No Kids in Cages

We don't usually get overtly political over here, but there are times when it's unavoidable. Times when something is so unconscionably, unimaginably WRONG that speaking out is not an option. Over the past few days we've seen the rights and well-being of migrant children, of "their" children, clearly articulated as less important than the rights and well-being of "our" children, doing irreparable damage to thousands as a result. Even with the promised incremental change to policy, kids have already been harmed, and it's inexcusable.

A vast swath of the kidlit community has come together in protest of this policy, publicly signing an open letter in opposition to the conditions under which these immigrant children are being held, and raising an incredible $173,533 so far for donation to Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services (RAICES) and a handful of other organizations providing services to immigrants and refugees at the border. You can read more and donate here.

The final thought I'd like to leave you with is this tweet from fellow author Carrie Jones:

If you are writing books for teens and kids, it is usually a good idea to actually care about teens and kids.

Not just some kids and teens.
All kids and teens.

— Carrie Jones (@carriejonesbook) June 19, 2018

WRITERS' RITES: Creation In Color

Things have changed, in children's literature. Historically, our posts have been alerting people to what's going on in smaller corners of a small world, and most of our time has been spent in talking about book deals, books, classroom visits, and young readers. Most of our time has been spent in earnestly seeking to understand and communicate both the trends and the ebb and flow of the market, sometimes in personal reference to us, but most often in reference to the whole world of children's lit. More personally, AF and I were both in on the big "multiculturalism" wave of the 90's. [AF: Compared to the limited range of stories available in the 80s, when we were growing up, it was a hopeful trend.] We attended conferences and listened to the talk about expanding stories and being inclusive. We hoped it meant something, that narratives about mixed kids would become more prominent, and that identity and ethnicity wouldn't stand out as hot-button "trend" books, but part of a normalized, homogenized whole. We've both listened in as the conversation has shifted to "diversity" and then away from that to the idea of "writing from the margins" and the use of "own voices" as part of the narrative.

We've mostly been pretty quiet. By nature and personality, neither Sarah nor I are scrappers and thus have been mostly observers in the growing pains of this brave new world of children's lit. But, recently I participated more directly in a Twitter conversation about being both a woman writer and a woman of color writing. A simple comment with a hashtag bloomed into a six+ hour outpouring of snark and pain and rage -- and it shocked a lot of people, galvanized others into trying to make it a "movement," offended a few, and infuriated others.

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No one needs to explain to anyone (because if you have to explain it, that person to whom you're speaking likely is predisposed to disagree, and then explanations will not assist) that this country has a problem with institutionalized, ingrained, implicit bias, or more directly with racism. If you're new to this idea, welcome. The rest of us have known for some time. What might have previously been harder to see is that something ingrained infects everything, everything. EVERY. THING. Even children's lit, a place where we previously insisted all was happiness, rainbow unicorns, and fluffy bunnies. "But, it's a happy, close-knit community!" people insisted. Which it is, unless you challenge the status quo and bring in new thinking - and then you'd be surprised by the fury. I know I have been. "All this talk just stirs up bitterness," some have said in response to the conversation. Yes. Not everyone is happy, even though they are in the field, because the field of children's lit is not yet what it could be, what it needs to be. And, that unhappiness is also okay. It's all part of the process.

Stepping aside from the daily misunderstandings, slights, overlooking and misdirecting, there are those in children's lit taking on the work of changing it, and I once again have to give them respect. Reading While White is the first blog I've ever seen written by people who are doing something specific about implicit bias in the children's lit field. And it's not easy for them; there is push-back against their every blog post, even as their stated purpose is to learn for themselves how to listen and hold themselves accountable for how their privileged whiteness impacts the way they see the world. It's as if every thing they write is a personalized rebuke to someone else, and there is a lot of bitterness.

We're mostly observers here, as I've said. I have a raging anxiety which causes me hives at the thought of the constant emotional labor and combat it takes to make inroads in the conversation around visibility and authenticity. This is not work I can do. [AF: And, as a mixed person, visibility and authenticity are huge issues--sometimes, those of us of mixed descent are racially or ethnically ambiguous, and if you aren't recognized as a "something," it's easy to feel like you're a nothing. Invisible. Not enough of one, not enough of the other, and authentic enough for neither.] 

And yet, even as we don't all work directly for this change, we are a part of it. As we usher greater visibility, accommodation, accuracy and accountability into young adult and children's literature, these changes will become a part of the world for those who come after us. AF is more thoughtful and articulate, and neither of us are quick with a comeback - we both prefer to think slowly and write and the conversations have at times been boiling along furiously. We've both stepped back from those -- but yesterday, it was really nice to be heard. It was cathartic to express the stupid things which have been said. It was nice not to feel crazy, exceptional, isolated. It is validating to feel that you are not alone. [AF: It is eye-opening to see certain types of comments in a new light, too--as well as to bear witness to some of the comments that I've been fortunate enough not to experience firsthand. It enhanced MY understanding of what fellow women writers and writers of color experience.] And that's why yesterday's conversation was most important.

It is hard being a woman writing in this day and age. It is hard in different ways being a woman of color writing. In many cases, people hear these sentences and assume the voices which say them are merely angry - that these microaggressions came with rejections, and that these people saying "this is hard, this is what I hear," are just victims lashing out. Not true. Sometimes the slights are said by well-meaning people who work with the women of color in question to produce their work. This is borne out by the fact that some very successful authors popped by to bring things up in these discussions. But, again, I sense a strange, slim thread of comfort in the furor, in the stories held private, and then shared -- we are moving, slowly, a troubled industry, one step at a time, toward what it should be.
Small comfort. But as long as life remains, we are the hope.

Congrats to Our Friend Ashley Hope Perez, Walden Award Finalist!

