Unraveling Mysteries with Candace Fleming: ‘Is It Real? The Loch Ness Monster’

A podcast interview with Candace Fleming discussing Is It Real? The Loch Ness Monster on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

Is the Loch Ness Monster real? Join award-winning author Candace Fleming as she takes us beneath the murky waters of Scotland’s most famous mystery.

In this captivating conversation, Candace reveals how she transforms rigorous research into page-turning adventures for young readers, shares her unique approach to investigating unexplained phenomena, and discusses why true stories can be even more compelling than fiction. Discover how curiosity and critical thinking come together in her latest book Is It Real? The Loch Ness Monster and why nonfiction has the power to transform young minds.

Whether you’re an educator, parent, or simply fascinated by enduring mysteries, this episode offers valuable insights into the art of storytelling and the joy of discovery.

Subscribe to The Growing Readers Podcast to ensure you never miss an episode celebrating the creators shaping young readers’ lives.

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Read the Transcript

Bianca Schulze Hi Candy, welcome to The Growing Readers Podcast.

Candace Fleming Hi Bianca, I’m really excited to be here.

Bianca Schulze My gosh, I think I’m even more excited. I’ve been reading your books for a really long time. And just straight off the bat, I have three kids and my youngest is a complete nonfiction fan. He loves nonfiction books. And I think I just want to start with it because you’ve probably made a lot of school visits and talked to a lot of your readers. What do you think draws some kids specifically to the nonfiction genre?

Candace Fleming I think I know what draws me to the nonfiction genre and I think it’s the same thing with young readers. I think it’s all about curiosity, about the fact that these amazing things happen in our world or happened in our world. And it’s that—it’s the same reason I write nonfiction. I discover something I didn’t know. And I say to myself, what? Right? Like, huh, that happened. And then I’m off.

Right. And I think that’s the same thing with kids. I think they’re absolutely fascinated by the world, absolutely fascinated by people, what people have done in the past, you know, natural history as well as, you know, human history. And I think that’s what draws them to nonfiction. I actually think kids like nonfiction more than adults give them credit for.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Well, I always ask this question. So they say that to be a writer, you should be a reader first. And I’m wondering, do you agree with that?

Candace Fleming I completely agree with that, absolutely, yes.

Bianca Schulze And so was there a pivotal moment in your life in which you considered yourself a reader?

Candace Fleming I remember the moment that I understood what it meant to really be a reader. It wasn’t just that you went to school and you read out loud something, and the teacher determined if you were reading or not, right? Which is how I had experienced that until I got to second grade and I was in second grade and we had a snowstorm and we were supposed to as a family go off to this Christmas party and my mother had been baking cookies all day for it and Santa was supposed to come and I was so disappointed. We got this monster snowstorm and we couldn’t go, and I was miserable, and my mother handed me an early Christmas present, which was a copy of E.B. White‘s Stuart Little.

And I remember sitting in, we had a window seat and I remember sitting in that window seat watching it, you know, fall like drapes of snow with warm cookies from the oven that we were no longer taking to the party, but with a copy of Stuart Little. And I read and I read and I read and I read. And I can remember when I looked up from the book I had completely disappeared into, I suddenly realized that this, this was what reading was about. And I suddenly could not wait for the next book that I would read. And that’s sort of my moment. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze I love that actually. I and I feel like I can just visualize too. I mean, what a beautiful, snowy setting and a disappointing moment that the book was like your savior and what a special moment.

Candace Fleming Right. Books continue to be my savior, right? They continue to be my companion. You know, they make me happy. They fill those moments when I feel sad. They’re terrific. And reading and cookies, in my opinion, go hand in hand. So, yeah.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, I love it. I love it. Well, I’m curious if you remember like a specific nonfiction book that you like remember being the first nonfiction book that felt really special to you.

Candace Fleming I’m going to confess, the books that were nonfiction books when I was a kid were not interesting books. They didn’t tell a true story, right? They told stories certainly, but none of them were true. Like I had these biographies set. And I think about it now. I think first of all, it was mostly men. The women that were portrayed in the set of biographies were nurses. It was Claire Barton, Florence Nightingale, was the woman that did the flag, Betsy Ross.

Bianca Schulze Yes, yes, yes, yes. I claim being Australian on that one, sorry.

