Get to know Newbery Honor winning author, poet and December's Author of the Month, Joyce Sidman. She explains the inspiration behind her new book, Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold, what got her started in poetry and her love of animals.
Where did you get your idea for this book?
I live in Minnesota and it gets very, very cold here. One day I started wondering how wild creatures survive without warm houses and hot cocoa. So I began reading and exploring the secret world of winter animals. While investigating a beaver lodge in February, I fell through the ice! Fortunately I was able to crawl out and wasn’t too far from home. I was a little more cautious after that . . .
What was your favorite book when you were growing up?
I loved a book called The Bat-poet, by Randall Jarrell. It’s about a bat who decides the stay up in the daytime (instead of sleeping as bats usually do). He writes poems about all the daytime creatures he meets. It’s part prose and part poetry, with wonderful illustrations by Maurice Sendak.
How old were you when you started writing?
Oh, I think I was always writing! Or drawing—I loved to draw, too. But the first poem I remember writing was in 4th grade. Oddly enough, it was about snow (hmmmm). To me, writing has always been a combination of noticing things and choosing just the right words to describe them.
What is your favorite word?
Ubiquitous (which means — existing or being everywhere at the same time).
What is your favorite book about Chicago?
I love the book Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park, which is set in Illinois. It’s about so many things—friendship, identity, kindness, discrimination—and caterpillars! The structure of the book is so different . . . the author interrupts the book and starts talking to her characters.
Find out even more about Joyce Sidman and Winter Bees & Other Poems of the Cold.
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