenuity to presenting science as accurately as possible -- even if we're presenting it to pre-schoolers.

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If you think pre-schoolers aren't ready for the great ideas of science, check out:

• Elin Kelsey's picture book, You Are Stardust, with delicate artwork by Soyeon Kim.
• Jan Thornhill's charming Kyle Goes Alone, which teaches kids about both sloths and themselves.
• Helaine Becker's Counting on Katherine, a picture book biography that is hitting all the science writing awards lists this year.

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We are all very aware that our readers are the adults of the future, and that the knowledge we can give them now -- and, more importantly, the sense that science is something they can enjoy, understand, and maybe do -- will contribute to ensuring they, and we collectively, have a future.

That sounds a bit grand, doesn't it? And I guess it's a bit of a rant. But good science writing is worth ranting about. As Sguario said, it's a crime to bore your readers to tears. Iniquitous!

A Frozen World Returns

By Claire Eamer

The wolf pup cleaned, preserved, and ready for display.
Yukon Government photo.

More than 50,000 years ago, when most of Canada was buried under kilometres-thick ice sheets, a wolf pup was born in one of the few places untouched by the ice -- a dry, grassy plain that extended across most of what is now the Yukon. No more than eight weeks later, the little wolf died, probably buried in a landslip and smothered while it slept in its den. The cold muck froze around it and stayed frozen, summer and winter, preserving the small body.

Just over two years ago, on July 13, 2016, gold miners on Last Chance Creek near Dawson City washed away some frozen sediment and found the little pup. It was frozen and dried but still remarkably well preserved. The miners immediately called in palaeontologist Grant Zazula and his colleagues in the Yukon government's Palaeontology Program. They were delighted with the find. To his knowledge, it's the only ice-age wolf ever found, Zazula says.

Only half of the caribou calf's body was found.
Yukon Government photo.

That was the second spectacular find of the 2016 summer. Six weeks earlier, miners on Paradise Hill -- another famous location in the historic Klondike Goldfields -- had discovered the frozen and mummified remains of a caribou calf. It wasn't as complete as the wolf pup, but nearly all of the front half of the body had survived, with skin, muscle, and hair intact.

Zazula and his colleagues knew they had something special, but they didn't realise quite how special until the results of radiocarbon dating came back. Both animals lived more than 50,000 years ago, the limit for radiocarbon dating. And the caribou calf had been found in association with a layer of volcanic ash that had settled to the ground about 80,000 years ago.

Yukon government palaeontologists Grant Zazula and Elizabeth Hall excavate
the caribou calf from the frozen muck of Paradise Hill near Dawson City, Yukon.
Yukon Government photo

Specimens that old are rare anywhere, and especially in the Yukon where the undulating landscape left few places for dead animals to lie and freeze undisturbed. There was no rush to preserve the bodies, Zazula says.

"We had them kicking around in our deep freeze for a couple of months. They were very well freeze-dried already."

The wolf pup's head before preservation, ice crystals visible.
Yukon Government photo

However, if anyone other than experts was going to see them, more work was required. Yukon Heritage applied for help from the experts at the Canadian Conservation Institute. And they got it. Today, both small bodies have been carefully thawed and preserved in a way that will make it possible to display them to the public. They are currently on display in Dawson at the Dänojà Zho Cultural Centre of the Tr’ondëk Hwëch’in First Nation, in whose traditional territory they were found. Later this fall, they will be moved to Whitehorse and a permanent display at the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre.

Meanwhile, scientific interest is building. Zazula is fielding calls from Pleistocene scholars around the world and brainstorming with them and his Yukon colleagues about what kind of questions the little corpses might answer. Is the wolf pup related to the wolves that live in the Yukon today, or did the Pleistocene wolf disappear to be replaced by a new population? Does the caribou calf have relatives living today? If so, which of the many caribou herds do they belong to? And that's just the beginning.

The thawing permafrost and melting ice of the world are revealing more and more clues to the past, both animal and human. That's the subject of my latest book, Out of the Ice: How Climate Change is Revealing the Past. The Yukon pup and calf are too recent to make it into the book, but it contains plenty of other fascinating evidence of lost or forgotten worlds.

Brand New School Year, Brand New Books!

by L. E. Carmichael

Forget January, for me, September is the start of the new year - the year of learning new things! September is also Read a New Book Month, and we at Sci/Why are here to help you with that task. Discover a new favourite with our freshly-updated-for-2018 Science Book List. Here are some hot-off-the-presses choices for you and your favourite junior scientist. Captions link direct to Amazon.

Bus to the Badlands

Cats

Erupt!

Do Frogs Drink Hot Chocolate?

