Making Science Fun for Kids

Tasmanian author, Ann Morgan, shares her love of writing, verse, Tasmania and having fun as she introduces science and scientific concepts to young children through her fascinating and gloriously illustrated picture books.

My writing career began by writing poetry for adults and fiction for children in the late 1990s. By the early 2000s, publishers were encouraging me to write funny stories for reluctant readers. My Captain Clawbeak series of illustrated junior novels (Penguin Random House, illustrator, Wayne Harris), is the most successful of these comic adventures for early readers.

Years later, I remembered how, in late primary and early secondary school, my favourite Christmas or birthday presents were, thanks to my science-loving mum, a toy microscope and a chemistry set. So during the covid pandemic, I tried writing science-based picture books for kids. 

The Way of the Weedy Seadragon, illustrated by Lois Bury, CSIRO Publishing, (2021)

My first picture book with CSIRO Publishing was inspired by a poem I had written, which had won a Fellowship of Tasmanian Writers award for nature poetry. I wrote Weedy Seadancers while working for the National Oceans Office, after taking my children snorkeling at the underwater discovery trail at Tinderbox. I am a genre-hopping writer after all!

Informed by her background in nursing, talented Tasmanian illustrator, Lois Bury, researched the biology of these weird and wonderful relatives of seahorses, and added gentle touches of quirkiness to the illlustrations, in a way that enhanced the book’s appeal to children and adults. Well done, Lois!

Ann and Lois at Kingston Market.

Tardigrades, Nature’s Toughest Survivors, illustrated by Jennifer Falkner, CSIRO Publishing (2024)

After reading about the astonishing survival talents of micro-organisms with the cute nicknames of ‘water bears’ and ‘moss piglets’, I decided to write about these tough little critters for five to nine year olds. Thanks to my partner for his subscription to New Scientist! 

The more I researched the tiny tardigrades, the more awed I became of their talents. There are about 1300 known species of this creature, and each species has a ,set of survival mechanisms. Many species can be found in moss. Some in the gutters of our roofs. Others on plants in our gardens – don’t worry, they won’t hurt you if you accidentally swallow them! Tardigrades can also be found in hot springs. They have even been discovered living in damp spots under rocks in scorching deserts! Some have been found near the summit of a Himalayan mountain; others at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans. They have even been found in a lake in Antarctica. 

Tardigrades Book Week costume

Tardigrades have survived for ten days, exposed to the extreme radiation of space - this would tear a human body apart in minutes, unless that person was wearing a space suit!

Tardigrades have an uncanny knack of placing themselves in a kind of suspended animation, and when conditions become favourable again, they can bring themselves back from the brink of death and get on with their lives. Scientists from many different fields are researching them, hoping to discover how they can withstand critical threats to survival such as extreme high or low pressures, heat, cold and dehydration; chemical and radiation poisoning; and lack of oxygen.

Vibrantly illustrated by WA’s Jennifer Falkner, Tardigrades, nature’s toughest survivors could be the perfect book to fire up the curiosity of young children, but teachers, parents and grandparents should also prepare to be amazed!

 

The Bird Lovers’ Ball, illustrated by Lois Bury,
Forty-South, (2025)

This quirky celebration of Tasmanian birds is a unique blend of scientific facts and light comic fantasy. It is also, without doubt, my most genre-bending children’s book.

A few years ago I was studying some greeting cards by Lois Bury, where people are shown dressed as birds. I knew there was a picture book in those images, but for a year or more, the ideal way of weaving those images into a story eluded me. 

Then I had one of those moments when cartoon tweety birds start chirping in your head. Why not have Tasmanian children dressing as their favourite endemic birds (species that only live in Tasmania) and heading off to a Bird Lovers Ball? One page could show a child dressed as an endemic bird character, and another page could contain images and facts about the bird that is being represented.

