Today features an interview with with one of my favorite children's authors- April Pulley Sayre. April is an award-winning children’s book author of over 55 natural history books for children and adults. Her read-aloud nonfiction books, known for their lyricism and scientific precision, have been translated into French, Dutch, Japanese, and Korean. She is best known for pioneering literary ways to immerse young readers in natural events via creative storytelling and unusual perspectives.
Today is the official publication date for April's latest book,
Touch A Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening with Kids. Welcome, April, and thank you for participating in this interview.
(Be sure to read all the way to the end to learn about a giveaway and to retrieve a discount code for book purchase).
1. You’re probably best known
for your lyrical, non-fiction books for young children. Two of my personal
favorites are Vulture View and Bumblebee Queen. What made you
decide to write this book for adults about gardening and exploring nature with
children?
APS: My
husband Jeff and I have been wildlife gardening for the past twenty or so
years. So it's part of our daily life. Years ago, we wrote a natural history of
hummingbirds (for adults) and used to present workshops about
hummingbirds/attracting hummingbirds at botanical gardens, flower and garden
shows, and birding festivals. Jeff is an expert in native
plants and was director of one of the Midwest's largest native plant nurseries
for five years. So our lives are full of these little daily discoveries about
what attracts birds, butterflies, and the like. I wanted to share
our knowledge and personal experiences with wildlife gardening. So I proposed
an adult book about the topic to a couple of publishers. Roost Books asked me
to shift the book toward gardening for families, including activities that
might suit families with children. So that is what I did. Last year, Kenn
Kaufman, author of many field guides, asked Jeff to co-author a field guide to
nature of the Midwest so we’re really immersed in native plant work and
photography now!
2.
In many of your picture
books, illustrations by children’s book illustrators help bring your words to
life. Two recent titles, Rah, Rah
Radishes! and Go, Go,
Grapes! include photographs taken by you. How was the creation of
these two styles of books different?
APS: The
word work is the same as with other books. But doing the photos has added a
whole new aspect to my work. I've always been a passionate photographer but
I've never done it with an eye to an entire book, with a deadline staring me in
the face. My recent book photography has involved a lot of experiments. You
learn by trying, and often by failing, before you find the right setups,
angles, and light. It's enthralling; I get these brainstorms about new
photos and dart around, finding ways to capture them. I just completed Let's Go
Nuts: Seeds We Eat. It will be released on August 27th, 2013 by Beach Lane
Books, the same publisher that did Rah, Rah, Radishes and Go, Go, Grapes.
3.
When you submitted your
manuscript Touch a Butterfly to
your publisher, you provided a variety of photos from which they could choose. Did you follow the same process with Rah, Rah and Go, Go?
Or did you select the photos and submit them with your manuscript?
APS: For
all three books I gave the publisher sample photographs with my proposal or, in
the case of the children’s books, with a full manuscript. Touch a
Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening With Kids is illustrated in full color with my
wildlife photography, supplemented by some photos contributed by colleagues,
families, and schools who had photos of kids enjoying/studying nature. In fact,
several photos were generously donated by the writer of this blog, Michelle
Cusolito! Thanks, Michelle! The publisher chose the final ones for the
book from among hundreds I submitted.
4.
How do you approach research
for your books? Do you go out into the field? Read books? Search the internet?
Other?
APS: I
pursue all avenues of research. I read adult science books. I read scientific
papers. I do a lot of interviews with scientists. But a lot of the nature books
just flow naturally from our goofy, exploratory daily lives. So I spend time
studying squirrels or investigating bees. Then, it becomes a picture book. That
said, I do a lot of study and word play that never comes to anything. Or, you
could say, perhaps not yet . . .
5.
To continue with that
idea…What advice do you have for students who need to complete research
projects for school? How might they begin? How might they organize their
research?
APS: Kids
need to pause and dig in deeper to what they wonder about the topic—not just
what they think are the content “slots” that need to be filled in with “the
facts.” They need to connect the topic to the reader.
I
love teaching kids about research and writing through school visits and
week-long author-in-residence programs. Kids really are hungry to do good work
and they embrace nonfiction research once they understand that you’re really
asking them to think, to connect with their readers through specific facts,
comparisons, and connections with readers’ lives. Someday I’d love to teach
kids a workshop just focused on interviews; that work is so crucial to
nonfiction research and the skills of asking questions and respecting an
interviewee are worth teaching. That work can cross over into many areas of
life.
6. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us?
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