OH, hello! Remember me? It’s been a while. In my defense, there was this worldwide pandemic thingy that took my mind off this site for a while. But I’m back, baby! (I would say “better than before” but that’s not really the case…)
And BOY do I have some news! While the past few months have not been good for my creative output (I’m looking at you, homeschooling), it HAS been a good time for getting books accepted for publication. I’m happy to announce that I’ve sold five (5, count ’em) manuscripts to publishers. Three will come out in 2021 and the other 2 don’t have dates yet.
(Insert smug face here 😉 )
The first three are NONFICTION. I’ve been branching out recently and trying my hand at writing nonfiction for kids. Turns out I LIKE IT!
(I wanted to insert a gif here from the Life Cereal ads back in the 80s when they say “Mikey likes it!” but I guess that’s too old school for giphy…)
So. anyhoo, for all my (zero) followers, here’s the latest super impressive cover for my next book. It was illustrated by the amazing Alexandra Badiu and you can see more of her lovely work at
The book is a biography of an amazing woman named Jocelyn Bell Burnell. Who? You ask. That’s exactly why I wrote the book. No one has heard of her, and her story NEEDS TO BE TOLD!
Jocelyn is an astrophysicist (yes, she’s alive and well at this very moment), who made what scientists consider the greatest astronomical find of the twentieth century. While a grad student at Cambridge, in the 1960s and 70s, Jocelyn identified the first four neutron stars ever. Einstein and other scientists had been speculating their existence since the 1930s, but no one had ever found proof. Until Jocelyn.
So why don’t we know her name? When the Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded for this discovery, it went to her adviser on the project, Anthony Hewish. Jocelyn’s name was left off the list.
When I first learned about Jocelyn, I was inspired by her graciousness in the face of this massive oversight, as well as her persistence and dedication. I knew that her story—like those of Rosalind Franklin, Lise Meitner, Chien Shiung Wu, or other female scientists whose contributions were overlooked throughout history—needed to be told.
So. Here. It. Is!!!
Isn’t that a sight for sore eyes?
Many thanks to Albert Whitman & Co for choosing to publish Jocelyn’s story.
The book will be available at all fine bookstores on April 1, 2021, and you’ll be able to pre-order it online soon. (I’ll write more about the process of writing this book in a separate thread.)
I’ll leave you with this:
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in you.
~ Rabindranath Tagore
Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
Happy writing!
JODIE PARACHINI 