Latest / Book Flood Podcast / Patricia Newman on "Beatrice and the Nightingale" (E61)
Transcript
- Tom Nixon: Welcome to the Book Flood Podcast. I am your host, Tom Nixon. My guest this week is author Patricia Newman. She is the author of the new Beatrice and the Nightingale, a recipient of a Sibert Honor Award, an environmentalist. Welcome, Patricia. Patricia Newman: Thank you for having me, Tom. It's great to be back on your podcast. Tom Nixon: Glad to have you here for sure. Definitely to get into Beatrice, your new book. ⁓ Let's talk, remind folks little bit of your career trajectory though. How did you get to here? Patricia Newman: Okay. was a long and torturous path, ⁓ Wow. You know, I was not one of those writers who loved as a kid. It was, you I wrote for school and my school reports and I was a good student. I was sort of a nerd actually, but I wasn't one of those kids who kept a journal. Boy, I really tried. I can't tell you how many journals and diaries I started only to have Tom Nixon: Hahaha! Patricia Newman: 90 % of the pages blank. I had the best of intentions, but I didn't follow through. ⁓ I think thing in particular sort of fueled my sense of justice, if you will. I was bullied in fifth grade as a kid. ⁓ And, you I didn't have much of a voice fifth grade and some of sixth grade. Tom Nixon: Stay. Right? Mm. Patricia Newman: And I feel it still, even now, when things are unfair. So I reading these stories about the planet, and there are definitely lot of unfair things going on with respect to endangered species or our ocean or rivers or just our air and generally our climate. So I writing these Tom Nixon: Mm. Patricia Newman: environmental stories. I didn't start there when I was writing. I wrote other things, but I read an article in the newspaper one day ⁓ I Plastic Ahoy. And once that published, I felt like I had found my home. I knew where I was supposed to be. So I guess good out of that bullying, right? Tom Nixon: Right, absolutely. So let's talk about Beatrice and the Nightingale. This is your new book. How long has it been out? Patricia Newman: It came out in February 2026. So it's still, it's still a brand new baby for me. Tom Nixon: Mm-hmm. Right? So tell us about it. Patricia Newman: I, um, it's a picture book for, um, younger students, uh, six to nine, say, so maybe kindergarten through first, second grade. Um, it's published by Margaret Quinlan books at peach tree. It's the story of a famous cellist in England. name was Beatrice Harrison. She lived, she was born in 1892. And so she lived kind of. during the turn of the century. I found out about her because during the pandemic, I was locked in my house like most of us were, binging on movies. And I happened to turn on Netflix movie called The Dig with Ray Fiennes and Carey Mulligan. It's about an archeological site in the called Sutton Hoo that ⁓ was excavated. an Anglo-Saxon, I think it's an Anglo-Saxon burial ground. But anyway, I'm watching this movie. Tom Nixon: you Patricia Newman: And of the characters is a young archeologist played by Lily James. And she's talking to a character who's an RAF pilot. And he mentions nightingales to her, know, the song of the nightingale, which is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the bird kingdom. And says to this RAF pilot, I've never heard a nightingale sing only over the wireless. And when he... expresses confusion, she starts to explain to him that she heard a nightingale because Beatrice Harrison, the cellist, was playing with nightingales in her backyard and they were singing along with her. And she convinced the BBC to come to her yard, lay down their microphones amplifiers, and broadcast the duet to millions of people. And this was 1924. So Radio was brand new. It was a brand new thing. Not everybody had a radio. So it was an accomplishment. Not only had nobody ever heard, many people had never heard Nightingale sing because Nightingales weren't endemic to area, but this was the first time Birdsong had ever been broadcast over the airwaves. So it was sort of a, Tom Nixon: Mm-hmm. Patricia Newman: story of firsts. for me, it nature and music technology. So it was sort of like the perfect storm for me. Tom Nixon: Why is it so important for you and in general to teach about the environment to kids? Patricia Newman: You know, I want to show kids how they're connected to the environment. are We are water. We are trees. We are plants. We are the animals. But a lot of kids don't necessarily know that. They depend on us and we depend on them. And just two very simple examples. ⁓ Think about the fish that's on your dinner plate at