November 28, 2012
Good morning, and welcome to Writing Wednesday.
The Kilauea Volcano on Hawaii’s Big Island is once again spilling lava into the ocean. This volcano has been erupting continuously from its Pu’u O’o vent since 1983. However, it has been nearly a year since the lava flow traveled the seven-mile (11 kilometer) distance to flow into the ocean.
When hot lava meets cold ocean waves, there is a spectacular display of steam and smoke. Tourists are traveling from all over to visit the volcano to see this rare and beautiful sight.
Your Assignment: Look at this photograph and imagine that you are able to travel to Hawaii’s Big Island to see the volcano and lava flowing down to the ocean. Describe what it is like. What do you see? What do you hear? Smell? How does seeing the hot lava meet the ocean waves make you feel?
When you have finished writing, you can share it with your class, friends or family. Or you can post it here for everyone to read. Just click on the yellow "Comments" button at the bottom of this blog to post your writing.
Photo: Hugh Gentry / Reuters
Note to Educators: Today’s Writing Wednesday exercise is designed to use in support of CCSS Writing Standard #3: Write narratives to develop real or imagined experiences or events using effective technique, descriptive details, and clear event sequences.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 28, 2012
Today’s Cool Photo of the Week is of hundreds of Blue Morpho butterflies gathered on a tree trunk in the rainforest. The blue morpho (Morpho peleides) is one of the largest butterflies in the world, with a wingspan from 5 to 8 inches (12 to 20 centimeters). If you spread your fingers as wide apart as you can, that’s roughly the size of a morpho butterfly!
The blue morpho lives in the rainforests of Latin America, from Mexico to Colombia. They are only bright blue on top of their wings. The bottom side is a dull brown with many eyespots, so that when birds and larger insect predators are looking up from the ground, the morpho is camouflaged.
Airplane pilots flying over the rainforest have reported seeing huge groups of blue morphos sunning themselves on top of the forest canopy. What a beautiful sight that would be!
There is a photo of a Blue Morpho in my book BUTTERFLIES, where you can learn lots more about these beautiful creatures that smell with their antennae and taste with their feet. Or, you can click here for a video preview of the book.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 26, 2012
A gecko travels like Spiderman - using its sticky toe pads to walk up walls and across ceilings with ease.
While those toe pads may seem simple, they are spectacularly designed, with millions of tiny hair-like structures called septulae (SEP-too-lay) that help them cling to any dry surface. A single gecko’s toe pads can hold the weight of two humans!
Researchers have learned recently that this only works when the surface is dry. If a gecko gets wet feet, it loses its grip, along with its "Spiderman" powers!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 21, 2012
We are not going to do a Writing Wednesday post today because everyone here in the U.S. is preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday. It is a day when everyone pauses to think about all that they have and how fortunate they are.
My wife Liz and I have many, many blessings to be thankful for, not the least of which is the fact that we have loyal readers and writers like you all. It is a joy to create this blog for kids who love science and nature, and we want to take a moment today to thank you for everything you do, every day, to make our planet Earth a better place.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 21, 2012
I can hardly bring myself to call this the "Cool Photo of the Week." It is more like the ASTOUNDING photo of the week!
This shipwreck was long buried under the sand dunes on Fire Island - a barrier island off Long Island, New York. The force of Hurricane Sandy completely reconfigured the beaches of Fire Island, and exposed the bones of this wrecked schooner.
Park rangers think that it is the wreck of the Bessie White, which ran aground off Fire Island in either 1919 or 1922 - almost 100 years ago! The Bessie White was a four-mast Canadian schooner, went aground in heavy fog. The crew and the ship’s cat escaped in lifeboats, but they couldn’t save the ship or the tons of coal that it was carrying.
Seeing the sand rearranged to the point that this buried shipwreck is revealed really gives you an idea of how strong the winds and surf are during a hurricane.
Photo: Cheryl Hapke, USGS
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 16, 2012
Our booth is up and we will be exhibiting at the NCTE convention all weekend in Las Vegas. If you are here, please come by booth 347 and say hello.
I would love to show you my new eBook, A SHIPMATE’S GUIDE TO OUR SOLAR SYSTEM: EARTH, in our StarWalk Reader. As you can see by the way I am grinning here, I am just thrilled at the way it looks and sounds!
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 15, 2012
For today’s SeeMore Explorers posting, I decided to identify a bird that I see often at my bird feeder and on the nearby tree.
I love watching birds at the feeder, and I keep a bird identification book on my desk, which I use to figure out what I am seeing. The one I use is Stokes Beginner’s Guide to Birds, Eastern Region. There are lots of these kinds of books out there, and most organize the birds by color, so that it is quite easy to look them up. Just be sure that you are using a book specific to the part of the country where you live.
Isn’t this a gorgeous bird? Here’s what I wrote on my Observation Log:
The first thing I did was look for the red-headed woodpecker, because this bird certainly does have a red head! As soon as I looked, though, I realized that it was not a red-headed woodpecker. Those birds have a completely red head, all the way down to the shoulders - almost as if they are wearing a red hood.