It was Lois who suggested I write the book in rhyme. My first reaction was a groan – not because I don’t like rhyming text. I do. I love the music of language; the way rhythm and rhyme can introduce unexpected and often comic elements into a text while helping readers develop their literacy skills by predicting what comes next. But I have studied versification at an advanced level, and know how difficult it is to make a rhythmic, rhyming text flow easily. It was nonetheless an inspired suggestion from Lois! After months of grinding my teeth while trying to be playful with rhythmic and rhyming language, the text was complete at last.

I didn’t like our chances of selling this story to a mainland traditional publisher because the topic was so local. Tasmania has just 3% of the Australian population, and royalty-paying publishers need to turn a profit or they go out of business. So I pitched the concept to Lucinda Sharp at Tasmania’s biggest publishing company, Forty South. She loved it! In no time at all, a very talented team was working on the Bird Lovers’ Ball. Thanks, team!

Lois added her own quirky, surreal touches in the illustrations, and the Bird Lovers Ball was  launched at Wild Island Tasmania by Mayor Anna Reynolds late in October 2025.

Birds have been singing in my head ever since!

 

Anne Morgan
Tasmanian children’s book author
Visit Anne’s website

 

Have you ever found a fossil?

Tasmanian author and illustrator, Fiona Levings, also has a PhD in Geology. Although no longer working in that field Fiona has expertly harnessed her experiences and knowledge to craft an informative and captivating picture  book to tell, in lyrical prose and amazingly detailed illustrations, the story of the mountain that embraces Hobart in its foothills. Fiona shares some of the challenges, planning, book design and illustrative techniques undertaken to capture a millennia of geological change in Before the Mountain had a Name.

Cover image of Before the Mountain had a Name

If you live in Tasmania, the chances are that you have. Three hundred million years ago our little state sat wedged between mainland Australia and Antarctica, part of the long coastline of the supercontinent Pangaea. At that time, Tassie lay within the southern polar circle and a large portion of it was covered by a cold, shallow sea that was teeming with life. Reefs of brachiopods and bryozoans competed for space with clams and mussels, sponges, corals and hungry snails. The fossilised remains of these critters are preserved in abundance in rock formations across the state, many of which are exposed in cliffs and platforms lining the modern shoreline. 

Permian-aged fossils including Brachiopod shells and Bryozoan colonies
are commonplace in rocks found across large parts of Tasmania © F Levings

The moment in time that is captured within these rocks is just one episode in the multi-billion-year history of this part of the world. Every bit of the Earth is the way it is today as a result of geological processes that have operated continuously at all scales – from continents colliding to slow drips of water – for the entire life of the planet. The complexity of this system is breathtaking and beautiful - even more so when you add in the biosphere and all of the things that grow, rustle, scurry, crawl and fly around the surface. It’s a lot to take in but understanding how our world formed is important, not least because it gives us perspective on our own species and the role we play within it. The trick, then, is to communicate the beauty of geology whilst dodging its overwhelm.

Page spread depicting The Permian Sea - how the mountain may have
appeared 300 million ago © F Levings

I am a geologist who is lucky enough to write and illustrate books for kids. For years I’ve wanted to ‘do one on rocks’ but couldn’t figure out how. The sense of wonder and curiosity that kids have regarding our world is such fertile ground - the more we can augment it with real understanding, the better. Geology is most commonly communicated to kids using fact books and these are super useful as they teach the language and concepts that underpin the science. There are also books that focus on periods in time (dinosaurs are pretty reliable) or specific processes (volcanoes, anyone?) and certainly lots and lots of books on fossils. However, what I wanted to do was to bring these concepts together and tell the story as a whole which, as we’ve seen, is a terrible idea because it’s huge and even if I could write it, who would ever read it?

Two things came to my rescue. The first was kunanyi, our beautiful mountain, which presented itself as a subject. To focus on just the mountain, a single piece of the earth, reduced the scale of the task enormously. The second was a discovery I’d made with my previous book Now and Then that a detailed illustration really is worth a thousand words.  And so, Before the Mountain had a Name, a picture book where each page spread is one moment in the history of one mountain, came into being. The story of the mountain gives us a glimpse into deep time and the many processes that combine to make our world the way it is - as well as a little bit of context for those wonderful fossils we find so often in its foothills. And whilst the book can be read as ‘just a story’, like all good geology adventures, the more you dig into these pictures, the more you will find. 