Candace Fleming Whatever. Yeah, mm. Yeah, you can see real important women in my memory. I know how fabulous. So, yeah, so the others were all men. And what I came to discover is that they were completely not true. So they were said that they were biographies, but they just made up and in truth, they were more like sermons, like directionally correct how wonderful a person George Washington was and how wonderful a person Florence Nightingale was and no flaws, no human anything and not even the truth. So other books were just books of facts, which did not interest me and weren’t written in the most compelling ways as they are now. But I do remember discovering how amazing true stories were the truth. I was reading Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell.

I was in fourth grade. I read this book about this girl, first of all, who survives on an island. And I was obsessed and compelled by the story. I got to the end and it was the first time I encountered an author’s note. And the author’s note, Scott O’Dell, told the readers that this was based on a true story, that this girl had actually been a real living, breathing person. And what had happened, he continued to tell in the author’s note what had happened to her after she was found on this island and taken back to civilization. And that was the first time that I thought to myself, what? This is true? One doesn’t really have to make up things to have an amazing story. And I will never forget that moment either.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, yeah. I’m curious. Well, actually, curious is a funny word. But you said what you think brings kids to nonfiction is that sense of curiosity. And that’s what brings you to write it. Like what? I mean, beyond curiosity, or maybe it is just curiosity. Is there something specific that drives you and motivates you and keeps you wanting to write nonfiction?

Candace Fleming Yeah, well, it’s curious. That’s what I start out with. But you know what? I’m curious about a lot of stuff that I go and look up some facts and I go, OK, I’m satisfied. Right. And I don’t write a book about those things. It’s the things that I feel some connection to. And it’s hard for me to explain this, but I feel a real connection to—I have an emotional connection to it. I can see with this piece of nonfiction a bigger issue, a bigger message. And I don’t even like the word message because that sounds like I’m writing it for a message. But there’s a bigger something. I actually call it when I teach writing, I actually call it the vital idea. So why am I telling kids this particular piece of history? Why am I telling kids about a particular animal like, you know, a narwhal? Why am I bothering to do that? And it has to be more than I simply think a kid should learn about narwhals or I simply think a kid should learn about the Loch Ness Monster and what the real history was. It’s more than that. I see something bigger, something that connects to readers of the 21st century, that I have something bigger to say with that nonfiction story, just like fiction writers do actually. So I’m not writing for a report, right? I’m not writing for my work to be used as a report. More power to you if you do, but that’s not my main goal.

Bianca Schulze Well, let’s talk about your new book. So the title is, Is It Real? The Loch Ness Monster. And it takes readers on an investigative journey while also teaching about critical thinking, which of what you said, maybe that’s the greater story is learning critical thinking. But it appears to be the first in what will become the Is It Real? series, right?

Candace Fleming Mm-hmm.

Bianca Schulze So what inspired you to tackle this particular mystery of the Loch Ness Monster and lead with it for the series?

Candace Fleming Okay, so what I have been drawn to by these by cryptids and it won’t just be cryptids. So there’s mystery stories and ghost stories, things that people have heard before and have sort of taken on faith, right? Wouldn’t that be great if there really was a big monster in Loch Ness, right? But something that I’ve long thought about, especially when it comes to my writing of nonfiction is what’s truth and what’s not.

And how do we, as people, look at evidence and determine if something we’re being told is true or not? How do we look at the evidence? How do we collect the evidence? What’s the difference between an opinion, an assumption, and a fact? And I think right now, all of us are a little confused about how to do that, and particularly kids. So I wanted to find a really fun way for kids to learn a few principles of critical thinking. So instead I have, what I’m doing is having them be investigators. So they are investigators for the Black Swan scientific investigation. That’s what they, each reader is. So it’s in second person, at least a portion of it. They are the investigators and they are given the evidence. This is what we have always based the story of the Loch Ness Monster on.

