As a kid, I grew up devouring any books I could find about animals. When other kids were reading about Little Red
Riding Hood, I was reading about wolf biology.
When other kids were reading Mother Goose, I was reading books about
birds of prey that I checked out from the library. I loved tales of wilderness, wildlife, and
adventure, and I thirsted to learn as much as I could about zoology and the
world around me. Jean Craighead George,
Jack London, and Gary Paulsen were among my favorite authors, and through their
words they crafted me windows into creatures and places I could not see from
the southern California suburb where I grew up.
Since books about animals influenced me early in life and nourished my
interest in a career in wildlife biology (not to mention my development as a
creative writer!), I am very excited to announce that a children’s book is in
the works about Dr. Holekamp and the Mara Hyena Project! Author Sy Montgomery and photographer Nic
Bishop stayed with us here in Talek Camp from May 15 to May 25, collecting
material for the book. Below is my
interview with this dynamic duo about their upcoming book, The Hyena Scientist, part of the Scientists in the Field series
from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers.
Amy: Tell me about this book. What inspired you to make it?
Sy: I’m the author of The Hyena Scientist. We’re writing this
nonfiction book about Kay and the Mara Hyena Project for younger readers,
grades 5 through 8. This book is not only full of adventure and excitement, but
also inspiring stories about both people and animals.
Kay Holekamp is known as the Jane Goodall of hyenas. She’s got one of the longest-running studies
of a mammal in the world, and with such important findings to share with us
all! Some of the things Kay discovered
about hyenas totally transformed the way we look at these animals. And that’s one of the things we hope to do
when our book comes out, is to show people what gorgeous, intelligent, caring
animals hyenas are, not skulking, cowardly scavengers!
Nic: I’m taking the photographs
for this book. What drew me to this
project is that I always like oddball animals, the sort of strange ones other
people don’t normally like. Often when
you look at things really closely, especially animals, they have all sorts of
amazing facts you can find out about them, and hyenas seem to be no exception
to that. They’re quite complex social
animals, and they’re not really the nasty villains people think they are. And they’re very nice to photograph! They do have rather cute faces and teddy bear
ears and soft fur around their faces, so I really like photographing them. And they have a lot of interesting behaviors
to photograph as well. And of course the
ones we’re looking at live in the Masai Mara, which is a beautiful landscape
with huge sweeps of plains and amazing thunderstorms coming over, so from a
photographer’s view it’s just a great animal and a great location.
 |
| Sy Montgomery (left) and Nic Bishop (right) experience firsthand the joys of muddy roads in the Mara. Credit Nic Bishop. |
Amy: How did you get inspired to
take this approach to conservation and educating people about animals? For whom do you write, and why do you do what
you do?
Sy: Growing up, my best friends
were always animals, so I think I might have had more friends than other kids I
was growing up with, who restricted their friendships to just one species, Homo sapiens. I write for both adults and children. Every book I write about an animal is really a
song of praise and a love story to that animal and to the people who also love
the creature. It’s also a plea for
keeping the world whole.
Nic: Although I trained as a
scientist, I always really liked taking photographs, and I eventually decided
to switch from just being a scientist to being a photographer of nonfiction
books, of natural history books. I
started out doing books for adults, but I liked photographing oddball animals,
like frogs and spiders and snakes and lizards, and people kept telling me that
kids really responded well to these pictures. I was surprised at first, because
I thought I was doing this for grownups, but apparently kids much prefer those
pictures of the small little creepy things, and eventually a children’s
publisher came to me and said I should really be doing nonfiction books for kids.
Nonfiction is not that well-represented in children’s books. Kids get given a lot of fiction to read, but
nonfiction is very important, and some kids who want nonfiction, if they can’t
find it at the library, just give up on reading, because the library doesn’t
have the information they’re interested in. So that’s what I’ve done for the last decade
or two – purely nonfiction books for kids. I really love doing it. It’s a great audience, books are a lot of fun
to do and I get to photograph all my favorite critters!
Amy: What advice would you give
to children and other readers of yours who are interested in wildlife and
conservation? How can they help animals and the planet?
Sy: For young kids, I want to
remind them how much power they have.
You can’t vote and you can’t drive, but children actually educate their
parents. Studies have shown that parents
of schoolchildren get about 70% of their environmental news from their
kids. So children actually drive a lot
of decisions in the household which deeply affect the environment: what you
buy, what you drive, how many kids you have, and of course things like making
donations, joining organizations, and volunteering. All of those things really help, and we are
far more powerful than we know.
 |
| Sy with our Talek West hyena, McDonald's, after we darted him on May 22. Credit Nic Bishop. |
Sy: We can also be far more destructive than we know. The first step to
fixing that is awareness of the damage we cause, but awareness doesn’t do any
good at all unless you do something about it, and there is so much room for
improvement that we can all do much, much better.
And for new adults, right after college or in college, I would say
whatever your talents are, you can use them to help animals and preserving the
Earth. You don’t have to be a wildlife
conservation biologist to do this. On
many of the projects Nic and I have worked on, people with completely different
skills – artists, marketing experts, computer programmers, athletes – brought
their talents to the table directly to help animals and the Earth. There are so many ways you can use your
abilities to benefit animals and the planet, and even if you don’t make it your
life’s work, you can still channel a lot of energy into that. And I’ll tell you, having spent my life
recording and reporting on animals and the people who love them, there is no
better or more fun thing you can do with the limited number of heartbeats you
have.
Nic: Remain curious about the
things you’re very interested in. Read books about them to educate yourself,
listen to other people interested in the same subject, study it, watch it on TV,
persuade your parents to take you on trips to see animals, join clubs. Feed your natural curiosity and passion, so
you can hold onto those qualities even as you grow up.
Amy: Thank you both so much for
spending time with us here at the Mara Hyena Project and for setting out to
teach young readers about hyenas! The Hyena Scientist, a true tale about
Kay Holekamp, the Mara Hyena Project, and Nic and Sy’s adventures with us here in
Fisi Camp, will be in bookstores and libraries near you a year and a half to
two years from now, from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Books for Young Readers. I
hope you’ll check it out!
Learn more about the work of Sy and Nic on their websites:
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