Kathryn Lasky | Daughters of the Sea

September 23, 2009 | Comments Off

Interview with Kathryn Lasky [40:31m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From Wikipedia:

Kathryn Lasky is the American author of many critically acclaimed books, including several Dear America books, several Royal Diaries books, 1984 Newbery Honor winning Sugaring Time, The Night Journey, and the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. She grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is married to Christopher Knight, with whom she lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Kathryn is the award-winning author of several children’s books, including the New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Book, She’s Wearing a Dead Bird on Her Head! Her imaginative new series, ‘Daughters of the Sea,’ tells the story of three mermaid sisters who, separated at birth by a storm, go on to lead three very different, and very exciting lives.

Posted by jamie | Filed Under Childrens, Fiction, Entertainment, AUTHOR INTERVIEW, PODCAST

Katherine Lasky | Newbery Honor Winner

September 12, 2009 | Comments Off

Interview with Katherine Lasky [13:46m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

From Wikipedia:

Kathryn Lasky is the American author of many critically acclaimed books, including several Dear America books, several Royal Diaries books, 1984 Newbery Honor winning Sugaring Time, The Night Journey, and the Guardians of Ga’Hoole series. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Her latest book, Guardians of Ga’Hoole Book 15: The War of the Ember, was released on November 1st, 2008. “Guardians of Gahoole: A guide to the Great Tree” was released on September 1st, almost a month before projected selling time. She was born June 24th, 1944, and grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, and is married to Christopher Knight, with whom she lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

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

Dillon Drake | Winner of Essay Writing Contest

September 11, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome back to Sound Authors. Today is June 12^th and the sun is just starting to shine here in New York, which is a great thing, summertime is coming. And in the summer we all like to think about baseball, and there’s a fellow named Paul Mullen who wrote a book called The Day I Hit a Home Run. And he’s been inspiring kids around the country with that book, and inspiring them to be able to live their dreams. There’s a contest that he held, and the winning essayist from that contest is with us on the show today. His name is Dillon Drake, and he’s from Mount Air Community School, and he’s 16. Welcome to the show, Dillon.

Dillon Drake: Hello.

Dr. Kent: How’re you doing today?

Dillon Drake: I’m pretty good.

Dr. Kent: Well, congratulations to you for winning this essay contest.

Dillon Drake: Thank you.

Dr. Kent: Is this the first time that you’ve written an essay like this?

Dillon Drake: No, we’ve had a few assignments like this, but they were never any contests.

Dr. Kent: Well the great thing about the contest is of course that you’re supposed to talk about achieving your dream. Tell us a little bit about your dream. I’ve read your essay, of course, but tell the folks listening. What’s your dream?

Dillon Drake: My dream is to have my own ranch and run cattle and ride horses and just live out in the open.

Dr. Kent: And is that something that you inherited from your parents? Do they have that dream for you as well?

Dillon Drake: No, I just kind of worked with my dad, and he rides horses and takes care of cattle, and I want to do something like that.

Dr. Kent: Now, where do you live?

Dillon Drake: I live here outside of Mount Air, Iowa.

Dr. Kent: And how’s the weather out there this time of year.

Dillon Drake: It’s been pretty rainy.

Dr. Kent: Yeah? And in the winter time you have to suffer through some cold, huh?

Dillon Drake: Yeah, it gets pretty cold.

Dr. Kent: And tell me about this. Now, if you were to own your own ranch, and you’re going to raise cattle and horses, how could you possibly do that? How do you go about it? Do you hire some people? Do you get out there early in the morning?

Dillon Drake: Yeah, probably just start out small and do everything myself. Then once I start expanding I’ll have to hire some help and, cause I can’t do everything on my own.

Dr. Kent: And your main point in your essay is that you want to be happy with your life because you’ll be doing something that you love. Talk about that. How would it make you happy to be doing that?

Dillon Drake: Well, I’ve always liked to be outside and outdoors, and feeling free riding horses and taking care of cattle. Just being out in the open, look around and see nothing but, no forms of modern civilization. Like you feel like you’re all alone. Kind of peaceful.

Dr. Kent: And now, you’re 16 years old, right?

Dillon Drake: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: And you’re already working towards your dream here, right?

Dillon Drake: Yes.

Dr. Kent: Tell me about your, are you working this summer?

Dillon Drake: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: What do you do?

