Elizabeth Rusch's many books for kids include Ready, Set...Baby!, The Music of Life, and the forthcoming Impact. Her work has appeared in a variety of publications, including Mother Jones and Smithsonian. She lives in Portland, Oregon.
Q: How did you come up with
the idea for Ready, Set...Baby!, and what age group do you think would especially
like it?
A: Ready, Set…Baby! is a read
aloud picture book for children ages 3-8 who will soon be welcoming a new baby
into the family. It features two big kids, Anna (age 8) and Oliver (age 5), who
describe what it is really like when a new baby joins the family and give
advice from an insider kid’s point of view.
I was a fan of Vicky Iovine’s
Girlfriend’s Guide to Surviving the First Year of Motherhood, and when I was
pregnant with my second child, I wanted a book like that to share with my then 3-year-old
son.
I checked out a bunch of new-baby
books from the library and couldn’t find what I wanted: something warm and
funny that would give him reassuring and useful insight from kids who had already
faced these experiences. So I wrote one!
Q: Did you need to do a lot
of research to write the book, or was it based on your own experiences with
your kids?
A: Both. I did talk with my
son when I was pregnant about what he thought it would be like when the baby
joined the family, and I asked him after my daughter was born what surprised
him. When I had a chance I slipped away to my desk and typed up his thoughts
and reactions and questions.
Also, for a column I wrote
for Child magazine, I interviewed a bunch of 6-year-olds about what advice they
would give to a friend who was going to become a big brother or sister. Their
answers were hilarious but also showed that young children see this experience quite
differently from how adults see it.
I also chatted with the
children of friends and neighbors who were expecting new babies. Before I knew
it, I had pages and pages of notes on how children view life with a new baby.
Q: One of your other new
books is The Music of Life. How did you learn about Bartolomeo Cristofori and
why did you decide to tell his story?
A: Wow, I don’t even remember
exactly where I first learned about Bartolomeo Cristofori. I just remember
reading a brief mention somewhere about him inventing the piano. I remember
thinking: “We know who INVENTED the PIANO?! That is so COOL. How come I have
never heard of him?”
That is often how books start
for me. My book For The Love Of Music: The Remarkable Story Of Maria Anna
Mozart started the same way. I saw a brief mention that Wolfgang Mozart had a
sister who was also a child prodigy and was his earliest inspiration and I
thought: “I didn’t know that!”
When I learned about
Cristofori I knew I wanted to take a similar approach as I did with the Mozart
book. I wanted to read and quote primary sources – letters, diary entries, and news
articles – to help me reconstruct these untold stories.
Q: Later this year, your book
Impact, about asteroids, will be published. What are some of the most surprising
things you discovered while researching this book?
A: I don’t want to scare you,
but did you know that there are an estimated hundred and fifty MILLION
asteroids soaring through our solar system big enough to level a city if they
struck Earth? Yikes, right?
Impact: Asteroids and The
Science of Saving the World is about scientists on a quest to find and track
all the asteroids that might be on a collision course with our planet – and about
people developing some pretty creative ideas on what to do if one is on the
way.
Another thing that surprised
me is that roughly once every day of the year, an asteroid makes it through our
atmosphere dropping rocks, called meteorites, onto the surface. That’s pretty
wild – every day space rocks are landing on Earth and most of time we don’t
even know it.
Q: What are you working on
now?
A: I’m working on another
Scientists in the Field book (like the asteroid book) – this one on the science
behind the Cascadia earthquakes (magnitude 8 and 9 earthquakes that have rocked
the Pacific Northwest 43 times in the last 10,000 years).
I’m also writing a really fun
picture book on dogs who are training to become avalanche rescue dogs. With
their agility and amazing sense of smell, these dogs can quickly sniff out
people buried deep under snow. And they are adorable.
I’m also working on a middle
grade novel called April Fool about the role of humor in life and death and a
YA documentary novel called I Will Stand With You about a high school ripped
apart by hate crimes.
Q: Anything else we should
know?
A: I have two more books
scheduled for publication, probably in 2018:
A picturebook about a girl who tends a special tree on her family’s tree
farm called Zee’s Tree and a picture book biography on a Mexican-American chemist
who saved our planet called Mario and the Hole in the Sky.
And I love donuts.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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