Hobart's beautiful kunanyi/Mt Wellington © F Levings

Fiona Levings

To learn more about Before the Mountain had a Name and access resources, activities and references for the book go to fionalevings.com.au 

Writing a Novel is Like Running an Ultramarathon. Part 2

Last week, readers navigated Part 1 of the marathon and this week the finish line is looming. Tasmanian author, Marie Heitz, concludes the journey, identifying further steps that explore both the ultramarathon and the writing process, that will help you reach the finish line. Are you up for the challenge?

8. Most of the work is invisible. 

The race is just the last part of the project. The first and biggest task is surviving the training. Not just  all the running. Sorting your nutrition, and hydration, the overuse injuries, the scheduling around life, testing the gear, and the thousands of kilometres of training, uphill training, downhill training, sand training, water crossings, and rocky technical training, without falling over, or with falling over. 

The words on the page spent years coming into being. Reading, reading, reading, writing emails and blogging and short stories, maturing your ideas, the novels that failed, finally this one: its first and second and fourteenth draft, the beta readers, maybe the paid editor, the submissions to publishers…..a shroud drawn over this…. WOOHOO the acceptance, the editing and drafts and editing and drafts, the changes you liked and didn’t and the proofreading and the proofreading and then suddenly the thing has escaped out into the world and has its own life now.

 

9. Somewhere along the way you will crash. 

Comprehensively. You’ll be absolutely sure you are gone. Not just your legs, every last muscle fibre is spent, and everything, everything hurts. Your mind’s forward push is spent, the last drop down the plughole. More than that: every so-called achievement of your life is worthless, you could just die right here and it wouldn’t matter to anyone, least of all yourself. The first time this happened to me, I was deep in the Tasmanian wilderness, miles and hours from the nearest checkpoint. Further from the nearest road. I would have given up if I could have, but I had to get to the checkpoint first. Solely to get there, I ate and drank and started walking. Slowly but forward. Eventually managed running, 50 steps at a time. I recovered.  And I finished. I discovered that sunk in a well so deep that all light is lost, I can still find the means to recover. Even when my body and spirit and soul have given up, my mind can keep going.

The story will traipse off track into mud, flounder ever deeper; your prose go limp, grey and lifeless. You are delusional that you ever thought anyone would be interested in the ideas. But. If the end is clear to you, keep going till you reach it. That’s what first drafts are for. 

Here’s where ultras and novels differ: Unfortunately, you can’t go back and rewrite that sentence where you trod on a wobbly rock and broke your ankle.

 

10. You have to avert your eyes from the totality if you want to finish. 

You can’t imagine yourself running all day, from before dawn, through everybody else’s breakfast, workday, sun travelling the whole sky, shadows swinging from west to east, sundown, people going home and having dinner, you still running. That’s ridiculous. You just can’t. So you don’t.

Do you believe you can write one arresting funny sentence? Yep, maybe. Write ten thousand? No chance. So don’t think about ten thousand. Just the next one. 

 

11. Whatever the weather. 

Rain, wind, scorching heat, hail, snow all happen outside. At some point, in some race, they will happen to you. So welcome the chance to train in horrible weather, because it gives you a chance to develop strategies to deal with it. Make it not scary. And the worse it is in training, the better chance that the race will be easier.

Marie during the Takayna Ultramarthon

If you want to finish your novel, you don’t just sit down to write when you’re cheery and well rested, the house is quiet and the muse is sitting on your shoulder, ready to share. You sit down, whatever your mental/emotional/life circumstances when sitting down to write. If you make excuses - not today because I’m tired, depressed, hungover, pimply, heartbroken - most days you’d never sit down at all. 

