Bookology Magazine
Evidence How Dr. John Snow Solved the Mystery of Cholera

Let’s Offer Readers a History Buffet

September 12, 2024 1 Comment
There are, of course, a myriad of possibilities for your history buffet: mix and match middle grade fiction, long form nonfiction, picture books, both nonfiction and informational fiction, artwork, film, and museum websites.
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Sarah Nelson revision

To Rhyme or Not to Rhyme

October 15, 2023 10 Comments
If you’ve ever dipped a toe into the children’s book publishing world, you’ve probably heard cautionary tales about writing in rhyme. In short, most insiders say, “Please don’t rhyme.”
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Follow the Flyway

Marveling about Migration

July 15, 2023 6 Comments
Flyways? Up until this moment, I confess I had a relatively elementary-school-like understanding of how and why birds migrate. Join me in learning more.
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Gandalf Lives

Gandalf Lives!

January 18, 2023 2 Comments
I’m not certain, but I suspect stories have played significant roles in the lives of most librarians. We are story people, after all — their sacred keepers, and we delight in helping others discover their wonders.
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A Park Connects Us

How Parks Connect Us
… and Why It Matters

April 22, 2022 1 Comment
Spring is in the air, and we’re pulled outdoors to wander in our favorite city parks. Ducks are dabbling; frogs are trilling; the apple trees are bursting into bloom. Everywhere, it seems, children frolic and neighbors wave. It’s been a long winter, but our cities are alive.
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Sarah Nelson

Doorways to the Wild and Wondrous

April 22, 2021 4 Comments
Today, writing about nature and outdoor play just feels as natural and right to me as breathing. All my happy memories of chasing frogs, climbing trees, and splashing in summer lakes easily inform the stories I write.
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Margo Sorenson

Playing Your Troubles Away

April 28, 2020 No Comments
“Fan­ta­sy and feel­ing lie deep­er than words… 
and both demand a more pro­found, more bio­log­i­cal expression, 
the prim­i­tive expres­sion of music.” 
(Mau­rice Sendak in “The Shape of Music”) Tied up in knots — nots — er — words? Are sen­tences slith­er­ing past you and para­graphs para­chut­ing from your brain? If so, maybe it’s time to step away from the writ­ing task, or any chore that has you flum­moxed, and give your­self a break, isn’t it?… more
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David LaRochelle

Modern-Day Treasure Hunting

December 26, 2019 4 Comments
Why was I crawl­ing through a frozen sew­er pipe on my hands and knees in the mid­dle of winter? I was geo­caching, my lat­est obsession. If you haven’t heard of geo­caching, it’s a world­wide trea­sure hunt using GPS to locate hid­den con­tain­ers called geo­caches. There are lit­er­al­ly mil­lions of geo­caches hid­den around the globe. When I first start­ed play­ing, I was delight­ed to dis­cov­er that there were sev­er­al with­in walk­ing dis­tance of my townhome.… more
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Stephanie Calmenson

Books Are Our Emissaries

February 28, 2019 No Comments
As authors, we send our books out into the world and, if we’re lucky, they con­nect us to good peo­ple whose paths we would­n’t oth­er­wise cross. For 28 years, Din­ner at the Pan­da Palace has been my excel­lent emissary.  Din­ner at the Pan­da Palace start­ed as a sim­ple count­ing and sort­ing book with lots of ani­mals and a par­ty atmos­phere to make the learn­ing fun. … more
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Padma Venkatraman

Bridging the Gap Between My Writing and Reading Selves:
an Author’s Experience of Recording an Audiobook

January 30, 2019 2 Comments
“The woman who read Climb­ing the Stairs aloud did a great job,” my friend said. She was telling me, with delight, how her chil­dren and their friends — two girls and two boys — lis­tened with rapt atten­tion to the audio book ver­sion of my debut nov­el, refus­ing to get out of the car when the trip end­ed but the sto­ry had­n’t yet.… more
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Virginia Euwer Wolff: The Guys’ Clubhouse

