Carol Johmann, Ph.D.
Children's Author
Buzz About Me (in other words my Biography)
I've been an author, journalist, medical writer, and research biologist in my career. But no matter what I'm doing, I try to find a way to combine my interests in science, writing, and education.
I grew up in a suburban town on Long Island, outside New York City, with wonderful parents, three sisters, and lots of friendly neighbors. Because one of my grandmothers lived in Manhattan and my other grandparents lived on a bay way out on the Island, I visited the City often during the school year and spent summer vacations at the beach. How lucky can you get, right? A voracious reader and fan of skyscrapers, bridges, and Broadway plays, by twelve I dreamed of becoming a scientist, architect, or foreign correspondent who would spend all her spare time in darkened theaters!
After earning a Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of Rochester in upstate New York, I moved to New York City to do research at Rockefeller University. Soon, though, I changed careers and joined TIME as a reporter, later switching to its sister publication, Discover, when that magazine was launched. I also freelanced for OMNI, American Health, and Science Digest, and revised elementary and high school textbooks.
During those years, I reported and wrote on everything from the insides of a virus to the outer reaches of space, from eroding beaches to spreading wildfires. Each week brought a new topic -- AIDS, the Challenger and Chernobyl disasters, superconductors, and cholesterol. Along the way I became interested in photography and began taking my camera on assignments. To my delight, several of my photographs were published in Discover. And, of course, while living in the City, I went to lots of plays, both on and off Broadway.
Another change of careers brought me to southern Connecticut and a stint of corporate life in the international R&D division of a pharmaceutical company. That's when I satisfied the foreign travel part of my childhood dream by zooming around Europe at company expense coordinating a worldwide training program. After establishing my own business as a pharmaceutical consultant and medical writer, I moved back to the Rochester area 17 years ago to begin writing children's activity books with my youngest sister, Elizabeth J. Rieth, who lived there with her family. We've written five books together.
Although I don't have children of my own, Liz and another sister, Patricia, have made me aunt to five nieces and two nephews. When they were younger, Liz's kids and their friends tested the activities before we put them in the books. I love being an aunt, and being one has helped me understand what kids like (and don't like). I think it also makes me better at giving presentations based on our books at schools, libraries, and museums.
My sixth book, Skyscrapers!, was the first one I wrote on my own. It was released the day before the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in New York. There are photos of the WTC towers and an explanation of how they were built in the book. Being so familiar with the towers through writing the book as well as having visited them many times made it all the more shocking to see them destroyed.
For my most recent book, I traveled back in time to our American past -- on a journey across the North American wilderness with Captains Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to celebrate their expedition's bicentennial anniversary.
Last year I moved back to Connecticut. I'm currently working on another activity-based biography and several picture books.
Who Is Dr. Buzz?
Dr. Buzz is a nickname my older sister Nancy gave to me. When we were kids it was mostly C-Buzz or Honey-Buzz, and sometimes Buzzard if she really wanted my attention. When I received my Ph.D., Nancy added the title. So Dr. Buzz is me, Carol A. Johmann, author or co-author of the hands-on learning books featured on this site. My co-author on most of them is another sister (I have three), my youngest, Elizabeth J. Rieth. I like to use my nickname when I give presentations to kids in schools, libraries, and bookstores.
How we got started
Liz and I got started writing science activity books because her oldest daughter, Jessica, complained that there was not enough science being taught at school. She was in the third grade then and is now 26, so you can see how much time has passed since this story began. Liz's response was to start an after-school science club, the Explorers, which proved to be wildly popular. At first, though, Liz could not find information about setting up an elementary school club and said so at a family holiday dinner. That's when I said she should write a book. And that's when she asked if I would help her.
I had been in magazine reporting and writing for a decade, and she figured I knew something about the publishing world. I did, but not much and we both found we had a lot to learn about writing books and getting them published.
That first book on how to set up and run a science club never did get published. Instead, one of the publishers we sent the proposal to offered us another book to write. That's how Science Works came into being as well as two other books with the same publisher, Gobble Up Science and Gobble Up Nature. After that we switched to another publisher, Williamson Publishing Company, which is now under Ideals Books.
What's it like to collaborate with a sister?
Well, the first thing to say is that it's both good and bad, though for us the good far outweighed the bad. The best thing about any collaboration is that "two heads are better than one." Together you have a wider variety of ideas, two different perspectives evaluating those ideas and the writing, and a broader range of skills and experience. In our case, I had experience as a published writer and Liz provided the know-how of setting up the club. She had a clear idea of what activities worked and why, and what interested kids of all ages. Once we started writing, we realized our writing styles were fairly similar so it wasn't hard to blend our writing together.
The bad part is that you don't always get your way. Collaboration takes lots of cooperation. Sometimes you have to compromise about what you include in the book or take out, and how you say it. Because Liz and I are sisters, we know each other very well and trust each other, which is important for co-authors. We can usually come to an agreement, even after a heated discussion (OK, argument), and still get along both as sisters and as co-authors.