night. Where does it come from? Well, it comes from the sea. And if the sea isn't healthy or it comes from a river, and if ⁓ sea and the river aren't healthy, then you don't have fish on your dinner plate. Think about the air that you breathe. Well, the air that we breathe comes from plants on land or plants in the ocean. And it's photosynthesis, that making of the food that gives off oxygen for us to breathe that actually makes Earth habitable. ⁓ it's nature, it's our environment that allows us to live on this planet because of all the functions it performs for us. So I'd like to give kids a sense of connection and feeling of gratitude for nature by sharing these role models with them. People like Beatrice who, who had a passion. for sharing her music and the song of the bird that was singing along with her sort of miraculously. He wasn't just making noise. He was in harmony with her. So she had this passion and her passion led to this incredible sense of awareness for the Nightingale song and what was possible for radio during that time. Tom Nixon: How do you find it being able to keep your passion for the environment going? I that this is certainly a passion for you, but one looks the world and wonders where we're headed, with the environment. Patricia Newman: Right, right. I usually counsel people to stop reading the news and read more children's books. Really, our is sort of the algorithm our media is bad news cells. And there actually have been studies about that bad news cells and headlines with sort of good news in them aren't clicked as often as the bad news headlines are. So part of it's our fault, right? And the media doesn't include stories of the good news that's happening. I I told my husband just the other day, we were watching dystopian show that had a chance of ⁓ a ⁓ nuclear reaction, a nuclear which would create a whole bunch of radiation and kill everything for hundreds of miles. And it me of Chernobyl. Remember, we were alive during Chernobyl and when that huge nuclear accident happened. And most don't know about Chernobyl now, yes, it was a huge nuclear accident, but it is now a wildlife refuge. Yes, the animals are radioactive, but they are they are colonizing that place and they are surviving. So ⁓ it's sort like, we don't Tom Nixon: Right. Patricia Newman: We don't hear about that kind of stuff. We don't hear about somebody like Beatrice who brings awareness to people about the beauties of Birdsong. ⁓ don't about the woman in Peru, Kirsten Forsberg in Giant Rays of Hope, who gathered her whole community together in coastal Peru and taught them to love mantas and use giant manta rays as flagship species to help each other protect the ocean and to increase awareness. We don't see all of the businesses and organizations and school students and everybody, churches, that are doing their localized projects because our media tends to focus on broad global issues. is out of the Paris Climate Accord again. Those are the kinds of headlines we see. But we don't see that, you know, XYZ and Fresno is happening because of this one little nonprofit that's doing this project. So I'm trying to do is shine a spotlight on good news. There's a lot of it. There really is. A lot people are working to save the environment. It's just that we don't know about them all. Tom Nixon: Right. you say there is hope for the environment? Patricia Newman: Absolutely, I have this whole new initiative called Teach the Hope. And think all we need to do is to share the good news with each other and share it our kids and our students in classrooms and teach environmental literacy through this lens these people, these models who are good things. Tom Nixon: good to hear because ⁓ ⁓ of course, is most what we hear on the news, 90 % more, is all very negative. ⁓ Yeah. Patricia Newman: Yeah, it's bad news. It's bad news. Tom Nixon: What was your experience in writing this book? What was that like? Patricia Newman: had a great time writing this book. ⁓ I interview scientists and ⁓ travel for my interviews, but Beatrice passed away in the 1960s. So I not get a chance to meet her, but I did read her journal, which was annotated by an author named Patricia Cleveland Peck. And she did a wonderful job. I had the ⁓ beauty of Beatrice's words Patricia's sort putting things in historical perspective. So, and I also had the opportunity to listen to several of Beatrice's recordings because ⁓ a lot of music is on recorded on record. In fact, she would go into, I think there was a recording studio called like His ⁓ Majesty's Voice or something like And she cut several records playing her cello. She performed