E.S. Ivy

author of middle grade books for children

Cleaner Fish – More Information than You Thought You Wanted to Know

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As I mention in last weeks post about fish cleaning stations, I didn’t intend to do any research for the Miri Attwater series. So when I did start doing some research, I wasn’t doing it like I would if I had been writing a non-fiction book about marine biology. I wasn’t taking a lot of detailed notes with page numbers and cross-referencing. I wasn’t double checking to see if information I got in one source could be confirmed by other sources. I wasn’t looking at a lot of original sources – meaning I wasn’t reading scientific research articles in marine biology journals. Because I know from my text book writing and editing work that there is lots of misinformation in science books and text books, and it gets copied when writers don’t go back to original sources. Writing a really well researched science book takes time – a lot of it. And it helps if you’re an expert in the field.

Really, my first goal for my research was to look at pretty pictures so I could make the underwater scenes in the book more real to the reader.

I probably shouldn’t have been surprised that the more I saw, the more amazed I became by the diversity of marine life. …

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Fish Cleaning Station – Yes, fish cleaning stations like in Miri Attwater and All That Glitters really exist

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fish cleaning station

A dragon wrasse being cleaned by Rainbow cleaner wrasses on a reef in Hawaii. By Brocken Inaglory (Own work) via Wikimedia Commons;

When I started writing the Miri Attwater books, I wasn’t planning on doing any research. They were fantasy, after all. I could make up anything I wanted. But when I started writing the underwater scenes, they felt flat and dim. They didn’t have the vividness I remembered from my snorkeling trips. It seemed like a great excuse to do some research! So I started watching movies about ocean life….

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At the blog of Newbery book author Kirby Larson: my first guest post!

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Newberry book Hattie Big Sky

I was so honored to do my first ever guest post at the blog of Kirby Larson. Kirby is the author of the beautiful Newbery book, Hattie Big Sky, that won a well deserved Newbery Honor Award in 2007. It’s a story of a pioneer girl in the early 1900s in the style of my favorite Laura Ingalls Wilder book. I’ve given it many times as a gift and highly recommend it as a great read!

 

If you’re curious about a peek into some of how the Miri Attwater series came about, and how a fantasy book came to involve science, you can read my guest blog post at Kirby’s Lane.

 

Octopus camouflage, science behind the magical mermaids of Miri Attwater

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best books for girls : All That Glitters cover 188 x 250In celebration of the release of Book 2, Miri Attwater and All that Glitters, I thought it would be fitting to go a little into the science behind the magic of the Miri Attwater series.

When I first started the Miri books, my intention was to write pure fantasy, with magic and everything. Magic makes things easy. Yeah, I know you have to come up with rules but – need something? Make up a rule and bam, you have something. It’s magic!

The problem was, every time I got to the point in the story where Miri’s legs magically turned into tails, it just didn’t feel right to me. Even though other writers used it – in fact the original myths even used it – it still felt hollow and unbelievable. I mean, how could legs turn into tails?…

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