Thanks so much to The Nature Generation for naming ONE SMALL HOP a Green Earth Book Award honor book. I started writing this book during a quiet summer when the frogs weren’t croaking and I’m so excited about the idea of more kids — and you — reading it.
It’s nearly Tu B’Shevat, the Birthday of the Trees, but you don’t have to be Jewish to celebrate your leafy friends. (See Arbor Day, Earth Day and Every Day.) Here is an updated list of activities you might try with your kids, even during winter months when the trees are stripped of their finery:
Leaf rubbings: You can still find some leaves on the ground. Grab some, along with a pack of crayons. If you can’t find any maple or oak leaves still hanging around, try evergreens. They make great patterns, which in turn make fine covers for letters or notes (you did make a New Year’s resolution about keeping in better touch with friends, right?) Try holding your paper against the tree and make a bark rubbing. Study the differences between different trees.
Plant a tree. I always thought you needed to wait until spring to plant a tree, but when I was doing some research for Happy Birthday, Tree, I learned that it’s okay to plant them while it’s still winter, so long as the ground is soft enough that you can dig a proper hole. (Apparently, when the trees are in their “sleepy” states, they’re less likely to suffer from root shock.) Here are some planting tips.
Create a wish tree. Use a fallen tree branch (there should be a lot of them in the Northeast after the recent snow). Then, use scrap paper to create leaves and have students write their wishes for the environment, or declare how they’ll protect the environment. Hang them from the tree. You can go small, for a table top, or large, using some rocks and a planter. I have an older blogpost that shows this project in more detail.
Be a tree. (Very zen sounding, no?) Hold your arms up to the sky. Bend in the breeze. Ask your child: If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?
Have a birthday party for your trees. Make a cake (I recommend chocolate, to look more like dirt.) Add a few gummy worms for authenticity. Make newspaper hats, like the ones Joni makes in Happy Birthday, Tree. Some templates are here, from Martha Stewart, no less.
Have a Tu B’Shevat Seder. Or for the secular crowd: eat as many different types of fruits as you can.
Find the strangest fruit you can find. Read about it. Eat it!
Count the trees. How many different kinds do you have in your yard? Do you see anything living in your trees? Count the different ways trees are used in your home. (Wooden tables or floors or chairs? Home for animals? Paper?)
Climb a tree.
As we talk with students about Not Your All-American Girl, we decided to put together a reading guide. Make sure you check out the activities at the end! We hope this will help readers connect with the book — and with some of the things that are going on in their own lives.A PDF is here: madwenreadingguide
Thanks for reading!
Madelyn and Wendy
ABOUT NOT YOUR ALL-AMERICAN GIRL
Lauren Horowitz has an awesome tryout for the school musical. But when the part goes to her best friend Tara, who did not sing as well but looks like the teacher’s idea of an All-American girl, Lauren, who is Jewish and Chinese American, must examine her own expectations and beliefs about herself to discover what it truly means to be “all-American.”
PRE-READING ACTIVITIES
Learn about the time period when this story takes place (1984) and the cultures involved. Find magazines, newspapers and other materials at that time to show what was in the news. Look at who was represented in TV shows and advertisements; how often were people of color the main character in a movie or ad?.
ABOUT THE 1980s
Your parents and guardians don’t think of the 1980s as history, but in fact, it is history. Even today will be history tomorrow. Ask the people around you how life was different then. How did people communicate? What were people worried about? How did they get their information? What did they do for fun? What kind of music represents the 1980s to them?
Now compare that with today. How do you communicate? What do you worry about?
FRIENDSHIPS
Many middle grade stories are about friendships. How do friends treat each other? How important is listening in a friendship? Make a list of the things you appreciate about your friends.
ARGUMENTS
How do you resolve arguments with friends? With family? Have you ever been afraid to speak up about something that bothers you? Why? Create a script where you bring up something that bothers you to a friend or family member.
FAIRNESS AND EQUALITY
What assumptions do you think other people have made about you or someone else because of race, religion, gender — or even your height? Were these assumptions correct or incorrect? How have you responded? The authors of this story often say that they could never think of what to do in moments when they faced prejudice, but that this story is their second chance at that.
What do you think you should do to stand up for friends? What do you wish friends would do to stand up for you?
VOCABULARY:
Bias: A preference for or against an idea or person, without an opportunity to consider other ideas.
Diversity: The practice or state of including people of different races, social backgrounds, ages, genders, sexual orientations or other identities.
Inclusion: The practice of involving, valuing and respecting others, particularly people who might normally be excluded or marginalized.
Microagression: A microaggression is any kind of slight, snub or insult, whether it is made intentionally or not, which communicates negative or hurtful messages to a person based solely on their identity as part of a marginalized group.
WHEN CULTURES MERGE
We all have more than one aspect that defines us. For instance, you might be a vegetarian and a bassoonist. 
In This Is Just a Test, a companion book to Not Your All-American Girl, one of David’s friends is surprised that he and Lauren are both Chinese-American and Jewish: “You can be Chinese and Buddhist or Chinese and Taoist or Chinese and Jewish.” I managed to stop blathering before I paired being Chinese with every religion on earth.
How do the different parts of Lauren’s identity cross over in her life? How does considering one part of your identity affect the other parts of your identity?
ACTIVITIES:
4. In a way, a playlist is like a time capsule. Create a musical playlist for the 1980s. If you’d like, have your parents or guardians help. (For reference, here’s a playlist that Madelyn and Wendy made in honor of the book.) Make another playlist of songs you like right now.
5. And finally, because we’re all spending too much time inside, if you own a hula hoop, get it out and see how long you can keep it going. Can you sing and hula hoop at the same time?
Publishing a book in 2020, I’ve felt like the proverbial salmon. Not that I’ve ever been a salmon, but ugh. How do you travel around to support your book? (Spoiler alert: you don’t.) How do you visit classrooms to talk to kids? (You don’t do that either, and even if you did, they wouldn’t be there.) I’ve tried a few videos and virtual visits, but here’s another spoiler alert: it’s not the same.
My brain is where it should be: on the pandemic, on my family, on the election, on those who have it so much worse than me. I’ve been working at my full-time job in affordable housing, and every day, I talk to people who are struggling.
It’s hard to tweet “buy my book” at time like these. But my writing career feels like it’s fading. And those books that came out this year? They were important to me. Also? They were good. So I’m going to spit three times and brag about them here on my quiet little blog.
I’m going to tell you that I think Cyclops of Central Park, illustrated by Victoria Tentler-Krylov, should be on the New York Times Best Illustrated Books list. I have the art from that book all over my wall and I never get tired of looking at it. Victoria’s New York is where I want to be right now.
I’ll also tell you that a few parents have said they are using the book I wrote with Wendy, Not Your All-American Girl, to talk to their kids about racism. Those characters are so alive inside my head and I hope more people will find them.
I hope these books will have a shelf life. That authors who had books come out in 2020 will get some sort of a do-over. Because we all have more books to write. And simply put: it’s harder to sell those books if the books we’ve just published are sitting in bookstores where booksellers are working their butts off but nobody is browsing because of COVID. (Free them! Free all the books!)
I have a lot of wishes right now. Most of them have to do with our collective health, both as humans and as a nation. But one of them has to do with these books. My friend Sharlene says when you want something you should put it out to the universe. So that’s what I’m going. Hey there, universe. Please be kind to these books.
Signed preorders: https://www.onemorepagebooks.com/one-small-hop
MR: Prior to ONE SMALL HOP (Scholastic, May 2021), I was steeped in the 1980s for two books with writing partner Wendy Shang. ONE SMALL HOP is set in the future, but I haven’t shaken the 80s, which might be why Billy Idol’s Dancing with Myself has been stuck in my brain for the last two days. That made me think: How about Interviewing with Myself? It doesn’t quite work as a song (too many syllables/the meter is wrong) but I need to reveal the cover for my upcoming book somehow, and that would be a good way to do it, right?
Self: Solid!
MR: Solid! So, OK, let’s start with that vibrant cover. What can you tell us about it?