Hubots

Hungry for Science

Counting on Katherine

Out of the Ice

Solve This!

The Triumphant Tale of the House Sparrow

Stories in the Clouds

Wild Buildings and Bridges

Looking for a Good Science Book? But Where to Start....

By Claire Eamer

If you're curious about Canadian kids' science books, but you don't know quite where to start, consider taking advantage of the expertise of others. A lot of that expertise goes into choosing shortlists and winners for a number of annual book awards that honour science and non-fiction writing for children. Here's where you'll find some of the best titles in Canadian science writing for children -- including some books by Sci/Why bloggers.

L.E. Carmichaeil's Fuzzy Forensics won the
2014 Lane Anderson Award for Youth Books.

Canadian Science Writing Awards

Science in Society Youth Book Award is given annually by the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada. For recent and current shortlisted and winning books, follow the links on the organization’s website at http://sciencewriters.ca/  Award winners for 2014 and earlier are listed on the Canadian Children’s Book Centre website at http://bookcentre.ca/awards/science-society-book-award-0/

The Lane Anderson Awards recognize Canadian science writing in both adult and youth categories. The current year’s shortlist will appear on the main website at http://laneandersonaward.ca/  Past winners and shortlisted books are at http://laneandersonaward.ca/past-winners-and-finalists/

Canadian Information Book Awards

The Children’s Literature Roundtables of Canada’s Information Book Award names a winner and an Honour Book each year. Many of the shortlisted and winning books are science books. For current and previous winners, go to the Vancouver Children’s Literature Roundtable’s website at http://vclr.ca/information-book-award/

The Tragic Tale of the Great Auk by Sci/Why's own
Jan Thornhill won the 2017 Information Book Award
given by the Canadian Children's Literature Roundtables.

The Norma Fleck Award for Canadian Children’s Non-Fiction was established by the Fleck Family Foundation and the Canadian Children’s Book Centre. For a complete list of winners and shortlisted titles, many of them about science, go to http://bookcentre.ca/programs/awards/norma-fleck-award-for-canadian-childrens-non-fiction/previous-winners-and-finalists/ 

International Awards

The American Institute of Physics presents an annual award for science communication for children, and Canadian writers have won on occasion, most recently in 2017. The list of previous winners is at https://www.aip.org/aip/awards/science-communication/children

Claire Eamer's Inside Your Insides: A Guide to the
Microbes That Call You Home was on the shortlist
for the 2018 AAAS/Subaru SB&F award.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science gives out the AAAS/Subaru Science Book & Film awards, and Canadian books have appeared on the award shortlists frequently. Find winners and shortlisted books at https://www.aaas.org/program/aaassubaru-sbf-prize

Our Booklist

If the awards lists have whetted your appetite for Canadian science writing for kids, why not delve deeper? Take a look at Sci/Why's own annotated listing of Canadian kids' science books. It's a free download on the Sci/Why site at https://sci-why.blogspot.ca/p/science-book-list.html

Books to Inspire the Outdoor Kid

By Margriet Ruurs

Looking for books that will inspire children to learn more about science?
Here are some great titles that focus on the natural environment.

Water’s Children by Angéle Delaunois
Water's Children has as subtitle ‘Celebrating the resource that unites us all’. The poetic text takes the reader from rainy cities to thirsty deserts, from mountain tops to the ocean shore, and from rice paddies to rain forests. All around the world, children share what water means to them. A lovely way to discuss countries, cultures, and the importance of water.

Water's Children, by Angéle Delaunois, Pajama Press, ISBN 978-1-77278-015-4.


Watch Me Grow and Up We Grow, by Deborah Hodge

Any school that wants to have a garden or nurture children to take an interest in nature should have these two nonfiction picture books. The first title focuses on growing food in the city. From beets and tomatoes in back yards to balconies, and from bees on rooftops to urban chickens, the book shares photos of kids growing things.

The second title takes the reader along on a year on a small farm. Both books offer ideas for growing your own food, including recipes.

Watch Me Grow, Deborah Hodge, Kids Can Press, ISBN 978-1-55453-618-4
Up We Grow, Deborah Hodge, ISBN 978-1-55453-561-3, 


Safari by Robert Bateman
This gorgeous picture book shares the art of Robert Bateman with young readers. Each image is an impressive, realistic painting of an African animal. Part diary, part note book, the text and images take the reader along on a safari to meet such animals as lion, zebra, elephant, wildebeest, and more. It even includes rough drafts of the paintings so that this book will appeal to young artists as well as nature lovers. Text boxes give detailed information on each animal.

Safari, Robert Bateman, Little, Brown, ISBN 978-0670879700.


