Celebrate with the Sci/Why Crew!

With such a diverse - and productive - crew of writers here at Sci/Why, it's no surprise we have a lot to celebrate! Here's what our members have been up to:

Joan Marie Galat

Dark Matters, Nature's Reaction to Light Pollution is one of three shortlisted titles for the Canadian Authors Association (Alberta Branch) Exporting Alberta Award

Joan's new book is Solve This! Wild and Wacky Challenges for the Genius Engineer in You (National Geographic Kids). It was the number one new title on the Amazon.ca list: Children's How Things Work Books.

Claire Eamer

What a Waste! Where Does Garbage Go? Has been racking up award nods:

• Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Youth Book Award, shortlist
• Green Book Festival Award, second place 
• Canadian Children’s Literature Roundtables Information Book Awards, finalist 
• Silver Birch Award nomination, Ontario Library Association 
• American Association for the Advancement of Science SB&F Prize nomination 

So has Inside Your Insides:

• 2018 - AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prizes for Excellence in Science Books - Middle Grade Category, shortlisted. More than 4000 copies of a special edition will be distributed to American schools by Subaru!
• 2018 - Prairie Pasque Children’s Book Award, shortlist
• 2016 - Youth Book Award, Canadian Science Writers' Association, shortlist
• 2016 - Lane Anderson Award, Fitzhenry Family Foundation, shortlist 

Claire's non-science picture book, Underneath the Sidewalk, has also been shortlisted for the 2018 Shining Willow Award (Saskatchewan Young Readers' Choice).

Paula Johanson

Paula is celebrating two new releases from Crabtree Publishing: Supercharged Sports and Tech Industry. Catch her at the When Worlds Collide festival in Calgary this August for all the details!

She's also edited three collections of articles for Greenhaven Publishing: Online Filter Bubbles, Student Loans and the Cost of College, and The Armenian Genocide, and completed a practicum at the University of Victoria's Electronic Textual Cultures Lab.

Margriet Ruurs

Margriet will be visiting an international school in Egypt and is looking forward to visiting mummies and pyramids. We hope she blogs all about it!

Helaine Becker

Helaine's Monster Science was a finalist for the Silver Birch Nonfiction award. She's also looking forward to launching Counting on Katherine on June 23 at the Ontario Science Centre.

L. E. Carmichael

Lindsey is thrilled to be working on her first science book for Kids Can Press! She's also recently returned from Hawaii, where she had a great time swimming with endangered sea turtles, learning about Hawaiian ethnobotany (traditional uses of food and medicine plants), and avoiding angry volcanoes.

New Books, New Awards, New Ways to Get Pumped About Science

by L. E. Carmichael

It's spring and the Sci/Why writers are celebrating. Check out these latest and award-winning books by our team of bloggers!

Simon Shapiro

Simon's book, Faster Higher Smarter (Annick Press) just won the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Youth Book Award! It takes a lot of talent, skill, and hard work to become a world-class athlete. But it takes even more to make a sport better: it takes smarts! And whether innovators are aware of it or not, it takes an understanding of physics, mechanics, and aerodynamics to come up with better techniques and equipment. From swimming, soccer, and basketball to skateboarding and wheelchair sports, Faster Higher Smarter looks at the hard science behind many inventions and improvements in sports.

Claire Eamer

Claire's book Inside Your Insides (Kids Can Press) was shortlisted for the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Youth Book Award!

Her latest, What a Waste! Where Does Garbage Go? (Annick Press) came out in March. It's the history, sociology, science, past, present, and future of human garbage (and even some pre-human garbage). 

Helaine Becker

Helaine's Monster Science (Kids Can Press) was also shortlisted for the Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Youth Book Award! She's also got two new books out: You Can Read (Orca) and Lines, Bars and Circles: How William Playfair Invented Graphs (Kids Can Press).

Paula Johanson

Paula's latest is Critical Perspectives on Vaccinations, a book for high school students from Enslow Publishers. It's a collection of published articles from doctors and experts, as well as court documents and personal viewpoints of ordinary citizens. Stay tuned for Critical Perspectives on the Opioid Epidemic, as well as two kids books on technology in sports and in industry!

Anita Miettunen 

Our newest blogger is also a newly published author! In January 2017, Red Deer Press published Anita's Big Blue Forever. This is a photo-based information book, inspired by the true story of how a blue whale skeleton, buried for over twenty years in PEI, was shipped cross country and reassembled for permanent display at the Beaty Biodiversity Museum in Vancouver, BC. This story is complemented with intriguing facts about blue whales and their environment, and the fascinating process that museums go through to uncover, prepare, and reassemble skeletons for display and study. Big Blue Forever can be purchased through your local independent!

L. E. Carmichael

Lindsey has two new forensic science books for middle readers. Discover Forensic Science (Lerner) starts with crime-fighting cadaver dogs and ends with cutting edge technology in forensics - like a camera that ages blood stains based on their colour. Forensics in the Real World (ABDO) explores careers in forensics, inspiring future Locards... and Sherlocks!