Welcome to SCBWI-MI's Book Birthday Blog!
Where we celebrate new books from Michigan's authors, illustrators and translators.
Congratulations to Mary Morgan on the release of Escape on the Lewis and Clark Trail
You've visited over 61 national parks and written a series of books. Which national park inspired your book?
This is book number ten. For Escape on the Lewis and Clark Trail, I relied on my trip to Oregon and Washington in the summer of 2021. Covid restrictions were letting up, so we flew to Boise, ID, where we met up with friends and traveled by car to the west coast. En route we rode a steam-wheeler paddleboat up the Columbia River which runs between the two states. Lewis and Clark navigated the river in 1805 – but they did it in hollowed-out canoes which they made with the help of Indians. We went to Fort Clatsop in Astoria, Oregon, which is close to where the Columbia runs into the Pacific Ocean. We spent hours listening to re-enactors tell how President Thomas Jefferson commissioned Lewis and Clark in 1804 to find a waterway which went all the way to the west coast. They traversed many rivers, carried their boats over the Rocky Mountains, finally reaching the Pacific Ocean eighteen months later in November of 1805. The men built the fort in nineteen days and wintered there for three months. All but twelve days, they were rained on. The Lewis and Clark Trail begins in Pittsburgh, PA, and runs for 4,900 miles. The Team of Explorers had to learn survival skills as they faced animals they had never seen, Indians who didn’t speak English, foraging for food, and performing first aid. I was impressed with the significant role Sacajawea played getting them safely to the west coast and then back east again. We walked to the river landing where the explorers went ashore and dealt with the Clatsop Indians. We went to the beach where they saw a 120’ beached whale and learned to make salt from the ocean water. All this sparked my interest in teaching young readers how they could develop survival skills at a Wilderness Camp.
At the time, I did not know the Fort was going to be the setting of a book, but I took many pictures, picked up brochures, maps, and the Junior Ranger book which I always incorporate in my books.
Early last year, I remembered that Lewis and Clark set sail in May of 1804. I made it my goal to have a book ready to read this May, commemorating that 220 year mark. With the help of our Buttonwood team, it happened.
What are the unique challenges of writing a series?
When I started writing, I had no idea how extensive it would be. In 2011 when Stolen Treasures at Pictured Rocks came out, my publisher ordered 1,000 copies since he got a good deal for that quantity. I stared in disbelief when he delivered them, saying I could keep them at my house, and when half of them were sold, we would publish book two. Well, nine months later, they were gone and another 1,000 were ordered. I finished The Face at Mount Rushmore and 1000 more were added to the others in my basement.
A challenge is finding new readers as my book fans grow out of the 7-11 age group. Interestingly, each year I have older teens find me at craft shows to get the new book. Another challenge is that the content of a book might not be as popular as others. Each book has a different theme, like the triathlon families can do in the 3 sections of Everglades, a family reunion at Phantom Ranch down at the Colorado River in Grand Canyon, the discovery of sharks at Mammoth Cave, and a winter rescue at Yellowstone where they can get up to 50 feet of snow. Coming up with new ideas take a while, but eventually an inspiration hits me. When I interview rangers, I ask for their park’s worst crime, and then determine how my characters can become the heroes in helping to solve the mystery.
Another challenge is finding new character types. Having six siblings, I use personality traits that I remember of our growing up years and use them in my characters. Just like the plots, each character is different.
What is something you hope your readers will take away from your book?
Back in 2011, I had a Lansing elementary principal read the Stolen Treasures at Pictured Rocks manuscript for age appropriateness. She told me it has all the history and geography that Michigan students learn in third to fifth grade, and every Michigan student should read my book. Her words have never left me. I do a lot of research about each park and weave history, geography, and science into the plots, so kids learn as they read. I have an F.Y.I (for your information) section in the back with important facts, people, places, camping recipes, etc. for added value.
I also want families to develop a passion to travel to these parks and explore them too. It is working because I am now getting postcards, emails, and actual letters from kids who tell they use my books as a travel guide as they search for the landmarks, and then live out the adventure like the kids in the book do. It doesn’t get better than this!
What are your marketing plans for the book and where can we find it?
**My publisher took our books to craft shows, festivals, wherever he could get a booth, in order to get the books into the hands of people. I have continued doing that as I have time.
**Being a member of SCBWI, I take advantage of the opportunities to join in with other authors and exhibit at events that are offered. I met Renee Bolla at one such event in Novi last December, and now I am part of her after school literacy program where students learn about reading and writing and buy our books.
**Because March is Reading Month in Michigan, I go into schools as a Michigan author. I send a digital order form to the librarian two weeks before I do a presentation. They send me a list of books and names two days prior to me going to the school, so I can autograph and personalize them to take with me. That has been very successful.
