GENRE: Humor, STEM/STEAM, Non-Fiction
WORDS: 588
Query:
Dear PB Party Judges, Editor and Agents,
Thank you for your work in creating opportunities through PB Party! I’m pleased to submit SMARTY PLANTS, a 588-word expository nonfiction picture book for budding botanists ages 6-10.
Plants don’t seem to do much. After all, they have no muscles, no voice, and no brain. But plants can react to threats, communicate with insects and other plants, recognize their relatives, learn, and even seem to do math. You might call them. . . SMARTY PLANTS.
SMARTY PLANTS uses the humorous approach found in Flower Talk (Levine/D’yans) to bring new fascinating plant facts to fans of Plants Fight Back (Amstutz/Evans) and Pretty Tricky (Kaner/Barron), while falling between the two in length and sophistication.
My curiosity and love for nature led me to degrees in biology and genetics, while my love of reading and writing led to my career as a picture book author. I especially love combining the two into books for kids that let them wonder and laugh. My debut picture book was published by Aladdin in 2018 and was a Texas 2 X 2 reading list pick for 2019-2020. I studied the craft of writing for children and teens through the Institute of Children’s Literature and was awarded a year-long mentorship with picture book author Jill Esbaum. I am a 2023 PB Party finalist and an active member of SCBWI who shares reading and writing joy with kids and adults through interactive story times, presentations, and workshops and as an Everybody Wins! reading mentor.
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Excerpt:
Plants don’t seem to do much.
Why?
No muscles.
No voice.
No brain.
But they can react, communicate, learn, and more.
In fact, you might call them. . .
smarty plants.
Smarty Plants Communicate
What do plants have to talk about? The same things as people.
[Plants: “How ya doin’?” “Think it’ll rain?” “How’s the family?”]
How do they do it?
Some use their roots.
What inspired you to write this story & what do you have in common with it:
A YouTube video of a Venus fly trap “counting” off the seconds before responding (or not) to a stimulus made me wonder what other things in nature use math and I began research for a book tentatively titled “Nature Counts.” But when I dug into the research, I was astounded at the ways plants communicate, learn, and recognize their family members in spite of not having a brain. I wanted to share that sense of amazement with kids and hopefully instill curiosity about the natural world and perhaps inspire them to make their own discoveries.
5 Comments
Leave your reply.