Respond to prefers-color-scheme dark in app web views

Follow section front redirects in Spectrum

Enable NLP source in PCS for load testing

Switch off the News Alerts Survey Widget when we have enough responses

Poll to determine if new LUF updates are available

Allows the winning A/B test variant to be turned on without Spectrum deployment

Show infinite scrolling sections in Assembler MultiView

Show option for NLP article summaries in Action Bar

A general feature flag for Recipe Features that aren't yet released

Feature flag for media team features that aren't yet released

Use new Orca video player for preroll plugin in Spectrum

Show the snow tracker (instead of the heat tracker) on Spectrum

Teen grabs wheel when driver passes out and school bus veers into traffic

Cat climbed into Amazon return box, found alive 630 miles away

I learned to heal my sadness by cradling dying chickens 

On Press Freedom Day, little to celebrate for Hong Kong’s journalists

Young Georgians want to be part of Europe. Their government is in the way.

Taxes are inevitable. Paying to prepare them doesn’t have to be.

Is Pastis as good as our food critic thought? He sent spies to find out.

Trevor Williams’s escape act helps Nationals blank Rangers 

Nationals can’t solve Nate Eovaldi, drop series finale to Rangers

Hope Hicks witnessed nearly every Trump scandal. Now she must testify.

Elections 2024 latest news: Biden to honor distinguished Americans; Trump back in N.Y. court

To the Gaza protesters helping to elect Trump: Give it a rest

The New York Times, alone in its outrage over access to Biden

Wait, what is Stephen A. Smith talking about? Find out with our quiz.

Stephen A. Smith would like even more of your attention

Miss Manners: Host eats luxurious breakfast, leaves cereal for guest

Ask Amy: Should I be the best man if I think the bride is abusive?

Carolyn Hax: Husband keeps pushing modest spouse to wear sexier clothes

The dangerous new call for regime change in Beijing

Ukrainian men abroad voice anger over pressure to return home to fight 

U.K. local election results could spell doom for Conservative Party

Riot police and over 2,000 arrests: A look at 2 weeks of campus protests

Hope on the horizon | The Trump Trials: Sidebar

Police break into UCLA encampment

You asked: Do I need a passport for my cruise?

What’s the best bus to New York? We tested 5 for comfort and value.

Adaptive equipment is making national parks more inclusive

This is the technology we’re loving right now

NASA moon capsule suffered extensive damage during 2022 test flight

Microsoft is changing how you log in to your accounts

An I bond is now at 4.28 percent. Are they still a good deal?

Use these 6 points to say no to a college you and your kid can’t afford

How this new rule protects retirement savers from costly advice

The Gryphon Press

Author Barbara Kingsolver had just stepped away from her desk in her home office where she was logged in for a Zoom interview when her daughter, Lily, logged on from her home in Florida.

Barbara quickly came back into view. “I was coming down the hall and heard Lily talking from my office!” she said, delighted. “It’s really fun to see each other, even on Zoom. … This is the farthest apart we’ve lived in our whole lives.”

The two Kingsolvers were there to discuss “<a href="https://amzn.to/3QYgNTN" target=_blank>Coyote’s Wild Home</a>,” a new children’s book they wrote together — a first for them. The book, illustrated by Paul Mirocha, tells the story of a grandfather and granddaughter on a camping trip. The grandpa shows the girl evidence of coyotes and explains why humans shouldn’t be afraid of predators, and why it’s important that they exist.

Lily, 27, grew up in southwest Virginia among the Appalachian Mountains. Now in graduate school at the Florida Institute of Technology, she’s earning her master’s degree in environmental education. Lily’s career path isn’t a surprise after being raised by Barbara, a biologist known for her attention to nature and the environment in her best-selling novels.

“We’ve been doing projects together our whole life,” Lily said. “Mom always got us in there, working on the garden.”

“Or in the woods, hiking,” Barbara added.

Mother and daughter discussed working together on their beautiful children’s book — one that the author of Demon Copperhead said she never could have written herself — and the necessity of educating children (and adults) about the importance of the natural world.

The interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Q: What drew you to write about this topic?

Barbara: I credit<a href="https://www.thegryphonpress.com/" target=_blank> Gryphon Press </a>with the origin of this book. They have this mission to publish children’s books that introduce children to the natural world and create compassion and empathy in children. They wanted to publish a book about coyotes, and sent me an email asking if I would be interested because I’ve written about coyotes before.

I actually wrote a <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Prodigal-Summer-Barbara-Kingsolver/dp/0060199652" target=_blank>novel in which coyotes</a> played a central part. One of the characters was a coyote scientist, and so I had done a lot of research about coyotes and the role of predators in ecosystems. So they thought that was a natural match. I thought, “Isn’t this a beautiful idea? And there’s no way I can do this.”

