“mayday” sounds like the French word m’aider, which means “help me”
Mayday mayday mayday. A distress call— which feels extremely on the nose this May. But May should be a time for renewal and flowers— I mean, it is May! I love Spring and the celebration of the renewal of life. I wouldn’t say it’s my favorite season because it can be so wet and cold and muddy, but symbolically, it’s my favorite season. I’m just patiently waiting for the forsythia in my yard to be in full bloom, and I like to think of the forsythia as a promise of more life and color to come. No distress. Just flowers. And eels. Or not eels this month.
Lampreys are not eels. They are slender fish, so maybe they look like eels, but I personally feel like lampreys have more in common with TREMORS and Kevin Bacon than they have to do with eels. Lampreys have round sucker mouths or as the Columbia River InterTribal Fish Commission described it, “jawless sucking disc mouths” (google if you dare) and they latch onto bigger fish and suck out their blood and bodily fluids because lampreys are long little parasite fish. Isn’t that gross?
Another fun lamprey fact is that they have cartilage skeletons like sharks! Lampreys are more closely related to hagfish (also eel shaped but not eels) and sharks than they are to eels. Lampreys, like Salmon, are anadromous fish that migrate to the ocean and then return— but unlike salmon, they don’t always return to their natal streams, they return to places where they think they’ll be successful in spawning. And it’s hard to return to streams when there are a bunch of dams in the way.
THIS IS NOT A LAMPREY REPORT, this is an EEL REPORT, but sometimes when we’re taking a moment to think about the renewal of life and spring, it’s important to think about lampreys (who are not eels), their important role in our river ecosystems, and recognize tribal efforts to return lampreys to tributaries they can’t reach on their own because protecting our ecosystems is also about trying to encourage that renewal of life. Which is my favorite thing about lampreys— that they’re important for the ecological health and life of our river systems, even if they are a little bit of a nightmare Tremors Kevin Bacon fish.
Reading
My reading was a bit all over the place this past month and a half, but I feel like there’s something here for everybody in this most recent round-up of reading.
Crocodile Hungry and Writing
Crocodile Hungry has been out in the world for over three months! I have celebrated by periodically checking my sales which I don’t think is particularly healthy or helpful. And I ordered a ridiculous customized ring— for marketing purposes! Or for my own entertainment! Both of those can be true, I think.
Order Pizza! Anyway, I’m trying to be better about chatting about Crocodile Hungry when I’m in new bookstores and I always feel a little salesman-y about pitching CH to bookstore staff when the book is not in a store I’m visiting. But I am proud of this little book that I made with John Martz and the staff and crew at Tundra Books, so I am working at being better about talking about it like I’m a proud picture book maker.
I have been writing! A little bit. New picture book stories, and jotting down notes and ideas on how to resolve issues on some other manuscripts I’m working on. The progress is small, but it’s there, and that’s what I need. A little bit of progress.
Writing is very much a silver lining business. Writing lives off of hope. And I guess I find myself thinking about things and experiencing the world that we live in and being frustrated and angry, but also looking for hope. In life and in writing. The writing has not gotten any easier, but I am grateful that the act of writing can be hope seeking, in both practice and pursuit. And I guess that’s where I’m at. Looking for a little bit of hope. And lampreys.
It’s elver season in Maine, beloveds, where’s my notepad.
Okay, another eel report! It really is elver season in Maine, so get your dip nets and elver licenses. Or lottery. Idk. Maybe in a future newsletter I will tell you about the time I thought I would go clam digging with zero knowledge or clam digging experience. But I’ll save that for when I run out of eel content.
This is How I Breathe, Jennifer
I don’t remember why I was talking about moray eels on a highway in California, but I was sharing that moray eels always have their mouths open because their gills are like inside their bodies.
Imagine me telling a story to my old college roommate, but also trying to demonstrate eel-like mouth breathing while sitting in the passenger seat of her SUV. She’s honestly seen weirder from me. It’s fine.
So all the meme-worthy or just surprised and a little bit terrifying photos of moray eels with their mouths open is because that is how their fish bodies breathe.
“Most fish breathe by closing and opening their gill covers to force water over their gills. Moray eels don’t have gill covers, so they constantly open and close their mouths to breathe.” (Source)
So some basics:
Fish breathe through their gills. Most fish have gill covers. Gill covers help protect fish organs, but they also help pump and move water over the gills. Moray eels do not have gill covers, so to move water over their gills, they keep their mouths open. They are mouth breathers. Mouth Breathingᵀᴹ to Live (would be an excellent title imo). It’s science. Maybe it is not evolution? Because gill covers are a big part of fish evolution? Or evolution in general? I don’t know.
But the important thing is, that no matter how weird they look, those eels are just breathing. They might bite you, but they might just be breathing. Which basically describes my cats or all cats. Or the past few years. I just look like this, but I am breathing. This is how I breathe, Jennifer. Move along.
Crocodile Spon
It’s been over a month since Crocodile Hungry published! It is really fun to get photos and videos of Crocodile Hungry being shared with little ones. That is the best part of all this picture book making process. Photos of classrooms with crocodile hands and little videos of kids reading along. Reading magic and Joy. It’s good stuff.
If you want to pick up a copy of Crocodile Hungry, I’ll personalize copies from BookPeople of Moscow. Or if you are a library user, you can always request your local library to purchase a copy.
Tundra Books, the publisher for Crocodile Hungry, created a #TundraTime Activity sheet to go along with the picture book if you’re looking for an activity or the beginning of a discussion guide, check out this free download.
Crocodile in the Canadian News
When I wrote Crocodile Hungry, I was hoping it would be a fun read aloud for story time, so I was honored and delighted to see Crocodile featured here with other active read aloud titles.
“It’s impossible to read this book aloud without changing your voice to a growly tone that suits the crocodile’s abbreviated speech pattern as he looks for a meal.”
One hundred percent recommend reading Crocodile in a growly Cookie-Monster like voice.
Reading
I haven’t been reading a lot this past month. I think it’s the uptick in family activities and the arrival of Spring, but I’ve mostly had brain power for only picture book reading. But that’s okay, because all these picture books pack so much depth and emotion that they more than make up for their shorter page and word count.
The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill was my only novel reading in March. A book I read slowly but that meant so much to me in seeing how a community rebuilds itself. With so much going on in the world right now (and in the past five years), I love that Kelly gave readers this generous book— a how-to in care, community, and repair.