Wild Ideas, Let Nature Inspire Your Thinking by Elin Kelsey, illustrated by Soyeon Kim.

A nonfiction picture book needs more than interesting facts. It needs a strong voice and an angle that makes it different from other books. Wild Ideas does just that. The environmentalist author looks at animals around the world, and how they solve problems: otters and primates make tools, squirrels copy people, and an octopus can play tricks. How do animals deal with problems and how can you do the same? A fun book to discuss in science and environmental studies. The art adds a whole other level and will inspire many art lessons. For more about the book, check out: www.owlkidsbooks.com/wildideas

Wild Ideas, by Elin Kelsey, Owl Books, ISBN 978-1-77147-062-9

Arctic Publisher Shares Northern Voices, Traditional Knowledge

By Gillian O'Reilly

Looking for engaging, appealing and informative science-themed and technology-themed books that incorporate traditional knowledge? Look no further than Inhabit Media.

Inhabit Media, an Inuit-owned publishing house based in Iqaluit and Toronto, aims to “promote and preserve the stories, knowledge and talent of northern Canada.” The company publishes a wide range of books for adults and kids, plus two magazines: Kaakuluk: Nunavut’s Discovery Magazine for Kids and Pivut: The Magazine for Nunavut Youth.

With an author list that includes established and emerging Northern writers and elders, as well as knowledgeable Southerners, Inhabit offers readers a rich variety -- from board books on Inuit tools and clothes to informational picture books to YA novels, historical and contemporary. Publishing in English, French, Inuktitut and sometimes Inuinnaqtun, Inhabit works to ensure that its books are accessible to both Northern and Southern readers.

A recent success for the company has been the Animals Illustrated series for readers aged 4 to 6. Each book is a lively mix of animals facts and first-hand accounts from authors who live in the Arctic, accompanied by meticulous and appealing illustrations. There are now four books in the series, covering polar bears, narwhals, muskox and walruses. A fifth book, on bowhead whales, is coming this fall.

One of my personal favourites in Inhabit’s list is A Children’s Guide to Arctic Birds (2014), written by Mia Pelletier and illustrated by Danny Christopher (for ages 4 to 6). Informative, accurate and with gorgeous illustrations, the book looks at 12 birds that make the Arctic their permanent or seasonal home.

Another favourite is A Walk on the Tundra (2011) written by Anna Ziegler and Rebecca Hainnu and illustrated by Qin Leng (for ages 6 to 8). This is a picture book story that features a warm intergenerational relationship while incorporating a great deal of traditional knowledge.

Innuujaq reluctantly accompanies her grandmother on a walk to pick Arctic plants. Through it, she learns a few things about her grandmother and much about tasty, nourishing and medicinal plants. Included at the end are scientific descriptions of the plants, photographs and a glossary of Inuktitut words and phrases.

More recently, Ziegler, Hainnu and Leng collaborated on A Walk on the Shoreline (2015).

Discover your own favourites among Inhabit’s books at www.inhabitmedia.com!

BREAKING NEWS: Sci/Why Bloggers Shortlisted for Major Award

Three of Sci/Why's regular bloggers have books shortlisted for the Canadian Science Writers' Association's 2017 Youth Books Award. The books and authors are:

• Faster Higher Smarter, by Simon Shapiro. Published by Annick Press.
• Inside Your Insides, by Claire Eamer. Published by Kids Can Press.
• Monster Science, by Helaine Becker. Published by Kids Can Press.

The other nominees are To Burp or Not to Burp: A Guide to Your Body in Space by Dr. Dave Williams and Loredana Cunti (Annick Press) and Dinosaurs of the Deep by Larry Verstraete (Turnstone Press).

I wrote an illustrated book - about invisible stuff!

By Claire Eamer

Cover art by Marie-Eve Tremblay.
Published by Kids Can Press.

My latest kids' science book - Inside Your Insides: A Guide to the Microbes That Call You Home - hits the bookstore shelves on Tuesday, September 6. And I'm thrilled.

I know, I know - I've been here before. After all, this is my seventh kids' book. But the launch of a new book never loses its charm. There's a long and sometimes painful road from the first exciting bit of research to the finished object - all shiny and glossy and colourful, and just waiting to delight fresh eyes.

This time there's an extra level of delight, at least for me. The topic of the book is the invisible menagerie of tiny critters that make up the human microbiome. The key word here is "invisible." And a key aspect of kids' books is illustration. So, how do you illustrate the invisible?

One solution might have been photographs. Microbes aren't really invisible - just really, really small. You can see some of them through a light microscope and more through an electron microscope, but some are barely visible even with the best equipment. And they....well....they look a bit boring. (Sorry, microbiologists! I know you love them all.)