all over the world. She performed for president Woodrow Wilson in the White House. So I a really good time just becoming acquainted with a person from history who just loved nature like do. She would play outside in her garden most nights. would often bring out her own pet birds. The Harrison family had a huge number of pets, something like 20 something dogs and canaries that would fly all over the house. She bring the birds outside and play for them. They had a donkey, they had reptiles, they had all kinds of ⁓ animals. they were true nature lovers. But she loved playing outside in her garden and she marveled at the Nightingale's song as it, I mean, obviously he didn't know the tunes that she was playing, but he could hear the music and he kind of harmonized and trilled along with her. the one reason that Nightingale sing, male Nightingale sing is to attract a mate. So I bet he thought he'd hit the jackpot, right? Here he's got this musician. who's helping him along to make this beautiful song that cannot possibly be matched by anyone else, any other Nightingale. Tom Nixon: talk about writing as a career. you feel like you've you're established now as a writer and you can make it happen or is it still a bit rough every day? Patricia Newman: Well, paraphrasing, I think it was Willard Cather. She said, each book teaches to write itself. So every time you have a new idea, you have figure out a new approach. Where are you going to start? What is the story? You know, I didn't want to write about Beatrice's entire life. mean, ⁓ then would been a catalog of concerts and practice sessions and people she met and people she played for. I wanted to write about one little incident in her life, which was this from the BBC with the Nightingale. So I had to pare it And what are you writing? Are you writing a picture book? Are you writing something for middle grade students? Are you writing something for young adults? So you have to figure out kind of how real estate are you working with? Picture books have a lot less real estate than young adult books, right? Tom Nixon: Mm-hmm. Patricia Newman: I'm almost always writing nonfiction, so the things I'm writing about are true, so I have to research. nine times out of ten, if I'm writing a book about the ocean, there's a lot I already know about the ocean, and I might be able to use some of my research again from a previous book. But for a book like Beatrice, I wasn't able to use any of my previous research, so I had to start at the beginning. But, I only, I only write books. Now I know, I know what captures my interest. So I'm not flailing like I did at the beginning. You know, there was, there's sort of this period about, okay, what do I write about next? But now I don't have that problem. I always know what I'm going to write about next. and I know a little bit better what will work in the market and what won't. I much better how to promote things. ⁓ better at promotion than I was at the beginning of my career. So yes, you do gain skills. I taught how to maintain my website. mean, as a writer, have to do things like that, these skills that you didn't you need to have. I'm a much better presenter when I So yes, there are skills that I learned, but There are certain parts of certain books where I do have to start at the beginning. Tom Nixon: know, it's if you ask the person on the street about a life, they would assume, well, you must be someone to do your website and you must be paying someone to promote your books. And that's just not the reality of the life for most writers. Patricia Newman: No, no, it isn't. And I mean, even if you are paying somebody to do your website and you are paying somebody to promote your books, you have to get out there and do some work as well. I mean, people want to see you. They want to talk to you about process and your struggles and the cool information that you found out. they, ⁓ you know, if you're, somebody's doing your website, for instance, you still have to provide the content. It doesn't just magically appear. You know, how do you want to say it and what exactly do you want to say? So there's still a lot you have to do, even if you're lucky enough to have a staff of people who are helping you. Tom Nixon: I have seen now at a couple of the ⁓ hosting companies that they say, you know, we can use AI to make your website for you. Patricia Newman: Yes, I'm sure they can and we're gonna leave it at that, right? Tom Nixon: Yeah, I just don't. I'm not necessarily always opposed to AI, but at but content still has to come from your head. Patricia Newman: Right, and it has to be authentic, right? I