Author Chat with ZarahG: Ms. Natasha Vizcarra on Science Writing and Book Recommendations

Author Chat with ZarahG: A Children's Book About COVID by Natasha Vizcarra

 

BA Library Online Author Visit: Writing About Science with Ms. Natasha Vizcarra

And it is done! Ms. Vizcarra's visit in the Academy was cool and fun!

Here is my short reflection and thank you message to our learning community, most especially to the teachers and the students who helped make the activity possible.

The Online Author Visit of Ms. Vizcarra was very informative. She covered important aspects of the writing and the research process. Sharing what she learned from real practice and building on skills overtime was precious. We learn by doing, indeed! We hope that her input and the sharing of her thinking process allowed us to reflect our own approach and style.

I am still munching on this line from her talk: My editor frequently challenged me. So I ask myself, how open am in accepting challenges from peers and readers of my work? As a Teacher Librarian in BA, I think about the research services we provide students if these are relevantly challenging to them. With just about the right amount of support. 

Feel free to reach out to us for responses, questions and insights on this activity. 

Do consider donating a copy of Spikeys, Prickles and Prongies to our partner public schools. 

You can also buy a personal copy for your child, pamangkin or inaanak. Once again, thank you! Your participation is also a great help for the local book industry.

View and read my previous posts about Ms. Vizcarra's Online Author Visit by following these links.

Online Author Visit Plan and Proposal 

Priming Activity: Getting to Know Ms. Natasha Vizcarra

How to plan an Author Visit? Here are tips in planning and hosting an Author Visit in the School Library.

Preparing for an Online Author Visit: Ms. Natasha Vizcarra

GET TO KNOW OUR GUEST AUTHOR, MS. NATASHA VIZCARRA!

We are excited to watch and listen to Ms. Natasha Vizcarra share her experiences as a Science writer and editor on Assembly this Wednesday, November 17, 2021 at 2PM. She writes interesting topics on science that are grounded on sound research and integrated into different subjects and disciplines.

Here is a sample of Ms. Vizcarra's article on fermentation. The storytelling voice is strong but the history and cultural background of fermentation to Asian cuisine and its relevance to health, wellbeing and a nation's economy are given emphasis. How can non-fiction sound so, ah, literary?

"In early March, Filipino writer and plant-based cook Mabi David plunged her hand into a vat of a bright red purée, Chinese cabbage, julienned carrots and radishes, and chopped green onions. She was mixing a fresh batch of kimchi, a fermented side-dish from Korea. Sharp scents of ginger, garlic and hot pepper wafted in the air as a crowd of vegetable farmers watched and jotted down notes.

David was teaching the class in Bauko, in the Philippines’ Mountain Province, where the high altitude and low temperatures allow farmers to grow temperate weather crops – like cabbage, carrots and salad greens – in the country’s hot and humid climate.

Like other Asian cuisines, Philippine cuisine is rich with well-loved fermented foods, turning local fruits, vegetables and seafood into dishes and condiments such as pickled green papaya and permutations of fermented rice, fish and shrimp pastes. Many evolved decades before the age of refrigeration, subsequently passed on from generation to generation

But David is expanding traditional practices by borrowing from other Asian cuisines to take advantage of new market demands for fermented foods as well as reduce food waste; as the Korean migrant population in the Philippines has grown since the 1990s, so too has Filipinos’ taste for Korean food. “We wanted to introduce [different] fermentation techniques to help the farmers deal with surplus harvest,” says David.

Barely a week after the kimchi-making class, however, the World Health Organization declared the COVID-19 outbreaks a pandemic on 11 March. A few days later, the Philippine government placed Manila under lockdown, keeping people home from shopping in stores to avoid infection. By late March, lower demand for their produce began forcing farmers to give away much of their harvests or dump them by roadsides.

Had David’s students explored kimchi-making as a side-business much earlier, tons of produce would not have gone to waste."

~ Excerpt from HOW FERMENTATION’S NEW HEYDAY IS BENEFITTING HUMAN AND PLANETARY HEALTH, April 29, 2020

You are highly encouraged to read the article on the topic. What piqued your interest? What did you observe on the handling of language and the rendition of facts to an intended audience? Imagine the amount and time of research the writer invested on a piece such as this. Visit Ms. Vizcarra's website for more interesting non-fiction.

