Coming Clean: 5 questions with Cincinnati author Mary Kay Carson

When she was a child, Mary Kay Carson loved animals and wanted to be a scientist. Instead, she turned those interests toward writing and became a science writer and nonfiction children’s book author.

Carson’s guiding principle for her approach to writing for kids is to make it engaging and interesting by tapping into a kid’s sense of wonder. “And then,” she says, “don’t mess up the science!”

Carson has written more than 50 books for kids about wildlife, nature, weather, space, and other science and history topics. She is the 2025 Writer-in-Residence for the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. In this role, she acts as a bridge between the library and the community, offering guidance on writing and promoting the local literary arts.

Carson has received multiple awards for her books, including the 2023 Giverny Award for Best Children’s Science Picture Book for The River That Wolves Moved: A True Tale from Yellowstone.

Tom UhlmanMary Kay Carson is surrounded by some of the many children’s nonfiction books she’s authored at the 2024 Books by the Banks book festival.

Here’s what else she had to say about her experience as a children’s author in Cincinnati:

1) What has been your luckiest break?
In 2004 an editor at Houghton Mifflin responded to a query letter I’d snail mailed pitching a book about a rare rhino birth. That was before I was agented so she pulled it out of the slush pile! That pitch became the book Emi and the Rhino Scientist, and my photographer husband Tom Uhlman and I went on to publish six more titles in the Scientists in the Field Series.

2) What has been your biggest challenge?
Rolling with the changes. The publishing business has changed tremendously over my 30-year career—and continues to evolve as technology takes over our lives. It’s difficult to continually navigate it all and find new niches to replace those that are vanishing. And of course, the pandemic forever changed how kids access content that used to be primarily found in books.

3) What are some local connections in your books?
Emi and the Rhino Scientist is about the Sumatran rhino work of Dr. Terri Roth, a reproductive physiologist and director of the Center for Conservation and Research of Endangered Wildlife (CREW) at the Cincinnati Zoo. And the super cute bat faces on the cover of The Bat Scientists are the Zoo’s vampire bats. We did research and photos at Carter Caves, so shout-out to Kentucky too! I wrote The Underground Railroad for Kids before the Freedom Center was opened, but the book features some stories and events from the region. Another title in that series, The Wright Brothers for Kids, of course has Dayton connections.

4) Why Cincinnati?
Why NOT? I love all the parks and places to kayak, bike and hike. We live five miles from downtown and have wildflowers and nesting, red-shouldered hawks in the yard thanks to hillside greenspaces. It’s kind of a perfectly sized city, I think. Manageable to navigate but with its own Shakespeare company and a fantastic library.

5) If you were tossing a coin into the Tyler Davidson Fountain regarding kid lit in Greater Cincinnati, what would your wish be?
I’d wish for our region to hear more about our local authors. Greater Cincinnati is home to quite a few well-respected, award-winning kid lit folks—Will Hillenbrand, Louise Borden, Jenn Bishop, Loren Long, Sharon Draper, to name a few—that are famous nationally but don’t get a lot of local press. These folks are just as much local treasures as Reds and Bengals players. Celebrate them!

You can learn more about Mary Kay Carson and her books on her website at https://www.marykaycarson.com/, or through the library’s Inside the Writer’s Head podcast.