PITCH INDEX

Scroll down to see the following pitches:

•Carolyn Fisher’s art samples (6 pages)

•The Weather Octopus (Full manuscript)

•The Elephants of Style (Full storyboard)

•Lobi’s Great Escape (Full storyboard available upon request)

•The Adventures of Tiny Lion (Work-in-progress)

•The Fractal Forest (Full manuscript available upon request)

•The Question Fish (Work-in-progress)

•The Wolf of Winter and the Brothers Grimm (Work-in-progress)

The Weather Octopus

Unpublished picture book

478 words, not including back matter

By Carolyn Fisher

Front flap copy: The Weather Octopus lives in the sky. When she ripples her arms, the weather springs out, from sunshine, to blizzards, to fog, and more. The Weather Octopus loves alone time, but the sky is becoming jam-packed! When the Weather Octopus gets overwhelmed by a crowd, her gigantic tantrum throws the weather into disarray. To fix this predicament, the Weather Octopus must accept help from a new friend – and learn that even a tiny action can ripple into a BIG effect.

Back matter includes an explanation of chaos theory and the butterfly effect.

_ _ _

The Weather Octopus

By Carolyn Fisher

Picture book

593 words, not including back matter

A long time ago, the Weather Octopus lived in the sky.

When she rippled her arms, the weather sprang out.

[Illustrations: lightning, thunder, sleet, snow, wind, hail, clouds, rain, fog, sunshine.]

Life was quiet except...

for the occasional passerby.

[Illustration: a moth, or monarch butterfly; or a flock of migratory birds like Canada geese; or a passing sandpiper or great blue heron.]

One day, the Weather Octopus felt a tickle

(on the 208th sucker of her third arm.)

[Illustration: Benjamin Franklin is flying his kite during the storm.]

She hid...

[Illustration note: the Weather Octopus camouflages herself to look like the thunderclouds, so that Ben Franklin can’t see her.]

until the tickle went away.

Another time, she heard a buzz

[Illustration note: Wright brothers are flying their airplane.]

so she jetted...

[Illustration note: Weather Octopus jets out of the picture frame, only one or two arms still visible.]

out of sight.

On the day when she felt a sting of heat on her sunny side,

[Illustration note: Apollo rocket ship shoots out a fiery contrail near the Weather Octopus.]

she performed an evasive maneuver.

[Illustration note: Weather Octopus squirts black cumulonimbus clouds out of her siphon to hide while she gets away.]

Time passed.

Each year, the sky got a little bit more crowded...

and a little bit more crowded...

until one day...

[Illustration: sky is jam packed with satellites, rockets, telescopes.]

the Weather Octopus got stuck!

[Illustration: the Weather Octopus is boxed in by space traffic and garbage.]

“Help!” she cried. “Let me out!”

But the more she thrashed, the less she could budge.

[Weather Octopus is tied into knots around the space junk.]

Now, when she twitched her arms to make the weather, odd things happened.

She tried for hail, but got tornadoes.

Her blizzards came out as dust devils.

All her sunshine turned to lightning.

[Double-page illustration: the frustrated Weather Octopus cycles through all the weather types in a huge tantrum.]

The Weather Octopus slumped.

A moth fluttered up. “Wait, I have an idea,” she said to the Weather Octopus. “Have you ever heard of the butterfly effect?”

“No,” said the Weather Octopus. She untied an arm. “What is it?”

Moth said, “The butterfly effect is an idea from science. It says that a tiny act, like the flapping of little wings, could make a mighty change.”

“But you’re a moth, not a butterfly,” pointed out the Weather Octopus.

“Yes, yes,” said Moth. “But I have a PhD in meteorology. Do you want my help or not?”

The Octopus blushed. “Yes, please!” she said. “I’ll try anything!”

“OK,” said Moth. “1, 2, 3, go!”

Moth fluttered her wings,

which made a tiny current

that looped and wafted past the Octopus’s beak,

where it caught a whisper of an idea,

that swept through the sky,

into the ears of a child,

who told her brother,

who told his friend.

Soon that idea blossomed like a buzz and a hum and a thrum to cousins, babies, neighbours, strangers, aunties, grandpas, and more around the world...

until every human rolled up their sleeves and got to work,

tending sun and water and wind and plants,

[Illustration: people building windmills, solar arrays and gardens; and cleaning up pollution.]

creating, caring...

and cleaning.