October 23, 2018 2 Comments
I didn’t even ask why I was turn­ing into Hold­en Caulfield. I was fif­teen, a brochure girl for post­war inno­cence. And I was a farm kid, three thou­sand miles away from Holden’s Man­hat­tan; I took vio­lin lessons, rode my bike through orchards, mem­o­rized social stud­ies facts, picked straw­ber­ries to make mon­ey, earned Camp Fire Girl hon­or beads. I also sought the right bras, the right pim­ple med­i­cine, the boys most like­ly to alarm my family.… more
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Planting Giant Pumpkin Seeds

April 14, 2018 2 Comments
As I write this, Min­neso­ta is in line to get hit with anoth­er Major Win­ter Storm. I know many of you in the north­ern lat­i­tudes can sym­pa­thize as we’ve all been hit, but it’s mid-April, and even by Min­neso­ta stan­dards, this is demor­al­iz­ing. Proms are being can­celled this week­end, the gro­cery stores are crazy, everyone’s watch­ing the radar while they make soup, and I … I have avert­ed my eyes from the win­dow so as to bet­ter ignore the wet slop com­ing down and bet­ter focus on my gar­den planning!… more
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David LaRochelle

The Kindness of Teachers

November 29, 2017 7 Comments
I loved first grade. Fifty-one years lat­er, I still have vivid mem­o­ries of my teacher, Miss Fol­lett. She played the piano every day. She read to us from her giant book of poet­ry. She showed us pho­tos of her trips to exot­ic places, like Alas­ka and Hawaii. At Hal­loween we screamed in ter­ror and delight when she hob­bled into our class­room dressed as a witch.… more
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Amanda Panda

Art and Words, Words and Art

November 15, 2017 No Comments
Thir­ty years ago, I bought a poster of “Jun­gle Tales” by J.J. Shan­non (1895) at the Met in New York City. I took it to my favorite framer, but when it was ready, I was hor­ri­fied to see they’d cut off Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, The Children’s Book­shop at the bot­tom, fram­ing just the image.  No one thought the words were impor­tant.… more
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Mary Casanova

Tiny House, Cozy Cabin

November 1, 2017 1 Comment
A few months ago, my hus­band and I sold our home of 30 years and decid­ed to live full-time in our cozy cab­in in the woods. We left behind greater square footage, a quaint and some­times bustling vil­lage on the water­front, and a home with lots of fam­i­ly memories. But it was time for a change. Time for more simplicity.… more
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Marion Dane Bauer

On Growing Older … Old

October 18, 2017 1 Comment
Why is “old­er” an accept­able word and “old” almost forbidden? To answer my own ques­tion, I sup­pose it’s because we’re all grow­ing old­er, even the four-year-old next door. But old … ah, old smacks of incom­pe­tence, of irrel­e­vance. Even worse, old smacks of that tru­ly obscene-to-our-soci­ety word … death. I am approach­ing my birth­day month. It won’t be a “big” divid­able-by-five birth­day, but still one that feels sig­nif­i­cant for the num­ber it stands close to.… more
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Author Candice Ransom

Windward into Revision

September 21, 2017 2 Comments
In August 2016, I trav­eled to Vinal­haven Island off the coast of Maine to par­tic­i­pate in a week-long fes­ti­val hon­or­ing for­mer res­i­dent Mar­garet Wise Brown. I gave a talk one evening, and, most fun of all, led a work­shop in which atten­dees penned poet­ry and even a pic­ture book in Margaret’s lyri­cal style. Back home again, I wrote about my island expe­ri­ence and my per­son­al con­nec­tion to Mar­garet in a Knock Knock essay pub­lished last August, “Bor­rowed Mag­ic.”… more
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Always the Weather

September 6, 2017 1 Comment
(orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten in Octo­ber 2016) Accord­ing to the real estate estab­lish­ment in Steam­boat Springs, Col­orado, there are, on aver­age, 242 days of sun­shine. That is, they claim more shin­ing sun than in Phoenix, Las Vegas, San Diego, and Los Angeles. That’s the way it is today: An absolute­ly clear blue sky, with not one cloud. The for­est in which we live (Routt Nation­al For­est) at 8,800 feet high is a kalei­do­scope of green, yel­low, orange and reds.… more
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Author Candice Ransom

