I got an email the other day from a parent looking for good mathematical literature to interest and challenge older children. Is there any? Which books would I recommend?
Congratulations to our bloggers Deborah Heiligman(Charles and Emma: The Darwins' Leap of Faith) and Steve Jenkins (Down, Down, Down. A Journey to the Bottom of the Sea) for their selection as one of the eight titles chosen by the New York Times as the most Notable Children's Book of 2009!
Here are some recommendations for other excellent children's nonfiction. Tis the season to buy nonfiction!
From Marfe Ferguson Delano:
Fabulous Fishes, written and illustrated by Susan Stockdale. (2008, Peachtree Press, $15.95 hardcover) This charming picture book features simple rhyming text ("Shiny fish / spiny fish/ fish that hitch a ride") and bold, colorful pictures that introduce kids to all sorts of fishes. A spread at the back of the book gives more information about the fish included in the book.
Listen to the Wind: The Story of Dr. Greg & Three Cups of Tea, by Greg Mortenson and Susan L. Roth, illustrated by Susan L. Roth. (2009, Dial Books for Young Readers, $16.99) I enjoyed Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, but I love the way Susan Roth retells this true story through the eyes of the Pakistani children. Her stunning paper-and-fabric collages take my breath away.
From Gretchen Woelfle:
Bad News for Outlaws: The Remarkable Life of Bass Reeves, Deputy U.S. Marshal sports the longest title and the most stunning cover I’ve seen this season. Gregory Christie’s monochromatic close-up headshot of Reeves is riveting. Christie continues with atmospheric endpapers and many full-page paintings which fit this monumental subject. Vaunda Micheaux Nelson’s colloquial text is also a perfect fit for a man who lived a most dramatic life. Slave, runaway slave, sharpshooter, and wily master of disguise, he became the first African American U.S. Deputy Marshal and served for thirty-two years. Nelson recounts several wily nonviolent captures by Reeves who brought more than 3000 outlaws, including his own son, to justice. The only quibble I have with this exciting story is the opening scene. Though Reeves killed only fourteen men out of 3000, Nelson opens with a thrilling but deadly confrontation with one of the fourteen victims. As an old peacenik, I would have preferred to see him outsmart rather than outshoot his man in the opening pages.
From Rosalyn Schanzer:
I first began my extensive collection of children’s books when I was a young illustrator and well before I began to write books on my own, so I used to select each book based solely upon the quality of the illustrations. One of my favorite early choices was the nonfiction book Ashanti to Zulu: African Traditions. This Caldecott Award Winner was fir
G’day from Down Under! I’m in Australia for a week’s worth of school visits starting tomorrow, and some extra time devoted exploring and research. I just saw my first kangaroo in the wild!
Aside from marsupials, the Sydney Opera House, meat pies, didgeridoos and other pleasures of Oz, I’m thinking about the metric system, or Système Internationale (SI), as it is properly known. In my presentations at schools, I refer to measurements many times. Last week while presenting at the wonderful Springfield Ball Charter School in Springfield, IL, I asked my host to make a note every time I said something like, “Light travels 186,000 miles per second” or “I’m about 6 feet tall” or “If you ate ice cream at a rate of one ounce per minute…” I wanted to know all the times I use measuring units in the American way.
Armed with his notes, I can now use conversion factors and change those archaic American measurements to sensible metric ones for my Aussie audiences. But do I want to? Does it make sense to convert a measurement to its equivalent in another system? As far as I can tell, the answer is, “Sometimes.”
I believe it makes perfect sense to say that the speed of light is 300,000 km per second and that the earth is 150,000 million kilometers from the Sun. (It’s pronounce KILO-meters, by the way — not kill-O-meters.) But should I convert when I am talking about my book on proportion, If You Hopped Like a Frog, and I say that I’m about six feet tall, and if I my tongue were as long proportionally as a chameleon’s (half as long as its body), my tongue would be three feet long? In other words, should I tell the Australian children that I am 183 cm tall, so my chameleon tongue would be about 91.5 cm? Or… to use the title example, in the States I tell my audience that a 4’6” child able to hop like a frog (meaning 20 times his or her length/height) would be able to jump 90 feet. Here in Australia, should I say that a 137 cm child able to perform a frog’s feat would thus hop 27.4 meters?
Of course not. Exact conversion often makes for complicated, daunting mathematics.
Yet I see this sort of thing in books all the time. “He walked about 25 miles (32.18 km) a day”. . . “Add two cups (473 ml) of flour” . . . “A St. Bernard can tip the scales at 200 lbs (91 kg).” If you didn’t know better, you’d think all American measurements are nice round numbers while metric measurements are ugly and unwieldy. But the fact is that whoever provided the original numbers approximated to nice, round ones. Calculate a conversion and it gets ugly. (Of course if we wrote it in the reciprocal it would be just as ugly. For instance, we could say, “A St. Bernard can tip the scales at 90 kg (198.42 lbs.)” and readers would blanche at the thought of weighing the dog in pounds!)
The best thing, I think, is not to convert, but to think metric from the start. Tomorrow, I won’t say I’m 183 cm tall. I’ll say I’m about 180 cm tall so my tongue (if I had one that was as long, proportionally, as a chameleon’s) would be 90 cm long. And so on.
