Kathryn Lasky, Author of One Beetle Too Many: The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin

June 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors!  Today is a stormy day in New York, there’s thunder and lightening all around.  It’s a great day for being on the radio.  I have four guests on the show today, three authors and one musician, as always. At the end of the show will be musician Janet Paschal, and she’s got a new album out called Treasure.  Before that I’ve got three authors, I’ve got Mark David Gerson, and he’s got a book that’s in the fantasy fiction category, and I’d love to talk to him about that.  Mark Updegrove is a former Newsweek editor, and I’ll be talking with him about Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office in Times of Crisis, and of course that applies today.  And my first guest on the show is Kathryn Lasky, and she’s a children’s author.  And without further ado, I’d love to chat with her, she’s on the line right now.  Welcome to the show, Kathryn.

Kathryn Lasky:  Oh, thank you.  Happy to be on the line!

Dr. Kent:  You’re the author of One Beetle Too Many.  Tell us about this book.

Kathryn Lasky:  Well, the full title is One Beetle Too Many: The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin.  So it’s basically what we call, in the children’s publishing world, a picture biography, which means it’s illustrated, and it’s 48 pages.  But it looks like a big picture book.  It is about the life of Charles Darwin.

Dr. Kent:  Just to get the fun stuff out of the way, first of all, are you running into anybody saying, “How could you do a biography of Charles Darwin?”

Kathryn Lasky:  No, everybody’s saying, “That’s a good idea! It’s the anniversary of his birthday, 300 years.

Dr. Kent:  That’s wonderful.  I think there’s so much talk in the media about creationism versus all of that stuff.  It’s neat to get to know Charles Darwin for what he really was, which is pretty extraordinary.  Now tell us about Mr. Darwin.

Kathryn Lasky:  Well, I decided to especially focus on the aspects of him, his personality, and his career that I thought would really appeal to children.  So first let’s begin with the title, One Beetle Too Many.  When Charles Darwin was a young boy, he wasn’t a very good student, actually.  But he did love observing nature, and going out and collecting things, like beetles. One expedition, this is just in the countryside around his home in England, he found one, he loved beetles, and he found one that was gorgeous.  And he had it in his left hand, and it was even more beautiful, and he had it in his right hand.  And then he saw a third, and he didn’t have a third hand.  So he popped the one from his right hand into his mouth and held it there, and then got the third one and went running home to put them in jars.  So that’s the title, and it’s sort of very indicative of his personality, and his enthusiasm.  He did try a few careers, but he did not succeed, well, studying for a few careers.  He studied to be a doctor, and couldn’t stand the sight of blood.  His father thought well, he should be a clergyman, but he didn’t like that much, but he was a fantastic observer of nature, and then he got his big break, which was to go as the naturalist on The Voyage of the Beagle.

Dr. Kent:  How cool is that.  Now, have you held two beetles in hand, and one in your mouth, just as part of your research?

Kathryn Lasky:  No, I don’t think I have to go quite that far.  I didn’t feel compelled.  (laughter) But I did do a lot of research.

Dr. Kent:  And what is, with a character like Charles Darwin, what was it about these creatures? I remember as a boy picking up a turtle and being so amazed, or catching my first firefly ad being so amazed at this little creature.  What was that that Darwin felt inside, and how do you transfer that into a children’s book?

Kathryn Lasky:  Well I think he was such a good observer, and he just started to feel, wonder how things are connected on earth.  Somebody said recently, and I can’t remember the guy’s name, but he’s an evolutionary biologist from the University of Florida, and he said 99% of what we know today Charles Darwin didn’t know.  But the 1% that he did know was really good.  Darwin had this capacity to kind of glance over, peek over the horizon and start to wonder about these connections, and wonder about time and change. So my challenge in the book was, how do you explain evolution to young readers?  So I tried to do it in kind of almost a visual and metaphoric way.  And I just kept my thoughts trained on three basic things: the notion of continuing change, the pressures that can bring about that change in living organisms, and the scale of time.  And you have to realize that when Darwin was born, people only thought the earth was something like, I don’t know, 6,000 years old.  At the time he reached maturity, they were thinking in terms of millions of years. Somewhere when he was in his 30’s or so, they were thinking in hundreds of thousands of years.  It’s only been in the 1920’s, maybe, that we started thinking in terms of billions of years.  So you just kind of, I tried to capture the moments in his travels, in his observations, I guess you’d call those eureka moments, and how he wove all this stuff together.

Dr. Kent:  Yeah, and he’s such a fascinating character from so many perspectives. So what made you start to think about writing this book?  You’ve done a lot of things, and what made you write this one?

Kathryn Lasky:  Well, first of all I have to tell you this story.  It took Darwin 20 years to write Origin of Species.  It took me four years to write this book.  I started this book years ago. I wrote, obviously, many in between. But I was in Cambridge, Massachusetts, very close to Harvard College, and when my daughter was about two I thought, “I’ve just got to get out of the house, I’m being driven crazy with diapers, and little kids running around.” So I hired a babysitter and what I did was, I walked over to Harvard.  It was only about a five minute walk from my house to the Science Center Lecture Hall, and I sat in and I audited the course of Stephen Jay Gould, who was the great evolutionary biologist. So that’s how it began.  And I started just educating myself.  From that course I went on and I audited another one that David Taube gave, who’s a paleoanthropologist on human evolution. So I just started putting all this together.  I just think, I know some people look at the stars and they wonder about the origins of the universe, they’re looking out into space. And I just started looking right on earth.  As a matter of fact, that was the name of the Stephen Jay Gould course, it was called Life on Earth.  So that’s when I started, but it was a bumpy road to getting the book out, that’s all I can say.  I won’t even bore you with the details.  But I’m very pleased.  I just want to say, the illustrations, which I did not do, but the wonderful Matthew Trueman did, are just fabulous.  I mean, they’re just beyond belief, and the critics have just raved about these illustrations. He just went and broke new ground with the illustrations as a medium.

