Author Melissa Stewart on Strong Hooks – PLUS A GIVEAWAY!

Hello world!!

Welcome to my blog, Blissfully Bookish! I’m so excited to introduce my next guest who’s the pioneer of nonfiction and also incredibly generous with her knowledge. Please welcome Melissa Stewart, who’s here to chat about her new nonfiction picture book Thank You, Moon: Celebrating Nature’s Nightlight illustrated by Jessica Lanan and published by Knopf Books for Young Readers.

BUT first- YAY! Melissa is generously giving away a FREE copy of her book. To be eligible to win, please enter the Rafflecopter contest by clicking HERE. Contest ends Nov 24, 2023, US only.

Please describe the journey to publication for Thank You, Moon.

This book has an unusual origin story. It’s the brainchild of editor Katherine Harrison. In February 2020, she tagged me on Twitter, alerting me to a conversation about how animals respond to the Moon’s cycle, and asked “Is this something you’d potentially be interested in writing? I just can’t get enough of the moon these days, and I feel like you could bring something special to it.” She also included a beautiful, eerie, mysterious image of the Moon partially obscured by clouds. It was an irresistible invitation.

Not only was it a fascinating topic that had never been written about in a children’s book before, I immediately knew how I’d end the book. I could draw inspiration from a special moment I’d shared with my nieces, Caroline and Claire, about 15 years ago.

As I discuss in this video, when Caroline was in kindergarten and Claire was in second grade, I did an author visit at their school in Maine. They wanted to ride to school with me rather than take the bus, and on the way, I spotted the Moon.

 “Oh, look, there’s the Moon,” I said, pointing out the passenger-side window.

Claire, who was on that side of the car, could easily see it. “Oh yeah. Cool,” she replied.

But Caroline couldn’t see it. She squirmed wildly in her car seat. “Where? Where?” she yelled. As her frustration grew, she exclaimed, “I’ve never seen the Moon in the day in my whole long life!”

So I pulled the car over, and we all got out to admire that lovely, surprising daytime Moon. I’ll never forget Caroline’s joy and astonishment in that moment. She was discovering something new and exciting about how nature works.

Even as an adult, spotting the Moon in the day is still a special treat. It feels a tiny bit magical because you aren’t expecting it. I wanted to capture that emotion at the end of the book, and it felt simpatico with the image Katherine had sent me.

But even though I started off with a topic that was fresh and fascinating plus a great idea for the ending, I still had a long way to go. First, I needed to make sure there was enough information to fill a whole book. Could I find a dozen really stellar examples?

After a couple of weeks of digging, I was confident that there were, indeed, plenty of good  animal examples from many different animal families that lived all over the world.

Next, I needed a strong hook—a unique lens that would spark the reader’s curiosity and encourage them to think about the topic in a new way.

When a book has a strong hook, it’s often built right into the title, so brainstorming titles is one way to discover the great hook. It can really help to toss around ideas with a friend, so one Saturday, I asked my husband to help me think of possible titles while we cleaned the house. The ideas could be good or bad, silly or serious, anything at all. Any unique way of thinking about “our closest companion in space.” I liked the sound of that phrase, so I wrote it down to get us started.

A few hours later, the dust bunnies were gone, the bathroom sparkled, and we’d filled a notebook page with ideas. The next day, I typed them into a computer file along with all the adjectives I could think of to describe the Moon photo Katherine had sent me. My goal was to create a manuscript that evoked that image.

It didn’t take long for the title Thank You, Moon and the lens of gratitude to rise to the top. After all, life on Earth—including us—couldn’t exist without the Moon to regulate Earth’s seasons.

I also thought it would be possible to use the phrase repetitively to craft the kind of lyrical voice I wanted for the book.

But it still wasn’t time to start writing until I’d settled on a text structure.

I used to start writing without this, and, as I describe in this video,  it led to lots and lots and lots of rewriting. Seriously, it could take me years and years.

More recently, I’ve realized that writing can be much more efficient if I do a lot of thinking before I do any writing. This might seem like another form of procrastination, but it’s not. It’s about working smarter and letting my unconscious mind work things out behind the scenes while I’m focused on something else.