Rodney was a Tortoise by Nan Forler and Yong Ling Kang is a very Canadian book. There’s Crokinole! (my favorite obsession, aside from eels). And Budgies (which are parakeets). But there’s also sadness, grief, and friendship, which goes beyond all borders.
Love in the Library by Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Yas Imamura is a beautiful book about finding hope and humanity in a place meant to crush both of those things. It’s a true story about the author’s grandparents finding each other and love in Minidoka, a Japanese Internment Camp in Southern Idaho.
John’s Turn by Mac Barnett and Kate Berube is just a perfect picture book. Mac Barnett does a fantastic job of not overwriting, so that Kate’s illustrations can carry the bigger emotional moments. I love the vulnerability and joy that John shares as he dances on his day to share his gift with his class.
Varenka by Bernadette Watts is my mom’s favorite picture book. Shout out to my mom who reads this newsletter, and always sends me edits after it has been published. I leave those grammar errors in this newsletter for you mom. Varenka has been out of print for forever, but my mom was beyond excited to tell me it’s being reissued later this year. NorthSouth is reissuing this timely story about war, wartime refugees, faith, and what it means to stay behind and care for whoever may need shelter.
Just a Smidge of Writing
With Crocodile Hungry publishing and preparing for what that experience would be like along with classroom visits and bookstore events, I didn’t really worry too much about writing the past month or two. No pressure, the book release was taking precedence, and I knew my writing time and energy wouldn’t realistically go towards writing new things or revising older projects.
So how do you return? How do you begin again after a break?
If I had answers, I would willingly share them and package them up with a large bow just for you. But I’ve been trying this writing thing for long enough that I know that the habits and practices frequently change. Just when you think things have been figured out, a routine shifts, a story becomes stuck, you become bored, and writing becomes nonexistent. And new practices and new routines need to be developed.
So this Spring, I’m working to discover new writing practices. Trying 10 minute exercises to begin again and find the words. Even if those exercises ARE the writing practice and not a warm-up. And I’m going to celebrate those moments, those words on paper, and new story beginnings.
Here’s to new rituals, new beginnings, and catching writing time no matter how slippery that can be. Thanks for reading.
Book Launch Month and then the Next Month Sneaked In There
Eel Report Newsletter, bebes! This was supposed to go out in February, but February is so short that this newsletter sneaked it’s way right into March. Wild how that happens sometimes.
Eel Ted Ed (this is very fun to say aloud)
We’ve now reached the part of programming where I am the tired substitute and rather than discuss eels, I’m just going to show you a video. Classic substitute move. I feel like some of the facts I’ve shared about eels in the past are also in this video— but this has animation and a great narrative voice. So there you go, watch this video kids, your teacher and regular eel programming will continue next month.
This Book and Writing Thing
Crocodile Hungry is out in the world! It’s on bookshelves! It’s been so fun seeing photos of kids with their copies and indie bookstores all across the United States with Crocodile Hungry on their shelves. What a gift! Thank you all for your support. Every photo I’ve been sent of a kid with their copy of Crocodile Hungry has been like a little magical zing through my phone. So grateful.
I had a virtual event to kick book events off with my friends, authors Jonathan Hillman and Lisa Riddiough in a triple book launch hosted by Red Balloon Bookshop. It was so fun to chat picture books and celebrate Jonathan and Lisa’s books, Big Wig, and, Letter’s to Live By, along with Crocodile Hungry.
One of the questions that Aimee Lucido, our moderator, for the Red Balloon book launch asked was why we write for kids. And I’ve been thinking about that question since.
Kids are the best readers. They’re smart, generous, and adventurous readers, and young kids feel things so immediately— as readers they’re willing to explore emotions and willingly go places where maybe adult readers might be more hesitant or skeptical. Kids will go there. They want to talk about big emotions and explore all the things that adults have learned to sweep away.
Writing for kids can also be permission to play. To try and find that childlike wonder in the ordinary world, to try and see the world in a way where everything is new and filled with possibilities— whether imaginary and real.
I know lots of children’s lit authors write for the kid they were, a book that they would’ve loved or needed, and I feel that. But for picture books, I feel like I’m doing my best writing when I am playing, where in my very first drafts, the story meanders in unexpected ways because all the possibilities are available to me— whether real or imagined and I’ve rediscovered some kind of kid logic that my brain still knows to be true.
I feel like when I write for kids, I am putting my best version of myself out there— uninhibited, willing to play and find the magic in everyday, and not afraid to feel all the things. What a dream come true.
Reading Life
Reading this past month while being so busy has been a challenge, but last month when I read, The Genius Under the Table, it kicked off a whole subject to explore— so I’ve been reading some Cold War and Eastern European books this February. And of course, some picture books to balance it all out.
Steve Sheinkin is brilliant, and he writes incredible non-fiction for kids (and it’s really great for adults too, btw). Fallout, about the Cold War is another well-researched and tightly plotted book by Sheinkin. Chance by Uri Shulevitz feels prescient as young Uri documents his and his family’s journey as refugees across the USSR and Eastern Europe during WWII as they fled to escape the Holocaust. I’ve been working my way through Maria Reva’s short story collection, Good Citizens Need Not Fear, which spans the years leading up to and immediately following the fall of the Soviet Union. Darkly funny. Again, there are so many connections and moments where I feel like these books are in conversation with each other— moments that The Genius Under the Table shares with Good Citizens are really something else. I’ve slowly been reading Black Square, which is more like a travel-memoir of Ukraine and Russia, or a travel-memoir while working with the Red Cross and AIDS awareness and healthcare. Mina and Bathe the Cat are both delightful in totally different ways, from the dark humor and suspense in Mina to the fun and absurdity of Bathe the Cat. I love them both.
Crocodile News
It’s been a bit of a whirlwind with a book release, virtual book launch, some school visits along with all the everyday parts of life. I’m so grateful for all the support from family and friends. I get news from Evan, my wonderful publicist at Tundra Books, keeping tabs on what’s happening with Crocodile.
“With its tongue-in-cheek humour (canned ham called “Oink”, for instance), short action statements, and bright illustrations, this hilarious book is sure to appeal to young children of all ages. [. . . ] Crocodile Hungry is a quick but satisfying read with a conclusion that most Canadians will appreciate.” Highly Recommended.