The practice of converting units has kept the U.S. from switching to the metric system and joining
To many of us, it’s almost unthinkable to imagine researching anything before the advent of the internet. Discovery of information before the era of google seems as onerous as hauling water out of a well. So seduced have we been by the simplicity and effectiveness of entering a few words into the rectangle at the top of the screen and — wowza! — dozens, hundreds or thousands of “hits” come up. If none is quite right, just change the search terms a bit and try again. For researchers, it’s like winning the lottery again and again.
But. . . you knew there would be a “but”. . . are we depriving ourselves of anything worthwhile when we boil the art of research down to finding 30,000 google hits in 18 microseconds? I would maintain that we are, for several reasons, and I am going to write about one of them: browsing. Sometimes there is both pleasure and success to be found by poking around in the shelves of libraries or bookstores, just to see what we might find.A few years ago, I wrote G is for Googol: A Math Alphabet Book, a potpourri of enjoyable mathematical ideas in an ABC format. Unlike the many alphabet books written for young children, this one is directed at readers in the intermediate and middle school grades (as is its sequel, Q is for Quark: A Science Alphabet Book). So how am I going to fill 26 slots with delightful math? Many entries popped into my mind right away. “A” is going to be for “abacus” because I love the fact that proficient abacus users can calculate lengthy addition or subtraction problems faster than the fastest calculator user. “Z” is going to be for “zillion” because it’s not a number at all but people often don’t realize that, so by discussing the difference between real numbers that end in “illion” and fake ones, I can discuss the actual meaning of number. As for what’s going to come in between A and Z, I had lots of ideas but not enough to fill out the book, so. . . let’s browse the library!
And so it was that I stumbled across Maps, Tracks and the Bridges of Königsberg: A Book About Networks by Michael Holt, a 1975 picture book that was one of many in the now sadly defunct “Young Math” series from the now sadly defunct publishing company, Thomas Y. Crowell. What fun! A great “K” word — Königsberg. I had heard about the dilemma that the residents of Königsberg, Germany, had tried to solve — to see if they could walk across each of their city’s seven bridges exactly once (all had to be crossed once and none could be re-crossed). No one could figure out a way to do it, but for centuries they were taunted by the prospect that a hidden solution eluded them. Finally the mathematician Leonhard Euler developed the postulates and theorems of a new branch of mathematics now known as graph theory or network theory in order to solve the Königsberg bridge problem. His goal was to figure out how to walk the bridges, or to prove it impossible. He succeeded not only in why the seven Königsberg bridges could not be walked once time each, but under what circumstances it could or could not be done for any network of bridges. Network theory not only proved to have many applications (useful, for example, in designing networks of cables) but it also laid the foundation for another branch of mathematics, topology. For me, as a researcher and writer, the cool thing is that I wouldn’t have thought of including the bridges of Königsberg in G is for Googol if I hadn’t bumped into them in Holt’s book on the shelves of a school library during a break between two assembly programs.
So that was an example of browsing, more-or-less aimlessly, to see what I could find and how I could tie it in. But there is another, more directed, way that browsing the shelves has proved fruitful in my research. It’s when I know what I’m looking for but neither google, for all its power, nor the library catalog nor anyone or anything else can tell me where to find it. For example. . .
Recently I have been doing research for an upcoming book called Where in the Wild? Mysteries in Nature Concealed. . . and Revealed, the next book in the series that began with Where in the Wlld? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed… and Revealed. One of the entries in What in the Wild? will be about the diggings of a star-nosed mole, a small mammal whose activities leave unwelcome mounds of soil on lawns and pastures. Moles, whether star-nosed or not, are usually not loved by landowners whose property they think of as their own.
Books and websites about moles turned out to be informative but a bit dull, focused on the minutia of their biology or harsh methods of putting an end to them and their excavations. So I wondered if I could find an interesting book with a section about moles. My initial searches in google and the public library catalog turned up no such book, probably because any that existed did not have the word “mole” in the title or subtitle or as one of the subject terms entered into the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data. Still, I figured that at least one such book must exist. I would employ a more venerable method of research.
And so it was that I found myself on hands and knees in the Rockridge branch of the Oakland Public Library, exploring the bottom shelf of the 596s just to see what I could find.
Within a few minutes, I had walked my fingers to Every Creeping Thing: True Tales of Faintly Repulsive Wildlife by Richard Conniff. The title seemed promising, and sure enough the table of contents led me to a chapter called “Notes from the Underground” — about moles. And guess what: star-nosed moles have a starring role! Conniff describes this creature in a most quotable way as a mole that “looks as if it’s got a sea anemone stuck on its snout.” And from there followed all kinds of fascinating information about the critters themselves and a colorful curmudgeon (of the human variety) who pursues them at the behest of disgruntled landowners in England. Once again, browsing trumped google!
