Getting to Know...Judge Marta Magellan

Interview by Lynne Marie

What brought you to children’s books? How long have you been writing?

Being a child and loving books started it. Teaching a Survey of Children’s Literature course at Miami Dade College gave me the nudge to actually write.

Has your publication journey direction changed at all from the onset?

I published several newspaper and magazine articles before I published my first picture book for a series on wild animals. Since then, I’ve been writing almost exclusively about wild animals.

Please tell us about the first book you published.

It was called Those Voracious Vultures, one of Pineapple Press’s Those Amazing Animals series. My husband is a photographer, and the two of us went to all kinds of places looking for vultures to photograph. I even went to a remote area of Brazil, where I’m from, to see if I could find a rare king vulture or a yellow-headed vulture. It was so much fun, I haven’t stopped writing about wild animals since.

What genres of books will you be open to rating for Rate Your Story?

Nonfiction

List five things you look for in a successful story.

Pacing, originality, language use, clarity, voice.

Name five subjects you love to read about.

Wild animals, nature, food, travel, history/historical, space

Name five subjects you don’t want to read about.

Sex, math, engineering, politics (but I sometimes read about them anyway)

What author has inspired you most on your journey?

Louisa May Alcott

What do you feel is an important preliminary step before actually writing a story?

Becoming passionate about the subject.

Please share a writing Tip for our Members.

Polish up your grammar in every story before submission. Really bad grammar ruins it for me, and I suspect for others, too.

Share a fun fact or two about YOU!

I was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Marta Magellan's Books

JUST WILD ENOUGH: Mireya Mayor, Primatologist, to be published September 2022, Albert Whitman & Co.

FLYING JEWELS A HUMMINGBIRD STORY May, 2021, Eifrig Publishing, illustrated by Mauro Magellan

DRAGONFLIES: WATER ANGELS AND BRILLIANT BIOINDICATORS, July, 2020, Eifrig Publishing, with cartoon illustrations by Mauro Magellan

PYTHON CATCHERS SAVING THE EVERGLADES. April 2020, Rowman and Littlefield, Pineapple Imprint about the Burmese python invasion

AMAZING, MISUNDERSTOOD BATS, May, 2019, nonfiction for grades 3-5, with photographs by the renowned Merlin Tuttle, launched in July, 2019 at the Nature Detectives workshop in Ponte Vedra, Florida.

ANOLE INVASION, May, 2018, on the non-native backyard lizards displacing the native Carolina anole for grades 3-5.

THE NUTTY LITTLE VULTURE, January, 2018, fiction picture book for ages 3-5 based on facts of the different services vultures provide for our environment.

OTHER CHILDREN'S BOOKS

Monkey and Rabbit The Singing Wolf The Donkey and the Farmer in Shared Reading series, Fountas and Pinnell, 2017, Heinemann. Only available through their educational market

Those Colossal Cats 2009, Pineapple Press

Those Lively Lizards 2008, Pineapple Press

Those Voracious Vultures 2008,Pineapple Press

Website http://martamagellan.com