Nancy Castaldo hopes that you will not forget about the fate of the planet, even though World Water Day and Earth Day are now in the backview. Her latest book is: When the World Runs Dry: Earth’s Water in CrisisShe published her January issue in a book that explores global water security or, more accurately, the lack thereoftackling infrastructure, pollution and fracking.
Castaldo, a resident of New York’s Hudson Valley, is interested in natureand writing about the environment since she was a kid. But it wasn’t until she was a student that she realized this. Marymount CollegeShe was particularly interested in ecology. Her interests converged during her senior year. She served as president of science club, editor for the literary magazine, intern at and was the editor of the literary journal. Audubon Magazine. She’s published over two dozen books and written many articles since then. She also worked as an environmental educator and won several awards. She is also an author. National Geographic Educator certification.
In When the World is DryCastaldo offers hope to readers aged 10-18 years old, despite the heartbreaking stories from Flint, Michigan and the alarm bells about Earth’s rising sea levels.
Your early interest in nature and the planet was evident. But when did it become a professional interest?
Before I joined Marymount, I had hoped to become a veterinarian. I started Marymount as a biology major. I found out that it was not the path I wanted. Instead, I wanted more to study ecology and animal behaviour. My ecology class at Marymount was instrumental to that realization.
What is your favorite part of the writing experience?
I am definitely a research junkie. It’s all my favorite thing. It’s like a scavenger hunt. I’m able to just explore things that I’m fascinated in during the research phase. So, when I get the OK to do any of my books and I begin that phase of research, whether it’s spending time in a library, digging out old books in a science library, or traveling, that is the part that I really enjoy the most. Research is the key to finding a path. It gives you offshoots of things to write about, and discoveries that you didn’t know when you set out to research a topic.
Which research destination has had the most impact on your life to date?
There have been many, many for many reasons. When the World is DryThis involved extensive research into areas where people were suffering from serious water problems. One of these was a visit in Flint, Michigan. It was very difficult to see the environmental injustice and to feel in a very small way what these people are going though. Its eye-opening. It changed the way that I see communities and environmental justice. That will remain with me for all my life.
I believe that when we travel beyond our own experiences, it opens us up for a deeper understanding of the world around. When I was working on a book called The Story of SeedsI was able travel to Russia and spend some time in St. Petersburg in ‘The Young Adult Book’, which I also published in 2016. And of course, right now, facing the war news every day in Ukraine, I can’t get that out of my head. The most important thing I learned on that trip, and it was very useful in my thinking going forward, is that scientists have a completely different sense of borders, of country boundaries, than I do. Scientists don’t put up [the same]  walls, and maybe we can learn from that.
So, there’ve been things like those experiences, those research stories, that have really opened my eyes to the world climate, so to speak.
Your books are mainly in the middle-grade to young adult range. Why kids? What attracted you to this audience?
Writing for children can be a gift. The books that children read are remembered by them. They’re impressionable at that age. Writing to them is a challenge. You must be very careful about what you write for children. It must be accurate. You can’t put anything over them. They’re smart, and they deserve books that tell them what’s going on out there. In my books for children, I want to inform, but also inspire my readers to take action. I want to empower them. I write for children to let them know they have a voice and that their voices matter. I think that’s a different goal than writing for adults.
We’re leaving the world to kids, and we need to give them the tools that they need to move forwardto be competent, well-versed citizens. I love the children that are fighting for the planet. I feel like they’re our future, and they need books that are going to help them. I’m hoping that my books do that.
How do you go about conveying such complex, layered issues in a way that’s digestible for the kids? One of the things that struck my attention while I was reading When the World is Dry was that you didn’t dumb down the topic. How do you balance the need to present the information in a way that is both easy to understand and challenging?
