a newsletter from children's book author, Eija Sumner

Earlier this year I discovered eels. I don’t mean I didn’t know about eels. I’ve seen The Little Mermaid, I’ve been to a few aquariums, and I think I once saw an iMax movie in the 90’s that was all about the ocean—I’m assuming there were eels in it.

But earlier this year I was reading, Lost Woods, The Discovered Writing of Rachel Carson, and there is a wonderful essay in it about Chesapeake Eels and the Sargasso Sea. It was the kind of writing that makes you want to know more, that makes you want to know everything. It was like unlocking a mystery, and I became obsessed.

Every odd story about eels delighted me, like Aristotle believing that eels generated spontaneously from mud, to the eventual discovery of the spawning journey from both North American eels and European eels to the Sargasso Sea, a gyre in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Eels don’t develop reproductive organs until they hit that salty ocean water, so how they spawn and where they come from has legit been a mystery for over two thousand years. Nice try though, Aristotle. Anyway, from the garden eels in the Pacific Ocean and Red Sea to the electric eels in South America, each discovery has been wondrous.

I’ve been wanting to start a newsletter about books and about writing, but I needed something else, something not entirely about me. So here we are, welcome to The Eel Report. I’m not an expert, just an eel fan with an internet connection and a newsletter. I’ve never tagged eels or dissected them or watched them run over flooded land, so if you are looking for hard scientific eel facts, this may not be it. It could be! But no promises.

Learning about eels, even casually, has been a welcome escape, and I’ve always— well, mostly— been an enthusiastic learner and curious about the world. So thanks for joining me in learning a little bit about eels, and about what I’m writing, reading, and how I’m trying to stay creative. I can’t wait to see what we discover.

Reading Life

I’ve always thought of myself as more of a reader than a writer, or a reader first and foremost. Here’s a roundup of some books I’ve been reading over the past month or so:

I learned more about the namesake of this newsletter in Eels by James Prosek. Plus, it had me asking my husband how to build a weir and it is important to note that I guess my husband designs weirs all the time, and is now my personal hero, even if the weirs he has designed are not for trapping eels and are just for water management. A weir is a low dam built across a river to regulate water, and an eel weir is a trap that sits in a stream and has stakes and levels to trap the eels against the current. Check out this article from James Prosek that is basically part of chapter 2 from Eels that is heavy on eel weir content. I have yet to build a tiny weir model, but the summer is long, and it could be fun, could be a popsicle stick project.

Brandy Colbert’s The Voting Booth is a wonderful contemporary YA that captures a budding relationship between Marva and Duke while addressing voter suppression, all taking place in one day— election day. I love a story set in one day, plus, there’s an instagram celebrity pet— Eartha Kitty. *heart eyes emoji*

I loved escaping into the excellent world-building of Roseanne A. Brown’s debut YA fantasy, A Song of Wraiths and Ruin, where Malik, a refugee, and Karina, the crown princess, barter with lives that are not their own. What could go wrong? Refreshing to see fantasy characters deal with panic attacks and PTSD, because these worlds being built are stressful. I am ready for book two, hurry up, 2021!

Working through Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad was an important opportunity to self-reflect on how I uphold and participate in white supremacy, and a book I can see myself working through again and returning to the journaling questions over and over.

As schools and mascots consider name changes across the country, Lisa Moore Ramée’s middle-grade novel, Something to Say, felt extremely prescient. I loved the family dynamics, and the awkward new friendship between Jenae and Aubrey, opposites, except in their awkwardness.

I love picture books. They can be so many things, but they’ve been especially wonderful lately when I’ve had a hard time reading, and my attention span is non-existent— picture books are a quick escape.

I love the deadpan humor and the illustrations that capture an exhausted parent in, I Can be Anything by Shinsuke Yoshitake, each page is an imaginative surprise and welcome laugh.

Two Bicycles in Beijing by Teresa Robeson, artwork by Junyi Wu, is beautiful, and a great picture book to leap into a bigger learning project about all the places that Lunzi and Huangche visit in Beijing.

Antiracist Baby by Ibram X. Kendi, artwork by Ashley Lukashevsky, is a brilliant and succinct introduction to the work of being antiracist. The artwork is beautiful with a diverse cast of characters, an excellent primer for kids and adults!

Let me know what you’re reading, I’m always looking for great recommendations and my next favorite book. I’m linking to every Eel Report Recommendation in Bookshop to keep a record for all newsletter book recs, but you can always find and request titles at your local library.

Writing Life

Writing has been a bit of a mess with so many starts and stops this spring and early summer. A few minor victories— I turned in my final edits for my upcoming picture book, Crocodile Hungry! so now it’s off to John Martz, the illustrator, who will no doubt make it a much better book than I can imagine.

I shelved a longer fiction project for a few months. Since then, I’ve been working through Story Genius with my Hamline co-hort, aka my writing support group, and it’s so nice to slog through and discuss craft books together.

My novel in progress needs a major revision, with a new narrative arc, a new beginning, and I didn’t even realize that until recently. So even though things are looking a bit of a mess and a bit chaotic, I think they’re headed in the right direction.

I was listening to a lecture from Nina LaCour on revision, and I loved this quote that she shared:

“In revision, you begin a kind of creative destruction.” — Claire Messud

A kind of permission to take apart and destroy what you’ve made, to not be so precious with it, to build it into something new, a little bit like legos. So I’m building. It’s a bit messy right now but that’s okay.

What I’m Doing

One thing that my family has been enjoying is watching the NWSL Challenge Cup, the professional women’s soccer league tournament. I’ve been trying to make a bigger effort in supporting women’s professional sports— watching their games on tv, seeing games in person, buying team gear. Have you seen the new Portland Thorns kit? a beauty! Chicago’s team kits? A love letter to the city of Chicago. I want all of them.

It’s been so fun watching Washington State alum, Morgan Weaver, make the transition from college athlete to professional sports and get her first professional goal. We are Mo super fans over here, and can’t wait to see what her career holds for her. Support women’s sports. It’s fun. You can catch the end of the Challenge Cup, and find your own team or do what we do and root for all of them.

My kids and I binged all of Netflix’s The Babysitter’s Club so quickly that I think we’ll need to revisit it again in August. Loved the characters and story arcs, and as someone who did not read TBSC growing up, the shows are perfectly enjoyable without the added pull of nostalgia— plus, I need as much style inspiration from Claudia as I can get, and I don’t think I’ve ever dressed as professionally as Stacey manages to do on the regular. An inspiration in teamwork, standing up for others, and fashion. Iconic. Watch, seriously.

When I realized we weren’t going to be traveling anywhere this summer and that we would be pretty much staying at home, I did what so many other people did and ordered seeds to start a garden. I seem to live in two extremes of forgetting to water the garden to extremely overwatering and flooding the garden, but somehow a lot of the plants are still alive and thriving and making their way onto our table. RIP to my cucumber starts and the plants that met an early death with a late spring frost. You were mourned and then quickly replaced. Gardening is ruthless.

Being outside helps ground me and inspire, even if it’s just a walk around the neighborhood, or a mad dash outside once I finally remember to turn the water off. So I hope you’re staying grounded, I hope you get a chance to sneak away into nature, to find some binoculars, to search for a comet, to find the sun and keep going.

Thanks for sharing your time with me. You can always find me on my website, twitter, and instagram. I’ll catch you next month with more eels, a writing update, and as always, whatever I’m reading, watching, and doing. Take care!

— Eija