Just published: The Tapir Scientist: Saving South America’s Largest Mammal

If you’ve never seen a lowland tapir, you’re not alone. Most of the people who live near tapir habitat in Brazil’s vast Pantanal (“the Everglades on steroids”) haven’t seen the elusive snorkel-snouted mammal, either. In this arresting nonfiction picture book, Sibert winners Sy Montgomery and Nic Bishop join a tapir-finding expedition led by the Brazilian field scientist Pati Medici. Aspiring scientists will love the immediate, often humorous “you are there” descriptions of fieldwork, and gadget lovers will revel in the high-tech science at play, from microchips to the camera traps that capture the “soap opera” of tapir life.

The Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards has chosen Temple Grandin as an Honor Book for older children.

The Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards are given annually to the children’s books published the preceding year that effectively promote the cause of peace, social justice, world community, and the equality of the sexes and all races as well as meeting conventional standards for excellence. The awards have been presented annually since 1953 by the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF) and the Jane Addams Peace Association.

A Snake Cake — as well as a fabulous banner, good questions and student performances — greeted Sy at her presentation April 18 at Cutler School in Swanzey, NH

Fourth and fifth graders at Chamberlain School in South Burlington, Vermont showered Sy with their great artwork and letters after they talked by Skype. Some students had suggestions for subsequent books. Taken under consideration!

Consider a Skype session: Sy is dramatically limiting her appearances over the next 9 to 12 months as she concentrates on researching and writing her book on octopus. But happily, there’s Skype. Readers can visit with Sy in her office, meet her border collie and watch as Sy shares some of her treasures, including the shed exoskeleton of a tarantula and the beak of an octopus. Email Sy for details: sy@authorwire.com

Sy’s newest book for kids, Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo, sold out at its debut March 1 in New York at the Barnes and Noble on 86th Street. With video of Snowball dancing and talks by Sy, illustrator Judith Oksner and Irena Schulz, the founder of Snowball’s bird rescue, Bird Lovers Only, the New York event drew more than 100 people, including kids from three schools.

The dancing cockatoo is a charmer, but at Abby Emerson’s 5th Graders at La Cima Charter School in Brooklyn they love The Tarantula Scientist.

New book. All my proceeds go to benefit Bird Lovers Only.

Snowball the Dancing Cockatoo, for kids in grades 3 and up, is the true story of how an unwanted cockatoo achieved international fame as a YouTube sensation, television star, and scientific study subject, all by rocking out to the beat of his favorite tunes.

Snowball tells the story (well, this is what he would have said if his language skills were as good as his dancing.) But everything he says is true, including how he inspired the World’s First Bird Dance-Off Contest, became the subject of a groundbreaking study about music and the brain, and has now gone into teaching children how to dance and doing charity work.

The book is illustrated with the whimsical paintings of my friend, Judith Oksner.

All author’s proceeds from this book go to benefit Bird Lovers Only, the bird rescue where Snowball now lives.

How to get the book?

• Order through Birdloversonly.org (all these copies are signed by Sy and Judith!)
• Order through University Press of New England at www.upne.com/0872331563.html
• Ask for it at your local independent bookstore (the ISBN is 978-087233-156-3)

My friend and master quilter Mary Strzelec of Lynnwood, WA created this fabulous work of fabric art celebrating the Giant Pacific Octopus, star of my book-in-progress.

What an incredible gift! While others can sleep in the arms of Morpheus, I can sleep wrapped in the eight arms and 16,000 suckers of Enteroctopus dofleni–sans slime. Mary’s husband, Mike, has been an indispensable help with the book, discovering all sorts of obscure cephalapodan information.

Temple Grandin has been selected for the list of Notable Social Studies Trade Books for 2013. This list is a cooperative project of the National Council for the Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council.

At Heavy Medal, a School Library Journal blog, they have convened a “mock” Newbery Award contest, and thrown opening the judging for discussion. Temple Grandin is one of the books under consideration. Here’s what Heavy Medal says about Temple Grandin:

“Though I always point out that ‘no book is flawless,’ I’ve been hard pressed to find the flaws in this seamless and engaging read. Montgomery creates a “you are there” feeling both without intruding as author, but also while being totally transparent as author. It is clear, from the way she constructs her sentences and from her backmatter explanations, how she has put together each piece of her vivid narrative from interviews and other sources. This is not flashy writing, and the emotional punch always comes from the story itself, not from the heavy hand of an author driving it home. “Heart-warming-ness” of the story aside (which is where the Newbery committee will have to put it), this is a wonderfully constructed piece of nonfiction, tuned perfectly to its audience in every respect.”

Temple Grandin is on the CCBC Choices list for 2013. CCBC Choices is the annual best-of-the-year list of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center.

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has chosen Temple Grandin as the recipient of the 2013 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books.

The AAAS prize celebrates outstanding science writing and illustration for children and young adults. This year’s finalists were selected by a panel of librarians, scientists, and science literacy experts. They chose the four winners out of nearly 170 books up for consideration.

The judges note: “Sy Montgomery’s excellent biography of Temple Grandin focuses not just on Grandin’s research and accomplishments, but also on the role her autism played not just in terms of obstacles, but also in terms of opportunities to see things differently. This is also an important message for children with autism or other disabilities because it provides them with a role model who broke barriers and made significant contributions to science and to society.”

The AAAS award will be presented in Boston in February.

Magnificent! The School Library Journal blog, Fuse #8, has chosen Temple Grandin as one of the One Hundred Magnificent Children’s Books of 2012.

Temple Grandin has been chosen by the New York Public Library as one of its One Hundred Children’s’ Books for Reading and Sharing.

The National Science Teachers Association has named Temple Grandin one of its Outstanding Science Trade Books of the year: “The autobiography of the autistic expert on animal treatment will be inspirational to a subset of students as well as to all readers.”

The Mind of the Octopus: “They’re so different from us. They can taste with their skin, have no bones, they can squeeze through a tiny opening, oozing as if they are a liquid themselves. A hundred pound giant pacific octopus can get through the opening the size of an orange. I mean unbelievable. But what I think is even more unbelievable is the fact that these guys have developed intelligence and emotions and personalities that are enough like ours that we can recognize them as such,”

The Wisconsin Public Radio show, To the Best of Our Knowledge, interviews Sy here.

The Best American Science and Nature Writing, 2012 has been published. Sy’s Orion story on the octopus, “Deep Intellect,” is part of this collection.

There’s a thorough interview with Sy at Library Sparks.

Sy talks about Temple Grandin, The Snake Scientist, Quest for the Tree Kangaroo, and about all sorts of other animals.

In its September issue, Highlights for Children ran a story on Sy’s children’s books, “Adventures with Animals: Pink Dolphins and Tree Kangaroos Inhabit the books of writer Sy Montgomery”. The story was written by Sy’s friend and neighbor, the children’s book writer Marcia Amidon Lusted, who lives up the street!

A “Meet the Author” movie of Sy, filmed at home in Hancock, NH (with a guess appearance by Sally, her border collie) is now among the excellent videos available to teachers and librarians who have joined teachingbooks.net.

Sy spent the first part of June at the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia, bathing in cheetah purrs and researching a new Scientists in the Field book with photographer Nic Bishop. CHASING CHEETAHS: The Race to Save Africa’s Fastest Cat, features CCF founder Laurie Marker and her staff’s extraordinary conservation work, and will be published next year. Nic Bishop took this photo of one of the very tame young cheetahs there who was captured by a farmer in infancy—so young he had to be bottle-fed to survive. Today he lives at CCF as an ambassador for his species, in the effort to protect wild cheetahs throughout their shrinking range.