The other day, a student at Landstuhl Elementary/Middle School on the U.S. Army base in Landstuhl, Germany, asked me the secret of success in researching books, and I told him a few things I thought of on the spot, but it didn't occur to me at the time to tell him what I am saying here. To rewrite Kenneth Grahame’s delightful line (which, as it happens, was spoken by the character Mole in Wind in the Willows), “There is nothing—absolutely nothing—half so much worth doing as messing about in boats.” In this case, Grahame’s ode to blissful aimlessness might be rewritten for researchers as “There is nothing so delightful — or fruitful — as messing about in libraries.”
Way back a few centuries ago in the mid-1980s, long before anyone had ever heard the word “internet,” I was assigned to write an article for Smithsonian magazine on the decline of a once-loved American institution, the drug store soda fountain. The research for my story led me to seek newspaper and magazine articles from the heyday of soda fountains in the early- and mid-20th century.
If you are of a certain age, you will understand what I mean when I say that this endeavor resulted in my spending many hours in a public library squinting through a gargantuan, eye-straining machine known as a microfilm reader. If you are younger than that, herewith a brief explanation: to make back issues of certain magazines and newspapers accessible for years to come, a few companies were in the business of photographing the publications, page by page, and printing them onto acetate film in a much reduced size.
The film was called microfilm and in order to actually read it, a researcher could put the film into a machine called a microfilm reader and turn a cranking device (later replaced by an electric motor) in order to scroll to the section being sought. Lenses magnified the film onto a screen. Needless to say, it was no easy feat to find the right section and you had to watch unwanted pages whiz by, often zipping past the part you wanted. It was a pain in the . . . eyes. But who knew that such things as personal computers and internet browsers and search engines and digital archives would make the job a lot easier if only we were willing to wait a few decades?
Despite the trials of research by microfilm (and, slightly later, microfiche, a close cousin of microfilm that used flat sheets of film instead of rolls, thus avoiding the need for scrolling), it had some advantages. When you looked for an article in the New York Times about an especially popular soda fountain in Queens, as I did, you didn’t just get that article in isolation, but you got a glimpse into the world of 1951, as captured on the pages of the Times. There were other articles on the politics and culture and society and sporting events of the day, and there were advertisements that presented the tenor of the times as well as anything a journalist could have written. (In the course of reading about that Queens soda fountain, for example, I learned that big shiny luxury cars were selling for under $2,000. I reached for my credit card but then remembered that there were no credit cards back then.)
In the course of my research on soda fountains, conducted on the microfilm reader at the Wallingford (CT) Public Library, I stumbled upon a very short article, a space-filler, positioned on a back page of the New York Times of July 8, 1951. It briefly told the story of a 66-year old Swedish grandfather named Gustaf Håkansson who had just completed a 1,000-mile bicycle race despite having been barred from the race on account of his age. (How laughable that is in the context of a modern era in which athletes ten or fifteen years older than Gustaf routinely complete grueling races of many kinds -- but this was the early 1950s). Hakansson had, in fact, started his personal race well ahead of the other racers and, 158 hours 20 minutes later, he finished to the rapturous cheers of thousands of fans who had turned out just to see him — the official racers weren’t due in for another day!
Gustaf’s story enchanted me, a lifelong bicycle lover, and I decided it needed to be told in its stereotype-bashing entirety. First, of course, I had to find out the story in its entirety.
Using The Reader’s Guide to Periodic Literature, an index that was then a staple on the reference shelves of libraries, I was able to find a more lengthy article about Gustaf in a long-defunct magazine called Lifetime Living. The article filled in some of the details, but I thought I’d need even more if I wanted to get into the mind of Gustaf and the psyche of his adoring fans. I hoped to see why he is, even to this day, remembered as a hero in Sweden.
Luckily, I had a Swedish friend living in the States who was getting ready to visit her family over the holidays. She offered to look in old Swedish newspapers for articles on the bushy-bearded bicyclist. She found several good ones and actually translated them into English for me. Another friend, studying at the University of Lund in Sweden, did further research with the help of a librarian friend.
The result was my picture book Supergrandpa, illustrated by Bert Dodson, later republished as Super Grandpa (with an audio CD of me reading the story with Swedish fiddle music in the background). In telling Gustaf’s story, I decided to “embroider” the actual facts to add to the dramatic tension, but in a page of back matter, I explained what actually happened.
To me, the most provocative lesson of this story is not about a bicycle ride in Sweden more than half a century ago. It is about differences in research methods between the internet era and the microfilm era. I’ll take the enormous power of the internet over the squinting inefficiency of microfilm readers any day. But let us not forget that sometimes the forgotten ways had their own power. Had I not been seduced by the charm of an old newspaper, the story of Gustaf Håkansson would probably still be buried in the back pages of a paper published on July 8th, 1951, and hardly noticed after July 9th.
This month I am thrilled to turn over my column to my friend Dan Gurney, who is a master Kindergarten teacher and a great enthusiast of non-fiction for kids. Dan is a blogger at Misterkindergarten and MindfulHeart. He is the creator of Soundabet.
David
INK’s foul relation, UNK
by Dan Gurney
David Schwartz, who is visiting schools in Asia, emailed me to ask if I would fill in for him this month. He thought INK readers would enjoy hearing from me, a public school kindergarten teacher with 30 years of experience.
