Meet Authors of Children Books

Chatroom - Animal Diaries Chat #14
 
21 November 2003

Jane Kurtz, writer of several books
Mrs. Goble = Mrs. Joan Goble, teacher of Cannelton Elem., and students

*** New Messages appeared at the top of the page ***

>>- Mrs. Goble wrote: Mr. Rene, when you read this....thank you for setting this chatroom up for us. :-) We wish you could have joined us. Maybe next time. :-)

Mrs. Goble and class wrote: Thank you ! We really liked this! You are very nice!

Mrs. Goble wrote: We live in southern Indiana...most of Indiana is on our time. We were Central about a month ago, now we are considered Eastern...in other words, we never change here, but others around us do. It is complicated! Sorry about that. Rene did not remember that we are now Eastern, that is ok it all worked out. thank you!!!!! We had fun chatting with you!

Jane Kurtz wrote: Yes, please send the rest of your questions via email. I'm so sorry that I was late because of not being able to figure out the time zones. Where DO you live?

Jane Kurtz wrote: This summer, my brother and I were at a family reunion in Red Lodge, Montana, where the illustrator of Water Hole Waiting lives, and I hoped I could meet him, but I didn't get to because he was on vacation.

Mrs. Goble wrote: We must say goodbye, but we would like to know, can we send some more questions via e-mail?

Jane Kurtz wrote: Hello, Mrs. Goble. People sometimes ask me how I found certain illustrators. I tell them...the good news is you don't have to find an illustrator for your picture book. The bad news is that you don't GET to find an illustrator. That is the editor's job. They must love that part of their job--matching a story up with an artist--and they definitely don't want to let anybody else do it. 

Jane Kurtz wrote: You know, Steven, my parents went to Ethiopia when I was only two years old, so I grew up thinking that was home. At the same time, I always knew I didn't completely belong there because my family spoke English and almost everyone else around me was speaking a different language, Amharic. When I'm in the U.S. I miss Ethiopia and when I'm in Ethiopia I miss the U.S. 

Mrs. Goble wrote: How did you get matched up with your illustrator for Water Hole Waiting?

Jane Kurtz wrote: I remember going on a hike one day near a town called Jimma, and a boy came up and offered to guide my sisters and me to a water hole where we could see hippopotami. Sure enough! There they were.

Steven wrote: How long did you live in Africa? Do you miss it?

Jane Kurtz wrote: Hunter, I think you might be right. We'll have to research that, won't we? Breanna, there are many different kinds of water holes. Some are quite big. Some are actually tiny. Think about lakes and ponds here in the U.S.--some of those are big and some are small, right? It's the same way with water holes.

Breanna wrote: How do water holes look like in real live. Are they big are small

Hunter wrote: I think crocodiles have short snouts and alligators are long, but maybe it is the other way around. Thank you for answering my question.

Jane Kurtz wrote: Hello, Dylan. I wrote a novel called JAKARTA MISSING that you might read when you get older. In it, I put an African elephant. When I was little, I saw tracks of elephants but I didn't see one up close in the wild. When I was doing research for WATER HOLE WAITING, though, I visited a water hole in Kenya, and elephants came to the water hole to drink. I was in a hotel built right into a tree, right above the water hole, so I was pretty close. I took some pictures and watched the way they drank.

Jane Kurtz wrote: Hunter, in Ethiopia they have a lot of crocodiles in some places, though not alligators. Do you know the difference? I don't, quite. But I saw lots of crocodiles when we were in a boat on some of the rivers in Ethiopia. (Not the rivers where I grew up, though, which are much too fast for crocodiles.) I never got very close to the crocodiles. My dad got a lot closer than I did. He sometimes had to float in a boat across a river that was full of crocodiles. I think their teeth look scary even when the crocodiles aren't snapping, don't you?

Dylan wrote: Have you ever seen an African elephant up close before? Have you ever written a book about one?

Jane Kurtz wrote: Skye, that's a great question, because I did mention that I write a lot from observation. Yes, I saw vervet monkeys when I was growing up. I even had a pet vervet monkey. It wasn't a very good pet, though. It bit me on the finger and ran away into the trees. I had to study about vervet monkeys when I was writing Water Hole Waiting. I read a big, thick book called HOW MONKEYS SEE THE WORLD.

