Book Giveaway: THOMAS JEFFERSON’S BATTLE FOR SCIENCE: BIAS, TRUTH, AND A MIGHTY MOOSE! by Beth Andersen

Beth Anderson has written a new Non-fiction picture book titled. THOMAS JEFFERSON’S BATTLE FOR SCIENCE, illustrated by Jeremy Holmes and published by Calkins Creek on May 14th, 2024). Beth has agreed to send a copy of her book to one lucky winner in the US.

Just leave a comment. Reblog, tweet, or talk about it on Facebook with a link and you will get additional chances to win. Let me know other things you did to share the good news, so I can put the right amount of tickets in my basket for you. Sharing on Facebook, Twitter, or reblogging helps spread the word about a new book. So, thank you for helping Beth and Jeremy.

If you have signed up to follow my blog and it is delivered to you every day, please let me know when you leave a comment and I will give you an extra ticket.

BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Thomas Jefferson is one of the most famous founding fathers, but did you know that his mind was always on science? This STEM/STEAM picture book tells how Jefferson’s scientific thinking and method battled against faulty facts and bias to prove that his new nation was just as good as any in the Old World.

Young Thomas Jefferson loved to measure the natural world: plants and animals, mountains and streams, crops and weather. With a notepad in his pocket, he constantly examined, experimented, and explored. He dreamed of making great discoveries like the well-known scientific author, Count Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon.

But when Buffon published an encyclopedia of the natural world, Jefferson was furious! According to the French count, America was cold and swampy, and filled with small and boring animals, nothing like the majestic creatures of the OId World. Jefferson knew Buffon had never even been to America. Where had Buffon gotten his information? Had he cherry-picked the facts to suit his arguments? Was he biased in favor of Europe?

BOOK JOURNEY:

Journey of the book: THOMAS JEFFERSON’S BATTLE FOR SCIENCE: BIAS, TRUTH, AND A MIGHTY MOOSE!

Thank you so much, Kathy, for the opportunity to share the journey of THOMAS JEFFERSON’S BATTLE FOR SCIENCE. It was a long one with several twists and turns. This project offers a valuable example of how several people can start with the same topic and end up with something different.

I first saw an article about Thomas Jefferson’s obsession with mammoths in 2015. What fun! I began researching in 2016. It wasn’t long before I saw an announcement for a picture book on the same topic…and put that idea aside. I pulled it out later and latched onto the incident about the moose. I went back down the research rabbit hole in April 2018 and surfaced with an idea that sprang from my own obsession—with truth. I began drafting in May, intent on a story about science, truth, and misinformation.

Then… I saw another book announced about the mammoth obsession, and this one included…you guessed it…the moose incident. But it sounded different than what I was brewing—it focused on measuring animals. I was focused on measuring truth. And…I was already up to my armpits in it, unwilling to let it go.

Much of what became the book, releasing May 14, appeared in the first few drafts. The story about Jefferson’s battle against Count Buffon’s theory of degeneration in North America begins when Jefferson reads Buffon’s ideas: “Nature is less active, less energetic on one side of the globe than she is on the other.” Ridiculous! And Jefferson set out to prove Buffon, the most famous and respected natural history authority in Europe, wrong. Tough gig for shy, amateur scientist, Jefferson. But the misinformation and faulty facts hit him in his nature-loving heart. The story is chock full of fascinating aspects of history and science, and has the bonus of humor and a bit of “ew”. There were many challenges in the crafting of story, such as SO much information, covering a lengthy period of time, connections to “side” pieces of history, and the ever-present lightning rod that comes with Jefferson.

The structure morphed a bit, but most changes involved revisions to the end where it all needs to come together into a tidy take-away. For a while, the focus was on Jefferson’s scientific pursuits and his joy in science. For another while, it included references to Western exploration, including Lewis and Clark’s expedition. (One editor critique at that point loved the science but hated the imperialism.) For a difficult while I was using the idea of different kinds of truth and how those are measured. (This connected to the Declaration of Independence and ended up to be my usual “trying to do too much.”)

By revision #22 in January 2019, I’d found how his process matched with the scientific inquiry process used in schools today and framed the story that way. I was still brainstorming on the take-away. I was trying to find a way to bring his efforts to kids today and, as always, “lay something special in the laps of young readers.” After more research, I found that parts of Jefferson’s book were being used in school readers in the U.S. and had also circulated in various forms while he was in still France. BINGO! From there the pieces slowly fell into place. By revision #29 in August 2019, the manuscript was shorter, focused on handing off science to the future—and for me this meant to kids. Many of the larger, more complicated ideas I’d been working with ended up in back matter, including bias—what it is, its effects, and how Jefferson too was biased. After 36 revisions, my manuscript went under contract in 2019 with Carolyn Yoder at Calkins Creek.

While we worked through editorial revisions involving tightening, how the mammoth obsession played through the story, and fine tuning context, Covid hit. The pandemic affected the timeline as illustrator Jeremy Holmes was working his magic. When sketches, and later final art, came through, it was clear that Jeremy totally got where I was coming from with the story. He must have read my mind when he included some of the pieces I had had to cut – those darlings made it into the illustrations! Huzzah! Jeremy’s art is truly amazing—the way he meshed art and text, added to pacing, supported the science themes, added historical details and sources, carried emotions through, and brought the perfect tone.

I can’t wait to share this book with the world! I hope that this interesting piece of history and the basic ideas of facts, misinformation, and bias that ring ever stronger today will get kids thinking.