 

12. Your competitors are your comrades too.

Ultramarathons are races. But for many participants, that’s the least important thing about them. That’s true for all amateur running races but becomes ‘more true’ the longer the distance: Increasingly, it becomes not you versus all of them, it’s all of you in it together against the course. You share your fatigue, pain, doubt and laughter. And the vivid green prehistoric forest and the view of mountaintops stretching into a blue haze or lit up with dawn or sunset. You share food and bandages and Panadol and spare socks. Conversation to shorten the miles. Get lost together and back on track together. Help them search for the shoe that got sucked off in the mud.

Nobody gets what it’s like to write a novel unless they’ve tried to write one. They recognise the tyranny and terror of the blank page. And the thrill of filling it with something resonant. And they’re the best people to ask when you think your novel is misfiring because they know what goes on under the hood. All the authors I’ve ever met are generous.

 

13. It affects the lives of those around you.

Not just because you disappear for hours, out onto the mountain or into the cocoon you inhabit in your study or at the end of the kitchen table. It’s because of the additional hours you are present but effectively absent, because you’re working out how you can plausibly get your new lovers to split up in the haunted house. Or because you’re totally flogged; you left your brains and sense of humour - and your cooking and algebra-homework-assisting energy - somewhere out in 28kms of mud and march flies.

 

14. Crosstraining helps. 

For ultras its cycling, weights, pilates, paddling. Because when your core fails, everything crumbles. 

To build your novelist muscle, exercise the discipline, precision and punch of poetry. Write nonfiction to hone accurate, evocative description, opinion pieces for lucid development of ideas.

 

15. You can run/write a very long way feeling just awful.

All going well, the first 30km should be no effort, enjoyable. In the next 20k the “forward” voice starts its work. The body’s reply is “I’d really rather not, but ok.” Around 50k, the niggles have started, agility and spring gradually leach from your legs as they transition to lead pipes, the “forward” voice adds cajolery, bargaining and downright lying. Eventually the brain setting bottoms out on “grim.” Somehow you still keep stumping along, and your spirit is still open to beauty. My enduring memory of the Surf Coast Century is the last 10km on a beach under a sky brilliant with stars, the invisible immensity of Pacific ocean, the rhythm of the surf, the rush and the long white ribbons of surf that loomed and vanished.

The most useful description of novel writing I ever read was “Staring at a blank page until it bleeds.”

 

16. They’re good for you. Except when they’re not. 

It’s not a secret that exercise benefits virtually every aspect of living, but too much exercise provides a similarly broad choice on how to damage or kill yourself, not limited to hypothermia, hyperthermia, falling off cliffs or getting caught in bushfires, overstretching your heart muscle (yep “athlete’s heart” is a thing), kidney failure. Every tendon in my lower half has had legitimate cause to complain of abuse. (But no, it does NOT bugger your knees.)

Writing engages multiple, brain functions, memory, analysis, creativity, planning, visuospatial manipulation, play. It’s an exercise, a release, an escape, a meditation. I get a definite “high” when I come up with a phrase or a sentence I like, especially if it’s funny. Writing is brain exercise. 

However… Twice, I’ve had to stop and reassess where my novel was going when I realised I’d been depressed for weeks and the cause was my subject matter. In the first case my hero was drifting between coma and terror and pain, his team seeing no way forward except death and betrayal. The second was set in a dystopian future in which the only remaining non-extinct animals were the apex scavengers: rats, cats and crows which had evolved towards each other in shape and savagery. And skill in killing cockroaches. I had to stop. I couldn’t spend my days in those dark places. The second book had an arresting premise and my world-building was advanced. But I had to abandon it.

 

17. Coffee.

No explanation necessary.

 

18.  Encouragement.

See:

12. – Your competitors are your comrades too.

17. - Coffee.

 

And to conclude, and in the struggle to think of a sentence to encapsulate this piece — something illustrative — nothing came to me. So I went for a run and found one…

The practical application of these correlations is that performing one activity prepares you for the other.

