Through the Eyes of an Author

Morse Pond School in Falmouth, MA has an annual “Battle of the Books” among its fifth and sixth grade students each year. Super school librarian, Liz Abbott, chooses a list of 25 books that the students can start reading over the summer. The kids form into teams in September (four or five students per team) and the team has until April to try and read the entire list. Following April vacation, the battle commences! Teams go head-to-head answering quiz-show-like questions about each book on the list. The winners advance, and class winners face off to determine pod winners, who then duke it out to choose grade winners. The final battle is between the winning fifth and sixth grade teams. The stakes are high—the overall school champ team wins a limo ride to pizza and ice cream (the limo, of course, picks up the winning team while all the kids watch at recess!)

This spring Liz Abbot informed me that The Grey Ghost was the most requested book on the battle list, so I returned to Morse Pond in April with an author visit to help properly launch the 2010 battle. Liz proudly reported later that none of the teams got any questions about The Grey Ghost wrong in the battles, but that it was hard to see teams that worked so hard fail to advance.

I wrote a letter to the Morse Pond students congratulating them for being battle veterans, and that by participating in the battle, they won something far greater than a limo ride—they’d deepened their love of reading! To reward this, I promised to design custom battle veteran bookmarks that I’d autograph for each student when I returned to Falmouth for a library talk on July 7. Eight Cousins Bookstore gladly hosted me on July 7, when I signed bookmarks for all the Morse Pond kids who came in. Included on the bookmark is an excerpt from “The Warrior’s Creed” which I wrote, based on the Marine Corps’ Rifleman’s Creed. Liz had the kids recite the creed before the final battle!

Keep on reading, Morse Pond battle veterans!

There’s much less rearing information available on cecropia moths than luna moths, since lunas are much easier to raise and more readily available. So yet again, the little buggies caught me by surprise. This morning, only 15 days after taking the cecropia cocoons out of the fridge, the first of six cocoons hatched (aka eclosed)! I thought it would be more like 30-35 days, so I wasn’t expecting to see this guy so soon!

I’m guessing he hatched very early in the morning, because his wings were pumped up but not yet hardened. He was sitting on the paper towel in the terrarium that held the four swallowtail chrysalises. (Stay tuned, bug fans…lots more action to come!)

We did a a photo shoot, but this fellow was a bit camera shy, so I’m hoping with the later eclosions to get some more shots and angles.

He was the first of six cecropia cocoons and they should all hatch within days of each other. I think the warm weather has sped up their eclosion clocks so I quickly had a housing crisis. The terrarium is glass walled and great for eclosion, but I’m hoping the moths will mate and lay fertile eggs. That requires great air circulation. The female’s pheromones will otherwise be way too intense for the male to find her in an enclosed space. So I had to build a screen cage large enough for six huge moths today. Luckily I had two 10-year-olds happy to assist! My friend Dana was eager to help, and her visiting friend Jamie readily agreed. We rumaged in the basement grabbing tools and materials, and then made a quick run to Home Depot for some trim and the right size nails. I showed them what to do, how to do it, and I trouble-shooted when things didn’t go quite right (they loved the concept of hammering nails, but quickly learned how easy it is to bend them, and how hard on the arm muscles it gets!) Since pictures are worth so much more than words, we’ll let Dana and Jamie tell the rest of this tale!

Last summer, in addition to the 120 luna moth caterpillars I reared, I also raised a dozen cecropia ‘pillars. I’ve never seen a live adult cecropia, but when I was little my mom’s stories about the one she saw as a young girl captivated me. These are the largest of the giant silk moths found in North America and are native to the eastern half of the United States. Six of my cecropia caterpillars survived to spin some very large cocoons (that’s a great survival rate for indoor rearing – they’re a tough species to raise), and the hatching season is now upon us! 

Adult cecropia - photo by Bill Oehlke

Like luna moths, cecropias in the New England states spend their winter in their cocoons, so my cocoons have been resting in the fridge since last November. I just brought them out on May 14 and they’re now in my terrarium. I don’t have an exact count on expected hatcing times, but I believe it’s 30-35 days for cecropias, once they come out of the cold. Lunas are typically 14-18 days, but last spring was cool and my lunas all hatched in 19-21 days. I’m anxious to see these big guys eclose (the scientific word for hatching), but some of my luna caterpillars last August spun cocoons and then died in them. So I can’t assume the cercropias are still viable. So I conducted an experiment to see!

Unlike a luna cocoon, which is little more than a leafy wrapper, the cecropia spins two dense layers of silk – an inner and an outer cocoon. Within the inner cocoon, the caterpialler metamorphs into a pupae (the moth’s equivalent of a butterfly’s chrysalis.) It’s within the hard pupae case the caterpillar metamorphs into the adult moth. It’s possilble to remove the pupae from the cocoon, but you must be careful there’s adequate humidity for a bare pupae case. Since mine were in my terrarium, I wasn’t worried, so I cut one of the cocoons open two days ago to take a peek!  

