Wombats Poop in Cubes
Photo credit: Dmitri Brant
Wombats are adorable. They are fantastic diggers. And they are the only animal in the world that leaves cube-shaped poop. (Everybody else does balls, tubes, or splats.)
Even more weirdly wonderful, they take the cubes of poop and arrange them into piles to mark their territory. Cubes are better than rounded shapes for this purpose because they don’t roll away.
This was not a fact that I managed to work into my new picture book, Wombat Underground, but it was so delightfully fascinating I felt I had to share it with you.
Read MoreThe Real Heroes
Jennings inoculating his first patient, eight-year-old James Phipps (who deserves a statue, too)
We put up statues to politicians and generals, but in a just world, people like Edward Jennings would have a statue on every corner. He created a true vaccine for smallpox, and the more I research pandemics, the more I understand how amazing his achievement was. This disease had been with us since ancient times and was capable of wiping out civilizations. Now? It’s gone. (Except for a few samples in laboratories which should be destroyed yesterday, if you ask me.)
Interestingly, he based his work on folk medicine practiced in Asia, where patients were immunized with pus taken from smallpox sores (it worked, though it was risky) and from the folk knowledge of farmers near his home, who insisted that, if they’d had cowpox, they were immune to smallpox (they were). So it was not just an individual epiphany, but an achievement built on observation and experimentation by countless others whose names science and history do not remember.
Read MoreThe Art of a Wombat
A sample of Charles’s warm, sweet, tender, richly colorful art
So excited that Charles Santoso has ageed to illustrate my upcoming picture book, Wombat Underground! I know he’ll give it both warmth and humor and pathos. It’s so great than an Australian artist will illustrate this story of fear and danger and community during the Australian bushfire season of 2019-20.
Read MoreWaiting for Words
At least it’s not too hard to social distance in Maine.
Sometimes it’s not easy to find your creative voice in the midst of dread. Like so many, I’m worried about high-risk relatives, anxious about whether I’m doing the right things to help, missing my beloved Maine community and all the small things we did to stay connected in our taciturn Maine ways.
It can be good to push through the panic and write, create, draw, sing, love. But sometimes it can also be right to take a step back, snuggle on the couch, and be gentle with yourself while the world swirls around you. In those times I lean on the creativity of others who’ve written us message from their own hard times and the fear in the center of their own hearts.
Books and stories will sustain us, whatever happens.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Readers will treasure the blossoming friendship between opposites in this whimsically illustrated tale. Short chapters and plenty of action make for an accessible and appealing reading experience. . . . Touching and inspiring.”
—Kirkus Reviews