AUTHOR GUEST POST: HEATHER KACZYNSKI, DARE MIGHTY THINGS

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DARE MIGHTY THINGS
by Heather Kaczynski
on sale 10/10/17!

Working in a library hadn’t been my dream, originally. I don’t know why I’d never considered the possibility, seeing as how I’d spent most of my childhood looking at people over the top of a book. I had gone to school assuming I wanted to be a physical therapist, and earned my bachelor’s degree in biology with a minor in exercise physiology. I quickly realized that – though I loved the science – the career wasn’t for me. So, right after graduation, I was working part time in a gym when my coworker, a frequent library patron, told me the library up the street was hiring.

We worked on a military base in my hometown, and the library is managed by the same organization as the gyms. Which, in the bizarre way of the federal government, helped make up for my lack of experience in libraries. My former boss told me later one of the major reasons they hired me – aside from the personal recommendation from my co-worker at the gym – was the passion with which I’d discussed my favorite science fiction novels in the interview.

I’m forever grateful they took that chance, because surprise surprise, working in a library turned out to be my dream job – and the impetus to my career as a writer. Six years later, I’m now in charge of ordering books for children and teens, running the summer reading program and various other children’s programs, as well as my regular duties working the circulation desk. (In a library with a staff of six people, only two of which are full time, we all tend to do a bit of everything.)

Landing so fortuitously at the library gave me the time and opportunity to fall back in love with books. I’d spent the last four years reading nothing but textbooks, writing sterile lab reports in dreaded passive voice, studying chemical structures and biological mechanisms. Not much fiction allowed. Now, surrounded by shelves full of books, with the time to read any and everything I wished, my dormant imagination awakened. Having written stories all my life without ever finishing one, I realized that now was the perfect time see if I could really do this writing thing.

Coupled with easy access to any book I could desire, the fact that my library was located on the same military base as NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, gave me plenty of inspiration. Every day, in my drive into work, I’d pass by a life-size replica of the Saturn V, the spacecraft that first took man to the moon, standing at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center. Every day, I served patrons whose livelihoods revolved around aerospace engineering, missile defense, and sending rockets into space. Our entire city of Huntsville, Alabama, was entrenched in the space program; it was our claim to fame, our history, and the basis of our economy.

Yet, our small science fiction section languished. Didn’t the kids who lived in the home of Space Camp have any interest in space? The last launch of an American space shuttle had occurred just the year before I graduated college, and soon after I started working at the library, NASA faced an uncertain budgetary future in Congress. Programs were being cut, jobs were on the line, and our town was on edge. With one of its major projects over, where was NASA headed now? Nobody seemed sure.

The culture of progress, the denial of the impossible, the engine of innovation that had created the Saturn V only a few decades before – where had it gone? Was the golden age of human spaceflight already behind us?  The youngest generations of Americans have always had astronauts orbiting above their heads. Was it mundane now? From my small sample size, it appeared that way. I wondered if maybe kids had stopped wanting to be astronauts, and what that meant for us as a society. If people stopped caring about it, stopped dreaming, would there even be a viable space program in the future?

All of these circumstances combined became the foundation for Dare Mighty Things. In Cassie’s near-future America, I imagined a future extrapolating from the present situation: NASA is so under-funded it is hardly functional, and there have been no crewed space programs since America landed a man on Mars. Nobody dreamed about space travel anymore. Nobody looked up and wondered, except a precious few – Cassie among them.

Cassie begins the novel in a position she’s worked hard to attain, a summer internship at Marshall Space Flight Center, where her dad also works. But she’s already reached the realization that her position is a dead-end, that NASA’s budget will get them nowhere, and her dream of spaceflight might never leave the ground. So when she’s offered a chance to compete for a spot on a mission into space, she leaps at it, not sure she’ll ever get another opportunity to achieve her dream – ignoring the suspicions and secrecy surrounding the project.

Dare Mighty Things takes place in a world I feared might become our future. Not the bleak dystopian world of The Hunger Games, but a more insidious decay. A world in which interest in science and exploration had languished, innovation had stagnated, and kids had stopped dreaming of achieving the incredible simply to prove it was possible. Knowing how books are both informed by our current society and help shape the perceptions of future generations, I want to encourage kids to go after their dreams – to push the boundary of the known and become innovators, explorers, dreamers.

My patron base, being on a military installation, includes people from all over the world. It’s not uncommon to hear three different languages spoken in the children’s area at any given time. The cast of characters in Dare Mighty Things is diverse because the world is diverse, and my experience in the library emphasized that for me. I hoped to portray as realistic as picture as I could, while still maintaining the air of hope.

Without my experiences working in a library, my daily exposure to NASA, and the physical evidence of the Saturn V standing as a testament of our determination and ingenuity to put a man on the moon, I’m quite sure Dare Mighty Things would not have come into existence. NASA is in a better place financially now, with an incredible new rocket poised to take us further than ever before. But our continued presence in space depends on the consistent support of the American people and our ability to train new generations to become scientists and engineers and artists to imagine what the future can be. There’s an entire universe out there waiting to be explored, and today’s kids are going to be the ones to do it – as long as we let them know it’s possible.

