and also some reading and a publishing update

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.

If you want to pre-order my book, you can do that wherever books are sold. My local bookstore will have signed copies you can pre-order, and I’ll keep you posted about events and goodies as we get closer to the publication date!

Almost the End

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.

I apologize for the terrible pun

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 friend showcases 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.

No matter what is happening, there is always time for poetry. We might all be better off instead of doomscrolling on our phones if we read poetry instead. (Love to ignore my own advice.) I’ve got Bright Dead Things by Ada Limón on my bedside table. Which sounds a little dark but it’s not. And you don’t have to read it, I mean you can, but if you don’t pick up the book you should read How to Triumph Like a Girl, A New National Anthem, and What It Looks Like To Us and the Words We Use.

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!

— Eija

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

Welcome to The Eel Report & Other Things by children’s book author and eel enthusiast, Eija Sumner.

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