Beth Anderson, Children's Writer

Visiting a place is magical, but authors can’t always do that to research a story. Here’s a fantastic post from author Colleen Paeff on how she landed on the heart of her puffling rescue story in Iceland, along with some tips for how to get a sense of place, people, and the heart of a story when that’s not possible.

GIVEAWAY!! Leave a comment below to get in on the giveaway for a copy of PUFFLINGS FLY FREE! A RESCUE TALE FROM ICELAND!

Congrats to Laura Roettiger, the winner of SILENCE SOUNDS SIMPLE by Gary Golio!

Finding a Story’s Heart in the Place Where it Happened (and How to Get There Without Leaving Home)

by Colleen Paeff

When I set out to write Pufflings Fly Free!: A Rescue Tale from Iceland (illustrated by Linda Ólafsdóttir), a picture book about Iceland’s Puffling Patrol, I thought I’d be writing straight nonfiction. The true story had it all: 

• kid heroes (Members of the Puffling Patrol, many of them children, spend late nights searching for…)
• adorable animals (baby puffins, or pufflings, who sometimes land in town where they will likely die – instead of safely on the water surrounding…) 
• an intriguing setting (the Westman Islands of Iceland). It’s a place and story that offers…
•  numerous classroom connections (biology, geography, climate change, humans helping nature, etc.).

What else could the story possibly need? But there was something missing that I never would have known about if I hadn’t had the opportunity to go to the Westman Islands and rescue some pufflings myself. 

It was after 11 PM when Sandra and Berglind arrived to retrieve my husband, Warren, and me from our Airbnb. The sisters, known as the “Puffling Queens of the Westman Islands,” for the large number of birds they rescue every year, had offered to take us on Puffling Patrol. 

Sandra drove slowly, as Berglind shone a high-powered flashlight out the car window. Everyone was on the lookout for small birds hiding in shadows. There! After receiving some instructions (wear gloves, reach for the bird from behind while a friend lights it from the front, and wrap your hands around the bird firmly, so its wings can’t flap) I was ready for my first puffling rescue! 

It didn’t go well. Linda Ólafsdóttir’s illustration of Freya’s first few attempts at rescuing a puffling on her own are eerily similar to my first try. (You can watch it on YouTube – it’s funnier with the sound on.)

Thankfully, Sandra swooped in and saved the bird for me – from inside an excavator’s clamshell bucket, just like in the story.

In fact, much of what happens in the book happened to me on Puffling Patrol. The couple near the gas station running in circles with “flailing arms” – that was me and my husband – before we’d had Sandra and Berglind’s help! And if a scene from the book didn’t happen to me, it happened to someone I interviewed – the story Freya’s dad tells about catching 120 pufflings in one night? That actually happened once!

Lines like, “Everything looks like a puffling late at night” and “…time goes slower when there are no birds to save” are pulled directly from my own experience. But it was a conversation I had with Sandra and Berglind that prompted my switch from straight nonfiction to informational fiction, and helped me find the heart of my story.

They told me that for children on the Westman Islands, rescuing a puffling on their own is an important rite of passage. Many children go on Puffling Patrol with their families before they can even walk. Kids on this island have been watching people save pufflings for as long as they can remember. When a child finally rescues a bird on her own…it’s a big deal. That, I knew, would be the heart of my story. 

Another author might have been able to write straight nonfiction with the same heart. But I wanted to follow a young girl as she experienced this important milestone for herself – so I made one up. Could I have written the story without visiting Iceland? Of course! But it would have had a different heart. 

What if you can’t get to the place where your story happens, though? Or what if it’s set in the past? There are still many ways to immerse yourself in the locations, events, and people of your story:

1. Interview people who live in your setting or have experience with your subject. Find them by reading relevant magazine or newspaper articles, then contact the people quoted in the articles. (That was how I found Sandra and Berglind!) 

2. Look for videos of your setting or subject on YouTube. Look for photos on Flickr. Consider reaching out to the people who posted the videos or photos.

3. Try to recreate an important scene from your story at home. For example, I could have gone on a late-night hunt for neighborhood cats or owls (minus the rescue attempts!) to discover what it’s like to search for something that’s hard to find in the dark. 

4. If your story is set in the past, rely on newspaper articles, diaries, memoirs, and even catalogs (if they existed) to learn more about everyday life. Chronicling America and Archive.org are amazing resources for this kind of thing. (Check out some of the resources I used when I was researching A Gilded Age Story: Stone by Stone, a historical fiction chapter book set in 1883 New York City. They’re amazing!) 

5. Contact local museums and historical societies. These organizations are often run by passionate people who are thrilled to share their knowledge. If they don’t have answers for you, ask if they can put you in touch with someone who might.

I relied on some of these methods when I was working on my upcoming picture book Rainbow Truck, which is set in Pakistan – a place I’ve never been. In fact, someone I interviewed early in my research process (when the story was going to be straight nonfiction – are you sensing a pattern?), ended up becoming my co-author and a dear friend. Her name is Hina Abidi and I hope to travel to Pakistan with her someday!

There’s no doubt that my first choice will always be to visit the places I write about. But, if that’s not an option, there are many ways to make a story sing without ever leaving home. 

Don’t forget to leave a comment below for a chance to win a copy of PUFFLINGS FLY FREE! (US addresses only, please. Winner announced 7/17/26.)

Bio:

Robert F. Sibert Honoree Colleen Paeff is the author of The Great Stink: How Joseph Bazalgette Solved London’s Poop Pollution Problem, Firefly Song: Lynn Frierson Faust and the Great Smoky Mountain Discovery and Pufflings Fly Free!: A Rescue Tale from Iceland. A lifelong Californian, she received a Bachelor’s Degree in set design for theater from California State University Fullerton, before becoming a bookseller, preschool teacher, and newspaper columnist. (She never did become a set designer!) Eventually, she figured out how to roll books, kids, and writing into a career as a children’s book author, and now she gets to share her enthusiasm for books and learning by visiting with students both at home and abroad. She lives in Los Angeles, CA. Subscribe to Colleen’s newsletter at http://www.colleenpaeff.com or follow her on Instagram @ColleenPaeff.

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