Julie Dillemuth (PhD 2008) wrote her Geography dissertation on “Map Use and Spatial Knowledge Acquisition with Small, Mobile Map Displays” (Clarke and Montello, Co-Chairs), and her PhD included a Cognitive Science Emphasis which she put to good use as Education Coordinator for the UCSB Center for Nanotechnology in Society before leaving academia to become a full time mother and writer.
“I interviewed Dan Montello for an article in this month’s issue of Odyssey magazine, a science magazine for 9-14 year olds, called “Spatial Survival Guide: Tips and Tricks for Finding Your Way.” The theme of the issue is “Lost! Our Sense of Space,” and our article offers some tips for getting and staying oriented in everyday life.” Julie’s interview questions for Dan included, “What’s one good tip for using a map?” (A: align it so the top is the direction you’re traveling in); “How do we figure where we are on a mall map?” (A: feature matching, using at least two features); and “What if I’m lost and don’t have a map?” (A: go to a high spot to see more of your surrounds, use direction sampling, and, best of all, employ the look-back strategy).
The Odyssey article was Julie’s first non-fiction foray into promoting spatial thinking for children. “I started writing for children a few years ago, with a focus on picture books, as well as magazine stories and poems. The idea to write for kids came, in part, from my graduate experience at UCSB. My research was spatial cognition in adults (navigation with maps on small screens), but I found developmental aspects of spatial cognition really fascinating – Reg Golledge was doing some work on GIS concepts with elementary and high school students, and the Spatial Intelligence Learning Center at Northwestern had just started up, with a research agenda that included spatial language and spatial skills development in children. Some of their results indicated that kids weren’t getting formal training in spatial skills in early elementary, nor often much informal training at home with parents; partly because of traditional curricular emphases, and partly because of ‘spatial anxiety’ in teachers and parents (the spatial analogue to math anxiety), and perhaps other reasons. I thought, wouldn’t it be neat to help promote spatial thinking in kids through fun, engaging books. Not straight-up educational books, but fiction stories with spatial themes and lots of spatial language.
So I started writing, and I discovered that I absolutely love writing for children. I do just the text (picture book publishers prefer to find their own illustrators), and while I’m working hard at my spatial goal, not all of my stories end up with a spatial theme. I also discovered how crazy hard it is to get published, and how no children’s writer does this for the money. But I am determined, and I hope to publish my first picture book while my daughter can still appreciate it! (She’s 21 months, so I have several years!)” (source: email to the editor, 11/15/12).
According to one published author, only 0.03% of submitted manuscripts are accepted for publication – roughly one in every 10,000. Despite the challenges of publishing, Julie is off to a great start. Apart from her publication in Odyssey, she won the prestigious Highlights magazine Children Fiction Contest this summer, “which gave me a huge vote of confidence for my writing, as well as a $1000 prize. I still can’t quite believe that.” That story will appear in Highlights, and she also has a poem coming out in 2013 in a brand-new Highlights magazine for 0-3 year olds, called “Hello.” You go, girl!