Right. So indeed, the vital idea for this really is how do we look at information? How do we parse information? How do we gather evidence? How do we ask questions? But let’s both all face that. That’s really boring. If I put it in just, you know, a modern day, here’s a news article. So instead, I thought, let me come to it with things that I’m naturally interested still am was totally interested in when I was a third, fourth or fifth grader. I’m going to write a book about things that we’re all really interested in. We wish maybe were true. So, Loch Ness Monster. I made a list for Scholastic. It is a series. I made a list of about 50 is it true topics that I could have written about. And my editor, Lisa Sandel and I both sort of agreed that kids are really fascinated with the Loch Ness Monster. If you had to ask me what’s my favorite cryptid, I’d say Nessie for sure. And so I thought I’m going to lead with the Loch Ness Monster. He’s a guy, a monster. I love it. He’s a monster that we’re all familiar with, right? We’ve all heard about. So I’m not asking kids to learn necessarily something before they can investigate it, which makes the investigation easier.

I also don’t tell you the entire history of the Loch Ness Monster, just really the origins of the Loch Ness Monster. This is how the craze really began. Let’s take a look at one summer in 1934 and let’s see what you think. Do you think this is real or do you not?

Bianca Schulze Well, you’ve written about everything from Tutankhamun’s tomb to World War II codebreakers, right? So what were any of the unique challenges that you faced in writing about a mystery that remains? I can edit this part out. Spoiler alert—unsolved. So what was some of the challenges?

Candace Fleming I think my biggest challenge was I didn’t want to disappoint readers. I didn’t want to just flat out go, this is not true, right? Because that is not fun. And let’s face it, it is fun to imagine that there might be a monster or an alien or any of these things, you know, Bigfoot. That would be so fun. And I didn’t want to like crush that imagination. I didn’t want to crush their ability to say, well, well, maybe.

And I didn’t want to answer the question for them. So knowing that, that’s why I went with this portion of the book, the middle portion of the book, where we switch from third person, right? Telling straight up narrative, nonfiction. That’s why I switched to the second part of the book, which is in second person. So you are now going to look, you know this, you have a handbook from BSSI, you have all these tools, you have a computer that has the BSSI database on it, right? And so you get to decide and I am only going to present the information. And at the end of the second section, it actually asks you, the investigator, that question, is it real? I’m not going to decide for them. I’m guessing some readers will determine that they think it’s real, right? And that’s okay.

Because what they’ve done is have fun, first of all, I hope. But they’ve also walked through the process of critical thinking. So perhaps they’ll use it the next time. The last section, then, of course, is what experts and scientists and scholars have said in the past and as recent as I could get. So that would have been 2023, I think. So they can then pit what they determined against what scholars have determined.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, I think as a reader, obviously I’m an adult reader, but I loved all of these factual pieces of information that you brought in and how some of them were from the 30s. But there were really recent pieces of, I guess, do we call it evidence, information. So I loved that relevance because I think sometimes some kids maybe don’t want to talk about things that happened in the past. They want to know what’s happening around them right now. And so I loved that relevance that you brought in by including that information.

Candace Fleming And I wanted kids, like I said, I didn’t want to go be the bummer and go, there’s no Loch Ness monster. That’s not fun. And who wants to read that? And so it was, I think, imperative that that last section be there simply because I could say, look, I have all these adult scientists who are still coming out here. They are still looking for things. And some of them really are real scientists, real mathematicians, people with a lot of knowledge, not just somebody that wishes they could find Loch Ness Monster. The fact that we still have online, that there is still a website where people can put the sightings that they saw. And there are some from last week. And I send kids to that. Yeah, I think it gives relevance. We’re still looking. We’re still thinking about it. What could it be if it’s not a monster? What else might it be?

Bianca Schulze Yeah.

Candace Fleming Yeah, eels.

Bianca Schulze Right. And it also opens up a philosophical question too, right? And there was a book I read, it’s fiction, as a young adult that really brought me back into reading as an adult. And it was Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder. And it’s been so long since I read the book. But if I remember correctly, the little piece of philosophy was, just because you haven’t seen a white crow, do you stop looking for one, right? And your book is that philosophical as well. It’s like just because maybe people question the sightings doesn’t mean they didn’t see it, right?