"The Amelia Elizabeth Walden Award, presented annually by ALAN, is an award in the United States for a book that exemplifies literary excellence, widespread appeal, and a positive approach to life in young adult literature."

ALAN, for those who don't know, is the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE. More acronyms: National Council of Teachers of English. This year's award goes to:

All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely
(reviewed on Guys Lit Wire)

 AND!!! The worthy field of finalists included our dear friend and fellow YA author, Ashley Hope Perez, for her recent novel Out of Darkness. YAAAY and CONGRATS!! We reviewed the book a while back, and interviewed her about it, so we wanted to round up those links right here for you along with links to our past reviews of her work. So, here you go:


Out of Darkness Review
Interview (Part 1) with Ashley Hope Perez, Author of OUT OF DARKNESS
Interview (Part 2) With Ashley Hope Pérez, Author of OUT OF DARKNESS Interview (Part 3) With Ashley Hope Pérez, Author of OUT OF DARKNESS

Guest Post: The Edge in Fiction, or: Why Safe Books Are Dead Books
Monday Review: THE KNIFE AND THE BUTTERFLY by Ashley Hope Pérez
Ashley Hope Pérez: Big Ideas, Small Venues
Debut Drumroll: Ashley Hope Pérez's WHAT CAN'T WAIT

AUTHOR INTERVIEW! Sarah Beth Durst on THE GIRL WHO COULD NOT DREAM

A little while ago I had the privilege of reading Sarah Beth Durst's latest fantasy novel for middle grade readers, The Girl Who Could Not Dream--the tale of a girl whose parents distill, bottle, and sell dreams out of a secret room in their secondhand bookstore. In my review, I wrote:

Durst's books always charm me with their imaginativeness, and this one is no exception. How wonderful, to bring all sorts of dream monsters and fears and mythical beasts to life, from frighteningly surreal Dali-esque creatures to good old flying unicorns. But, hands down, Monster is the best monster. I'll leave it to you to read the book and find out why.

It's got such a fun premise, set in a world very like our own, and I was thrilled to get to ask the author some of my burning questions about the book. She always comes up with such quirky, unique, highly individual fantasy stories, whether writing for MG, YA, or even adult fiction, and here at Finding Wonderland we've been lucky to host multiple interviews to find out more about the story behind the story.

With no further ado, here it is! Thank you to Sarah Beth Durst for agreeing to stop by again and share this with us.

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FW: The Girl Who Could Not Dream is so imaginative, set in a world where dreams can be distilled, bottled and sold. Where did the idea for this story start? With a character, a phrase, an idea?

It started with a wish, actually. "I wish I could remember my dreams."

Sometimes I have these dreams filled with dragons and aliens and telepathic dolphins, and in them I'm heroic and wise and witty and a lot more athletic... then I wake, and the dream slips away like a cloud dispersing in the wind. I often wish I could bottle up my best dreams and save them for later, to replace all the boring missed-the-train dreams.

So that's where this book started: with the wish to bottle dreams. That led to the idea of the dream shop -- a secret store where you can buy, bottle, and sell dreams. And to Sophie, whose parents own the shop and whose best friend is a cupcake-loving monster who came out of one of those bottled dreams.

FW: What were some of the challenges to writing this story? Was it difficult to strike a balance between fun/charming and scary? Did you worry at all about making it too scary or not scary enough?

One of the things I like best about writing for kids is that you can be silly and serious in the same story, even in the same moment. You can have a moment that makes you cry, and you can have a unicorn that poops rainbows.

Balancing those moments was very important to me, and it was something that I paid a lot of attention to as I was writing this book -- I wanted this book to have both, because I think life can often be funny and scary and silly and sad, all at the same time.

FW: With so many books out there that focus on dysfunctional families, it was refreshing to read a story with strong, loving family bonds, in which Sophie and her parents are a team. Was this a conscious choice?

Yes, it was. You see a lot of stories out there about characters who are strong because of pain in their past -- and I do think that's a very valid and powerful narrative structure -- but in The Girl Who Could Not Dream, I wanted to play with a character who came from a safe place... and see what would happen when she took her first step outside that familiar safe haven. I wanted to see what she'd do if everything she valued was threatened.

FW: Sophie and her friends (dream-world and real-world) seem to have a lot of potential for further adventures. Are you planning to write any other books set in this world, or with the same characters?

I don't have any immediate plans for sequels, but I have to admit that I miss Sophie and Monster and the others, so who knows what the future will bring...

Monster in particular was so much fun to write. Usually, for me, characters develop during the course of writing the story -- it takes me numerous pages to discover their voice and learn more about them -- but Monster appeared fully formed from chapter one. It felt like he plopped down on my desk and said, "Tell my story! And give me a cupcake."

FW: What are you working on right now—what's coming up next?

Right now, I'm working on an epic fantasy series for adults (and teens) entitled THE QUEENS OF RENTHIA, about bloodthirsty nature spirits and the women who can control them. They will be published by Harper Voyager, starting with THE QUEEN OF BLOOD on September 20th. I'm very, very excited about them!

Thanks so much for interviewing me!

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You can read more about Sarah Beth Durst and her work on her website--including a sneak peek at The Queen of Blood!

Guest Post: Elizabeth May On Writing Faeries and Creating Monsters

Today we are excited to host a guest post by the author of The Falconer Trilogy, Elizabeth May. We're concluding an action-packed blog tour schedule that includes the following:

Tuesday, 6/21/2016: The Reader's Antidote
Wednesday, 6/22/2016: Tales of the Ravenous Reader
Thursday, 6/23/2016: Once Upon a Twilight
Friday, 6/24/2016: Mundie Moms
Saturday, 6/25/2016: Fiction Fare
Sunday, 6/26/2016: Cracking the Cover
Monday, 6/27/2016: Stuck in YA Books

Without any further ado, here is Elizabeth's guest post shedding insight onto her inspiration and writing process when it comes to writing faeries and monsters...

