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February is right around the corner and that means Valentine's Day! More importantly, that means CANDY!
Fittingly, the February issue of Odyssey magazine is all about Candy!

Be sure to check out my article "Making New Candy Concoctions". Ric McKown, an old friend and author of The Candy Bar Cookbook: Baking with America's Favorite Candy (Longstreet Press, 2000), graciously helped me with some of the candy science.  (See, old friends do come in handy.)
To complement my article, Odyssey has a Candy Concoction Contest. Entries must be postmarked by March 30, 2012, so check it out.
And, four pages after my article, check out a piece by fellow INK member, Karen Romano Young. Her Humanimal Doodle is titled "Honey Doodle".

Librarians, teachers, and parents, looking for other books about Candy and Sweets for February?  In May 2011, I wrote Sweet! Interesting Nonfiction for Kids with a list of book suggestions.
Here are a few more suggestions that may inspire some candy concoctions:

Ghoulish Goodies: Creature Feature Cupcakes, Monster Eyeballs, Bat Wings, Funny Bones, Witches' Knuckles, and Much More!
by Sharon Bowers
Storey Publishing   July 2009







Raw Chocolate
by  Matthew Kenney and Meredith Baird
Gibbs Smith   February 2012








Twist It Up: More Than 60 Delicious Recipes from an Inspiring Young Chef
by Jack Witherspoon, Sheri Giblin, Lisa Witherspoon
Chronicle Books   November 2011





Happy Valentine's Day to All!

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My post is a doodle. Please click on the picture to read it at full size. -- Karen

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My post is a doodle. Please click the picture to read it. -- Karen

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I'm happy to announce that the winner of an autographed copy of Doodlebug: A Novel in Doodles is Theresa, a teacher who blogs at Looking for the Write Words. Theresa, we hope you and your students enjoy Karen Romano Young's book!

Thank you to all who entered the contest. I'm sorry we couldn't give everyone a prize, but stay tuned for two more giveaways this month!

And, as always, happy writing!
Carmela

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Vicki Cobb's new book What's the BIG Idea? Amazing Science Questions for the Curious Kid is published by Skyhorse Publishing on June 6. You can see Vidki's promo for the book at http://vickicobb.com/Video1/whatsthebigidea.html

Karen Romano Young is headed for the Arctic! She's taking part in the NASA-sponsored ICESCAPE mission aboard the Coast Guard Cutter Healy, and will be at sea for two weeks in June. The Healy, an icebreaker, will carry nearly 50 scientists who are studying the effects of climate change on the Arctic Ocean and its ice. Karen will be researching a new book called Investigating the Arctic, drawing a science comic for Drawing Flies (http://www.jayhosler.com/jshblog/), creating a podcast for the Encyclopedia of Life (www.eol.org), and blogging at Science + Story. (http://scienceandstory.blogspot.com/) And her new book, Doodlebug, is in the warehouse June 8! (www.karenromanoyoung.com)

Dorothy Patent just returned from a trip to California for research on a book about one of the dogs rescued from the Michael Vick dog-fighting ring. She's fallen in love with her subject, named Audie. Look for the book is Spring, 2011.

Susanna Reich be speaking at the Metro New York SCBWI Professional Series on Tuesday, June 8. Author illustrator Melanie Hope Greenberg and I will be talking about "Marketing to the Max: Publicity for Children's Book Authors and Illustrators." http://metro.nyscbwi.org/profseries.htm

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Ada Lovelace Day

“Women’s contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognized. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines, whatever they do.” -- Ada Lovelace Day website

Augusta Ada King, the Countess of Lovelace (1815-1852) wrote the first computer programs, which were used by the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage.

Ada Lovelace Day celebrates the legacy of a lone woman scientist in a field of men. -- and does so, in part, through across-the-board blogging about women in the sciences.

The first Ada Lovelace Day, March 24, 2009, generated hundreds of blogs worldwide, as well as attention on Facebook and in the media.

I decided to sign up on behalf of I.N.K. to blog about women scientists on this day and soon found out that 1,110 other bloggers signed up, as well.

