A winning poster from Maire Elementary's poster contest to encourage reading

Ahoy all ye book lovers! We recently visited Lewis Maire Elementary in Michigan, who had a poster contest to raise awareness about reading. Every year, the school celebrates March is reading month by inviting an author to visit, and then the students read throughout the month (with pledges) to raise money toward the March of Dimes. Part of this year’s festivities included a challenge to create posters that encouraged reading, based on our children’s book A Pirate’s Quest and movie The Riddle in a Bottle. Why not use pirates and ocean creatures to encourage reading? Before each assembly, we were lucky enough to judge the posters and choose a few winners. I must say that I was very impressed – lots of great ocean creatures, like the octopus holding books in his tentacles. I particularly liked the student who created “book-head” sharks, which look like hammerhead sharks, but have books for heads.  There were also many animated pirates hooked on books, with reading treasure, sailing to reading destinations . . . Here are a few of the students’ pirate and ocean reading masterpieces.

Laura and Robert Sams pose with reading-themed poster winners after the afternoon author assembly

A Book is a Treasure Poster

"Book Head" Sharks Encourage Reading

Grab a Good Book

Pirate Reading Poster called Read a Whale of a Tail

Rrrrrrrrread it Poster

A Pirate-themed Poster: Read a Book It's Better Than Treasure!

We didn’t get pictures of all the posters, but I think you can see there were some great, creative ideas, which were proudly displayed in the school’s halls after our assembly. Congratulations to all ye poster-making scalliwags!

Well folks, what do toasters have to do with gardening? And what do toasters have to do with sharks? And where can you get a shark microphone? If you are wondering about any of these questions, I suggest you watch this short, shark-related piece. When I was visiting the Sanibel Sea School to film children at a shark camp for The Riddle Solvers shark episode, I conducted some behind-the-scenes interviews for fun, in the blazing hot Florida sun, and this is what happened. And I should mention that you’ll see some stunning HD footage of sharks, from the Save Our Seas Foundation’s amazing library of footage.

Robert sleeps in a bed on the beach during the shark lullaby, on the Oregon coast

I am going to state the obvious here – cameras don’t like water.  Water and electronics hardly ever mix in a good way.  Cameras also don’t like sand.  Sand is very tiny and very good at finding all of the tiny crevices on a camera.  Knowing this, then why on earth did we decide to make a movie on the beach?  Because it looked awesome – that’s  why!

Riddle Solvers Take 7

We just finished filming for eight days out on the beautiful and rugged Oregon coast.  We chose places with wicked names, like The Devil’s Punchbowl and Heceta Head, which I think translates to “even worse than The Devil’s Punchbowl.”  Every day, we had to know exactly what the tide was doing, because at high tide our filming locations were quite literally underwater…several feet underwater.  We also had to know what the weather was doing, because late October and early November is when Mother Nature turns her weather machine from “good” to “bad.”

Robert chisels a megalodon tooth out of rock

So after eight days, our crew of ten returned home soggy and sandy and exhausted from hauling our riddle solving stand up and down a flight of 102 stairs.  But it was all worth it to solve a mysterious riddle found inside an ancient shark journal.  Stay tuned for our newest Riddle Solvers episode: The Shark Riddle.

Why did we film this? Well, our shark episode is about, of course, sharks. And while we try to solve the riddle in our movie, we get help from these children who attended a week long “shark camp”.

Sanibel Sea School Sign

Sanibel Sea School features week-long camps of various topics during the summer (manatee week, sea turtle week, horseshoe crab week, plankton week, etc.), and we were fortunate that the school invited us to spend time with them during shark week.
What exactly did kids do during shark week?

Children paint a patchwork shark

Well, they made shark-based art projects, like a large puzzle-piece bull shark. They played shark jeopardy. They conducted a “shark attack” where they visited local businesses and used chalk to draw shark facts and images on sidewalks. They snorkeled and surfed and had paddle races.

They even tried to save two young black-tip sharks that were caught in a commercial fishing net. Bruce Neill, the school’s founder, tried for hours to save the black-tip sharks that a fisherman found in his bycatch. He held them under running water to get oxygen through their gills, but unfortunately, the sharks were too far gone. As a result, the kids were able to see  shark dissection (at least the sharks went to good use). Have you ever seen how big a shark liver is? Trust me, it’s amazing.

