Most picture books are typically geared toward young children who delight in the illustrations while listening to a short story. However, when Susan Levine, a resident of Naples, crafts her books, she strives to captivate the interest of older kids and adults as well. This is why her books feature an illustrated story interwoven with factual information.
Levine’s most recent book, Gilbert’s Migration Vacation, adheres to that formula. It’s the sweet story of a young sanderling who is making his first migration from Prince of Wales Island in the Canadian Arctic to Marco Island. The story is full of adventures as young Gilbert faces the challenges of exhaustion, a storm, finding food, and more. But each page is also full of facts. Readers can learn about sanderlings and other shorebirds, migration, predators, resting stops, and more.
“I want everything in my book to be educational,” Levine explained.
She also wants her books to appeal to a broad audience.
“I try to make the fictional story something that a kindergartener or first grader would enjoy,” she began. “The fact boxes I am really writing for that older child, the teenager, the parents and the grandparents. I don’t expect them to read the fact boxes to teach a kindergartener or a first grader, but the older child can learn a lot.”
And she hopes that learning will spark helping.
“I am really hoping if they know how amazing these birds are they will protect them,” she explained. “Maybe they won’t chase them on the beach. That was my goal with Gilbert. Those birds have traveled 4,000 miles, and they are here to feed and rest.”
Levine wrote her first book many years ago while living in Columbus, Ohio. She was in charge of her daughter’s first-grade field trip where they studied the state capital, and when she realized there were no children’s books about Columbus she wrote one. Levine followed that with a book about Cincinnati. When she moved to Naples, she turned her writing attention to Southwest Florida birds. Her first local book, Jenny’s First Catch, features a Roseate Spoonbill that tries the fishing methods of other birds, only to learn that her big spoonbill won’t work that way. That fictional story contains fact boxes about common wading birds.
“I am not a teacher, but l always liked to immerse myself and learn things,” Levine said.
“The first thing I always do when I get an idea for a book is to see if anyone else has done one,” she said.
While Levine doesn’t have a background in teaching or writing, she has a lot of experience with nature. She is a Florida Master Naturalist.
“I have always loved nature,” Levine stated. “I love wading birds.”
Yet, even she learned things while researching her latest book.
“To me, the most surprising thing was the parents don’t feed the babies,” she admitted. “Right after they hatch, the females start their migration south. The males stay until the bird fledges, so these young birds migrate all by themselves. It is all just instinct. The other thing that I thought was just amazing was how these birds change physically to prepare for migration.”
Levine said Marco Island was the perfect place for Gilbert to end his journey.
“I wanted someplace that was accessible for kids to go where they could see a lot of the birds. That is why I picked Marco,” she said.
It takes Levine about a year to complete a book. She’s unsure what her next topic will be, but it will have a bird as a main character, possibly a seabird.
“I just have to wait to see what inspires me,” she concluded.