Stephanie Roth Sisson is the author and illustrator of the new children's picture book biography Spring After Spring: How Rachel Carson Inspired the Environmental Movement. She also has written and illustrated Star Stuff: Carl Sagan and the Mysteries of the Cosmos, and has illustrated many other books. She lives in Florida and in Mauritius.
Q: Why did you decide to write a picture book biography of
Rachel Carson?
A: Just after my previous book, Star Stuff:
Carl Sagan and the Mysteries of the Cosmos, was published, I began
looking for another person to do a picture book biography on. Since science
seemed to be less valued in the general public in the U.S. at the time, and
especially environmental sciences, Rachel Carson seemed a nice fit.
She also has other attributes that seemed to speak to the
times: she was an introvert with something to say (as opposed to someone just
speaking loudly over everyone to make an impact), worked in what was considered
a man’s field at the time, and used facts to convey her message in a
poetic and easy to understand way, but was still able to change the way people
all over the world looked at the environment.
Rachel Carson’s story has been told many times, but I wanted
to tell it differently focusing on her childhood, making her more relatable to
children. One thing that I loved about both her life story and Carl Sagan’s is
that you can draw a clear line from the children they were to the adults they
became.
Q: Did you work on the text and the illustrations
simultaneously, or focus on one and then the other?
A: I am relatively new to writing. Before writing
Star Stuff, I had illustrated well over 65 books, so my process is
evolving. So far, I do a combination of moving back and forth
from sketching and writing and then finally putting text and story
together.
Picture books these days cannot be text-heavy (children have
shorted attention spans than they used to have), so I go through and see what
can be shown and what can be told and I try to have the pictures do most
of the heavy lifting.
While parents or teachers are reading the book to kids, they
are looking at the pictures and hopefully reading additional parts of the
story in the pictures themselves. The pictures and the words should be
doing different things and not repetitive.
For example, in Spring After Spring I begin with
showing a day (using mostly the change of light and the types of sounds
and animals associated with each time of day), then seasons, then years.
I repeat circles and cycles and connections on almost
every page and try to show the same kinds of animals that
are familiar to children. I zoom in and out of images to show the
relationship between the microcosm and the bigger picture. These are all
things that I show rather than tell.
Q: How much do you assume kids know about Rachel Carson
before coming to the book?
A: Absolutely nothing. I try to writing books where kids can
see the subject as a child and relate to that child and then see how that
person’s affinities, passions and lives lead them to do whatever they are
well known for. I want them to think about their own lives in that context.
Also, each book [looks at] another subject. In the
case of Star Stuff, we’re learning about astronomy, speculative science
and space exploration. In Spring After Spring, we are learning
about the seasons and about how the sounds in nature are a reflection
of the health of an ecosystem and about how ecosystems work.
Q: What do you hope kids take away from Rachel Carson’s
story, and what do you see as her legacy today?
A: I want kids to see that if you care about something, you
can make a difference using your talents and skills. Rachel did not want
to write Silent Spring. She was quite happy to continue writing her gorgeous
nature books and live in her cabin in Maine wandering the coast studying
the creatures that lived there.
But when she saw what she loved was in danger, she used her
skills and was very brave and wrote Silent Spring.
Silent Spring was the first time that and entire ecosystem
was talked about as being impacted by the actions of humans, not just one
species. What she wanted was for us to do careful research and
understand how we affect nature (and ourselves) through our actions.
Also very important was to point out that Rachel Carson
never said that there is no use for pesticides and herbicides. She is often
accused of wanting to eliminate them.
Her point was that we were using massive amounts of them
ubiquitously without regard to their effects. She was an advocate for their
wise use. She is still quite relevant today, especially with the lifting
of environmental protections and safeguards.
Q: What are you working on now?
A: I have another picture book biography in the works as
well as a completely different kind of picture book, but I’m not ready to tell
what the specific topics are yet!
Q: Anything else we should know?
A: That picture books (and books in general) are incredibly
important in shaping lives of kids. Ask adults about their favorite books
as a kid and they will be able to tell you and remember in some detail what
that book was and why it was important to them.
Several years ago, people in my industry thought that
tablets and screens were going to take the place of books, but the younger
generations are choosing real books over e-books.
Reading a book with a child creates a unique space to share
and connect. The book as a physical object with its pages and smell, etc., and
its ability to be shared and passed down make it special and timeless. Sharing
books with children is important and life-changing.
--Interview with Deborah Kalb
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