To the bottom of his email, he appended the following quotation:
“You can almost divide [children’s] nonfiction into two categories: nonfiction that stuffs in facts, as if children were vases to be filled, and nonfiction that ignites the imagination, as if children were indeed fires to be lit.” — Jo Carr
INK readers come here to learn about the second category.
Here, however, I wish to discuss nonfiction that’s so bad, I’m not sure Ms. Carr would stick with only two categories.
I want to talk about INK’s foulest relation, UNK.
UNK, is the acronym for Uninteresting Nonsense for Kids. The first thing you need to know about UNK is that he is crowding INK right out of my kindergarten day.
I searched the INK website to see if anyone had already blogged about UNK and was surprised to see that so far he’s escaped notice.
UNK, of course, doesn’t saunter onto websites or into classrooms using his real name. He’s got an alias: DIBELS. Let me introduce you to UNK, I mean, DIBELS.
DIBELS—a reading assessment system in widespread use across America—is making learning to read more stressful and less meaningful. It is changing the kindergarten language arts curriculum for the worse. And it’s stealing untold hours that could otherwise have been spent reading interesting nonfiction.
What is DIBELS?
DIBELS is the acronym for a collection of reading assessments given three times a year to kindergarten students called Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy. Kindergarten DIBELS uses timed tests to measure four discrete skills:
- initial sound fluency,
- letter naming fluency,
- phoneme segmentation fluency, and
- the ability to quickly decode nonsense words.
What Makes DIBELS Stressful?
Ask any kindergarten teacher with a DIBELS-issued stopwatch hanging from her neck what she thinks of DIBELS. She’ll likely roll her eyes in exasperation, sigh with frustration, and say something like this, “DIBELS is stressing me out. It’s meaningless. It doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know. And it’s demeaning. It presumes that I’m not competent to make instructional decisions.”
In its full implementation, DIBELS tests are given three times a year, fall, winter, and spring. These tests are designed to ferret out kids headed for reading trouble. DIBELS computers classify students into three categories: “Benchmark,” “Strategic,” and “Intensive” which mean, respectively, “OK,” “Borderline,” and “You’re in for it.”
Students who are classified as “Intensive” undergo “Progress Monitoring,” DIBELS-speak for on-going, preferably weekly, DIBELS testing. DIBELS scores are uploaded to a national computer which generates individual student charts and saves the scores to an enormous and growing national database. If the DIBELS computer deems any student’s progress to be inadequate, the computer will prompt the teacher to apply new instructional activities.
Scrutiny like this might have been just the ticket for banks and investment firms on Wall Street. But for kindergarten classrooms?
Nonsense
Careful monitoring might make sense if what was being monitored was meaningful. But it’s not. It’s nonsense. Literally nonsense. If this sounds like hyperbole, consider this: DIBELS calls their final test in kindergarten “Nonsense Word Fluency.”
Not that I’m against nonsense. When nonsense is used to lighten us up, to help us take ourselves less seriously, I’m all for it. But DIBELS nonsense has a different purpose: to sort and classify kindergarten students into high and low achievers, to record that information in a nationwide database, and to urge teachers to apply instructional strategies to see that low achievers get higher scores. Serious nonsense.
On this test, kindergarten students are expected to demonstrate fluency in reading consonant-vowel-consonant nonsense words like “sim” “lut” “vaj” and “cun.” Student progress is thus measured. Sadly, some of UNK’s “nonsense” words are actual words. “Wan” is one example. If a precocious, imaginative, or curious student should pause to ask her examiner why a real word is inserted among the nonsense words, her fluency score would plummet.
Because teachers are likely to teach the skills upon which their performance will be evaluated, DIBELS influences the way reading is taught in ways that may contribute to the emergence of a generation of students who may well resent reading as difficult and meaningless work. (DIBELS officially insists that their scores should not to be used in teacher evaluations, but I cannot imagine whom they think they are kidding.)
It Doesn’t Make Sense
Slipping in almost unseen is an important premise of DIBELS: that utter nonsense is appropriate for five year-old children in their first year of formal education.
When I began teaching in the 1970s, a kindergarten teacher’s job was to teach manners, develop social skills, generate generosity, and, yes, to ignite imaginations. We read books—interesting nonfiction books—to inform, to entertain, and to inspire sustained investigation.
If we were feeling ambitious, and we thought the kids were ready, we might introduce the ABCs at a leisurely one-letter-per-week pace. Kindergarten teachers liked to think more about how to get schools ready for children than how to get children ready for school.
Back then, we educators waited, patiently, wisely, compassionately, until late in second grade before we expected students to master letter sounds.
It never occurred to me that someday I would be told to teach very, very young children—many with lagging listening and speaking skills—to read nonsense quickly.
I am just back from San Antonio, where I spoke at NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English). An annual appearance at NCTM (National Council of Teachers of Mathematics) has been on my agenda since 1996 but this was my first NCTE. I started thinking about similarities and differences between the two organizations in how they encourage teachers to use literature, and I mostly came up with similarities. And then I remembered a book on my shelf at home that makes that point exactly, focusing on mathematical literature. Appropriately, the book is published jointly by NCTM and NCTE. If I could put just one resource in the hands of a teacher wanting to mine the many treasures of “math-lit” as a teaching tool for both mathematics and language arts, this would be the book.