Dr. Kent:  The most fun thing about being a children’s author is that you get some wonderful illustrations in all your books, right?

Kathryn Lasky:  Yeah, you do.  And this is certainly among the finest that I’ve ever had, and I’ve done a lot of picture books for kids.

Dr. Kent:  This book is called One Beetle Too Many: The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin.  Have you had a chance to read this for kids?

Kathryn Lasky:  I’ve read parts of it for kids, but I’ve been really pretty busy. So I haven’t sat down and read it with a group of kids yet.  All my kids are grown up and out of the house.  But I have a granddaughter now, but she’s just 8 months old, so she might be a little too young.

Dr. Kent:  You’ll have to wait a couple years to bring your whole shelf of books over.  So tell us about your career a little bit, where you’ve come from and where you plan to go with what you’re writing now.

Kathryn Lasky:  I am one of these children’s book authors who does a lot of different things, a lot of different genres.  Perhaps, like I did a lot of historical fiction, but perhaps right now my most popular books are a series called the Guardians of Ga’Hoole, which is a middle grade fantasy series, no humans in it, and only owls and other animals.  And it’s being made into a movie.  And actually the director of the movie is Zack Snyder, who just did The Watchmen.  So that is being made, as we speak. That fantasy series of owl books, Guardians of Ga’Hoole, has been enormously popular amongst kids.  I’m starting up another series, another two series.  I’m also doing a non-fiction book about spiders, and I call her Spider Woman, but she’s an arachnologist, and a professor of Biology at Lewis and Clark University. My husband, with the non-fiction books, he’s a former National Geographic Photographer, but he illustrates a lot of the non-fiction with photographs.  So we are just back from following Greta Binford, the arachnologist, around in the Dominican Republic.

Dr. Kent:  Did you have to actually get in touch with some spiders?

Kathryn Lasky:  Yeah.  Up close and personal with spiders, with tarantulas and the (inaudible) spiders, which their more common name is brown recluse, but there’s a lot of different kinds of brown recluse, so these were the ones in the Caribbean.

Dr. Kent: You are a brave human being.

Kathryn Lasky:  I thought I was going to be scared.  I really wasn’t that scared at all. What scared me more was driving on the roads in the Dominican Republic.  I realized there was a lot better chance that I was going to get killed on a road than bitten by a spider.

Dr. Kent:  I think it’s the same thing in New York here.

Kathryn Lasky:  Yeah, so anyhow, that’s what I do.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been such a pleasure speaking with the author of One Beetle Too Many: The Extraordinary Adventures of Charles Darwin.  It’s written by Kathryn Lasky and illustrated by Matthew Trueman. Or True-man? How does he say it?

Kathryn Lasky:  Trueman.  Not spelled like Harry Truman, but pronounced the same way.

Dr. Kent:  Well, and he has truly beautiful artwork in this book, there’s no question.  What a neat topic to have for a kid’s book, and thank you so much for chatting with me about it. Hopefully we talk to you again sometime.

Kathryn Lasky:  Oh, thank you. Have a nice day.

Dr. Kent:  You, too.  My next guest on the show is the author of Baptism by Fire: Eight Presidents Who Took Office In Times of Crisis.  Come on back in one second, and we’ll chat with him.

Posted by admin | Filed Under History, Science, Childrens, TRANSCRIPTS, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Garen Thomas | Live on Sound Authors

February 27, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors!  My next guest on the show is Garen Thomas.  She’s written a beautiful book called Yes We Can: A Biography of Barack Obama.  It’s full of pictures beautifully laid out and it’s done very well recently for obvious reasons.  We now have President Barack Obama and he’s been doing some incredible things over the past few weeks.  So welcome to the show Garen Thomas.

Garen Thomas:  Thank you, thank you so much for having me.

Dr. Kent:  So it must’ve been a great last few weeks, last couple of months for you talking about this book and having been part of this historical moment.

Garen Thomas:  Well I was really happy to have provided for kids a glimpse into the life of this candidate and now the president of the United States.  I thought that his story was really interesting.  It’s unique but it’s also one to which many children can relate so I was really proud that turned out to be the case.

Dr. Kent:  Of course all of us this is the kind of book that kids bring home and then their parents see laying on the table and say that book looks great and they pick it up and read it themselves.

Garen Thomas:  I’ve found that a lot of adults actually have read this book.  It turns out it can work at a primer for people who don’t know much about the president and many people, many adults have told me that they read the book and then passed it along to their kids or the kids read it and then they read it so its wonderful that it actually crossed over from the children’s market to the adult market.

Dr. Kent:  You’ve been in the New York Times book review and major newspapers everywhere.  How has that felt for you?

Garen Thomas:  That was actually really wonderful.  It was nice to be recognized that way, it was nice to have that attention; however, for me the most important thing was getting the book in the hands of children and to be on the bestseller list is a case that where kids were getting it and adults were getting it and that’s what it means to me.

Dr. Kent:  So where did this start for you?  When did you look at this guy?  I mean for me I didn’t know about him until 2004 and I watched that speech and said oh wow, who is this guy?  I wonder if we could have this guy for our president one day.  Then I thought no, that’ll never happen.  But when did it start for you?

