In 1997 Lynn Brunelle '85 was senior editor and ghostwriter of children's books for Workman Publishing Company in New York City. Less than a year later she was holding an Emmy for Outstanding Writing for a Children's Television Series, which she won as head writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy.

"I'd seen Bill Nye doing on TV what I'm doing in books," said Brunelle, who has written about 30 children's books all told, including several for Scientific American and five for the Discovery Channel on subjects ranging from bacteria to volcanoes.

The Nye show, she says, was funny, fast paced and had a frantic back-and-forth quality that hooks kids and "connects science with all sorts of other things." Solidly grounded with her Colby majors in biology and English, four years of teaching in a middle school, an M.A. in art history and six years of writing about science for kids, Brunelle thought her background was "perfect for getting that stuff across. My grand scheme was to connect everything—current science, history, social studies—with art," she said.

Three weeks after contacting the Nye show, she was on the set in Seattle "watching Bill say words I'd written—it was surreal," Brunelle said. She deems Nye, whose own science work is in fluid dynamics, an enthusiastic, charming actor in front of the camera. Brunelle's Emmy for writing—"There's my English background," she said—left her fearful that somebody would say, "Sorry, we made a mistake" and take away the statue. Instead, she won a second Emmy in 1999 for the Outstanding Children's Series when Bill Nye the Science Guy beat out Sesame Street.

Production of the Nye show ended in February 1999, and Brunelle began free-lance work on a series of books on science experiments with water and magnets for Somerville House Books in Toronto and on a series for all age groups for the Gymboree chain of stores. Back from a honeymoon in Venice following her marriage last fall to Keith Uyekawa, she also reviews toys for Amazon.com and writes on science in the natural world for Kids Contact magazine. She's even found time to work on a novel aimed at kids ages 10-14.

Her major project, however, involves combining books and TV. With two others from the Nye show she founded Big Head Entertainment to produce Brain Quest, a sort of Jeopardy! for kids. Based on questions and answers for first through eighth graders, she says, the show is "straightforward and simple in a challenging way." They planned to shoot the pilot this April.

At the annual television convention in New Orleans recently, Brunelle met with executives from Warner Brothers, Fox, Discovery, Nickelodeon and Children's Television Workshop "to start the buzz over Brain Quest. I felt like quite the small fish in the mighty ocean of the entertainment industry—maybe even a protozoan," she said.

All along, Brunelle says, she has been encouraged to head to Los Angeles and write for sitcoms, but she declines. "I've got this thing about making good TV for kids. TV is such an amazing, powerful tool. It can teach kids so much," she said. "The Simpsons is producing a generation of non-achievers. We want to come across as 'it's cool to be smart!'"

—Robert Gillespie