Candace Fleming That’s exactly right. And I’m hoping kids will actually look up why. I mean, there’s there’s something I hope they’ll look up. Why is it the black swan scientific investigation? Because we all know that piece of critical thinking. It’s a you know, it’s a principle. Just because you haven’t seen a black swan doesn’t mean there are no black swans. Right. So so yeah. And the fact that the world is an astonishing place, that there are miracles in our world every day and we don’t—yeah, I’m thinking about like my monsters and water, right? I’m thinking giant squid, right? We know based on scientific evidence scientists believe there are hundreds of thousands of them in our oceans, they’re a size of a school bus that we don’t see them. We rarely see them. I mean, what is that? Right? That’s that’s astonishing. So there maybe could be you never know. Like I said, the world’s miraculous place. So I hope Nessie, if he’s there, swims up while I’m still alive. So yeah, so we can all see him. Although you think, although you think really would it be as fun as, you know, isn’t it more fun to think about the mystery and wonder about it than have it solved? That’s how I feel about Amelia Earhart too. It’s like part of me goes, I need to know. And the other part of me goes, it’s so great not to know. So yeah.

Bianca Schulze Yes. I know.

Bianca Schulze Well, what did your research look like for this book? And was there anything different about your process for this book than for other books you’ve written?

Candace Fleming You know, my research for this one, usually I travel to the places and I did not go to Scotland, unfortunately. But I did look at a lot of those old newspapers from the time that were printed in Scotland and in the UK. I read a lot of those old newspapers. I went to, gosh, I can’t remember the website, but Adrian Shine has a site online. He’s sort of like the foremost Loch Ness guy. He’s been doing searching for Nessie since the 70s, started out as a firm believer and now is not. But don’t let that dissuade you because he’s still looking. But he is an expert. So he had a lot to say about what evidence I should present and which evidence I could not, should not. I went to newspapers from the 70s as well because there’s a lot going on suddenly at Loch Ness. The 70s were like a watershed decade in the world. Remember that was the year, you’re too young to remember. But all of a sudden we were bringing back stories about alien abductions and Roswell suddenly became this big thing again and we had ghosts and angels and demonic possession. I mean it was a really strange year or decade for people to think about paranormal cryptids, a lot of stuff was going on in the 70s. And so when I went back and looked, of course, Loch Ness was, you know, Nessie was high on the list of things that suddenly sort of made a rebound. And it was while I was looking at that 70s rebound that I found that story about how that famous picture that we all imagine when we see Nessie in our head, how that was manufactured, you know? And then I was like, wait, I have found my Loch Ness, the Loch Ness story that I wanna tell. And I wasn’t sure which Loch Ness story I wanna tell. There are so many of them, you know? So I thought the origin story feels right to me, so yeah.

Bianca Schulze Yeah. When you’re doing your research, obviously there’s probably times for different books where you can’t speak to anybody directly attached to the concept or the theory or the theme. Is there a part of your research that brings you the most joy? And is it the most helpful, like talking specifically to people that are really in the know? Or is it the traveling and being in the setting? Like, what is it that you enjoy the most and helps the most with your writing.

Candace Fleming I have, you know, I have four paths of research. And the first thing is always primary source material. So that one I was talking about looking at old newspapers, old interviews that like the McKays gave or George Spicer gave sketches that they made of the sightings that they had, you know, their, their sighting of the Loch Ness monster. This is what they saw. Those are all primary sources. The first reportings of it.

Newsreels, I watched old newsreels, silent movie—I mean, you know, some of them, old newsreels and those are all primary sources. It gave me a real feel for Nessie mania, which I hadn’t quite realized was as big as it was—old advertisements from the day. So I’m looking at those primary sources. And that really is for me, the treasure trove for me. I love primary sources because you really go back in time, it’s like a time capsule, right? You go back and you get to see what people actually said, what their descriptions actually were, what photographs they looked at, what people in the world were saying about their claims and how the claims grew in the newspapers and how certain reporters added to those stories.

You know, I think my favorite character in the whole origin story is Marmaduke Wetherall. You can’t beat a name like that, right? But I didn’t even know he was part of the story till I went back and looked at those primary sources. And folks in Loch Ness had brought in, he was a hunter, a professional big game hunter. They wanted him to come down and find Nessie. If anybody could do it, Marmaduke could. And it turns out that he could not, right?

Bianca Schulze No.

Candace Fleming I would not have even known he was in the story if I had not gone back to those primary sources. So I love primary sources. So those really are my treasure trove. Yeah.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, yeah, and you’re right that Marmaduke Wetherell—I mean you couldn’t—I mean you couldn’t even make that name up. It’s like perfect.

Candace Fleming No, it’s a perfect name and it’s—and there you go you go huh that’s real—it is right—yeah.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, yeah. Well, I read that you intentionally make a mess when writing. So tell me about that and how it helps you.