Garen Thomas:  It started for me around the same time.  I was actually working as a children’s book editor and was looking for positive role models in the African American community and then this person who I had never heard of came out and made this passionate speech and I had my eye on him right at that time.  I wanted to have him actually write a children’s book for us and we approached him but it turned out he went with his adult book publisher to publish a children’s book.  I kept my eye on him and was very excited to see him enter the race.  Oh gosh, how many years ago has it been now and thrilled to have been able to write a part of this historical moment.

Dr. Kent:  And that’s so interesting.  We have for me as an artist, as someone who has devoted their life to the arts, its so wonderful I heard on the Grammy’s last night, sorry a few nights ago that this is a Grammy award wining president; how neat is that?

Garen Thomas:  Yeah, I believe he’s one who grabs you now!

Dr. Kent:  For his writing, how he read it of course, but.

Garen Thomas:  Absolutely; I think it speaks largely to his writing ability and the message he’s able to convey.  That it resonates with people; granted he did explore the spoken award that he won at the Grammy’s, but I don’t think you can win a Grammy without having the meat of material behind it.

Dr. Kent:  So tell me, there’s a lot of people out there that are collecting things; this is clearly the president of the last couple hundred years for people to look at and say wow, this is a unique character, in my opinion.  What’s your personal sort of relationship to the whole okay now he’s president, how do I look at this now?  Earlier you said this is a great primer about the president.  How did things change for you when he actually won?

Garen Thomas:  Wow; I think similar to you I actually couldn’t believe it.  For me it was like magic, it was like the world slightly changed a little bit, something shifted in American history and perhaps world history.  It definitely felt that way and I also was, I couldn’t enjoy the moment right at the time because I was writing the final chapters to the updated version of the book.

Dr. Kent:  The thing for me, we’re on internet radio so I can be pretty free with my opinions and I was very excited about the candidate Obama and when he gave the acceptance speech I was anticipating that I would be overjoyed and jumping around and excited and actually I sort of joined half of the legions of people across the country that were crying.  I was thinking and I don’t know why I was but it was like this is a moment that I was sort of waiting for, for a long time.

Garen Thomas:  At the time of the inauguration, it was you know I was still holding my breath after he won the election but for me I still was waiting for that inaugural date to come; anything could’ve happened between the election and the inauguration.  I don’t know if I would consider myself a pessimist or just extremely cautious but I definitely wanted to take it slow and make sure that everything went according to plan and during the inauguration at his inaugural speech I was definitely moved and wasn’t blogging it live but was writing down pieces of his speech that really moved me.

Dr. Kent:  I remember there was a moment where I was at home for the holidays with my parents and we were watching some speeches and I guess Obama gave his now famous speech in Iowa and I remember just sitting there actually giving responses and this will kind of bring up another question.  I didn’t grow up in a church or in a community that sort of responds freely to a speaker but I’ve heard a lot of it of course in both music and different speakers, but when Obama speaks, people evoke responses involuntarily.  When he gave that speech in Iowa I was talking to the television.  He would say things and I would go mmm, he’d say something else and I’d go yeah.  What does it mean to have an African American man in the white house who studied how to do that honestly?  He’s so well studied and developed that his style of connecting to people.

Garen Thomas:  I think what it means is that he’s connected with, he’s able to connect with our core emotions, he gets people from the core.  I think that sort of call on response is or when you feel compelled to talk back to the TV because somebody said something that really ignites a passion in you or a fire in you and you want to respond, you want to say yes or whatever.  I think it’s amazing that style that he’s got translates so well across all of America and it looks like globally.

Dr. Kent:  So let’s go back to the book itself.  Now he has such an interesting story and you know it’s not often that any character in public life had that deep of a story.  We’ve all been sort of in love with this fellow Sully who saved all these people in New York and he’s a wonderful story and we sort of cling to characters.  Barack Obama is an especially sticky character.  When we hear his story we’re drawn to it, even before he was president, he was selling millions of books.  Why is he so sticky and why is he so important to us?

Garen Thomas:  When he initially published his first book it did okay but it didn’t sort of take off until he became senator.  That was a momentous thing as well and people revisited his initial story and found a unique person behind it, somebody who was able to live in several worlds literally and figuratively and find a place for himself to fit.  I think it was amazing.

Dr. Kent:  In your book what I love about the book especially and what obviously all of the press loves about it is that it is for children but I find myself really drawn to it because of the pictures in it and it’s such a neat thing when you write books for younger people, you’re allowed to put pictures in.

Garen Thomas:  Yes it’s true.  I don’t know when we decide that we’re too adult to have images in our books but I feel like they help tell the story.  We’re still drawn to pictures and movies and I don’t know why we can’t still have something like that in our books for adults but the pictures help tell his story.  He’s got an amazing life story and there are bits and pieces of it that probably we wouldn’t have a full sense of unless we actually saw him, like in Hawaii with his grandparents or saw him graduating from Harvard or Columbia.  It has a real, you’re able to connect more I think with him as a human being when you have those pictures to hold onto.

Dr. Kent:  So, I have kind of two questions.  What surprised you about Barack Obama’s story and the second question is what has surprised you since you published this book since Obama has become president and you’re getting reactions from readers?  Has anything surprised you?

Garen Thomas:  I think I didn’t realize how close he was with his grandparents and his mother and how interesting and exceptional a woman his mother was.  She basically I think she gave him the tools to be president at a very young age.  She instilled in him a desire to learn and the necessity to learn and to not have excuses for things that you feel are unfair but to find a way to make changes happen.  as far as what surprises me since the book and the inauguration when he became president; I think I ran into an article online about a woman who read the book with her daughter and then went to her school and told the teacher there that she wanted the book as part of the curriculum and apparently its become a part of the curriculum and they got hundreds of copies and the kids are reading it.  That means so much to me, the fact that the mother saw that and saw the value in it and I think she actually said that she wanted the children to see if he could do it they could do.  That means more to me than any best seller list or anything like that.