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New Visions for Linking Literature and Mathematics by David J. Whitin and Phyllis Whitin is more than a resource book about using math-related literature in the classroom. It does indeed illustrate a myriad
ways that teachers can use a wide range of quality b
ooks to support both math and literacy. But note the word “quality.” In addition to providing examples (plenty!) and illustrating how teachers have used them (impressive!), it tells you how to judge mathematical literature. That’s where New Visions differs from any other resource book I’ve seen. “Many (math-related books) seem more like workbooks than stories,” write the Whitins and I agree wholeheartedly. “Some give detailed prescriptions for reading, much like a teaching manual for a basal reader, while others mask doses of ‘skills’ with comical illustrations or popular food products…” Bottom line: not all math lit is created equal, and New Visions shows you how to evaluate. It even shows why some books just don’t make the grade, and it does name names. Harsh! But someone had to do it.
The Whitins put forth four criteria as a guide for judging mathematical literature as worthy. They then select one book as exemplary, showing how it makes the grade in all four areas. More on that later. Here are their criteria with an example of a book that stands out in each category.
1. Mathematical integrity Stories and literature have enormous value when they inspire children to apply mathematical ideas to the world around them, but for that to happen, the math in a book should be not only accurate, but should be presented in a context that is believable, not forced; it should be presented in an accessible way; and it should “promote healthy mathematical attitudes and dispositions.”
The Whitins give several examples, including Ann Whitehead Nagda’s Tiger Math: Learning to Graph from a Baby Tiger, which provides both an exciting non-fiction narrative with photographs and statistical data from the true, suspenseful story of a motherless tiger cub being raised at the Denver Zoo. Data (such as weight gain over time) is expressed in a variety of useful graphs. It’s an engaging book that connects math to the real world in a way children find spellbinding — and educators find supportive of the standards they are trying to teach.
2. Potential for Varied Response. Children’s books should not be worksheets. Instead of being didactic, they should encourage children to think mathematically and invite them to “investigate, discuss, and extend… (and to) engage in research, problem posing and problem solving.” Readers are not directed. They are invited.
Readers of the charming Grandpa’s Quilt by Betsy Franco, are easily tempted to find their own solutions the problem that faces the book’s characters. The 6-square by 6-square quilt does not cover their grandfather’s feet so they must rearrange its dimensions. Children are likely to explore factors of 36 and to get a feel for the relationship between perimeter and area. And the mathematical “invitations” go on from there.
3. An aesthetic dimension “Good books appeal to the emotions and senses of the reader, provide a fresh perspective, and free the imagination.” Here the Whitins look at how well the written language is crafted, along with the quality of the visuals and whether the book actually inspires a greater appreciation of the wonders of the world (including the human world). To earn our respect, the words and visuals of a work of mathematical literature must be just as compelling as those of any other literary genre. Claiming "It's just a math book!" doesn't cut it.
In their unique counting book, Spots: Counting Creatures from Sky to Sea, author Carolyn Lesser and illustrator Laura Regan use vivid, evocative language and stunning paintings to inspire awe and appreciation of nature — as well as the mathematics that is so often useful in describing and explaining the natural world.
4. Racial, cultural and gender inclusiveness. My first reaction to this criterion was a bit dismissive. “Doesn’t that apply to all books?” I asked. Of course it does, but we should be especially careful not to let the
mathematical component of literature that perpetuates stereotypes blind us to an unfortunate sub-text. There is a huge push now to attract women and members of ethnic minorities to careers in mathematics, science and engineering, and children’s books can help promot
e equity. There is more to it than counting boys vs. girls or white children vs. black or brown children in the illustrations. As one of several fascinating examples, the Whitins sing the praises of The History of Counting by eminent archaeologist Denise Schmandt-Besserat, a non-fiction picture book that celebrates the contributions
of many cultures over many centuries in developing diverse number systems.
New Visions for Linking Literature and Mathematics goes on to provide myriad examples of books for a wide range of ages, strategies for using them to teach math, and an outstanding annotated bibliography called “Best Books for Exploring.”
Now about that exemplary book the Whitins chose to feature in the opening chapter. I held off identifying it until now for fear of seeming self-serving, but in the interest of full-disclosure, I should say that it’s my book If You Hopped Like a Frog. I’ve written about it in earlier posts so I won’t summarize it now and it would really feel way too “me”-focused to list the ways the authors of New Visions found that it met their four criteria. Instead, I’ll close with a passage from an article published in Horn Book in 1987, quoted by the Whitins. I can think of no better summary of their feelings and mine:
“You can almost divide the nonfiction [that children] read into two categories: nonfiction that stuffs in facts, as if children were vases to be filled, and nonfiction that ignites the imagination, as if children were indeed fires to be lit.” (Jo Carr, “Filling Vases, Lighting Fires” Horn Book 63, November/December 1987.)
