An Interview with Editor Donna German, Sylvan Dell Publishing

by Joan Waites

With August quickly drawing to a close, teachers, students, and parents are preparing for back to school. Like most teachers, I’m cleaning, reorganizing, and gathering new resources for lessons, projects, and new ways of presenting material in the classroom.

A publisher I have had the privilege of working with, Sylvan Dell Publishing, publishes picture books that also provide resources for expanded learning opportunities in science, math, geography, character, and Spanish. Donna German, Editor-in-Chief and co-publisher at Sylvan Dell was gracious enough to answer a few questions about this unique publisher of picture books and the added teaching resources they offer with each title.

1. What was the motivation behind taking on the huge task of starting a new publishing company from the ground up?

Do you mean other than stupidity in starting a business right before one of the biggest economic downturns in recent history? Lee (my husband and co-owner in the business) had retired from the US Navy and wanted to buy a small manufacturing business. My passion was always with children’s books so we decided to manufacture children’s books.

2. What did you hope to bring to the picture book market that was not already available from other publishers?

Our books are, in fact, very unique. We had taken our three then-young girls on a cross-country camping trip to see as many National Parks as we could. While exploring the parks, the girls did the Junior Ranger programs at each park. Those Junior Ranger programs were the seed that grew into the “For Creative Minds” (FCM) section in the back of each book. These sections are usually 4 pages but may be as low as 2 or as many as 6. That is what makes our books truly unique.

Our mission is to get young children excited about science, math, and now geography through reading at a very early age. Our goal is to provide fun-to-read fictional (some non-fiction) picture book stories that parents will read to young children (cuddle factor) but that have non-fiction facts woven throughout the story. While some publishers add a page of “Fun Facts” to the back of some books, our FCM section in each book is designed to engage children through activities. These activities are the non-fiction component of each book that builds on the underlying science or math in the picture book story. Our hope is that when a child asks “why,” that the parent can work through the FCM with the child to answer the question—even if the parent didn’t know the answer. Older children can work through the activities on their own, but the reading level of the FCM sections is usually higher than the picture book reading level.

Either way, we believe that the more a young child is exposed to science and math in a fun way at a very young age, the more they will become interested and remember as they get older. Even if they don’t remember the specifics, they’ve been exposed to the concepts and that provides early building blocks for better understanding and retention later in life. And, I need to add that because our mission is to get young children excited about science and math through reading, we take that mission seriously. We are not experts in the subjects so we turn to the experts to review each title before going to print. We have worked with educators and scientists from NASA and JPL, NOAA, USGS, US National Parks, Nature Centers, Zoos, Aquariums, etc. to verify the information in the books. In many cases, the experts are aware of the areas that are most confusing to children (and even adults) and help us to present the information in an easily understood fashion.

What makes our books especially useful in the classroom is that it allows teachers to “kill two birds with one stone.” They can use the books during language arts to introduce or supplement a science or math lesson. We even know about high school teachers using some of our picture books in their classes!

3. Your books offer so much for the teacher to incorporate into classroom instruction-the "For Creative Minds" (FCM) section for each book, the additional content for each book on the website, the site license that is available to use on smart boards-can you tell us a little about those extras and how teachers can take advantage of them?

You mention the site license so let me describe that a little because eBooks are really confusing! Like most publishers, we make our books available in a wide variety of formats including ePubs and downloadable PDFS. But those are very different eBooks than what we offer in our “site license” or “personal eLibrary.” The interactive eBooks that we offer (through our website and some distributors but not all) stream on the web or can stream or be downloaded on an iPad (Fun eReader free app). 

The interactive eBooks feature: 1)  Dual language: readers can go back and forth on any page between English and Spanish 2)  Auto or manual: readers can turn the pages themselves or put the book in “play” so they can just read and watch 3)  Audio or no audio: readers can listen to the book being read to them (in either language) or not. 4)  Different Languages: This is available on the web but not on the iPad app. When in manual mode, a reader can read the text in one language but listen to the audio in the other. This is great for learning either English or Spanish!

In addition to the FCM section, we provide all kinds of support for each title, all of which can be found FREE on our website   from either the book’s homepage or from the Teacher and Librarian page:

For Creative Minds: The FCM sections of each book are available on the website in English or Spanish for download.

      Teaching Activities: Each book has 25 to 80 (depending on the book) pages of cross-curricular teaching activities that can be taken up or down in interest level and can be done at home or in the classroom. For example, if teaching the parts of speech, why not do it with science-based sentences?

Quizzes: We provide three on-line interactive quizzes for each title. Again, these can be done at home for parents to ensure comprehension (or just for fun), as individuals in the classroom, or on a white board as a group: 1) on the story itself  2) on the FCM section 3) a math-related quiz

 Related Websites: for more online learning on each subject

Alignment to Standards: While this is more for teachers than parents, each of our titles is aligned to Core Math and Language arts as well as each state’s Science and Social Studies standards. If a state does not participate in the Core standards, we align to that state’s math standards. We align each of our books to the upcoming Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) that will be adopted by 27 states in the next few years.

Reading Levels: Again, mostly for teachers, we provide the information AR, Lexile, Reading Counts, and Fountas and Pinnell.

Trailers: depending on the author or illustrator, some titles have trailers to peak children’s interest

4. With eight books published each season, you certainly have a lot on your plate. What's next on the horizon for Sylvan Dell?