mean, if you wanted to talk to a machine, you'd just go ask AI about me. But if you want to hear me and hear my stories and hear some the research bumps I had with Beatrice, and boy, I did have a big one that we should talk about in a little bit, but ⁓ you to talk to me. Tom Nixon: Right. Mm. Okay. So tell us about the bump. Patricia Newman: Tell us about the research bump. editor Margaret and I were actually in the throes of editing Beatrice and the Nightingale. And she emails me and she goes, Patty, did you see the podcast with a bird expert who said that Beatrice's duet the Nightingale was faked? I know your, your eyes are opening wide, right? I not seen that. So I started doing some research ⁓ and, enough, this bird expert was on a, a podcast in, England. had to actually, contact one of my friends in England to download the podcast for me because it wasn't available in the UK, in the U S. So she downloaded the podcast, me the file. listened to it and man, he sounded so. Tom Nixon: Right? Patricia Newman: you know authentic and and expert and I thought no but he a of things that made me question he said something about you know from this recording of Beatrice and the we can tell that the Nightingale was not real it was a bird mimic and a person who mimicked bird that the BBC had hired stationed in Beatrice's garden, just in case the bird didn't sing. And that was a little suspicious because in my research, I had never read anything about the BBC broadcast in 1924 being recorded. It was broadcast, yes, but not recorded. Well, right, mean, who thought about recording it then, right? Tom Nixon: because they weren't always recording that. Right? Patricia Newman: So, then thank goodness for Patricia Cleveland Peck again, person who annotated Beatrice's diary, she actually knew Beatrice's sisters who survived Beatrice and had a relationship them. And one of the sisters, was in the garden with a boy. I mean, there were many people in the garden because so much equipment had to be laid and it was It was sort of a spectacle at the time. So there were a lot of people in the garden Margaret was there and she said, I never saw a bird mimic in the garden. You know, I was there the whole time. then Patricia Cleveland Peck wrote this wonderful article that ⁓ said, Beatrice was an expert musician. She was a prodigy. She was to the Royal College of Music at the age of nine. Tom Nixon: Mm. Patricia Newman: Her musician's ear was so well developed that do you really think she couldn't tell the difference between a real Nightingale and a fake one? do you really think that Sir John Reath, the director of the BBC, would put his entire reputation on the line by basically lying to the audience and saying that this was a real duet when in fact it was fake? With that kind of evidence and that kind of, know, sort of historical perspective, I'm inclined to agree with Patricia Cleveland Peck and say that the duet happened. And the other huge piece of evidence for that, the fact that the duet happened was that they it for the next 12 years. So if the bird didn't sing the first time round, why would they go back for 12 more years for more of the same punishment? So. ⁓ Tom Nixon: Right, you'd assume that if it didn't work the first time, it's probably not going to work any of the other times. Patricia Newman: Right, okay, this is not gonna happen. And you know, of course it only happens in the spring because that's when nightingales are mating. It's not a year round phenomenon. So, the duet happened. All this is in the back matter. I tell you all about it in much more detail than I related here, but it's all in the back matter. So you can share with your children, your students. It's a great fun story. And it's a wonderful- Tom Nixon: Mm. nice. Patricia Newman: example of how sometimes research takes a left turn and takes us places that we have no idea it's going to take us. Tom Nixon: Is there a book or award of which you are most proud? Patricia Newman: know, children, ⁓ is a tough question because, you know, children school visits always ask me what's my favorite, fill in the blank. What's your favorite book? What's your favorite animal? What's your favorite kind of ice cream? What's your, you know, keep, we keep going. So I I have problems with the favorites because I like lots of different things and ⁓ every award I've, ⁓ I've Tom Nixon: This is always a tough question. Patricia Newman: received is just so special because it's telling me that my work has connected with someone. And since I write about connection and I write about gratitude and I write about, you know, these people in our world