A Working Writer’s Life, Part 2

August 24, 2017 No Comments
[con­tin­ued from Part 1] After sev­er­al months, I real­ized New York didn’t rec­og­nize I was the Next Big Thing. I’d actu­al­ly have to write my sec­ond book and sell it. Tim­ing was on my side. It was the ear­ly 80s, when paper­backs filled mall book­store racks. Series books with new titles each month, priced for kids, were the Next Big Thing.… more
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Author Candice Ransom

A Working Writer’s Life, Part 1

August 11, 2017 1 Comment
One Sun­day morn­ing in May, 1970, I sat on the mus­tard-col­ored sofa in our liv­ing room with the Spring Children’s Books issue of the Wash­ing­ton Post Book World. I stud­ied the reviews as some­one who intend­ed to have her book reviewed in that pub­li­ca­tion, prefer­ably the Spring 1971 issue. The back page fea­tured an ad for Lothrop, Lee, and Shepard’s new list.… more
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Knowing My Own Mind

July 27, 2017 2 Comments
There are times when I don’t know my own mind. Worse, there are times when I think I know my mind per­fect­ly well and then find an entire­ly dif­fer­ent mind on a lat­er vis­it to my opinions. Which feels almost as though I have no mind at all. Some time ago one of my favorite writ­ers came out with a new nov­el. I had been wait­ing for her next book for years, so, of course, I signed up to have it pop into my elec­tron­ic read­er at the first oppor­tu­ni­ty.… more
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Mary Casanova

Babies and Puppies

July 14, 2017 No Comments
What, real­ly, can be more life-affirm­ing than a beau­ti­ful baby or cud­dly pup­pies? On June 26th, both arrived in our lives. One baby — our first grand­child, Olivia — born to our son and Kore­an daugh­ter-in-law. We received the news via Face­Time from Seoul, South Korea. Though they had Broad­way relat­ed jobs in NYC, they opt­ed to move to Korea for awhile where they would have more time to work at becom­ing a family.… more
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Behind the Poem, “What She Asked”

April 8, 2017 4 Comments
Lis­ten to Vir­gini­a’s poem, “What She Asked,” on Poet­ry Mosa­ic, the April 7th entry, and then read her descrip­tion of the real-life event behind the poem. In a rur­al Ore­gon high school where I taught Eng­lish more than 20 years ago, we had big teach­ing areas sep­a­rat­ed by screen-wall things, but they came nowhere near reach­ing the high ceil­ing, because a few years ear­li­er the design of the school had been to have a giant Resource Cen­ter and Library, and teach­ers and groups of stu­dents would ide­al­ly meet in sec­tions of the mas­sive room, and that would be school.… more
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In Draft

December 7, 2016 20 Comments
“He was always chas­ing the next draft of himself.”  Amer­i­can crit­ic Dwight Gar­ner, in the New York Times Book Review on Feb­ru­ary 16 of this year, was describ­ing the child­hood of Hen­ry James. An expand­able list comes to mind, some of our mem­o­rable fig­ures mov­ing toward the next draft of them­selves: Anne Shirley, Hold­en Caulfield, Jo March, Jody Bax­ter, Arnold Spir­it, Jr.,… more
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My Work-Study Internship

September 29, 2016 No Comments
The first col­lege I attend­ed was Anti­och Col­lege in Yel­low Springs, Ohio. It had a work-study cur­ricu­lum in which half your year was spent work­ing off-cam­pus on some job relat­ing to your pro­fes­sion­al aspi­ra­tions. At that time, being inter­est­ed in the the­atre, I was offered and took a job at a Cleve­land tele­vi­sion sta­tion. A few days before the job began it was can­celed.… more
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Mary Casanova

Below the Surface

September 15, 2016 No Comments
Our park ranger, Earl, which is pronounced in three syllables in south-central Kentucky, asks one last time to reconsider this journey if anyone suffers from a bad heart, high blood pressure, or claustrophobia. He waits at the steel door at the base of a sinkhole.
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Author Candice Ransom