If you’re of a certain age, you will remember the one-word career advice given
to an ambitionless Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) in the opening scene of the immortal 1967 film, The Graduate: “Plastics!” If an aspiring author of children’s non-fiction picture books asked for two words of advice, I might say “Guessing Games!”
Children love to guess. The opportunity to figure out something or to find objects hidden in illustrations, combined with a chance to show off what they have already learned, gets kids jumping (sometimes literally) with knowledge and joy. If an author can present good factual material in an enjoyable format that allows to children to take guesses, the author might have a popular book on his or her hands. It’s happened to me 25 times, with number 26 on its way.
In the late ‘90s, I wrote two dozen science books in the series “Look Once, Look Again.” They came out in two batches of 12 – the first oriented around habitats and the second around anatomical features of animals and plants. The publisher, Creative Teaching Press, predicted they would be in print for five or six years but it’s now been almost a dozen since the first series came out, and the “LOLA” books (as photographer Dwight Kuhn and I fondly call them) are still going strong.
There was nothing special about the idea, other than the interactive possibilities that come from children using both visual and textual clues to identify plants and animals. First they see a close-up photograph of an organism that gives a magnified view of part of its exterior (the plates of a turtle’s carapace, for example, or the kernels of an ear of corn). The text hints at the organism’s identity (“These are plates but you wouldn’t want to eat from them. What animal has hard plates on its back?” or “What has ears but cannot hear?”). And the child is on his or her way. Kids tear through these books and reach for more. With so many colorful covers, I long ago began to call them “book candy.” Unlike mouth candy, this kind of confection allows kids to think and have no-calorie fun at the same time, while expanding their knowledge of the natural world and, in a subtle way, encouraging them think like a naturalist -- in terms of a creature’s characteristics.
As an author who visits schools, I have had the most fun when I've seen class projects derived from my
books, including class-created books based on “Look Once, Look Again.” Typically, first or second graders have drawn close-ups of animal or plant parts and written clues about the identity, followed by drawings of the complete animal or plant and further explanation. In one school, the students went beyond modeling their work after the LOLA books. They invented fantastical animals that combined characteristics of various real creatures. It reminded me of one of my favoite Dr. Seuss books, On Beyond Zebra, which I first encountered on the shelf of one of my biology professors at Cornell.
Late last year, I published (with co-author Yael Schy, who is also my wife) a book of poems that hint about the identity of well-camouflaged animals found (if you can spot them) in the photographs (also by Dwight Kuhn). The challenge is to find the animal hidden in the picture and identify it from the poem. We adopted a unique design element in which the gate-fold pages open up to reveal another version of the same photo; the difference is that now the background is faded (thanks to the miracle of PhotoShop) to allow the hidden animal to stand out. Then come prose “naturalist notes,” identifying the animal and offering more info about its life history, its use of camouflage, and a few more photos.
Many readers, both young and older, have suggested that Where In the Wild? reminds them of I Spy and Where’s Waldo?. Our book hasn’t yet enjoyed quite the success of those (their illustrations are not limited by the true arrangements of objects in the world), but it has captured the attention of many readers and reviewers (and, I’m pleased to say, award committees–most recently the Animal Behavior Society, which just honored it with its 2008 Outstanding Children’s Book Award). Again, I think the hook is the guessing game format.
With great anticipation, I am waiting to see student projects based on Where In the Wild? Teachers and home schoolers: this is your chance to combine science with poetry. Please show me what you come up with by sending an email to (you know how to turn that into an email address). And all INK blog readers can post some of your favorite non-fiction books that use a guessing-game format. Why limit ourselves to science? How about history, geography, grammar, philosophy, math -- there's no limit! Aspiriing authors of non-fiction: it’s better than plastics.
This is a repeat of my post on February 25, 2008. I have made some changes and added a few new pictures.
The opinions and questions of children often fascinate and delight me. As an author o
f non-fiction children’s books, I receive many letters from young readers. One that stands out came from a nine-year old girl named Lisa who wondered about the accuracy of various statements in my first book,
How Much Is a Million? I was thrilled to receive her letter, for I am always happy to learn that my books are being read critically.
Lisa wondered about the truth of my book’s claim that counting from one to one billion (saying each number individually) would take 95 years. After questioning a few other statements in my book, she closed her letter:
“I had mixed up feelings about your book. That’s where the magic comes from the world of books. The magic of books is not knowing whether the facts are true or not.”
In my presentations at schools, I often tell children, "Wondering is wonderful." I find it wonderful that Lisa is wondering about the truth of statements in my books.
I wish more readers of my books—of all books—would wonder about them the way Lisa does. Active minds read critically, questioning what they have read as the reader blends his or her own experiences, knowledge and observations with the author's raw ingredients. Critical readers ingest a nourishing stew that is more than a bowl of information.
I feel privileged to have seen many examples of readers extending or challenging statements in my books. The members of a 2nd/3rd grade class doubted that the average height of elementary school students is 4'8" (142 cm), as reported in the backmatter of How Much Is a Million? Using 4’8” as the average height, I had figured that average shoulder height would be about 4’, and I multiplied 4’ by 1,000,000 to estimate the height of a one-million child tower, which came out to about 757 miles (1,218 km): “If one million children climbed onto one another’s shoulders,” the book begins, “they would be taller than the tallest buildings, higher than the highest mountains, and farther up than airplanes can fly.”
