Summer 2003

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Books

Such stuff as dreams are made on Nature for kids and happy accidents

– Charles Creekmore ’95

One Hundred accidents and coincidences?: We think Not. Laurence Pringle ’61 at home in New York state. (photo by Ben Barnhart) IN TODAY'S ECONOMY, ANY WRITING career faces about the same chance of survival as a skunk crossing an eight-lane highway. Being a penniless writer doesn’t seem to pay as well as it used to. But then along comes Laurence Pringle ’61 to inspire every struggling author. Pringle has just published his 100th (count ’em) children’s book and is still going strong. If you’re looking for the quintessential passage set down by Pringle, turn directly to page 58 of his 1996 book, Taking Care of the Earth: Kids in Action. In 1989, President George Bush the First was presenting an Environmental Youth Award to a high-school student named Allen Graves. “Does your office recycle?” Allen demanded. “I don’t know,” replied the president, basically taking the Fifth. “It should,” Allen said. Eight months later, the White House began to recycle cans and newspapers. Allen’s disarming influence on the president is the perfect example of the attitude adjustment championed by Pringle in his books, most of which deal with nature, ecology and conservation. “I’m a hopeful person,” says Pringle, “and I try to hope through my books that our young people will someday turn things around for the world.” Pringle still looks back on his five score books with awe. Having experienced the slings and arrows of outrageous publishing, he’s well aware that “writer” is often just another euphemism for “unemployment.” During his time at UMass, from 1958-61, the writing bug hadn’t yet infected Pringle. He aspired to a career path in wildlife conservation, his major. Within a few years, though, his aspirations had followed the career path of the dodo. While pursuing his Ph.D. at Syracuse University, Pringle took two required courses in statistics and German that have turned generations of doctoral candidates into endangered species. Feeling that something had died inside, he left wildlife conservation for journalism. Pringle’s resurrection came in 1963 when he nailed down an editing job with a new children’s magazine called Nature and Science. In 1968, he published his first book, Dinosaurs and Their World. Flushed with this success, he was nonetheless shocked in 1970 when Nature and Science went belly-up, leaving him to sink or swim as an author. To hear Pringle tell it, 99 books later he’s still dog-paddling. Meanwhile, the reverence for nature he developed as a child in rural New York is reflected in every book he writes. One good example is a charming autobiographical account, his One Room School. It includes many sweet references to his teacher, Miss Shackelton, including “the stories she told about big snapping turtles that lived in a pond by her house and about a woodchuck she had tamed. She showed us snapshots of the woodchuck, scratching at her screen door for treats. It ate ice cream!” Later in the book, Pringle recounts his daydreams about the natural wonders beyond the schoolhouse. “My dream came true in May,” Pringle writes, “when Miss Shackelton led us on a nature walk. …“Along the creek the scent of mint filled the air as we stepped on a carpet of wild spearmint plants. …Jack Cuthbertson looked for a snake to catch so he could tease the girls.” According to Pringle’s humble assessment of his success, it was all one big coincidence. When asked how his highly acclaimed Strange and Wonderful series was created, Pringle answers, “purely by accident.” Someone in the marketing department slapped the Strange and Wonderful subtitle on Pringle’s dinosaur manuscript and later the book sold unbelievably well. Now Pringle is about to publish his sixth book in the series, debunking stereotypes about what he calls “underdog animals.” Take this passage about bats, for instance: “When people look calmly at bats, they can learn that bats are gentle, intelligent, and fascinating animals. Bats are among the most beneficial animals on earth.” The series, published by Boyds Mills Press, also contains some strange and wonderful factoids. Did you know, for example, that in 1976 scientists discovered a shark whose distinguishing feature was its humongous mouth? They named this Pac-Man of the shark world the “megamouth.” One book reflecting Pringle’s own life is titled Everybody Has a Bellybutton: Your Life Before You Were Born. “When my first child was born,” says Pringle, “it was traditional for the husband to sit in the lobby and wait for the nurse to arrive and say, ‘Congratulations, it’s a girl!’” But by the time his fourth and fifth children were born, Pringle’s involvement with the birth process had become much more in vivo. He funneled his newborn knowledge into his “bellybutton” book. The volume has triggered some wonderful moments. Once, when he was autographing the book at a promotion, a woman asked him to “sign it for Christine.” “How old is Christine?” Pringle said. The woman patted her bulging abdomen. “This is Christine,” she said. Pringle cherishes such personalized moments. One eighth-grader recently asked Pringle the $64,000 question about writing: “Can you really make a living doing that?” Pringle was probably tempted to answer, “purely by accident.” Despite his abiding modesty, Pringle’s motivation for his books remains as lucid and clean as his writing style. “I feel writing for kids is more important than writing for adults,” says Pringle. “Most adults are set in their ways, but children are works in progress. Books can make a huge difference in their attitudes, their viewpoints, and their futures.” Or, to paraphrase another fair-to-middling scribe, books are “such stuff as dreams are made on.”

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