Here’s a cocoon as the caterpillar spun it. Nearby leaves get incorporated into the cocoon, but their’ not really structural as they are with the luna. The leaves are more “nice to have” than a “need to have.”

Cocoon as spun by cecropia caterpillar

I peeled away the leaves and the underlying silk cocoon was still very tough and durable. In this next photo you can see that I’ve already snipped through the outer silk cocoon (along the right edge). That’s the easy part.

Cecropia cocoon with leaves stripped away

By carefully separating the cut edges of the outer cocoon, you can see the inner silk cocoon within.

Exposed inner silk cocoon of Hyalophora cecropia

The inner cocoon was much denser, and here I had to be much more careful. You don’t want to disturb or puncture the pupae case within, and it’s very close to the interior surface of that inner cocoon. It took a lot of patient snipping to actually get through the tough, dense silk.

Initial cut on the inner silk cocoon...so far, so good!

I cut the length of the inner cocoon and held my breath as I opened the slit. If the pupae was dead it would be nearly black. A healthy pupae would be a darkish orange-brown. And here’s what I saw…

What do a children’s author, Hartford school librarians, and a brewing company have in common?

We all share a desire to motivate kids to read!

I promote my books with free visits to schools throughout New England. I create a win-win for the schools and myself by offering an educational and inspirational program to students at no cost, and then selling my books to interested kids. After such a visit to Hartford’s Milner Core Academy in January, Milner’s librarian, Nancy LaBonne, was so excited about my program she started e-mailing her colleagues at Hartford’s other schools. Before I knew it, I had invites to visit eight more Hartford schools! The only trouble was, I knew the Hartford students couldn’t afford to buy my books. This is often the case in many of the urban and rural schools I visit. But I think it’s important that all kids have access to inspiration—not just those who live in wealthier communities. And in fact, it’s the kids who’ve never met an author before, or who’ve never had a program like this, who draw the most inspiration and hope from it.

So I’ve accepted every Hartford invitation, knowing I won’t even cover my gas costs (I live two hours away.) With each acceptance, however, I became increasingly troubled that the Hartford school librarians have no budget for new books. I thought it was terribly unfair to excite the kids to want to read my books if they had no access to them. So I went in search of a corporate sponsor who could help put my books in these schools.

I didn’t have to search very far. My first call was to Bob and Gail McClellan, owners of Olde Burnside Brewing Company in East Hartford, and sponsors of Hartford’s Pipes in the Valley Celtic Music Festival. As both a piper and an author, I’m a regular participant at Pipes in the Valley each September, and I know how community-minded the McClellans are. They immediately said, “Yes, let’s do it!”

Olde Burnside Brewing Company has purchased a set of five of my books for each of the nine Hartford schools I’m visiting this spring. These schools are: Milner Core Academy, McDonough, Hartford Public High School Freshmen Academy, Batchelder, WISH School, Mary Hooker, Moylan, Parkville, and Burns Academy of Latino Studies.

Yesterday I visited Parkville and Batchelder Schools, and the kids were overjoyed when they learned their libraries had copies of my books. Their enthusiasm and excitement was such a priceless gift to see! Thank you Hartford school librarians and especially Olde Burnside Brewing Company for giving this tremendous gift—this love of reading—to so many Hartford kids!

In 2007 the National Endowment of the Arts wrote that only one out of five 17-year-olds (only 22%) read books for pleasure. This, in my mind, is a teen reading crisis. While high school reading lists endeavor to stretch students with thoughtful, challenging books, this isn’t pleasurable reading for a lot of teens. And these aren’t the books that teens will seek out in their spare time.

I spoke today at Lynn English High School in nearby Lynn, MA. Lynn is the 9th largest city in Massachusetts, with a population of 89,000. It’s blue collar, has its share of rough neighborhoods, and it’s safe to say that not all of Lynn English’s students are Ivy bound. But I love speaking at this school, and when I do I’m always impressed with the respect and attention I receive from its students.

The students who had a free period after my talk hung out in the library and shared pizza on this last day before vacation. It was a nice chance to chat casually with them. One 17-yr-old told me he didn’t read books. He said it politely, but as a fact that he wasn’t a potential audience for my books. I handed him a copy of The Grey Ghost. He thumbed through it noting the shorter length, the larger font size, and the copious (and well drawn) illustrations. He nodded his head for a few seconds and announced, “Now this is a book I might read.”

Apparently, this student wasn’t alone in his opinion. Librarian Linda Barefield already had twenty copies for the school, but to help satisfy demand she bought ten more today. The Grey Ghost has been very popular among her students, particularly those less inclined to read a book.