Candace Fleming I write everything by hand, picture books, middle grade novels, Loch Ness, Is It real? Loch Ness Monster written by hand, everything. I use a loose leaf, wait a minute, let me say it again, loose leaf, wide lined paper and a Bic pen. And I know that sounds really specific, but for me, those are the tools that all books start with. And Bic has a blue Bic pen, it’s unbelievably cheap pen. And it has a very big smell. And for me, when I smell it, I know that I’m writing that like clicks in. I like wide-lined loose-leaf paper because it’s not precious. You can slide it across your desk, you can crumple it up and throw it in the trash can, you can scratch all over it, you can do anything you want to it, right? It just feels not precious. And for me, that’s intentional because writing really is about play and it really is about discovery.

And if I’m sit down and—for, I’m, I’m, learned to write by hand. I didn’t learn to compose on a computer. So for me to compose on the computer feels like that’s permanent and it feels like it’s a project. And that is not a good way for me to, to create a book, to discover ways of telling a story. I have to have that freedom and that mess. And that’s why right now you’re looking, we’re looking at each other here and. And you’ve got one tiny corner of my room because the rest of my office is covered in wide line, loose leaf paper and blue Bic pen. It really and truly is. So, yeah, that’s why I use it. And I encourage kids. I think there’s something really tactile about those words coming out of your hand. And I have a unique abbreviation system that I’ve made up for myself that no one would ever understand what that meant with and the She, he, yeah. So that I can catch up with my thoughts. But that’s how I do it, entire books. So when I get done, say I get done with a book that’s, oh, like I had a book this year called The Enigma Girl, so it was about 300 pages. My stack will be, you know, might be 300 printed pages, but I’ll have six or 700 handwritten pages. I know.

Bianca Schulze That’s amazing. I feel like I’m having this moment where I don’t feel very intelligent because why have I never thought to write on loose leaf paper? It’s genius. Because especially if you’re trying to write something longer, and sometimes you might realize that this chapter might do better. I love it. Oh my gosh. Anyone cannot see Candace just held up her loose leaf paper with her large pen writing, and I loved it.

Candace Fleming Ha ha ha!

Bianca Schulze But yeah, it’s genius. I mean, I think I’ve just, that’s going to be something I absolutely take away and move forward with. Yeah.

Candace Fleming Try it. It’s amazing. What really, at least for me, it really clicks into my head. Try anything. We can scratch it out. I mean, seriously, I don’t have to go back. I don’t have to move things around. I don’t, I just like scratch it out. And you know, I leave big holes. Sometimes I have no idea what comes next. And so I just leave a big line or a bunch of lines, meaning we’re going to fill this in later, move on to the next part.

Right. And I just don’t feel like I have that freedom, which is really what it’s all about. I don’t feel like I have that freedom when I’m composing on the computer. So if it’s misspelled, when I’m on the computer, it stops me. Right. If I’m composing on the computer goes, you’ve misspelled the word business. It’s a word I typically misspell. And so all of a sudden I want to stop and fix that. But then everything that is in my head goes away. So.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, and even not just on the computer. I always handwrite to start with, and it’s in a notebook. And even when you’re in a notebook, those pages are fixed. You’re either scribbling out or you’re rewriting things. And you run out of loose leaf paper, like you said. Don’t know what’s coming next. OK, leave it. And then you can just slide that next piece in when you figure it out. Love it. Love it.

Candace Fleming Right? Mm-hmm. I love Bic. And you know what else I love about Bic? It’s so cheap. It’s the perfect pen, in my opinion. It smells like writing. But when you’re done, I also roll up my sleeves because I know that my whole right forearm will be covered in blue ink. And I can actually, it’s like a badge of honor. I can hold it up and go, I wrote today. I wrote today. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bianca Schulze Yes, I love it. I love it. Well, it’s definitely a true art form to when you’re writing nonfiction to both delight and engage young readers while having something important to say. And you have that skill down beautifully. So what’s your secret to finding that balance between entertainment and education when you’re writing about something like scientific investigation?

Candace Fleming Thank you.

Candace Fleming Okay, so I’m going to confess this and don’t be shocked. But when I finally feel like I’m ready to write, when I know the story and I’m not talking about the facts, I know the story, I understand that sort of arc that it has. I will go ahead and write the story. And if I need to weave in some facts, I come back to it. So I leave it.