The line, “a conclusion that most Canadians will appreciate,” feels extremely Canadian to me??? I don’t know but I love this review. And Canada. I dream about butter tarts and crokinole boards.
Crocodile Hungry was on Canada’s CTV Your Morning Show. I was geo-blocked from watching the link, but my wonderful writer buddy Lisa from Manitoba sent me video footage! Here’s the blog post from Vicki VanSickle, Tundra’s Marketing and Publicity Director, who recommended Crocodile on CTV.
I want to quote the whole book review from School Library Journal, because I thought was so nice. But I’ll keep it short.
“This deceptively simple book will delight readers of all ages. It succeeds so well because the author creates a character and story line that run counter to all expectations. [. . . ] Giggles guaranteed in this hilarious easy reader; a nice piece of overturned expectations, sure to delight.”
– Sally James, School Library Journal
Last month, I said Crocodile Hungry was going to be in Australia later this year. And I was sort of right and sort of wrong. Publishing and rights contracts are confusing sometimes. Crocodile Hungryis going to be published in Australia and New Zealand, but I’m not sure on the date yet— definitely far enough out to plan a trip! *eyeball emoji*
I love that I am writing a correction in my own newsletter. Every newsletter is a correction, beloved. Let’s get existential about this eel report newsletter on a rainy Thursday morning.
Events!
I’ll be reading Crocodile Hungry and signing books at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre on Saturday, March 5th at 11:00am. The Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre is Moscow’s premier historic, downtown, community performing arts venue. BookPeople of Moscow is hosting, my friend and bookseller, Liela, will be there selling copies of Crocodile Hungry. My friend and fellow kid lit author, Annette Pimentel, will be there to introduce me— her wonderful non-fiction picture books are at BookPeople.
If you want to pick up a copy of Crocodile Hungry, I’ll personalize copies from BookPeople of Moscow, but I like to recommend picking it up from you local indie bookstore if you have one near you. Indies are the best. Make friends with your booksellers, ask them where the good books are and the weird ones, too. Or if you are a library user, I’d appreciate asking your local library to purchase a copy.
Big hugs, quiet walks, letters to your reps, and news breaks when you need them during these wild time. Thank you for reading this newsletter. Cheers to you and yours.
a little less about eels and more about traditional publishing, forgive me
I know this is usually about eels at the beginning, but it’s also going to be about writing. If you are really here for the Eel Content™ and Eel Content™ alone, here is a beautiful tin of gourmet baby eels in olive oil:
This is where I admit that I am not a huge fan of canned fish. Maybe this Eel Report will become a spin off of a horribly produced video series of me eating tinned fish delicacies. Probably not.
Maybe you’re not here for eels at all, but are interested in writing and children’s literature. I promise, we will get there. Maybe you’re not interested in any of the above, but you are supportive of me and my weird endeavors. Thank you for your ongoing support and for being here.
Swapping Eels for Writing Thrills
Sometimes writers like to talk about voice, like it’s this undefinable thing but you know it when you read it. But so much of voice is the rhythm and cadence of the sentences, the word choice and how the words are put together. This is not to be confused with grammar. Grammar is *shudders* something else.
I feel like voice is something that comes up often in writing circles and workshops. Voice is something readers want. Does the story have voice? We can’t always say what voice is, but we know we want it! And we know when we hear it!
Which is why I was delighted to read this article about eels (okay, Eel Content™, here we gooo!) which feels like it should be read in a movie trailer voice with explosions in the background. The title alone is amazing. I think it’s a delightful example of voice, informative and informal writing, and keeping your audience in mind.
I personally loved the “Swapping Guts for Gonads” sub-header. I did not know that eels’ anuses shrink to prevent water loss as they journey back to the ocean to breed. Learn something new everyday, a minuscule eel anus factoid for you this morning. Minuscule eel anus is really hard to say. You should try saying it four times fast.
I think it’d be a fun writing exercise to take a story, an idea, or something you are working on and write a pitch that is to be read in an exciting movie trailer voice, and then write it again like it will be a lifetime movie special, and then write it like it’s the end of a pharmaceutical ad and speed read it. I wouldn’t spend too much time on this, maybe a couple minutes each, just to see how the writing shifts and changes. Maybe in a later newsletter, I will do all of these with Crocodile Hungry. We’ll see.
Event Announcements
I have a virtual book launch with some wonderful friends, Lisa Riddiough and Jonathan Hillman, moderated by the brilliant Aimee Lucido. Red Balloon Bookshop, based out of St. Paul, Minnesota, is hosting the event on February 16, 2022. Mark your calendar, save the date, and practice your time-change math skills!
If you order Crocodile Hungry from Red Balloon, I’ll be sending them book plates with my author signature. If you DO order books from Red Balloon, and you want the book personalized, please let them know when you order, and I’ll coordinate with the wonderful staff at Red Balloon Bookshop.
Lisa, Jonathan, Aimee, and I are all Hamline University grads from different graduating classes, so this is gonna be like a smorgasbord of Hamline kidlit support and love. If you do attend, I suggest planning on eating cake. Every Red Balloon event I’ve ever been to involves cake. I know virtual events make this more of a challenge, but I had a spice cake around the holidays that I am still thinking about, so maybe I will have a spice cake to celebrate.
I have an in-person event, hosted by Book People of Moscow, at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Center on March 5th in Moscow, Idaho. If you’re local, save the date! And maybe Omicron will be more of an Omicant by then. Hahaha, I am so sorry.
Book People of Moscow is my beloved local bookstore, and whether you’ll be able to make it to the event or not, they’re the place to pick up signed copies of Crocodile Hungry!
A Little Story about Making a Book
I’ve had a few people ask about the process of making a book or publishing a book, so I thought I’d share a little bit about my experience in The Making of a Traditionally Published Picture Book.
I wrote a first draft of Crocodile Hungry probably in 2013. There was a time when I tried to illustrate this story, but we don’t talk about drawing, no no. We don’t talk about drawing!! Nooooo. Encanto is on a constant loop over here and it is amazing, my ability to illustrate, less so.
And then I kept writing other stories. And writing and revising more stories. And when I felt like my writing had improved and that I had enough picture books to query literary agents, I started to query literary agents. A query is sending out a letter and pitch introducing yourself and your writing along with a picture book manuscript, hitting send, and then pacing around the neighborhood and sweating profusely. Again, just my experience.
