Boo!
A little treat for Halloween–a short short story called “Cat’s Paw.”
The boy sat up in bed, listening.
First a feathery sound. Like a dry paintbrush whispering across paper.
Then footsteps softer than his own heartbeat.
Finally a thump more felt than heard as something landed on the bed.
The boy groped for a lamp. He touched the switch. He looked at the cat sitting by his feet.
He sighed. “It’s you. I thought it was something scary.”
“Silly,” said the cat. “Cats aren’t scary.”
“I’m dreaming,” the boy whispered. “Cats can’t talk!”
“I wouldn’t worry about that,” answered the cat. Her whiskers were black with something sticky and dark.
“I’d worry about the rats,” she added. “Now that’s scary.”
Inside the wall, the boy could hear tiny claws scrabbling at plaster.
When the claws broke through, the boy could swear the cat smiled.
For more like this, check out Half Minute Horrors, an anthology of tiny and terrifying tales, edited by Susan Rich.
Read MoreScience Marches On…
…but books stand still.
One of the hardships of a nonfiction author’s life is the way you can scramble to get the most updated information for your book, only to have those ding-dangity scientists discover brand new facts that throw everything out of whack right after your book hits the shelves.
It’s a particular problem with dinosaurs. Kids, of course, love to know about the most extreme dinosaurs (biggest! longest! smallest! tallest!). Just as you have firmly declared that so-and-so-asaurus is the biggest, somebody will come up with a newer, bigger find. Sometimes you wish they’d just knock off all the discovery for a year or two. On the other hand, sometimes you need them to hurry it up. Remember when Pluto was in the process of becoming not a planet after all? I was in the middle of writing a nonfiction book on outer space. Deadline was approaching. Scientists could not make up their minds. I was sitting there tapping my fingers on my desk, thinking, “Come on, guys, either it’s in or it’s out, but make up your minds! I’ve got to get this to my editor!”
Now, just after Terror Bird has been published, people are starting to wonder if these marvelous and outlandish birds were VEGETARIANS. No! What will happen to the marvelous illustration of the terror bird chomping up a teeny horse? And can a plant-eater be called a terror bird anyway? I’m pretty sure my editor would not have taken the book if it had been called Extremely Large Seed-Nibbling Bird.
Well, these particular scientists are studying a European species of terror bird, not my South American beauties, so let’s hope that the ones in my book can remain predators at least until the publisher runs out of stock.
Read MoreThe Cats Are Coming!
Saber-Toothed Cat by Sarah L. Thomson–the latest in the early reader series Ancient Animals.
The latest title in the Ancient Animals series has been published! Check out Saber-Toothed Cat. If you know a newly independent reader (think first or second grade) who loves dinosaurs, this would be a perfect introduction to a wider and wonderful world of prehistoric creatures.
Read MoreDo We Still Need Libraries?
I used to do library research here, at the New York Public Library. Loved it. There’s something about great architecture combined with books–transformative.
Rural Maine libraries on borrowed time. Libraries that survive on fundraisers, donations, and grants–or that are closing.
Stories like this make me weep. But then I think–I admit it. I don’t spend as much time in libraries as I used to.
Well, I just don’t. A lot of the research material I need is available online. A few keystrokes and I can get it, without leaving my desk. And like a lot of people in the publishing business, I am buried under books. I rarely need to go and pick up a paperback to while away the time. I’m too busy cowering guiltily away from the tomes piled up under my coffee table and on my nightstand.
So do we need libraries anymore? Let me think. What do libraries provide that I can’t get at home?
Access. Not every person, especially not every child, has a computer with high-speed internet. Libraries used to the the only place it was easy to find reference books, encyclopedias, dictionaries–the kind of book you didn’t need every day, but when you needed them, you needed them. Now a lot of that stuff is available electronically, and libraries are there to make sure we are all able to get it–not just those of us who can afford expensive gadgets. Libraries are still about the democratization of information, without which a democracy is doomed.
Community. I see them. Sitting there. Staring at a screen, flipping through a magazine, curled up on a beanbag chair with a book. READERS. Reading is a solitary pursuit, but when I go into a library, I’m surrounded by evidence that I am not the only person who does it. Granted, some of these readers look a little odd, and some of them seem to be carrying on conversations with invisible table mates, and they aren’t all the kind of people I want to invite home for a cup of tea. I don’t like all of them. I don’t like all of their books. It doesn’t matter. They are fellow members of my tribe, people immersed in words and ideas. Libraries build that community–and we readers can’t do without it.
Expertise. It’s too easy to discount this today. We can shop for any book we want online; we can browse through a million websites; we have a world of literature at our digital fingertips. But librarians still know things the rest of us don’t. The wider and wilder the world of information and literature grows, the more we need guides who have read the maps and can point out the signposts.
Choice. Shelves and shelves of books spread out all around us. We don’t have to read the latest bestseller or the book that just got the hot review or the one our mother-in-law gave us for Christmas. We can look at all the possibilities on the shelves, and we can choose. How especially wonderful this is for children, who can break out from the books their parents have picked for them (“Mom. Nothing about India or adoption,” my six-year-old said sternly to me the other day. Rats. She’s on to me.) and read what catches their eyes and calls to their hearts.
And those things are worth $22.24 per taxpayer per year, or about 6 cents a day–which is what it costs per resident to keep the library in Mexico, Maine, open. A bargain.
Read MoreSarah L. Thomson
A children’s book author publishing award-winning nonfiction, poetry, picture books and novels including…
“Thomson focuses on newfound connection, magic, and suspense to conjure a fast-paced, heartwarming mystery. Thomson’s world is populated by resourceful protagonists, fanciful creatures, and quirky supporting characters.”
—Publishers Weekly