The problem, the kids decide, is that the adults have forgotten that what they love about the world and what there is to save.

When the science fair comes along they take all the grownups outside and make them turn off their phones and just rest under the night sky. (One girl, knowing people breathe out carbon dioxide, brings all her siblings in and orders them to hold their breath.) At the last minute Ivy and Bean have a brainwave. The other kids come up with some hilarious solutions. Ivy and Bean get really stumped for a long time. But here it departs from the script of the classics of children’s literature and turns into a kind of referendum on life in the Anthropocene: for the science fair the kids are going to tackle global warming. It’s another typical setup: the second-grade kids have a science fair. Then there’s book seven, Ivy + Bean: What’s the Big Idea, published in 2013. In the course of the 11-book series they navigate all the familiar stuff in the world of kids’ books - their kind-but-strict second-grade teacher, summer camp, Bean’s annoying big sister Nancy, weird old neighbors, that time they signed up for ballet class and hated it. The titular heroines, the creation of East Bay writer Annie Barrows, are your classic odd-friend-pairing: studious, imaginative, clever Ivy rambunctious, outgoing, impatient Bean. If you have elementary-school-age kids you’ve probably seen or read about the Ivy + Bean series of books. In 1996, Annie received her Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Mills College and had a baby, a confluence of events that persuaded her to leave editorial work and move into writing.Īnnie lives in Northern California with her husband and two daughters.The cover of Ivy + Bean: What’s the Big Idea? Somewhere in this trajectory, she acquired Griffin & Sabine, Chronicle's first New York Times best seller.

In 1988, Chronicle Books hired Annie as an editorial assistant, from which platform she became successively assistant editor, managing editor, Editor, and Senior Editor. Under the impression that a career in publishing meant she'd get to read a lot, Annie became a proofreader at an art magazine and later an editor at a textbook publishing company. She knows more than the average person about 3rd century saints. She wouldn't leave, so they hired her to shelve books at the age of twelve.Īnnie attended UC Berkeley and received a B. She spent most of her childhood at the library. Annie Barrows was born in 1962 in San Diego, California, but quickly moved to a small town called San Anselmo in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Author annie barrows