***

Library and School ideas:
Dare Mighty Things is a great tie-in title for any program related to space, robotics, or STEM, for older middle school and high school readers. For STEM crafts and activities, the sky is literally the limit – just ask Pinterest! –  but here are some of my favorites.

Static Programming
Post prompts for kids and teens to answer in the form of artwork, poetry, or prose, such as:

  • “If you could go anywhere in the universe, where would you go and why?”
  • “Design your own spaceship and give it a name.” Provide examples of current and past spacecraft from around the world as inspiration.
  • “Create your own constellation” with star stickers and display them, OR have participants guess the constellation
  • Post a weekly space program trivia question and pick a random correct answer to win a prize
  • Have rotating displays of exoplanets that NASA has discovered; their approximate distance from Earth, and whether they might be habitable (NASA has an amazing treasure trove of free resources, including free downloadable planet “travel posters”: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/visions-of-the-future/)

Crafts
Though Dare Mighty Things is aimed at teen readers, there’s plenty of activities to include younger siblings as well. Craft programs to do with stars or constellations are easy and educational. Kids can create constellation cards, learn the history of constellations (Don’t forget to include the meanings of constellations across different parts of the world who see a different sky!) and even make a simple projector with a cardboard tube and flashlight to light up the ceiling with stars.

For libraries with Makerspaces or button makers, you can have kids and teens design empowering & inclusive STEM-positive wearable slogans. Some suggestions: Future Astronaut (Or Chemist/Engineer/Physicist), Be Daring, Per Aspera Ad Astra, Space Explorer, Code Like a Girl, Through Hardship to the Stars, Science is for Everyone.

Design a Mars Habitat
You can have kids and teens design simple Mars habitats. No Makerspace? No problem! Just provide worksheets with thought-provoking questions (i.e., what will the Mars colonists eat? How will they generate oxygen? What will they use as an energy source? How will they be protected from the harsh environment?) and provide a space for them to sketch their ideas with art supplies. If you have more room and supplies, kids can use Makerspace materials to build 3D models of Mars habitats. You can pose specific problems to the kids as they build, such as: “How will this habitat deal with dust storms on Mars?” When they’re finished, you could award ribbons to the most creative, innovative, largest, silliest, most energy efficient, etc., and then discuss NASA’s actual Mars plans.

Rocket Building
Using some NASA resources for educators, have participants build rockets and other spacecraft with household items. Some starting links:

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/build-a-spacecraft/en/

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/rocketry/lessonplans/index.html

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/rocketry/home/shuttle-activities-index.html

https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/moon-habitat/en/

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/resources/engineering-in-the-classroom.php

Space Camp Competition
If you’re ambitious like Cassie, you can host a competition inspired by the one in Dare Mighty Things. Kids and teens can partake in a series of tasks, such as: a scavenger hunt around the library to simulate wilderness survival, crafting robots out of Makerspace supplies or Legos, competing in teamwork games, and participating in space-y trivia contests to test their knowledge.

Give the kids nametags that say “Future Astronaut” and let them choose nicknames, or “Call Signs.” You can either choose a winner at the end, or give all competitors a small token prize for competing. Be sure to remind the kids to check out books from your “astronaut library” of books on space, astronauts, and STEM! (I’d particularly recommend the nonfiction titles Hidden Figures by Margot Lee Shetterly, Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, My Dream of Stars by Anousheh Ansari, October Sky by Homer Hickam, Women in Space: 23 Stories of First Flights, Scientific Missions, and Gravity-Breaking Adventures by Karen Bush Gibson,  and the middle grade novel The Countdown Conspiracy by Katie Slivensky.)

If you have the space and ability, you could even host an Escape Room like the Simulated Lunar Habitat experiment in the book, where competitors solve puzzles to fix the hacked computer that’s locked them inside. (Don’t worry, you don’t really need to lock kids in a room! You can guide them through the library and assist them as they solve puzzles, serving as “Mission Control” that the kids can communicate with “on the radio.”) There are many varied resources to library escape rooms online; many of them can be done on the cheap. There are some great resources out there for designing your own program – here are some to get you started:

https://legolibrarian.com/2017/06/14/tween-programming-escape-room-in-the-library/amp/

https://librarystewblog.wordpress.com/2016/09/20/breakout-edu-library-orientation/

http://www.teenlibrariantoolbox.com/2016/07/tpib-locked-in-the-library

https://lockpaperscissors.co/

***

If you’re interested in hosting a space or STEM-themed program using Dare Mighty Things, you are welcome to contact me via my website: www.heatherkaczynski.com.  While I’m certainly no expert, I’d be happy to lend support to your programming efforts if I’m able!

***

HEATHER KACZYNSKI never got to go to Space Camp, so she had to settle for writing about it. After graduating cum laude with a degree in biology, she returned to her first love of books, and now works in a library near NASA. She lives with her husband, their daughter, and way too many books. She’s not nearly brave enough to go into space, but she did twirl a fire baton in high school.

***

Dare Mighty Things * On sale 10/10/17 * ISBN: 9780062479860 * $17.99 *

 

 

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BLOG CATEGORY: Activities, Authors, Books, Libraries, Programming Ideas, YA, YA Books

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