Guest Post - Cara Bartek
Serafina Loves Science
I am thrilled to host Cara Bartek for today's MMGM focus. Thanks so much Cara, for stopping by today!
As the mom of a math and science loving daughter, I truly appreciate the STEM focus of these awesome stories. More than that, I love the fun and adventure thrown in. These books are a must have! Add them to your Christmas shopping list!
Cara has taken the time to share her publishing journey with us, and how the Serafina series came to be. Enjoy!
Time Traveling Ten-Year
Olds
I read A Wrinkle in Time quite literally on
a dark and stormy night. I was ten and we had just moved from the
sprawling concrete suburbs of North Houston out to a
small farming community in Austin County, Texas. Where my old school
was new and state of the art with computers and carpeting and air
conditioning, my new school was built sometime around World War II and
looked like something Norman Bates and his mom would consider
“lovely”.
It was also a dark and stormy time in my life. We were
living with my grandparents as we were making this transition. My parents
were going through a rough time, I was going through a rough time
adjusting to the new environment, and I felt pretty alone.
The library at my new elementary school was cozy and proved
to be a nice sanctuary, save for the really scary librarian. She was
something like a cross between Old Mother Hubbard and the devil himself. In the
library there was no talking, no eye contact, no loud breathing, and certainly
no love. She preferred everyone to make his or her reading
selection silently and then immediately leave.
I had picked through the stacks many times, as I
was already a bookworm at this point in my life. I ran across a copy of A
Wrinkle in Time and was drawn in by the cover. It was a depiction of
some sort of flying horse with kids on its back. It looked
pretty cool, so I gave it a shot.
I read the entire book in a single night. That is a pretty
big accomplishment for someone who actively avoided brushing her teeth. The
book had me. I wanted to be Meg. I wanted to visit new and strange worlds. I
wanted to be understood just like Calvin understood her. Most of all I wanted
to escape. I wanted to jump through that tesseract just like Meg and Charles
and Calvin.
My life pivots along the line of that night – the
ten years prior to reading A Wrinkle and all the time that
followed. You may think this is a story about how I came to love
reading. (Actually that story happened much earlier in my life as I
watched my mom and dad devour hardbacks and paperbacks and grocery store
novels and Tolstoy and McMurtry and Anne Rice. Reading brought them so much
pleasure I thought I would try it on myself.) This is a story about
something different.
That chasm, that fault line represents the day I
realized science was more than just a subject. Until that evening with my
thirty-year old copy of A Wrinkle in Time, science was something that was
talked about, studied, used, and left at school. Cold and
antiseptic. It was never brought home. It didn’t have utility in my life.
It was a concept that people who were much older and much smarter than me used.
Meg, Charles, and Calvin had used science to bend space and time and transform
their ordinary lives into something extraordinary.
I took this realization into my own life and started to grow
keen on science. I saw how the simple concepts we were learning had much
broader and deeper meanings. You could almost hear all
the gears grinding to life in my brain. I saw
how through the understanding of the most basic tenets of
the universe, you could in some small way begin to master the world around you.
You could gain power in your own life. You could, in some small
way, escape the nasty and dogging reality of being a kid in
between. A kid who exists somewhere between child and grownup and has
no real control over parents fighting or where you live or what other people
think of you. This power was the power of understanding.
As a woman in STEM, I see the under-representation of
women in all roles, including leadership, the difficulty that exists in
balancing work and home by way of outdated family and maternity practice, and
the lack of opportunity for advancement. I spent time working in educational
and advocacy groups trying to promote change. What I realized is the people
standing next to me, my peers, my colleagues, all agreed change should happen.
So I asked myself why were things so slow to change? Later, as I became a
mother, I realized that not all girls believe they are capable, amazing,
and wonderful. It struck me. The hearts and minds that need to be changed are
not people my age; it’s the children.
In the Serafina
Loves Science! series I seek to create this connection for little
girls. I am working to change their hearts and minds about their ability to
excel in science. I also hope to make them laugh and enjoy scientific concepts
along the way. I know I am no Madeline L’Engle, but I hope to make “nerdy”
happen one fart joke at a time.
About Serafina Loves
Science! The series is middle grade fiction that focuses on an
eleven-year-old girl named Serafina Sterling. Serafina is just like all other
eleven-year-olds who have to deal with issues like annoying older brothers,
cliques at school, and parents who restrict her use of noxious chemicals.
Serafina is trying to figure it out, much like all of her friends. But she has
a little secret… Serafina loves science! Her passion for all things scientific
helps her make new friends and figure the old ones out, understand her family,
invent new devices for space travel, and appreciate the basic principles of the
universe.
About me: I live
in Texas with my husband and two daughters. The Serafina Loves Science! series was inspired in part by my own
career path. The other part of my inspiration is my two little girls. I hope to
make this world a more equitable and opportune place for my daughters one silly
story at a time!
You can find me at:
