Valerie Wyatt, Author

Winnipeg, Manitoba.

November 14th.

Victoria, British Columbia.

When I was in my 20s. I worked for a children’s magazine called OWL and one of my jobs was to answer kids’ questions. Readers would write in and ask, “Do fish sleep?” or “What makes a mirage appear?” and I would phone scientists, get the answers and write them up. Boy, did I learn a lot.

Good question. When you’re writing, you’re trying your best to make the information interesting. But sometimes you get so involved, you can’t tell if what you’ve written is great or garbage. An editor is like a fresh pair of eyes. He or she can point out the problem areas and sometimes help come up with solutions.

When I was 12 years old, I read a book about a marine biologist named Eugenie Clark who swam with sharks. It was fabulous! Her adventures thrilled me, and for a long time, I wanted to be a marine biologist like her. I guess that’s why I write and edit children’s books. I know the power they can have.

One (very fat) cat, Gypsy.

I received a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Manitoba and a Master’s degree in English Literature from Queen’s University, in Kingston, Ontario.

While I was working at OWL magazine, I was asked to write a book. There’s a big difference between writing a few hundred words for a magazine and a whole book. It was a scary proposition. But the topic was inventions and I soon got caught up in the weird and wacky world of inventors. My enthusiasm for the topic just sort of carried me along. My first book, Inventions: An Amazing Investigation, was published in 1987. Around the same time, I started editing children’s books, helping authors develop their ideas and get them down on paper.

I got hooked on children’s books because they are like a puzzle. You’ve got the words and you’ve got the pictures and the challenge is to get them to fit together like a jigsaw puzzle. You have to learn to think visually. I like the challenge of going beyond the words.

Research is one of my favorite parts of writing, but I’m a sloppy researcher. I just go to the library and pull all of the books on a topic off the shelves and start reading. One bit of info seems to lead to another, and sometimes it’s hard to know when to stop. I also talk to specialists and use the Internet to do research. But nothing beats an hour or two at the library.

Be curious.

My biggest secret is that I also write under another name. I won’t reveal what it is. I’ll just say that I have one book so far written by the “other me” and it’s published by Kids Can Press.

The Science Book for Girls and Other Intelligent Beings came about accidentally. I was planning to write a book on electricity and went to a kids’ camp to see what kids were interested in on the topic. While waiting to get into a workshop on electricity, I found myself surrounded by 17 boys and 2 girls. When I asked the girls why they were there, they said, “All the other workshops were full.” Given a choice, they would have been somewhere else! So I went home and started thinking. I thought about how I had become turned off science in school, and how many of the scientists I had consulted over the years were men. And I thought about those two girls who wanted to be somewhere else. I decided I wanted to try to show girls the fun in science, and the idea of a science book especially for girls was hatched.