Congratulations, Carrie Tillotson, on Alpacas Here, Alpacas There!

Thank you so much, Carrie, for sharing the release of ALPACAS HERE, ALPACAS THERE 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? Thank you so much for having me, Nancy! The initial spark for Alpacas Here, Alpacas There (Beach Lane Books, February 2025), beautifully illustrated by Elisa Chavarri, came after visiting San Juan Island in Washington state with my sister. As we explored the island, we came upon a farm with adorable, fluffy creatures grazing in the pasture. Neither of us had ever seen or heard of alpacas before! Something about them charmed me from that first moment. I later dove deep into researching how to have an alpaca farm of my own, but I soon learned that alpacas require more time, care, and room to roam than I had available (not to mention my plethora of animal, grass, and hay allergies, plus the price of farmland in my area!). Once I started my foray into writing picture books, I realized I could share my love of alpacas by writing about them. It was actually about 6 years from when I first saw alpacas to when I started writing about them, but sometimes there’s a spark that just won’t leave you alone. That’s how I knew I needed to write about these darling, fluffy friends.

Writing STEAM books requires a substantial amount of research. Often it is the most fun part of our writing process. Did you meet any challenges in your research journey? Oh, definitely. Once I had decided on the compare and contrast structure of looking at alpacas lives in both South and North America, it was sometimes hard to get the Andean perspective on alpacas. Much of the work I found was written by North Americans who were not native to the culture, or the sources I found were written or produced in Spanish, which I don’t read or understand very well anymore. I reached out to the Centro de Textiles Tradicionales del Cusco (CTTC), and one of their board members graciously reviewed an early version of the manuscript. She also asked the indigenous weavers that the CTTC works with many of my questions about raising alpacas in the Andes. I am forever grateful to them, and a portion of the proceeds from this book are donated to the CTTC, whose mission is to aid in the survival of textile traditions of the Cusco region of Peru. Another challenge I faced was the gaps in my knowledge and context of Quechua culture as an outsider. I wanted to be accurate and respectful of both the alpacas and the Andean people for the parts of the book portrayed in South America, so I asked my editor if we could hire an authenticity reader. It was very helpful to get her insights. She even connected me with an alpaca farmer in Peru who was happy to meet with me over Zoom and chat through What’s App. Below is a photo he sent me regarding my questions about the types of grass alpacas eat. I can’t thank them both enough for their help!

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? I left out some of the more basic facts about alpacas. For example, that they spit when agitated, have no upper teeth, or that they poop in communal dung piles. I didn’t want to the book to read like an encyclopedia entry about alpacas, but rather wanted to focus on the theme of comparing and contrasting alpaca life between North and South America. It was hard to leave out some of those interesting facts, but I wanted to stay true to my vision of sharing how, for both alpacas and humans, that no matter where we live we all follow similar rhythms of life.

What tip can you share with teachers who want to use your book in the classroom? It can be used in the language arts classroom to compare and contrast the two different settings in the book—South America and North America. How are alpacas’ lives different depending on where they live? How are they similar? For a math-based lesson, have students make a Venn diagram characterizing the features of alpaca life that are the same and different depending on their location. For social studies units, extend the compare and contrast thinking to discuss how people from various parts of the world have diverse ways of living, or how humans are in relationship with their environment through farming. Or use it in the science classroom to talk about the relationship between the needs of plants and animals and the places they live. Congratulations on this book release! What comes next for you? Can you give us a peek at what you are currently researching? My next picture book hasn’t been announced yet, but I can say that it’s a silly, hopefully laugh-out-loud, informational fiction picture book that I can’t wait to share more about soon. I am also currently researching for a nonfiction book on another one of my favorite animals.

About the author: Carrie Tillotson is the award-winning author of picture books like Alpacas Here, Alpacas There; Counting to Bananas, an Oregon Spirit Book Award Honor Book and Amazon Editor’s Pick; B Is for Bananas, a Good Housekeeping Kids’ Book Award winner, SCBWI Crystal Kite Honor winner, and Bank Street College of Education Best Books of the Year selection. After getting a master’s degree in public health, Carrie worked as a biostatistician for more than ten years and now sculpts her interests in science into playful picture books. She lives in Oregon with her husband, son, and two dogs, who are always going bananas. Carrie is represented by Tracy Marchini at BookEnds Literary Agency. Visit her at CarrieTillotson.com. Nancy Castaldo is the author of many award-winning books for young readers. Look for news about her latest releases here.

Why Names Are Important

Over the last weeks we have seen President Trump issue executive orders to change the names of the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America and North America's tallest peak, known as Denali to Mount McKinley.