Dr. Kent:  And that really has been surprising to me and many people is this shift that happened on January 20.  People said wow, I could really be somebody and that’s really wonderful.  Let me ask you this.  One of Obama’s biographers David Mendell who I chatted with just before Obama was elected actually.  The beginning to his book, the quote before the book begins was I’m Lebron’s baby.” And I was really amused by that because this was what Obama said as he went on stage in 2004.  He had this confidence and I wanted to ask you about that and then the beginning of your book, which you talk about the quote he said “In the end that is God’s greatest gift to us, a belief in things not seen.”  And then your first line of the introduction, “His father was a legend, like John Henry.”  There’s this real mystery and a sense of forward thinking, future thinking in Obama and he says these really wonderful lofty things.

Garen Thomas:  I also believe that comes across that he has that.  I guess people don’t expect it.  It’s a surprise to them that he can be conscious of that, that he can fill himself with enough knowledge to be confident and get out there and put form and to convey his message that’s going to connect with people.  It turns out that it relates to the Lebron James comment.  When I chose the quote about Gods greatest gift to us is the belief in things not seen, I was thinking about his father.  The fact that he grew up without his dad and that yet he had to somehow believe in his dad and believe in himself so that he could reach great heights.  That was what really I wanted to get at in the book was his relationships with his parents and his grandparents and the people in his life.  It really was important to me to spend a lot of time on his childhood in his formative years and find out what his relationship was like with individuals, the people who helped make him into the person that people are looking up to today.

Dr. Kent:  I guess my final and favorite question for you is what makes Barack Obama so cool in two ways?  The first way of course is I as well as many people were swept up in who is this guy around 2006.  I thought wow, how amazing would it be if he could get elected and I was amazed by the things he said; to me it felt cool.  He was this incredibly popular character.  In the other sense where everyone says how does he stay so calm?  And that’s part of what got him elected and what’s so reassuring now to see in this president is this coolness.  I think I lost Garen Thomas!  I will hang on the line for a minute and see if we can get her back.  The book is called Yes We Can: A biography of President Barack Obama and I’m going to put a commercial on for a minute while we get her back.  So we’re back on the line with Garen Thomas.  I think we dropped her call for a minute there but we’re talking about Yes We Can: A biography of President Barack Obama.  Welcome back to the show.

Garen Thomas:  Thank you.

Dr. Kent:  Sorry I lost you there but I was asking about our cool president and he’s both cool in a very popular sense and cool, calm, collected, reassuring – so talk about our president’s coolness.

Garen Thomas:  It’s funny that you should mention that.  I’m actually in business school now and one of the people in our admissions department talks about swag and how some people have just a little of a swagger about them and I think our current president has that.  I think he has an air about him; it’s not a conceited air but I think he gives a level of confidence and calm.  I don’t think I’ve seen him open to anger or lose his cool.  He just sort of has a measured approach to things and a reasoned approach.  I think it helps put people at ease and it’s really a fun thing to see.  Part of that might come from Michelle to because I think she’s got some of that as well.

Dr. Kent:  And at the same time he’s cool for kids, for young people, for Gen-Xers and he’s also cool for boomers.  Why is this character politically so cool?

Garen Thomas:  I think because people have grown tired of the same type of politician and he brings a new style to politics.  I think he’s actually made people more engaged and more excited about policy and about what can be done.  There is a lot going on in the United States and across the globe that really needs fixed and this is somebody who’s standing up for principals and working to fix it.  In terms of what makes him cool to younger kids, I know one of my close friends has a three year old and helped sway his dad to vote for Obama because that’s the candidate who’s name he could say.  And I think he has a fun name as well; Obama is a fun name for kids to say.

Dr. Kent:  Right and its true and I recall before he was elected about a week before I was on a walk with my dog and we passed a younger woman with her child and we introduced my dog to the child first and then I remember her saying tell him what you think?  I think I must’ve been wearing some kind of Barack Obama shirt and the kid said bawack Obama and I won’t forget; it’s the funniest thing but the kid just loved saying his name.

Garen Thomas:  It has a nice little ring to it.  I definitely think kids like that plus I think he just it’s a generational thing.  He’s a new kind of politician and Colin Powell talks about a need for generational change in the white house and I think we see this person as that shift in policy and just a new face that’s something that’s bringing America into the 21st century.

Dr. Kent:  It’s been such a pleasure chatting with Garen Thomas, she’s the author of Yes We Can.  It’s a new York Times best seller and it’s a biography of our new president Barack Obama and it goes from his kindergarten essay “I Want to become President” all the way back to his childhood and to the present day in the new edition so thank you so much for chatting with me.

Garen Thomas:  Thanks very much it was fun.

Dr. Kent:  My next guest on the show is Nina Burleigh and she’s the author of Unholy Business: A true tale of faith, greed and forgery in the holy land.  Come on back for that one.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Childrens, History, TRANSCRIPTS, Politics, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST 

Interview with Clea & John Adams | Sound Authors Radio

February 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome to Sound Authors!  I’ve got four wonderful guests on the show today.  Three of course are authors and one is a musician.  I have Clea Adams, the author of the Dragonfly Secret on at the beginning.  Then I have professor Rothbart on, known as the father of chronic pain elimination.  My third guest then will be Kristin Tillquist, author of Capitalizing on Kindness, Why 21st century needs to be nice.  That’s something great in these tough economic times when around here in New York when you go out on the street you’re taking your life in your own hands because people just aren’t nice; times are too hard to be nice.  And at the end of the show I’ve got a great musician, composer and educator Yosvany Terry, an amazing jazz player.  So without further ado, my first guest on the show, her name is Clea Adams.  She’s the author of the Dragonfly Secret.  It’s a beautiful children’s book.  Welcome to the show.

