Author: Anastasia Suen

From her studio in Northern California, developmental editor Anastasia Suen reads, writes, and edits books for creators of all ages.
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When Sue Found Sue

When Sue Found Sue: Sue Hendrickson Discovers Her T. Rex
by Toni Buzzeo (Author) and Diana Sudyka (Illustrator)

Booktalk: From a very young age, Sue Hendrickson was meant to find things: lost coins, perfume bottles, even hidden treasure. Her endless curiosity eventually led to her career in diving and paleontology, where she would continue to find things big and small. In 1990, at a dig in South Dakota, Sue made her biggest discovery to date: Sue the T. rex, the largest and most complete T. rex skeleton ever unearthed. Named in Sue’s honor, Sue the T. rex would be placed on permanent exhibition at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago.

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Nonfiction Monday

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Copyright © 2019 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

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An Owl at Sea

An Owl at Sea
by Susan Vande Griek (Author) and Ian Wallace (Illustrator)

Booktalk: The true story of a Short-eared Owl that plummeted onto the deck of an oil rig in the North Sea, one hundred miles from shore told in a prose poem. Weak and tired, it huddled on the deck until riggers provided it with a makeshift shelter and fresh meat to eat. When a helicopter arrived to transport some of the workers back home, they took the owl with them, handing it over to the Scottish SPCA. A few weeks later the owl was strong enough to be released into the countryside. An author’s note includes information about the Short-eared Owl, a bird found in the Americas, Europe and Asia, whose numbers may be in decline due to loss of habitat.

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Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Copyright © 2019 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

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Nikola Tesla for Kids

Nikola Tesla for Kids: His Life, Ideas, and Inventions, with 21 Activities
by Amy M. O’Quinn (Author)

Booktalk: Nikola Tesla was a physicist, scientist, electrical engineer, and world-renowned inventor whose accomplishments faded into oblivion after his death in 1943. Tesla was undeniably eccentric and compulsive; some considered him to be somewhat of a “mad” scientist. But in reality, he was a visionary. Many of his ideas and inventions that were deemed impossible during his lifetime have since become reality. He was the first to successfully use rotating magnetic fields to create an AC (alternating current) electrical power supply system and induction motor. He is now acknowledged to have invented the radio ahead of Marconi. Among other things, he developed the Tesla coil, an oscillator, generators, fluorescent tubes, neon lights, and a small remote-controlled boat. He helped design the world’s first hydroelectric plant at Niagara Falls.

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CREATE AN ELECTROMAGNET
A regular magnet is permanently magnetic–you can’t just turn the charge on or off. But an electromagnet is magnetic only when it is supplied with electricity, and you can easily change the strength of the electromagnet by changing the amount of electricity that flows through it. Find out for yourself!

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Copyright © 2019 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

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Reaching for the Moon

Reaching for the Moon: The Autobiography of NASA Mathematician Katherine Johnson
by Katherine Johnson (Author)

Booktalk: As a young girl, Katherine Johnson showed an exceptional aptitude for math. In school she quickly skipped ahead several grades and was soon studying complex equations with the support of a professor who saw great promise in her. But ability and opportunity did not always go hand in hand. As an African American and a girl growing up in an era of brutal racism and sexism, Katherine faced daily challenges. Still, she lived her life with her father’s words in mind: “You are no better than anyone else, and nobody else is better than you.”

In the early 1950s, Katherine was thrilled to join the organization that would become NASA. She worked on many of NASA’s biggest projects including the Apollo 11 mission that landed the first men on the moon.

Snippet: “There is some sort of secret government project out here on the Virginia peninsula, and they are looking for Colored women who are mathematicians,” Eric told me.

“Really!?”

“They call the women ‘computers,’ Katherine,” he said. “I don’t know exactly what they do. But do you think you might be interested?”

“Yes. I want to hear more!”

“Well, I know several women who do that job. I think I can help you get on.”

After the fire we needed a fresh start. So we packed up and moved the 358 miles east to the Hampton Roads area, the largest ice-free harbor in the United States and home to some of the nation’s most important military installations. With so many military bases there, there were lots of jobs in the area.

Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Copyright © 2019 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.

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Susan B. Anthony: The Making of America

Susan B. Anthony: The Making of America
by Teri Kanefield (Author)

Booktalk: America’s famous suffragette Susan B. Anthony was born into a world in which men ruled women: A man could beat his wife, take her earnings, have her committed into an asylum based on his word, and take her children away from her. While the young nation was ablaze with the radical notion that people could govern themselves, “people” were understood to be white and male. Women were expected to stay out of public life and debates. Anthony began her public career as a radical abolitionist, and after the Civil War, she became an international figurehead of the women’s suffrage movement.

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Nonfiction Monday

It’s Nonfiction Monday!

Copyright © 2019 Anastasia Suen All Rights Reserved.