Children investigate a blacktip shark that died in a commercial fisherman's net

My highlight was filming the whale shark on the beach. We spent several days with the school’s staff, scheming about how to build the whale shark. Bruce Neill kept consulting shark guides and measuring textbook drawings with his calipers, so that we would be sure to build the whale shark and its fins to scale. We originally wanted to build a full grown 50 foot shark, but that would make the shark way too tall to conceivably build it out of sand in just a couple hours. So it ended up being a smaller, 40 foot shark . . . the kids used dark seaweed collected from the beach to create the shark’s skin. Then they used globs of sand to create the spots. Finally, they collected white shells to create the gills.  I am incredibly thrilled with the footage we got during the week, and I think it is going to be a great addition to the shark episode.

Cameraman Dave Cain films the sand whale shark

I will end this blog entry with two trivia questions.

Question: What do whale sharks eat?

Answer: They mainly eat plankton and tiny creatures by filter feeding.

Last Question: What does a cameraman look like while filming a sand whale shark?

Answer: Very small.

In 1972, a gentleman and widower named Vern spotted a lovely lady sitting in the back row of his church in Trenton, Michigan.  He asked the minister about her and learned that she was “Mrs. Sams,” that her husband Oscar had died, and that she had two boys in college.  The minister spoke highly of her, so Vern decided he would look up her phone number in the church directory and ask her on a date.  (I recently discovered from some elders in this church that the back row was traditionally the place for single ladies – so beware of your seating choices in church. . .).

Also in 1972, my parents got married and were living with my dad’s mom — the “Mrs. Sams” who sat in the back row of the church.  My mom was a newlywed, and she was getting used to her new last name of Sams.

Vern called the number from the church directory, and my mom answered the phone.

“May I speak to Mrs. Sams?” Vern asked politely.

“This is she,” my mom replied.

Then Vern proceeded to ask my mom out on a date.  My mom listened and finally said, “I think you want the other Mrs. Sams.”  And that is how my grandparents met.

My Grandma Max and Grandpa Vern were married for 36 years, and I have been thinking a lot about them lately, specifically about how they kept amazing senses of humor in the face of very serious circumstances.

The funniest I ever remember my Grandpa Vern being . . . was in the waiting room of an emergency room.  One evening many years ago on Thanksgiving, my Grandma Max was having trouble breathing, which quickly progressed to not being able to breathe at all.  The paramedics came and whisked her away to the hospital down river, and I took my Grandpa Vern to the hospital, where we sat in the waiting room, with all the other worried and weary folks who sit in emergency rooms in the middle of the night.  I, myself, was sitting quietly, hoping and also dreading the moment that someone came to tell us whether she lived or died.  (She did live on this night, by the way).

Suddenly my Grandpa Vern started telling jokes . . . jokes about farmers and boys falling down wells.  Jokes about stray dogs.  Jokes about kids at church.  And the entire waiting room was laughing,  hilariously.  My Grandpa Vern just kept telling jokes, and he allowed us (about 15 people in all) in the waiting room to laugh and bond and forget for a little while, just for a little while, the situation we were in.  It was the funniest I ever saw him.  In the face of a terrible situation, he got funnier.  It was an amazing moment to witness.

A few years after that, my Grandma Max found out she had breast cancer (she lived through that too, by the way).  She had a mastectomy, and while she was healing, she wrote a song called “Lopsided Lady, You’re Not All There For Me.”  It was hilarious and, of course, a brilliant way to deal with a frustrating situation.

There are some very serious issues facing our world right now, from the economy to the state of the environment.  As my grandparents used grace and humor as a coping mechanism, I have made a conscious choice to use humor in our own movies and books.  I write stories for children that give them a chance to laugh.  I also make a conscious choice to write humor that adults can enjoy with children, because if families are laughing together, the laughter is even more powerful.  It gives families a needed reprieve from the serious and often stifling realities of the immense issues we all face in our day to day lives.

I am lucky to come from a family that appreciates humor, and much of that comes from my grandparents.  I am certainly happy that Vern persevered to take “the other Mrs. Sams” out on a date all those years ago.