Clea Adams:  Hi Dr. Kent, thank you and I do have my co-author John Adams on the line as well with you.

John Adams:  Hi Kent!

Dr. Kent:  Hi, so Clea and John Adams, the co-authors and tell me how this book came about.

Clea Adams:  Well it was just released last October and the first book in the dragonfly series was called the Dragonfly Door and both books help children cope with a lot.  in this particular story, we like to describe it that all children love secrets and this book has a secret to help children, especially those who may have suffered a lot and it basically takes place in a beautiful garden where a mysterious boy named David befriends a little dragonfly named Leah and without much explanation, David asks Leah to do three things for him and she the dragonfly starts her special assignment.  She meets other people that need her help too and its not until the surprise ending of the story that you begin to realize that its really a book about loss, hope and love all being carried on the wings of this little dragonfly.

Dr. Kent:  This book has gotten several awards, including the Benjamin Franklin Award, which is incredibly prestigious.  Talk about the life of this first book that you had – The Dragonfly Door.

John Adams:  The dragonfly door has won several awards and really that’s a story about these two insect friends Leah and Nan and the struggles that Nan has to go through when her friend disappears from under the marsh where they live together.  Really this story has two purposes.  Number one is it shows children who may have had a loss in life that their feelings of loss are normal but then at the same time what it does is gives parents and grandparents the tools to express their own fears about life and death and we’ve heard from a number of teachers, parents, grandparents.  Many people love to use this book because there’s so many layers to it and really ambiguous enough to where you can go any direction that you want.  If it’s just talking about friendship, talking about patience, diversity or something as serious as loss and change.

Clea Adams:  And I would also add that both books now have won the moms choice gold award and that actually hasn’t been announced.  I think they’re going to announce that at the end of January.

Dr. Kent:  Isn’t that wonderful!  And the thing about children’s books that’s so wonderful, I know from my own childhood that my favorites were the Dr. Seuss Books, The Lorax and the Butter Battle Book and there’s always a greater dimension to a good children’s book.  What goes into writing it?

John Adams:  Well I think from our perspective, we want our books to really have a purpose and that’s one of the reasons why we pushed forward with both of these books.  We find that so many other publishers want to have other genres that their kind of lighthearted but I think it’s fair to say we’re willing to tackle some very serious issues because we think its very worthwhile books that will stand the test of time and help people.

Dr. Kent:  What inspired you to start writing this first book and now the second one about the dragonfly?

John Adams:  I’m the guilty one there.  About 34-35 years ago when I was 13 I had a very tragic loss in my family and the memory of that loss and the pain from that loss has been with me all my life.  I carry that and then about four or five years ago, I learned about a teenager, a girl named Ann, who was 13 years old and she had lost her sixth grade friend, a boy who was 11 years old at the time and as part of her grieving process and reaching out to others in the community, she and her friends actually went forward and started a grief outreach program called the dragonfly project.  When I learned about that is it carried me back to when I was a child and I thought about everything that I went through and when I look at what Ann and her friends were doing following a tragedy to someone they were very close to, they were reaching out to a community of others and in fact to this day they’ve reached out to about 20,000-21,000 people throughout the world with this outreach program they formed.  So I certainly think about that and what I could do to help children.  That started pushing me along the way to write this book.

Clea Adams:  And I think as well both John & I are real nature lovers and we’ve really had found in our personal lives comfort from nature and I think you’ll find that both of these stories have a comforting message using nature as really the centerpiece of that.

Dr. Kent:  And the neat things about children’s books is that the visual has come back.  I think as adults we’re sometimes scared to say we like picture books but I got to say I have a huge collection of children’s books because I love looking at the pictures.  What does the artwork mean to you?

Clea Adams:  Oh my gosh!  Well that’s so true for us too and there’s so many beautiful books out there today and we were lucky to find Barbara Gibson who actually, she started her career with the National Geographic Children’s Magazine and to this day I think she’s done over 40 children’s books.  What she was able to detect was not only really the heart and soul of the story, but do it in like you’re saying, a very captivating way.  What’s really unique about her talent is the first book really takes place completely under the marsh, except for this one last scene where the dragonfly transforms into a beautiful, well a water nymph turns into this beautiful dragonfly.  So Barbara has really captured all those muted colors but she really has had made the creatures within the story just really lovable.

Then with the second book, which takes place in a garden, she is able to bring a brilliancy to the colors and that really complements the hopefulness of the story when you write it.  The illustrations can make a huge difference in any story.

Dr. Kent:  What’s interesting about children’s books to me is that the text is usually, I don’t want to say simple, but very concise and I know that again, I said earlier I love Dr. Seuss.  I know he spent weeks and months on each one of his books, if not years.  How long did it take to craft these books and what’s that process like?

John Adams:  Well both of the books we spent about a year writing the text, so each story is between 1500 and 1800 words and I think with a lot of people its hard to imagine why it would take that long but we were very diligent in how we crafted the words and trying to put everything together to show what was taking place within the story.  Then at the same time we were very diligent about having professional critiques with those stories and I think with each one we went through about five or six critiques to make sure that we were moving in the right direction because it was important that we approached it with the understanding that these books need to stand on their own.  Not because of us or anything but because they had a purpose for children.  We also by the way I would add that with the first book in particular, we spent some time with two child psychologists because the whole purpose again was to help children with loss and change.  So we wanted to make sure that we had a psychologist’s perspective and were approaching it the right way.

