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News Flash: Border Crossings Wins the 2024 Orbis Pictus Award!

Read the official press release here!

“Sneed’s online visits with our Primary-aged children during Book Week, were an absolute highlight! Students were “enlightened” by his session on ocean animals that create their own light and his own experience in a submersible. Other students got to learn about his love of birds and how a passion like that, can result in so many published books. I highly recommend Sneed as a guest author for students and parents alike. On my own desk right here, I now have a book about birdwatching, so I can personally vouch for the positive impact that Sneed’s sessions can have!”—Tania Jordan, Teacher Librarian, Yew Chung International School of Shanghai

2024 is Here!

Dear friends, librarians, kids, and teachers. I hope the school year has been going amazingly well for all of you. As we move into deep winter, I look back on a wonderful past year and look forward to another one with optimism. After the Great Recession, covid, and other calamities, I have to say that I am astonished to be working on five different book projects. These include two picture books, a middle-grade science book, and two adult guide books, one about birds and the other about traveling in Japan. One of the highlights of last year, in fact, was to fulfill a long-held dream of taking my daughter to Japan. Check out the photos below. Meanwhile, I continue to celebrate last spring’s release of Border Crossings, which I am astounded and pleased to announce has won the 2024 Orbis Pictus Award given out by the National Council of Teachers of English. Please enjoy my other news below—including a sneak preview of my next picture book, Like No Other, from Kane Press. In case you are wondering, yes, I am still doing plenty of school visits so please click on the School Visits link for more details or shoot me an email at sbcollardiii@gmail.com. Have a great rest of your year, and as always, I appreciate all that you do to make our world a better place.

Border Crossings, released January 24, 2023, illustrated by Howard Gray, published by Charlesbridge Publishing. Winner of the 2024 Orbis Pictus Award for Nonfiction!

Check out my new interview on Maria Marshall’s The Picture Book Buzz in celebration of the release of my newest picture book, Border Crossings!

Watch a video about Border Crossings by clicking here!

One review of my new picture book Border Crossings, illustrated by the fabulous Howard Gray, and published by my longtime publisher Charlesbridge Publishing:

“On a shadowy night, a young ocelot makes his way south in search of a mate, but his trip abruptly ends when he comes to a giant wall: “where protective plants once stood, an ugly scar now stretches.” Unable to squeeze through the wall’s slats or gain traction on its slippery sides, the ocelot turns back and becomes one of many animals whose environment has been radically changed by the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico. The book then walks viewers through the deserts, forests, and grasslands that surround the wall, emphasizing that the border is completely arbitrary and nonexistent in the environment. Its effects, however, are quite real, dividing breeding grounds, disrupting migratory patterns, and upending ecosystems. Simple, direct text gives the book broad accessibility, and an author’s note offers more specifics on the building of the border wall and the animals endangered both by its presence and other manmade threats. Suggestions for activism, a glossary, and further resources are included.”  

—The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books

Little Killers: The Ferocious Lives of Puny Predators is a book I have wanted to write almost since I became a writer, and I am so thrilled that it is out in the world. Here’s what Booklist has to say:

“Lions and sharks may get all the notice, Collard writes, but some of the most fearsome and successful predators on the planet are barely visible: there’s a protozoan Trachelius “slurping up” its tiny prey “like an algae-filled ice-cream cone” while ladybird beetles enjoy an “aphid smoothie.” Meanwhile, army ants rip any creature in their path to shreds, and, in the sea, arrow worms “shorter than a pencil eraser” fall upon unwary copepods “faster than you can shout ‘free food!’” Young browsers will . . . devour this, and budding zoologists will relish the heaping helpings of specific species names and natural detail.”

I am super excited to be working with legendary editor Harold Underdown at Kane Press on TWO new picture books. This image is from the upcoming Like No Other, a picture book about remarkable animals that have no close living relatives. These include one of my favorite birds, Africa’s Secretarybird. Look for Like No Other in 2024!
A Sneak Preview of Defending Nature, one of many exciting new book projects I have coming out in the next two years.

If you haven’t done so already, please check out the videos and book trailers posted on my YouTube channel. They include Sneed’s Virtual Galapagos STEAM Author Visit, me reading my book Birds of Every Color out loud, and a virtual birding field trip complete with a lesson plan and study guide that you can download under the Study Guides section of this website.

If you haven’t yet checked them out, my other recent picture books are perfect additions to STEM and STEAM studies. Waiting for a Warbler, a finalist for the Green Earth Book Award, is a captivating story about a Cerulean Warbler’s epic journey from South America to its breeding grounds in the United States. It also tells the inspiring parallel story of a family that has been trying to improve its yard habitat for birds and other creatures. Beaver and Otter Get Along . . . Sort of, an Honor Book for the Eureka! Children’s Nonfiction Award, shares the charming, humorous story of a beaver who has to deal with river otters invading his pond!