**I do other school events like sponsoring a lollipop tree at an Ice Cream Social and sell my books at the same time.
**Homeschool families love my books because they travel to national parks on extended vacations and use my books as a study guide. I now speak and sell at four of their big conferences each year, extolling the educational benefits of visiting national parks.
**I contact bookstores near the parks I have written about, and some are now selling those located near them. My Gettysburg book is sold at the Heritage Center in Gettysburg, and they called asking me to do a book-signing over Memorial Day weekend.
**I use real kids in my books and put their pictures in the back section, so now I have kids from around the country sending me their fifth-grade pictures. My former artist has some family health issues which need attention, so I am reaching out to new artists to give them an opportunity to get their artwork in a book. Students have asked if they can submit artwork, so I let them draw pictures for the FYI section. All of these new families buy a lot of books because their kids and artwork are in them.
**I feel I have a great website when people Google national park books for kids. We are set up with PayPal and I am learning about Venmo. It is a challenge to stay on top of new technology, but our sales are over 35,000 books, so we are happy with how it has all come together.
**I can be reached at:
https://www.nationalparkmysteries.com/
nationalparkmysteries@gmail.com
Facebook - Mary Morgan National Park Mysteries
What's next for you?
This is a hard one to answer. When we set up our table, it is full, but I always have a story in my head. I wrote Tugboat To The Rescue, because little ones wanted another book too. It is in the production stage, using another artist who dreamed of having his artwork in a book.
As far as another national park book goes, I think one set at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon might be an introduction to a breath-taking place many people don’t know about, except seeing it on a calendar. The 1900 feet deep, ice-cold lake was formed after a volcano eruption. They stocked it with fish, so I thought a plot centered around a fishing competition between girls and boys would be fun. It might be called Hook, Line, and Sink Her.
We just experienced the awesome total eclipse last Monday, while traveling through Indiana. Who knows, that might make it into a book too.
For now, I am focused on getting this new book launched. At the places we have been so far, it is proving to be another winner. Kids will learn history of early explorers and hopefully make the trip to Astoria to explore the fort and park for themselves.
Having so many siblings, I use personality traits that I remember into my characters. I use them as main characters in my newest books since I have seen them in action as Junior Rangers.
More about the book . . .
Escape on the Lewis and Clark Trail takes young readers to Fort Clatsop in Astoria, OR, located just miles from the Pacific Ocean where the team of explorers wintered in 1805. Ben and Bekka Cooper, along with sixteen other brave campers, attend Wilderness Camp to learn to survive like Lewis and Clark and Sacajawea. Putting their resourceful skills to the test, camp becomes the ultimate contest to survive in water, foraging for food, and escaping from the wilderness - alive.
Publisher: Buttonwood Books
About Buttonwood Books: I haven’t always been a book writer. I am a secretary by profession but had a passion to write books for children someday. When my children were grown and I had some free time, I devoted my evenings to writing the book of my dreams. I joined a writers’ group in Grand Ledge, MI, that invited local authors to share their experiences with hopes that we would be inspired by them. My friend was the bookkeeper for Richard Baldwin, a local murder mystery writer from Haslett. My husband and I enjoyed reading his books before we met him, so I asked my friend if he would come and talk about mystery plots and developing characters that would run through the series. He agreed to speak in November of 2010, and I couldn’t help but ask questions during his presentation. Afterward, he asked me what I really wanted to do, and I told him I wanted to write mystery books for kids set in national parks. He liked my idea and told me he would publish my work – even without reading anything I had written. Less than two months later, I finished Stolen Treasures at Pictured Rocks. He liked it and kept his word. For eight years, Buttonwood Press published one book a year, and our readership grew. We had seven National Park Mystery Books for Middle Grade students and The Runaway Lawnmower for children 3 – 5 years old, printed in English and Spanish, both being award winners. Sadly, Mr. Baldwin developed cancer and passed away in December of 2019. Three months later, Covid-19 hit and our publishing flat-lined. An agent pursued me and connected me with a publisher in Mississippi, but I needed my books to be warehoused here in Michigan, not down south. My husband and I decided we would form our own company, use Richard’s editor, artist, and printing company to keep continuity. We tweaked the name to Buttonwood Books, and it has proven to be successful.
More about the author . . .
I grew up in a family of nine in Upstate New York. We took summer vacations to places we had never been, and I looked forward to going on them. I believe that sparked my wanderlust for travel. I have been to all fifty states and sixty-one national parks, rarely returning to the same location, except Hawaii which calls my name. When our two children were young, my husband and I traveled with them to spectacular and historic locations, introducing them to what is out there in our great country, as well as instilling in them the desire to travel.
Now that we have two grandchildren, taking them on mystery trips to national parks is the perfect vacation. When we were riding bikes through Cuyahoga Valley National Park near Akron, OH, a couple years ago, they stopped a ranger and told her I would want to interview her to be in a book someday. She took it in stride and answered all my questions about the park. No ranger is safe when I’m lurking about looking for a new spot and juicy plot.
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