Robert Young

The Beetle Book by Steve Jenkins Houghton Mifflin, 2012 32 pages

If you lined up every living thing on the planet, one of every four would be a beetle. Amazing, huh? Just like this book, which gives readers a detailed look at these creatures. You can find out what makes a beetle a beetle, the parts of a beetle, and the unique qualities of beetles (e.g. the forest fire beetle has special heat sensors that can detect fires more than 20 miles away!). You can find out about the smallest beetle (size of a period), the largest beetle (big as a hand), what beetles eat, how they talk, and their fighting strategies. Illustrations in this book are bright, colorful, and as detailed as the text, making it a great choice for Six-Traiters (not Traitors!).

Moving Targets, my middle-grade novel about bullying, is making headway and moving closer to its publication date in February. The other day I had the great pleasure of sitting down with the illustrator who is creating the cover art for the book. Kurt Cyrus, the talented and experienced picture book artist (and writer too!) is putting the finishing touches on the “face” of the book. Here’s a snap of the artiste and a sneak preview. Check out Kurt’s website when you have a chance.

It’s not hard to revisit the Lewis and Clark. It’s a classic tale of exploration, discovery, and then exploitation. It’s compelling, captivating, and it’s got something for everyone. Since I wrote the original Passage book back in 2003, I’ve made it a point to continue to encourage teachers and students to explore the topic. Not only did I redo the book with new illustrations and tine-tuned text, but I have rewritten a Lewis and Clark simulation that I am currently working with a local school to enact. It’s quite fun to see the kids (fourth graders, in this case) learn about this historic journey and, best of all, come up with questions that they then seek answers to.

With the republication of my Passage book, I was invited to attend the annual dinner of the Oregon chapter of the Lewis and Clark Heritage Foundation this past weekend. It was held at Fort Clatsop in Astoria, the site of the Corps’ camp during the winter of 1805-1806. The dinner was awesome, and I got to sign books and meet folks who are passionate and knowledgeable on all things Lewis and Clark.

The following day, we stopped by the Salt Works in Seaside, where members of the Corps of Discovery boiled sea water to obtain salt, a very important supply for the party. Seaside is a ways from the fort and I always wondered why they went farther than they had to in order to get water from the ocean. The answer eluded me for the longest time, but I finally found out. Hope you can find out too!

Hmmm. Why is the Salt Works so far from Fort Clatsop? They could have made it a lot closer. Why didn't they?

As if moving was not enough to keep me from “the pencil” add another interesting twist. My grown son has been on a work hiatus and doing a bit of traveling (Africa for four months). He had been living in San Diego for the past five years and I haven’t gotten to see him as much as I’d like, so when he returned from Africa and invited me on a cross-country road trip, I couldn’t resist.

So, for most of September I have been “on the road” from Oregon to Maine, exploring places I’ve never been (Yellowstone, Theodore Roosevelt national Park, Springfield, IL, Maine) and sharing places I’ve previously experienced (Black Hills, Gettysburg, NJ, NYC, Walden Pond). It was a blast and the time I spent with my son was filled with unforgettable moments.

But, what of the writing? The bottom line is simply that there is more to life to putting words on paper. That said, experiences form the basis of writing so I have many, many bases for doing additional works. Some have presented themselves directly; others with take time to bubble to the front of my mind. Other experiences will remain as such. And happily so.

You don’t always have to be scratching a pencil across a piece of paper or pounding away at a keyboard to be writing. Those are a necessary part of the process, for sure, but there’s always the planning stage and even the composing in your mind stage. I did a whole lot of both, believe me. And, I was greatly inspired by visits to the Kurt Vonnegut Library and Museum in Indianapolis as well as Walden Pond in Concord, MA.

Okay, the move is done, the boxes are unpacked (or put into storage) and life resumes, but there’s lots different. Like waking up to see clouds embracing the hills, the lake shimmering, the birds playing. A mile away cars and trucks thread their way along the lakeside and remind me that people are going places and doing things. There’s work to be done.

And what of this writing work? It appears to have stopped for now, but it really hasn’t. It’s going on – all the time – in my head. Characters, plot points, curious topics to explore. All of them, in there somewhere. I just haven’t had the wherewithal to formalize them onto paper or the screen. Some of them will remain for the plucking, others will dissipate.

Looking forward to moving forward (not “moving” again!) back into the world of words.

A writing milestone. My first book of fiction has now been published! Who Stinks? is picture book story about a bear who wakes up in the spring and smells something bad. Very bad. He stomps out of his cave and around the forest blaming everything he can find: a mouse, a snake, a blackbird, even a tree! In the end, it’s the wind who helps the bear discover who the culprit really is.

I wrote this story a while back – 1986. That’s twenty-six years ago! So, what’s taken so long for it to finally get published? Who knows? You can call it luck. Or timing. I think it was both those, plus a big dose of persistence. What else would make me keep sending it out all those years no matter how many rejection letters I got (and I got a WHOLE LOT!).

Some of the rejections had a personal spark to them (“a funny idea,” “good humor,” “we think kids would like it.”) and those helped me put it out to more than fifty publishers. My agent liked it and sent it to many more. A couple tastes, but no bites.

I could have just let it go, like I’ve done with so many other projects. But this book was different. And, I was getting positive feedback on it. Not just from editors, either. I created a large (11” x 17”) copy of the book, complete with illustrations I had done with the help from my five-year-old son. When I did author visits, I took the book along and read it to the kindergarten classes. The kids loved it, and the teachers would invariably say, “Why isn’t this published?” and I would reply, “I don’t know.”

And then there was the contest run by Writer’s Digest. I entered the story one year and was pleasantly surprised that it won third place in the Children’s Fiction division. Buoyed by that good news, I started sending it out to publishers once more. And again, no luck.

In 2011 I hooked up with E-Readia to digitize another book I had written. The publisher was excited about my work and asked about other titles I had available. Enter Who Stinks? He loved it, maybe as much as I did. No, of course not. Who could? But he liked it enough to offer a contract and an illustrator. Deal!
Since the signing, the children’s book part of the company has become Bushbaby Press (www.bushbaby.com).

So, what have I learned from this 26 year experience? Nothing profound, really. I already knew that persistence can pay off, I was aware that the market changes over time, and I had lots of experiences in frustration dealing with publishers. The most important thing I got from this experience is the idea that if you write something you like, do something with it, even if publishers don’t want to partner with you. In this case, I created my own copy of the book (complete with amateur home-made illustrations) and shared it with lots of kids. And they liked it! So, to have his book actually published by a real publisher is just the icing on the cake.

I’ll enjoy the icing.