Beakuency welcomes Anita Sanchez and George Steele, environmental educators based in Amsterdam, NY. They are co-authors of A Sky That Sings, a children’s book that invites readers to use all their senses to experience nature. The story follows Mia, a blind girl who leads her aunt through the park, identifying birds by their calls and songs. Anita and George will share the inspiration behind the book and their collaboration with the Northeastern Association of the Blind at Albany. In today’s modern world, we often develop an unfounded fear of nature. That fear can narrow our understanding and imagination, not only toward the natural world but also toward people whose experiences differ from our own. Through their books and the nature education programs they lead, Anita and George inspire us to embrace nature, not with fear, but with curiosity and joy.
Anita’s website: https://anitasanchez.com
A Sky That Sings information on Lee & Low Books webpage
https://www.leeandlow.com/books/a-sky-that-sings
Northeastern Association of the Blind at Albany (NABA) https://nabavision.org
This interview was recorded on October 14th, 2025, and broadcast on November 22nd, 2025 on Wave Farm’s WGXC 90.7FM.
Interview Transcript
Mayuko Fujino: Thank you so much for taking time to speak with me today. Could you introduce yourselves?
Anita Sanchez: Sure. My name’s Anita Sanchez, and I’m a naturalist and an author. I write books on science and nature, mostly for kids.
George Steele: And I’m Anita’s husband, George Steele. I do environmental education programs, enrichment programs, mostly for elementary age students in schools, and then also for families at nature centers and other green spaces.
MF: I wanted you to talk about your latest book today in this interview, which is titled “A Sky That Sings”. Could you tell the listeners what the theme of this book is?
AS: It’s a book about a lot of things. It’s about a visually impaired child who’s a Latina, and she goes birding and uses her other senses besides sight, since she’s blind, to experience the natural world. So I think the main theme of the book is trying to get kids, all readers, to use all of their senses to enjoy nature and have fun in nature and to go outdoors in nature.
MF: Where did the idea come from?
AS: I used to work at Five Rivers (Environmental Education Center) and Nature center years ago, and one day I was assigned to do a nature walk for a group of visually impaired children. And at first I couldn’t imagine how that would work. But when they got there and we went outdoors, I was amazed how much I learned from them. They could hear things that I never noticed, and they wanted to touch things that I never thought about touching. And so they were using their senses in a way that seemed really interesting. So that was the original idea for the book.
MF: This protagonist — the blind girl whose name is Mia — in the book, she mentions Ms. Gomez, and she says that Ms. Gomez took her and other kids to field trips. So I guess your experience of leading that group of kids must be the model behind Ms. Gomez’s field trip.
AS: I think, probably, in my imagination, Mia, the main character would be in a class probably included with sighted children. She might have an aide to go with her, but she would be on a field trip with kids who could see. And the fictional Mrs. Gomez, might be careful of her language. For instance, if you say “there’s a bird over there,” that means nothing to a blind person. If you say there’s a bird in the tree behind you, high up, and it’s about the size and shape and color of a lemon, it’s called a Yellow Warbler. So using descriptive language, which is great for all the kids, not just kids who are visually impaired.
MF: Definitely.
GS: Once I had worked with a group of fifth graders, so it’s about the same age range. There was a boy in the class that was blind, he’s with the kids all the time. They get to know each other and he interacted with the other kids. The other kids would help him out and show him some things. And then I recall, too, when I was young, I had been in summer camp in Boy Scouts, and I’d been there with my troop. And then I stayed an extra week. And when you stay an extra week, you’re not with your troop, they have what they call a provisional troop. So that week, there was a camper that was blind. And it was amazing just learning from him about things. Like, you know, you sort of have this vision — Okay, you’re blind. It means you can’t see anything at all. It’s totally dark. And I vividly recall approaching the dining hall, and he said, oh, we’re almost there. Because I would help him around camp. And I was, like, shocked, “How did you know?” And he says, “well, I can see lightness and darkness. So when we enter the shadow of the building, I knew that we were getting near the building.” So I think young kids learn a lot from working with children of other abilities. And I think teachers take a big advantage of that in classrooms.