EHEC bacteria, O104:H4 outbreak strain. Scanning electron microscopy. Bar: 1 µmSource: Gudrun Holland, Michael Laue/RKI

The better solution is an artist - in this case, the marvellous Quebec artist and illustrator Marie-Eve Tremblay.

I should explain that the publisher, Kids Can Press, came up with this solution. I just sent them words and then sat back and crossed my fingers, hoping they'd find a way to bring the book to visual life.

And they certainly did. Marie-Eve's microbes have character, humour, colour, emotion. Not bad for mostly-single-cell organisms. They might not be exactly what a microbiologist sees, but they get some fairly difficult information across in a way that will engage the kids reading the book.

And, who knows? Some of those kids might be the next generation of microbiologists. I hope so!

Thanks, Kids Can Press and Marie-Eve Tremblay, for making my words come to colourful and entertaining life.

If you want to know what reviewers think of the book, check out the reviews in Quill & Quire, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews.

And for some cool information about researching the human microbiome - and keeping your research up to date - see Jan Thornhill's Sci/Why post from March of this year.

Announcing the Bigger, Better - and Fully Updated - Science Book List

By Claire Eamer

2014 Lane Anderson Award

About a year ago, we posted our first list of Canadian science-themed books for children. Our goal was to help teachers, librarians, science communicators, and parents find science resources home-grown in Canada.

It was a selection only, not a comprehensive list - just what we could do with too little time, too few hands, and no resources to speak of.

2012 Lane Anderson Award

Here we are a year later, and not much has changed in the time-hands-resources continuum - but the book list has changed. It's bigger, bolder, better organized - and UPDATED!

(Oops. Did I shout that? Well, it's worth shouting about.)

The list is still not comprehensive, but there are a lot of books in there. Including the prize-winners you see on this page. The books are listed by curricular topic, so you can search for books on your favourite subject or just browse happily.

2013 Lane Anderson Award

And the book list even has its own shiny new page on the Sci/Why website. Take note of the tab on the right, above, and keep an eye on that page for further news. Or you can just jump straight to the book list.

Please share the Science Book List link with everyone and anyone. And use the list. You're welcome to download and distribute it. Just acknowledge the source.

Happy Reading!

The Importance of “Thoughtful Spots”

By Melissa Stewart, guest blogger

“Half way between Pooh’s house and Piglet’s house was a Thoughtful Spot where they met sometimes when they had decided to go out and see each other . . .”
         —The House at Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne

I think everyone should have a Thoughtful Spot—a quiet place in nature where they can be alone with their thoughts. And for writers, I think a Thoughtful Spot is absolutely essential. My guess is that beloved author A.A. Milne felt exactly the same way.

Today more than ever before, daily life is busy and chaotic. We need time and space to analyze and process and evaluate it all. Only then, can our minds be free to dream and imagine and find the inspiration the fuels us.

My Thoughtful Spot is a pond about 20 minutes from my home.


While walking along the wooded trail surrounding the pond, I’ve solved many problems that seemed insurmountable while sitting at my keyboard, staring a mess-of-a-manuscript.

This same special spot provided experiences and observations that led directly to two of my most popular books—Under the Snow and When Rain Falls. I take you to the pond and describe those book-generating experiences in a video called Where Do Ideas Come From.

Do you have your own Thoughtful Spot? I hope so. Visit it often and soak up its treasures.

And it you don’t, I heartily encourage you to make time to explore some natural areas near your home. My guess is that it won’t take long to find a special place where you can go to slow down and reconnect with the part of yourself that’s open to all the possibilities the world has to offer.

Why not give it a try? After all, it worked for Winnie-the-Pooh.

Melissa Stewart is the award-winning author of more than 150 nonfiction books for children, including No Monkeys, No Chocolate; Feathers: Not Just for Flying; Under the Snow; and Animal Grossapedia. She maintains the blog Celebrate Science and serves on the board of advisors for the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators.

(P.S. For anyone wondering why an American writer is guesting on a Canadian kids' science writers' blog - we just like her work! - CE)

Deck the Halls With Boughs of Ilex!

Winter can get really cold in Canada!

By Claire Eamer (and the Sci/Why crew)

‘Tis the season to be jolly…. And to take a little time to relax, and maybe dip into a favourite book or website. We thought - as a present from us to you - that we’d tell you about a few of our favourites. And since we’re all science geeks here at Sci/Why, there’s plenty of science involved.

(Speaking of science, did you know that there are about 600 species of the genus Ilex? That’s holly, for those of you who are still decking your halls.)

So, here we go!