See you all on Wednesday!

PS - Ms. Vizcarra has a new book, Spikeys, Prickles and Prongies: A Corona Virus Story published by Ilaw ng Tahanan. The publisher will sell copies!

Planning for an Online Author Visit

I am really excited planning this Author Visit of Ms. Natasha Vizcarra. I am sharing some parts of my plan and the poster which our Communications Associate made for this event. Here is the link to a blog post I wrote a few years back on how to plan and organize an Author Visit.

Author Visit: Writing About Science During COVID Times with Natasha Vizcarra

DESCRIPTION AND OBJECTIVE:

This Author Visit is contextualized around research and its value to meaning making, to the responsible communication of facts and information and in the creation of knowledge for readers, young and old. Ms. Natasha Vizcarra, a seasoned writer and editor, has been researching and writing about Science even before the dawn of the COVID age. The kind of writing she does, apparently, takes on greater relevance when Ilaw ng Tahanan published her book, Spikeys, Prickles & Prongies: A Coronavirus Discovery Story (2021), a children’s book about the coronavirus.

 In this visit, we are curious to find out from Ms. Vizcara how a topic as lethal as the coronavirus can be written creatively for children. With the proliferation of fake news, misinformation and disinformation, we are eager to know how she  approaches the selection and curation of information, especially topics concerning Science when preparing for a writing task or project. As a learning community, we are interested to listen to her sharing of experiences as a Science writer in an age of unprecedented change.

TARGETED CORE VALUES:

Adaptation

●      By understanding the story of a science writer creating a book about the coronavirus, we are able to gain confidence in braving the pandemic as individuals and as a community.

Bayanihan

●       The Author Visit has a book donation drive for students of our partner public school in coordination with CAS Coor, BASC and UPServe (?) A minimum of 30 copies shall be bought for book donation to public school students.

●      The Author Visit is open to the BA Community and teachers from our partner public schools will be invited to attend.

Connection

●      Concepts about the creative process and skills on research shared by the guest speaker connect to tasks and projects in the subject areas.

●      This event may inspire more students to begin CAS projects related to the Sciences and consider pursuing a career integrating the humanities to the sciences.

New Book on the Block: Spikeys, Prickles and Prongies

 

When I learned that Ilaw ng Tahanan is launching a new children's book about COVID-19, I got excited. Spikeys, Prickles and Prongies: A Coronavirus Discovery Story is written by Natasha Vizcarra and illustrated by Jamie Bauza -- two women I admire for their body of work and the advocacies they pursue. I know Ms. Vizcarra from way back as editor of the Junior Inquirer while Ms. Bauza illustrated Masaya Ang Maging Ako (Lampara, 2020). 

The Junior Inquirer (JI) has ceased publication for a while now and it is only in the library of the Philippine Daily Inquirer where copies can be retrieved. At the time, around the early 2000s, the JI was a launch pad for aspiring writers, young and old. If you need to see a good model for campus journalism, turn to the JI. There were workshops and training sessions for students on all kinds of writing. It featured texts and materials for students to read which were all written with verve and a sense of wonder. It celebrated the joy and curiosities of children as well as the young at heart. 

At the time, I was working in Xavier School. My students would tell me stories of their trainings and meet ups with the JI staff. How they encouraged and mentored them to write, to speak and to find their voice. Our English teachers who mentored them alongside the JI staff were appreciative of this support from community resources. 

Ms. Vizcarra is now a science writer based in Denver Colorado. She writes about nature and people's interaction with the environment so engagingly well it branch out to real life events, making one think about the connections we have as precious links in the fragile chain of life. I had an interview with Ms. Vizcarra last week wherein I had a glimpse of the meticulous research and fact checking work she and Ilaw ng Tahanan put into the book project. I felt the sincere care and caution these wonder women put into making this book. At the front, back and center is the child reader who will meet the book. 

I was happy and honored to meet once again the editor in chief of the JI I know back in the day. And I think, this is one of the many reasons why we need journalists. They help us make sense of events, big and small, that shape their world in order to understand their role in reshaping and reforming it. 

I look forward to getting my copies of Spikeys, Prickles and Prongies: A Coronavirus Discovery Story!