Melissa Stewart
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Summertime Sleepers

Animals That Estivate

Summertime Sleepers Animals That Estivate

by Melis­sa Stewart

illus by Sarah S. Brannen

Charles­bridge, 2021

ISBN 978–1‑58089–716‑7

Pur­chase this book at your local inde­pen­dent book­seller or Amazon.com.

What do mourn­ing cloak but­ter­flies have in com­mon with pix­ie frogs and yel­low-bel­lied mar­mots? They all esti­vate, or sleep through sum­mer. Every­one knows about hiber­na­tion, but this book offers young read­ers a lyri­cal look at its fas­ci­nat­ing warm-weath­er coun­ter­part. Dis­cov­er how a vari­ety of ani­mals sur­vive by tak­ing a break dur­ing the hottest days of the year.

Take a look at this record­ed pan­el pre­sen­ta­tion in which Melis­sa dis­cuss­es Sum­mer­time Sleep­ers and the Joy of Nonfiction.

Honors and Awards

  • Abi­lene ISD (TX) Mock­ing­bird List
  • ALA Notable
  • Bank Street Col­lege Best Children’s Book of the Year
  • Char­ter Oak Children’s Book Award Nominee
  • Dog­wood Book List for Nonfiction
  • Evanston Pub­lic Library Blue­ber­ry Award Hon­or Title
  • Fuse #8 Pro­duc­tion Best Sci­ence & Nature Books
  • Junior Library Guild Selection
  • Key­stone to Read­ing Ele­men­tary Book Award Finalist
  • Nation­al Sci­ence Teach­ing Asso­ci­a­tion Out­stand­ing Sci­ence Trade Book
  • New York Pub­lic Library Best Books for Kids
  • Nerdy Book Club Award for Non­fic­tion Pic­ture Books
  • Okla­homa Library Association’s Don­na Norvell Book Award
  • Robert F. Sib­ert Infor­ma­tion­al Book Medal, Honor

Reviews

  “Employ­ing her splen­did tal­ent for mak­ing sci­ence cool, Melis­sa Stew­art intro­duces young read­ers to crea­tures that go dor­mant not through the win­ter, but dur­ing the sum­mer. … Her enthu­si­asm for these unfa­mil­iar snooz­ers, com­bined with stun­ning­ly real­is­tic water­col­or illus­tra­tions by Sarah S. Bran­nen, make sum­mer sleep­ers the super­stars in this charm­ing non­fic­tion pic­ture book.” (Shelf Aware­ness)

“… hooks kids on the con­cept of esti­va­tion from page 1.” (Par­ents Mag­a­zine)

“Rep­re­sent­ing groups as diverse as insects, crus­taceans, fish, amphib­ians, rep­tiles, and mam­mals, the ani­mals include the tiny man­grove kil­li­fish that flips head-over-tail until it lands in a water-filled hol­low log, and the ver­sa­tile yel­low-bel­lied mar­mot, which out­does itself by hiber­nat­ing and esti­vat­ing … Stewart’s live­ly text offers enter­tain­ing fac­toids while clear­ly explain­ing how dif­fer­ent ani­mals use esti­va­tion to sur­vive in hot, dry places. Brannen’s pleas­ing illus­tra­tions, both sketch­es and water­col­or scenes, enable the audi­ence to envi­sion the ani­mals with­in their habi­tats. An attrac­tive sci­ence book on an uncom­mon but inter­est­ing top­ic.” (Book­list)

“Stewart’s prose bal­ances a con­ver­sa­tion­al tone with eas­i­ly absorbed facts about esti­vat­ing beings across sev­er­al con­ti­nents … Inset dia­grams with species details plus near-pho­to­re­al­is­tic illus­tra­tions by Bran­nen make the sub­ject mat­ter more acces­si­ble for visu­al learn­ers. Bud­ding biol­o­gists will espe­cial­ly appre­ci­ate this intrigu­ing primer on a less­er-known process.” (Pub­lish­ers Week­ly)

“A well-craft­ed and attrac­tive text for ani­mal fans, and a suit­able intro­duc­tion to the sci­en­tif­ic con­cept of esti­va­tion.” (School Library Jour­nal)

“[T]he child-friend­ly text… gives a large amount of infor­ma­tion which is eas­i­ly tak­en in and digest­ed through the dif­fer­ent ele­ments of the text and illus­tra­tions. This well-craft­ed book [is] an empow­er­ing, engag­ing, infor­ma­tive treat!” (The News Gazette, Cham­paign, IL)

“Stew­art and Bran­nen team up again for anoth­er fan­tas­tic read. I love the “sketch­book” draw­ings Bran­nen includes on each page. Also a very inter­est­ing author’s note, espe­cial­ly if you talk about text struc­ture with your stu­dents.” (Michele Knott, ele­men­tary lit­er­a­cy educator)

Behind the Book

“Some­times I like to scan the shelves in the nat­ur­al his­to­ry sec­tion of my town library and see what grabs my atten­tion. On a hot June day in 2011, I stum­bled upon a 250-page tome on hiber­na­tion. It con­tained a sin­gle para­graph about an ani­mal behav­ior I’d nev­er heard of—estivation. And that made me curious.

“To find out more, I typed “esti­vat” into a data­base of sci­ence jour­nals, hop­ing to pull up papers with any form of the word—estivate, esti­va­tion, esti­vat­ing. The ref­er­ence sec­tions of those ini­tial papers led me to more resources, and soon I had plen­ty of mate­r­i­al for a book.

“Because there were so many great exam­ples from every cor­ner of the ani­mal king­dom, I knew ear­ly on that I’d write a list book. To make the pre­sen­ta­tion engag­ing and empha­size the diver­si­ty of the ani­mals, I decid­ed to use a com­pare-and-con­trast struc­ture with lay­ered text. But I strug­gled with voice. At first, I tried a live­ly, humor­ous voice. But it just didn’t feel right for a book about inac­tive ani­mals. I need­ed to let the top­ic dic­tate the voice, so a soft, cozy, lyri­cal voice was a bet­ter fit.

“Next, I had to admit that my begin­ning wasn’t work­ing. After a year of being stuck, I real­ized that my intro­duc­tion was buried on page eight. After cut­ting the first fifty words, I added to and reor­ga­nized the ani­mal exam­ples. Then I sent the man­u­script to my edi­tor. With her guid­ance, I tight­ened the struc­ture, strength­ened the flow and pac­ing, and reworked the back mat­ter. Final­ly, the text was ready for publication.”

Summertime Sleepers Animals That Estivate

by Melis­sa Stewart

illus by Sarah S. Brannen

Charles­bridge, 2021

ISBN 978–1‑58089–716‑7

Pur­chase this book at your local inde­pen­dent book­seller or Amazon.com.

Book Extensions

TEACHERS’ GUIDE
READ ALOUD GUIDE
READERS THEATER

REVISION DECISIONS
INTERACTIVE TEACHING TOOL

VIDEO: ROCKIN’ RESEARCH

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