It’s Monday morning, and I’m putting the finishing touches on my Ada Lovelace blog when I find this article in the New York Times: “Bias Called Persistent Hurdle for Women in Sciences”. Tamar Lewin describes the American Association of University Women’s report, "Why So Few?" on the gains that women have made in the sciences, and the issues that still get in their way. Thirty years ago, among high schoolers scoring 700 or more on their math SATs, boys outnumbered girls 13 to 1. The ratio has dropped to 3 to 1, but that’s still proof of chopped sides.

Despite increasing numbers of women receiving doctorates in science, math, and computer science, women don’t represent a parallel percentage of workers or tenured faculty in those fields. The AAUW report focused more on factors that can make a difference in the accomplishments of women and girls -- such as learning that ability can grow with effort -- than on differences in innate ability between the sexes. Researchers found that cultural bias -- an underlying impression that women can’t cut the mustard -- had considerable impact. This bias takes root in any who feel themselves to be on shaky ground, as evidenced by a dramatic difference in performance between groups told that men and women have equal abilities in math and science and those told that men are stronger in these areas.

Many I.N.K. writers have devoted their

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Please continue to look for additions to Karen Romano Young's series, Science Fair Winners, from National Geographic. These little books are full of science project ideas (NOT only experiments!) for middle schoolers. The first book, Bug Science, is going gangbusters, and Crime Scene Science is out now, too. Coming in March: Junkyard Science, all about trash, energy, going green, and -- everybody's favorite topic -- decomposition. Book 4, Family Science (experiments on your brothers and sisters) is due in May.
Visit www.karenromanoyoung.com to see the Bug Science trailer and more.







CHARLES AND EMMA: THE DARWINS' LEAP OF FAITH was the winner of the first YALSA-ALA Prize for Excellence in Young Adult Nonfiction. It also received a Printz Honor and was a Best Book for Young Adults.





Vicki Cobb's Your Body Battles a Cold has been named an Honor Book in the Science – Grades K-6 category of the Society of School Librarians International 2009 Book Awards.



Ink Think Tank. is pleased to announce a new partnership with Mackin Educational Resources. The FREE database on http://www.inkthinktank.com/, which features all of the I.N.K. bloggers current books in print, will be linked to Mackin so that users can fulfill book orders in a one-stop shopping experience. Database searchers will be able to click into Mackin’s personalized service to educators, which reaches more than 20,000 school librarians, teachers and administrators around the globe. The connection will go live later this month. If you are a registered user, you will be prompted to update your profile before gaining access to search the database. This is part of the process of linking our database to theirs. We are very gratified by their support and interest in the books by I.N.K. authors.

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Here are two answers to a great question from Linda Zajac. Thanks, Linda. I hope you find these responses useful.

How do you folks orchestrate working on multiple books for multiple publishers and meeting deadlines? Is there some kind of courtesy given by one editor to another if you're currently working on a project or are the deadlines roomier than they are for magazine articles or do you set your own deadlines?

Loreen Leedy says:
I always have multiple books in progress but at different stages and try to keep the ball rolling on each one. In my experience, trade book editors propose the upcoming deadlines within their production cycle then I gauge which one is realistic given my outstanding commitments.

The agreed-upon deadline might be a year or more in the future. Some publishers put a clause into the contract that requires working on that particular book "next" as opposed to signing a contract for Book A then signing another for Book B (with a different publisher) and working on Book B.If necessary, my editors are generally willing to push deadlines to the next cycle (making it a Spring instead of a Fall book, or vice versa), That may be in part because I'm both the author and the illustrator so there's no contractual issue where an author contract spells out that the book must be published within X number of months.

In my case, any delay is usually due to the uncertainties of design and illustration, which often seem to take much longer than one optimistically estimates. A missed deadline may also happen if the editor is unsatisfied with a manuscript, dummy, or artwork, which means the work has to be redone. Changing deadlines depends on the priorities of the publisher; some may not be willing or able to be so flexible.There are many factors... it takes time to do a quality job and trying to force someone to rush may be counterproductive... the advance money in many cases does not compensate the author and/or illustrator for the time spent working on the book, so they may take a paying job to stay afloat... publishers naturally don't want tons of cash tied up in advances... publishers need to have a book in hand to sell it... et cetera!


Karen Romano Young says:
It seems to me that there are really two questions here: how do you manage multiple editors, and how do you manage multiple books?