Why are these name changes important? Think about your own name. Your parents, most likely, took great care to select your name. You might be named after an ancestor or saint, or your name might have a special meaning. Imagine having a teacher who decided they wanted to call you something different. While our geography has no say in what it is called, mountains and water bodies carry names that also have a rich history.

The Koyukon people inhabiting the area around the great mountain in Alaska called the peak "Denali" for centuries until a random gold prospector in the late 1800s, who supported William McKinley's run for president, renamed it "Mount McKinley." The name, McKinley, continued until it was returned to Denali in 2015. Naming natural and public places, like streets and bridges, reflect how communities want to be perceived. “Wherever we go in the world and whatever we do – walking around town, looking up a telephone number, surfing the internet, reading a recipe book or shopping for new clothes – we encounter names of places. They surround us, providing us not only with a sense of place but also with a means of finding our way about, searching for information and organizing the world we live in. For all of us, a place name is a reference point of our language and our identity," said Cecille Blake of UN DESA. There are other reasons why geographical names matter. “It may seem trivial when an airline passenger confuses Dulles airport in Washington, D.C. with Dallas in Texas or when they arrive in Sydney in Canada’s Nova Scotia instead of Sydney, Australia. However, it is not trivial when duplication or lack of clearly recorded and easily available names result in confused instructions to emergency services, who cannot reach people in time."

Let's return to your own name and how that name reflects your own identity and place within your community. Random name changes do have an impact and should not be taken lightly. Connections to our history are integral in understanding our country's character. The names of our places continue to teach our history to our citizens. Changing them creates confusion, lack of identity, and miscomunication. In addition, it is expensive and unnecessary.

Congratulations, Ann Marie Stephens, on CATawampus! and sCATttered!

Thank you so much for sharing the release of CATawampus! A Story of Shapes and sCATttered! A Story of Estimation 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 these books? What was your initial spark? I guess I should go ahead and admit I’m more of a dog person. Though for some reason, cats gravitate to me. They follow me around houses, try to grab my hair, and stray cats seem to find me when I travel. I do appreciate kitty quirks and I enjoy watching them defy gravity and land on their feet. My first cat book in the series, is CATastrophe! A Story of Patterns. I wanted to create a story where the characters were struggling to make patterns but still landing on their feet so to speak. Casting a group of hyper, messy yet resourceful cats seemed like the perfect pairing. My publisher asked for four more books after that and the brainstorming began. I chose math skills relevant to kindergarten and first grade and ones that are also building blocks for second grade and up. I put the cats in relatable situations and made room for lots of mistakes. I taught in elementary schools (mostly first grade) for 31 years. What happens in my books is similar to what took place in my classroom. We would try out new math concepts in practical ways. We’d struggle, we’d make messes, then one day things would fall into place. Math is hard for so many kids. I want my books to help make it exciting.

Did you meet any challenges in your book’s journey from inspiration to completion? There are many challenges when writing a series. Uniformity is essential. The characters’ actions and reactions need to stay true to who they are. Language, voice, and pacing need to be consistent. My editors and I thought we should put the word “CAT” in each of the titles. Not so easy. I made a master list of CAT words and chose what I thought could work. I created stories and themes around the words while also figuring out how to include a math skill. sCATtered! A Story of Estimation, called for some disorganization to accompany the idea of being scattered, which is fitting because the concept of estimation, as it relates to elementary classrooms, can feel a bit that way. Kids basically need to make an educated guess despite not being able to actually count, or while dealing with weaknesses in number sense or visual perception. Young kids typically want to get the exact number, but the truth is, sometimes they are very far off the mark. In the story, my cat characters are shopping, baking, decorating, and cleaning for the arrival of their Grandma from Catmandu. They estimate in everything they do, giving readers a chance to see realistic applications of estimating and join in or choose a cat they think might be close in their guess. Jenn Harney’s illustrations provide the visual reinforcement kids need for math, while illuminating relatable family dynamics and challenges. CATawampus! A Story of Shapes focuses on a STEM project to build a robot and how wonky it gets. Kids often forget to check their design plans before they gather the best materials and adapt. Eventually they do all these steps through trial and error and this is echoed in the events of the story. Engineering projects call for the use of specific materials though they are often quite varied. In this story, the cats are searching for basic 2D shapes in their 3D world. As with young kids, they confuse or forget the characteristics such as, number of sides or corners. The cats rush to complete their robot and there are consequences. It’s in good fun and, best of all, they don’t give up. Overall, my goal for this series is to find organic, applicable ways to work math into the real world, while also conjuring up some laughs.