While publishers are eager to pigeon-hole an easier-reading book for a “9-12 year old audience,” there’s a huge need for such books that aren’t junvenile in tone or theme for older, more reluctant readers. Good use of illustration within the story is also a critical component. And yet there’s very little to satisfy this unnamed genre. Graphic novels are popular, but are too often more comics than literature. The Grey Ghost’s success with reluctant-reading teens helps spotlight this vast and unserved group of potential readers. Surely we can do better to support them!

On January 26 this year I visited two elementary schools in Hartford, CT. These are inner-city schools without the funding for outside programs, and I would venture that none of the students had ever seen a live author before. Visits to poor urban and rural schools rarely cover my gas expense, because the students can’t afford to buy books and I don’t charge for the visits. And while I can’t afford to do this all the time, I get so much gratification seeing the kids’ enthusiasm and spirit. All kids should have access to inspiration, not just those with money.

I received a wonderful surprise in the mail today. The school librarian from Milner Core Academy (thank goodness they still have a librarian!) sent me a care package that contained a lovely note, my very own Milner Core Academy t-shirt, and a small mountain of thank-you letters from the students! She wrote that she spared me the 100+ letters the students turned in, and she chose her favorite sixteen to share with me.

While they won’t pay the bills, thank-you notes from excited kids are the best form of payment! Here are my favorite excerpts from the Milner students:

3rd grader: “…Thank you for playing the bagpipes. It was very funny because my teacher ran out. My teacher ran out because she hates the bagpipes. Don’t take it personally…”

4th grader: “…I enjoyed when you was telling us about how you spent your summer with caterpillars and telling us how they grew. And how they changed colors and how you had a wonderful time with them…”

4th grader: “…I would never want to be an author because when you start writing everybody wants you to write more and it gets tireing…”

5th grader: “…My favorite part was, when you were telling us about the bugs. It was so cool. I love animals, and bugs…”

5th grade girl who disagrees with the student above: “…I wanted to regirgitate when I saw the bugs…”

5th grader: “…Also I am thankful for you coming and telling us about new animals we never knew…”

5th grader: “…When I carried the wonderful sword replica you brought in I felt like I was back in time and I was fighting a battle as a [k]night…”

Thank you, Milner Core for having me! I look forward to coming back to visit in the future, and in the meantime, KEEP ON READING AND WRITING!

“The Author shall from time to time give to her readers information on the State of the Books.”

Friends are always asking me the status of my books and when the next sequel is due out, so I thought I’d recap where things stand. My first book, Through the Eyes of a Raptor (Raptor for short) is in a holding pattern for the time being. I self-published it back in May ’07 with the goal of finding a mainstream publisher for it. I still have that goal, but my current focus is on my newest book, which has strong momentum just now. In early 2008 a small publisher, PublishingWorks, offered to work with me on a new series, and that was the birth of The Wolf’s Apprentice Series, the first book being The Grey Ghost (GG for short), which came out in April ‘09.

GG did remarkably well! Bookstores around the country voted it #3 on the Summer Kids’ Indie Next List in June ‘09, and we sold through the first printing by early fall. I spent last summer and fall writing the sequel (the series will be 12 books), and that’s when things got interesting. My publisher was struggling financially and wasn’t in a position to support the series at the pace it was moving. We spent the fall negotiating a deal that we settled in late Dec. As of Jan 1, 2010, all rights to The Grey Ghost reverted to me. That means I can now sell the entire series, including GG, to a larger publishing house.

I bought back the entire 2nd printing of GG, and I’m working directly with a distributor so that GG remains “in print” and available through all standard wholesale channels. In fact, it’s now more broadly available than it was with my previous publisher, so all bookstores and libraries can order it through their normal channels. When I heard last week that The Grey Ghost won a Mom’s Choice Award, it became my responsibility to order the medallion stickers for the book covers (normally a publisher would do that). That’s why I’m ordering and stickering several thousand book covers myself. This is definitely learning the publishing business from the inside out – in other words, on the job training!

The exciting news is that there’s active interest among the big publishing houses for The Wolf’s Apprentice Series, and my agent is working on those negotiations. Until we have a contract with a new publisher I won’t have a date for the release of GG’s sequel, titled The Strath of Death, but the manuscript is written and I’m hopeful there will be more to report in the near future.

My efforts at the moment are promoting GG to schools, and polishing The Strath of Death’s manuscript while we wait on a contract, but Raptor is not forgotten. It’s simply waiting its turn. The more successful GG is, the easier it will be to sell the Raptor series. Stay tuned all, and thanks for your support! 