Marie Heitz

Author of The Diemen Alexander, and with a wealth of experiences in laboratories emergency services, and a host of outdoor activities (including running, of course!)

Editor's note: The takayna Trail (see image above) is an annual event in the rainforests of takayna / Tarkine in northwest Tasmania

Saving species through story

Can stories save the world? Dr Sarah Pye thinks they can!

This week’s blog introduces a series of literary non fiction texts focusing on endangered animals in South East Asia, the conservation work of Dr Wong and the many projects of the author, Dr Sarah Pye in sharing her knowledge and experiences with young readers and students in schools.

It was a humid 2012 day in Borneo. The hotel receptionist had just found out I was a freelance writer gathering fodder for a feature story about wildlife tourism. “You need to talk to Dr Wong,” she said, scribbling a phone number onto her notepad and handing me the phone.

Little did I know that day would change my life.

Sun bear at the Bornean Sun Bear
Conservation Centre ©

Seeing sun bears for the first time

Dr Wong invited me to visit the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre, not yet open to the public. As I stood on the observation platform watching the world’s smallest bear swinging from a branch 50m in the air, I was hooked. “There are far fewer sun bears than orangutans,” Wong explained. “I have dedicated my life to saving the sun bear.”

I asked what I could do to help.

“Do what you do best,” came the reply.

Sarah Pye with Wong Siew Te ©

Do what you do best!

Those five powerful words have shaped my last decade. Yes, I wrote the article, but I also wrote Wong’s biography (for adults) as a Doctor of Creative Arts degree, exploring how narratives can engage non-scientists in conservation. However, when Saving Sun Bears was published in 2020, I realised my job had only just begun. I needed to reach the next generation. 

Making a mini rainforest | © Jessie Dee

Why are nonfiction conservation stories for children important?

Stories about iconic animals can evoke emotions like wonder, empathy and concern. They can foster a sense of environmental stewardship and inspire children to become change makers. So, back at the keyboard, I started writing middle-grade children’s books about Wong’s life. There are now six books in the Wildlife Wong series. Each one focuses on Wong’s adventures with a different species: sun bears, orangutans, pygmy elephants, bearded pigs, fig wasps and Sumatran rhinos, but they are innovative in their structure.

But what if kids don’t like reading?

As any teacher will tell you, children learn in different ways. To engage with differing preferences, I decided to include different touchpoints. Each Wildlife Wong books includes a nonfiction narrative (or story); informational text or cool animal facts; sketches and photographs which make it look like a field journal; and experiments which link back to the narrative and engage those reluctant readers. This innovative style led to them being shortlisted for an Australian Educational Publishing Award in 2022. 

Sumatran rhino sketch of baby Mina and her mother |
© Woon Bing Chang

Sarah Pye with Pongo | © Jessie Dee

Storytelling puppets

The next step was extending my reach by visiting schools, so I developed workshops around reading my stories and conducting the experiments. Most recently, I started incorporating the art of puppetry! I now visit schools together with my puppet sidekicks, Luna the sun bear and Pongo the orangutan. The response has been incredible. This August, for instance, we spent 12 full days in schools, directly interacting with over 1,200 students. With the help of technology, many of them even got to meet the real Wildlife Wong!

Tours to Borneo

I’m not done yet! I am excited to announce I have just launched a 10-day guided tour of Borneo for next August, during which Wong will take my guests on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre! 

When he said, “Do what you do best”, Wong had no idea it would spawn a doctorate, seven books and a lasting friendship. So, I now ask you the same question: what can YOU do best to help our endangered animals?

Dr Sarah Pye is an award-winning biography and children’s author, an environmentalist and avid traveller.

Web: https://sarahrpye.com/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/SarahRPye

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/author_sarahrpye/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuthorSarahPye

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahpye/

Editor's note: Sarah and I connected online via a shared passion for animal conservation issues conveyed through story. It was a pleasure to read and review her latest book in the series - Wildlife Wong and the Sumatran Rhino. Read my review!