Self: That I absolutely love it. And that when I first saw it, it reminded me a smidge of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (space + world + brilliant green), which made me love it even more. The art is by Joyceline Furniss and the designer was Baily Crawford, who also designed the cover for Not Your All-American Girl. Alph (the frog) has a Mona Lisa smile, don’t you think? He obviously knows something we don’t.
MR: Talk a bit about the story.
Self: Ahab wants to save the world. But his parents are pretending that the climate isn’t changing and his sister cares more about her Friday night date than the fact that the ocean has been declared off limits. Fortunately, Ahab has friends. And a bicycle. And he has Alph. (More details about this middle-grade novel at the end of this post.)
MR: You’ve been working on this book for a long time now, right?
Self: So long. And I’ve had the concept even longer. When we first moved into our house in Arlington 14 years ago, we discovered that the small pond in back had bullfrogs, and I decided I’d write a story about them one day. I’ve made it a point to include frogs in stories in the intervening years, but I’m pretty sure it’s been building up to this.
Detail from How to Behave at a Tea Party, illustrated by Heather Ross
MR: This book is considered science fiction. What made you decide to go there?
Self: Every time I do a school visit, a kid asks me: What’s your favorite genre? My answer is Fantasy and Science Fiction. But I tend to write realistically. Weirdly, I even consider my first novel, about a talking canary, to be “realistic fiction,” though I know that’s not quite the case. This time around, I felt that to talk about the things I wanted to talk about, the world had to be ahead of where we are now; to think about the future, I had to go there.
One of our frogs. Our neighbors named him Frank.
MR: You wrote some novels by yourself, but your last two novels have been with writing partner Wendy Shang and before that, you wrote a book with Mary Crockett. How did it feel to write a novel alone again?
Self: I talked to myself an awful lot.
MR: How did the pandemic underscore the writing of this book?
Self: This book was completed before the pandemic – we were going over copyedits at that point, I think. But the pandemic shows us all how the world can change in a minute. I mean, the world is constantly changing but most of the time, we’re not really hyper aware. Writers put those bits into their stories constantly – we’re keen observers, after all — and maybe later, we look back and say “Oh, remember that detail? That was so 2018! Remember when we thought this or when the political landscape was that? Remember when scooters were everywhere or when they invented the Segway? Remember when we ate fudge pops? Remember when we dabbed?” But in this case, everything changed drastically, over the course of a weekend, really. Suddenly, there we were, sewing masks with fabric and shoelaces, businesses shut down, the streets and highways empty. I think that makes science fiction and fantasy more real – more realistic – for everyone.
MR: Preorders help a book have legs, yes?
Self: Yes! If you want a signed copy, please order through One More Page. They ship!
https://www.onemorepagebooks.com/one-small-hop
You can also order from an indie near you, from all traditional online retailers, and most anywhere books are sold.
(Marketing jingle: Order today! Read it in May!)
MR: And about those other book details that you mentioned?
Self: Right!
When Ahab and his friends find a bullfrog in their town — a real, live bullfrog, possibly the last bullfrog in North America — they have several options:
A. Report it to the Environmental Police Force. Too bad everyone knows the agency is a joke.
B. Leave it alone. They’re just a bunch of kids —what if they hurt it by moving it?
C. Find another real, live bullfrog in a secret location. Talk their parents into letting them bike to Canada. Introduce the two frogs. Save all of frogkind.
Ahab convinces the rest of the group that C is their only real option. Because if they don’t save this frog, who will? Their quest, which will involve fake ice cream, real frog spawn, and some very close calls, teaches Ahab that hope is always the logical choice and that science is always better with friends.
With humor and empathy, acclaimed author Madelyn Rosenberg builds an all-too-imaginable future ravaged by climate change, where one kid can still lean on his friends and dream up a better tomorrow.
Perfect for fans of Carl Hiaasen’s classic Hoot, this humorous adventure story set in a not-so-distant future celebrates the important differences we can make with small, brave acts.
Thanks to the team at Scholastic for making this happen, especially Lisa Sandell and Olivia Valcarce.
