Today's post is an interview with editor, Jean Reynolds, and book giveaway for
30 People Who Changed the World:
Fascinating Bite-Sized Essays from Award-Winning Writers.
Instructions on how to enter the giveaway
for this book are at the end of this post.
It is my privilege to introduce you to our guest today. Jean E. Reynolds co-founded The Millbrook Press in 1989,
where she served as Executive VP and Publisher.
She developed Millbrook’s trade imprint, Roaring Brook Press, winner of
two Caldecott awards.
Before founding Millbrook, she had been Editor-in-Chief of
Young People’s Publications at Grolier and Editor in Chief of The Book of
Knowledge and, prior to that, Senior Vice President / Editorial Director and a
member of the Board of Franklin Watts, Inc.
Now retired, more or less, she
edits a blog called The Nonfiction Minute consisting of daily postings of
400-word essays by 30 award-winning nonfiction writers for young readers. She has edited two books based on this blog, 30 People Who Changed the World, and 30 Animals That Share Our World.
In the spirit of full
disclosure, I’ve come to know Jean as an editor recently because I’m part of
the group of authors that make up iNK Think Tank, who produce The Nonfiction
Minute. Also, one of my essays appear in
30 People Who Changed the World.
Congratulations on the book you
edited, 30 People Who Changed the World, which was selected as
a Notable Social Studies Trade Books for
Young People 2018 by the NCSS-CBC Notable Social Studies Committee. Can
you tell us how this book came to be?
Vicki Cobb first
started iNK Think Tank in 2009 when the Common Core Standards had just been implemented,
requiring more reading of nonfiction. A number of her fellow nonfiction writers
were pleased that the importance of their genre was being recognized by the
education community. But they also knew
that most teachers had very little awareness of the trove of excellent nonfiction
books related to their required curricula and that those books were actually sitting
idly on their school library shelves. Vicki approached a number of her favorite
award-wining nonfiction authors and convinced them to join with her in creating
a database aligning their books to the new Standards. They created a website, which launched under
the domain name of www.inkthinktank.com (now www.inkthinktank.org) in
October 2009. All 22 member-authors donated money to make it happen.
These authors used
their combined strength to purchase electronic equipment and learn how to do
two way virtual classroom visits. But as
they got to know each other, they all realized that they wanted to do something
more to introduce fine nonfiction writing to the classroom. Thus the idea of The Nonfiction Minute was
born. And this is the point where I was brought
into the organization. I was a
newly-retired editor who had worked with many of the iNK Think Tank authors
over the years. I know it’s hard to
believe that a group of authors voluntarily called in an editor, because as a
group we do tend to create a lot of work for a good author – but that’s what
they did!
The plan was for
each member of the iNK group, which had grown to more than 30 at this point, to
create multiple 400-word nonfiction essays with the intention of posting one
each day for use in the classroom. It
was my job to organize the effort, sometimes suggest the topics, edit the
articles, illustrate the articles with free materials, solicit and edit an mp3
of the author reading his/her essay, and prepare a description of the author’s
latest book to be included at the end of the essay. The first year, academic 2015-16, was a
gargantuan effort for all of us in that we were all in unfamiliar
territory. I had to learn how to work
not only as an editor but as a fact checker and copyeditor – the latter being
the most difficult. I had had a staff of
copyeditors overseeing my work for decades, and it was very difficult to not
only edit but copyedit the essays.
Fortunately I was working with authors who were the best of the best in
the field, but I literally wore out my Chicago
Manual of Style.
I was worried that
without the power of a major publishing house who was going to pay an author on
the completion of the work, there were no carrots to keep the very busy
volunteer authors on track. But to my
delight, I discovered that their carrot was not money at all, but rather their
true belief in what we were giving to children.
How is this book different from
other books on the market today?
There may be other anthologies in the children’s book market – although
the only ones that occur to me now are poetry collections in which different
poets are paid by the piece to be included in a single volume. But I don’t believe that anything else exists
that is based on the premise of good nonfiction writing. I think such a volume would be very difficult
to put together because the selection would be so subjective. Also, the expense of paying for 30 essays
would be major. Remember that all of our
authors are doing this without payment, which makes this book possible.
One of the many unique things about 30 People is that each of the 30
biographical essays is done with a different style and different approach. It was an interesting experience for me as
an editor transformed into an author to work with our very excellent copyeditor
at Seagrass. Coping with the work of 30
different authors was a real challenge for a copyeditor whose job is to assure
uniformity of style -- and it was kind of fun for me as the author-once-children’s-book-editor
to have to argue on behalf on inconsistency!
30 People Who Changed the World is
interesting especially since it is a compilation of articles by different
authors. Can you tell us how it works to edit this type of book?
Josalyn Moran, the Seagrass publisher who discovered The Nonfiction
Minute online chose the topic. She felt
that introductions to new subjects or new details about old subjects would be
helpful to upper elementary and middle school students who were involved in the
inevitable assignment “Write an x-hundred word biography of a person you
admire.” Our Nonfiction Minutes fill
that bill beautifully. So for me, who
was familiar with all of the Minutes, it was a question of picking 30 out of
the 60 or so biographical Minutes. I
wanted to use not only all different approaches by different authors, but also
a wide variety of subjects balanced between the well-known and the virtually
unknown. I wanted people from different
eras, which we definitely achieved by including Imhotep of 2600 BCE and
present-day Malala Yousafzai! Also we
wanted a balance between male and female, and of course, racial diversity. By
the time these factors were all considered, the choices were pretty obvious.
Because the Minutes had been published previously and were still
available for free on line, I wanted to add some additional factors and the
logical thing to do was to help kids who were interested in knowing more to get
started on their research by adding a Find Out More section to each Minute. So I went back to the authors (who had
already done a great deal of in-depth research on their respective biographees)
and asked them to give me the title of the best book on their subject, the URL
of the best introductory website, and the link to an interesting U-tube, all of
which were then included at the end of each Minute.