Yes, it can be difficult. Sometimes it takes me several attempts to get it right. I have good editors to help me along. I think today’s kids are more versed in writing than they were back when I started. I remember writing a book called “The Book of 2008”. Keep Our Earth GreenIt was about all the various issues that we face on the planet. I had to explain to children what climate change was at that time and make it easy to understand. But since then, there’s so much out there now that kids really understand.
What I tried with When the World is DryIt was to give them real-life examples and explain water issues. And I know that my readers come from many different ages so I tried to balance that and provide resources to help them find more information.
The book does a wonderful job of humanizing this topic. Unfortunately, there’s no shortage of people who have been negatively impacted by the water crisis, so how did you choose the subjects that you highlighted in the book?
I wanted to show the diversity of people involved, to show kids that it pretty much didn’t matter who or where you were, that there are water issues that could impact you wherever you lived. To also show the diversity of people involved. Unfortunately, there’s so much in the news that it was a matter of picking and choosing what were the best examples of those different aspects. I wanted them also to see that it wasn’t just happening in the United States. We may not be experiencing the same level of crisis here in the United States, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening in Australia or South Africa.
While I wasn’t able to travel to all of those areas, I did travel quite a bit for this book, and I wanted my reader to come along with me for that exploration and see the variety of climate, the variety of people, the variety of country, and how each area and each group of people were being impacted. There are so many places I wish there was less. It was a matter if you left out some or add more.
How did you keep your faith high while working on this book?
I believe that everyone should have hope for the future of our planet. How else can we continue to make a difference? You can’t strive to make a difference if you don’t have hope. If you don’t think that there can be change, there won’t be change. But, that doesn’t mean that there werent times in this book when I was writing it that it was just overwhelmingly sad to hear about people who were displaced, people having health issues; the young woman that I dedicated the book to passed away after I interviewed her. [Jassmine McBride died in February 2019. Then just 30 years old, McBride was the 13th official victim of Flints outbreak of Legionnaires disease, a respiratory condition caused by soil- and water-dwelling bacterium.]   She still stays with me, and I can’t help but be upset and saddened by so much of that.
It was a difficult book to write, but I think that it’s always better to have the knowledge. One of the things that I tried to do was include as many young people as possible in the bookthere’s obviously always room for moreto let my young readers know that there are other teens out there that are doing amazing things by raising their voices or inventing things, [like Mari Copenys #WednesdaysForWater Twitter initiative or Gitanjali Raos handheld water-testing device].   Those are the things that give me hope. Those are the stories that make me hopeful.
August will see the release of your next book. What is it about?
The Isle Royale Wolves and MooseThis is a story about ecosystem restoration. When I was in college at Marymount, I had a fabulous ecology teacher who taught us about this wolf and moose predator-prey relationship on Isle Royale, a fascinating little island that’s in Lake Superior and [part of the National Parks System].   It’s the oldest predator-prey study that’s happened in the world. The wolf population has declined so much that the moose populations have soared. This has created an imbalance in the island ecosystem. So scientists decided to reintroduce the wolves. This book explores the study of predator-prey.Find out why the wolves have been reintroduced and how it is going.
It was amazing to go there and meet the people I studied in college who have been working on this project so many years. It was fascinating. It was like going back to college.
Buildings that BreatheIt will be available at the beginning November. And it’s a young adult book about green infrastructure, urban greening, greening parks, and it focuses primarily on the vertical forest called Bosco Verticale in Milan, Italy. It was a week-long trip to Italy for a United Nations conference on urban forestry. It’s fascinating to be able to build buildings that actually help the environmentthat can alter what our cities will look like in the future. That’s what we see at the start of November.
Do you have anything else you would like readers to know?
One of my goals for the book is that readers will learn how to deal with adversity. I think that’s very important at any time, but particularly now. We can’t get through our lives without such experiences. It may not be a problem with water, but it may be something else. I’m hoping that my books provide tools to strengthen my readers and help them become active citizens in our world.
I hope they find the book instructive, entertaining, and empowering. It also helps them to develop empathy.