The members of this particular class doubted that the average elementary school student is only 4’8” tall, and to prove me wrong, they measured every child in the school. They found the median, mode, and mean, and they graphed their data in several ways. Finally, they declared that the average height is only 4'4" (132 cm).
But they didn't quit there. Like a journal article by professional scientists, the report included a section devoted to reflecting upon their results. Scientists would call it the “Discussion” section. In it, the students wondered aloud if there were a legitimate explanation for the four-inch discrepancy between the average height I reported and what they found. They proposed some possibilities: Their school stopped at Grade 5. Maybe I used data from an elementary school that went up to Grade 6 or 8. That might explain why my average height was higher than theirs. Alternatively, their school could have been shorter than normal... or perhaps mine was taller than normal. Or maybe I just measured a single child and declared him or her to be normal! “He’s 4’8” and he looks normal,” I might have said, “so that’s the average. Done!” I find their out of-the-box thinking quite impressive.
In
If You Made a Million, my book on money (using United States currency), I write that one million dollars would be equal to "a whale's weight in quarters." A group of children wondered if a whale really did weigh the same as four million U.S. 25-cent pieces. They looked up the weight of a blue whale (appx. 60 tons or 54,400 kg) and calculated that the blue whale’s 60 tons is the weight of about 10 million quarters or $2.5 million— not $1 million, as my book says! They wrote to tell me their results, and in my reply I pointed out that the book does not name a particular species of whale. It simply says a million dollars is equal to “a whale’s weigh in quarters.” And in the back of the book, where I provide the calculations, I specifically note that the weight of a million dollars in quarters (about 50,000 pounds or 22,680 kg), is "the approximate weight of many kinds of whales, including the sperm whale." Then, as if anticipating their objection, I had added the fact that blue whales can be much heavier.
I thought my arguments had absolved me of error in their minds, but these students were not convinced. They sent me a color copy of the illustration in the book, with an arrow pointing to the blue-tinted caricature of a whale. Handwritten in thick block letters were their final words on the matter:“This is a blue whale!”
After recovering from laughter, I wrote back to suggest that they take it up with the illustrator, Steven Kellogg.
To me, the point isn't who is right and who is wrong. Often it’s a matter of interpreta-tion, as in the case of the whale. The point is that wonderful things happen when children wonder about what they have read. They can pursue their wonders through research and, if appropriate, mathematical calculations or estimations. As nine year-old Lisa wrote, “The magic of books is not knowing whether the facts are true or not.”
It truly is magical.
_______________________
________
* Note: I am using the American definition of “billion” as 1,000,000,000 or 109. Traditional British usage is different, although the American form is being used increasingly in Britain.
Every summer, I think back on my author visits from the previous school year, and many highlights come to mind. Usually one stands out in a slightly brighter typeface than the others, and this past year it was the kindergarteners of Michelle Schaub's class at Grayhawk Elementary School in Scottsdale, Arizona. They had read my book Where In the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed...and Revealed, and they decided that when I came to their school, they would have a surprise for me: their own performance of a poem from the book. It was the poem about the coyote.
Wary eyes...
Ears are keen...
Sniff the air...
Seldom seen...
Crouching low...
In the brush...
Standing still...
Watching, hush...
Darkness falls...
On the prowl...
Rising moon...
Yip and howwwwwllllllll
One thing led to another and soon they had a plan to do it on Grayhawk's schoolwide TV network while I was in the studio and the entire school was watching in classrooms. And there was to be a surprise at the end, when each child lifted a beautiful coyote mask to cover his or her face. They had worked for days on the masks; each one was beautiful and unique. The overall result: spectacular.
You can probably imagine what fun this was for the children, their teacher, the whole school and me. But here's the important point: Those kinders are not going to forget this poem or facts about this animal (detailed, in prose, later in the book) because they turned what I wrote into something of their own.
I could produce a lengthy resource book about ways that classes have extended my books into projects of their own. Some classes have explored individual statements from my books (perhaps to confirm or dispute what I wrote). Some have created books of their own, modeled (closely or loosely) after mine. Some have performed sections of my books in various ways, or even enacted episodes of my life. Think of the differences in learning opportunities between simply reading a book and extending it into something of one's own, something to be proud of. "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime" goes the saying. "Read a child a poem a coyote poem, he'll learn about coyotes for a minute. Give a child a coyote poem to enact, she'll learn about coyotes for days."
By:
David Schwartz,
on 2/25/2008
Blog:
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Hi Everyone!
I'm thrilled to be here, sharing some thoughts with you. I'm just back from Boston, where I was honored to received an award for my latest book, Where in the Wild? Camouflaged Creatures Concealed... and Revealed, which I co-authored with my wife, Yael Schy. (Our book was awarded the 2008 SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the category "Children's Science Picture Book." The award is sponsored by Subaru and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and it was shared between the two authors and photographer Dwight Kuhn.) I was planning to write about the award ceremony and the four books that received the prize in different categories (see www.sbfonline/prizes) but I have decided to save that for another day,
except to give you a glimpse of our book's cover and to share one detail about the ceremony. The sponsors of the SB&F Prize arranged to have several local children present the awards to the winning authors. The kids told the audience (and the authors) what they liked about the books. Some of them spoke with passion about questions the books had raised in their minds. To these readers, a book that raises interesting questions is a good book indeed. Then the young book reviewers shook our hands while handing us our award plaques.
