I write books throughout the year, but they all tend to come out during the peak book season of late summer, in time for the new school year. I recently received author copies of two books.
Here is Diseases and Defenses, part of the Human Machine series from Rourke:
And here is Coral Reefs, part of the Animal Engineers series from Focus Readers:
Almost all of my books so far have targeted kids in high school. That means I get to write to a 7th or 8th grade reading level. Though these books require a greater time investment in terms of research and writing, in some ways they are easier. I don’t have to go over the same sentence a hundred times to get it just right for the audience.
In these two books, I had to reach a 3rd to 4th grade reading level. That’s not easy. Here are the requirements:
- Short sentences
- Simple vocabulary
- Fun content
- Real, factual science
These things don’t go together easily! Realistic science requires some tricky vocabulary. And shortening sentences sometimes seems to take the fun out of the content. It’s an interesting puzzle to figure out just the right way to say something. For example, in the coral reefs book, I refer to the polyps’ shells as “cups.” It’s a short, simple word that gets the idea across.
The thing that makes me most excited about these books, though, is that my three-year-old son is almost old enough to enjoy them!