Congratulations, Julie Winterbottom, MAGIC IN A DROP OF WATER!

Thank you so much for sharing the release of Magic in a Drop of Water: How Ruth Patrick Taught the World about Water Pollution with us!

Young readers love STEAM books and I’m sure yours will find many happy readers. Can you share with us a bit about the inspiration for this book? What was your initial spark? When I started working on this book, I had already published several humorous nonfiction books for middle grade readers (Pranklopedia, What a Blast!). But I wanted to try writing a picture book biography. I began by reading a lot of books about women in science. I got very excited when I came across a short essay about the pioneering botanist and ecologist Ruth Patrick. What caught my eye was a sentence about her being only five years old when she fell in love with diatoms, the microscopic algae that became the cornerstone of her career. I loved that she started doing field work at the tender age of five, collecting specimens from streams and examining them under her father’s microscope. And I loved that her childhood passion drove her to become a pioneering, pollution-fighting scientist at a time when there were no women in her field.

Often one of the most difficult parts of crafting our books is not deciding what to include, but deciding what to leave out. What did you choose to leave out of this book and why? Ruth Patrick had a very long and productive life. She was 105 when she died, and she worked well into her nineties. It was difficult to choose which of her scientific achievements to focus on. In my early drafts, I kept trying to shoehorn two strands of her research into the book: her work on diatoms as measures of pollution and her discoveries about overall species diversity as a measure of health. It was too much for a picture book! Finally, I decided to focus on biodiversity. It was a difficult decision, but it let me tell a much more coherent story. The other part I cut, at my editor’s suggestion, was a section about how Patrick was discriminated against as a woman in science. We ended up moving it to the back matter. In hindsight, I think it was a good idea.

What tip can you share with teachers who want to use your book in the classroom? Teachers can use the book to start a discussion of how the diversity of plants and animals in an ecosystem tells you if it is healthy or not. Drawing a food web of organisms in the book—or in another ecosystem—can help students visualize what happens if one or more species disappears, causing others to explode in population. The book can also spark a discussion about advice Ruth’s father gave her when she was young. He told her to “leave the world a better place than you found it.” Ruth found her own ways to use her science to address the real-world problem of pollution, but there are other ways to combine science and activism. Lastly, younger kids can make beautiful art inspired by diatoms. One way to get started is to do a search for images of “Victorian diatom art” and use them to inspire classroom projects.

Congratulations on this book release! What comes next for you? Can you give us a peek at what you are currently researching? I’m researching an idea I had for a book about bears and another about a musical instrument. Maybe I will find a bear that plays a musical instrument! About the author:

Julie Winterbottom was born in Princeton, New Jersey. Growing up, she loved to explore the streams and the woods near her house, much like the subject of her picture book, Magic in a Drop of Water. She is the former editor-in-chief of Nickelodeon Magazine and the author of the humor books Pranklopedia and What a Blast! She lives on the shores of the Hudson River in New York.