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All images are provided courtesy of
the publisher and author.

The fae are an incredible example of how beauty does not necessarily mean goodness. They’re romanticized due to their otherworldly good looks, and their sexual allure is, literally, written into their legends. But more than that, faeries are interesting to write about because their moral ambiguity is a feature of their mythology. They are quick to offend, and very, very quick to resort to punishment and murder.

In Katharine Briggs’s book The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends, which I used a great deal for researching my series, The Falconer Trilogy, she has an entire chapter devoted to the morality of fae. She concludes her analyses with a statement I kept turning over in my head as I wrote my books: “We are dealing with a pendulous people . . . whose mirth is often hollow and whose beauty is precarious and glamorous. From such no great compassion can be expected” (p. 161).

Briggs draws a comparison between faeries and humans being equally morally ambiguous, and this is an idea I kept coming back to: what would a human be like if they never aged, couldn’t die, and watched as other creatures lived and died and lived and died through the centuries? What kind of monster would that create?

A big part of The Falconer Trilogy is an exploration of what creates the conditions for monstrosity, and in what conditions they’re reversible. In The Falconer, Aileana slaughters faeries because she feels justified at first (one killed her mother; they also murder people), but realizes that in doing so, she’s become something of a monster herself. Her love interest, Kiaran, is a faery with a very awful past (revealed in The Vanishing Throne), who finds himself becoming more like a human as he begins to feel for her.

My trilogy is, at its heart, like any fairy story: monsters are neither inherently good nor bad; they’re created by circumstance.

The excerpt I’ve included here is from The Vanishing Throne, and it touches a bit on this. I hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading!

Xx Elizabeth May

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Huge thanks to the author and her publisher, Chronicle Books, for putting together this blog tour! It was a privilege to catch a glimpse into another writer's process, and of course it's always fun to promote an enjoyable YA fantasy adventure series featuring a strong heroine.

Click on the respective links to read longer Scribd excerpts of The Falconer and The Vanishing Throne. 

Visit Elizabeth May online on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Randomly, on a Thursday, She Caught Up. Sort of.

I am about a week and a half overdue in posting this, but better late than never: DID YOU KNOW TANITA'S NEW BOOK IS OUT? WOO HOO! Released on Feb. 9, it's about being a foster sister and finding a family in today's complex social and racial environment, which means families come in all shapes, sizes, colors, and combinations--and the one thing you can count on is that nobody will do exactly what you expect.

Find out whether Dess and Hope can learn to cross socioeconomic, racial, and plain old personality divides to become friends as well as foster sisters--You can buy Tanita's latest novel PEAS AND CARROTS at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

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Go check out this wonderful post by Sharon Levin entitled Children's Books Make Me Smarter. I kind of thought I might be the only one who feels this way, but I'm glad I'm not! I am ALWAYS (and PROUDLY) learning from what I read, fiction and nonfiction alike; written for children, teens, or adults. This is yet another reason why we need lots and lots of stories, why diversity in children's literature is so incredibly important. As a child I learned about animals and people, about illness (You Can't Catch Diabetes from a Friend) and about Waltzing Matilda. As an adult I am still learning: pox parties, the Women's Army Corps, female aviators, neuromorphic circuitry, what it's like to live life as someone with a very different background. Let's not stop reading; let's not stop getting smarter.

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Next Wednesday, February 24th, is World Read Aloud Day! Thanks to author and agent-sister Kate Messner, I was able to sign up to participate in Skype classroom visits in honor of World Read Aloud Day, and now I'm booked for four virtual middle school visits, two on Wednesday and two on Thursday. I am very excited and a bit daunted, but I think this is a wonderful opportunity to talk to students about writing and read a little of my work. Plus I get to talk to kids in Minnesota, Florida, and Maryland without leaving my office....now I just have to clean my desk so it doesn't look like I am a total slob....

Congrats, Mr. Ambassador! Celebrating Gene Luen Yang

Photo courtesy of the author and First Second

From the press release: The Children’s Book Council (CBC), Every Child a Reader (ECAR), and the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress (CFB) have announced the appointment of Gene Luen Yang, Printz Award winner and two-time National Book Award finalist, as National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature.

The Kidlitosphere's own Betsy Bird was part of the selection committee, and having met Gene on a few occasions, I know it couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. We're longtime fans, and we've featured his books here on Finding Wonderland several times (with a review of his latest, Secret Coders, still upcoming); we've hosted him for interviews, too. In honor of his appointment as the 5th Ambassador, here's a roundup of our posts featuring Gene and his books:

Interviews:

Kids Comics Q&A Blog Tour: Interview with Gene Luen Yang  - 5/11/2015

Diversity in YA Kicks Off Tour at SFPL - 5/9/2011

Summer Blog Blast Tour Kick-Off: Gene Yang - 6/16/2007

Reviews and such:

Reviews in Tandem: THE SHADOW HERO by Gene Luen Yang and Sonny Liew - 6/30/2014

Waiting on Wednesday: Some GENE LUEN YANG Love - 2/13/2013

Thursday Review: LEVEL UP by Gene Luen Yang - 5/26/2011

May Graphic Novels Roundup, Part Two: Prime Baby, Mercury, and Stitches - 6/6/2010

Two from :01 (The Eternal Smile) - 6/26/2009

Learning Your ABCs (American Born Chinese) - 2/1/2007

CONGRATULATIONS, GENE!

Interview (Part 3) With Ashley Hope Pérez, Author of OUT OF DARKNESS

Happy Monday! We're back again today with the final installment in our interview with the wonderfully articulate and interesting Ashley Hope Pérez, who has stopped by on her blog tour for her forthcoming novel Out of Darkness. The story is based on real-life events of the March 1937 gas leak which caused a massive explosion and killed almost 300 children and teachers at a school in New London, Texas. It also explores the fraught racial, cultural, and economic environment of Depression-era, pre-WWII small-town America.