Before I started writing Thank You, Moon, I experimented with arranging the animals by the phases of the Moon (didn’t work), then the seasons of the year (didn’t work). Then I had the idea to present the animals in linked pairs, focusing on what they need to do to survive—find food, avoid predators, raise a family. This led to a list book with a compare and contrast text structure.

Finally, it was time to start writing.

Of course, Katherine hadn’t made any commitment to acquire the manuscript. But luckily, when I sent her a draft that had gone though many revisions and critiques by my two writing groups, she liked it well enough to purchase it. I was, er, over the Moon.

After another revision and copy editor review, the manuscript was ready for illustrator Jessica Lanan. I couldn’t be happier with her art and feel so lucky to have been paired with her.

Here’s a sneak peek at one of her early sketches.

This is a later sketch.

And here’s final art. Isn’t it just so gorgeous?

In general, how many books do you work on at once? How do you know which ones are the most marketable?

That’s a tricky question to answer because there are so many different stages in the process. Why don’t I count up what I have in the works right now.

Books with editor: 4
Books with illustrator: 3
Books at printer: 1
Books on submission: 3
Books ready for submission: 1
Books I’m actively revising: 1
Books with a critique partner: 1
Books I’m researching: 1
Looks like that’s 15 in all, which is more than I thought. I would have guessed 8-10.

Please share a few of your favorite nonfiction books from 2023.

Oh wow, there are so many great nonfiction books coming out. 2023 is a banner year! Here are ten I think everyone should read.

Accountable: The True Story if a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers  Whose Lives It Changed by Dashka Slater
The Book of Turtles Sy Montgomery and Matt Patterson
The Fire of Stars: The Life and Brilliance of the woman Who Discovered What Stars Are Made Of by Kirsten Larson and Katherine Roy
How Do You Spell Unfair? MacNolia Cox and the National Spelling Bee by Carole Boston Weatherford and Frank Morrison
Impossible Escape: A True Story of Survival and Heroism in Nazi Europe by Steve Sheinkin
Jumper: A Day in the Life e of a backyard Jumping Spider by Jessica Lanan
Mysterious Glowing Mammals: An Unexpected Discovery Sparks a Scientific Investigation by Maria Parrott-Ryan
Nature Is a Sculptor: Weathering and Erosion by Heather Ferranti Kinser
Superpod: Saving the Endangered Orcas of the Pacific Northwest by Nora Nickum
To Boldly Go: How Nichelle Nichols and Star Trek Helped Advance Civil Rights by Angela Dalton and Lauren Semmer
One book that I’m dying to read is The Mona Lisa Vanishes: A Legendary Painter, a Shocking Heist, and the Birth of a Global Celebrity by Nicolas Day. I’ve heard so many good things about it.

What is the best piece of advice you would give to other writers in terms of finding the right text structure in nonfiction?

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Can you come up with a unique text structure that fits your topic perfectly? One of my favorite books of all time is Swirl by Swirl: Spirals in Nature by Joyce Sidman because the structure spirals. Sidman starts with small tightly coiled examples. As we read, the examples grown and unfurl all the way to the size of a galaxy. Then they shrink and tighten again. Ingenius!

And a bonus question just for kicks! What did you want to be when you were a little girl?

A scientist. I’m so lucky that now I get to explore the wide world of science and share what I learn with other people.

---

BIO

Melissa Stewart has written more than 200 science-themed nonfiction books for children, including the Sibert Medal Honoree Summertime Sleepers: Animals that Estivate, illustrated by Sarah S. Brannen. She co-wrote 5 Kinds of Nonfiction: Enriching Reading and Writing Instruction with Children’s Books, edited the anthologyNonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing, and maintains the award-winning blog Celebrate Nonfiction. Melissa’s highly-regarded website features a rich array of nonfiction reading and writing resources.

LINKS
Website: https://www.melissa-stewart.com/
Blog: http://celebratescience.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @mstewartscience
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/melissa.stewart.33865
Instagram: @melissastewartscience
Bluesky: @mstewartscience.bsky.social