If an agent likes the picture book manuscript that a writer queries with, then the literary agent will usually request more picture book manuscripts to read before offering representation. As far as I’m aware, this is industry standard, and a picture book writer should have at least 4-6 polished picture manuscripts before querying agents. I think I shared 10 (TEN!) picture book manuscripts with my agent before she offered to represent me because either I am an overachiever or because my writing is all over the place so my agent needed to see a wider range of stories. Award winning author, Laura Ruby, once said very kindly, that my body of writing had range, so let’s go with that one, although I freely admit that my writing is all over the place. It can be both, I’ve decided.
Anyway, my agent offered to represent me and my writing back in January 2019 and then I revised Crocodile Hungry with my agent to get it ready to go out on submission.
Being on submission is like the querying process all over again, but instead of querying agents, your agent is submitting your manuscript to editors at different publishing houses.
It’s exciting and stressful and an illogical amount of inbox refreshing. There is also a decent amount of rejection. You simultaneously develop a thick skin and also a creeping sense of self doubt. Walking around the neighborhood helps. I don’t know if profusely sweating helps.
My editor from Tundra Books offered to acquire my manuscript— there’s a lot more involved here with acquisition meetings within the publishing house and comparison analysis on potential market and sales but that’s the editorial and publishing side of things— and then my agent called me on a sunny day and we yelled into our phones for a bit while I walked around my neighborhood. Again, more profusely sweating. That was in April 2019.
My editor thought John Martz would be the perfect illustrator for Crocodile Hungry and he is, like I can’t wait for readers to find all the funny gags and great details hidden in the illustrations. I worked with my editor to revise the text, and John began work on the development of the characters and the visual story.
There were proofs and a little more revising, a few small changes to the text and the art, an internal review and report (I cried when I read this, I’ve never been more proud and/or seen as a writer), and then everything went to print in the summer of 2021.
And that’s the story and (my) experience with the traditional publishing of a picture book! And it’ll be a real physical book on shelves all over North America in just over two weeks.
If you are reading this and you live in Australia, I am so sorry, but you’ll have to wait until April 18, 2022, for Crocodile Hungry. Maybe we can all agree to meet in Australia after April 18, 2022 so we can say that we’ve seen Crocodile Hungry in both the Southern and Northern Hemispheres which feels like a big deal.
Books I Read and Loved this Month
I like to list all the books mentioned in this newsletter in an Eel Report BookShop page, so it’s all nicely cataloged and easy to reference. Also there’s a book list for a ghost newsletter that was never sent in September & October, which I find mysterious and elusive, like what happened to that newsletter?! It lives in draft form only, but the booklist lives on! Such is writing sometimes. A week ago, the American Library Association held the Youth Media Awards and that’s such a fun place to build a reading list heading into the new year to pick up celebrated titles. The Genius Under the Table and Nicky & Vera: AQuiet Hero of the Holocaust and the Children He Rescued both received honors from the ALA last week.
Happy reading, writing, and learning about whatever keeps you curious!
the eels made it over some dams and so can we, beloved
I think the last time I started drafting this newsletter I didn’t actually send it. I don’t know why, probably exhausted from the panini or I didn’t have good eel information. Or maybe because I haven’t really really sat down at my computer in forever? There are so many roadblocks and difficulties in trying to write and making time to be creative or even time to just be, and I’m feeling that more than ever this past year or two years. So it’s been a minute. And I’m fine with that.
Eel News You Didn’t Know You Needed
This newsletter always starts off with a little bit of eel research and eel news, and I stumbled upon this article about eel population restoration on the Susquehanna River. I’ve mostly lived in western states in the US, so eel population struggles are new to me, but the first political slogan I really remember was, “Can Helen Not Salmon!” A slogan chanted over the radio waves trying to unseat Idaho congressional politician, Helen Chenoweth, who would hold Endangered Salmon Bakes because she didn’t believe that Idaho salmon should be listed as an endangered species in the 1990s. This is when Snake River sockeye salmon populations were near extinct, like only eight (8!) Snake River sockeye salmon returned to Redfish Lake, and Helen was like, but we’ve got canned Salmon so who cares?! Maybe this 90s political slogan is aging me, but you know what else is aging?? THE SUSQUEHANNA RIVER.
I’m kidding. I mean not really. If you live near the Susquehanna River, I apologize for throwing the river under the bus and over the dams in this newsletter. I’m sure it’s fine. We love a restoration project here at The Eel Report. I have heard about salmon populations and river health my whole life. But I thought this eel article was really interesting because there had not been a huge effort to save the eels or increase the eel population. I am assuming because people don’t like eels, or because eels have a bad reputation, or maybe because people don’t eat them in the US nearly as much as they used to. The article mentions extensive efforts and money invested to save the American Shad— btw Shad is like the equivalent of a fish named Kevin and I can’t handle it— but fascinating that with minimal resources biologists began a project a decade ago to catch little elver (baby) eels stuck at dams on the Susquehanna and truck them upstream. This has boosted eel populations and in turn helped boost the entire health of the river, and hopefully will boost future eel populations and the ecosystem as well.
Boost is the word of the month this December. Is the river boosted? I don’t know, but I am! Get boosted!
I love to think that somewhere there could be an entire truck of little eels catching a ride upstream. Nature is wild. Or humans trying to save nature while simultaneously destroying nature is wild.
Before we continue, here is my disclaimer that my eel report is mostly me just reading random news and books about eels but that I am just a person on a couch reading stuff on the internet and I am in no way an expert on eels. Just a fan with an internet connection and a newsletter, which if we’re all paying attention to everything happening right now, this is an extremely dangerous place to be— like should I even share my half-researched eel information? Maybe I haven’t sent another newsletter because I’m having an existential crisis about authorial ethics and expertise??
Basically, please read about eels from more qualified people than me. But also, it really is fun to shout, CAN HELEN NOT SALMON!! which is something I totally did in second grade.
Here’s a clip of Nicole Kidman and Jimmy Fallon not really touching a Fire Eel but almost touching a Fire Eel. The Fire Eel did not ask to be touched by these celebrities!
Crocodile Hungry Picture Book Debut So Close
It is TWO MONTHS until Crocodile Hungry publishes on February 15, 2022. Exclamation Mark! I’m excited and nervous and feel like I should be doing something. I am mostly refreshing my email. I am not sure how that helps with anything, but refreshing your email plays a much larger role in writing than I ever imagined.
