Night Sky

Who would have thunk it?  A starred review for an easy reader! 

 School Library Journal has starred Night Sky, my newest Level 1 Ready-to-Read, part of my Our Universe series published by Simon Spotlight.  The book arrives in the world today.

 “Packed with wonder and delight,” the reviewer says. 

 Not all reviews, even when they are entirely positive, appreciate a book for the reasons I wrote it.  But this small book—so small that I hardly expected anyone to notice its existence except for those wonderfully sturdy teachers always seeking new material—was written out of precisely those kinds of feelings.  The feelings I’ve been carrying ever since I spent months researching for The Stuff of Stars.

 Wonder and delight!  The wonder and delight of being a speck in this vast, this spectacular, this mysterious universe.

 And that, if I have any advice worth offering the writers coming after me, bears repeating.  Write what you love!  Write what brings you wonder and delight!

You have often heard write what you know, and there is truth in those words, though I would add “what you know or are willing to learn . . . deeply.”  But it is even more essential to write what we love.  Because that love will shine through every word.

 I began writing early readers years ago because I needed to buy some eggs, a few more books, a new pair of walking shoes.  Early readers don’t pay much, but one doesn’t take months and months to produce, so if I think in terms of a per-hour wage, they’re a pretty good deal.

 I began with a topic I love.  Weather.  So the first four books for Simon & Schuster were Snow, Wind, Clouds and Rain. Later when the series was proving to be successful, I was invited to add Rainbows and Sun. 

 I chose weather as my topic because I’ve spent much of my life in the Midwest, the last fifty years in Minnesota, where weather is changeable, unequivocal, a perpetual topic of conversation.  And something I love.  Every manifestation of it.  Even the winds that both caress and howl.  The sun that turns a summer day into a sauna or makes a winter one both stunningly beautiful and magnificently cold.  The fragrant, muddy springs and the bursts of crisp fall color.  All of it!

 And having chosen weather as my topic, I went to the library—this was years before information could be so easily gathered from the internet—to explore what was already out there.  I found books on weather for everyone except the very young.

 So that’s where I began.

 Early readers proved to be a good niche for me, and in the years that followed, I have written many.  I found that, after gathering a load of information, I can readily sort what is most important to say.  I greatly admire nonfiction writers who juggle the endless details of a topic for more mature readers, lay out the information, and support it with references.  Perhaps that is something I could have learned to do, but the learning wouldn’t have come easily.

 I developed a pattern with the first of these young nonfiction books, and the pattern has held.  Two-hundred-and-fifty words of main text, another two-hundred-and-fifty words of interesting facts at the end.  And that combination has enabled me to explore a wide variety of topics: Weather, Wonders of America, Natural Disasters, Our Universe.

But the key has been the same for each.  I take on a topic because I love it.  I explore it because I want to know more about it myself.  And I present what I have learned in the simplest way I can.  I present it simply because, of course, young readers need simplicity, but also because one of my deepest convictions as a writer is that the simplest word is always the best word possible for any audience in any context.

 I never talk down.  (Write down?)  I just pass on what I have learned with the greatest clarity I can muster.

 And so today Night Sky comes into the world.  Wearing a star!

 I’ve had lots of starred reviews over the years, and getting pulled out of the pack is always satisfying.  But there is something special about seeing this quiet little book get that kind of notice.

 It reminds me that even the smallest entry in this world, crowded with books, can make a difference.  To someone.  Somewhere.  Sometime.

 And it affirms for me again that it isn’t enough to love to write.  It is absolutely essential to write what I love.