Dr. Kent:  What’s your background both of you?

John Adams:  We both come from the business world so this is totally unexpected for us.  Its one of those things where you’re inspired and you move beyond the edge a little bit and there’s a saying “If you jump your parachute will appear”, well that’s what we did.  We jumped.

Clea Adams:  That’s a good way to describe it and I would say I’ve been writing and reading my whole life and when we do school visits we do try to reiterate with kids that its important to be inspired and to feel fire that you’re writing for a purpose and I think that the kids really respond to that message.  Because we usually give a lot of examples too and its funny you should bring up the Dr. Seuss books because we do use those as an example of how they are classics and how you do want to keep returning to something that has either made you laugh in childhood or maybe taken you on an adventure or something like that.

Dr. Kent:  I see, one of my other favorite books is the one with Where the Wild Things Are.

Clea Adams:  Oh yeah, and I’m a big Nancy Drew fan so I think I’ve read all of those.

Dr. Kent:  Oh absolutely!  So what is it?  Are you going to continue with this series?  Do you want to sort of keep doing this and get them out to more schools and clinics and things like that?  What’s the plan?

Clea Adams:  Yeah, exactly.  We would like to do more school visits but as far as the writing goes, we have a couple ideas cooking in our heads and a couple on paper and we would like to continue to write and produce more books, but I think right now as you know, the focus for us with this newly released book The Dragonfly Secret, we’re focused on the marketing and promotion.  Sometimes I wish we had more time to be writing but we’re hoping to get back to that later in the year and possibly with another dragonfly book within that series.  And maybe go off on a different tangent as well, so we’ll see what happens.

Dr. Kent:  Well it’s been a real honor chatting with Clea and John Adams, their book is called The Dragonfly Secret.  It’s a wonderful story and gorgeous pictures; even the back cover with the picture of a dragonfly landing on a flower is just stunning.  So I hope it does really well, just as the Dragonfly Door has done.

Clea Adams:  Thank you very much, thanks for having us!

Dr. Kent:  Absolutely and we can visit their website online at dragonflystories.com.  My next guest on the show will be a fellow named Professor Rothbart and he’s going to tell us about chronic pain elimination so come on back for that.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Childrens, TRANSCRIPTS, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Clea & John Adams | Dragonfly Books

February 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment

 
icon for podpress  Interview with Clea & John Adams [11:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Clea & John Adams have written a beautiful duo of children’s books. They spoke with me about it on the show. More information about “The Dragonfly Secret” from their website:

Love and hope transcend all boundaries when a boy and a dragonfly meet. An impossible encounter? Lea journeys through a beautiful garden to discover the boy’s secret. As she follows his clues, Lea meets people who need her help. And at the end, the unexpected secret is revealed.

Discover the power of boundless love in this heartfelt story of friendship, family, and remembrance. Beautifully illustrated, The Dragonfly Secret gently encourages children and adults to explore life’s infinite possibilities. Because of it, readers may look at nature in an entirely new light.

The Dragonfly Secret is a heartwarming story for family members who have lost a loved one. 

“The Dragonfly Secret is on the same level as Love You Forever by Robert Munsch in the respect of delivering the message of just how powerful unconditional love is, especially between a parent and child.” ——CafeofDreams

“A wonderful story well crafted and beautifully illustrated”  ——Midwest Book Review

“The Dragonfly Secret is a must for any home library, but it also deserves a place of honor in libraries, churches, and other places where young children congregate. This book would also make a wonderful gift for any young child suffering from a tragic loss.”  ——Bobbi’s Book Nook

“It’s a book that gives readers a soft place to land in their grieving process.”   ——Armchair Interviews

Posted by admin | Filed Under Childrens, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST 

Interview with Norma J. Watts | Sound Authors Radio

January 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment

Dr. Kent:  Welcome back to Sound Authors!  My next guest on the show is Norma J. Watts.  She’s the author of The Art of Baby Nameology, Explore the Deeper Meaning of Names for your Baby.  But its more exciting than just that, she’s also an expert in saying what names mean.  So lets start out, what do you think my name means; Kent Gustavson?

Norma J. Watts:  Oh hi Kent.

Dr. Kent:  How are you?

Norma J. Watts:  Oh I’m good.  I just work with the first name.  I found that there are some studies that they run the whole name.  They study the middle name, the last name, all of it and with women they drive you crazy; they get married several times and their maiden name and this name.  I’ve just based the Art of Nameology on the first name because of the point is that when we meet someone, we just know their first name and that says a lot about us so that is what this basic study is all about.  And your name Kent is there’s a hidden seven in the beginning of your name if we add the K and the E together so this tells me that you’re either spiritual or scientific but this is hidden, not everybody knows but you have an inner search for knowledge.  Having to do with scientific or spiritual.  A Kent could be a person who studies the bible or a Kabala or possibly you study the stock market or a handicap horse racing, you may be into because there’s a science in that.  But somebody with the name Kent or with the first two letters together, there’s a hidden step in there, so there’s something you like to study.

Dr. Kent:  I’m certainly a little obsessed with not horse racing, but definitely interested in the bible and science and all sorts of things.  What does it mean to take a name that parents gave a child and then find deeper meaning within it?  How does that work exactly?

Norma J. Watts:  When we’re born, our names are drawn to us subconsciously at birth and that name has the energy of our personality.  So of course it reveals our personality really.  To a person like me and to people who study names like I do we have a little bit more inside knowledge of what that persons about.