In the conclusion of our interview, we talk about what effect writers can have in exploring stories like the one in Out of Darkness; what responsibilities authors might feel when writing a story that examines issues of race and violence, whether it takes place in the historical past or the present; and how writers decide to tackle endings that don't conform to the traditional "Happily Ever After."

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Tanita Davis: Can reading books like OUT OF DARKNESS, which examines the racialized violence of the past, do anything other than provoke disdain for an ignorant history and ancestry and reinforce the idea that racism is a boogeyman from the past for teens who are allegedly post-race and colorblind?

Ashley Hope Pérez: For students who have not had the history of race relations in this country impressed on them (whether academically or in how they experience the world), I can imagine that there will be a desire to quarantine racism to the ward of “evils from history.” But I think readers can do more with Out of Darkness than that. I’ve already begun to suggest this, I suppose, when I said that Out of Darkness asks us to think about the present as well as the past. But you’re right that a lot depends on how readers receive the world of the novel.

Perhaps notions like “post-race” and “colorblind” do have relevance for some teens of color in some places, but for the most part it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone following the news—or just paying attention to the world around us—could believe race has no impact on contemporary experience. In my view, the notion of colorblindness has been a tactic of (often well-meaning) people who want to avoid the discomfort of talking about race. Other people have made better arguments than I can about why this is problematic, both for people of color and for well-meaning white people. You can see one example of this line of reasoning—that conversations of race matter for everyone, not just people of color—in this article about why and how to talk about race with kids.

TD: So maybe there’s an alternative reaction to racism as the boogeyman from the past…

AHP: I think so. Although racism is rarely expressed as openly and directly today as we see it in the experiences of the characters in Out of Darkness, the novel can still attune readers to how racism and inequality persist in our world. The vulnerability of brown and black lives in public spaces is one example; another is the view that some loves are legitimate and some are not. I hope readers’ empathetic response to Naomi, Wash, and other characters primes them to embrace the precious humanity of people like and unlike themselves, especially when those people encounter discrimination or other injustice.

Sarah J. Stevenson: Do you see your book, or other books like it, as a call to action or a form of action in and of itself (or both)? If so --what did writing this book FEEL like you were doing, besides writing a compelling story? What do you feel is the author's responsibility, if any, for making a social statement, and did you feel like you needed or wanted to convey a particular message? Did the act of writing this book feel like it ought to be a crusade?

Photo of the 1937 New London school explosion

AHP: I didn’t have a message in mind as I was first figuring out what the book would be. In the beginning and for much of the way, there was just the painful work of trying to draw my story out of a set of historical possibilities and one actual event. I did know, though, that my starting place for telling this story was not the white community, which has been the focus of pretty much every account of the New London school explosion. The heroes of Out of Darkness are people who, if they were real, wouldn’t even register in the official historical record. If I was crusading for anything, it was for the notion that these experiences at the margins of history matter. They matter deeply because every experience deserves a place in our understanding of the past. When we broaden our criteria for whose stories “count” in history, our notion of what the past was changes.

An East Texas oil field, historical photo

Authors have many responsibilities when they write, but I think any social statement has to grow out of the dynamics of the narrative; it can’t be imposed or decided in advance. Of course, plenty of writers have done this, but I don’t think it works. I think that, when I’m writing, my biggest responsibility is to pay attention to what the story is trying to become. When I revise, I revise to make my story more like itself, more what it wants to be. I realize that this sounds very mystical, so let me give an example.

Originally, I hoped for a different ending to Out of Darkness. I researched possibilities, charted escape routes, pondered the rare spaces in the world (Canada? The Caribbean? A black colony in Mexico?) where my characters might succeed in making their family. I wanted a positive outcome for Naomi and Wash, a future that, in spite of its challenges, was made bright because they were able to share it with each other. What happened? It wasn’t that this happy ending was impossible; as I said, I ferreted out some historical possibilities and tried to force it for a while. But ultimately that ending proved to be profoundly at odds with the story as it wanted to be. So even though the ending of the novel brings shade upon shade of darkness, even though it denies the reader’s desire for “Happily Ever After,” I believe writing it was my responsibility.

TD: And as tough as it was, at the end of the day, telling the true, and not rearranging for a “Happily Ever After,” is always the right call.

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We are thrilled to have had this opportunity to have such a deep, meaningful conversation with the author about the book, about writing, and about the power of stories to help us forge connections with our own history, even (perhaps especially) when that past is uncomfortable or difficult. Thanks, Ashley, for stopping by, and a hat tip to her editor, too, the amazing Andrew Karre at Carolrhoda LAB. If you missed Part 1 or Part 2, just click the links! Also, Ash is over at Diversity in YA today with an essay which gives a bit more background on the hows and whys of her writing OUT OF THE DARKNESS. The essay is called, "Words That Wake Us."

...because he could not stop for Death

DEATH KINDLY STOPPED FOR HIM. AND WILL PROBABLY LET HIM RIDE BINKY. EVENTUALLY.

From the bottom of our broken hearts, thank you, Sir Terry.

"I was a first-time writer, so I did as I was told."

Oh, my word, THANK YOU, Ms. Harper Lee, for holding onto your work, despite your editor telling you to rewrite Scout's story a different way.

This is a literary boon for those of us who have read and reread our copies of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD until the edges of the pages have softened and stained. For those of us readers who fell in love with a big, big story and let the feelings it brought us burgeon into a desire to produce meaningful fiction of our own, this is A Big Deal. We readers-turned-writers need proof of successes snatched from "failures" like this. And, it is "failure" in quotation marks - because failures, in writing, in art, are often only in the eye of the creator.