Did you miss me on Jerry Pallotta’s great “Learning Live with Authors” Youtube show? Never fear. Click here to watch a replay—and catch other awesome authors reveal the stories behind their books!

School and Conference Visits

In-person school and conference visits are showing signs of life, but I continue to offer author visit presentations and workshops online through ZOOM. These online visits are extremely affordable, the cost depending on your class size and situation. Contact me at sbcollardiii@gmail.com.

I am pleased to announce that I am now working with Author’s Abroad to book my international school visits. To find out more, you can contact them directly by clicking here or, as always, my own email listed above. Here is what teacher Hannah McLaughlin wrote of my remote visit to Bangkok Patana School: “We wanted to email to say a HUGE thank you for your writers workshop you provided for our Year 6 students last week. They really enjoyed hearing about your journey as an author and how your passion has shaped your writing over the course of your career. Your passion for not only birds, but all species of animals, was inspiring and this week our students are choosing a species they’re interested in for a migration project in our connected learning sessions. We have an amazing range of animals from Arctic Terns to Zooplankton to Caribou. You definitely instilled the importance of our passion, choices, and drive to learn about something that will help us in creating the best writing we can!”

♦ SPEAKING DATES ♦

Please consult the calendar to the right, or better yet, email me at sbcollardiii@gmail.com.

♦ MORE GREAT BOOKS ♦

Kirkus awarded One Iguana, Two Iguanas: A Story of Accident, Natural Selection, and Evolution, a starred review, calling it “A fresh and accessible approach to an important scientific topic.”  A Junior Library Guild selection, the book tells the remarkable story of how the Galápagos marine and land iguanas—two radically different creatures—evolved from the same accidental arrival to the Galápagos beginning about four million years ago. It’s a perfect STEM/STEAM selection, one that will captivate your students and facilitate a wealth of scientific inquiry. The book was also named a Bank Street 2019 Best of Children’s Books selection. and an Outstanding Science Trade Book for Students K-12. Best of all, you can order it now!

Hopping Ahead of Climate Change—Snowshoe Hares, Science, and Survival (Bucking Horse Books, 2016)

Hopping Ahead of Climate Change, Finalist for the AAAS/Subaru/SB&F Prize for Middle Grade Science
Hopping Ahead of Climate Change, Finalist for the AAAS/Subaru/SB&F Prize for Middle Grade Science
  • Finalist for the American Association Advancement of Science/Subaru/Science Books & Films Prize for Nonfiction Science
  • NSTA-CBC Outstanding Science Trade Books
  • Eureka Nonfiction Award Silver Medal
  • Junior Library Guild Selection
  • Booklist: “Collard does an excellent job of telling the story of the snowshoe hare, while also keeping stewardship and conservation as the core message.”
  • School Library Journal: “Captivating text and a stimulating use of color photographs make this a welcome addition for all environmental collections.”
  • Midwest Book Review: “Impressively well written, organized and presented, “Hopping Ahead of Climate Change” is unreservedly recommended for family, school, and community library Environmental Studies and Wildlife Studies collections and supplemental studies reading lists.”
  • Karen Yingling Reads: “veteran nonfiction science writer Collard gives us fascinating insights into what’s going on with this (extremely adorable) animal.”
  • Winner, High Plains Books Award
  • Finalist, Green Earth Book Award

Fire Birds—Valuing Natural Wildfires and Burned Forests (Bucking Horse Books, 2015)

Fire Birds has been racking up terrific reviews and receiving a lot of attention--no surprise given this year's record-breaking heat!
Fire Birds continues to gain traction as a highly readable and useful STEM book for kids of many ages!
  • NSTA-CBC Outstanding Science Trade Books
  • Eureka! Nonfiction Book Award Silver Medal
  • Green Prize for Sustainable Literature
  • AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize, Commended List
  • High Plains Book Award, Finalist
  • Starred Review, School Library Journal
  • A Junior Library Guild selection

Japan 2023

Heading to Japan? Pick up Sneed’s new step-by-step planning guide, First-Time Japan! This innovative, concise volume gives you key details on transportation, lodging, documents, food, manners—in short, all of the essential details you need to plan and conduct your trip. Along the way, it provides great ideas and insider tips for what to do and where to go. Order now directly from Mountain Press.

To learn more, also check out my review of Japan travel books at: https://shepherd.com/best-books/travel-guides-for-conquering-your-fear-of-japan