You can preorder Crocodile Hungry at BookPeople of Moscow and I will totally sign it and the lovely people at BookPeople will ship that book to your door. It’s magic.
Writing Life
For me, right now during this moment in history, the only writing I have been able to do has been extremely planned.
I’ve written beat sheets and character sketches. I’ve outlined and completed the dreaded but necessary synopsis. It works. I know it’s supposed to work, but it really does work. I’m kind of mad at how good pre-writing and planning works! There are still things I need to figure out, but I had the framework and the tools. So when I did have time to write, I wrote. I feel like I finally discovered outlining, which omg took me long enough.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like I have as much time to write, or maybe I feel like I don’t have as much time for anything. So being prepared, doing this prep work has given me some much needed tools to move forward.
I feel like my brain is having to relearn how to be creative, and for longer projects that means I have to outline, I have to give myself the tools to be able to do this writing thing.
I’m still figuring out what this means with picture books. Usually, picture book drafting starts off as playtime and develops from there. But how do you play while the world falls apart? Or how do you play while you try and hold things together? I’m still figuring this out, but I think the obvious answer is that I need to play. We all probably do.
So I guess in 2022, I hope I plan the hell out of my writing while also giving myself the freedom to play. To look for joy when I see the world, and to give myself all the time and patience I need to find my way back to this creative work.
Thanks for reading this mess of a newsletter and for supporting me. Stay tuned for more regular newsletters as I share book launch details and the countdown to publication day really truly begins!
And on to my favorite part, aside from the eels, the book recommendations! And it’s a lot, but it’s the end of the year so I feel less bad about celebrating books I have read and loved since the last newsletter.
You can find all these titles and maybe a few more over here. Thanks for reading this newsletter. You can always subscribe or share. I’ll see you next time for Crocodile Hungry updates, events, and reveals. Cheers!
A fun thing about having a strange or niche interest is that people like to send you articles and updates (shout out to Tina Hoggatt for tagging me for all the eel updates, I appreciate you). There was an amazing NYT article on moray eels with incredible eel puns, and a number of people made sure I saw it and that is a delightful thing that has developed out of this weird newsletter and obsession. You too, can read this amazing article:
And because I am a mom and I have youngish children, they, too, know about my weird interests, and so when I took my family to an aquarium at the end of June, my youngest child came barreling through the aquarium, yelling,
“MOM, COME SEE!! IT’S AN EEL!!”
*imagine that moment in Bridget Jones’s’ Diary when Tom yells, “FIGHT! well QUICK! IT’S A REAL FIGHT!” and it had that same energy but about eels*
and then my kid dragged me to the specific tank and down some stairs to show me the moray eel they spotted like it was the greatest thing in the world. Which is wonderful. Maybe I will save an eel aquarium picture for the end of this newsletter.
Some important eel news:
A couple found a rarely seen species of eel called Shrimp Eels in South Carolina. They are a burrowing eel— mostly hiding out in shallow waters, eating crustaceans, generally unbothered and unseen by people— essentially they are a pandemic champion. Twenty-five points to Shrimp Eels for model pandemic behavior. To be clear, the couple in the article did not discover the Shrimp Eels— the Shrimp Eels are not well known, not interested in being known.
Remember last month when I was like, I need to disconnect, I need to be an eel, this is me method acting, eels don’t care about social media! Well, I guess I’m still using social media, but eels are great and weird and do not care at all about what Sharon did over the weekend. And that seems noble to me. Which is funny because this same Shrimp Eel article was like they are reclusive but also, “o.O these scary-looking fish!”
A fun thing I’ve been doing is noting when eels are used as metaphors in books. Maybe this doesn’t actually happen very much, maybe it happens more now that I’m looking for it. But anyway, I am generally surprised at the usage of eels as a metaphor or shorthand for evil or disturbing in writing. Please let me know if you read a book and the description is like, “his eel-like smile,” and then the character murders or nearly murders another character. I feel like this happens a lot now that I’m keeping tabs on it. I am also beginning to question my reading choices.
Summer Reading Recs
Sato the Rabbit is a beautiful picture book, with little vignettes and Sato’s adventures chock-full of imagination and play. It’s a dreamy book with magical illustrations, and the smaller trim size is perfect for little hands. I love it.
I feel like after a year of being stuck inside with the whole family that How to Apologize was a very necessary and helpful book— perfect for all ages and everyone who needs a little guidance in apologizing— it’s all of us, we all need guidance.
Tokyo Ever After was a wonderful escape of a read. Any book that can transport me and have me laughing out loud at best friend antics is perfection. Also shout out to Reese and her bookclub, truly excellent book club choices, and I love that she has a YA choice each month too.
I love these Bumpy Rumps books. Board books are tricky… it’s better if they sound nice, with rhythm and rhyme, and I think they’re even better if you can sing and make all sorts of noises. That is what I thought I wanted in a board book, until. . . BUMPY RUMPS! The premise is so silly that the whole thing makes me giddy. It is just touching butts. I have learned (as an irl bookseller) that not everyone is amused about this, and not everyone wants to touch animal butts. They can have the board book classics. You and me can have these hilarious rump board books. This is so funny to me! you can feel all the bumps! and they. are. butts!!! A little weird but(t) brilliant.
This summer has the been the summer reading of R.F. Kuang and her Poppy War trilogy. I love an excellent fantasy series and this has everything. The Poppy War follows the history of 20th century China with the addition of gods and monsters. The novels are about war and destruction and vendettas and colonizing westerners and power and magic and friendship and loyalty and trust and religion, and I really really liked these books! I usually spend so much time reading children’s books that I was like, wow, this is a book that is for adults, like there is definitely a lot of violence. But it’s a fantastic, well-written, thought-provoking series. There is still time in the summer to make your way through this trilogy, it’ll be worth it, I promise.
Vampenguin is the right amounts of dark humor and adorableness that is exactly what I want in a picture book. It’s a hilarious switching places kind of story as the youngest member of the dracula family finds themselves in the penguin enclosure, and a penguin finds themselves on a tour of the zoo with the vampire fam. It’s perfect.
Writing Life
I am writing a little bit. As a treat. I am getting better at realizing that the writing is the writing and that is fun in and of itself, and I am making peace with the reality that lots of writing is for writing is for writing. And that’s how it should be.
