Sixty-five (small) reviewers!

Ninja and Dr. Elin visiting Landås skole (Photo: E. Darelius)

Ninja has been on a new adventure! This time he joined me on the bike down to Landås skole and their Climate club to hear what pupils in 6th grade had to say about “Ninja goes south“. We have now translated the book into Norwegian (thanks Marthe!), and I was eager – and a bit nervous! – to hear what the 65 “reviewers” had to say about it! In class last week they had all read, discussed and written about the book; what words did they not understand, what parts did they like best, what parts could be shortened and what did they want to know more about…   While there were a few critical reviews (who either did not care about Ninjas and therefor found the book utterly boring, or who did care about Ninjas but found this Ninja not to be enough Ninja-like) most of them were very positive: We loved the pancakes! Can you write more books, please? We learnt a lot about ice shelves / seals / Antarctica / moorings.

I think an editor would have landed on “minor revision”… so I’m now re-working the book with their comments in mind: less text in each “bubble”, more information about the seals, explain these words and so on…. Fingers crossed that the next version will be accepted!

The classes seemed convinced the book will be a success – and, for the first time in my life – I was asked to write autographs! There was even a queue!!!

Writing autographs for the first time in my life! Photo: Endre Tufteland

While visiting – I took the opportunity to introduced the ice-shelf game “Iceflows” (don’t blame me if you get addicted) …

Make your own iceshelf at www.iceflowsgame.com Photo: Endre Tufteland

…and off course to do my all time favorite melt-ice-cubes-in-salt-and-fresh-water-experiment!

The experiment with melting ice cubes works equally well at the Norwegian Academy of Science as on Landås skole! Photo: Endre Tufteland