Leslie Barnard Booth

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Leslie will be at the
OLA Author Fair 
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​April 25th,
1:30-4:30pm, 
​​Salem Conference Center

Featuring author ​Leslie Barnard Booth
Email interview by John Repplinger, April 10th, 2024

Leslie Barnard Booth writes lyrical picture books about science and nature. She is the author of One Day This Tree Will Fall (Simon & Schuster/McElderry) and A Stone Is a Story (Simon & Schuster/McElderry), a Kids' Indie Next pick, Blueberry Honor Book, and NSTA Outstanding Science Trade Book. She has taught at preschool, elementary, and college levels and holds an MFA in creative writing and an MS in education from the University of Oregon.
​​Leslie lives in Portland, Oregon. She is a mom to two daughters, and her children often inspire her creative work. She learns a lot from watching how they approach nature—the way they pause, crouch, and look closely at even the littlest, humblest creatures. Thanks to them, she's relearned what children seem to know intuitively: that every snail, stone, and clump of moss is full of wonder, if only we take the time to look. 

Leslie, thanks so much for taking the time for this interview. To kick things off, I have a fun ice breaker question: If you could hike anywhere in the world, where would you go and why?
I’d love to go hiking in the Amazon rainforest. I’ve spent so much time exploring the temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest; it would be incredible to experience a new kind of rainforest—one I’ve read a lot about but never had the chance to see (or hear or smell or touch!).

You describe yourself as an author of “lyrical picture books.” For those who are unfamiliar with this phrase, how would you describe this in layman’s terms?
Lyrical in this sense means poetic. My books are essentially poems—poems that explore and explain an aspect of nature. When I was growing up, much of the nonfiction available for children was written in a very straightforward style, like a Wikipedia entry. Basically, here are the facts. But lyrical nonfiction uses a poet’s toolkit to excavate emotional meaning from scientific phenomena. I love this style of nonfiction because it invites readers to connect with nature both intellectually and emotionally.

How does poetry influence your work?
Each of my picture books is essentially a single poem, illustrated and spread across about 30 pages. I’m also working on a children’s poetry collection right now. So poetry is at the center of what I do. I didn’t initially understand that picture books were poems. But as I became more interested in writing picture books, I began to type up published picture books I liked, in manuscript form. Doing this, it became clear to me that these books were actually poems. No wonder I liked them! Poetry has been a big part of my life since childhood. My dad has many poems memorized and would often recite poetry to me at bedtime or when we were fishing together in the rain and in dire need of entertainment. Poetry lends itself well to picture books because both are oral art forms, meant to be performed aloud. Both are concerned with the musicality of language. Sound design is a primary focus for me when I write and revise a picture book. I want the words I set down on the page to sing when shared between caregiver and child.

Both of your books have science themes. Your first book, A Stone is a Story, follows the journey of a stone from creation and formation over time. Your second book, One Day This Tree Will Fall, follows the life of a tree. How did you get interested in writing about nature and science, and when did you decide to get serious about writing on these topics?
​Nature is a refuge for me—it connects me with something greater than myself and pulls me out of day to day concerns. It enables reflection and gratitude and the slowing of time. It also connects me to my children in a uniquely powerful way. Being outdoors with my daughters, I witness the primal connection between these young human animals and the beautiful, wild, endlessly complex natural world. It’s so fulfilling to see the joy and creativity and incredible attentiveness that emerges when we hike together. So there’s that emotional element—the transcendence nature brings. The other piece that compels me to write about these topics is that, for me, the factual truth of our dynamic planet—its history and its systems—is as astounding as any work of fiction. As to the second part of your question, I’ve been writing poetry about nature since childhood, but I didn’t get serious about writing for children until I had children of my own. When they were very young, our days consisted of a lot of nature and a lot of picture books, so that was when I saw that there was a home out there for this kind of writing.

What kind of research do you do before and while you write? 
Often I read a few books on the topic I’m interested in, then I write a first draft. As I see how the manuscript is shaping up and where it’s headed, I read more books and journal articles, highlighting, jotting notes, and rereading as I go. Once I’m getting close—I’ve researched the manuscript thoroughly and a publisher is interested—I reach out to scientists, and in some cases historians and other scholars, to vet the manuscript. I always have my manuscripts fully vetted by at least one expert in the field. My husband is a scientist, and all too often he finds errors in newspaper articles or books in which a non-scientist misunderstands something important and inadvertently spreads those misunderstandings. So, it’s really important to me to always reach out to scientists and make sure everything I’m sharing with children is 100% accurate.

