Writing Exercise: USING THE FIVE SENSES, 1

I recently cleaned out my files and found various materials that I had used when teaching my class in writing for children in the UCLA Writer’s Program. Here is a writing exercise called “Using the Five Senses, 1.” (Another example of this exercise will post next week.)
 
Most of us have no trouble writing visual descriptions, but we often forget to include our other senses in our descriptions.  This exercise focuses on using all five senses to make your writing come alive.  Choose an object, place, person, or animal, and write five sentences about it, one sentence (or two) for each sense-- sight, sound, touch, taste and smell. 

Here are some examples from my book A Walrus’ World.

•     Sight: The baby walrus’ plump body is covered with short fur.

•     Smell: The mother walrus sniffs her baby and rubs his back with her whiskers.

•     Sound: Splash! He tumbles into the water. Splash! His mother dives in too.

•     Touch: Using her whiskers, she feels a clam.  Then she grabs the shell with her lips and sucks out the meat.

•     Taste: Their sleek bodies slide through the cool, salty water.  (From A Killer Whale’s World.)

You can write more complex descriptions if you like.  The important thing is to immerse yourself in the scene and use all your senses to convey the essence of that scene to your reader.  To find out if you are using sensory descriptions in your writing, go through one of your stories with a highlighter, and mark each time you use one of your senses.  Note which sense you use most often!

A Walrus’ World and A Killer Whale’s World are in my series Caroline Arnold’s Animals published by Picture Window Books (Capstone.) 

Illustration by Caroline Arnold from A Killer Whale's World

WALRUS MOTHER AND BABY Coloring Page

A walrus mother has a baby, called a calf, about 15 months after mating. At birth, a walrus calf weighs 100 to 160 pounds (45 to 72 kilograms) and is about 4.5 feet (1.4 meters) long.  The calf is almost the size of a person!
You can learn more about walruses in my book A WALRUS' WORLD (Picture Window Books, 2010.)
To print a coloring page of a walrus mother and baby, click here.

CLC Award: The Best Written and Illustrated Suite of Nonfiction for Children

Caroline and Marjorie Arnett at the CLC Gala

    Attending the annual author luncheon of the CLC (Council on Literature for Children in Southern California), is a fall ritual for me.  I think I have been to most of them over the years and I always look forward to it.  This year was the gala celebration of the organization’s 50th anniversary, held at the historic Romanesque Room in Pasadena.  I was so pleased to have my books A Polar Bear’s World, A Walrus’ World, A Moose’s World and A Bald Eagle’s World honored as The Best Written and Illustrated Suite of Nonfiction for Children and happy that so many of my friends were there to help celebrate at this special event.  Here are my remarks upon receiving the award: 

  I am truly honored.  It is especially nice to be here at the celebration of the 50th anniversary of the organization that I still think of as SCCLCYP.  Remembering what all the letters stood for, ...Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People... was a little like learning to spell Mississippi when I was in first grade–once you start, you just go as fast as you can until you get to the end.  I was not there at the beginning of SCCLCYP, but I do remember my first Author Luncheon 31 years ago in 1980.  It was held at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles and I remember being awed both by the elegant surroundings (there was a string quartet playing in the lobby) and the fact that this was my first professional event as a new author. I had just published my very first book, an easy read story about birds, and I was feeling totally intimidated by the roomful of other much more established authors.  I never imagined that one day I would be standing in front receiving an award.
   
The books that are being honored today are the last four in a series of twelve books published by Picture Window Books.  The first four in the series were about black and white animals, the next four about Australian animals, and these focus on animals that live in Alaska or the Arctic. 

Many of you know me as a writer specializing in books about animals and the environment.  For many years, I worked with photographers, including my husband, Art, who is here today.  With all of those books, I needed stories that lent themselves to photography.  That meant, no nocturnal animals, no underwater animals, no remote locations.  So many times I said to myself, “It would be so much easier if I could just do the art myself!”  Then I wouldn’t have to worry about backgrounds, I could set my stories in any location, and I could make the animals behave as I wanted. With the Picture Window Books animal series I finally had the chance. 