From the excellent science book writer and this year's Lane Anderson Award winner, L. E. Carmichael:

Here's a link to my favourite science story of the year – about a cure for a kind of blindness.

I discovered this treatment to cure a form of congenital blindness while researching GENE THERAPY in 2012, and it became the first chapter of the book. At that time, it had only been tested on dogs and a small group of patients, including a young boy named Corey Haas. Now the therapy is about to be approved, offering hope to all the people who suffer from the condition.

(Claire speaking: Actually, Lindsey liked this story so much that she wrote a blog post about it.)

From Margriet Ruurs, who sends in Sci/Why posts from the far corners of the world:

I love YOU ARE STARDUST by Elin Kelsey because of the gentle voice in which this story is told (in the ebook). It is the story of evolution, of how we all came to be here on this planet. There are lots of activities on Elin's site linked to the book. 

(Claire speaking: I love this book too – and the illustrations are beautiful. It really does work for readers of any age, from toddler to senior.)

Sometimes, it's not so cold. This is Canadian shirt-sleeve weather.

From Helen Mason, a recent and welcome addition to the Sci/Why ranks:

Here's my current favourite – an interview with a rock-snot scientist who wasn’t allowed to talk about his work until recently. 

Not only am I happy about Canadian scientists being unleashed, I'm looking forward to learning more about rock snot. A scientist who understands how such a term would interest listeners must have some interesting things to say.

Jan Thornhill couldn’t stop at one favourite. She gave us two:

If Children lose contact with nature they won’t fight for it - an article in the Guardian by George Monbiot about "the collapse of children’s engagement with nature.”

And I loved the mesmerizing video of this amazing deep sea jellyfish.

Joan Marie Galat loves astronomy, so her favourite is not really a big surprise:

Here's my contribution. It was a thrill to see the world's first close-up views of Pluto this year, thanks to the New Horizons spacecraft. Its pictures provide sharp views of breath-taking mountains, icy plains, and impact craters.

Paula Johanson didn’t stop at two favourites. Or three. She has four!

While I've been writing an introduction to the Paleolithic Revolution, it's been fun to find archaeology stories in the news. There was the hiker who found a Viking sword by a path in Norway. And it was fun to go to the Yukon Beringia Interpretive Centre’s website.

But for interesting images of hominid bones, my favourite resource is Morpho Source. MorphoSource is a project-based data archive where researchers store and organize, share, and distribute their own 3-D images of hominid fossil bones. Anyone can register and download 3-D images to use in their own studies. The website is designed to be self-explanatory, but young students will need assistance browsing the archive

And last, but definitely not least, my favourite of the day is the fossil bird found on a beach about five miles from my new home in Sooke, British Columbia.

And sometimes (and some places), it's not cold at all, even at Christmas.

Claire here again. I'm back! And not to be outdone, I have four favourites to offer too.

For an ever-changing set of science stories from around the world – and some wonderful photos and photo collections, try the Science and Environment pages of the BBC.

And for another take on the day’s science stories (also with some great pictures), but with a Canadian perspective, go to CBC Technology & Science pages.

The host of CBC Radio’s great science magazine, Quirks and Quarks, Bob McDonald, writes a weekly blog about a science issue or story that caught his eye – and he’s great at explaining things in a way that all of us can understand.

Finally, if you’re as fascinated as I am by the unseen, unsuspected microscopic world around us, go to Nikon’s Small World and see the beauty, adventure, and high drama visible only through a light microscope.

Now grab a Christmas cookie and hot chocolate, relax, and have a science-y good time.

Falalala la lala la LAAAA!

All photos by Claire Eamer

Books! Books! Books!

By Claire Eamer

Claire Eamer photo

A few months ago, we at Sci/Why put together a list of kids' science books by Canadian writers - ourselves and others. It's a work in progress, which we plan to update as often as we can manage, but it's already pretty lengthy.

The list is organized so that you can find books by topic and see immediately what grade level they're suitable for. That was for the convenience of teachers and librarians. But it's awfully convenient for people who might be looking for presents for their favourite kids at this time of year. Right?

So we thought we'd just mention again that we offer, for your consideration, our list of Science-Themed Books for Children. Just follow the link to a lot of science a lot of fun, and a lot of great ideas!

Jan Thornhill Wins 2015 Vicky Metcalf Award

By Claire Eamer

Jan Thornhill

Sci/Why's own Jan Thornhill is this year's winner of the prestigious Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People - and the rest of us at Sci/Why couldn't be prouder! The award is given for a body of work over many years, and Jan certainly has that. She has fourteen books to her credit (so far) - and for many of them, she was both writer and illustrator.

