Mary Kay Carson is a prolific freelance science writer of books, articles and teaching materials. Her interest in science and animals stems from a childhood where she explored the woods and nurtured animals (including a litter of opossums). Her interest in writing bloomed during her tour of duty in the Dominican Republic as a fisheries extension agent with the Peace Corps. Her diverse career includes writing for a Scholastic science magazine, a stint on an Alaskan fishing boat to earn money for grad school, and an internship with the Audubon Society. Although the major body of Mary Kay's published work is in the field of science, she's recently branched out into historical non-fiction collaborations with her photographer-husband, Tom Uhlman.

SCBWI: Is it necessary to have a background in science to establish a career in science writing for kids? How can a new writer build and establish credibility in the field of science writing?

Mary Kay Carson: No, it isn't. Neither of my editors at Scholastic's SuperScience magazine had science backgrounds. Having a biology degree has impressed a couple of clients, but most don't really care what you studied in college. They're mostly interested in your writing. You establish credibility by consistently producing good science writing. To me, this means doing exhaustive research, using credible sources, and knowing what your readers likely know and don't know about a science topic. That's where studying the National Science Education Standards (NSES) come in.

The National Science Education Standards (NSES) is a sort of guide to scientific literacy by age. The standards describe what students should be able to understand at different grade levels in various science categories. For example, 2nd graders can be expected to know and make observations about the moon and its path across the sky, whereas 5th graders should be able to identify gravity as the mechanism. This means that if you're writing for 2nd graders you can't assume they know what gravity is-and some editors may even consider it developmentally inappropriate to include an explanation of gravity. You can buy a copy of the National Science Education Standards (National Academy Press, 1996). It can also be downloaded (or viewed) online for free at www.nap.edu/catalog/4962.html.

SCBWI: Much of your writing focuses on teacher books and classroom materials. Can you talk a little about how these materials differ from articles and books sold to the public and how writers can break into this field?

MKC: First of all, there are a lot more contracts out there to write classroom materials than there are for trade books! Writing educational materials for students and teachers is how I've been able to make a living as a writer for ten years.

Educational materials come in many flavors and types. There are classroom magazines (think Weekly Reader or Science World); short "leveled reader" books; theme unit books for teachers that give basic info about a topic and provide activities and reproducible student pages; and a slush category of "supplemental materials." Some examples of supplemental materials might be a student newsletter put out by Audubon that comes with a teaching guide; student and teacher guides that go with film strips sets; teaching guides that accompany education software titles; etc.

Most educational materials are sold to teachers and schools through catalogs or school/teacher supply stores. The contracts are usually work-for-hire and pay a flat fee. Some of the larger publishers do offer royalty contracts and have a wider distribution to the public. The teacher titles I've written for Scholastic Professional Books are like this and can be bought through Amazon.com and other regular bookstores.

Writing educational materials is its own skill. Writing a leveled reader for 3rd graders about Mars has to meet a number of different criteria. Its primary aim is to teach non-fiction reading skills to 3rd graders. Therefore, the vocabulary, sentence structure and length, amount of text per page, etc. must be very exact for the age level.

The book also needs to teach science-but just not any science! You'll often be given the exact NSES that the text should cover. Of course the book is also supposed to engaging and fun to read! It can be a bit like writing haiku at times. Thankfully, most publishers provide very detailed writers guidelines for leveled reader series.

Likewise, teaching guides have their own kind of "education-speak" language full of student skill words (investigate, conclude, observe, etc.) that teachers are looking for. Most teaching guides follow pretty strict and easy to emulate formats, so you can use past ones as templates. It's not always the most exciting kind of writing! The fun part (for me) is coming up with the student activities that are usually included in teaching guides. I love turning my kitchen into a science lab for an afternoon. (Hint: You might need to brush up on the scientific method before tackling science activities.)

As far as breaking into the field, SCBWI publishes a Directory Guide to Educational Markets. (Members can send or download it at www.scbwi.com/pubs.htm.) Poking around those teacher supply stores and writing down names of publishers whose work you like, is another way to decide whom to contact. Be warned that a good chunk of this work is now being contracted through developers and book packagers. They too are looking for writers, but I'm unaware of any directory of them. And they usually pay less than the source due to the middleman phenomena. Joining the National Association of Science Writers can be a good resource for freelance jobs (www.nasw.org), as well as learning about science writing in general.

