Hi Everyone! I’m super excited to participate in this Science Comics Blog Tour! Thank you :01FirstSecond for setting it up!

 

Today is Mairghread Scott!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Why is science awesome? 

Because it’s everything. Science explains why the sky is blue and makes cell phones work. Robots are science and baking is science. If you ever wondered why or how something happened…you wanted to learn more science.

 

What makes comics a particularly amazing format to tell science nonfiction in? 

Because it offers a fun, really clear way to see some of this big concepts. Robots in particular are governed by their design and letting you just see how they move and change over time is so much easier than trying to describe it with words alone. Comics are especially great because artists like Jacob can bring so much personality and fun to the science. And having fun is the best way to learn.

 

How did you do research to make your book? 

Robots are always changing, so I had to do a lot of research on books at the library as well as digital archives and sites on the Internet that had the latest up-to-date findings. Fortunately, anyone who builds a robot seems to be anger to talk about it. For example, when I was researching how to build a hobby drone, I watched some of the dozens of videos online of people actually building drones and compared the different styles and assemblies to find the most common parts.

 

Tell us a little about the process of creating your book! 

Well, I did a lot of research to work up a basic outline of what we wanted to talk about and how many pages it would be. After writing the script, my editor send it to a fact-checker, who made sure we were accurate. We made some changes and then handed it off to Jacob who drew out very rough sketches called thumbnails, then refined them in the “pencils” stage, then we got the final image in “inks” and the colorist added color to it. Finally the letterer took my script and put in the captions and speech bubbles I wrote onto the art. We did a final fact-check and proofread and sent it out! Simple, huh?

 

What’s the coolest thing you learned while you were researching your book? 

That the first robots date all the way back to Ancient Greece and that robots are mentioned in The Iliad.

 

What’s the toughest part of turning science research into a comic? 

In Robots and Drones it was difficult to break down some of the more complex ideas into things kids could understand. Robotics is always changing so even some basic definitions, like what is a robot or a drone, aren’t always agreed on. But with a lot of help from various experts I think we were able to give kids the basics so they feel confident enough to tackle the science of robotics themselves.

 

Have you always loved science since you were a kid? 

Nope. Haha. OF COURSE! I watched NOVA. I took advanced science courses in high school. But funny enough, I was always scared of robots. Computer science was so crushingly unfriendly to girls when I was growing up. Often things like computer programming and robotics clubs where you were supposed to be able to learn from your peers ended up being guys intentionally trying to make things confusing to show how much smarter than me they were.

 

Of course, when I got to college I did some basic coding and loved it! I had no idea why I’d waited so long to try and pursue computer science and robotics, but by then I was already set on writing as a career.

 

Don’t get me wrong, I love writing! But in a way, this book is my gift to the next little kid who wants to learn more without having people make fun of them for not knowing it all from the start.

 

What do you recommend for kids who want to learn more about science and do more science? 

Don’t be afraid to ask for help and to fail. Especially not in robotics. Robotics is a field with a proud tradition of people trying, and failing, and trying again, and failing in a whole new way. It’s an important part of learning. Some people made small improvements to existing things, some made big leaps forward, but all of them failed a lot before they got anything right. Even robots themselves developed in incremental steps, and they’re still nowhere near perfect. So don’t worry if you don’t know something, or you mess up something, or you forget. Get out there and fail! It’s the only real way to succeed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for joining us!

Be sure to check out the other awesome author interviews on this book blog tour!