Dr. Kent:  I have to say I’ve seen a lot of information since that there is a lot to a name.  My fiancé, her name is Katarina and when I first heard the name I thought what a beautiful name and then I thought she was a more beautiful person.  Not that I didn’t think she was beautiful before but there’s a lot to that; people say oh does it fit with my last name and they’re always thinking about names and you can almost in your head think, oh what would a Kent look like, or what would a Norma J. Watts look like?  Talk about perception in the world of certain names.

Norma J. Watts:  For example, Katarina, by the way when you said that, I saw she has two T’s in her name, right?  And that sort of matches up with your name.  Our names can be compatible with other names and the T means dynamic, busy lifestyle.  She’s probably always, even when her plate is full, she’s taking on more and usually getting it all done.  She’s probably very dynamic.

Dr. Kent:  Indeed.

Norma J. Watts:  So it does tell what we’re like.

Dr. Kent:  Are there people who, I always hear this?  People that change their names or for example, my mother, her name is Cynthia and as a kid she was called Cindy.  After about 40 years or 45 years of that, she said listen, my name is now Cynthia, nobody calls me Cindy anymore.

Norma J. Watts:  I’m seeing a lot of that because I have a blog on Amazon and it’s in a new age section and it’s called Our Names Reveal Our Personalities, I’ll Prove It.  I have over 1100 posts and I tell people just tell me your first name and I’ll tell you what it means and invariably people that didn’t like their birth name, when I tell them what it means they actually like it again.  To feel that about your birth name and even if you go to a nickname, you end up, you can’t get away from your birth name, you just can’t.

Dr. Kent:  Here’s another hard question for you.  My father works with undernourished children and abused children and he once worked with kids called Whiskey and Brandy, they were twins.  What do you do when you’re named Whiskey from birth?

Norma J. Watts:  Oh for heavens sake!  That’s sad.  Well, I’m thinking that is still their destiny name.  The letters in the name give us a definite description of that person’s personality.  It’s interesting when you say Whiskey and Brandy; they both have a Y at the end and Y means a lot of freedom.  These kids, we’re still going to be like our heredity; there’s heredity in everything and even in nameology when I look at the letters in the name and what the parents’ names are, we inherit certain letters from our parents time and time again.  We’ll see that our children have the same letters or similar letters and we want to put those letters in their name and they’re going to inherit certain qualities no matter what.

Dr. Kent:  That’s fascinating, my fathers name is Ed and mine is Kent and it does kind of make sense.

Norma J. Watts:  Yes, you’ve got his E.

Dr. Kent:  What about your name?  How do you analyze your own name?

Norma J. Watts:  Well I never liked my name, Norma.  I thought gosh, that’s such an old name.  I really used to be embarrassed about it but since I’ve become a nameologist, I love my name.  I love what each letter means.  Now, there’s a choice.  I could either live on the positive side of my letters or on the negative side of my letters.  There’s no bad name, there’s no such thing as a bad name because every letter has a positive and negative side to it and its up to us, whether we’re going to live on the positive or negative side of our letters.

Dr. Kent:  One of my favorite songs in history is A Boy Named Sue, where of course the father named his son Sue and the kid is angry, its an angry song and at the end the father says well do whatever you want to me but the reason I named you Sue is because I knew I wasn’t going to be there and that it would make you tough.

Norma J. Watts:  The funny song, its interesting that the name Sue, the U is a funny letter.  It has a sense of humor.  It’s ruled by three in that it’s the natural comedian so that was a really great song in that way.

Dr. Kent:  As a nameologist, what do you do everyday?

Norma J. Watts:  I have a regular day job that I cant quit and I even have a joke about that on my profile; don’t give up your day job and it has a picture of me at my workplace with my nametag and everything but at night I blog and I keep up a nameology blog and it kind of keeps the spark going, keeps things going and makes me happy.

Dr. Kent:  Okay, so how did you get into it?  What’s the history of nameology?  When you talked about numbers, what do those mean?

Norma J. Watts:  I actually as an astrologer, a student of astrology since I was 12 years old, I believe that all metaphysical studies are based on astrology.  So it was sort of a branch off of it and it was just sort of natural for me to understand it.  I understand all the metaphysical sciences.  Its sort of like if you can play piano you can easily learn how to play other instruments because if you have that basic understanding, you understand others as well.  It’s the same thing, so that’s why when I picked up a book on it, I right away understood.

There’s two different types of numerology that are studied here in the United States and the west studied the pathagarist [assumed spelling] method which I do as well.  It just connected with it right away, I understood it.  So I use the Greek mathematician pathagarist method and this method has been around for almost 3,000 years.  It’s still hard for me to understand why people don’t see this and why they don’t know our names are as plain as the nose on our face and yet nobody knows that you can tell a lot about a person just by knowing their first name.

Dr. Kent:  Right, it’s just like people say there’s that famous phrase, you can’t judge a book by its cover, but as someone in the book industry, you really can.

Norma J. Watts:  Yes, I beg to differ!

Dr. Kent:  Speaking of your book cover, it’s a beautiful book.  It’s been put out by source books and its one of so many baby name books but what’s great about this book is it’s almost like the names have more than just okay, where is this from or whatever.  It talks about the strength of the individual and all of that.  Did you just go about one name after the other?  You just started working?

Norma J. Watts:  Oh you mean the name definition section?  About 70% of the book is name definitions.  I wanted to do the work for the reader so you don’t have to try to mash out what does this name mean.  I kind of did that for people.  You can look up your own name, you can look up the names of your children or what you’d like to have and it gives a little idea.  I had to go with the system, a scientific mathematical system so it could’ve been very repetitive.  Most books like this are too repetitive so I really had to dice it up.  There’s looking at the power number, the secret numbers, there’s hidden numbers; I had to really tailor and custom fit every single name.  I spent a lot of time with this; it took a lot of years to do.