Here's what the award jury had to say about Jan and her work:

With clarity and grace, Jan Thornhill’s books use both art and text to draw children into a closer and more understanding relationship with the natural world. Over a period of almost 30 years she has shown a rare ability to present serious topics to children from a scientific perspective in which gaining knowledge is pleasurable, never didactic or dry. From concept books like The Wildlife ABC, to stories and folk tales dealing with subjects like migration or wild animals in urban environments, to non-fiction books for older children on complex and challenging subjects such as conservation or death, Thornhill enriches the young reader’s awareness of the physical world and our place in it. A passionate and deeply-informed interest in nature is always conveyed with her characteristic combination of humour, empathy, and common sense.

Jan with Kirsten Hanson, chair of the board of the Metcalf Foundation and one of Vicky Metcalf's grandchildren. (Laurence Acland photo)

Jan has kindly shared with us her acceptance speech, delivered at the Writers' Trust Awards banquet on November 3. Here it is:

Thank you so much! I am humbled and thrilled to receive this award— my sincerest gratitude to the Writer’s Trust and the Metcalf Foundation.

Of course, I’ve known about the Vicky Metcalf Award for a long time, but I never thought I had a chance of getting it. Not only because there are so many amazing children’s writers in Canada, but also because I write mostly non-fiction. For a long time, non-fiction, especially for kids, has been the odd man out awards-wise. So I’m so glad that someone – well, a jury of three someones – has decided that what I write is both important and literature…. Literature, despite the fact that, in one of my books, there are fewer than 50 words in the main text. The Wildlife 123 begins with the very hard-to-write line: “One panda,” and ends with the equally difficult “One thousand tadpoles.”

So I guess I am also being recognized as an illustrator. This shows a growing understanding that picture books are, indeed, literature; and that when they work, they are a perfect marriage between words and art. This has been made even clearer to me when other artists have illustrated my words, most recently the fabulous Ashley Barron who did the gorgeous artwork for Kyle Goes Alone, published by Owlkids this fall.

I am not the only writer/illustrator who has received this award in the past 50 years, but I do seem to be the first author who writes primarily non-fiction, almost always about science, nature, and the environment. And YAY! to that, I say. As a science writer, it’s particularly gratifying to be recognized after 10 years of living under an unbelievably heavy-handed anti-science regime – a government that did not understand the importance of long-term scientific studies, research libraries, and, most critically, the free dissemination of information and ideas—which is part of what literature is also about. I hope the new government gets it right, with both the sciences and the arts.

On a more personal note, my family and friends, and a few industry associates know that more than 10 years ago I had to give up illustrating because of a painful condition in my arm that was eventually diagnosed as cancer. I’m happy to report that I’ve been cancer-free for seven years since my treatment. But I’m just as thrilled to say that, though my dexterity is not what it once was, I’ve recently figured out a way to work around my handicap and I’ve almost completed my first self-illustrated book in more than 10 years. (It comes out with Groundwood next fall.)

Along with offering my thanks again to the Writers’ Trust and the Metcalf Foundation for granting me this award, I would also like to express my gratitude for the substantial sum of money that comes with it. I don’t know if everyone here knows this, but trying to create children’s books that make a difference doesn’t often pay very well. I, and others like me, do it because we believe that children deserve excellence in the books they are given to read. Receiving this recognition confirms I actually did make the right career choice 25 years ago.

I’d also like to thank the publishers and editors I’ve worked with over the years: Sheba Meland and Anne Shone, Jennifer Canham, Karen Boersma, Karen Li, and Sheila Barry, to name just a few. I’d also like to thank my pal, Laurence, who has been my computer and science mentor for years, and my mum, who’s sitting right there, my biggest fan from the first time she stuck a crayon in my hand when I was two, and who, along with my dad, surrounded me with books.

And of course, my wonderful husband, Fred, who, for more than thirty years, has put up with the squalor that surrounds me when I work. And who has stood beside me on volcanoes and in hospitals, and has made me laugh in both places.

Finally, I want to thank the astonishing biodiversity of this planet of ours that never fails to entertain me and provide me with inspiration."

If you'd like more Jan Thornhill (who wouldn't?), check out her fungus blog, Weird and Wonderful Wild Mushrooms, or just enter her name in the Sci/Why search engine (right) to find links to her many fine Sci/Why posts.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a winner!! (Well, several winners, actually.)

By Claire Eamer

Every now and then, we have to boast about the amazing awesomeness of the Sci/Why crew. After all, somebody's gotta do it. Why not one of us?