Oregon has experienced many wildfires and ice storms of late. Did these events influence your second book, One Day This Tree Will Fall?
I’ve always been interested in fire scars on trees. As a child, I appreciated that I could read a bit of a tree’s story in these marks. I could see that it had been through something difficult, even disastrous, and survived. The wildfires, ice storms, and drought Oregon has experienced lately all show up in One Day This Tree Will Fall. And they were all going on in the background as I wrote it. I’m not sure which came first, my conception of this tree’s story or the real-life events happening all around us, but what I do know is that in writing this book, I developed a much deeper empathy for the trees themselves. Their struggle in the face of these hardships became more real than ever to me.

According to your website, you visit schools, libraries, and nature centers to teach writing and talk about science topics. Could you describe what these visits are like and what things children might experience?
I’m a former teacher and I really enjoy interacting with students. Igniting and supporting their interest in writing and science is incredibly rewarding. I have a lot of different offerings, but I’ll share some examples. For visits focusing on One Day This Tree Will Fall, one of my offerings is a Puppet-Tree presentation. I bring along my portable tree-shaped puppet theater (it’s as awesome as it sounds) and my troupe of tree-dwelling animal puppets, which includes a pileated woodpecker, a chickadee, and a grizzly bear, among others. After storytime, I put on an interactive ecology puppet show that expands on the content in the book, showing children, in a very fun, immediate way, how a tree changes physically as it ages, and what these changes mean for wildlife.

For presentations centered on A Stone Is a Story, I bring my Traveling Rock Museum—a really fantastic collection of rocks that includes trilobite, ammonite, and crinoid fossils. (I’m a big crinoid fan.) I read the book, emphasizing one of the book’s central points—that a rock’s physical features can reveal its story. Then I lead a game in which the audience listens to the true story of a mystery rock (hidden in a paper bag) and tries to guess what the rock might look like, based on how it formed. Kids really enjoy pulling out the mystery rocks and seeing how well they can predict each rock’s appearance. It gives children a window into how geologists analyze rocks and allows them to see that they can do this kind of analysis too. This is followed by a rock-themed craft and hands-on exploration of the Traveling Rock Museum.

Your website also lists resources for educators for your books. Can you tell us a bit about those? 
Yes! My website is full of educator resources. Most are for preschool through elementary. Some I created; others I found. They mainly focus on life science, Earth science, and literacy, and range from detailed lesson plans to printables and coloring sheets. One of my favorite resources on my site is a Mason Jar Stratigraphy project I created that blends art and science to teach about stratigraphy and sedimentary layers. In creating a model of sedimentary layers embedded with fossils, students also create a work of art!

Your publisher, Simon & Schuster/McElderry, teamed you up with two different illustrators for your books (Marc Martin & Stephanie Fizer Coleman). How much communication did you have with the illustrators? And what was that process like?
I feel so honored to have been paired with these incredible illustrators. I didn’t talk to them directly during the illustration process. All my communication about the art went through my editor, who then relayed it to the art director and illustrator. Many people find it surprising that the author and illustrator often don’t communicate directly, but I understand the reasoning behind this approach. An artist really has to connect with a text on their own terms, and it’s important to give the illustrator the space to explore their vision for the book. For both A Stone Is a Story and One Day This Tree Will Fall, the illustrator brought new layers of meaning to the book, building on the text in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

You have a new book coming in fall 2025 called I Am We: A Story of Survival, and it is about crows. Could you tell us a little about it? Do you have other projects down the line that you would like to mention? (Could I suggest one? Mosses) 
During lockdown my daughters and I started paying more attention to our neighborhood crows. We began to really enjoy their daily rhythms. We noticed that huge flight lines of crows would stream west over our area at about the same time each evening. This spurred my interest in crows’ roosting behavior. I learned that in winter crows gather together by the thousands to sleep. After lockdown I was in downtown Portland one night, and I finally got to see for myself where they were all gathering. It was an unbelievable, heart-thundering spectacle of thousands of chattering birds. I Am We: A Story of Survival explores this phenomenon--the communal roosting behavior of the clever, ubiquitous crow. In this atmospheric picture book, readers see how crows come together—often in urban areas--to cope with winter nights full of hidden dangers. So it’s a book about crows, and urban nature, and also a book about the power of we. As far as future projects, I can’t share much, but in addition to the poetry collection I mentioned, I will say that at the moment I am indeed working on a manuscript about moss! How could I not? Moss is glorious.

Thanks Leslie so much for this interview. Learn more about Leslie Barnard Booth and her books at Lesliebarnardbooth.com