What do Al Gore and Rochelle Strauss have in common? Their names both appear on the American Library Association’s Booklist as authors of the top ten environmental books for youth.
In fact, Strauss’s recent book, One Well: The Story of Water on Earth, is a finalist for ForeWord Magazine’s Book of the Year in its juvenile non-fiction category. The winner will be announced on May 29. Strauss’s first book, Tree of Life, was a runner up in 2004 for this prestigious award. One Well has also just recently won the Sigurd Olson Children’s Award for Nature Writing.
Strauss joined the AGO as interpretive planner for Canadian art in 2007, bringing with her both a museum and environmental studies background. At Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum, she taught natural history classes, developed family programming and served as gallery coordinator for its hands-on biodiversity gallery. She also designed and developed numerous education programs on a freelance basis, and consulted on several international environmental projects, including a biodiversity museum in Panama and a national park in Canada.
For many years, Strauss had a growing interest in writing children’s books, but always assumed it would be in the fiction genre. In 2002 she submitted a proposal for a picture book to a Toronto publisher.
“I got a flat-out rejection,” said Strauss. However, the timing was right. “Instead, they were very interested in my environmental background, and asked me to write a book on biodiversity.”
Within two weeks, she had signed a contract with the publisher, and her first book, Tree of Life, was published two years later. One Well followed in 2007, and has already sold over 10,000 copies. It is available in six languages, including French, Korean, Spanish and Arabic.
Strauss was keynote speaker at Weaving Words in Lethbridge, Alberta in April. Her topic: – Changing the World: One Book at a Time. In her spare time – which, as the mother of four-year-old Oliver, is a rarity – she keeps busy with school presentations and book tours.
Stories continue to play an active role in Strauss’s work at the AGO. As this fall’s opening looms ever closer, her role as interpretive planner focuses on working to ensure that the stories of Canadian art will be told to our visitors in as many ways as possible.
For more information on Strauss’s books, please visit www.kidscanpress.com. To access her recent Metro Morning interview, visit www.cbc.ca/metromorning/parent/.