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Narrative in children's science books
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From: Jane E Kurtz <jkurtz>
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 14:46:05 -0600 (CST)
Does "this month" mean we can start discussing this immediately? I hope so because I'm rushing off to an author-in-the-schools event in Minnesota and would love to put in my 2 cents worth before I leave. This summer, I was hired by the space studies department at UND to add some writing for children to their volcano web page, Volcano World. They wanted me to do something fictional that would also incorporate good science (harder than it looks, I think). The scientists I met with made it clear that I was not to use some of the children's books readily available on volcanoes because, at least in several cases, the photographs were stunning but the information was just plain wrong. So that was one interesting revelation. On the other hand, they were able to give me a handful of children's books that they did recommend. What interested me so much was that I read children's book after children's book and was simply bored silly...I began to despair; I began to think, I can't possibly follow through with this project. It wasn't until I sat down, one day, and read one of the adult books on the subject--by a scholar but by a scholar who knew how to tell the *story*, as the initial post mentions--that I was hooked. Later I was able to go back to some of the children's books and not find all of them as boring, now that I was developing some depth of background on the subject. But I did, indeed, find that the children's books tended to be recitations of facts with no sense (from me) of where to "put" those facts, how to ground them, how they related to the big picture. And it was the story of the science that hooked me. I must say, too, that my experience leaves me with all kinds of respect for those who do science writing, since I re-discovered the truth of the old adage that you need to know tons and tons about a subject to write about it simply and well. Jane Kurtz
P.S. I just finished the volcano project, and it should be available for you to judge for yourselves how well *I* did within the month at http://volcano.und.nodak.edu
Received on Tue 12 Nov 1996 02:46:05 PM CST
Date: Tue, 12 Nov 1996 14:46:05 -0600 (CST)
Does "this month" mean we can start discussing this immediately? I hope so because I'm rushing off to an author-in-the-schools event in Minnesota and would love to put in my 2 cents worth before I leave. This summer, I was hired by the space studies department at UND to add some writing for children to their volcano web page, Volcano World. They wanted me to do something fictional that would also incorporate good science (harder than it looks, I think). The scientists I met with made it clear that I was not to use some of the children's books readily available on volcanoes because, at least in several cases, the photographs were stunning but the information was just plain wrong. So that was one interesting revelation. On the other hand, they were able to give me a handful of children's books that they did recommend. What interested me so much was that I read children's book after children's book and was simply bored silly...I began to despair; I began to think, I can't possibly follow through with this project. It wasn't until I sat down, one day, and read one of the adult books on the subject--by a scholar but by a scholar who knew how to tell the *story*, as the initial post mentions--that I was hooked. Later I was able to go back to some of the children's books and not find all of them as boring, now that I was developing some depth of background on the subject. But I did, indeed, find that the children's books tended to be recitations of facts with no sense (from me) of where to "put" those facts, how to ground them, how they related to the big picture. And it was the story of the science that hooked me. I must say, too, that my experience leaves me with all kinds of respect for those who do science writing, since I re-discovered the truth of the old adage that you need to know tons and tons about a subject to write about it simply and well. Jane Kurtz
P.S. I just finished the volcano project, and it should be available for you to judge for yourselves how well *I* did within the month at http://volcano.und.nodak.edu
Received on Tue 12 Nov 1996 02:46:05 PM CST