SCBWI: How do collect the information you need for your research? Do you use the Internet? Read books and articles? Interview experts (and how do you locate experts?) Do you travel to field locations for on-site research?

MKC: I do all of the above! I like to look at kids' books on the subject to see what's already been done-and overdone. But you have to be super careful not use kid science books as sources. They are rife with errors and often outdated.

Be careful with adult books, too. Most ten-year-old science books are useless as sources of accurate facts. Websites, as well, can be error ridden. I stick to university or government sponsored ones mostly.

Scientists are pretty easy to track down-most work at universities and for agencies with public relations departments. If you don't have a particular person in mind to interview, there are free expert reference services like Media Source (www.mediaresource.org) and ProfNet (www3.profnet.com). Scientists are parents, too, and many enjoy contributing to a kids magazine or book. Probably one of the nicest compliments I've ever received was from an engineer I interviewed for a project about risk assessment. He wrote me a note saying that he'd done one of the activities in the teaching guide with his son. He said it was the first time he felt like his son really understood what his job was.

SCBWI: Are the photographs or illustrations for your books and articles provided by the publisher? If not, how do you go about locating public domain material?

MKC: The art is provided by the publisher for all of the work for hire books-though I often provide sketches or other art references for diagrams or activity illustrations. I did have to provide photos for a number of the royalty books (Epilepsy, The Wright Brothers for Kids, The Underground Railroad for Kids). I think this is common practice in lower end and/or small independent publishers. I'll warn you that obtaining photos can be a time-gobbling black hole! That said, it is getting easier thanks to the Internet and digitization. The Library of Congress (www.loc.gov), the National Archives (www.archives.gov), and other websites have many high-resolution public domain images. Also anything published more than 75 years ago is in the public domain.

I used the interlibrary loan system to track down, borrow, and copy books with images for my Underground Railroad book. There are lots of resources about copyright and public domain at www.copyright.cornell.edu. I'd recommend doing some research before agreeing to provide images. Find out what kinds of images are out there and what it's going to cost you (in time and money) to get them.

In general, historical images will be easier to get a hold of than recent ones. Depending on the topic, you might be able to submit your own photos. (This is where being married to a photographer helps!)

SCBWI: Editors frequently mention they want articles/book queries that approach science (or history) from a "fresh" angle. How do you brainstorm ideas that offer unique approaches?

MKC: Taking a good look at what's already out there is the best way to start. If a particular angle seems overdone to you, it probably is.

You can do an "Advanced Search" on Amazon.com books by age group and subject and get a pretty good idea of what's been written about Mars for 4-8 year old, for example. Searches like these help me brainstorm, too. Your mind starts noticing patterns of what's there, what's not, and what could be better!

When I was doing research for the book proposal for The Underground Railroad for Kids I started reading slave narratives. Many included amazing stories of daring escapes. I also began noticing that most Underground Railroad books seemed to emphasize the work of Underground Railroad conductors and stationmasters. So I decided to focus on the escaping slaves and tell their stories in their own words as much as possible.

Science-and history-can have a bad wrap as boring and encyclopedic. Obviously no editor will buy a book that starts "Mars has a diameter of 7,950 kilometers…" Remember that just because science and history isn't fiction doesn't mean that a nonfiction book can't tell a story. Narratives about how scientists discovered something or solved a problem can be just as compelling as a mystery. Describing what goes on inside a cell or what it would be like to visit Pluto is can be as engaging as a fantasy novel. Using specific examples, including vivid details, and telling a story about a person can all make a kid keep turning the page!

Find out more about Mary Kay Carson and science-based freelance writing on her website, www.marykaycarson.com.

A Sampling of Mary Kay Carson's Children's Book Titles:

• The Underground Railroad for Kids (Chicago Review Press, Autumn 2004 scheduled release)
• The Wright Brothers for Kids (Chicago Review Press, 2003)
• Mars (Chelsea House, 2003)
• In the Deep (Chelsea House, 2003)
• The Creepiest, Scariest, Weirdest Creatures Ever! (Kidsbooks, 2002)
• Epilepsy (Enslow, 1998)

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