I was standing in front of 150 kids when a second-grader asked me a science question I couldn’t answer about an animal in my book The Secret Pool. “Why are a spotted salamander’s spots yellow?” he asked. Panicked, I spluttered, “I don’t know.” Then, it dawned on me. “Let’s see if we can find out,” […]
Students often ask me, “what’s the best part of writing a book?” High on my list is meeting them—and seeing how my books inspire them in their own writing, guided by their brilliant teachers. Young writers at one elementary school in Maine recently created cool comic strips inspired by ancient creatures in my book Extreme […]
Wading in the icy waters of Maine’s Penobscot Bay one summer day, I spotted transparent creatures near the surface rippling with rainbow bands of light. I thought I was seeing things until a scientist friend told me that these thumb-long, otherworldly critters are called comb jellies. He explained that their namesake “combs” — rows of […]