Oftentimes when I’m writing, and this is first draft stuff, right? So I’m writing just for the story. I know that I need a quote. It feels to me, I mean, I’ve done this enough, that it feels like I need a quote or I need a really good description or I need to know what the weather is. I know that I need that because I’m writing scenes, right? Just like a fiction writer does. I know that I need some of this stuff and I have a research gap. I don’t know that either. I actually leave it blank.

So if you look at my first drafts, they have all these lines that indicates to me, you know, Candy, you’re going to have to come back and and fill this in. But you don’t need to do that now. I have the information. I have it in my box of research, my boxes of research. I have that. I can find it, but I can’t stop right now because I’m following my story and following that story. And I think following the story, writing in scenes, using all those same tools as a fiction writer, I think is what makes it, I know this, makes it engaging and readable and entertaining. And the education—that some sounds terrible, say this, but it kind of comes in second for me. So you won’t get, you know, I won’t make up as I’m writing what the weather is. I’ll actually put weather, a lot of times, weather, you know, dress, you know, carpet.

Bianca Schulze Yep. Yep. Yep.

Candace Fleming Those are examples, you know, what color was the carpet? And those are things you can generally go back and find, you know, sometimes you can’t, then you go, well, I won’t mention that the carpet was green, but sometimes you can, you know, yeah.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, yeah, that’s so cool. So if I have it right, it’s like you have the concept and the theme first, then most importantly is the story, the arc, and then making sure that the facts and the research is there. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Candace Fleming Mm-hmm. Yeah, the little itty bitty thing. So I do the research first and the research always reveals, at least to me, what story it is that I want to tell and how. And once I figure out what story I want to tell and how, what angle on this particular piece of history or science that I’m going to take, once I know that, then I go ahead and write it. But I’m going to write it story first, right?

Bianca Schulze Yeah. Have you ever come back to your loose leaf paper and seen a blank space and thought, what the heck did I leave this blank space for?

Candace Fleming All the time, all the time. And the one I held up to, I’m like, I’m not sure what that means. I actually wrote a note to myself, C symbolize C, my initial, I like, I call myself C symbolize. I think I’ll figure it out or not, you know, I’ve, I’ve also had that where I know that I have a quote or I know I have a description by recall it. I know I’m going to come back to it. And then I can’t find it in the mess that is my research, right? And then you go, well, there’s a problem. I’m going to have to write around that.

Bianca Schulze Ha ha ha ha ha. That’s so funny.

Well, so we talked about this before, but the book teaches kids to be critical thinkers while investigating a really fascinating mystery. So can you talk us through one of your favorite examples from the book where you help readers distinguish between fact and fiction?

Candace Fleming My favorite and I love them all, my favorite is page 43. And on page 43, we discuss wishful thinking and you, the investigator, you take a look at your handbook. Every investigator has his Black Swan scientific investigative handbook to give you tips or to jog your memory which is often the case with my investigators because they’re so smart. And on page 43, we remind readers that, or we warn readers that the more you want to believe something, the more you should question it. We all are susceptible to that, right? Kids, adults. And so that I think is, there’s a lot of fun things to look at, but that I think is probably the most important part of the investigation section is to be aware of what you really wish was true, even though all the evidence is to the contrary.

Bianca Schulze Yes, I love that. That’s such a great life lesson that can be applied to so many areas. Well, I’m curious then sort of on that specific topic, were there any moments in your research when you had to challenge your own assumptions about the Loch Ness Monster? Or were you already clear on your…

Candace Fleming So much. That’s that’s a really great question. I wasn’t clear. I had to remind myself that because I came in and I assumed right. I’ve already and there you go. We’re going to talk about in the book, assumption, opinion, in fact, what are the differences? But I already came in going, there’s no Loch Ness monster. That’s completely ridiculous. But here’s what challenged me.

