By Sarah C. Campbell

I think my two picture books, Wolfsnail (2008) and Growing Patterns: Fibonacci Numbers in Nature (2010)(both from Boyds Mills) are perfect for use in elementary schools. Not only are they compelling nonfiction for emerging and beginning readers, but their content fits into the science and math curricula. My hope – and my publisher’s – is that teachers will use the books in their classrooms. One way to make this more likely is to develop educational materials, such as a teachers’ guide, lessons, and activities, that teachers can readily adapt for their needs. Many writers do the work of determining how a book fits into the curriculum before they sell a manuscript. (A strong curriculum tie-in can help an editor acquire a book.) When it comes to creating educational materials, however, the research gets more detailed. For example, in addition to knowing that first graders in Mississippi study the difference between living and nonliving things, I determined that they must also be able to identify specific animals that can be found in local ecosystems. Voila, Wolfsnail! State curriculum guides are readily available online. You may also want to look at the Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted by at least 36 states. If you have trouble translating a curriculum into plain English, ask for help from a teacher. Educational materials are as varied as the people who develop them. Look around at what other writers are doing. Be creative. For Wolfsnail, the teacher’s guide includes a variety of activities, from a very simple coloring page, which is perfect for bookstore and library visits, to suggestions for experiments that involve live snails. Luckily, my co-photographer (and husband), Richard P. Campbell, is an artist and was able to draw the wolfsnail for the coloring page. Don’t use a generic coloring image from the Internet unless you have permission from the artist. In addition to considerations about content, you will need to decide the form you want your materials to take. I publish mine on my website, making them available to anyone with internet access. When I go to a teachers’ conference, I print a copy of my educational materials for display so teachers will know what is available online. With Growing Patterns, my husband and I developed a web-based tutorial, complete with video, audio, and lots of color images, to explain The Fibonacci Folding Book Project, a lesson I created with a librarian friend for the 2010 International Reading Association (IRA) conference. For a month, in conjunction with this blog post, I am making the entire video tutorial available for free. Because it is a complete professional development package, I offer it to schools that have hired me for a residency with their students and/or teachers. Anything you can do to help teachers cover multiple objectives and/or multiple curriculum areas will make your materials attractive. For help with this, I researched model lessons on the IRA’s ReadWriteThink and the Kennedy Center’s ArtsEdge websites. Though my two books are straight nonfiction, I am confident that this process is applicable to fiction, too.