The books in this series are intended for children in the primary grades.  (They are also perfect in preschool)  The main story of each book is short and told from the point of view of a baby animal growing up in the wild.  Factual information not essential to the flow of the story is put in sidebars and in front and back matter.
    
For the illustrations in these books, I chose a cut-paper collage technique.  I wanted a poster-like look with bold colors that would make the images easy to see, even by a child in the back of the room when a teacher or librarian is reading the book aloud.  The essential parts of each illustration are the outlines.  Basically, as I do the art, I am drawing with scissors. I do, in fact, draw each image in pencil first, but the final result comes from cutting it out with my best sewing scissors. I typically cut out the animals first and then position them on a background.  I use flat colors, overlapping the paper in layers.  When the art is scanned for the book, a slight shadow around the edges of the paper creates a subtle 3-D effect.

I rely on photographs and personal observations of the animals as references for my drawings.  When possible, I like to observe animals in their natural habitats. I have been to Alaska and have seen both moose and bald eagles in the wild.  To learn about polar bears and walruses, I went to Sea World and the San Diego Zoo.  The wonderful thing about zoos is that you can see huge animals like these just inches away on the other side of the glass.   Basically, I discovered, walruses are huge lumps.  They are a bit like your living room sofa with tusks.  And yet, they are surprisingly agile in the water.  I also find nature films and video helpful in my research.  While I was working on the eagle book, I kept my second computer screen open to a live webcam at an eagle nest on Catalina island.  It was amazing.  In real time, I could watch the young chicks toddling around the nest waiting for their parents to bring them food, and then suddenly the adult eagle would arrive, swooping in with a fish in its talons. 

I never get tired of watching animals and learning about them.  I know from my school and library visits that kids love to learn about animals too.  I want to thank all the teachers and librarians and parents who put books like mine into the hands of children.  And I want to express my gratitude to the CLC for choosing my books for this very special honor today.  Thank you, Marjorie Arnett, for your great introduction.  And thanks to Barbara Metzenbaum and all the people on the award committee for choosing me to receive this award.

CLC Fall Gala and Book Award

I was pleased to learn that my books, A Bald Eagle’s World, A Moose’s World, A Polar Bear’s World, and A Walrus’ World (from the Caroline Arnold’s Animals series published by PictureWindow Books) have been awarded The Best Written and Illustrated Suite of Nonfiction for Children by the Children’s Literature Council of Southern California.  I will receive the award at the CLC Gala, Saturday, November 5^th.  The featured speaker at the luncheon was supposed to be Australian author, Mem Fox, author of Possum Magic and many other best-selling books but she has had to cancel.  Instead, the keynote speaker will be two-time Newbery winner, Lois Lowry.  I have heard her speak before and she is always outstanding.  The CLC (formerly known as SCCLCYP—Southern California Council on Literature for Children and Young People) is a non-profit organization that promotes greater interest in literature for children and young people and encourages excellence in the production and selection of books in that field. It will be celebrating its 50^th anniversary this year! The annual fall Gala honors southern California children’s book authors and illustrators.  Hope to see you there! 

The Gala will be from 12:30 to 4:00 pm, on Saturday, November 5^th at the Romanesque Room, 50 East Green Street, Pasadena, CA 91105.  Go to the CLC website for information and to make reservations.

I Love Maps

Sharing A Koala's World with a First Grade Class

I love maps.  As a child, on long car trips, I followed the road maps we got at gas stations, noting the distance between towns and calculating how long it would take us to get to the next one.  And I loved the maps in my geography books at school, locating far away places that I hoped to travel to someday.  In the books that I write, if there is the possibility of including a map, I always like to do so.  In the Caroline Arnold’s Animals series, published by Picture Window Books, a map showing where each animal lives is part of the back matter of each book.  A map of Australia in A Koala’s World can be seen above.  The challenge in A Polar Bear’s World and A Walrus’s World was that the maps had to be a polar view, which is unfamiliar to many children.
My book, The Geography Book: Activities for Exploring, Mapping, and Enjoying Your World, is filled with projects for children  including twelve activities that help them learn about maps.  You can have fun making a balloon globe, a contour potato and other projects.