I am also mostly avoiding the novel I’ve been working on for over two years. I had some great feedback on that project, and I’ve been slowly revising and piecing things together while tearing them apart at the same time. Revising is a weird way of working. I feel like I’m putting together a big emotional machine piece by piece but without any directions, but then I’m missing a few pieces, but I also have some extra parts or whatever that I don’t actually need. But I’m not sure what I’m missing and what is extra. And the big emotional machine won’t work if I put the parts in the wrong order, so I might have the right parts, but then I also have to move them around?? I honestly don’t know how people write.
Which is why I have a shiny new project (this is not that new, but an idea I had over a year ago, so like patina new project) I am trying really really hard to outline. But it’s because that project is fun! and not difficult! and doesn’t even know it’s a big emotional machine with no directions! And I’m not stuck in the weeds and planning and plotting and trying to piece together the structure, and that feels fine, because I’m still building it, I’m gathering the pieces, and I’m attempting to outline and write the instructions as I plan, so maybe, just maybe, I can picture what this project will look like and map it all out.
But mostly, I am still trying to be kind to myself about writing and revising. I work when I can. And it slowly adds up. If one project is stuck, I pivot. I’m not making a lot of work right now, but I am making progress.
I was able to reunite with a lot of my grad school friends and we talked books and life and writing and listened to some inspiring lectures together, and we walked around the lakes and we ate delicious food and oh my goodness it was wonderful. And it was all nourishing and good and I was ready for that boost and rejuvenation both for me but also for my writing.
I hope you find that boost you need for all the daily things and for whatever you’re working on.
Book Announcements
The publication date for my debut picture book, Crocodile Hungry has moved to February 15, 2022. It is the great pandemic publishing delay, but it means my picture book is now an Aquarius. A progressive individual. A water bearer. Honestly, this is going to be perfect for Crocodile Hungry.
This doesn’t change anything as far as pre-orders go or anything like that. Just queued up with printers across the ocean and the wait is a little longer than planned. C’est la vie.
I can’t believe you are still here! I broke my website and then I had to fix it, so I made it quirky and fun. I kinda love it. I am making all kinds of digital collages now.
Thank you for reading! If you’re not subscribed, you can subscribe and then you’ll get the next newsletter straight to your inbox— no promises on when! Just a promise of the next one.
If you think someone might like this newsletter you can share it. Everyone could use some eel content from your friendly children’s book author who is not at all a scientist.
Happy reading. Happy writing. Happy to be curious about the world but mostly curious about eels. As promised, here is the eel my youngest child chased me down to share with me:
She’s beautiful. Be glad I didn’t include the 6 minute short film.
It has been about nine months since the last newsletter!
Either I am very bad at this or I have a newsletter schedule that is about the same gestation period for a human being. I think I might be bad at newsletters.
Since this is an Eel Report, who knows how long it takes for an eel to develop because scientists don’t actually know– haven’t actually witnessed spawning. They have ideas and best guesses, but no direct observations. There’s still enough mystery around the developmental and reproductive stages of eel life that it is a best scientific guess scenario. And I love that. I love that we don’t actually know.
There could be tiny hats, a party, a specific phase of the moon. No idea. Or I should say, no certainties. There are probably not tiny hats, but I would like to imagine that there are.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how information is so readily available. How people know things. Or easily access information in order to know things. You can listen to any song you want anytime you want to. There are apps for identifying fish. There are probably apps for identifying eels! I looked up all this information about eels and spawning from my home where there are absolutely zero eels. Every phone can be a dictionary or a camera or social network. And as much as I enjoy learning new things and following along with current events, I’m kind of over it?
Maybe this is coming off of a year in quasi-lockdown with kids and screen time overtaking our lives. Maybe I have subscribed to one too many news outlets. Or maybe I am just tired of all the phone usage (it’s a lot, like an embarrassing amount). But I wonder if I’ve lost some sense of wonder and awe and mystery because all the answers seem to be right here. I guess what I am looking for is the need to slow down, to process what’s going on, to have time to wonder, to make time to be still. To disconnect.
And maybe this past year was supposed to be slowed down. But it wasn’t necessarily that, either. It was (and still is) a pandemic!
I think what I’m trying to articulate is the speed of information and media and content and best practices and activities and events and how quickly everything is thrown at us and then the next thing and the next thing and it’s like I don’t know how to sit with anything right now. News or information, activities, or otherwise. I’m not sure how to sit with my writing. I’m not sure how to sit with my stories. I am not sure how to turn it all down.
I think maybe my writing and my brain need to rewire themselves a little bit. I don’t have to fill in all the answers or know all the things in the moment. This isn’t a race. Writing and reading and work and life and living. We’re not supposed to be racing through it. I can wonder and wander. And I think that that is what I need. Is this way too long to type: I think I am burnt out despite not having done anything aside from basic necessities?
How are you doing with all of this? What do you need? Are we all burnt out? Just me?
Maybe I need to take some cues from my friends, the eels, and live mysteriously for a bit. Unobserved, disconnected, just swimming along in the Sargasso Sea being mysterious for thousands of years.
Reading Life
Despite my lack of attention span and inability to complete longer projects right now, I do have some book recommendations for books that I’ve read recently and loved.
XOXO – This made me want to go to Koreatown in LA and then all around Seoul. A delightful read about k-pop, music, family, being true to yourself and chasing love.
Crying in H Mart– Heartbreaking memoir about mothers, daughters, and grief. How Korean food is the foundation of a complicated yet loving relationship.
The Fire Keeper’s Daughter – My favorite young adult book of the year. Complex. Beautifully drawn characters in an Ojibwe community in the upper MI peninsula.
Watercress – A beautiful picture book. Jason Chin’s artwork is incredible as always. Beautiful family story about survival and connections to family heritage and past.
The Rock From the Sky– I love what Jon Klassen is able to do and explore here. A story about impending doom, nothing, and everything all at once. Perfection!
The Capybaras – I feel like European books lean into metaphor more easily than US picture books. And this one tells the story of outsiders with heart and humor.
Blackout – A wonderful collection of interconnected love stories that all take place during a NYC blackout. The representation is excellent. This book is delightful.
Hunt, Gather, Parent – I listened to this, and it’s really made me think about my parenting practices and culture of western parenting. Excellent.
Grandpa Across the Ocean – I love all of Hyewon Yum’s books, but I loved this sweet story about a child getting to know their grandparent and creating that relationship.