Dillon Drake: Me and my dad take care of about 400 head of steers and 100 head of cattle and calves for a guy who lives in Carson, Iowa.

Dr. Kent: In Carson, how far is that from Mount Air?

Dillon Drake: About 2 hours north.

Dr. Kent: So do you have to wake up at like four in the morning?

Dillon Drake: No, he brings the cattle down here in the spring, and we take care of them close to home.

Dr. Kent: And so what time do you have to get up?

Dillon Drake: Not very early, about 7:00, 7:30.

Dr. Kent: That sounds early to me, out here in New York. Well, and so obviously your dad means a lot to you. As part of this essay you talk about him a couple times. What does he mean to you?

Dillon Drake: Well, he’s just taught me to be independent and do what you want to do, and don’t let anybody stop you. Just work hard to get what you want.

Dr. Kent: And you met this fellow who wrote The Day I Hit a Home Run, right? Paul Mullen. How was that? He came to your school?

Dillon Drake: No, I haven’t met him.

Dr. Kent: Well, I hope you do someday. The essay contest is something then that you heard about through your school?

Dillon Drake: Yeah, we heard about it in my English class, and all of our…

Dr. Kent: Were you pretty surprised when you won it?

Dillon Drake: Yeah. Very surprised.

Dr. Kent: And was your family pretty happy about that, too?

Dillon Drake: Yeah. Everybody saw it in the paper and cut it out and put it up on the wall or something.

Dr. Kent: So you’re sure you don’t want to be a writer instead of a cattle rancher?

Dillon Drake: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: Cool. And what’s your plan? What grade are you in right now?

Dillon Drake: I’m going to be a junior in the fall.

Dr. Kent: Ok, junior, and you’re going to finish school. And what’s your plan after that?

Dillon Drake: Probably go to local two year college and find out what kind of degree I’m wanting to get so I can open up my opportunities.

Dr. Kent: And tell me, as somebody who’s never worked with cattle, I’ve seen a whole bunch. What do you do when you take care of them? You, do you get to ride around and make sure they’re in the right spot, or what does it, day to day, what do you do with them?

Dillon Drake: Well, yeah, we, the steers we have to ride around and make sure they’re not getting out into other people’s land, and making sure none of them are sick. If they are we’ve got to rope ‘em and give them shots. The cows, they’re calving, so we have to get the baby cows and make sure they’re tagged and up and moving around all right. Make sure everything stays in and fed.

Dr. Kent: And can you rope them?

Dillon Drake: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: Wow. I bet that took a long time to learn.

Dillon Drake: Yeah. I started when I just started walking.

Dr. Kent: Yeah. Well, so it’s pretty cool that you wrote this essay and that you’ve won this contest. Now, are you a baseball player?

Dillon Drake: No, I used to be, but I didn’t much enjoy it out here.

Dr. Kent: I think what Paul Mullen’s talking about by The Day I Hit a Home Run is it’s about really following your dreams, and you’ve got a real plan to follow your dreams. And I’ll be your father and mother are just busting at the seams cause they’re so proud of you for winning this thing.

Dillon Drake: Yeah, they’re pretty proud. My whole family is.

Dr. Kent: Cool. Well, I want to say congratulations to you very much, and it’s been a pleasure talking with you here on Sound Authors, and I hope you do keep writing. And I think if you’re a cattle farmer, maybe you can come inside at night and write a few words down, cause you’ve got a good start here.

Dillon Drake: Yeah. Well, thanks. It means a whole lot to everybody that I won this competition, so…

Dr. Kent: Yeah, and tell me a little bit about your school. They’ll probably like that.

Dillon Drake: Well, it’s not a very big school. (inaudible) kids in our high school.

Dr. Kent: How many?

Dillon Drake: 200.

Dr. Kent: Wow, that is a small school.

Dillon Drake: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: Wow, and so you know everybody, I’ll bet.

Dillon Drake: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: Do you get sick of them?

Dillon Drake: No, not really.

Dr. Kent: Everybody gets along pretty well?

Dillon Drake: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: And how many teachers do you have in that school?

Dillon Drake: Oh, about 40.

Dr. Kent: Wow, cool. So you know all them too, I’ll bet?

Dillon Drake: Yeah. We’re all pretty good friends around here.

Dr. Kent: Cool. Well, it’s been such an honor chatting with Dillon Drake. He goes to Mount Air Community. Is that the name of the school?