MF: You mentioned the descriptive language, and I think it’s quite helpful for anybody, really, because when I go birding and try to tell your group that “over there! That tree! That tree!”, “It’s above the cloud!” [laughs] It’s very hard to come up with that descriptive language. And I’m trying to do a little better. English is not my first language, so my vocabulary is poor in the first place. But even if you don’t know the species of the tree, you could say, well, there’s that shaggy bark or the pointy shape or whatever. But since you’re a writer, and you both — you wrote this book together, right?
GS: Right. Well, I essentially ride on Anita’s coattails. She’s the one who writes. So we sit there, and Anita will be writing, and then she’ll ask a question or ask something about this, or I’ll make a suggestion, but Anita really lays out most of it. And then if I’ve done enough to warrant the honor of being co-author, then you know, we go that route.
AS: He’s the birder, so he’s my birding Google. So when it came to deciding what birds to put in and what sounds they made and how likely it would be to see these two birds in the same season, because I wanted the book to be accurate, would you see a heron at the same time as you’d see a Yellow Warbler, or something like that. So he just knows everything about all those details of ornithology.
MF: Right. So you provided the technical assistance part of the book. Yeah, that descriptive language. If you’re a writer, I think you are used to explaining things in the way that’s clear to the readers, so I bet it helps. But when we use the word inclusive birding — I’ve birded with people who are very knowledgeable in trees. It’s the opposite of my problem. They say there’s that ash tree or whatever, and I don’t know which one is the ash tree. So it’s not exactly an inclusive way of operating things either. And so the word inclusive has lots of meanings, that you need to kind of slow down and look at, like, how dumb I could be. [laughs] And then you kind of have to come down to where I am, while I try to get to where they are. Again, when we use the word inclusive, sometimes it’s an abstract idea to many of us, like, what does that exactly mean? And that’s a great insight, “try to be more descriptive.”
You already touched a little bit on how you decided what birds would appear in this book. But if you can tell us more about it.
GS: Well, actually it’s sort of interesting and, you know, reading the book, thinking, “hmm, how come we didn’t include that bird?” or, “this is another interesting bird.” There’s so many birds. And the big part of the book then too is, how do you describe, say, a Wood Thrush or Hermit Thrush song? I mean, it’s flute-like, you know, it becomes very difficult. So it works best for birds that have like an onomatopoetic kind of thing, like “*Drink Your Tea.” Although we didn’t have the Eastern Towhee, but, you know, something along those lines.
*Birders say that’s what the Eastern Towhee’s call sounds like.
And then also because this is not a book for advanced birders, it’s for someone who’s going to be, you know, maybe never having gone birding. So you want birds that are likely to be encountered. So the Yellow Warbler with the song “Sweet, sweet, I’m so sweet.” And then it’s funny too, because then you get different ones like Red-winged Blackbird, a very common bird, and even the books will have it, “conk-a-ree, o-ka-reee”, because you’re taking the actual birds song and trying to put it into a phrase that you can write down.
You know, so again, like you have these birds that have trilling, warbling flute-like songs, you know, saying it’s trilling, warbling, flute-like, well, that’s like mud. You leave it to someone’s imagination. You have no idea what they’re thinking.
AS: It also had to be things that your average reader, young reader might relate to. The sewing machine bird, the Chipping Sparrow that sounds like a sewing machine that relates to, you know, most kids.
GS: Although I ask many a child when I do, “listen, okay, that bird that sounds like a sew — do you guys know what a sewing machine is?” [laughs]
MF: I was just wondering that just now. [laughs]
AS: I’m a quilter, I tend to think in terms of sewing. But that’s probably true.
GS: Yeah, but you don’t even use the sewing machine. You’re just this quiet hand sewing. [laughs]
MF: And I guess also it has to be birds that people would see in a park setting.
GS: You don’t want something like a Swainson’s Thrush on the top of a mountain.
MF: Right. But did you struggle to narrow it down? Like, you could have had Caroline Wren. It’s like “I have to let that bird go because there’s the page limit?”