So - without further ado - let me announce that my colleague, L.E. Carmichael has won this year's Lane Anderson Award for the best Canadian youth science book published in 2014. Ta da! She earned the award with her book Fuzzy Forensics: DNA Fingerprinting Gets Wild.

Part mystery and part scientific guidebook, Fuzzy Forensics tells the story of cutting-edge science put to work to solve a wildlife crime, how the science works, and why wildlife crime is important. It's both fascinating and fun.



Pretty impressive, eh? But that's not the end of our amazing accomplishments.

In September, Sci/Why blogger and Science Lady, Shar Levine, was presented with a 2015 Alumni Honour Award by her alma mater, the University of Alberta, for her work in advocating for children's science literacy.

Shar's writing partner, Leslie Johnstone, is no slouch either. While Shar was being honoured at the University of Alberta, Leslie was named one of the 100 leaders in education in British Columbia by the University of British Columbia. Besides writing dozens of entertaining science books for kids, in partnership with Shar, Leslie has taught science at Point Grey Secondary School in Vancouver since 1988 and is currently acting vice principal and head of the science department there.

Congratulations to all of our winners!

Dispatches from the Peanut Gallery

By Claire Eamer

I wrote the original version of this post a year or so ago for the Canadian Science Writers' Association's blog, currently offline. I thought it might interest readers of this blog as well. - CE

Respectable science writer and audience. Rick Massie photo

Do you remember the first science book you read? It probably wasn’t a heavy tome about a vital scientific issue of the day, or even a romp through the dusty corners and characters of archaeology. I’ll bet it was a book about dinosaurs, or insects, or stinky anatomical functions.

And I bet you didn’t think of it as a science book. You just thought, “Dinosaurs!” Or, “Bugs!” Or, happily, “Ew, gross!” (When you’re a kid, the exclamation points are part of the experience.)

Kids aren’t drawn to abstract terms like biodiversity or evolution or even chemistry or physics. Their taste is specific and concrete. It’s the joy of reading about giant monsters that actually lived – and knowing more about them than their parents do. Or the squirmy delight of tiny, six-legged alien life forms that live among us. And stinky, messy, disgusting anatomical functions – well, what kid doesn’t love those?

Some of us respectable grown-up science writers spend a lot of time thinking about the same things. We write about science for kids – from toddlers to teenagers.

And we don’t get no respect.

No Respect?

Okay, I’ll grant you that might be a bit of an overstatement. However, it’s true that science writing for kids can be a hard sell, whether it’s to teachers and librarians, parents, or to other science writers. School reading lists tend to be dominated by fiction – as do book reviews, literary awards, granting-agency qualifications, and kidlit festivals. Science-writing conferences and the like are dominated by books, magazines, and blogs for adults.

The easiest audience is the kids themselves. They are generally fascinated by how things work, what they’re made of, and why they’re the way they are – all the questions that scientists ask every day. At the age I usually write for (8 to 12 years), they aren’t slotting knowledge into categories and dismissing the categories they don’t think they should be interested in. They just want to KNOW STUFF – everything from poop (very popular in the middle grade set) to astronauts (almost as popular).

And it’s important to offer them stuff to learn about and to know. If you want knowledgeable adults, willing to learn new things and consider new ideas, you’ve got to start ‘em young. Which is why what kids’ science writers do is important.

Honest!

Enough with the whining!

Yeah yeah – I hear you. If we’re so hard-done-by, why do we do it? Well, actually we like it – a lot. And that keeps us coming back.

Kids’ science writers get to embrace their inner child. Mine is about 10 years old, a bit grubby, likes old jeans, grasshoppers, dragonflies, tidepool critters, and wading in sloughs right to the tops of her rubber boots. The reasonably respectable grey-haired lady is just a clever disguise.

When I write my kids’ books, I’m usually writing for that inner child who still has all the enthusiasm I brought to reading and knowledge decades ago. Writing for that kid has some constraints, but they’re constraints that it doesn’t hurt to think about when you’re writing for grown-ups too.

For example, always remember who you’re talking to. Simple, colourful language is good – for kids and adults. Leave the scientific language to the scientists whenever possible. What adds precision to a scientific paper often obscures the information for the non-scientist or, especially, the kid.

Keep things concrete. I’ll bet every kids’ science writer has had the experience of wandering distractedly around the house, tape measure in hand, looking for a common object that is exactly the same length as a Galapagos tortoise, a hummingbird, or Galileo’s first telescope.

And what about big things? Even adults don’t always grasp how big is Big. For example, Bullockornis planei, the giant flightless goose of ancient Australia, was about 2.5 metres tall. Are you more impressed if I tell you it was tall enough to stand beside a single-storey house and pluck shingles off the roof?

