Author Melissa Stewart on Writing from Experience

Hello world!!

Welcome to my blog, Blissfully Bookish. First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day! Today I’m super excited because I get to interview one of my mentors, the Queen of nonfiction herself, Melissa Stewart. As usual, she found a way to make expository scientific information engaging and accessible to kids. Here she is, discussing her new nonfiction picture book, SHAPE SEARCH, published by Reycraft Books.

When did you start writing SHAPE SEARCH and how many drafts were there?

I often spend 5 or more years writing a manuscript, but this one came more quickly. I got the idea in February 2021 and had a solid first draft by mid-April. This is partially because I was writing from experience rather than research. And partially because I knew the structure immediately. The biggest hurdle was finding the right ending.

I took it to my critique group in May, and they helped me see a few things that needed work. I didn’t have an immediate solution, so I set the manuscript aside.

A year later, I felt ready to take a hatchet to the trouble spots and rebuild them. About a month later, I sent the sixth draft to Reycraft as an exclusive submission. I loved the photo selection and design of Footprints Across the Planet by Jennifer Swanson and Whooo Knew?, Woof!, and Scurry! by Annette Whipple, so I thought Reycraft would be the perfect home for Shape Search. They accepted it about 6 weeks later.

I love the hook with associating shapes, a universal children’s concept, with nature. How did you come up with it? I never imagined seeing a circle on a flower or a rectangle in a rock!

This book was inspired by a Twitter conversation with authors Linda Sue Park and the late April Pulley Sayre.

It led me to start thinking about shapes in the natural world, and a couple of weeks later, the basic concept underlying Shape Search popped into my mind. I envisioned it as a lyrical invitation to notice and hunt for shapes in nature. I hoped it would spark the curiosity of young readers and encourage them to see the world in a whole new way.

Please paste a short and compelling excerpt from your book.

Here are two spreads from the book. You can see it’s a very simple text with additional information in the backmatter.

Can tell us about any hands-on field research you do for your nonfiction books?

I’m lucky to have taken many amazing trips throughout my career, to places like East Africa, the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii, the American Southwest, Botanical Beach on Vancouver Island, and more. I record my experiences in nature journals, and then I can refer back to these notes later as I write books. Recollecting my raw experiences in the field brings a richness, a vibrancy to my text, which makes it more engaging.

Right now, I’m working on a manuscript that draws heavily on journal entries recording observations close to my home in Massachusetts. I think we’re even going to include sample pages from my journals in the backmatter.

Please share your favorite top five nonfiction books of all time.

Oh my goodness! I’m not sure that’s even possible. I will say that The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time by Jonathan Wiener is the book that made me believe I could write a book of my own. I read it in the mid-1990s, and my first book, Life Without Light: A Journey to Earth’s Dark Ecosystems was published in 1998.

What is the best piece of advice you would give to other writers about how to make expository texts more engaging?

Oh boy, that’s another tough question! Rich language and text scaffolding are both important, but I think a strong, unique text structure is really the most critical element. So I guess my advice would be to dig deep to find just the right structure. Don’t rush it. Take your time. Be patient and persistent.

And a bonus question just for kicks! What was your favorite book when you were a child? Was it nonfiction?

I wasn’t much of a reader as a child. I spent most of my time outdoors, romping around in the woods. I like to think that the books I write now would fascinate the child and inspire her to read under the covers late into the night.

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BIO

Melissa Stewart has written more than 200 science 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 and edited the anthology Nonfiction Writers Dig Deep: 50 Award-winning Authors Share the Secret of Engaging Writing. 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