GS: Well, I left that to Anita as far as which birds because it would have been, again, in hindsight, something like the Carolina Wren would have been a cool bird because it’s such a loud, raucous bird. There’s funny stories. You know, the books say it says “Tea kettle, tea kettle, tea kettle.” Okay, so then what do kids know about tea kettles? But this one first grader raised their hand, goes, Mr. Steele, what bird goes, “Dorito, dorito, dorito?” That’s perfect, I mean, no book will ever say, the Carolina Wren says that. But that’s the pattern. Da-da-da, da-da-da, tea-kettle, tea-kettle, tea-kettle. Or I swear, sometimes I hear them say, pretty-bird, pretty-bird, pretty-bird. But it’s that phrasing that you can transmit into, again, a written series of words that make sense to people.
MF: It would be funny to ask kids “what do you think is the word that applies to these songs?”
AS: When I do kids programs, like reading the book in a library, I have bird calls on my phone. I play the bird call so they can actually hear it as I read the book. So that’s a good idea to ask the kid, what do you think the bird is saying?
MF: Yeah, that would be really funny to hear their interpretation of bird calls.
This is one question that I wanted to ask and may not include in the radio, because I don’t want to spoil the story, but I was wondering why you chose Red-tailed Hawk to be Mia’s favorite bird. Because she keeps saying, “I haven’t heard my favorite yet.” And I’m like, “what could her favorite be? Could it be really special birds with special songs like, I don’t know, Easter Meadowlark or something?” And then, it ended with the Red-tailed Hawk. And Red-tailed Hawk, we wouldn’t associate it with beautiful songs, but it does give me this open sky feeling. But I was wondering why you decided that to be her favorite.”
AS: Well, it’s my favorite. And Mia is me, sort of, because I’m a real novice birder and I feel a bit like her. But open sky feeling is a good way of putting it. It gives you that sort of freedom. You know, the joke is that often when you see a Bald Eagle on TV, they use the Red-tailed Hawk’s scream because it gives you that freedom sense.
Also, when you’re writing a children’s book, you need to be aware of page turning. So Originally, the book was Mia and, her grandmother, actually, walking along listening to different birds. And they heard the different birds and then they got in the car and went home. And my editor said, well, yeah, but, where’s the tension? There’s no sense of, you know, “are we gonna succeed?" Is there some goal we have? And so that’s when I thought of, “we have to hear my favorite, yes, this is good, but we haven’t heard my favorite yet.” And there’s hints and so that makes you want to turn the page to keep going to find out.
So I had to really think of “What is the struggle? What’s the goal?” The other sort of struggle that Mia has is she navigates somewhat difficult terrain. She has to go up a hill, over a log, through the forest, through the mud. And I wanted to really emphasize that a blind child is perfectly capable of doing this. And in the book, the illustrator did a very good job of having Mia be in front, be the leader. The adult is behind her going, “wait for me.” And Mia is leading her aunt, showing how blind kids have so many abilities. You know, we don’t need to think of them as weak or clumsy or helpless. They have a lot of power.
GS: You set up with the what’s the sky like when she’s starting off. And so there’s anticipating her favorite bird being up in the sky because she takes flight with the bird in her mind.
MF: Yeah, that’s quite beautiful. I’m still debating if I would include this or not, because I don’t know if I want to spoil what her favorite bird was. But I wanted to ask you about this. Maybe I put a spoiler alert, “skip this five minutes if you don’t want to know.” [laughs]
MF: You consulted a non profit that helped you how to portray blind people in an accurate light. I was wondering what this organization was and what the collaboration looked like.
AS: They’re called NABA, Northeastern Association of the Blind at Albany. They’re based here in Albany, and they were wonderful. I sent them an email just hoping someone might get back to me. They got back to me right away. And the teachers, several of the teachers who work with blind students and were very experienced, read multiple drafts of the book. And then they read them aloud to blind students to get their feedback. They read it to blind elementary school students to see how they liked the book.