All this activity

blew a breeze down the valleys from the mountains to the sea,

which made a swell,

which piled into tides,

which formed a storm off a faraway land,

which boomeranged back with the jet stream in a great gulp of wind and water,

which swooped the Weather Octopus out of her jam and untied her knots.

The Weather Octopus gasped.

She unfurled and twitched an arm.

A sprig of hail fell out.

She thrashed another arm to let loose a torrent of snow.

The Weather Octopus danced and twirled and swooshed through the sky.

[Illustrations: lightning, thunder, sleet, snow, wind, hail, clouds, rain, fog, sunshine.]

“O, thank you, Moth!” she cried.

Then, the Weather Octopus drummed a gentle rain.

[Illustration: double-page scene of the parched world greening and blossoming, and people tending their communities and gardens.]

The Weather Octopus was happy.

And the moth was happy, too.

[Illustration: moth sets off another butterfly effect experiment.]

THE END

BACK MATTER

The Butterfly Effect and Chaos Theory

The butterfly effect is an idea that comes from science that says that a tiny change in the initial conditions of a complicated system can snowball into a huge effect as time passes. In the 1960s, meteorologist Edward Lorenz was studying weather systems. When Lorenz created mini weather models, he noticed that a nearly invisible change at the beginning of his experiment led to a huge difference in the experiment result. He called this pattern the butterfly effect.

“Does the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil set off a tornado in Texas?” Lorenz asked in his 1972 paper. But it seemed like all of the flitting and fluttering of bugs and butterflies and everything else in the universe would be impossible to measure with infinite accuracy. And, Lorenz said,  “if the flap of a butterfly’s wings can be instrumental in generating a tornado, it can equally well be instrumental in preventing a tornado.” (1)

Still, Lorenz’s research showed that even a chaotic system operates within limits, and can be studied to gain insight. This branch of science is called chaos theory.

In addition to the weather, scientists use chaos theory to try to understand complex systems like:

Irregular heartbeats

Erosion of riverbeds

Fluctuation of populations

Traffic jams

Jupiter’s Great Red Spot

And more.

So chaos theory and the butterfly effect are tools that humans use to try to understand an uncertain and turbulent world.

Citation:

(1) The Essence of Chaos. http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/climdyn2017/LorenzButterfly.pdf,

Edward Lorenz’s 1972 paper.

Sources:

When the Butterfly Effect Took Flight. https://www.technologyreview.com/2011/02/22/196987/when-the-butterfly-effect-took-flight/ By Peter Dizikes

Chaos: The Science of the Butterfly Effect. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDek6cYijxI Professor Robert Ghrist via Youtube.

For Fashion Week, the Elephants of Style are tearing up the runway. But soon, they encounter a wedge (or wedgie) issue that threatens their catwalk debut. The sassy pachyderms must address the elephant in the room – or end up fashion victims!

Carolyn Fisher’s bio:

Artist-author Carolyn Fisher has illustrated eight children’s books, three of which she also wrote. Her pictures have been sought by hundreds of magazines and newspapers from Businessweek to Disney Adventures magazine. She has created poetry, prose and art for chickaDEE magazine. Her book Two Old Potatoes and Me was featured on the PBS educational TV show Reading Rainbow. Paul O. Zelinsky, writing for The New York Times Book Review called her book The Snow Show “visually arresting…one of the most gloriously exuberant, inventive displays of computer-created art that I have ever seen in a picture book.” Her art has been exhibited in the US and Canada. In addition to teaching at art college for seven years, Carolyn has talked to thousands of kids in scores of libraries and schools about writing and art.

LOBI'S GREAT ESCAPE

Unpublished picture book

Written and illustrated by Carolyn Fisher

During a flood, Lobi, a hippo, escapes the zoo to drift the river – 1500 miles to the Arctic. Amidst the icebergs, he discovers a watery world teeming with algae, krill, belugas, and more. But when global warming threatens, where will Lobi and his newfound friends find refuge?

This nearly wordless climate change fable was inspired by the true story of Lobi, the hippo at the Calgary Zoo, who escaped his enclosure during the flood of 2013. (In real life, Lobi was quickly rescued before he made it to the river – because he got stuck in a doorway on his way out of the joint.)

Full storyboard for Lobi’s Great Escape available upon request. Please email here.

The Wolf of Winter and the Brothers Grimm

(Work-in-progress.)