Hatching Scientists

As local writer Julie Hahnke carries her screened cage of hatched silk moths through the corridors of Stanley School, she is greeted by students and teachers alike.

“Did you bring your bagpipes?” calls out one student.

She laughs and shakes her head, “No, not this time.”

When she sets up shop in Kelly Stephens’ second grade classroom, the students answer her questions with the confidence of budding naturalists.

“Are moths active in the day or night?”

“Night.”

“What’s the word for that?”

“Nocturnal.”

“What do they do during the day?”

“They sleep.”

“Who wants to eat them?”

“Birds.”

This leads to a discussion of the way the different colorations of the three types of moths Hahnke hatches with Stephens—Luna, Cecropia and Polyphemus—helps the creatures  to avoid getting eaten.

The students then pass around a wiggling polyphemus pupa carefully, with glee.

Developed as part of a marketing program to bring attention to her books, the moth project is clearly now a labor of love for Hahnke

Hahnke started visiting schools after she self-published her first book, Through the Eyes of a Raptor, which is set in medieval Scotland, bringing along her bagpipes and five-foot-long replica sword of that era’s violent clan wars. Her visits were so popular that she was asked to return to give writing workshops to the students.

After selling over 3,000 copies of her first book, an almost unheard amount for a self-published middle grade book, she was approached by a publisher to write another.

The Grey Ghost was the result. The Grey Ghost, also set in medieval Scotland and illustrated by Marcia Christensen, was chosen by the Indie Next List as a book to watch, and has sold well.

As one of the main characters in the The Grey Ghost is a Luna moth, the natural next step for Hahnke was to develop a school program around moths to pair with the elementary schools' science curriculum.

And she has found the perfect partner in Kelly Stephens. Stephens, who has been teaching at Stanley School for 11 years, first became interested in hatching butterflies when her husband brought her home a milkweed egg he’d found.

Now, not only has Stephens hatched all kinds of butterflies and moths with her students, but she created a butterfly garden right outside the window of her first-floor classroom. And not just any butterfly garden but Garden Monarch World Certified as a stopping place for monarchs.

“When we released monarchs,” she reports in her cheerful manner, “they flew around the building and ended up in the garden.”

Two birdhouses sit outside the window as well, where she and her students have observed, among other birds, baby sparrow, house finch, woodpecker, doves, cardinals and dark eyed junkos. In fact, each time a new bird is seen, they circle it on their poster of birds of the Northeast.

Clearly, Stephens is fostering a love of nature as well as the habit of close observation in her young students.

Hahnke, who has a background in finance and marketing, says that she realized a few years back that she wanted to do something more than just make money. She says she finds a great deal of satisfaction in having a role in getting kids to read.

The publishing world being in such a flux, Hahnke finds herself, however, again searching for a publisher for the next book in her series. For more information on Julie Hahnke and her work, visit her website at: http://www.eyesofaraptor.com/jkh/index.html