Here’s another Web post that I missed at the time it was made. The American Booksellers’ Association, or ABA, featured me in their weekly newsletter, Bookselling This Week, back in July.

Author Wins IndieBound Points Contest

July 22, 2009

To mark its first anniversary, IndieBound has drawn a winner for the IndieBound.org points contest — Julie Hahnke of Marblehead, Massachusetts. Hahnke, author of The Grey Ghost, a Summer Kids’ Indie Next List pick, won a $50 gift card to her local indie bookstore, Spirit of ‘76 in Marblehead.

The contest awarded visitors to IndieBound.org points for creating a profile, for contributing to a discussion, leaving a note for another user, becoming a fan of a store, and participating in other activities on the site. Hahnke’s name was selected randomly from the IndieBound community members who had accumulated more than 100 points.

In a note on IndieBound.org, Hahnke, who is using her prize to purchase children’s and teen books for a secondary school library in Ghana, explained what independents mean to her:

Huzzah! to Indies all across the country! It’s your energy and excitement that has fueled The Grey Ghost’s success. I’m grateful for your enthusiasm, and my question is, what can I do for you?

In a scary economy where financial stability is as fragile as a spider’s web, it’s tempting to let the lowest price drive our purchase decisions. And yet, price isn’t everything. In many ways, it’s the least thing.

When bookstores support authors, when communities support their independent businesses, and when authors support communities, we create a web of mutual benefit for everyone that’s adamantine hard. It’s all about dreaming and our desire to realize our dreams. Our dreams are all different, but if we support others as they strive to realize theirs, we’ll find a community of mutual respect and gratitude circling around us, helping us realize our own.

That’s what IndieBound is about — building and sustaining communities one dream and one transaction at a time!

I thought it would be appropriate to use my IndieBound gift card to help support another community — one that’s far off geographically, but very close to my heart.

My dear friend and illustrator, Marcia Christensen, is the Queen Mother to an African village in Ghana. Marcia and her husband, Jim, have been supporting this community for years, building a church, creating a school, establishing scholarships, and developing a library at a nearby secondary school for girls.

With my IndieBound gift card, I’m purchasing children’s and teen books for the secondary school library in Mawuko, Ghana. I’ve chosen some of my favorites, picking titles that represent broad cultural diversity for a range of ages. Here’s what I’m sending them:

 

• The Grey Ghost (Julie Hahnke, PublishingWorks, donated by Hahnke)
• The Book Thief (Markus Zusak, Knopf Books for Young Readers)
• If Not for the Cat (Jack Prelutsky, Greenwillow)
• Under the Persimmon Tree (Suzanne Fisher Staples, Square Fish)
• Aleutian Sparrow (Karen Hesse, Aladdin)
• Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson (Simon & Schuster Children’s)                                 –J.H.

Topics: News – Bookselling, IndieBound, People,

Here’s the link if you’d like to view this on the ABA’s Web site: http://news.bookweb.org/news/6936.html

With dozens of upcoming school visits competing for my time while I finish the sequel to The Grey Ghost, I’ve once again neglected my blog. I’m traveling to schools on Cape Cod tomorrow and was sorting out my agenda this afternoon when I stumbled across this blog post from Children’s Librarian, Karen Arnold, at the Falmouth Public Library on the Cape. It was posted on Aug 29, during the Obama family’s visit to Cape Cod.

Rainy Day Reading Choices for Malia and Sasha

I’d like to introduce a new buzzword for educators: let’s strive for “sustainable learning” in our schools. For too long, our schools have driven curriculum around student test performance and rigid testing requirements have frustrated our teachers. Yes, we need to measure the success of student learning so that we don’t leave any kids behind. But if that learning isn’t sustainable—if the students don’t remember the lessons in one, five, or even fifty years—then is their education a success, even if they pass the test? I’d say no.

Sustainable learning is about teaching lessons that resonate with students—ones they won’t forget. Because what good is an education that evaporates with age? And how can you inspire a love of learning in students if the lessons and curriculum lack juice and excitement? How can we achieve sustainable learning? By delivering memorable and fun lessons that students will never forget. 

An attractive vehicle for sustainable learning is the use of stories and animation in curriculum. Kids love to create video clips and post them on the Internet. Everyone can draw and that’s all it takes to create animated videos.

This summer I’ve had the pleasure to partner with FableVision Learning, an educational software company with some amazing products. Using their student animation product, Animation-Ish, we’ve created a video that showcases what’s possible when using animation in the classroom—in this case, animation about The Grey Ghost and some of the curriculum ties in my story.

Here’s the video on YouTube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJ0wpTXOHFI

You can also view the video on FableVision Learning’s Web site (it doesn’t link back to YouTube, so it’s school-friendly):

http://fablevisionlearning.com/blog/?p=599

Enjoy and dream big!