As the author of The Fairy Ring, or Elsie and Francis Fool the World, I was asked to recommend some books about (you guessed it) fairies. You can find them at this link:

https://shepherd.com/best-books/fairies

And while you’re there, you can browse through a ton of other book recommendations, on all sorts of topics!

I’ll be appearing (virtually) in the Deep Valley Book Festival!  www.deepvalleybookfestival.com

Excited to be there, talking about things dear to my heart.

Nonfiction! True stories! Alchemists, fairies, you  name it.

 

I got an email the other day:

“Greetings from Los Angeles. We’re writing to let you know that you have been included in our recently published wiki: Excellent Nonfiction Books For Kids.”

I’m honored that Isaac the Alchemist is in such fine company! You can see the published wiki here.

https://wiki.ezvid.com/m/9-excellent-nonfiction-books-for-kids-jmAioeGaanzug

This fall, I went to Grantham, England, which every two years holds a joyful celebration of the life of crusty old Isaac Newton. The town is near Newton’s birthplace, the amazing Woolthorpe Manor: a perfectly preserved farmhouse where you can see the VERY ROOM where Newton did his experiments with light and prisms.

Grantham is also where, as a twelve-year-old boy, Newton lived in an attic above an apothecary’s workshop, where he could see Magical Looking Things happening.

Which is where I came in.

In my Magick and Alchemy show, I mix together mysterious ingredients, just as real apothecaries (and alchemists!) did.

It would be nice if in my show, I could  (like the alchemists) stand over a cauldron of molten metal and toss in mysterious substances that produced all sorts of magical looking special effects. Explosions! Stinks and bangs! Clouds of colored smoke!

I can’t, of course.  But even much safer mixtures can produce what looked—to the alchemists—very much like magic. Why did what the alchemists called “salts” sometimes cause a liquid to change color, and other times to bubble over? Why do some salts mysteriously change their shape when stirred into water?

What I like about alchemy is trying to imagine the world before science as we know it existed. So many things were utter mysteries. Then, very gradually, we began to figure out, say, what happens when a candle burns.  The modern-day science of chemistry emerged from the mists.

I notice, now, that I’m a lot more interested in chemistry than I used to be. Trying to think like an alchemist helps me wonder about things much more than I used to.

Which, of course, is what science is all about.

 

 

 

A year ago, I was waiting nervously for Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal’d, to launch itself into the world.  I had spent years on it, and in that time I felt I had come to know Isaac in a new way: as an angry, lonely boy and later a magician.

Now I’m happy to see that (besides getting great reviews) Isaac the Alchemist has been selected for a TON of best-of lists, which (drum roll) I will just put down here* (plus a footnote, latest news, see bottom of list!):

School Library Journal Best Books of 2017

Kirkus Reviews Best Books of 2017: Best of Children’s Middle Grade List

Outstanding Science Trade Books, 2017,  National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) and Children’s Book Council

2018 Orbis Pictus Recommended Titles, National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE)

2017 Chicago Public Library Best of the Best Books

Chicago Public Library Mock Newbery Pick

Parents’ Choice Awards, Nonfiction, Spring 2017

101 Great Books for Kids list for 2017 (Evanston Public Library Edition)

Nerdy Book Club Award for Long Form Nonfiction

Texas Library Association’s 2018 Topaz list   

2017 Cybils Finalists

My thanks to everyone, the  book-lovers of all kinds who work so hard on award committees.

These honors mean, I hope, that more teachers and librarians and booksellers and parents and YES actual children (!) will find out about  Isaac the Alchemist, and for that I’m deeply grateful.

***** And this just in!  Isaac the Alchemist is a finalist for the Minnesota Book Awards, children’s literature for middle grade readers!   So happy to see this.  Thanks so much  #mnbookwards !

Wild Boy: The Real Life of the Savage of Aveyron is coming out in Poland!  The publisher asked me to write a few words of introduction for the Polish edition, which I did.  Then they sent me back this translation.

Bardzo się cieszę, że wędrówki dzikiego chłopca zaprowadziły go do Polski!
Chciałam o nim napisać, bo jego zdolność przetrwania, zupełnie samemu, w dzikiej głuszy, budziła mój podziw.
Zastanawiałam się co się działo  w jego niezwykłym, dzikim umyśle.

Jednak dowiedziawszy się więcej o jego podróży do świata ludzi, zaczęłam go podziwiać też za inne rzeczy: za jego odwagę, jego wytrwałość i ciężką pracę. Choć może się to wydać dziwne, mam nadzieję, że będzie on inspiracją dla innych dzieci (dzikich lub nie) w odkrywaniu własnych ścieżek życia.

Looking at this utterly unfamiliar language, searching for meaning and finding almost none–it makes me think about what it must have been like for the wild boy when he left his life in wilderness behind and first set foot in a schoolroom.  It would have been WAY harder for him, yet he tried his best. He never gave up.

And now (if for some reason you haven’t quite figured out what the above worlds mean) here’s the original copy I sent to Poland.

I’m very happy to see that the wild boy’s wanderings have taken him to Poland!

I wanted to write about him because I admired how he could survive, all by himself, in the wilderness. I wondered what was inside his strange wild mind.

But as I learned more about his journey into the human world, I admired him for other things as well: his courage, his resilience, and his hard work.  Odd as it may seem, I hope he will serve as an inspiration to other children (wild, or not) as they find their own paths through life.