STEAM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math. You’ve chosen to highlight math in these fun books. Why? I like to think that maybe math chose me because it’s hard to believe I chose it. Math has never been my favorite subject. Not even close. In fact, I can call it my least favorite. As a student, I found it boring and too precise for my creative, right-brained approaches to life. The idea for Arithmechicks Add Up, the first book in my other series about fuzzy chicks who do math, came as a result of combining art and addition while teaching first grade. I was always looking for ways to make math seem imaginative or colorful. My students who struggled in the subject, and even the ones who didn’t, appreciated my efforts. I loved hunting down math picture books that could reiterate what we were learning. When I wrote mine, I wanted them to be math plus story to equal a balance. One of the positives of math is that it is indeed all around us. Kids use it every day when they follow a schedule, sign into computers, or set an alarm. Knowing that math has a purpose helps promote interest and application. I hope my cats (and chicks) are helping kids feel supported and understood when it comes to the challenges of math. I also hope they love and relate to the cat shenanigans and emotions that the illustrator, Jenn Harney, has masterfully created.

What tip can you share with teachers who want to use your books in the classroom? I’d love to see educators use my books in small groups, large groups, and centers. Reading the books at whole group time is great for introducing a new skill or reinforcing an existing one. Small group time allows for more discussion and participation. Centers provide moments for close examination of illustrations and the Easter Eggs Jenn planted. Readers can’t wait to locate all of the worms, dragonflies, or toy mice on the pages! The cat books can go in reading baskets, libraries, reading rooms, and math, STEM, and language centers. Kids can illustrate their own cat pictures and math concepts or create different characters and mix math into their own original stories. Students can gather in groups to engineer robots out of shapes or work as individuals for a real robot rumpus! Teachers can fill jars with everyday objects and have kids estimate the contents. The inclusion of picture books in math instruction and the activities they can lead to are endless. Lastly, I hope educators who use my books in any form tag me on social media. I love witnessing and celebrating the efforts and inventiveness of teachers.

Congratulations on these book releases! What comes next for you? Can you give us a peek at what you are currently working on? Thank you so much! After these two books, I have a picture book titled, SO MANY BOOKS!, cowritten with Sue Fliess, coming out April 10. It’s a rhyming book about books! Then the fourth story in the CATastrophe Tale Series, CATerwaul! A Story of Sorting, releases in December, and the last one in the series, CATapult! A Story of Movement and Position, debuts in 2026. I’m working on writing a few other picture books, an early reader series, and some collaborations, while my agent shops a board book series, another early reader series, and multiple picture books. I’m actively pursuing school visits, workshops for writers and teachers, and I’m doing some educational writing. I try to work on many things at once so I don’t get distracted by rejection or riddled with impatience directed at the pace of the publishing industry. I should also add, none of the books I’m currently writing or submitting have anything to do with math. Science? Maybe.

About the author: Ann Marie Stephens is the author of numerous picture books including the Arithmechicks series, the CATastrophe! series, the upcoming So Many Books, coauthored with Sue Fliess, and more. Her books have been translated into several languages and have been featured on lists such as, Fuse #8, Children’s Book Council, and Hot Off the Press. Ann Marie’s poetry and literacy work has been included in Bon Appetit Magazine and on NPR. She is also a retired, award-winning elementary teacher with over 30 years in the classroom. While teaching, she received several grants for her inventive literacy projects. She’s taught dozens of original writing and education-based workshops for both children and educators. She was a contributing author for Kwame Alexander’s The Write Thing, and a co-writer for Scholastic’s Trait Crate Plus for third and fifth grade. She is represented by Emily Mitchell at Wernick & Pratt Agency and lives in Virginia. Website: https://www.annmariestephensbooks.com/ Instagram: amstephens_ X: amstephens_ Facebook: AMStephensAuthor Bluesky: amstephens.bsky.social

Congratulations, Darcy Pattison, on JEREMY, THE BRITISH GARDEN SNAIL!

Thank you so much, Darcy, for sharing the release of JEREMY, THE BRITISH GARDEN SNAIL: Heredity, Citizen Science and #snaillove 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?