Available for Pre-Order at booksellers everywhere!

Publisher book page: https://astrapublishinghouse.com/product/thomas-jeffersons-battle-for-science-9781635926200/

For signed copies, visit Old Firehouse Books here: https://www.oldfirehousebooks.com/book/9781635926200

Educator Guide: https://astrapublishinghouse.com/resources/thomas-jefferson-guide/

BETH’S BIO:

Beth Anderson, a former basement tinkerer and English as a Second Language teacher, has always marveled at the power of books. With curiosity and a love for words, she writes untold tales, hoping to inspire kids to laugh, ponder, and question. Besides her new book THOMAS JEFFERSON’S BATTLE FOR SCIENCE: BIAS, TRUTH, AND A MIGHTY MOOSE!  She’s the award-winning author of CLOAKED IN COURAGE: UNCOVERING DEBORAH SAMPSON, PATRIOT SOLDIER, REVOLUTIONARY PRUDENCE WRIGHT, TAD LINCOLN’S RESTLESS WRIGGLE, “SMELLY” KELLY AND HIS SUPER SENSES, LIZZIE DEMANDS A SEAT!, and AN INCONVENIENT ALPHABET.

Beth Anderson has always been fascinated by language. After years of using literature to teach English as a Second Language, she took off in pursuit of her “someday” and began writing for children. She loves exploring points of view, playing with words, and digging into history and culture for undiscovered gems. Beth is drawn to stories that open minds, touch hearts, and inspire questions.

Beth was born and raised in Illinois, she now lives near the mountains in Colorado.

Website https://bethandersonwriter.com

JERREMY’S BIO:

Jeremy Holmes is an internationally renowned children’s book illustrator whose work has received numerous awards and starred reviews from critics. His books include There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, Poem­mobiles, The Templeton Twins, The Secrets of the Dragon Tomb, The Emperor of mars, What We Found in the Sofa and How It Saved the World and The Eye that Never Sleeps. His three forthcoming illustration projects are Road Trip! (Calkins Creek, 2022), Thomas Jefferson’s Battle for Science: Bias, Truth, and a Mighty Moose (Calkins Creek, 2023), and Mazie’s Amazing Machines (Nancy Paulsen Books, 2023)

He won the prestigious BolognaRagazzi Opera Prima Award (2010) for his debut book There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly. Jeremy’s approach to illustrating books is to tailor his illustration style to each unique manuscript. This process can include custom hand-drawn typography, experimentation with physical form and paper mechanics, and an array of visual mediums.

Jeremy lives in Abington, PA with his wife and four children.

Thank you for sharing your book and journey with us.

I love how Beth keeps blowing me away with interesting books that teach me new things. In addition to every page being filled with interesting and fun facts and details, the entire book is gorgeous. Jeremy’s illustrations are a perfect fit for the book. Children will love the illustrations. Teachers, Parents, and adults will be in awe of every illustrated page. What’s not to love? The story is fresh, and so are the illustrations. I even enjoyed the endpapers that identify the footprints of animals living in America.

The way the book is laid out with drawings and notes of animals, plants, mountains, streams, weather, and crops makes the reader feel like they are right there with Jefferson, recording the dates, times, size, shape, distance, speed, temperature, and collecting bones to discover a mammoth creature to prove Buffon was wrong about America being a terrible place. Far worse than the Old World of Europe and Asia.

Beth did a good job weaving in America’s fight for independence with Jefferson’s fight to prove Buffon wrong. When the war for independence ended, Thomas continued his war on the faulty facts and decided to write his own book. When he finished his book, Congress assigned him minister to France to negotiate trade and treaties and settle disputes, but there was one dispute he couldn’t wait to settle! He packed his manuscript, loaded his trunk, and while in Philadelphia, he bought an enormous panther pelt to help prove his point before sailing to Europe. I loved the map Jeremy created for this double-page spread.

While in France, Jefferson had his book published, and almost a year later, he had it, so he sent it along with the hide of the panther to Buffon. That’s when the battle began. I thought this double-page spread was brilliant because it showed the verbal fight between the two men in such an exciting way. Jefferson is determined to prove to Buffon how wrong he is, so he sets off to America to find a Moose to prove himself to Buffon.

It took twenty men, fourteen days, to haul the seven-foot-tall moose twenty miles through a forest of deep snow to get it to Jefferson. This illustration is so striking that I find myself going back to look at it over and over again. When Buffon received the Moose, he sent Jefferson a response promising TO REVISE HIS BOOK!

But like all good books or movies, that’s not the end of the story for Jefferson. Then, the news of the royal scientist’s death reached Jefferson, and he feared that Buffon’s faulty facts would never be corrected. Talk about a high and low point. Kids will be saying “Oh, No!” But by the time Jefferson made it home to the United States, his book had found its way into the hands of the old and young. It’s a great message for everyone to remember to keep going forward like Jefferson did.

Teachers, Parents, and adults will love the last four pages of THOMAS JEFFERSON’S BATTLE FOR SCIENCE: BIAS, TRUTH, AND A MIGHTY MOOSE! Beth discusses Thomas Jefferson and the Five Steps to the Scientific Inquiry Process, a nice visual teachers could use in their classroom, and a timeline of Thomas Jefferson’s Life. Also, she lists her primary and secondary resources for her reach, which others can use if they are interested in further research.

Don’t miss this book. I only glanced at the surface. Good luck with the book.

Good luck with the book!

Talk tomorrow,

Kathy