Hunter wrote: Have you ever seen an alligator up close? If so, have you ever got snapped at by one?

skye wrote: Did you see a real monkey like in the book?

Jane Kurtz wrote: By the way, Allicyn, if I said, "Draw a picture about something," you would probably think of something you like to draw, and you'd start drawing the picture. That's not too much different from the way most of my writing starts. 

Jane Kurtz wrote: Hi, Allicyn. That's the important question, isn't it! Nobody tells me what to write...that's for sure. In some schools where I visit, children are keeping a writing notebook. That's something like what I do. I think about my writing a lot. I think about what I might write about. And when I get ideas, I jot them down in my idea book. Real life gives me ideas. Curiosity gives me ideas. Reading other people's stories gives me ideas. Thinking about what I know about and what I care about gives me ideas. That's how my brother and I got the idea to write Water Hole Waiting.

Allicyn wrote: How did you know what to write?

Jane Kurtz wrote: Hi, Taylor. If I'm far from my computer, I will work on a piece of paper. For example, I spend a lot of time traveling and speaking, so sometimes I scribble thoughts on paper. But I prefer to be at my computer, either my desk top or my laptop. I can type faster than I can write, so it helps me capture my ideas if I'm sitting at a computer.

Taylor wrote: How you writ the storycomputer? Paper?

Jane Kurtz wrote: Today is one of those days when I wish I could be sitting at my computer and working on my newest story, but I have a lot of other things I need to catch up on first. So sometimes I don't want to sit down and write and have to coax myself to get started. Other times, I want to sit down and write, but I don't really have time to. Yikes!

Jane Kurtz wrote: Makayla, I like to write and read very much. I used to love to read even when I was young. That's why I became an author. Of course, it's also very hard work. Sometimes I don't like it at all. But mostly I do. 

Jane Kurtz wrote: Klinton, thanks for the smaller question that I can answer. It's very hot on the savanna, where Water Hole Waiting is set. I visited there when I was a child. But I grew up in the mountains where it wasn't hot at all. In fact, I usually had to wear a sweater. It never snowed, though. You might want to read my book FARAWAY HOME where Desta asks her dad if he was hot in Ethiopia when he was young.

Klinton wrote: Was it really hot in Africa?

Jane Kurtz wrote: One reason I started writing books set in Ethiopia was so people here in the U.S. could see what it was like for me growing up in Ethiopia. It's pretty hard to describe a place where someone has never been.

Klinton wrote: Was it really hot in a

makayla wrote: do you like writing youre books

Jane Kurtz wrote: Hi, Klinton. That's a pretty big question! If I asked you, "what is it like in the United States?" what would you say?

Jane Kurtz wrote: Sometimes when I can visit a school and they ask me to talk about my writing, I show the students and teachers how my writing is a combination of imagination, observation, and research. Those three things all went into Water Hole Waiting, too.

Klinton wrote: What is it like in Africa

Jane Kurtz wrote: I'm sorry for showing up late. When I saw that the page said Central Standard Time, I thought, well, that's what time zone I'm in. But it's only 1:20 here. Caila, I saw water holes when I was a child growing up in Ethiopia. I've also seen them recently as an adult. But I also did a lot of research about water holes.

MRs. Goble wrote: we are here...we are glad you could make it. :-)

Jane Kurtz wrote: Hello, Joan. Are you in the room right now? I asked you this morning about exactly where you live because I thought we were on the same time zone, but I wasn't sure. Apparently we aren't! I'm here now though. 

caila wrote: how do you know all about the water hole?

Mrs. Goble wrote: yes, I think so (welcome to our chat! )

Jane Kurtz wrote: Do I need to click "add message" each time? That's the only thing that isn't clear to me. Thanks, Jane

Jane Kurtz wrote: I'm testing from my end! jk

Mrs. Goble wrote: This works fine for us. We look forward to the chat!

END OF 14th ANIMAL DIARIES CHAT