This book began because I set myself a strange little puzzle. I’d started a book series, ANOTHER EXTRAORDINARY ANIMAL, that included a bird, spider, mammal, marine mammal, reptile, and amphibian. The series is about an individual animal, not a species, and each animal was named because of some interaction with humans. Beyond that, they needed an interesting story with a beginning, middle and end. Finally, I needed a scientist who could answer questions about the animal and its life. I thought the series was done. And then, along came a snail. An unusual snail with an interesting story. It had a left-coiled snail instead of the usual right-coiled snail. And the snail’s scientist kicked up a fuss online with a viral social media campaign to find it a mate, #snaillove. How could I resist? Writing STEAM books requires a substantial amount of research. Often it is the most fun part of our writing process. Did you meet any challenges in your research journey? This book was straightforward in its research. The hardest thing sometimes is to gather the courage to contact the scientists involved. In this case, the scientist specializing in snail genetics, Dr. Angus Davison at University of Nottingham, in Nottingham, England, agreed to a video interview. To prepare, I read his research papers and studied the species of snail. During the interview, Dr. Davison answered lingering questions and provided reference photos for the illustrator. He also agreed to vet the manuscript when it was completed.

(Dr. Angus Davison, genetics professor, studies the heredity and inheritance in snails.) 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? Genetics is a tough subject for elementary school readers. For example, genes can be recessive, which means they may not be expressed in an individual for several generations. Instead of talking about these specifics, the story reads: “However, from his study of genetics, Angus knew that he might not see another left-coiled snail for several generations.” It avoids the specific topic of recessive genes but gets across the information needed, namely, that you must study several generations to understand heredity and inheritance. The audience’s age—elementary school—meant the topic of genetics was just briefly introduced.

What tip can you share with teachers who want to use your book in the classroom? The scientific question facing Dr. Davison was whether the left-coiled snail was a product of heredity or an accident of nature. One odd thing about snails is that they are hermaphrodites, which means they have both male and female parts. However, the twist of the snail’s shell means that right-coiled snails need right-coiled snails to mate and left-coiled snails need left-coiled snails to mate. But left-coiled snails for this species are very rare. Dr. Davison turned to citizen science and asked people to examine snails in their gardens to see if they could find a left-coiled snail in a #snaillove campaign. They found two for the initial study, but eventually found about 45 left-coiled nails. Without help from the public and without the viral social media campaign, Dr. Davison could not have done his experiments on heredity and inheritance in snails. In first and third grades, the NextGen Science Standards ask kids to understand that certain traits can be passed from parent to child. This story is a perfect introduction to the concepts of heredity and inheritance. Did the snail Jeremy inherit the left-coiled shell from his parent? The answer is an overwhelming, “No.” In addition, citizen science made Dr. Davison’s experiments successful. Kids can discuss how and when a scientist might appeal for help to their community. Ask kids to participate in the annual Christmas bird count from Audubon Society, one of the oldest known citizen science projects. Or consult Zooniverse.org for other projects.

Congratulations on this book release! What comes next for you? Can you give us a peek at what you are currently researching?

Coming this summer is CLIMATE: How Wladimir Köppen Studied Weather and Drew the First Climate Maps. As the subtitle implies this is the story of Wladimir Köppen, the scientist who drew the first climate maps. His maps are still used today, with slight modifications. He took vague ideas about climate and solidified them into a world-wide map that still shapes our future today. Fortunately, he wrote an autobiography, so starting the research was easy.

About the author: Children’s book author and indie publisher DARCY PATTISON has written over seventy award-winning fiction and non-fiction books for children. Five books have received starred PW, Kirkus, or BCCB reviews. Awards include the Irma Black Honor award, five NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Books, five Eureka! Nonfiction Honor book (CA Reading Assn.), two Junior Library Guild selections, two CLA Notable Children’s Book in Language Arts, a Notable Social Studies Trade Book, a Best STEM Book, an Arkansiana Award, and the Susannah DeBlack Arkansas Children’s History Book award. She’s the 2007 recipient of the Arkansas Governor’s Arts Award for Individual Artist for her work in children’s literature. Her books have been translated into ten languages. Always active, before her tenth birthday, she (almost) climbed the Continental Divide, turning back at the last twenty yards because it was too steep and great climbing shoes hadn’t been invented yet. She once rode a bicycle down a volcano in Bali, Indonesia and has often hiked the Rockies. She recently hiked New Zealand’s backcountry for a taste of Kiwi life, and then strolled the beaches of Australia. On her bucket list is kayaking the Nā Pali Coast of Hawaii and eating curry in Mumbai.

Reseeding Altadena

I have often found that the topics I research for my books stay in my mind long after the book is published and on bookshelves. It has been years since I unearthed the importance of seed libraries for THE STORY OF SEEDS, and yet, stories of their importance still find their way to me.

Today, in the midst of all the fire devastation in Los Angeles, one community is searching for seed donations. The Altadena Seed Library is searching for donations to help reseed their community. Many local Altadena farmers and growers lost generations of crops at community gardens and backyards. This also means that wildlife has lost habitat and food. Seeds are needed, as are donations.

I hope you can help!