Q: Were you too busy? Why couldn’t you do this?

Barbara: I’ve actually tried three times to write a children’s book, and I just don’t have that skill set. So I had already drafted an email back to them saying, “I love this idea. I’m so sorry, I can’t do it.”

That letter and that book idea were sitting on my kitchen table when Lily came in and read the letter and said, “What a good idea!” And I said, “Well, it is a good idea, but the predator biology is so complex. How could you possibly fit that into a child-sized narrative?”

And Lily just laid out the plot. The whole thing right there on the spur of the moment. And I said, “Lily, you should write this book.”

Lily: I said I would, but only if we do it together. I spend a lot of time with children, I spend a lot of time reading books. But mom has the Pulitzer Prize-winning knack. And I absolutely could not have done it without her guidance and encouragement.

Q: How difficult is it to go from Pulitzer Prize-winning writing, Barbara, to writing a children’s book?

Barbara: People think that writing children’s books takes a small subset of the skills it takes to write a novel. They’re not right. It is closer to poetry, closer to songwriting. And Lily is an excellent poet.

She has been a writer since she was very young. She was that 4-year-old who would stop an adult conversation and say, “tell me what crepuscular means.” And so I’ve always known that whatever else Lily does, she will also write. Lily was absolutely the first author of this novel.

I feel like I served more as an editor. We turned in our proposal, and they said, this is great, but it’s 3,000 words, and what we need from you in total is 1,500 words.

Lily: And then we cut it down and we cut it down. I’m so used to teaching where you can just say more and more. And so I wanted to fit in this and fit in that. And Mom was really good at saying, no, this is our message.

Q: In this book, a grandfather gently explains the role of animals in nature and why coyotes, in particular, are important to the ecosystem to his granddaughter. Separately, we read about the coyote family. How did you come up with this plotline?

Lily: As an environmental educator, you think a lot about predators [and their] different positions in the world. Because we as humans are in the position of predators, I think we are in a parallel role.

I feel like people’s fear of predators is somewhat based on the fact that we see ourselves in them, and that’s very threatening. We like to be on top, and it’s scary to see something that is also very powerful, that also has a large impact on its environment.

And so I think the story is sort of to position humans in the food chain as well as positioning the coyotes, because I think it is really imperative that we think about how we relate to animals in the ecosystem.

Q: Why is it important to you to be an environmental educator and to write a book like this?

Lily: What we change is based on what we care about. And so early childhood is when you can encourage empathy, when you can start to show children why and how we care about the world, about animals and ecosystems and our environment.

It brings me the most joy when you see young kids hold a worm for the first time or see a bird nest. To just foster these connections between children and their environment, I think that is the first step to addressing the problems and issues that these kids probably shouldn’t know about at their age.

But when they’re older, they are going to face these problems like climate change and habitat destruction and our predators disappearing. And fixing that all begins with empathy.

Barbara: We thought of this as an especially important opportunity to encourage empathy for predators because children’s literature has really done a number on them.

Our folklore and our stories have made predators the bad guys: the big, bad wolf; the big, bad bear. It probably dates back to the time when people really did have to worry about the wolf at the door or eating their sheep, damaging their farm animals.

Of course a coyote still will take a lamb from time to time. But we have pushed our ecosystems into smaller spaces and most people don’t know that predators hold such a crucial position. Which is so much to pack into a children’s book.

Q: So how did you pack it all in?

Barbara: An important revelation as we worked on condensing the text of this book was that a picture really is worth a thousand words. We would take our page of text, and think about what parts of this can be told by the illustrations. We would circle a line and move it over to the illustration side. It was such a great day when we realized the who, what and where could all be told by the illustrations, leaving us with the why.

Q: What else do you want readers to know?

Barbara: The greatest miracle of parenting is that your kids turn into your friends. And when your kid can also turn into your colleague whom you respect, who has skills beyond your own, like Lily does, that’s just the most wonderful thing.

I Went to College for This? 

Catholic University BA in English

Amy Joyce is a writer and editor for On Parenting.

Amy Joyce

A Q&A with Barbara Kingsolver and daugher Lily on their new book

the-washington-post

Gryphon Press

handout

name

washpost

prism://prism.query/site-and-discussions-not-future,/lifestyle/on-parenting&limit=20

Parenting

News, advice and essays that impact parents everywhere.

prism://prism.query/site-articles-only,/lifestyle&limit=20

Lifestyle

Washington Post Lifestyle gives you the latest fashion and beauty trends, home d&eacute;cor pointers, food and recipe ideas and reviews, relationship advice, travel ideas, wellness tips and much more.