Congratulations, Heather Lang, on SUPERSQUADS!

Thank you so much for sharing the release of SUPERSQUADS, the latest in your Animal Heroes series with us! Young readers love STEAM books and I’m sure it will find many happy readers. 

Can you share with us a bit about the inspiration for this book? Was there an initial spark?

SUPERSQUADS! is the third book in the Animal Heroes series, which I’m writing with my super talented friend Jamie Harper (she’s also the illustrator). We’ve had a blast collaborating on these books, so writing a book about animals that team up in the wild seemed like the perfect topic and one we were both curious about. The book has lots of takeaways for young readers. We hope they’ll learn the value of teamwork and the many ways they can be super teammates. And we hope they’ll laugh a lot! 

Humor and teamwork are a perfect pairing. Writing STEAM books involves a substantial amount of research. Often it is the most enjoyable part of our writing process. But, it also comes with challenges. Did you have any in your research journey? 

Researching SUPERSQUADS! was indeed fun and fascinating but also a little overwhelming. We really struggled deciding how best to focus the book. In SUPERMOMS! and SUPERDADS! we divided our animal heroes into five categories based on parenting behavior, so we knew we wanted to use a similar approach. But what behaviors best represent successful teamwork in the wild? We began by casting a wide net. We read books and online articles from reliable sources. We watched everything from YouTube videos made by nature enthusiasts to PBS Nature episodes to award-winning movies. The more we researched, the more we found new cool examples of supersquads. We sorted the animal teams by what quality made them successful. Eventually we decided on five qualities that we think are important in teamwork for both animals in the wild and humans: communication, leadership, organization, diversity (mutualism), and unity (strength in numbers). Another challenge we faced in all three books was confirming facts. We reached out to scientists and searched for scientific papers. After connecting with experts, sometimes we had to cut animals, because the “facts” we had found didn’t hold up. Other times we learned new information, which provided rich details to add to the text or our back matter.

SUPERSQUADS!: ANIMAL HEROES. Text Copyright © 2025 Jamie Harper and Heather Lang. Illustrations Copyright © 2025 Jamie Harper. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA. 

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? 

There were loads of interesting examples of animals that team up in the wild, so we had to do a lot of cutting. Some were easier to cut, like elephants, because we’d written about them in SUPERMOMS! Others, like lemurs and vampire bats, were harder to let go. But we wanted to have a variety of animals all teaming up in different ways. Once we had identified our categories of teamwork, we looked for different behaviors within each category, which influenced the animals and facts we chose. For example, we showed three different communication behaviors: grooming (snow monkeys), vocalization (chickadees), and dancing (bees). And of course we were also considering opportunities for humor. It was like piecing together a giant puzzle! 

I love comparing it all to piecing a puzzle. So true! I'm sure teachers will want to use your book in the classroom. Any tips for them?  

We hope teachers will use this book and the rest of the series to celebrate animals of all kinds as moms, dads, and teammates, and most importantly, inspire kids to care about nature. If kids feel that interconnectedness, they will want to protect it. The text in SUPERSQUADS! models rich figurative language, including analogies, alliteration, vivid verbs, and strong adjectives. Onomatopoeias are always a big hit with kids and a fun way to make the reading interactive. Teachers can have their students create an onomatopoeia word wall and add their own onomatopoeias to the pages without them. Dialogue is also a great tool to begin developing in young students. Whether bossy or grateful or funny, dialogue adds voice and depth to writing. It shows how the characters in a story feel and interact. Simple speech bubbles are a perfect step to introduce dialogue to young students. As we discovered, animals can teach us a lot about what it means to be a good teammate. We end the book by asking readers, “Who’s on your squad? And what makes it make SUPER?” We hope this question will inspire kids to compare their own squads to the animal squads in the book and to think about what makes them successful. This can lead to lots of conversation and reflection in the classroom as well as some fun writing/illustration projects. There are worksheets and activities on my website (heatherlangbooks.com), as well as videos of our squads in action. And don’t miss the back matter, which shares more fun facts and information about the animals’ habitats and diets. Each is labeled with a “superpower.” This is a great literacy tool to demonstrate using specific language to identify and describe character traits. We’ve also included a list of more picture books about our animals and teaming up in the wild.

SUPERSQUADS!: ANIMAL HEROES. Text Copyright © 2025 Jamie Harper and Heather Lang. Illustrations Copyright © 2025 Jamie Harper. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Somerville, MA. 

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

My next book has been a passion project for the last five years: a middle-grade collective biography about twelve animal conservationists from around the world (coming in 2027). I also have a picture book biography about an amazing bat scientist and an octopus picture book coming out in 2028. I’m deeply in love with elephants, so currently I’m in heaven researching them for a new book. SO MUCH FUN! 

They sound wonderful, Heather! I can't wait to see them on bookshop shelves. Congratulations and happy writing!

About the author: 

Heather Lang writes picture books that celebrate our natural world and biographies about women who overcame extraordinary obstacles to follow their dreams. Her award-winning children’s books include The Animal Heroes series, Swimming with Sharks: The Daring Discoveries of Eugenie Clark, and The Leaf Detective: How Margaret Lowman Uncovered Secrets in the Rainforest, an NSTA/CBC Best STEM Book and Green Earth Book Award winner. To research her books, Heather has climbed to the treetops of the Amazon, observed animals in the Serengeti, and gone scuba diving with sharks. You can read more about Heather’s books and find lots of activities and resources for them at heatherlangbooks.com.