Dillon Drake: Yeah.

Dr. Kent: And he’s 16 and he won the The Day I Hit a Home Run essay contest about the dreams he has for his life, and it’s a great essay. Go check it out on the website at thedayihitahomerun.com/essays, and there’s a whole bunch of essays up there, including Dillon’s, which won first place. Well, congratulations to you, and I hope you have a great summer.

Dillon Drake: Thanks, you too.

Dr. Kent: All right. And one of these days, I hope I’ll get a chance to check out a real cattle ranch. I haven’t done that in my life, but one of these days I’ll do that.

Dillon Drake: Yeah, it’s pretty fun.

Dr. Kent: All right. Take it easy. And thank you, everybody, for tuning into Sound Authors today. Pick up a great book for me, and we’ll see you next week. We’ve got some great authors coming up. We’ll talk to you the next time.

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

Jill Starishevsky | My Body Belongs to Me

September 3, 2009 | Comments Off

Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors! I’ve got four guests on the show today. At then end of the show we’re going to have Dale Anger, who’s one of the best fiddlers of our whole time. He’s done work with the Turtle Island String Quartet, amazing group, and before that we’ve got two best selling authors, Michael Port, who’s the author of Book Yourself Solid, and a new book we’re going to talk about with him, all about manifestos, thinking big manifestos. And I’ve got Michael Gates Gill, the author of How Starbucks Saved My Life, and he’s a best selling author as well. He’s going to talk to us later on in the show. But at the beginning, I’m very excited to talk to an author of a book called My Body Belongs To Me. She is an assistant District Attorney in New York City, and it’ll be fantastic speaking to her about children, and also about sort of the craziness of New York that we all see on television, but now we can hear about first hand. So welcome to the show Jill Starishevsky.

Jill Starishevsky: Thank you for having me, very good pronunciation of my last name.

Dr. Kent: I was about to ask that. Good, good. So tell me a little about you background, what a, it’s a hard job that you have, right?

Jill Starishevsky: Yes, I prosecute sex crimes against children, as well as sex crimes against adults, and child abuse as well. So all of those things are kind of sad and difficult. I’ve been doing it in New York City for almost 12 years now, and I find that as long as I don’t think about what I’m doing, I can move forward. But if I spend too much time thinking about it, it weighs me down. Otherwise I just think of it as helping people, and I can push forward and get the job done. It’s really quite exciting work, but sometimes it’s not dinner conversation. Dr. Kent, did I lose you? Hello?

Dr. Kent: Hello, and welcome back to Sound Authors. We’re back on the air after some technical difficulties, and I believe now I also have Jill back on the line. Sorry about those difficulties, we’ve got you back.

Jill Starishevsky: No worries, happy to be here.

Dr. Kent: So let’s go back where we were, and we were talking about, you had said that it’s a difficult job, and I surely understand. My father actually works with child abuse kids, and specializes in neglect and shaken baby, and all sorts of things, and it’s a horrible thing to hear folks that are in that industry, well, I shouldn’t call it an industry, in that service talk about the horrors that happen to these children. How do you go to sleep at night?

Jill Starishevsky: You go to sleep by not thinking about it. You just do as much as you can during the day, and when you go home you pray, and you pray for the kids that you dealt with, and you just go to work and you start again the next day. I have to say, some of the hardest cases that I’ve had to deal with are the shaken baby cases, because you just ask yourself, who would do this? How could someone do this to a child? Those are particularly difficult now that I’m a mother, but overall, the child (inaudible) and the sex abuse against adults, it’s very, it’s difficult work, to say the least.

Dr. Kent: And part of that, I imagine, is what inspires you to write a book like My Body Belongs to Me. Talk about that.

Jill Starishevsky: Well, absolutely. One of the things I learned early on in doing this is that children don’t disclose immediately when they’ve been sexually abused. People think that if a child falls down on a playground they’re going to come running over to the parent and say, “Oh, I hurt my knee.” And they try and draw a parallel and say, “Well, of course if my child were, God forbid, sexually abused, they would come running and tell me.” But it doesn’t work like that. And in so many of the cases, the children that I’m seeing have endured years of abuse in silence. And I decided after years and years of seeing this that something needed to be done. And there was one case in particular that really sparked this book, that was really the catalyst for me to write this book.