And then, once the book was accepted for publication, and the publisher found an illustrator, then the NABA folks worked with the illustrator to illustrate how a blind child would walk, would hold her cane, how she would, you know, would she look at the bird, or would she have her ear more towards the bird? Often she, Mia, is looking away from the bird that her aunt is looking at, but she’s turning her head so that she can hear the sound better. So they worked with the illustrator to get details like that right. Or how a blind child uses a cane. You don’t use it like a walking stick. You use it differently. So, yeah, they were wonderful. Very, very helpful. And it was a long process. It took several years that I kept saying, “okay, here’s another draft. Do you mind reading it?” And they always would.
MF: Did they have to make a lot of changes for you? I’m sure you went in doing some research of your own writing this story, but was there anything surprised you in their suggestions?
AS: Mostly it was the language. The aunt had a lot of things that she was saying that are not as effective with a blind child. For instance, “over there,” that’s the classic. The aunt was always saying, oh, what’s that bird over there? Or come on over here, or let’s go this way. And of course, those words mean nothing to a blind person. So I had to change mostly the aunt’s dialogue to, like I said, you know, the bird in is in the tree behind you, high up. The aunt kind of describes it not only for Mia, but for the reader as well. Because I was always aware that the reader also wouldn’t know that the bird was the size of a lemon or, you know, was near the pond or whatever. So yeah, the NABA folks were really great.
MF: That’s really great. Like we were saying earlier, the word like “over there” is not helpful to anybody, really. When I was taking ESL (English as a Second Language) classes back when I arrived in the United States, one thing I really remember well was that one teacher said, “don’t ever say ‘people’. Always say ‘passengers’ or ‘viewers’ or whatever they are. Don’t ever say just ‘people’, be specific. Think what they are and use that word. Don’t be lazy and just say ‘people’.” And that’s something I still remember to this day.
And when we talk, I mean, maybe we should use our brain a little bit as we say things. You’re trying to communicate something with other person who may not know what you’re talking about. So having that specificity is not only helpful to blind people, but really helps anybody when we bird, if you can be a little bit more specific. I’m saying that to myself, really. [laughs]
GS: Related to the organizations, there’s a big movement with trying to get birding more available or introduce more people to birding than just sighted people and able-bodied people. So there’s an organization started, I don’t know how many years it’s been around, but it’s called Birdability. And there’s an official Birdability week which is coming up October 20th through the 26th. And I was Googling to see, you know, who’s doing it in our area. I was down at Hawk Mountain to observe hawk migration back in mid September and was chatting to the Hawk Mountain people. And they’ve got a whole variety of things related to birds and nature. They were going to have a touch table and they were having a variety of other things in addition to birders listening for birds and exploring the mountain for birds. But here, I know one state park is doing something. I’m not sure what other ones, but I think it’s an annual event. I have to imagine they probably have it set the same time every year so people can expect it’s coming up.
MF: Right. I saw that information and I’ve learned a little bit about Birdability, but I haven’t seen anything local. So that’s great to know.
GS: Yeah, I think it’s starting to build a little bit more steam just because people don’t think about that. I mean, everyone is sort of centered on their own exploring birds. And what are the opportunities to bring other people out to enjoy birds? I know that the Saratoga State park is doing something. I saw that one specifically. I happen to be out north of Boston, Cape Ann Gloucester area and Drumlin Farm, which is Massachusetts Audubon Society, they had plans for something. But I think if people Google Birdability, they’ll find organizations that are trying to get the outdoors open to more people of different abilities.
MF: I saw in your other book that is titled “Wait Till It Gets Dark! A Kid’s Guide to Exploring the Night”. There’s a chapter that’s titled “We Need the Dark”. And you explain that humans have done a thorough job of eliminating darkness from our lives, which has led to light pollution and disrupted nocturnal wildlife and the loss of our own internal natural rhythm.
And I believe this also reflects how we have designed our society primarily for the convenience of sighted people, for our own comfort and prioritizing our fears and remedy that fear. And as a result, this design of the society has created challenges for blind individuals and wildlife.
And so I was wondering, if you have any suggestions for specific steps or actions that you would recommend for those of us in upstate New York, especially the ones from the city like myself, how can we confront this fear of stepping outside our comfort zones and engage all five senses like Mia could? Is there any programs or other resources you suggest?