Quite nearby in the bird identification book was the red-bellied woodpecker, and that is what my bird is. It seems like a strange name, but it turns out that this bird has an orange patch on its belly, and that is where it got its name.
I’d love to hear from my readers. What kind of birds do you see in the world around you? Which are your favorites?
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 14, 2012
Good morning, and welcome to Writing Wednesday! Today we’re going to look at a portion of a book called A PINKY IS A BABY MOUSE, written by Pam Muñoz Ryan and illustrated by Diane deGroat. 
In this book, the author is talking about the names for the babies of all different animal species, and she asks a question: What is a baby bat called?
Your Assignment: Read the excerpt below and do some research. Find out what a baby bat is called, and then work with other students or friends to write a few more sentences about what you think is interesting, beautiful, or NOT beautiful about a baby bat. When you are finished, click on the yellow "Comments" link below to post your writing, or share it with your class.
Note to Educators: Today’s Writing Wednesday exercise is designed to use in support of CCSS Writing Standard #7: Participate in shared research and writing projects. A PINKY IS A BABY MOUSE is one of the exclusive, recorded eBooks available in the StarWalk Kids digital collection. Click here for more information about signing up for a free, 60-day trial for your school.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 12, 2012
Yesterday was a very special day, because I went to the memorial service for the great writer Jean Craighead George. She died this year at age 92, and her daughter Twig told me that her mother had still been writing up until four days before her death. Isn’t that wonderful?
Jean grew up in a family of naturalists, in a house full of rescued wild animals. She once told an interviewer that when she started kindergarten she was shocked to discover that she was the only child who had a turkey vulture for a pet! She wrote in an essay for "Children’s Books and Their Creators": "I have discovered I cannot dream up characters as incredible as the ones I meet in the wilderness."
Jean was an outdoorswoman her whole life, and many fellow authors and editors who spoke about knowing her yesterday described trips they made with Jean to visit the wolves in Yellowstone National Park, to the great aquarium in New Orleans, and to observe whales migrating in Alaska. Amy Kellman, a librarian from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a longtime friend of Jean’s, quoted a line from one of Jean Craighead George’s books in which she was describing a peregrine falcon named Oxie, who "did things her own way." Kellman said that she always thought Jean was describing herself when she wrote about the independent falcon.Her son, Dr. Craig George, is a Senior Wildlife Biologist in Barrow, Alaska, working with bowhead whales. Craig told the gathering that just a few years ago his mother camped with them on unstable ice, at minus 20 degrees, during the bowhead census. "She was absolutely fearless," he said.
Jean Craighead George wrote more than 100 books. The most famous one was JULIE OF THE WOLVES. Have you ever read it? It is a wonderful story about a girl known as Miyax in her small Eskimo village; to her friend in San Francisco, she is Julie. When Miyax runs away from her village, she finds herself lost in the Alaskan wilderness. In danger of starving to death, Miyax survives by copying the ways of the wolves. She is soon accepted into their pack, and when she finally returns to her old life, she struggles to decide who she is - Miyax of the Eskimos—or Julie of the wolves?
Here is a passage from the story:
Miyax stared hard at the regal black wolf, hoping to catch his eye. She must somehow tell him that she was starving and ask him for food. This could be done she knew, for her father, an Eskimo hunter, had done so.
Jean Craighead George was a great supporter of the Wolf Conservation Center near her home in Chappaqua, New York.
At the end of yesterday’s memorial service, stories, we all sang "This Land is Your Land"......and then Twig asked for a minute of silence.
As we sat quietly, the doors in the back of the auditorium opened and a trainer leading a white wolf entered the room. We all rose to our feet as this gorgeous creature, from the wolf sanctuary that Jean Craighead George loved, took the stage and looked at us all. It was magical.
I admired Jean as a writer and a person. She was, and still is, an inspiration to my own writing. She will always remain one of the towering figures in children’s literature, one of the inspirational models for the rest of us in her field.
Photo: Rocco Staino / School Library Journal
Posted by: Seymour Simon
November 2, 2012
I am relieved, grateful and aware that we were extremely lucky in the aftermath of the Hurricane Sandy superstorm that has devastated communities all around us. We don’t expect to have power back for quite some time in my neighborhood, but amazingly, though there are downed trees all around us, our house was untouched. We were very, very fortunate, and our hearts ache for our friends and neighbors throughout the Northeast who are struggling to recover from terrible losses.
In the midst of all this sobering news, I was so happy to receive this update today from the staff at the Wolf Conservation Center in South Salem, NY. They wrote:
Although Hurricane Sandy did a number on our Center in South Salem, NY, everyone is safe and sound. Dozens of enormous trees fell victim to the storm’s powerful winds, tearing down several fences in their fall. Although several enclosures were compromised, the wolves remained safe and contained during the powerful storm.
And so the rebuilding begins.
Posted by: Seymour Simon
