Beth Kantrowitz wrote Run, Sparky, Run! in 2008 to encourage her six-year-old nephew to read. The idea of publishing it was “sparked” when her sister rediscovered the story among her kids’ childhood papers. Beth decided to bring Sparky’s pure and beautiful story to life in 2025 to counter the current dismal state of the world.
Beth has an undergraduate degree in biology from Cornell University and two graduate degrees from the University of Maryland: a master of science in sustainable development and conservation biology and a master of public administration in environmental policy. She currently manages grants and contracts for the Environmental Law Institute in Washington, DC.
Outside of work, Beth is an avid birder who has served on the board of Prince George’s Audubon Society for the past two decades. She is active in the skeptic, secular, and humanist communities and recently published an article about climate change on Humanist.org. Though Beth is a New York native (and a die-hard fan of the New York Mets), she currently lives in Hyattsville, Maryland, with her dog, Darwin.
Q: What inspired the idea behind your book?
A: When my younger nephew, now an adult, was six years old, he was struggling to learn how to read. He and I had a very close bond, so I thought he might respond better to a book written by me. When thinking about an animal to focus on, what immediately came to mind was the eastern gray squirrel. For some forgotten reason, while at Cornell University from 1985 to 1990, my friends and I called squirrels “sparkies,” and we named all squirrels Sparky. As someone with a science background, I wanted as much scientific accuracy in the book as possible, which is now reflected in the illustrations—the hawk is a red-tailed hawk, and the snake is an Eastern rat snake, and the squirrels’ back feet face backward when coming down a tree headfirst. Even the names of Sparky’s siblings, Scooter and Caroline, come from the scientific name for the eastern gray squirrel, Sciurus carolinensis.
Q: As an author, what tips would you give anyone who wants to get into writing?
A: I think to be a writer you need to love reading. Just as you get a sense of the rhythms of speech from hearing others, you get a sense of the rhythms of the written word from reading as much and as often as possible. You need to write a lot, everything from personal journals to articles, essays, poems, letters, and books, with the writing as an end in itself. Sharing or publication is an afterthought. You also need the time and temperament to be able to lose yourself in something purely creative.
Q: What is your favorite book?
A: That’s such a hard question. I usually say The Once and Future King by T.H. White, but at times it has been John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany, or anything by Shakespeare, or a bound volume of Bloom County or Calvin and Hobbes cartoon strips.
Q: Was your main character modeled after anyone in your life?
A: Not really, but the way the young squirrels behave is much like many young children I have known, from my niece and nephews to kids I babysat as a teenager to friends’ children.
Q: What is your favorite part of the writing process?
A: Getting completely lost in the process, unaware of time passing or outside stimuli unless they’re loud or annoying. Lately, I’ve been writing in the mornings during my commute using the Notes app on my iPhone, and I am totally immersed until I hear my bus stop and train stop announced.
Q: Do you believe that being a “good writer” is a developed skill or a natural talent?
A: Both. The desire and skill to write are things I feel I had from an early age, but years of education, reading, and writing certainly developed my skills. I didn’t take a creative writing class until my senior year of college. As an avid reader, I have a good sense of what works and what doesn’t by how much I enjoy a particular book, and I try to use that knowledge in my own writing.
Q: Do you have a favorite book, poem, TV, or movie quote?
A: From a book, my favorite quote would be “Keep passing the open windows” from John Irving’s The Hotel New Hampshire. To me, it means keep moving forward and don’t jump out. From a movie (The Princess Bride, though I also read the book), my favorite quote is “Life is pain, Highness. Anyone telling you differently is selling something.”
Q: Would you write another book (or are you already writing another book)?
A: I am usually writing something. I began writing as a teenager with Star Trek fan fiction published in fanzines. Then, during college and grad school, I wrote a Star Trek novel, which got to the agent and editing stage before running up against copyright. In college, I kept a daily journal for three years, which inspired later attempts at memoir/creative nonfiction. Recently, I published an article about a humanist view of the climate crisis on AmericanHumanist.com and in a UK humanist publication. I have ideas for other humanist articles, such as one explaining why baseball is the most humanist sport.
Though I never intended to write children’s books, the process of publishing Run, Sparky, Run! has given me ideas for others—one about my experience growing up as a classic middle child of three and another about climate change. What I am currently working on is a science fiction novel based on the alien species that was the enemy in my long-ago Star Trek novel.
Q: Is there an author you look up to, and why?
A: I look up to John Irving and Anne Tyler because they each have written many books, all with common elements familiar to readers (New Hampshire, boys’ prep schools, and wrestling for Irving; Baltimore and complicated families for Tyler), yet each book is self-contained and unique, and each has its own voice.
Q: If there were an apocalypse and you could only take five books into your doomsday bunker, what would they be?
A: I am cheating a bit, since three of my choices contain multiple books/plays/poems, and there are two possible Vonnegut books.
- The Complete Shakespeare by William Shakespeare
- The Once and Future King by T.H. White
- Slaughterhouse-Five or Cat’s Cradle, both by Kurt Vonnegut
- The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide by Douglas Adams
- The Complete, Fully Illustrated Works by Lewis Carroll
Learn more about Beth Kantrowitz and her new book, Run, Sparky, Run!, here. Coming soon October 21, 2025!