It's like the fan artist wincing at the perception that their artistic interpretation is so much less awesome than the original character, superhero, etc., that they were celebrating with their sketch or painting or story. Meanwhile, everyone else who looks at the work is in shock and awe that they took the time and effort to do something. Likewise, writers should never consider something unworkable or unrevise-able or unfinish-able - maybe the actual manuscript, yes, but an idea is a seed, a germ, and ideas aren't something we should throw away. Also, this second Lee book says a lot to me about how, when we as writers have work rejected, we need to consider that it may be the editor, the time period, the house, and the already published list: it doesn't mean our work isn't fit for consumption.

Of course, these are hard things to keep in mind, especially when writing and selling and all feel so... fraught, so imbalanced, in terms of the artist's authority over their own work. But, it's a truth: not every work finds its right time and place right away -- but persistence and faith in ourselves pays off. Maybe you got smacked down as a first-time writer, or early in your process, and you've kind of been stuck since then - you backed down and did what you were told, even if it felt like it went against your personal grain. Unfortunately, that happens - but Ms. Lee is a reminder that you can get up and keep writing - keep submitting your work - and that good things can still happen.

They're Here! Some Observations.

The Cybils finalists for 2014, that is. And the diversity tally this year is something to shout about (in a good way, I mean). Some personal highlights from this year's Cybils finalists:

• One of our most longstanding blog buds, Melissa Wiley, is a finalist in the Easy Readers category for her book Inch and Roly and the Sunny Day Scare. YAY YAY YAY!


• I'm very excited to start judging Round 2 in the Graphic Novels category--so many amazing finalists for both Young Adults and Elementary & Middle Grades. And I haven't read that many of them prior to this--just In Real Life and The Shadow Hero. I'm eager to read Jimmy Gownley's The Dumbest Idea Ever!, which I read some buzz about when it came out (I love the title), and I've also heard great things about The Harlem Hellfighters...but most of all I'm pleased to see the level of variety: the diversity of authors as well as subject matter and style.


• There are some awesome-looking middle grade finalists this year. I don't read as much middle grade fiction, but I really want to check out Abby Spencer Goes to Bollywood (yay for more books by South Asian authors!) and Death by Toilet Paper.


• I haven't yet managed to review Brown Girl Dreaming, but I'm happy (and not surprised) to see it make the Poetry list. As a rule I don't generally read novels in verse, but somehow I feel differently about the memoir form, and this one is unlike anything else I've read. 


• I've only read three of the seven YA Spec Fic finalists! My TBR list just grew...


• I haven't, shockingly, read ANY of the YA Fiction finalists. Not even Pointe by Brandy Colbert, which has been on my radar for a while. MOAR BOOKS.

What do you think of the Big Reveal? What finalist titles are you looking forward to most? Inquiring minds (or, anyway, mind) want to know. 

Alison Bechdel is a Genius, but We Already Knew That

Just a quick post today--but I wanted to make sure you all knew that cartoonist/graphic novelist Alison Bechdel has won one of those nifty MacArthur Genius Grant thingies. Yes, of COURSE we knew she was a genius way back when we first heard of the Bechdel test and challenged folks to go forth and write with an awareness of what diversity really means. But it's fantastic to see her ideas recognized and her work get more exposure. If you haven't read Fun Home (reviewed here) or its companion book, Are You My Mother?, I can't recommend them highly enough.

Also, there was a really cool Q&A with Bechdel posted on NPR several days ago--go check it out. Seriously, I'm chuffed that someone so deserving (and someone I've even heard of, no less) has been honored so highly. It's awesome. Go cartoonists!

Visions of the Future: A Post-Apocalyptic Blog Tour, featuring Caragh O'Brien

First of all, huge thanks to Gina Gagliano at First Second/Macmillan, who set us up with Caragh O'Brien on this blog tour--Tanita and I are both fascinated by the topic and love a good post-apocalyptic vision of the earth. (Um, in fiction only, please.) What is "Visions of the Future" all about? Macmillan Teen's website says this: "Five writers talk about what they think of the future—and why they wrote it the way they did." Five authors of recent novels that spin a rather grim view of what might happen to us in the not-so-distant future--and we are thrilled to host an essay by Caragh O'Brien, author of Birthmarked (which Tanita reviewed here).

Tanita describes the novel much more aptly and eloquently than I can do at the moment (you can blame the brain freeze on my day job), so go read the full review, in which she notes, "The post-apocalypse survival narrative is excellent, and as she gets deeper into trouble, Gaia has to make agonizing, hair-trigger decisions based on only what she feels is right." She also says, "This book is -- intense. There just aren't a lot of YA novels about midwifery, inbreeding, and hemophilia," and if that doesn't make you curious, then nothing will. So, without further delay, here is Caragh's post.

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To talk about the fictional world in my Birthmarked trilogy, I must begin with a true story. A few years back, I took a road trip across the country with my family, and somewhere in Arkansas, we drove over a bridge where the river beneath was a dry gully. The next bridge spanned another dry river, and then we passed a lake that was as dry as a baseball diamond. Mile after mile the drought extended, and whenever we passed what was supposed to be water, it was another dusty, sloping void.

Until that drive, I had thought climate change was a doom that would happen in the distant future, to other generations, but it was suddenly right in my face. It freaked me out.

I began writing the Birthmarked trilogy because, in essence, I was afraid. I wanted to predict who could adapt and how they might do it. I wondered how much cutthroat self-preservation would be justified, and most of all, I wanted to believe that some of us would survive. Writing the novel let me delve in to my fear and search for something that could give me hope.

