Sara Behrman

Sara will be at the
OLA Author Fair ​
​April 25th 
1:30-4:30pm

Featuring author ​Sara Behrman
Email interview by John Repplinger, April 9th, 2024
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Sara Behrman (pronounced BEARman) is a former librarian, a freelance writer, frequent visitor to classrooms, well-received book-talker, and a popular workshop leader at the Oregon Writing Festival. She has published 40 feature articles and creative pieces in regional and national publications (e.g. Oregon Humanities, American Libraries, School Library Journal). 
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Until January 2024, when not writing children’s stories, she wrote grant proposals for clients who did wonderful things for our world. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her “special sweetie, F.X.”
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Sara, thanks so much for this interview, and today is a special day for you.  Your debut picture book, The Sea Hides a Seahorse, is released today. Congratulations! Hopefully you get to celebrate.  While reading through your “10 Things to Know About Me,” you mention that you have a collection of finger puppets. How many do you have? 
I have about 50 finger puppets, and I have my sea marine animals with me today. Sometimes when I need to get in the mood, I'll get out my finger puppets and have them talk to each other. They have been really useful when I'm working on a story and need characters to interact with each other.

You also speak several languages, and have visited forty countries. If you could pick a country you haven’t visited, which would it be and why? 
I actually have two: Thailand and Costa Rica. I would love to visit Thailand for the culture and to experience culinary aspects. Costa Rica has an amazing natural world with plants, animals, and geology that I haven't seen yet and is so different from the Pacific Northwest.

Tell us a bit about The Sea Hides a Seahorse. What inspired you to write about seahorses?
I grew up on an island in the Atlantic called New York City. When I was a kid, we had something called sea monkey aquariums. You would go to the toy store and buy a small package that would hatch into these tiny little things that looked like sea monkeys. They were actually brine shrimp. So I had always thought that seahorses were not real--they were fictional like mermaids and unicorns and sea monkeys.

When we were traveling in Australia, we visited the Sydney Aquarium; that was the first time I saw a real living seahorse. I realized they were real, living animals, and I got really interested in them. When I saw them again at the World Expo in Lisbon, I started doing research and wanted to share what I learned with kids. I tried different ways of writing a story that included seahorses and seahorse facts, and then finally found my way through with The Sea Hides a Seahorse. 

You include a number of sea creatures throughout the story–eels, flounder, parrotfish, an octopus, sea turtle. How did you decide which animals to include? 
So once I figured out the format of the story, had done my research, and decided what I wanted to share, I focused on the predators and the prey of seahorses. When you think about a seahorse, the reason they have the ability to change color and camouflage is to mostly hide from predators and blend in with their surroundings. So the predator is actually causing the seahorse to change color, and blend into their  natural surroundings. That is why they were where they were on each page. You get to see what a seahorse habitat is like, their behavior, predators, and their response. ​

A fair amount of knowledge about seahorses went into this book. You even include a few pages in the back with more information about seahorses. Did you know a lot of facts about seahorses before you wrote the book or did you research to verify the facts? And how did you go about researching?
I am a professional librarian by trade, and my first job was as a special librarian at the Iowa Office of State Archaeologist. Later, when I worked at The New York Public Library, I started as a reference librarian and I loved researching. I love answering questions, especially hard to find answers to our public's questions. Research has always been a part of who I am and what I do. 

For my book, I began researching much like I did with any other research--I started with children's books!  If you want to know something really fast, you go to a kids non-fiction book, especially a picture book. I also used the Web, but information on the Internet may not be all that accurate, so I had to collect a lot of information from different sources and check the facts. In terms of organizing the research, that's when my library experience comes in handy. I have well organized files, have made notes about what I liked about seahorses, and what kids might like. It made the process of adding specific aspects into the story much easier.

When the manuscript was going through its editorial review, I also reached out to two marine biologists, one at Oregon Coast Aquarium and one at Seattle Aquarium. They reviewed the manuscript for accuracy and offered a few pointers. During this process, I learned that starfish are actually called sea stars, and jellyfish are now called jellies. Also, even though the illustrator chose to include a couple of sea dragons which are technically not seahorses, I said that it would be okay because they were cousins. I do mention that distinction in the book. 

I have charts and color codes that match predators with prey, correct habitats to species, and the time of day they are active. We can't have nocturnal animals hunting during the day, for example.

Have you considered writing a follow up story or sequel to The Sea Hides a Seahorse?
My agent suggested writing a companion to The Sea Hides a Seahorse which I have written. I have another book about sea stars which my agent is about to  shop around. That book was much faster to write because I didn't need to know how to organize the story since it would closely mirror my first book. I just followed the same pattern and used the facts I already had. I also have another book about nudibranchs called The Sea Hides a Sea Slug.

Your writing is very poetic. Do you write poetry as well?
I do not write poetry, but I do write songs and songs are poetry set to music. I created a music video based off my book Zombie Rodent: The Musical. It is about a fat squirrel (Fatty becomes Flatty) who steps out into the road during an eclipse and gets hit by a hearse and ends up undead. I recently submitted it to a musical festival, and out of 150 submissions, mine made the top 25!

I found my way to The Sea Hides a Seahorse by wrestling with several different types of book types: chapter books, early readers, fiction, and a novel. Then my lady’s book group read Just Us Kids by songwriter Patty Smith, so I tried writing The Sea Hides a Seahorse as a song, and that was where I found my breakthrough.

