April Pulley Sayre Author Photo illustrator
Website for April Pulley Sayre, Award-winning Children's Book Author / Illustrator
Here are some resources to help readers and teachers use my new book, Let’s Go Nuts! Seeds We Eat (Release date August 27, 2013, Beach Lane Books an imprint of Simon & Schuster). Hope you find edible seeds a a chewy, fun topic as I did!
Related Children’s Books and Reference Books
It’s here! April 23rd release. If you like what you hear in my talks or read in my children’s books, this is the next step. Touch a Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening With Kids is perhaps my most personal book with a traditional publisher. Yes, it’s geared to parents and families, but I think some of my student fans, 5th grade and up, would like sections of it because in it I share not just wildlife gardening and family stories, but also how to approach/study wildlife at close range. Continue reading “Touch a Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening With Kids”
When I saw Steve Jenkins’ art for our new book, Eat Like a Bear (Sept 10, 2013, Holt), I was amazed. The bears’ bodies were so furry-looking. I emailed Steve about it. He told me their bodies were made of amate, Mexican bark paper. Bark paper? You know me and my love o’ plants. I had to find out more. Turns out that this paper is made from fig and mulberry trees by craftspeople in a few small villages in the mountains of Mexico. It has a really deep history. The Mayan and Aztec people held it sacred. The craft almost died out but survived in one Otomi village in Mexico. Oh, there’s so much more to the story, I almost wish I could write a book about it. Hmm…! Take a look at this article on the web and you’ll see why I fell under the spell of this complex bark paper story: Amate Art of Mexico
AAAS Science NetLinks has put up an excellent K-2 lesson on food chains that uses Vulture View and Trout Are Made of Trees. It links with Project 2061 Benchmark 5 The Living Environment; and National Science Standard C, Life Science. The National Science Teachers Association website has a section called NSTA RECOMMENDS which points out good resources for science teaching. Here Come the Humpbacks was just added with a full review.
If you want to know who I am and what I do, NAEYC’s Young Children magazine November 2012 issues has what’s probably my best interview yet: www.naeyc.org/yc/files/yc/file/201211/MeetTheAuthor.pdf
Last Fall I spoke at the national conference of NAEYC, in the Meet the Authors session, which featured Mem Fox and James Dean, creator/illustrator of Pete the Cat. Yes, I know, MEM FOX! Wow, her voice is enthralling.
I just returned from a great weekend speaking at the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library where they are celebrating 100 years and the young authors in their community. The educators and authors were so inspiring! Back home I found that Here Come the Humpbacks is in the major review arenas such as Kirkus. A few blogs are popping up, such as one on Nonfiction Detectives. Touch a Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening For Kids, which will be released April 23rd, has a very thorough review in ForeWord Reviews. I’ll be traveling widely for school talks and young author conferences the rest of March and all of April 2013. I look forward to seeing many of you on my travels.
Here Come the Humpbacks! illustrated by Jamie Hogan should be swimming its way into stores on Feb 1st. Then, April 23rd, Touch A Butterfly: Wildlife Gardening With Kids arrives in stores. It’s an adult book and will be in the parenting section. 
My long awaited next book with Steve Jenkins, Eat Like a Bear, will be released by Holt sometime next Fall. Finally, the sequel to Rah, Rah, Radishes and Go, Go, Grapes will also show up sometime late next year. It’s Let’s Go Nuts: Seeds We Eat.
Science Books and Films’ November 2012 issue has an article by Terrence E. Young, Jr that celebrates science picture books: “November is Science Picture Book Month.” Vulture View and Stars Beneath Your Bed are mentioned and there’s a page at the end with a paragraph quote about my view of science picture books. Also, a new article on my writing process is in Bruce Black’s wordswimmer blog.
Rah, Rah, Radishes is on Oprah’s Kids’ Reading List 2012, ages 4-7! What I love is that Oprah.com had serious children’s book experts, folks at ALA-CBC, ALSC choose the 25 books on this list. So the whole list is chock full of good stuff, including one of my favorites, Actual Size, by Steve Jenkins. (Jenkins writes great books and illustrated Vulture View. He’s illustrating my book Eat Like a Bear, which comes out Fall 2013. Yippee!)