Some fun Announcements
Crocodile Hungry, a picture book that I made with illustrator, John Martz, is available to pre-order! You can pre-order it wherever books are sold, but if you pre-order it from my local indie bookstore, I will 100% sign it. I’m so grateful to my editor and publisher, Tundra Books, for taking a chance on this story. I hope y’all will love it.
Here’s a fun interview I did for the cover reveal for Crocodile Hungry over at The Storyteller’s Inkpot.
You can follow what I’m doing on twitter or instagram. Hopefully I am quieter over there in the next couple of months, but you can gentle tell me to log off if you see me extremely online. And you can check out my picture book debut group on twitter and instagram to see book updates from me and a wonderful group of picture book makers.
If you’d like to subscribe to this newsletter, I’d be honored. The schedule is a mystery! Like our dear eels, the namesake of this newsletter.
I know it’s September already, it’s fine. Getting by with children’s book author, Eija Sumner.
Welcome back to the Eel Report! I guess today we’re going to look at how eels swim, because it’s my newsletter, and we might as well talk about that before we get into robots. When I think about fish, I usually think about them having fins on each side, pectoral fins, a fin along the top of their body, their dorsal fin, their tail or caudal fin, and the fins along the bottom of their body, usually pelvic fins closer to their head and an anal fin closer to the tail.
I once had a fish science class that I took when I realized I needed like two science credits to complete my undergraduate degree, and I hope my fish science teacher is proud of me writing about dorsal and pectoral fins in this newsletter. I loved that class.
Anyways, eels have a continuous fin along the top of their body, so it’s almost like if the dorsal, pectoral, and caudal fins are all combined into one long fin that eels use to propel their body. Eels are anguilliform swimmers, which sounds very fancy, but it really is named after themselves because Anguilliformes is the scientific order that eels belong to. Anyway, anguilliform swimming means eels undulate their whole body, or mostly their whole body when they swim, because of this wave like motion that propels them, they can swim forward and backward.
I believe some dogs are anguilliform waggers. I knew a basset hound who most definitely was an anguilliform wagger, undulating his whole little basset body every time he was happy. Remember in my first newsletter where I said I wasn’t a scientist? Well, if it wasn’t obvious, it is now.
Here is a wild video of an eel swimming forwards and then backwards:
Now that we’ve got the basics of anguilliform swimming we’re going to shift to robotics. I am assuming you have seen little video clips of robots—like the terrifying robot dog, Spot, and his rectangular yellow body that is the stuff of futuristic nightmares. But this is not a dog newsletter, it is an Eel Report, and guess what I have found—an eel robot. At first, I stumbled upon an article:
It goes in depth into the mechanics of how an eel swims, there is quite a bit of math involved . . .
But I was reading this article, and was like, okay, so what’s the goal? And readers, the goal is of course to make an eel robot. I was wondering if scientists and engineers had already done that and yes, yes, of course they have.
I like this eel robot that collects data about the water:
And I think this eel robot in development is really interesting, but I imagine it would be eaten.
I think if I was a fish and I saw a little translucent eel robot I would probably take a bite.
Reading Life
I guess it shouldn’t be surprising that I am having a hard time reading. But that hasn’t stopped me from acquiring books! If there is one thing that I have comfort bought during this pandemic, it is books. And cinnamon bears. And blue tortilla chips. Okay three things. Maybe in a later newsletter I will meticulously rank cinnamon bear brands which I had only eaten occasionally before, but for the past couple months they are now my main source of nutrition.
Back to reading, it has been so hard for me to focus on reading. To read a novel. To read a book. Audiobooks have been a godsend, picture books, poetry, cookbooks. So here’s what I’ve been reading this month:
Second Banana, by Blair Thornburgh, illustrated by Kate Berube, is a sweet and hilarious book about a class play and also about disappointment. Second Banana wants to be the star, she wants more lines, she wants to be the ONLY banana! I’m not trying to share too many spoilers, but I have never identified more with a character than with First Banana.
Big Poppa’s Time Machine by Daniel Bernstrom and Shane W. Evans is a beautiful story about African American history, family history, oral storytelling, and also about fear, and facing those fears with the support and strength of your ancestors behind you. I wonder what kind of stories kids can ask their grandparents and their elders that might help kids navigate or inform what they’re experiencing right now.
Julie Fogliano and Jillian Tamaki are some of my absolute favorite picture book makers. Julie’s poetry, explorations, and observations in picture books are lovely. I have been a Jillian Tamaki fan for over a decade, from comics and graphic novels to picture books. my best friendshowcases all my favorite things about writing for children. It is about wonder and a complete embracing of the moment; it is about connection and imagination. It’s beautiful. And I love it. The pickle page lives up to and deserves all the hype.
Ray by Marianna Coppo is so funny and surprising. A quirky and beautiful little book about a light bulb, and about perspective and how you fit into your world and how you see yourself in the world. Marianna is a genius. I think books about inanimate objects are difficult to write and they create so many challenges for the reader and storyteller, but between Ray and Petra, Marianna Coppo makes it look easy.
You all thought you might get zero eel content in the book recommendations, but nope! I have more eel content! Yoshi’s Feast by Kimiko Kajikawa, illustrated by Yumi Heo is a lovely tale about community and working together, and of course there are boiled eels at the center of the conflict (and resolution). It’s also a story about paying people for their work—and it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about. About consumption and value. About who is doing the work. About who is getting paid—or not. About who is getting taking advantage of. And about using your labor power. Am I reading into things?? Maybe. I did just watch the historic NBA player strike, so maybe I’m inspired. But when one neighbor doesn’t value the work of the other, doesn’t want to pay for the work they enjoy . . . well, things get eel-y out of hand.
I’ve been looking for books about fear, about worries, about unknowns, because *wildly points fingers at everything happening* and I liked Don’t Worry, Little Crab by Chris Haughton. This is a sweet and vibrant story about a scared little crab, and I think it’s such a great read aloud as the crabs go tic-a-tic, tic-a-tic over the rocks and on their way to the ocean. A nice book for big changes and new beginnings. Only drawback, zero eels.
What if I just started rating books on whether or not they have eel content? I’m not there yet. We’ll see. 5/5 about eels. 4/5 eel metaphor. 4/5 eels in the illustrations. 3/5 eels but they’re depicted negatively. 2/5 could’ve used an eel. 1/5 no eels, no context for eels. I don’t know. I’m still working on this ranking system. Most of the manuscripts I have written utterly fail with this ranking system.