Dr. Kent:  It’s a fun book, even for someone who’s not expecting a child.  I was paging through it and you can look at every single letter and of course you always flock to your own name first.  You read the section and it talks about if the name starts with this letter.  It’s a fascinating book.  How’s this been doing for you?

Norma J. Watts:  It’s been moving along but this type of study hasn’t quite taken off yet.  People don’t know, they’re like what is this?  It’s a different kind of animal so I think it’s still an unknown thing, just a few people here and there really know about it and its kind of still hasn’t taken off.

Dr. Kent:  It’s still catching on.

Norma J. Watts:  I hope!

Dr. Kent:  When parents name the child, is there something unconscious going on?  My parents always say well we named you; my whole name is Kent Samuel Gustavson and they say we named you that because it sounded good together, the rhythm worked.  Certain parents then name their children Apple or in the public eye.  It’s so interesting how different celebrities are from normal folks, in certain communities people make up names.  Talk about all the different kind of names.

Norma J. Watts:  Again, our names they vibrate a certain personality so when that parent is thinking, gee, I think I’ll name my child apple, when they’re saying the word apple, those two P’s, they’re seven rule letters.  The P has a knowledgeable, commanding first impression and this is the feeling that the mother or whoever is naming the child feels in that child that they’re carrying.  They feel that vibration, that personality.  Oftentimes, parents will have a name all picked out and right after that baby’s born, just before they put the name on the birth certificate they think, you know what, this looks more like an Ashley, or this is more like a Karen, I think we should go with this.  Oftentimes they will change the name and go with what they feel; that vibration of the person’s personality comes out and that’s what they end up using.

Dr. Kent:  How about names like my middle name, which is Samuel.  How much do you credit to for that one it means in Hebrew one who fears God?  How much do you look at etymology?  How much does that interest you?

Norma J. Watts:  It doesn’t at all.  It’s a whole different thing; its apples to oranges.  I don’t even look at the middle or last name.  I kind of take it into consideration; sometimes a person’s middle or last name I can see some of that in their personality, but the very first name.  Nobody calls you Samuel, everybody calls you Kent.  That’s the name that I see that I dissect and that I look at and is the nose on your face.  To me, this is you.  You have a hidden 3 for example too.  Some hidden literary talent.  Not everybody knows, you probably have some books in the works.  There’s some things I can pick out of your name that say this is what this person is about and it helps me know, should I warm up to this person.  If there’s a salesperson knocking on the door, a Doris with the O first vowel, oh they’ve got to have kids or pets and I can sell my products with that in mind, you know?  So it’s good for everything, not just naming children; you can also get to know the other person that you’re dealing with.

Dr. Kent:  What are some popular names these days?

Norma J. Watts:  These days I’m seeing a lot of Peyton and Vincent are coming back.  I think its funny but recently I’ve been seeing Hunter for a girl and Gunner for a boy and I’m wondering if Governor Palin didn’t have some influence there.  Then Ashley is still popular, Jaden, Noah, Taylor and Madison.  People put names together like BethAnn and Julissa.  They’re putting names together now, especially with the girls.

Dr. Kent:  Right and a lot of the older names are kind of coming back.

Norma J. Watts:  Yes the vintage names, they’re coming back and I love it.

Dr. Kent:  Like Bella and things like that.

Norma J. Watts:  Yeah, I think it’s fantastic.

Dr. Kent:  Okay so let’s say you do name a child one thing and in college my nickname was Rusty.  Does that mean anything about a personality?

Norma J. Watts:  Ah-Hah!  Yes it does.  See it’s interesting, you didn’t lose that T.  You had it in Kent and then in Rusty.  Rusty has that U first vowel.  You were more funny in college, you had a sense of humor, you were probably more talkative and you ruled communications that maybe you did some kind of writing or a lot of writing.  The R is kind of I don’t want to say you’re a bully, but it’s a very strong presence.  Its very what do you call it?  Oh you could have been intimidating to other people with the R up front.  And the Y, you needed a lot of freedom.  I bet you were pretty wild actually with a name like that.

Dr. Kent:  Yeah a little bit.

Norma J. Watts:  I’m seeing that.

Dr. Kent:  Let’s talk about some stars because I think that’s fun for everybody.  There are so many names out there that lately its almost like they want to shock the world by naming their children, but maybe that’s not the case, maybe its what they’re feeling.

Norma J. Watts:  Well if you think about it, their child is going to be very special like nobody else’s child because they are a child of a celebrity.  So right away that kind of makes sense to me that Apple, or Scout, or they come up with Ireland, Suri, Shiloh, and speaking of those names, I made sure I drove my publisher crazy at the very last minute saying oh, we got to get Suri in there and we got to get… I kept going back and putting celebrity’s children’s names in that book.

So if you look in the book, you’re going to see the name Apple, Suri, Shiloh and some others.  You also see a lot of multi-cultural or Russian type names, Hungarian.  I had a Japanese girl tell me the other day, you know what?  My mothers name is in here.  I wanted to have a little bit of everything in there.  I just wanted to be different.

Dr. Kent:  This has been a fun discussion chatting with Norma J. Watts.  She’s the author of The Art of Baby Nameology and I really appreciate chatting with you and we’ll stay in touch.

Norma J. Watts:  Thank you Kent.

Dr. Kent:  My next guest on the show is a New York Times Bestselling author of the Wasted Vigil, a novel by Nadeem Aslam and it’s the winner of the Curiama [assumed spelling] Prize as well.  So come on back for that in just one minute.

Posted by admin | Filed Under Spirituality, TRANSCRIPTS, Childrens, Entertainment, Hollywood, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, Inspiration, PODCAST 

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