The story of Birthmarked takes place 400 years in the future on the north shore of Unlake Superior, after climate change. I take Minnesota, the state I grew up in, Land of 10,000 Lakes, and imagine all the water gone. I envision it as a wasteland that’s both beautiful and severe. I figure that certain smart, wealthy people prepare for the change by building the Enclave, a walled city with solar power, geothermal power, and deeply drilled wells. Inside the walls, they have education, technology, culture, and enough food, but they’ve miscalculated on one thing: how many people they need for diversity in their gene pool. Due to inbreeding, they’re having trouble with infertility and hemophilia. What they need is a most basic resource: more human genes.

Here’s where our heroine comes in. Gaia Stone, a young midwife, lives outside the wall in Wharfton, an impoverished community that exists in essentially medieval conditions, with no electricity or services. In exchange for rations of water and mycoprotein from the Enclave, Wharfton must surrender a quota of babies every month to the authorities inside the wall. Gaia accepts this system until the first time she helps a mother deliver a baby solo, and the mother objects to forfeiting her child. That same night, Gaia’s parents are arrested, and Gaia determines to rescue them from the Enclave.

As happens with world building, I found that the physical setting of the novel wove into the plot, and the shortage of resources underscored every choice that the characters made, individually and at a societal level. On one hand, the Enclave was lovely and thriving, but it hid the heartache of dying hemophiliacs and its citizens could stand by while a pregnant woman was hanged. I respected that people like Gaia would do almost anything to survive, and I could also grasp that the evil leader meant well when he justified his ruthless decisions. My story grounded in climate change was really about need, family, power, and fairness.

Of course, I’m still troubled by what’s happening with climate change, especially when I see that the populations that suffer the most are our poorest. Yet I also believe that we’re ingenuitive and compassionate, and our most important resource, as in my novel, is our humans. We are already the survivors.

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Thank you so much, Caragh and Gina! Here's the full schedule for the Visions of the Future blog tour:

Monday, September 8
Andrew Smith
Cuddlebuggery

Tuesday, September 9
Caragh O’Brien
Finding Wonderland

Wednesday, September 10
Farel Dalrymple
The Book Wars

Thursday, September 11
Emmy Laybourne
Green Bean Teen Queen

Friday, September 12
Carrie Ryan
Forever YA

Congratulations, Betsy & Jules!

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From Booklist, who knows good literature, a star for WILD THINGS: ACTS OF MISCHIEF IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE. Congratulations, you guys! May this be the first of many accolades.

Haven't got your copy yet? For a most EXCELLENT review from Kelly, pop over to Writing & Ruminating.

Interview with Sarah Beth Durst, author of THE LOST

We've interviewed versatile author Sarah Beth Durst before--the last time was when we talked to her about her fantasy novel Conjured. We are thrilled to have her back for another interview, because her latest book, The Lost, is a bit of a departure from the last few: it's got an adult character, and it's labeled as "an adult book with crossover appeal." Tanita and I were eager to ask Sarah about this one after we reviewed it in tandem a few months ago--what it was like writing a story that doesn't cleanly fall into the YA or MG category, how she sees the book's genre, and much more. Luckily, the opportunity for an interview came along, and we seized it with gusto. Here it is!

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Finding Wonderland: Do you consider your novel to be "new adult," or if not, how would you classify it (if at all)? Did you set out to write a book that wasn't YA/MG, or was that a decision that came later?

Sarah Beth Durst: For this book, I wanted to write about someone who felt empty, who felt as if her dreams had died, who felt lost. For me, that meant she had to be at least in her late twenties. And so I knew from the very start that THE LOST would be labeled an adult book with crossover appeal, since it (A) has a 27-year-old protagonist and (B) deals with the universal theme of loss.

In a way, you could say that the story chose the label.

THE LOST is about a woman, Lauren Chase, whose life feels empty. She abandoned her own dreams to work a dead-end job to pay her mother's mounting hospital bills. One day -- the day that they're due to hear the results of her mother's latest medical tests -- she gets into her car to drive to work and, instead of taking a left at the light, just drives straight... and drives and drives until she ends up trapped in a town full of only lost things and lost people.

FW: What was it like working with Harlequin MIRA, in comparison to working with a YA/MG publisher?

Most of it's the same: you're working with wonderful people who love books as much as you do. What's better than that? But one thing that I did notice is different is the timeline. In the YA/MG world, you have to turn in your manuscript about one year before publication. With Harlequin, it was more like six months.

FW: How was it writing THE LOST versus writing fantasy for a younger audience? Did your concerns as a writer change with the intended audience? If so, how?

No different. And nope.

Actually, this is something I feel rather strongly about. I think that if you're true to your characters, then everything else will fall into place. If your main character is twelve years old and you are true to her and see her world through her eyes, then the story will come out as MG. If your main character is twenty-seven and you're true to her... then it will come out adult.

FW: We have questions about the thematic and metaphoric aspect of losing, gaining, loss and identity -- are you trying to write a novel about moving on from parts of our lives, or do you feel like the novel is more about hope -- that nothing is ever really lost -- ?

Yes, and yes.

I wanted to write about loss and about hope and about finding light in the darkness, shaping a new future out of the shards of the past, and filling the emptiness.

I think that in a way, every novel is about hope, because writing a novel is one of the ultimate acts of hope. By stringing words into a story, you are hoping that life has meaning, that people can connect, and that experiences and dreams can be shared. You are hoping to touch another soul. And I think reading is a similar act of hope, of reaching out, of seeking escape or contact or even healing.

FW: Would you say that this a retelling of Peter Pan? It really does have elements of the whole Wendy, trying hard to launch herself, even as her essential self clings to belief in the real, the very loyal and changeable Tinkerbelle, the very moody and mercurial - yet helpful Peter Pan figure in the Finder... (Although, who, then, in this scenario would be The Missing Man? Who is really missing from the Peter Pan stories? A father figure? Lauren's father???)

Oh my gosh, I love that! Wish I'd thought of it. Actually, that interpretation fits really well, so can I just pretend I planned it that way?