AS: Well, fear is a very good word to describe part of the problem. People are so afraid. People are afraid of everything these days. And in the years we’ve worked with kids in nature, I think we’ve seen that fear level rise. Kids don’t want to touch things. They don’t want to leave the blacktop. They’re worried about germs, they’re worried about stranger danger. And a lot of people, I know many people who would never go out for a stroll at night because they might get eaten by coyotes or get a bat tangled in their hair or there might be bears. There’s so many fears. And really, as far as wildlife goes, it’s pretty safe to walk around at night. Probably the biggest danger is getting hit by a car. You need to be careful to not get hit by a car. But if we could calm some of our fears and start to feel more comfortable in nature. Many places like Five Rivers or Pine Hollow Arboretum, many nature centers do night walks, which is a really good entry level because you go out with a group and you can have the comfort of a group and begin to kind of dip your toe in it. I used to be scared to death of the dark when I was a kid, but now I love to go out at night. I try to walk on our pitch dark road every night. And I love night walks.
GS: At the Landis Arboretum, I’ll always have at least two different, or maybe three different nighttime activities for families to come to. Matter of fact, again, my last program of the year is always a Halloween Owl Prowl. So it’s focused on birds and a lot of it is what owls we expect. But we then go off into the woods, too. And I challenge everyone, because everyone comes with flashlights, and I challenge them to not use the lights for the beginning. Let’s let our eyes get adjusted to the light and then see how we can do it, depending upon the ambient light conditions. If there’s a full moon, goodness gracious, in October with no leaves on the tree, you could walk through the woods with no flashlight and see exactly where you’re going. Just take your time. But someone is always anxious to use a flashlight. I’ll usually say by the time we finish up, if we’re heading back, okay, turn your flashlights on, you can feel comfortable going at a faster speed.
But one of the things that I think becomes important and for someone like Mia, it would be a natural instinct to feel the ground with her feet. I’m sure no blind person isn’t going to be told to feel the ground. They just grow up feeling where they walk with their feet. And I learned many years ago, when I was a camp counselor, to walk most of the trails of the camp with no flashlight because once I did know the sense of the trails, I could tell if I was off the trail by feeling with my feet. The trail feels different than not being on the trail. People are so used to walking on sidewalks or on pavement. And that’s why you ramble along on pavement and all of a sudden you get a little place where the sidewalk is a little off kilter, and you trip on it because you’re just so used to sort of shuffling along, instead of really feeling with your feet as you walk along.
So that whole thing again, you know, use your senses. I think one of the easiest ways that families could start helping with their kids becoming more accustomed to the dark is to explore their backyard with no lights on, no flashlight. And wait till it gets dark, and try some games in the backyard, sneak up games and things, where you’re using your senses in the nighttime to maneuver around your backyard, in a very safe place. Not all kids have a backyard they can do it in, but maybe it’s the grandparents backyard that they could explore some of the sense of darkness at nighttime.
AS: One thing that I’m sure a lot of birders are familiar with, they’re always saying, turn off your outside lights at night for the bird migration. And of course it’s true, for it affects bats, it affects moths, it has a lot of effect on many types of wildlife besides birds. So many people have their houses hugely lit up, not just at the holiday time, but all through the year. And it’s a security thing, you know, I see that. But there are types of lighting you can get that doesn’t affect wildlife quite so much. Red lighting or lighting with shade so that the most of the light points directly down instead of up towards the sky. Our local supermarket, their whole parking lot has lights that shine down just towards the parking lot, not up towards the side sky because they’re near the Landis Arboretum, which is a major stargazing place for so many. So when they built the supermarket, they planned those lights especially. So just being aware of the fact that darkness isn’t bad, that there’s positive things about it.
And a lot of my books, the theme of my book is that nature is cool, that nature isn’t scary, that we don’t need to fear it. And I often write about things that people don’t like, like poison ivy and dandelions and spiders and stuff like that, to try to bring down that fear a notch.