“Borrowed Magic”

August 31, 2016 2 Comments
Thir­teen years.  The project I began in 2003 has had that many birth­days.  It occu­pies two large crates in my office.  It has dom­i­nat­ed my life, involv­ing trav­el, research, read­ing.  It has spawned four ver­sions, each drag­ging mul­ti­ple drafts.  Rejec­tions span ten years. Nobody, it seems, wants this book.  “Kids won’t be inter­est­ed.”  The sub­ject, Mar­garet Wise Brown, would find this fun­ny. … more
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The Birthday Surprise

August 17, 2016 8 Comments
I had pretty much given up on finding an appropriate gift for my dad’s 82nd birthday; the last thing he needed was more stuff. So I headed off to the family lake cabin for the 4th of July holiday (also his birthday weekend) with the thought that I’d figure out a clever celebratory idea at the last minute. Maybe some kind of game that everyone would enjoy?
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Saying “Yes!”

August 5, 2016 9 Comments
Though I’m reluctant to admit it, some of the most rewarding moments of my career have come when I’ve stepped out of my comfort zone and attempted things I didn’t think I could do: write for teenagers, illustrate a book with tricky paper engineering, tackle nonfiction.
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Old

July 12, 2016 4 Comments
“That’s your Great-Grandfather Who Lost His Arm in the Battle of the Wilderness.” That was his name. In a big gold gilt-framed photo: a distinguished-looking, white-haired, mustached gentleman high above the upright piano in my grandmother’s music room.
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Heather Vogel Frederick

Laughing All the Way

June 28, 2016 2 Comments
I fin­ished read­ing The Road to Lit­tle Drib­bling over a week ago, and I’m still laughing. I’m a suck­er for a fun­ny sto­ry, and Bill Bryson has pro­vid­ed me with a steady stream of them since I first dis­cov­ered him in Gran­ta mag­a­zine back in the ’80s. I couldn’t get enough of his wise­crack­ing tales about grow­ing up in Des Moines, espe­cial­ly the epic fam­i­ly road trips he endured.… more
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Melissa Stewart

Look at how we’re teaching nonfiction!

June 8, 2016 3 Comments
As anoth­er school year winds to a close, I’m feel­ing encour­aged about the state of non­fic­tion read­ing and writ­ing in ele­men­tary class­rooms across the country. In 2010, when the Com­mon Core State Stan­dards were intro­duced, edu­ca­tors began ask­ing me for ideas and strate­gies for imple­ment­ing the Read­ing Infor­ma­tion­al Text stan­dards. And they were hun­gry for tips and tools that they could use to teach infor­ma­tion­al writing.… more
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Wolf Sighting

May 25, 2016 No Comments
It is not often that I get a call such as I just did. The call came Lar­ry McCoy, who holds a doc­tor­ate in the­ol­o­gy, and teach­es phi­los­o­phy at the Steam­boat, Col­orado Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege. He also builds log hous­es and has a dog named “Helen.” That’s the way folks are here in Routt Coun­ty.  He is one of our near neigh­bors, liv­ing about a mile and a half away.… more
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Liza Ketchum

La Escuela Primaria: A Visit to Cuba

May 10, 2016 3 Comments
This past Feb­ru­ary, my hus­band and I trav­eled to Cuba on an eleven-day tour. Near the end of the trip, we drove from the cen­tral city of Cam­agüey to vis­it a ranch. After a two-hour dri­ve, our bus bounced down a long dirt road and passed under a wood­en sign that resem­bled a gate in an old west­ern, telling us we had reached “The King Ranch.”… more
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Author Candice Ransom

Making a Deep Map

April 19, 2016 2 Comments
I like to think of land­scape not as a fixed place but as a path that is unwind­ing before my eyes, under my feet. ~ Gre­tel Ehrlich Book projects get set aside, even those with fast beat­ing hearts that you can’t bear to be away from for a sec­ond. Sick­ness, hol­i­days, oth­er stuff push­es it away. The book’s heart­beat slows and goes qui­et.… more
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Unexpected Visitors

