Posted by CBethM on September 18, 2024 in Author Posts |
The other night, out to dinner with a couple fiction-writer friends, I learned a new-to-me genre word: howdunit. The friend who shared the term said it describes a detective story in which the focus of the narrative is not the person who committed the crime (that would be a whodunit) but, rather, how the crime was accomplished.
Nerdy Book Club friends, this is the word I’ve needed my entire nonfiction-writing life. It perfectly describes the science stories I most like to share. What are science stories if not mysteries, right? Who are scientists if not detectives? Understanding the world around us and how it works is endlessly fascinating to me, and when I share the world around us and how it works with young readers, my preferred approach is to craft a howdunit.
My own science origin story, in fact, is a howdunit, although I’ve never known to call it that. As a freshman in high school, Mr. Micarelli, my biology teacher, proposed I join his team of student researchers. I could choose anything at all that I wanted to know more about, and Mic would help me design some experiments to learn from. I decided to study earthworms. More specifically, I decided to figure out what kind of soil earthworms like best.
Why did I choose to study earthworms? I have no idea.
How did I study earthworms? That I can tell you.
First, I found several deep, narrow glass containers; think of an ant farm minus the ants. I filled one container with garden soil, one with sand, and one with an equal mixture of the two.
Then I got me some worms. (Did I dig them up outside? Did we order them from a biological supply company? My guess is the latter, but this detail is also lost to history.)
I placed a couple worms on the top of the soil in each of the three containers and then I wrapped the containers in tin foil so that the worms would think they were underground day and night.
I set the containers in a temperature-controlled hood in the science lab, and I visited every day to feed and water my subjects, carefully recording their behaviors in my lab notebook.
My theory was simple: the worms would burrow differently in each substrate and those differences—burrowing fast or slow, constantly or intermittently, deeply or shallowly or not at all—would allow me to figure out which medium they liked best.
Here’s the thing: I don’t remember my results. I know I had results, because I had to write them up in a report at the end of the school year. I could guess what those results were, but I’ve honestly just never felt the need to.
First of all, I could easily figure it out by repeating my original experiments. (So could you! Or your students!)
Secondly, the results are superfluous to me. They are the ending, but they are not the story. What I discovered mattered less to me, even then, than how I discovered it. Coming up with a theory, designing experiments to test it, conducting the experiments, these were the parts of doing science that thrilled me. These were the steps that gave me the power to figure out anything I wanted to. Thirteen-year-old Loree was giddy thinking about all she didn’t know and how, suddenly, she had tools to help her figure some of it out.
If you’re still reading this post, there’s a good change you might enjoy a howdunit yourself. And so, I’m going to close with a book recommendation. (Surely you saw this coming?)
One Long Line: Marching Caterpillars and the Scientists that Followed Them is the first book in a brand-new early chapter book series written by me, illustrated by the wildly talented Jamie Green, and published by our friends at MITKids and Candlewick Press. It’s about unusual caterpillars, called pine processionaries, and their strangest behavior. They live in large groups and move everywhere together en masse … in long, undulating, head-to-tail, single-file lines.
Why do pine processionaries travel this way? It seems to be a strategy for staying safe as the caterpillars venture forth from their nest to feed on pine needles at night.
Who figured this out? A French scientist named Jean Henri Fabre and, later, an American scientist named Terrance Fitzgerald. You’ll meet them both in the book.
How did they figure this out? That, my friends, is the story. I hope you will give our little howdunit a read. And I hope you’ll share it with the curious young people in your lives, too.
Loree Griffin Burns is a biologist and the author of many nonfiction books for children, including Honeybee Rescue: A Backyard Drama, illustrated by Ellen Harasimowicz, and Life on Surtsey: Iceland’s Upstart Island. Her books have won many accolades, including American Library Association Notable designations, a Boston Globe–Horn Book Honor, an International Reading Association Children’s Book Award, a Green Earth Book Award, and two AAAS/Subaru Prizes for Excellence in Science Books. She lives in central New England, where she writes, teaches, and studies her insect neighbors.
English (US) · 