I did deliberately reference Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and the Wizard of Oz, because I believe one of the primary things lost in life is childhood and the innocence of childhood. So I wanted to have shreds of those tattered bits of lost childhood, twisted and abandoned in Lost.

And in case you were curious, you will learn a lot more about the Missing Man in the next two books!

FW: In reading this book, it felt much more like magical realism than clear-cut fantasy, as many of your other books have been. How would you describe THE LOST in terms of genre? Do you see it as a departure from your previous writing? Do you see this more of a mystery or a contemporary romance?

Definitely magical realism. So this was a new challenge for me. My other books have all been different flavors of fantasy (epic like my romantic desert adventure VESSEL, comedy like my vampire and were-unicorn book DRINK SLAY LOVE, etc.). Each flavor has its own feel and tone. For THE LOST, I wanted to create an atmospheric, disoriented kind of feel, and so I chose to use a very close first person, present tense pov. Many, many nights, this left me shaking my fists at the sky shouting, "VERBS!!!"

I love playing with different kinds of fantasy. Always have. I was that kid who was always checking her closet for a way to Narnia, who always put "magic wand" on her birthday wish list, and who really wished her school could be invaded by friendly aliens at least once. In retrospect, it was kind of inevitable that I'd end up writing it.

FW: When can we expect a sequel? Is that what you're currently working on, and if not, what ARE you working on right now?

THE LOST is the first book in a new trilogy. The second book, THE MISSING, will be out on November 25th, and the third book, THE FOUND, will be out at the end of March 2015. My next YA book, CHASING POWER, will be out in October, and I am currently working on an MG novel, THE GIRL WHO COULD NOT DREAM, which will be out in fall 2015. I'm extremely excited about all of them!

Thanks so much for interviewing me!

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Thank YOU to Sarah Beth Durst for stopping by our blog again and intriguing us even further about her upcoming projects!

A Little of This, A Little of That...

I haven't done a links roundup in a while. That's mainly because I'm so far behind on my e-newsletters and other online reading that I've got an enormous backlog to go through. I put all that stuff in a separate email folder and instead of making me feel organized, it ends up languishing in there for months, making me feel guilty. So periodically I open up a few and find out what I've been missing, and now I'll share a few links with YOU in case you also missed them. Enjoy!

• Ilsa J. Bick Talks with Read Roger in a VERY interesting interview for Horn Book, including some teasers about her next book, White Space, and why Ilsa Is Fearless despite all that scary stuff she writes.
• I don't read a lot of actual memoirs, but I really, really like graphic novel memoirs, and I can't wait to read The Dumbest Idea Ever! by Jimmy Gownley, who wrote the Amelia Rules! series. GraphicNovelReporter has a nice review as well as an interview with Gownley, in which he talks about his book--which is all about how he became a cartoonist: "I never had a Plan B. I actually don’t believe in Plan B’s, because they are really just excuses to give up on your dream as soon as possible."  Yeah. What he said.
• Also, in case you missed it, check out GraphicNovelReporter's Best Graphic Novels of 2013. My TBR list just got a lot longer...
• Ages ago, I found a roundup of links on Writer's Digest on humor and writing--how to inject more humor into your work, lists of "funny words," and more. If you've ever agonized over the perfect way to word that hilarious phrase (I used to have a freelance job where I did that every day!), you might want to check it out.

Thank You.

Brilliant writer, Walter Dean Myers, 1937-2014

To one of the first who said, "We need diverse books," and never, ever, ever stopped saying it.

With gratitude, for lending us your words and your voice,
Young adult readers and writers of all colors, everywhere.

Full obit at Betsy's.

The Weekend Word: The Perks of Being a YA Author

So, Tech Boy and I recently spent some four days in Portland, the one in Oregon, anyway, and for those of you who have been there or heard it called The Berkeley of the Pacific Northwest, it isn't; Berkeley is still offbeat and a little dirty, and Portland is This Other Thing Entirely for which I don't think I yet have words.

It was four days of ink and piercings, body mod, dye, and vegan/raw food. I love my counterculture as well as the next person, but GAH, sometimes you want to just, you know, have an egg sandwich, not a Free Range, Cruelty Free Lightly Coddled Egg on Artisan-Made Cracked Spelt and Oatmeal Bread Sprinkled With Pink Himalayan Salt, Garnished With Slightly Wilted Kale And Finished With Freshly Cracked Szechuan Peppercorn - hand delivered by a girl on a "fixie" bike with Malcolm X eye glasses, wearing cowboy boots with green-dyed hair. But - you get what you get, and you don't pitch a fit. Portland was friendly and lovely and full of roses and full of organic everything. Good times. Also, a shout-out to all the pink-haired girls in Portland, Lainey Taylor was in Europe while we were there, but I waved at every pink-haired girl regardless, waving to her in spirit.

We were in Portland to see friends, of course, but Tech Boy has a coworker who ...commutes from Portland each week (as one does. With an airplane.), so we brought our friends and met he and his wife at a pub downtown, and over really good coffee and purloined candied hazelnuts (mine, which everyone else stole. What is it with candied nuts? They're like French fries. JUST ORDER YOUR OWN, PEOPLE.), we listened to stories about WWII and Polish relatives in the resistance and all, and then, as I was sipping my mocha, the wife said, in an aside to me at our far-at-the-end corner of the table, "Oh, so you write young adult literature...have you ever heard of an author named John Green?"

SNORT. Choke.

Reader, I laughed internally for five solid minutes. I was also tempted to say, "No, who?" but that just would've been ridiculous, as I'm pretty sure BUSES went by with posters for The Fault in our Stars on them, and I do avoid being completely ridiculous, if at all possible.

So, I admitted, "Oh, yes, I've ...stood in the same room with him, even," and I was treated -- seriously treated -- to a lovely reminiscence of John Green as a cute and pudgy two-year old.