Melanie Mikecz was your illustrator, and she did a fantastic job. I love the use of color, texture, and how it compliments the text. The phrase “And the sea hides a seahorse” appears throughout the story, and seahorses are hidden on those pages for readers to find kind of like Where's Waldo. Did you work with or communicate this concept to Melanie? Was this something that you wanted to include?
When the book was originally acquired by West Margin Press, I was assigned an editor. My editor sent me a story development letter before working with me. Mine was only four pages long with suggestions, and one suggestion was to think about my story in terms of page turns. A page turn is how a book transitions from the open pages of a book to the next two pages. Storytellers must think about how a story carries over and transitions from one set of pages to the next set of pages. It was something I hadn't really thought about before.

My editor, Michelle McCann, asked me about the layout, and if I wanted to hide the seahorse right before the page turn (right side of the book) or after the page turn (left side of the book). I asked if we could do both and essentially hide seahorses on all of the pages. If you look closely, you'll notice that the seahorse is hidden in the first page (right side), followed by a closeup of the seahorse on the page turn (left side). I knew that I wanted the seahorse hidden but didn't know how it would be hidden.

Editors typically act as a go between for authors and illustrators, Melanie Mikecz in my case, and facilitate communication for comments or questions. I did get to review thumbnail images and early drafts of Melanie's artwork. As the author, I did have the ability if needed to request that certain aspects be modified, such as a seahorse facing a certain direction, or the text to match the illustration.

Melanie did a fantastic job and her color palette is gorgeous. I also want to give credit to the editorial team for hiding the seahorse until after the page turn and for suggesting I include verbs/actions as page themes: snacking, hiding, playing. My editor also suggested starting the book at day and ending at night because kids often read books at night just before bedtime. My story ends with the baby seahorses sleeping.

Do you have any artistic inclinations? 
No. My husband is an artist, but I can't really draw. I tried to draw a seahorse and it looked like a worm. I'm more of a word picture person but I do appreciate other people's art.

You mention that you have written other things such as articles for the Oregon Humanities, School Library Journal, and even grant proposals “for clients who do wonderful things in our world.” You are also a former librarian. How have these influenced your decision and ability to write a children’s picture book?
I think that the opposite has happened. I've always wanted to write kid's books, even at a young age and had even written several short books. When I was thinking about careers, I wanted to do something that kept me close to writing. At one point, I had considered teaching literature at the university level, but ended up going to library school instead and became a librarian. That kept me around books.

Writing was a natural habit, so when I was a librarian I would publish articles and over time I developed a publications list. This list was important because it led to a literary group (Community of Writers) which was a precursor to Wordstock, a nonprofit literary organization based in Portland, Oregon. This list of publications was actually important because it gave me the opportunity to participate in the Writers in Schools program which brought local authors into schools to talk about writing. That helped build my writing credentials even more.

Grant proposals utilize technical writing skills and are not dissimilar to a children's story which is logical, sequential, and they have facts. If I had to read up on a field of study for my grant proposals, I would often turn to children's literature for a quick and easy way to get a grasp of complex concepts or meanings. These books would help me write persuasive grant proposals with more accessible terminology.

​As with any skill, the more practice you put into writing, the better you get. The main difference I see between my professional writing and children's literature is that writing children's books is way harder than some of the other types of writing. Authors need to really think about how to communicate effectively with a limited vocabulary, page space, and number of pages. It is one thing to use the terminology of professionals but is often completely different when talking in layman's terms. The same goes for talking with younger audiences; it is an important skill to be able to communicate with different age groups when writing children's books.


You have led popular workshops at the Oregon Writing Festival. For those who have not attended the Oregon Writing Festival, what is it like? You also offer workshops for libraries and schools. What kind of things do you cover in your workshops? 
The workshops I teach at the Oregon Writing Festival are designed for kids, K-12. It is run through the Oregon Council Teachers of English every spring. The best young writers vie for the best spots at the festival to spend a day writing with their peers and meeting Oregon Authors. I have been a workshop leader for maybe a dozen festivals, and typically I work with 4th and 5th graders in two 45-minute workshop sessions. I usually provide a prompt and explain how I write.

In the Twisting a Tale workshops I have led, I bring books from the library such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack and the Beanstalk, Little Red Riding Hood. The children take a well-known fairytale and add a twist.  They are able to use the framework of a familiar story to jumpstart ideas and write their own versions.

It can be hard for kids to figure out plot and character, so using a well-known framework like a fairytale provides enough structure for them to write a rough draft within a 45-minute time slot. For me, inspiring kids to read and write is very important. I am really passionate about having children hit those literacy markers.

I will be heading down to Berkely for a workshop in the future, and I will offer workshops for libraries with my new book too. Those workshops will feature the book, a craft, song, and signing. Currently, I have two planned activities for the Sea Hides a Seahorse: a coloring sheet for the younger kids and a seahorse stick puppet. I also wrote some seahorse lyrics to traditional songs. The Wheels on the Bus song is now The Animals in the Sea. The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly is now The Old Mermaid Who Swallowed a Bubble. The song a Sailor Went to Sea, Sea, Sea to See What He Could See, See, See includes animals from my book.


You’ve hinted that you have written other stories. Are there any that you are currently working on that you would like to mention?
Besides The Sea Hides a Seahorse, The Sea Hides a Sea Slug, and Zombie Rodent the Musical (which came out of three books: Zombie Rodent, Zombie Rodent Falls Apart, and Zombie Rodent Restored), I have a Moishe Pupik  collection that is a series of Yiddish-themed stories based around Yiddish culture and food. The first book in the series is called Goldilox and the Three Schmears which explains about the origins of lox [brined salmon] and bagels. I have several other tales, so we'll see how well this first book does before I ask my agent to submit the rest of the stories.

Thanks again Sara for taking time to do this interview. Good luck with all of your upcoming events and book launch!  

For more information about Sara Behrman or her work, please visit Saratbehrman.com or Amazon. Visit Sara's Instagram account at Instagram.com/sara.behrman