(That, of course, leaves aside the issue of whether you have ever heard of Bullockornis planei. I hadn’t, until I started researching Spiked Scorpions & Walking Whales and discovered the Demon Duck of Doom. Look it up. Trust me!)

Oh, yeah. Another good rule for kids’ science writing is keep it short. And this post is already too long. So I’ll stop.

Longing for the Giants

By Claire Eamer

In the long and complex story of evolution, organisms emerge and then disappear, never to be seen again. I understand and accept that. Honest. But, fair or not, I regret the loss of some organisms more than others.

I admit it. I miss giant ground sloths.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not old enough to have met a giant ground sloth face to face. None of us is. The last lingering remnants of a great bunch of animals perished about 5,000 years ago, probably on a small Caribbean island.

Fossil foot of a Jefferson's ground sloth beside my shoe. C. Eamer photo.

While they were here, though, they were amazing. And really, really big. Well, some of them were big. Some species were as small as house-cats, but the largest ground sloths – Megatherium and Eremotherium – were the size of elephants. Hairy elephants, with thick hides dotted with bony plates, claws the size of bananas, and a propensity to stand up on their hind legs and maul substantial trees.

If it’s any comfort, they were vegetarian. Mostly. Some scientists think that Megatherium, at least, might have used those giant claws to grab a bite of meat to go with the veggies, especially when climate change dried the local landscape and thinned out the forests it relied on.

Greg McDonald, senior curator of natural history for the US National Park Service, is another sloth enthusiast. He recently delivered a talk on ground sloths, via Skype, to an appreciative audience in Whitehorse, Yukon.

The Yukon is, surprisingly, ground sloth territory. It’s actually where I first met a ground sloth – if not face to face, then at least face to skull. It was a Jefferson ground sloth, a member of the genus Megalonyx, and its ox-sized skeleton looms over visitors to the Beringia Interpretive Centre in Whitehorse.

For hundreds of thousands of years, Megalonyx ranged from southern Mexico to as far as Alaska and the northern Yukon. Megalonyx was unique, McDonald said, in being a wholly North American sloth. Although its ancestors came from South America, Megalonyx itself evolved in North America and never spread south of Mexico.

A sloth skeleton towers over visitors to the Beringia Interpretive Centre. C. Eamer photo.

That made it a late-comer in the sloth world. Like many other strange and wonderful mammals, sloths evolved in South America, in splendid isolation.

“For most of the age of mammals,” said McDonald, “South America was an island continent, much as we think of Australia today.”

The giant Megatherium roamed the ancient forests of South America in those days. And it had a curious assortment of cousins: anteaters, giant armadillos, and a bizarre creature called a glyptodont that looked like an ambulatory bone igloo. They all belonged to a group called Xenarthrans, which evolved exclusively in South America.

Once thought to be an odd evolutionary offshoot, Xenarthrans are now recognized as one of the major subdivisions in mammalian evolution, McDonald said. They prospered for tens of millions of years in South America and moved on to North America when the Isthmus of Panama began to form and link the two continents, just a few million years ago. (Or maybe more than a few million years ago, according to some recent studies.)

That was a momentous time in evolution, said McDonald. It’s called GABI: the Great American Biotic Interchange. Released from isolation, the Xenarthrans drifted northward, along with other distinctly South American animals, such as giant flightless birds with the hooked beaks of meat-eaters and the ancestor of the humble porcupine. At the same time, animals that had evolved in North America moved southward, including hunting cats with dagger-like fangs and those members of the camel family that became South America’s llamas and alpacas.

Ground sloths spread and adapted and changed on both continents for several more millions of years. They even took to the sea. Marine deposits in southern Peru have turned up a wealth of ancient fossil whales, seals, and sea lions – and entire skeletons of giant sloths. The sloth skeletons show clear evidence of adaptation to an aquatic environment. McDonald said it appears that the aquatic sloths were evolving into animals that went into the sea to eat sea grasses. Like the whales, they were reversing the classic sea-to-land journey of most mammals.

But that’s as far as they got. The aquatic sloths died out about 4 million years ago, and most of the rest of the ground
sloths didn’t survive the great megafauna die-off at the end of the last glaciation, about 12,000 years ago. A few small ground sloths lingered on isolated Caribbean islands, where 5,000-year-old sloth bones have been found in caves.

Today, the much-diminished sloth tribe has been reduced to the endangered tree sloths – a mere six species in two genera – eking out an existence in the shrinking rainforests of South and Central America.

The giants are gone. And, even though I never shared the world with them, I miss them. In fact, they inspired me to write my first kids' science book, Super Crocs & Monster Wings: Modern Animals' Ancient Past.