Color me surprised.

Apparently, this lady whom I'll call Cee and John Green's mother went to high school together in Indiana somewhere back in time. His mother, interestingly enough, hated it, hated the town, the school, and Indiana, and when she left she basically told everyone that and brushed the dust of their little town off of her feet. And, nobody blamed her -- C. said she got out as soon as she could. I loved hearing that -- it made the whole "teen angst in my little do-nothing town" thing that John Green writes about feel very true.

"Did you know his mother used to write?" Cee asked. Couldn't say that I did. "And, did you know that they wanted to film that movie right there, in his home state, and Indiana said no?!" she went on in disgust. "It really is just the stupidest state." (I don't know -- there is STILL nothing in Forks, Washington, except for empty parking places for Dr. Cullen, and people still make pilgrimages there. Were you just avoiding the crazy, Indiana? I feel you...)

Cee regaled me with more tales of things she and Mrs. Green got up to, way back in the day. Because of how much Cee hates Facebook, she knows she is always "the last one" to know anything of what is going on with other people's kids(also felt her on that)," but that she thought they were having another baby (and since the President essentially gave them a high-five for that, I could say that, yeah, I'd heard that one). I did a lot of listening, of course, but Cee was tickled to death for me to get a chance to share. I hooked her up with some vlog brothers stuff, Crash Course, all the REST of John's books she hadn't heard of, SciShow, for the vlog brother she hadn't gotten to meet as a toddler, and The Lizzie Bennet diaries...

So, we came to the end of our stories and we parted ways with big hugs -- I mean, we bonded over someone she met when he was two, and someone I don't even know, but come on, the world is weird, and I'm a writer, right? Weird is implied. And then, Tech Boy tells me, days later when we're home, "Hey, Cee wanted to know if you've actually, uh, published anything she could buy?" He gives me a disgusted scowl. "She doesn't even know if you're published. Dude, what did you two talk about for all that time?"

Um, John Green. Isn't that who everybody is talking about?

::sigh::

Okay, yeah, so I suck at self-promotion, and while I like John Green just fine, I was glad at least Cee realized there are other authors. And, in light of the Green Acres, Greenlit, Green-a-holic fest the media has become, just remember, in time, guys, everyone else will, too. This slightly unmerited glut of attention to YA's alleged "savior" will pass, because the rest of us are writing awesome books, too. Meanwhile...

Do your part, y'all.
Keep Portland weird.
Not that flamingo-head here needs any help...

New Ventures: Inscription Magazine

It started last November with an Indiegogo campaign - raise five grand to produce and fund (for a year - the goal is for it to carry its own weight at some point, I would assume) a free ezine for teens containing diverse speculative fiction stories. A laudable goal, and the campaign raised in excess of its five grand. They had enough to hire illustrators, and web builders, and logo designers -- and authors -- and pay them a professional rate (which, according to the Science Fiction Writers of America guild is at minimum, $.05/word).

If you've been on Tor.com or a few others sites this week, you know that the first story is up! While probably not everything is finished or perfect, this site looks shiny, and has powerful goodwill and hope behind it. Submissions are open, so writers of short stories and readers of awesome will want to hop over.

Want to do more to support the ideals and goals of diverse children's lit than move your mouth and read endless articles in various journals and newspapers? Want to relive the brief kidlit glory days of THE EDGE OF THE FOREST or TBR TALLBOY (I KNOW! Remember them???) Find out how you can be involved. There have been too many "great ideas" and "great starts" in ezines that haven't ever had a chance to find their feet. Read, submit, talk!

P.S. - TALK ABOUT A SMALL, SERENDIPITOUS WORLD: Kelly Herold, editor-in-chief of the currently shuttered EDGE OF THE FOREST... was INSCRIPTION editor-in-chief Rachel Halpern's professor at Grinnell College in Iowa... and together they ran a YA reading group her Senior year. You've gotta love the kidlitosphere, people. ♥

Ron, Hermione, and True Love...

Quoted in an article on ThinkProgress, J.K. Rowling says, "I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it, Hermione ended up with Ron."

Alyssa Rosenberg, who wrote the article, goes on to say, "it is interesting to me that Rowling apparently regrets what I see as some of the most sensitively written and emotionally well-realized passages in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows as an error of judgement." At the beginning of the article, she says, "It's frustrating, but probably inevitable in this age of voracious fandom, to see authors attempts to tweak, or litigate, or modify their work via interview long after the pages have gone to the printers and the work has wandered out into the world to be read and loved." 

All I can say is, Word. Sometimes I don't need to know every detail of the backstory. Sometimes it's what isn't explicitly stated that creates its own magic in a story; the unconscious resonance created by the layers being woven together, intentionally or unintentionally, and to change that might be to unravel the whole thing.

We talked about this a bit today in our writing group, using a recent Hunger Mountain article by Stephanie Friedman called "Conjuring the Magic of Story" as a point of departure. The idea of resonance as magical really, well, resonated. And I can't help but feel like, beyond a certain point, over-explanation dissipates the power of that magic. Sort of like, when you try too hard to explain a joke, it isn't funny anymore--humor and laughter being a kind of magic, too. The magic is an emergent property, the result of some mysterious, invisible alchemy that occurs between the writer and the words and the reader. And once it's out there, it's out there.

[I suspect that's one reason why sequels are a challenge: the writer has their experience of the story, but the reader's may well be different, and their expectations may not be met by what the writer writes next--and that's not the fault of the writer. It's not a fault situation at all, really. But I digress.]

I acknowledge the fact of Reader Greed. I've been guilty of it myself: there are times when I want to know more, want to read more. There are plenty of times where I just plain don't want to leave the world of a story. But, I guess, what we want isn't always what's good for us, right? Sometimes we eat that extra piece of pie and then feel a little sick...