CELEBRATE THE EARTH: AUTHOR VISIT AT ECOLE BILINGUE, Berkeley, CA

Ecole Bilingue School Garden, Berkeley, CA

A week ago on Tuesday I had a terrific visit with the kindergarten, first, and second graders at Ecole Bilingue in Berkeley, California. This was my second visit this year—the first was in March when I presented my book, KEEPER OF THE LIGHT, to the upper grades, a good fit for studies of California history, and in particular, women’s history.

The main focus of my presentation this time was my book PLANTING A GARDEN IN ROOM 6, timed to coordinate with Earth Month and Earth Day. Ecole Bilingue has long had an extensive school garden, including a pair of chickens, who wander freely among the planting boxes. At night and on rainy days they go into a coop where they have nest boxes.

One of the school chickens.

Learning about the plants in the garden and how they grow is part of the school curriculum. The garden also is home to a tortoise. 

Tortoise in the school garden.

Ecole Bilingue is a bilingual school where children learn in both French and English. (I don’t speak French so my presentation was in English.) I have a special connection to EB because my granddaughter Paige was a student there from pre-school through middle school. It is always a pleasure to visit EB and see many of her former teachers and meet the new staff as well. I especially thank Emily Kaltenbach, the English Program coordinator for arranging my visit and making sure that everything ran smoothly. 

Ecole Bilingue, Berkeley, CA.

BACK TO SCHOOL WITH CHICKENS

Author Carolyn Combs blog for Sept 2021

I was pleased to discover my book HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6 featured on author Carolyn Combs blog. Each month she presents books about a different animal. The theme for September 2021 was AN-ANIMAL-A-MONTH: CHICKENS. 

Many thanks to Carolyn Combs! Check out her blog and learn about my book and four other fascinating books about chickens and their relatives! 

STEAM Project: The Egg is Hatching!

When a chick is ready to hatch, it uses its beak to poke a hole in the shell. In my book, Hatching Chicks in Room 6, you can see photos of real chicks in the process of hatching. In this art project ou can create your own hatching chick.

You will need:
Yellow construction paper, about 12 by 18 inches.
Brown construction paper, about 12 by 18 inches.
A small piece of orange construction paper, about 4 inches square.
Pencil.
Scissors.
Glue.
Black marker.

1. Draw a large egg shape on the yellow paper. Cut it out. Use the pencil to trace around it to make another egg shape on the brown paper. Cut it out. Make a small hole in the middle of the brown paper.
2. Spread glue around the edge of the yellow egg. Put the brown egg on top and press to fasten the two pieces of paper together.
3. Carefully tear the paper around the hole, pulling the pieces back to reveal the yellow paper underneath.
4. Use the marker to draw two black eyes.
5. Fold the orange paper in half to make a triangle. Fold under two corners and glue on to make a beak.

Your chick is ready to hatch!

Caroline Arnold interview with Cybils:

After my book Hatching Chicks in Room 6 won the Cybils Award for Elementary Non-fiction, I did an interview with Cybils blog editor Melissa Fox. It was published on the Cybils blog on March 27, 2018. Caroline Arnold interview with Cybils:

Do you have plans to keep chickens after learning about their care along with Room 6?

A number of years ago, before I moved to Los Angeles, I lived in the country with my family and we kept a flock of chickens. Watching the children in Room 6 care for their chickens reminded me of this experience. Now that I live in the city, it is not practical to keep chickens, so the answer is no, I do not have plans to keep chickens.

What do you think is the most valuable thing students learn from studying chickens in the classroom?

Among the many valuable lessons learned from hatching chicks in the classroom is being able to witness the life cycle process–from incubating the eggs, to seeing the shells break open, to watching the chicks grow from fluffy balls to fully feathered chickens. It is one thing to be told that chicks grow in eggs, but another to actually see an egg hatch with your own eyes.

How do you keep your research organized?

I have a box system to keep my research organized. Each book I write has its own box, which is where I put my notes, letters, brochures, print-outs from my computer, and anything else pertinent to the book. My digital photos are kept in folders in my computer.

What challenges did you face working with photos instead of your usual collage illustrations?

