Emily Swanson

As a junior in college, I landed a dream job. After researching lakes for two years, my professor asked me to write a blog for the department, about any lake topic I wanted – and get paid for it. I loved writing since I stapled together my first “book” in Mrs. Lewis’ 1st grade class, and the natural world was always my topic of choice. What could go wrong?

By August, it was clear that something was missing – I wanted to work with kids. That led me to be a science teacher for six years after graduation. And no surprise, I loved editing their writing. And taking them outside to make written observations. And creating a curriculum to incorporate more writing into our school.

When I started reading picture books with my daughter, I kept writing down ideas for nature and science books I wish I could find. Books that would make kids notice tiny creatures they’d never considered before. Books that revealed the chemistry behind ordinary things. Books that would spark a question they needed to answer.

With several heavily critiqued and revised submission-ready picture book manuscripts, I'm on the hunt for an agent. As an extrovert endlessly attracted to introverted activities like writing, I'm looking forward to having a teammate as I pursue publishing.

Some picture books I just love:

• What's In Your Pocket? Collecting Nature's Treasures, by Heather Montgomery, Maribel Lechuga
• Grand Canyon, by Jason Chin
• Bloom Boom! by April Pulley Sayre
• Neighborhood Sharks, by Katherine Roy
• The Reason for a Flower, by Ruth Heller
• You're Invited to a Moth Ball, by Loree Griffin Burns, Ellen Harasimowicz
• Water is Water, by Miranda Paul, Jason Chin
• Plant a Pocket of Prairie, by Phyllis Root, Betsy Bowen
• Dark Emperor and Other Poems of the Night, by Joyce Sidman, Rick Allen
• Honeybee, by Candace Fleming, Eric Rohmann
• Weeds Find a Way, by Cindy Jenson-Elliott, Carolyn Fisher

At any night around 9PM, you'll find me reading:

• A classic work of children's lit or nature writing
• Seed catalogs or a cookbook
• A parenting book, to get better at my most important job
• Sigurd Olson's The Singing Wilderness or Michael Pollan's Second Nature (again)
• A work of environmental or science history