As the book came together, I was very happy that I had been such a
strict taskmaster about the length of the minutes. As you know, I was adamant about the 400 word
limit, and that helped the design flow very smoothly because our wonderful
designer Marc Cheshire could perform his magic on the total layout even before
he had the final text, knowing in advance how much room to allow for each
minute. I’m afraid that many of my free
illustrations which worked well on a computer screen were not high enough
resolution to work in a book. So we had
a lot of scrambling to find additional art.
It was wonderful to have professional researchers at the publisher
working on it rather than me. Like my
copyediting knowledge, my picture research is rusty. I’ve been working with and
selecting pictures for years, but always with lots of help from professional
researchers. Also, the publisher gave us
a generous budget for pictures, whereas my budget for the illustrations for the
online Minutes was zero.
One problem was that the author’s book promotion could not be placed at
the end of each Minute as it was on line.
I felt that information about each author was a must. I lobbied hard for eight full book pages for
author bios, photos, and book mentions.
We even included the author’s home town and email addresses. I had to keep making suggestions about what
photos we could cut, or even text we could cut to keep that eight-page section
in tact – but it remained. I felt that the
volunteer authors needed some sort of major recognition in the book, not only
for providing the one or two Minutes contained in the book, but for the scores
of other Minutes they have produced over the past few years.
So all in all, editing this book and working with a publisher as an
author rather than being the publisher myself was a really interesting
experience. Because she knew my
extensive background, I think the editor, Josalyn, probably included me in a lot
more decisions that the average author might have been able to participate
in. We consulted on the title and
subtitle and cover design and cover copy – actually publishing details that I
knew a lot more about than being an author.
It was fun.
One final thought on the topic.
Reading this book from an editor’s
standpoint, can you give our readers some advice on writing captivating
nonfiction?
I think captivating is the operative word in that question. I think in order to captivate your reader,
your topic has to have captivated you. In
that case, you do the best you can to share your enthusiasm.
Many years ago, I read an article that really helped form my love for
what is called narrative nonfiction.
(Narrative nonfiction means that the author is really telling an
interesting story and not presenting a series of facts and figures about the
subject.) The article, which probably
was in an educational magazine, quoted two articles on the VietNam war. The first was from a well-known American
history text book, and I remember it began: “Vietnam is a Southeast Asian
country on the South China Sea.” In the course of about 300 words it described
the location and climate of VietNam, the years the war lasted, a bit about why
the US was a combatant country. I think
the article lost me on the opening sentence.
The second article was from Time Magazine and it began with two
American soldiers lying under some jungle foliage with artillery fire from the
North Vietnamese passing just over their heads.
They had me!
I went on to read the rest of the dramatic story of what brought these
Americans to this point, and the subsequent story, I learned a lot about
VietNam.
In a widespread educational test, the text book article was given to a
large group of students and the Time article was given to a different
group. Both were tested on the
information two weeks later. The
textbook group remembered very very little, while the Time group could repeat
parts of the story and actually remembered facts about VietNam and the course
of the war.
Our aim in the Minutes is to have our writers tell an interesting
enough story that our readers may mention something about it later on the
playground, or talk about it at home over dinner.
Of course there are many other things about writing good nonfiction,
but none are more important than captivating your reader.
Do you have some suggestions about
how teachers could use this book in the classroom?
I am not a teacher. That’s a
very hard job, and I don’t think that I’d be very good at it. But I do spend a lot of time talking with
teachers about how they work with kids and books. As I mentioned earlier, 30 People is a great
resource if there are students having trouble finding a topic for a
biographical essay. Also, I understand
that some teachers are using the individual Minutes for (shudder) test prep.
We have added a new Transfer to Teaching section for each
minute published this season which has a custom page with creative ideas for
using the Minute in the classroom. Organized by subject area and focused
on critical thinking and problem-solving skills, these ideas have been created
and organized by certified school librarian Karen Sterling, an iNK Think Tank
member. Each Minute is also categorized according to the Library of
Congress Subject Authority headings to increase access points for
users. So my suggestion would be for a teacher interested in specific
ideas for any of the minutes in the book, use the archives on the
NonfictionMinute.org website to find any of the Minutes in the book and click
on the T2T link.
Are there more books like this one
in the future?
Absolutely. 30 Animals Who Share
Our World is being released by Seagrass on April 4, 2018. This book has some fascinating science, as
well as some delightful stories about animal behavior. This one has a huge variety of minutes
ranging from a poetry collection in praise of vultures to the commuting habits
of a British cat. You’ll learn a lot,
but this one is really fun!
We’re talking about
a future STEM-themed book, but it is not yet under contract.
Thank you, Jean Reynolds!
Carla Killough McClafferty
Readers, to enter our drawing for a chance to win an autographed copy of
30 People Who Changed the World,
written by iNK Think Tank and edited by Jean Reynolds, use the Rafflecopter widget below. You may enter via 1, 2, or all 3 options.
If you choose option 2, you MUST leave a comment on TODAY'S blog post below or on our TeachingAuthors Facebook page. If you haven't already "liked" our Facebook page, please do so today! In your comment, tell us what you'd do with the book if you win our giveaway--keep it for yourself or give it to a young reader?
(If you prefer, you may submit your comment via email to: teachingauthors [at] gmail [dot] com.)
Email subscribers: if you received this post via email, you can click on the Rafflecopter link at the end of this message to access the entry form.
Note: if you submit your comments via email or Facebook, YOU MUST STILL ENTER THE DRAWING VIA THE WIDGET BELOW. The giveaway ends April 6, 2018 and is open to U.S. residents only.
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