The opinions and questions of children often fascinate and delight me. I get a lot of great letters from children and I would be hard-pressed to pick a favorite, but one letter that stands out in my mind came from a nine-year old girl who wondered about the accuracy of various statements in my first book. I'm going to remove her name and address to protect her privacy, but we can call her by her first name, Lisa. Here is what she wrote. I apologize that the letters are small and a little hard to read. Lisa's message is summarized in the last two sentences:
In my presentations at schools, I often tell children, "Wondering is wonderful." I find it wonderful that Lisa is wondering about the statements in my book and whether or not they are true. These musings give her "mixed up feelings," which may sound uncomfortable, but she quickly goes on to reassure us that she finds these feelings magical. Her letter ends with a sentence I find truly memorable. To Lisa, the magic in books is wondering whether the "facts" are true or not! 
I wish readers of my books -- or all books -- would wonder about them the way Lisa does. Active minds read critically, questioning what they read as they blend their own experiences, knowledge and observations with the author's raw ingredients. They create a nourishing stew that is more than a bowl of information.
I have been lucky enough to see see many examples of readers extending or challenging statements in my books. The 2rd and 3rd graders of one class doubted that the average height of elementary school students was truly 4'8", as I reported in the backmatter of How Much Is a Million? I used that figure to estimate the height of a million children standing on one another's shoulders. To find out if I was right, this class set about measuring every child in their elementary school. They determined the median, the mode and the mean, and they graphed their data. Finally, they declared that the average height was only 4'4".
But they didn't quit there. They proposed several possible explanations for the discrepancy between what I had written and what they had found. For example, their school has grades from K-5. Maybe my school went up to 6th or 8th grade. If so, that could explain the difference between their answer and mine. Or, they speculated, their school might be shorter than normal... or perhaps mine was taller than normal. Or maybe I just measured a single child with a height of 4'8" and I said, "He's normal!" In a scientific paper, this section of their report would have been the "discussion" section.
I'll give just one other example of children wondering about what they have read.
In If You Made a Million, I wrote that a million dollars would be equal to "a whale's weight in quarters." A group of schoolkids wondered about that. They looked up the weight of a blue whale (60 tons) and calculated that it is the same as the weight of 10 million quarters, or 2.5 million dollars -- not one million dollars as the book said. When they wrote to me about it, I pointed out that the book did not specify a particular species of whale. And in the backmatter, where I explained the math, I showed that the weight of a million dollars in quarters is about 50,000 pounds, which is "the approximate weight of many kinds of whales, including the sperm whale." Then, as if anticipating their objection, I added that blue whales can be much heavier than that. I thought I had covered my bases and I said so (nicely) in a letter to my challengers, but they were not convinced. Here is a copy of the page that they sent back to me, bearing their comment upon the situation:
Don't you love it? I sure do. I told them they would have to take it up with the illustrator, Steven Kellogg. And I even provided his address!
To me, the point isn't who is right and who is wrong. The point is that they wondered about something they had read in a book ... and they pursued their wonders through research and mathematics. It's magical. As nine year-old Lisa said, "The magic of books is not knowing whether the facts are true or not."
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I looked Maggie up in the phone book, called her and asked for an interview. That interview and the many conversations that followed became SKY HIGH: THE TRUE STORY OF MAGGIE GEE. What impressed me about Maggie was her drive, her optimism, her courage. She didn’t see barriers, but opportunities. Sure, there was discrimination against her, both as a woman, and as a Chinese-American, but she barely mentioned such problems when she talked about her life. Although her mother had lost her U.S. citizenship when she married Maggie’s father, a Chinese immigrant, that didn’t deter her from working as a welder on Liberty ships during the war, nor from encouraging her daughter to join the Women’s Army Service Pilots. After the WASP were disbanded, Maggie went on to charge through more doors, becoming a physicist and working on weapon systems at the Lawrence Livermore labs, another job that was rare for a woman, let alone an Asian-American woman.
Flatland is not on its way to classic status: it’s already there. Like The Number Devil, it incorporates dreams but the concepts are geometrical rather than numerical. This novella, written in 1884 by English schoolmaster Edwin A. Abbott, is a pointed satire of closed-minded, hierarchical Victorian society but it is also, as Isaac Asimov put it, “The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions.” The story has been developed into several short films and a 2007 feature film; there have been TV episodes, a role-playing game and sequels by other authors.
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I loved the canal stats you provided and you did wow me with them and your suggestions for class use. So how long did it take Mr. Halliburton to swim the canal? I also love odd moments in history.
I like how your mind works, David. Great idea for kids, teachers and writers to think about.
Jim, I amended the part about Halliburton, including the answer to your question (and some other tidbits). David