April 7, 2016 1 Comment
As writ­ers, we learn to expect the unex­pect­ed and be ready to cap­ture expe­ri­ences in words. One such moment stands out from this past win­ter for me. My hus­band and I were sleep­ing in our cab­in loft, on 60 acres where we keep our hors­es. I woke at 3 am to crunch­ing snow below our win­dow. I sat upright, won­der­ing what sort of late night intrud­er it could be.… more
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Molting Advice

March 3, 2016 5 Comments
Level 1 books teem with action. Illustrations match the narrative. If the reader has trouble decoding the text, the art provides necessary cues.
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Lisa Bullard

Lisa Bullard: My Not-So-Overnight Success

February 4, 2016 7 Comments
Ear­ly on, when peo­ple would ask my kid self what I want­ed to be when I grew up, I’d answer “Shoe Sales­per­son.” But then I dis­cov­ered that feet some­times smell, and I moved on to a dif­fer­ent dream: Book Writer. I could invent a great sto­ry and tell you that I craft­ed a long-term plan to real­ize my dream. But instead, this is a tale of false starts and mis­di­rect­ed wan­der­ings.… more
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Lynne Jonell

Lynne Jonell: Accessing Childhood Emotion

January 19, 2016 No Comments
They say that, if you’re a doc­tor, it’s not some­thing you want to admit to at an event where you’re going to have to make small talk with a lot of strangers. Because invari­ably peo­ple will want your opin­ion on their rash, or the fun­ny flut­ter in their chest, or the odd bump on their knee. I wouldn’t know, not being a doc­tor, but I under­stand feel­ing cau­tious about admit­ting what I do for a liv­ing.… more
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At the Dying of the Year

December 29, 2015 4 Comments
by Vir­ginia Euw­er Wolff Now win­ter downs the dying of the year, And night is all a set­tle­ment of snow…  —Richard Wilbur, “Year’s End”   We all have our cir­cles of par­tic­u­lar­ly mourned lost ones. As our hemi­sphere dark­ens down in this ele­giac sea­son of the win­ter equinox, and death has been so relent­less­ly in the air dur­ing 2015, I wave my own lit­tle flags of grat­i­tude to some of my men­tors and acci­den­tal teachers.… more
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Mary Casanova: Cultivating Quiet

December 22, 2015 4 Comments
by Mary Casanova Eudo­ra Wel­ty wrote in One-Writer’s Begin­nings: “Long before I wrote sto­ries, I lis­tened for stories.” The more I write, the more I find that writ­ing is about lis­ten­ing to sto­ries that need to be told. Lis­ten­ing at a deeply intu­itive lev­el, how­ev­er, demands shut­ting out a fre­net­ic world in favor of a qui­eter life — one that sup­ports and nur­tures cre­ativ­i­ty — and writing.… more
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The Power of Fiction to Help Kids Grow

December 8, 2015 2 Comments
by Eliz­a­beth Fixmer The years I spent in pri­vate prac­tice as a psy­chother­a­pist spe­cial­iz­ing in work with chil­dren pro­pelled me to become a children’s writer. My use of books as a ther­a­py adjunct evolved over time, as did my respect and even­tu­al awe for the pow­er of fic­tion as a change agent. My young clients intro­duced me to mid­dle-grade and young-adult nov­els.… more
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Marion Dane Bauer: Animals in Stories, Animals in the World

November 24, 2015 No Comments
by Mar­i­on Dane Bauer Who doesn’t love a pup­py? Well, admit­ted­ly there are some folks who don’t, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing how dif­fi­cult both ends of such crea­tures are to keep under con­trol. So let’s rephrase the ques­tion: Who doesn’t love a pup­py in a children’s sto­ry? Or even a frog or a toad, for that matter? Some­thing hap­pens to a sto­ry when it is pop­u­lat­ed by ani­mals, some­thing easy to feel but dif­fi­cult to define.… more
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