Beth Anderson, Children's Writer

Ever interview your main character? What if it’s a rock? Sounds like a good idea to me! Once you start asking questions a path can open. In this post, author Carmela LaVigna Coyle takes us down her path to her beautiful new picture book, SOMETHING SPECTACULAR: A ROCK’S JOURNEY.

GIVEAWAY! Carmela is offering a copy of SOMETHING SPECTACULAR! Just leave a comment below to be entered. 

Congrats to Lori Alexander, winner of Kari Gonzalez’s giveaway of either a 20-minute ask-anything conversation or a copy of HOW TO HATCH A READER! 

The Journey of a Rock, a Story, and a Writer 

by Carmela LaVigna Coyle

I held the rock in my hand, and questions tumbled out. “Where did you come from?” “How did you get here?” “How old ARE you, anyway?” (Which, thankfully, is a perfectly appropriate question to ask a rock.)

This is precisely (well, almost precisely) how Something Spectacular, A Rock’s Journey, began.

At first sight, I was filled with gratitude for this perfectly imperfect heart-shaped rock, a gift given to me by my husband. It wasn’t the first heart-rock he (or I) had ever collected, but it was the first (maybe only) heart rock found during the worst of the pandemic.

The “early digs” of my story were in the form of a free verse poem, written as a daily entry in my Morning Journal—a file I keep open on my desktop for whenever inspiration hits. It hadn’t occurred to me at the time that my newborn poem would one day grow up to be an informational fiction picture book.

My story could have gone in so many directions, like sliding doors. But my first impulse was to poetically ponder the questions I was asking even if my answers weren’t exactly accurate. It was more important that I simply . . . began. The process of “not knowing” the accuracies freed my mind to imagine what might have happened over the eons. It was quite magical!

At some point, through re-readings and revisions, the picture-book-possibility-light-bulb went off. But so did the alarm bells, because honestly, if it was to become a book, I now had a lot of research to do.

So the alarm bells were dinging and I was stressing about the timeline, historical, and geologic accuracy, and every teeny-tiny detail. Yet, in its deepest place, the story was still a poem about how a rock became heart-shaped. I would need to blend and blur the two, and rely heavily on illustrations.

Back to the research, I determined the most important thing was to discover a feasible timeline. Rock building takes millions and sometimes billions of years. And different kinds of rocks need different conditions and circumstances. Had my sandstone heart-shaped rock taken longer? Shorter?

I began online study regarding the most likely location and logistics. I ordered books, conversed with a HS geology teacher, then made some tweaks and sent the poem off to my critique group. As always, they offered thoughtful feedback and suggestions, and I found my way forward.

Next, I reached out to two geologist friends who I knew would be forgiving of my obvious lack of knowledge. “What do you mean my rock didn’t start at the bottom of a lake?”

We laughed a lot. I learned a lot. I took notes, read book recommendations, studied the evolving earth during Pangea, and researched more online resources, which eventually led to me standing in the middle of a stream with the geologists near Guanella Pass, in the Rockies.

Our conversation flitted from Pangea to the Colorado Plateau to extinctions to earthquakes to sedimentary rocks to . . . I’m hungry, where should we picnic?

As the author of the “research-lite” Do Princesses Wear Hiking Boots? book series, I have to admit there were a few times I questioned whether I was the one to write this story. Each morning, I would high-five myself in the mirror, just like Mel Robbins recommends with, “You’ve got this!” (Seriously, I did this every morning in an attempt to convince myself I would be able to distill all the research down into a simpler package.)

Another thing not far from my mind was how to merge the rock’s journey and timeline with something a child would easily grasp. I also wanted to keep the rock’s shape a mystery until the very end. Thankfully, editor Theresa Howell and illustrator Carly Allen-Fletcher agreed to all of the above. Carly kept the rock’s shape secret in clever ways, and added the young child to the cover art. Then we came up with an innovative, but non-illustrative way to bring the child’s day hike onto each page-turn in the upper left hand corner:

 Not all of what I learned through my research was about geology and timelines. Many of my notes didn’t even make it into the text! Earth and everything on board her is in constant flux—changing, moving, evolving. We live on a young planet even though it seems unfathomably old at 4.5ish billion years. Yet, fast forward, here we are writing and reading stories way up on the surface of what is basically a beautiful round rock.

It’s magical how earth (in concert with those other four elements) crank out heart rocks. And yet, is it? It’s all about the right conditions, lots of patience, and an impulse to move forward. Just like our stories.

It’s has been a sincere honor to dive deep into Something Spectacular, A Rock’s Journey. Thank you-thank you, Beth Anderson for inviting me along!

Don’t forget to leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of SOMETHING SPECTACULAR: A ROCK’S JOURNEY! [US addresses only, please. Winner announced 10/6/23]