One, that I had to try desperately, I mean, I really worked really hard to make sure that that did not come clear from the author, that I don’t believe it. And the other thing I discovered was, when the research was, had not really considered the fact that the Loch Ness Monster could actually be something else, not necessary, not necessarily a monster. But for instance, scientists were looking at giant eels, right? And it could be giant eels because they did DNA tests of the water and discovered all of this eel DNA. And I thought, well, there’s something crazy. It could have been a giant eel. And then, of course, I’m looking at the historical record. I go back, have we ever seen giant eels? Have eels ever been a problem in Loch Ness? And lo and behold, they have. And that changed a lot for me. So I would say to you, I wish it was Nessie, but based just on the origin story, I would say no, but that does not mean that there isn’t something else out in that lake. So it has changed my opinion.

Bianca Schulze Well, I was kind of hoping we could do some fun little rapid fire questions. I have just three of them. Like just like snappy answer here. What’s the wildest Loch Ness monster theory you encountered during your research?

Candace Fleming My wildest Loch Ness—okay, that there’s right now that somebody recently found a tunnel to the secret cave of Loch Ness Monster and Loch Ness Monster is a female and she has a baby. And so they’re keeping the place that the tunnel secret because they don’t want to disturb mom and baby.

Bianca Schulze Okay, I love that one. All right. If you could give young detectives just one tool for investigating mysteries, what would it be?

Candace Fleming The ability to ask good questions.

Bianca Schulze All right, we’ll complete this sentence. The biggest mistake people make when investigating mysteries is…

Candace Fleming I think I think about 20 of them. Wait a minute. The biggest mistake people make when investigating mysteries is not to go back to the primary resources, not to go back to the primary source material.

Bianca Schulze Great answer. All right. Well, what do you hope that this book may spark in young readers?

Candace Fleming Curiosity, need to know more, and the ability to find out more, to find the answers, to find the truths.

Bianca Schulze Yeah. And what’s next in the series? So we know that there’s more and you presented 50 ideas. So I mean, are we going to get all 50? What’s next?

Candace Fleming I don’t think so. I was like, you know, here’s—look at this is open ended series. Bigfoot is next. And yes, simply based on what we decided, you know, I’m fascinated with Bigfoot. So is my editor, Lisa, but we know that kids are super, you know, they find Bigfoot really interesting. And so, yeah, Bigfoot’s next.

Bianca Schulze Yeah. Yeah. My brain, when I was reading it, was like, hope that Bigfoot or Yeti is next. And then I was like all over the, like, UFOs. Yeah.

Candace Fleming You know, I know, I love UFOs having written one, but also there’s a mermaid from Florida that someone found that I really liked the story of. Yeah, there are so many great, crazy, wonderful stories out there. So.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, wonderful. Well, if there was just one thing that listeners took away from our conversation today, what would you want that to be?

Candace Fleming Love reading, love nonfiction, have fun. You know, keep an open mind.

Bianca Schulze Yeah, beautiful. Well, Candy, thank you so much for taking us on this fascinating exploration of the Loch Ness mystery. Your ability to weave together entertainment and education while empowering young readers to think critically is so very cool to me. I love how you’ve shown that the best investigations often lead to more questions than answers. And that’s exactly what makes this book and your other books so exciting.

Candace Fleming Thank you.

Bianca Schulze So thanks so much for writing it. Thanks for wanting to continue this series. It’s going to be fabulous. And just thank you so much for being here today.

Candace Fleming I enjoyed it. Thanks, Bianca.

Show Notes

Publisher’s Book Summary: Put on your detective hat and prepare all your investigative tools, because you’ve been assigned a new case to solve: the mystery of the Loch Ness Monster!

Follow along as award-winning author Candace Fleming uses all of her nonfiction tools and storytelling prowess to investigate the enduring mystery surrounding the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.

Nestled in the lush green hills of the Scotland Highlands lies Loch Ness, a deep, murky lake with a storied history. It is also the home of the Loch Ness Monster. Numerous stories and photographs by people claiming to have spotted the mysterious monster have surfaced, often gaining immediate fame. But after decades of countless expeditions, documentaries, firsthand accounts, pictures, and videos, the mystery of Nessie continues to haunt us.

Now, Sibert Award-winning author Candace Fleming invites you to become a detective and to join the race to uncover the truth. You’ll learn how real-life detectives and scientists conduct their investigations to solve the greatest mysteries as the principles of the Scientific Method and more tools for boosting critical thinking and analysis are introduced. You will consider the evidence, see if you can tell the difference between fact and fiction, and maybe you can answer this age-old question about the Loch Ness monster: Is it real?

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