Pasta Grannies is a beautiful cookbook— part biography, part cultural heritage, lots of pasta. I didn’t realize it started as a youtube channel—as a way to preserve recipes and oral histories and a little web series going into the homes of Italian grandmothers who share their pasta recipes. This is all the things I love. All my favorite tv shows are about day-to-day relatively mundane (not to me!) activities. Give me the drama of someone planting a full-sun shrub in partial shade! Anyway. I haven’t made my own pasta yet, but I have taken inspiration from some of these Pasta Grannies recipes.
If you thought you might want to read about a plague fantasy during a pandemic, then I have a young adult duology for you! The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen is the first book in a plague fantasy duology, but The Faithless Hawk just published this August, and I have never downloaded an audiobook so quickly. I did so much laundry while trying to find things to do around my house so I could listen to this second book. It has an intricate power structure and caste system. It has magic. It has a corrupt government. A little bit of betrayal. A little bit of court intrigue and games. A dead army. Characters who collect teeth. And hair. And of course, it has the plague.
I haven’t read Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston in fifteen years, but I thought I would try and follow along with an online book club, Read a Book! with Kara, and reread it. I’m slowly making my way through the novel, way too late to watch the book discussion live, but grateful for the linked video. I’m keeping track of all of the books in this club and filing them away to see if I can keep a date and finish a book in time for discussion.
I did read Clean Getaway by Nic Stone for my own local kidlit bookclub, but then I missed the book club discussion because what is time. Clean Getaway is the first middle grade novel from Nic Stone, and it’s a bit of a mystery and a bit of an adventure while also carefully examining race, prejudice, and privilege as William ‘Scoob’ Lamar goes on a road trip with his white G’ma. Scoob gets dragged into G’ma’s past, as they follow her old Green Book, and the stories she shares of her own history with Scoob’s Black G’pop. Scoob’s G’ma is grappling with mistakes she’s made, the privilege she’s wielded and the trouble she can’t help but get into, and who gets the blame. A great book to break down for a group discussion.
Sometimes there are moments in an audiobook where you just know that the audio adds something extra, something the print book couldn’t achieve on its own. There’s a lullaby that is sung in the Mañanaland audiobook and it’s so lovely. I played that section of the audiobook over and over again. Mañanaland by Pam Muñoz Ryan is about hope and what it means to emigrate to somewhere new, to seek refuge, to fight for a new life. The reader follows Maximiliano as he chases his past as well as his future into Mañanaland to help a young refugee. It’s a beautiful story. There’s this moment when Max realizes he has all the tools and information he needs, because it’s all been passed down in stories he has been told his whole life. I love that, how stories can guide us. It reminded me of Jacqueline Woodson’s Show Way picture book.
We Dream of Space by Erin Entrada Kelly is a beautiful middle-grade novel set in January 1986 about three siblings: Cash, Fitch, and Bird, each trying to find their own refuge in a dysfunctional family, all while they study space and prepare for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger. Erin Entrada Kelly carefully shapes each character, the ways they orbit around their parents and their lives at school, then she pushes the characters out of orbit, forcing them to crash and grapple with who they are. It’s a great historical novel, the way Fitch escapes at the arcade, Cash and the 76ers and Dr. J, and Bird dreaming of space and wanting to be NASA’s first female shuttle commander, and what the launch of the Challenger means to her as she tries to hold everything together.
I listened to a lot more audiobooks to read this past month. I usually use a combination of overdrive from my public library and libro.fm from my indie bookstore. Libro.fm supports indies and has a membership a lot like Audible— if you’re looking to jump ship from Amazon.
Writing Life
If I could pick one mantra for the month of August, it would be to focus on what I can control.
This past month has been especially difficult. I don’t know if it’s the August heat. If it’s the covid19 pandemic. Politics. The internal attacks on the US Post Service. America grappling with its systemic racism. The attacks on our political systems. Trying to understand and prepare for the upcoming school year. Jacob Blake.
So I’ve been trying to focus on what I can control. For my family, that meant choosing online-only schooling. For political unknowns, that meant triple-checking I’m registered to vote, and volunteering to be a poll worker for the November election. For reading and book buying, it means choosing which stories to spend time with and uplift, as well as supporting Black-owned bookstores. Where to donate to support Black lives and Black communities. And for everything else, it has meant eating so many cinnamon bears. Because I think that helps.
Along with the business of writing, there are variables that seem to change and are out of my control when it comes to publishing. So, I’m trying really hard to focus on what I can control.
I can control when I wake up. I can control whether or not I have time to write, to create. Writing is more difficult than normal right now, which, that is saying something! I’m not a fast writer. I don’t have a lot of extra time in my day, but if I make enough time in the morning, I can usually get some words. And that’s the goal, right? I love this Nina LaCour quote, “Some words, most days.”
I cannot control what’s happening in publishing, with agencies, editors, budgets, marketing, printing, all of it . . . but I can wake up extra early. I can give myself enough time to write in the morning. Because the time and the writing, even if it’s really slow, that’s what I can control.
It doesn’t mean the writing is necessarily easier! It doesn’t mean I’m suddenly churning out words and pages. I’m not. But I’m directing my time towards what I can control.
Sometimes there are nice, unexpected surprises along the way! This past month I got to see rough illustrations for my 2022 picture book, Crocodile Hungry, and that was delightful. John Martz is such a fantastic illustrator and cartoonist, and I think y’all are going to love everything he is adding to this story.
What I’m Doing
Literally nothing. I’m kidding. I’m staring at my phone. I’ve developed an eye twitch. I’m feeding my children. I’m going to work. I’m wearing a mask. I’m playing badminton. I’m eating cinnamon bears.
My garden is growing and I need to figure out what to do with all this swiss chard. It is very exciting pulling up carrots and beets. There is an added layer of suspense and joy from pulling something up from the ground not knowing what it will look like, will it be ripe, will it be ready to harvest. Who knows. Let’s find out.
Here’s to you and whatever you’re cultivating. Make time for it. Take naps. Drink water. Eat an occasional cinnamon bear. Stay curious. Find some eel content. Pre-order books. Seriously, print runs are lower right now due to printing issues, so it’s really helpful to pre-order books, not only to support the author, but to guarantee you’ll get a book near its release date.
If you’re new here, thanks for making it all the way to the end! I’m honored. You can:
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!
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 Eelsby 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!