I'll take the multiple editors question first. I think of it as any supplier with a customer: Make the one you're working with feel that he or she is the most important. Meet your deadlines and your quality goals, do your work well, and don't mention or comment on the demands other customers place on you. But these are editors, so there are a couple of other issues here. Built into these issues is how to get into this multiple editor fix to begin with!

One, be careful to reserve your genre for one editor. For instance, if you have two novels available, selling them to different editors isn't such a hot idea. You also have a choice to make if your editor turns down one of your novels. Will you submit it elsewhere?

If you work in two genres, you may wind up having one editor for everything, or a different editor for each. Different age groups, too.

Even within one genre or age group you might work with two houses. You might succeed in selling, say, your ocean book to one editor, and your insect book to another, as happened in my case. The key is to figure out what that first editor who took your work wants in the future: does she want to see EVERYTHING? Then make sure she does—and that she knows that if she turns something down, you'll be taking it elsewhere.

Second, be open with your editors about your multiple books. While I don't think you should talk about every book you're working on while you're doing it, I believe it's important to be up front about publishing schedules.

There are lots of issues around publishing different books with different houses in the same season—just as there are issues with publishing two books at once anytime, even if they're for the same house. Some people think that reviewers and buyers will sometimes choose between one book and another in terms of space in their journals or stores. There's some controversy around this, so it's best to keep your various editors informed of the dates, genres, age levels, topics, etc., of your books. The fact is that the market may respond to one of your books more than another, and that this can affect each different title.

Now to the multiple books question. How to juggle multiple books is really up to the individual's multitasking capabilities—just as you decide for yourself how you're going to get dinner, walk the dog, go to graduate school, and write the next Newbery-winning novel.

Some people really don't seem to be able to go back and forth between two books, but I do. I need to. I rarely work on one book at a time. I like best to be working on something fictional or very creative at the same time as working on nonfiction, whether I'm researching or writing. Now that I've added illustration to my resume it's interesting to figure out the mindset I need to be in to work on that as well. And I'm not even getting into freelance writing projects, mentor teaching, and keeping up with Facebook. Here are the highpoints, for me:

1. I make my own deadlines. Right now I'm struggling to finish the revision of a proposal for a new nonfiction book, a painting, and a dummy for an illustrated book. None of this has to be done. Nobody is waiting for any of it. And if I miss the deadline (most likely the painting will take too long) nothing will happen. I don't know why I can do this. And I have just as much trouble finishing things as anyone.

2. I use my energy. I have a lot of energy, but not a long attention span. I want to work all day, but can't focus long enough on one thing. So I'll pick two or three things to work on during the course of the day, break it up additionally by walking dogs and doing the laundry, and more gets done than if I try to park my rear for hours and hours to do only one thing. Fatigue hits, and I can't do anything, and that gets stressful. That said, I can get obsessive about things and just stay with them at the expense of all else; but I never start out by assuming I'll be able to do that.

3. I do the thing that's calling to me. Is it the laundry? Is it the novel? Is it the internet research? It's not that I don't require heavy disciplining; I do. But over time, for the most part, I find that I get to everything.

This is THE KEY to my ability to work on multiple novels: when you work on two, then each of them becomes a vacation from the other. When I'm tired of writing fiction, research seems simple and black-and-white; when organizing information is tying me up in knots (I'm not a linear thinker) then working on a story of my own imagining feels like such a pleasure. And, although the freelance work can seem like a drag, I've learned that I like working with other people occasionally; at least it forces me to get dressed.

I have to admit that there are days when the yardwork or housework or dogs or kids get me carried away and the work goes along the wayside. I tell myself that I need time to process the work; sometimes I can even focus on doing so while up to my elbows in something physical. And I know that the next day, when I sit down to write again that the place will be organized and that writing will feel like a rest.

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I went to visit a Scholastic editor this week to talk about books, but that's not why I'm writing this. I'm writing this because her office happened to be in the middle of Scholastic's news magazine group, where I got my start. I never even worked in these particular offices and, indeed, never visited 555 Broadway as a magazine writer. But seeing those glass-walled offices, their windows collaged with words and pictures that inspired the inhabitants -- including a life-size standee of President Obama -- gave me a funny feeling in the back of my throat. "I learned to write here," I explained briefly, blinked like I had something in my eye, and battled past the moment.

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