Dr. Kent: And now, let’s talk just a second about, one thing I’ve heard, and I’m pretty sure is true, is that most… And here we are again, back live again on BlogTalk Radio. Clearly there’s some connection problems today, but luckily we’re still live with the incredibly author Jill Starishevsky and the book My Body Belongs to Me. We’ve had some difficulties, but we’re persisting here.

Jill Starishevsky: We shall overcome.

Dr. Kent: Yeah, so tell me more, right where we left off. I’d love to know more about this book. How can we keep our children safe, and the question I’ve asked, I had heard that most domestic violence does occur within families.

Jill Starishevsky: Well, domestic violence is the violence within the family, that’s inherent in the definition of domestic violence, but most child abuse often does occur with either inter family, or with someone who’s a close family relationship, because someone has to have access to your child. So the person who’s going to be alone with your child and therefore able to hurt them or touch them is someone who you trust to take care of them, whether it’s a soccer coach, a religious official, it’s someone who you trust to be alone with your child. So it’s the kind of thing where a lot of people think, “Well, this isn’t going to happen to my child,” so they don’t talk to their children about how to prevent child sexual abuse. They don’t teach them what it is, that their bodies are private, that no one should be touching them, and therefore, if they are touched, oftentimes children don’t know who to tell, and therefore the abuse continues and often escalates.

Dr. Kent: And what has it been like after writing this book? What’s it like being in touch with children and parents in this way?

Jill Starishevsky: Well, you know, it’s actually been wonderful because I feel like in my role as a prosecutor I get to the children after they’ve already been hurt, and there’s nothing I can do to prevent that hurt. All I can do is work and move forward to try to get justice against the person who did this to the child, but having written this book, this is like a proactive step that I can take to try and help prevent the abuse from happening in the first place, help encourage a child who already has been abused and is continuing to be abused to get the courage to disclose and tell someone. So the book is very simple, it’s a 22-line rhyme, and it tells the story of a child who is touched by an uncle’s friend, and then tells a parent right away, and the parents praise the child for being brave enough to tell, and it’s a message that’s empowering for children. So although we as parents come to the subject with a lot of baggage, children hear this story and it’s light and easy to hear, in child-friendly language, and they walk away understanding that their body parts are private and that if someone touches them inappropriately to tell a parent or a teacher right away.

Dr. Kent: Well, and it is, it’s such a difficult discussion for parents to even have with their kids, and that’s part of the problem, right?

Jill Starishevsky: Right. Parents are afraid to have the discussion, they either don’t know what to say and don’t want to mess it up and therefore say nothing, they don’t know when to say it, and they’re often under the impression that it should be when a child is 7 or 8, but it’s really much younger that they need to hear this information, but again sometimes parents are under the belief or misconception that this isn’t going to happen to my child, so I don’t need to have this conversation. But it’s the kind of thing where no one thinks it’s going to happen, just like we teach children water safety and look both ways before you cross the street. You never think your child’s going to get hit by a car, but you still teach them about traffic safety. It’s the same thing with their bodies. You hope this never happens to them, but you give them the information, the tools, so as to hopefully prevent it, and again, worse case scenario if it does happen to know to tell someone right away. And in the back of the book there’s a part that’s called “Suggestions for the Storyteller.” And that’s the part of the book where it tells the parents how to utilize the book, what to talk to the children about after they’ve read the book, with questions to ask. So it’s really foolproof. It really, we’ve gotten a wonderful response from parents and educators in the medical community, and people who have really embraced the book and understand that there’s a need for this, and this is a tool that’s helping to facilitate an otherwise difficult conversation.

Dr. Kent: Well, and there was an interesting, in the election cycle, in the sort of brutal stuff that developed during the elections there was a statement that went out into the press that Obama was in favor of sex education in kindergarten and how crazy is this, and it seems to me that what he had been talking about was something like what your book does.