A lot of kids grow up with, you know, the Beauty and the Beast and all those movies where the wolves chase the heroine through the woods. We have neighbors who wouldn’t dare walk down our road for fear of coyotes. And, you know, no, a coyote is not going to jump out of the bushes, wrestle you to the ground and rip your throat out. They’re just not going to do that. They are predators, so they might, for instance, eat a cat or a toy poodle, possibly, if one was running loose. But they’re not going to attack humans. They just don’t. So, you know, I really wish we could allay people’s fears about bats and spiders, they’re not waiting to attack you. All they want, all wildlife wants is to get as far away from people as possible. Really, humans are our biggest risk. Traffic is my big concern, when I’m walking late at night. I really should wear a bright orange vest and that sort of thing for cars.
MF: Yeah. Having that kind of fear is what’s limiting our own ability, like you said. And that kind of fear, I think, limits our imagination for blind people, too. Because we are scared in the dark — we think, well, blind people couldn’t do it either. “They couldn’t run. If you can’t see, how could you run? Because it must be scary,” is what we think.
GS: That’s true. I mean, for a person of differing abilities, they don’t focus on the abilities that they don’t have. They focus on the abilities they do have. So, you know, they don’t have to worry about that. And Mia jokes about that. You know, the aunt says, it’s getting dark out, it’s getting late. And she says, what’s the problem?
AS: One of the things I did for researching the book was I read Helen Keller’s autobiography, and it’s fascinating. Of course, she was blind and deaf, so she was really limited as to her sensory input. And it’s amazing she could identify individual human beings by their scent, which, you know, we don’t think about people having a smell, but because her brain had no input from her eyes or her ears. When she lived in the late 1800s, only in the summer was she allowed to wear short sleeves. And she loved to feel the air on her arms. But in winter they had to be covered. And she could identify as individual species of flowers by their smell and feel vibrations as someone walked toward her in the floor. So that made me think about what George was saying earlier about how you can feel the ground with your feet. You know, other senses besides hearing. Of course, a lot of the book is about hearing, but also there’s a lot of Mia feeling the grass under her feet. “My nose tells me they just mowed the lawn.” “We’re near smelling the mud of the pond, right? We’re near a pond. I can smell it.” So I thought it was interesting a blind person would know you were getting near a pond because they hear the Red-winged Blackbirds and smell the mud, not because they see it, but they know a pond is coming up.
MF: It feels very rich, that world Mia lives in, because she assigns lots of meanings to everything that she receives through the senses that are available to her. You could have all five senses, but if you don’t assign meanings and eliminate everything to be just noise that is not important to you, then you’re living in a very poor world.
GS: I find that my involvement in nature and in environmental education is just trying to people open up all their senses to the natural environment. Not that they’re going to be using all their senses 100% all the time, because I don’t think it works that way. But just be aware that this natural world around us has so much more than what we have come to learn. I’m thinking of a person from, say, the late 1800s, they would sense the world different than we do because they were more in tune to their local surroundings because they worked in it and they needed it and they used things from it. Whereas, we’re in a more modern, urbanized society. You know, go from your house to a car, from your car to a parking garage into an office, so you never get to the outdoors. And so there’s room to become more aware without overloading your senses.
MF: Where can people find more about your books? Do you have upcoming projects? I mean, I guess you just finished this big work.
AS: Well, on my website, it’s anitasanchez.com. Any book store can order my books. Or if you Google “indie bound”, it will direct you to independent bookstores, you can order them online. I’m working on a book about — I love history, and so I’m working on a book about Mount Vesuvius. The eruption of Mount Vesuvius. George and I went to Italy a few years ago, and, well, we didn’t climb Mount Vesuvius. We took a bus. [laughs]
GS: We did, from the bus stop. We did climb. [laughs]
AS: Well, we climbed a little. Mount Vesuvius is an active volcano, but on the top of the volcano, you can buy gelato and pizza, and there’s tourist buses going there every day. And someday that volcano’s gonna blow up again. So I wrote a book about the big eruption. It’s had many eruptions, but the big one, we think of where Pompeii was destroyed. So it was very fun. It was like writing a novel with characters who actually were there. But it’s all nonfiction. So that was it, that was a good change from backyard nature.
MF: Is this a children’s book or young adult or adult fiction?
AS: Middle grade. Anyone can read it, I hope. So, yeah, that’s been a lot of fun.
MF: Okay. Well, thank you very much.
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