Grace Maccarone, my Scholastic editor for many years, asked me to write a series of Level 1 science readers for children in grades K-1. Having been editor of Let's Find Out, Scholastic's kindergarten magazine for 20 years, I was happy to do this. Scholastic picked Judith Moffatt for the illustrations. She is a wonderful paper/collage artist. Kids and teachers love her work in these books because her pictures make science feel like fun. I enjoyed writing the books simply, accurately, and as poetically as possible. As I wrote, I read the text aloud to myself very slowly because that's how readers in grades K-1 read. Reading slowly helped me write poetically.

Excerpt:

I am snow.
I fall gently,
    gently,
        gently.
I am a million,
billion, trillion
snowflakes
all piled up.