Our English books are already available in hardcover, paperback and a wide variety of eBook formats. At the specific request of the Department of Education in Puerto Rico, we started printing some of our titles in Spanish as well.

We are building to ten titles a season (twenty for the year). As part of that expansion, we are expanding into folklore and myth retellings (preferably from North America) that were used to explain scientific occurrences. That seems to be a good blending of language arts, science, and social studies (culture and geography). Our first release of that grouping will be next spring (2014) with Nancy Kelly Allen’s First Fire: A Cherokee Folktale.

We released our Fun eReader iPad app a little over a year ago. While the interactive eBooks work on all other tablets through the web, we are currently developing apps for droid tablets.

As funding permits, we would like to add other languages to our interactive eBooks. We have received specific requests for French, Mandarin, and Arabic.

From a teacher support perspective, we plan to develop teaching activities using multiple books to teach science concepts (life cycles, habitat interaction, solar system, natural disasters, etc.). And now that the NGSS standards are about to be implemented along with the Core standards, we can develop teaching activities for different grade levels.

Many thanks to Donna for taking time out of her extremely busy schedule to tell us more about Sylvan Dell books and their mission. If you haven’t had the chance to read one of their titles yet, I think you will be pleasantly surprised how much each book can enhance classroom learning.

www.joanwaites.com

DIVING LESSONS

by Jane Harrington

New to this blog, I’ve been reading over prior posts and thinking about what writing workshop advice I can offer that hasn’t already, and so swimmingly, been addressed. What ideas might I stand on and spring from? What words of wisdom will land me in this pool with but a graceful ripple? It should be something gentle, coaxing, encouraging.…

Nah. I’m going with the cannonball, the big splash. Today’s topic: REJECTION.

Believe it or not, I’ve had good fun with this at author visits. After getting the How do you get published? question for years, I began keeping a list of publishing opportunities for young wordsmiths on my website. Eyes open wide when I scroll through this list and preview some of the print magazines that publish children’s writing and art (Creative Kids, Stone Soup), writing communities that allow kids to start their own serial novels (Figment), and social literary networks for book chatting and reviewing (Goodreads). And when they see a list of writing contests—well, the energy in the room is palpable. Then I tell them that they’ll probably be rejected.

At this point, I push aside my laptop and pull out the folder I have also brought, which is filled with rejection letters. And I point out that there are a whole lot more of these than books I’ve published. (Though, fortunately, the books represent more width on my shelf.) And I read some aloud, and then pass some around and tell the students to please not be careful with them. Drop them! Accidentally step on them! They are mean, awful things that made me feel terrible. But I also tell the students that when I get one of these I only let myself wallow in the bad vibe for the rest of the day. (It used to be a week, but I’ve gotten really good at being rejected.) I wake up the next morning defiant, ready to prove that letter wrong—to reshape that reject and resubmit it. That’s what you have to do as a writer, I say to them. You have to perch your toes on the edge of the board again, and turn a belly-flop into a swan dive.

Maybe by way of another belly-flop, but that’s okay!

If you too want to help young writers get rejected, check out my website for ideas: (click on the “yo, publish!” tab).

http://www.janeharrington.com/

THE POWER OF PUBLISHING

by Jacqueline Jules

At the end of the year, many schools publish literary magazines. It’s a wonderful way to help young writers see that they write for a purpose and an audience. Publication is also a powerful motivator for revision.

Before you send your literary magazine to the printer or post it online, give your students the opportunity to see “proof pages” of their entry. This simulates the real world model many magazines and publishing houses follow of giving authors one last final approval before publication. Explain to the students that this is their chance to look over their work and make any necessary changes before it is presented to the public. You might be surprised how seriously even elementary school students take this responsibility.

Presented with a typed and formatted version of their own writing, students will suddenly see repetitious or weak word choices. They will add snappier endings or beginnings and they will find typos you missed. Some will even come up with stronger titles.

I recently visited five third grade classes with proof pages of work most of them had completed at least two months prior. All of these students had previously seen their stories typed on an individual page. They had chosen the font type and formatting. However, when told that their work would be part of a grade level book, they re-read their work with a critical eye. Working in pairs, they read their own work and their partners', checking for mistakes and making suggestions. They were told to write on the papers directly and put a 0,+1, +2, +3, etc, indicating how many changes they wanted.

One boy who had been lackadaisical about his writing in earlier conferences suddenly had all sorts of details he urgently wanted added to his story. His proof page came back with +8! Another girl changed the sentence, “It was sooo beautiful,” to “She was enchanted by its beauty.” Student after student crossed out bland words for more descriptive ones.

And while I am not a proponent of changing ,“said,” simply for variety since  there is no point in calling unnecessary attention to a speech tag, I was delighted when a child looked over his story and changed a “said” to “murmured.” The story was about a misunderstanding in a conversation. Indicating that one speaker mumbled, strengthened the whole story. Other third graders found inconsistencies in their stories such as “My mom drove the car. I don’t drive!”  Or, “The story shouldn’t take place in 55 A.D.” I even saw students catch pronouns with no antecedents. Wow!

Publishing student work in a literary magazine is time-consuming and can be expensive, but it is a powerful tool for motivating students to do their best work. There is something about knowing your work will be in an anthology beside other pieces that makes young writers realize that a little extra effort might just be worth it.

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/