Every photographer will tell you that the two most difficult subjects are children and animals-- because they don’t stay still and they don’t take direction! My secret was to take LOTS of pictures. The challenge of a book like this is that the story takes place in real time so I had to get the photos I needed as they happened. There was no going backwards. Photographs give an immediacy to the story and help make the reader feel part of the action.

If you don’t mind telling us, what’s next for you?

When I was in Mrs. Best’s classroom working on Hatching Chicks in Room 6, I noticed that the children were also learning about insects and the process of metamorphosis. It occurred to me that this could be the topic of another book. So the following year I was back in Room 6 learning about painted lady butterflies and how they grow from tiny eggs to beautiful adult butterflies. That book, Butterflies in Room 6, will be published in January 2019.

An Egg is Beautiful

“I don’t know of anything in the world more wonderful to look at then a nest with eggs in it. An egg, because it contains life, is the most perfect thing there is. It is beautiful and mysterious.”
---E.B. White, author of Charlotte's Web and a life long admirer of chickens and eggs. To him, "the egg is all."
As we celebrate spring, let us appreciate the egg, the perfect symbol for the renewal of life.

Read more about the life and work of E.B. White in Melissa Sweet's excellent biography, Some Writer! The Story of E.B. White (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016).

NEW BOOK! Hatching Chicks in Room 6, Official Publication Day

HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6, Text and Photos by Caroline Arnold (Charlesbridge, 2017)

TA-DAH! Today is the official publication day of HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6!
On May 12, 2014, I was invited to do an author visit to Haynes Center for Enriched Studies elementary school in West Hills, California, in honor of Amy Werner, a librarian who had worked for many years in schools in the area. After my presentation, Jennifer Best, a kindergarten teacher at Haynes, asked me if I had ever written a book about hatching chicks. Each spring, she brought eggs to her classroom and hatched chicks. But, she told me, she couldn’t find any books that were written at the right level for her kindergarten students. I said I hadn’t written any books about chickens, although I had written a number of books about other kinds of birds. I liked the idea of a book about hatching chicks, and a year later I was in Mrs. Best’s classroom learning about eggs and chicks and documenting the process with photos. HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6 is the result of that project.

I thank Jennifer Best and her students for sharing their chick hatching experience with me. The children’s enthusiasm was contagious as they learned about chickens and eggs and cared for the growing chicks. I am extremely grateful to Jennifer for her wealth of knowledge about hatching chicks in the classroom. I couldn’t have done the book without her. I also thank the children and their families for their cooperation throughout the process. The fourteen chicks who are the stars of the book are now adult chickens. It was a remarkable journey watching them hatch and grow.
I also thank my editor Alyssa Pusey for her careful editing of the text, art director Susan Sherman for the very attractive and readable design of the book, and all the staff of Charlesbridge for their contributions to the project.

HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6 is available as both a hardcover book and an ebook. For details click HERE.
For more about the book, go to the Hatching Chicks page at my website: http://www.carolinearnoldbooks.com/hatchingchicks.html

HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6: Coming January 10, 2017!

I am delighted to have an advanced copy of my new book Hatching Chicks in Room 6 (Charlesbridge, 2017.) I think it looks terrific!  (It is already available for pre-order on Amazon.) Stay tuned for more about the book after the official publication date, January 10, 2017.

HATCHING CHICKS IN ROOM 6
Author: Caroline Arnold
Photographs by Caroline Arnold
Age: 3-7 years
Pages: 40
Publisher: Charlesbridge Publishing, 2017 (available January 10, 2017)
ISBN: ( Hardcover ): 9781580897358

From the flap:
In 21 days, chicks will hatch in Room 6! A hen laid the eggs. Mrs. Best brought them to school and put them in an incubator. Soon the chicks will PECK, PUSH, and POP! right out of their shells. The kindergarteners are counting down to hatching day. When it happens, they'll be ready.

Follow a classroom of kindergartners as they participate in a popular activity: hatching chicks. Readers learn about the life cycle of a chicken, incubating eggs, watching them hatch, and raising the chicks until they are old enough to return to the chicken coop.

Simple text and close-up photographs tell the story. Back matter includes answers to questions about chicks, chick vocabulary, links to chicks online and further reading about chicks.