doing these wonderful things, like if I can connect to somebody with my words and the images that an illustrator or photographer bring to my work, I, just sets off a whole round of gratitude for me that I don't want to diminish by saying one award is my favorite. Tom Nixon: are you working on now? Patricia Newman: Well, I have several ⁓ the pipeline. Nothing has a yet, but I think also we're sort of in a bit of a slowdown with respect to children's publishing. So I'm hoping that my editors are just kind of holding on to them and not saying no, but it's going to say yes when the time is right. Tom Nixon: Mmm. Patricia Newman: But just as a for instance, I've got another book about an ocean out, but the ocean out there. I've got a book about beavers. I've got a book about cheetahs. I've got a book about hermit crabs. So who knows where, which one will hit first, but I'm, I'm hoping they'll all hit, but we'll see one after the other, maybe. Tom Nixon: Is there a book or a series of books from your childhood that still resonates with you? Patricia Newman: Well, when I was a kid, I read series books all the time. I don't have much patience for them now as an adult. Do you find that too? Do you read series as an adult? Tom Nixon: I probably read, I'll do a trilogy, but ⁓ much than that and no, not as an adult. Patricia Newman: Okay. Right, because there's so many other things you want to read and it's hard to stick with. But as a kid, I devoured those things. So missed anything that was a mystery. think the one thing that stuck with me the most is Harriet the Spy because of her notebook where she wrote down everything. Remember Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh? Because I use notebooks like Harriet's all the time. Every book, I start a new notebook. Tom Nixon: Right. Mm-hmm. Patricia Newman: And my notebooks come from, they come from the dollar store, but other times they come from the places that I have visited. So my travels, I always buy a new notebook every place I travel. Like I just went to Australia and Zealand and I've got a new book idea going in this one. This is the book, the notebook I up in, ⁓ I think I in Tasmania when I picked up that book. Tom Nixon: Mm. ⁓ neat. Patricia Newman: So I like that notebook concept. So I think about Harriet the Spy a lot. Tom Nixon: What are you reading now? Patricia Newman: I picked up a book the Auckland airport called The Poet Empress, which ⁓ a fantasy, but it's also, seems it's clearly about ancient China, but it's a fantasy world of ancient China. And I picked it up as a kind of a fast read, but man, I'm enjoying it. It's really clipping right along. The other thing I'm reading, Tom Nixon: Mm. Patricia Newman: Right now you can see all my markers here is Hope Matters. This by Ellen Kelsey and feeling sense of hope for the environment in part because of her book. So I always have like a piece of fiction going and a piece of nonfiction going and then there's always a stack of articles or books or magazine ⁓ things that have to read for research. Tom Nixon: Nice. I do it a little bit differently. I always have a print book going and an audio book going because I walk every day. And so I'm always listening to a book. I find though that they need to be very different books. I'm, we're actually going on a trip, my wife and I are going on a trip to Germany and Poland. so I've been delving deep into that. Patricia Newman: interesting. Okay. Okay. Tom Nixon: The is the books overlap a little too much. so I go, wait, about this? ⁓ no, that's the other book. Patricia Newman: Right, you're starting to conflate them. Exactly. You know, I too, I walk my dog, but I find that I ⁓ up talking to my dog rather than listening to books. ⁓ I'm trying to solve a story problem or figure out how I'm going to write this paragraph or something like that. You know, I use it as a thinking time. I use audio books help me fall asleep on a red-eye flight. Tom Nixon: Yeah. Mmm. Mm. Patricia Newman: There's something about audio. I have to see the words in front of me. I'm not an auditory learner, I think, because audio books put me to sleep and it has nothing to do with the quality of the book. could be the best book ever. I would still fall asleep. It's just that, that calming, listening feeling. It relaxes me and I fall asleep. I'm not big on audio books. ⁓ Tom Nixon: I want to thank you. I want to thank you so much for being on the program today for our listeners and watchers. Please come check us out at book flood podcast.com. And again, thank you, Patricia. Patricia Newman: Thank you, Tom. It's been a pleasure. Tom Nixon: Absolutely.