Jill Starishevsky: Absolutely. I mean, he’s talking about child abuse prevention, and child sexual abuse prevention. You know, this conversation is very timely. April is National Child Abuse Prevention Month, and what the President’s talking about was that at a young age we need to teach children how to protect themselves and to know that their bodies are private and that it’s ok to say no. You know, we teach children, “Listen to adults.” And there needs to be a caveat, “Obey adults, unless they’re telling you to do something that’s hurting you, in which case it’s ok to say no to an adult. It’s ok to run away.” This is not common sense, and I can tell you this firsthand because I’m seeing the children on a daily basis, and part of what I do as a prosecutor is I need to understand why a child didn’t tell, or why a child didn’t say no and run away, so that I can explain to a jury. Because a jury might think, “Well, if this were happening to my child it wouldn’t have gone on for two years, and my child would have told me right away.” So I have to ask these children, “Why didn’t you tell? Why didn’t you run away?” It’s not intuitive. Children either, either they’re told, if he said, “It’s our secret,” or “He said no one would believe me,” all of these things are addressed in the book. We talk about, “We don’t keep secrets from adults.” You know, children and adults don’t keep secrets. In fact we’ve taken that word out of our vocabulary at my house. If you need to use the word surprise you can say surprise, because oftentimes it’s not that these children are being threatened into silence. “I’m going to hurt your mother if you tell them what I did.” It’s, “This is our secret, ok, don’t tell anybody,” and the kids don’t. So this is really a conversation that we need to start having at a young age, and I think schools across the country have been responding so positively to this book, and I think it’s only a matter of time that this message really gets out there.

Dr. Kent: And you talk about a particular incident from your work that sort of inspired this book. Do you want to go into that a little bit?

Jill Starishevsky: Oh, sure. I mentioned that children often don’t tell. There was one case in particular, after years of hearing that children didn’t tell, one case really became the catalyst for this book. I prosecuted a case involving a child who was 9 years old, and she had been sexually molested by her stepfather from the time she was 6 until she was 9, and she told no one. And one day she got into an argument with her mother, who knew nothing about the abuse at the hands of her husband, and she said to her mother, “You love my little brother more than you love me.” And the mom wanted to show her daughter that that wasn’t true, that she did love her. So she had her 9-year-old watch an episode of the Oprah Winfrey show that was on, it was called “Tortured Children.” It was about parents who physically abuse their kids, locked them in cages, horrible stuff. The mom wanted the 9 year old to watch the show so she could say, “This is what parents do who don’t love their children, and I love you.” So the 9 year old watched this show, and although it wasn’t about sexual abuse, the 9 year old got Oprah’s message, which was, “If you’re being hurt and can’t tell a parent, because it is a parent, go to school and tell your teacher.” After three years of telling no one, this little girl went to school the very next day, and she told her teacher, “My daddy’s been,” whatever, however she characterized it. And the teacher told the principal, and the principal called child services, and child services called the police, and the police brought it to the District Attorney’s office, and I prosecuted the case a year later, when she was 10. I put the little girl on the stand and I put the teacher on the stand, and I put the principal on the stand, and we talked about the Oprah Winfrey show, and we convicted the man, and he’s now in prison for a very long time. Back when that happened I thought all it took to end this little girl’s nightmare, three years of a nightmare was a TV show saying, “Tell a teacher.” So I thought, either Oprah needs to end every show by saying, “Tell a teacher,” which of course she can’t do, she’s got a huge platform, and I understand that, but I was like either Oprah needs to end every show saying that, or someone needs to do something. So years went by and I saw more and more children who didn’t disclose, and the abuse continued, and I kept waiting for someone to do something, and finally I said, you know what, I’m going to do something. And I wrote this book, and that’s how I got to where I am. And it’s really been a wonderful thing because I can see it making a difference. The more the book gets out there, I really feel that there’s a war going on out there, another war, that the child predators know how to get to our children. They know what they like, they know how to get them alone and what to give them to keep them silent, and we’re not talking to our kids, and it’s not working so far. We’re not talking to our kids, and they’re getting to our kids. So if we try talking to our children and teaching them about how to keep themselves safe, then we can have a better chance of winning this war.

Dr. Kent: Wow, it’s such a powerful story, and you speak with such conviction about it, I certainly hope this book gets a mighty platform. And again, as the child of someone who did a similar job to what you’re doing, worked with abused children, it’s a real chore to have that in your life, and it’s amazing that you’ve turned around and created a wonderful book like this. My Body Belongs to Me is written by Jill Starishevsky, thank you so much for talking to me today.

Jill Starishevsky: Wonderful being here.

Dr. Kent: And we can find out more about the book at mybodybelongstome.com, and that’s really such a beautifully illustrated book, so positive, and a great way to teach your children about all of these things, and we all need to do that. So it was great speaking to her, and my next guest on the show is going to be the award winning author Michael Port, come on back for that.

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

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 24 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.

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