Dorothy Hinshaw Patent has camped with grizzly bears, hung out with wolves and tried to outswim a whale. It's all part of the job: she writes nature books, mostly for children. Patent, '62, reached a remarkable milestone this year -- her 100th title. That works out to four books a year for the quarter-century she's been writing.
How does she keep up the momentum? "I'm interested in just about everything," Patent says. She's written about wildlife from alligators to zebras and tackled hot issues like ecology and land management.
Patent's rule of thumb is never to "write down" to kids. "I write as if I'm talking to an adult who doesn't know anything about my topic. That ends up being about right for 9- to 10-year-old kids," she says. Critics have applauded her willingness to take on controversial topics, including the slaughter of wild horses and the benefits of forest fires.
But Patent doesn't write exclusively for the juvenile market. She's done books for young adults and how-to guides -- and she holds writing workshops at Yellowstone. The American Nature Society saluted her lifetime achievement earlier this year.
Her books are lavishly illustrated and filled with quirky facts. Did you know that pigeons can be trained to distinguish between impressionist and cubist paintings? "There's a lot of bizarre stuff out there," Patent laughs.
She's always loved learning about the natural world, she says. Her father, a physician also trained in zoology, encouraged her. "I had snakes as pets -- things not allowed for girls," she says. She majored in biology at Stanford, then earned a PhD in zoology at Berkeley. There she met zoologist David Patent. They married in 1964 and live in Missoula, Mont.
Patent planned an academic career, but she also wanted to spend time with her sons Jason, MA '94, and David. Writing was the perfect compromise.
The veteran author says she'd like to slow down, but in the last 15 months, she's gone to China, Italy, the Galápagos Islands and England. While continuing to write for kids -- Where Eagles Thrive is her latest, and a book on the wildlife discovered by Lewis and Clark is in the works -- she's done an apple cookbook and started work on a biography of Charles Darwin. Her survival in the publishing world seems certain.
