The winner of a signed copy of Polly Holyoke’s debut middle grade novel, “The Neptune Project”, as well as a bookmark and dolphin necklace, is
Mary Ryan
Congratulations, Mary, and many thanks to all who left a comment.
Yearly archive for 2013
I’d like to introduce Lauren Baratz-Logsted. She’s one of the three co-authors of The Sisters 8 series. Lauren has experienced two unique situations in the writing industry. One is writing with her husband and middle-grade daughter. The other you will read about later. So grab a scone and a warm cup of tea and curl up for an interesting conversation!
Lauren Baratz-Logsted is the author of over 30 books for adults (The Thin Pink Line; Vertigo), teens (Crazy Beautiful; The Twin’s Daughter; Little Women and Me) and children (the nine-book series The Sisters 8 which she created with her writer husband Greg Logsted and their daughter Jackie). Before becoming a published author, she was an independent bookseller, a PW reviewer, a freelance editor, a sort-of librarian and a window washer. You can read more about Lauren’s life and work at www.laurenbaratzlogsted.com, follow her on Twitter @LaurenBaratzL or visit the official Sisters 8 website at www.sisterseight.com.
Me: Where did you get the concept for The Sisters 8 series?
Lauren: In December of 2006, when Jackie was still just six, we were visiting friends in Crested Butte, Colorado, when a great blizzard hit that closed Denver Airport. Our friends have no TV nor were there any other children around. This was fine for the originally allotted time for the trip, but when the blizzard extended our stay to 10 days, well, how many snow angels can a person make? Jackie had always been proud of my career but never able to read any of the books because they were for adults and teens. So, toward the end, to keep Jackie entertained, I asked her what kind of book she’d like. Her: A book about sisters. Me: How many sisters? Her: 8. (Trust me, she’d give a different answer today, having gotten rather used to being the center of the universe.) Me: How old should they be? Her: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8. Me: That would be interesting, but what if we made them something really rare like, say, octuplets? Before we knew it, my husband Greg got into the act. We began brainstorming an entire book about octuplets whose parents go missing one New Year’s Eve, leaving the eight girls to solve the mystery of what happened to their parents while keeping the rest of the world from realizing they’re living home alone. Our brainstorming kept us entertained through the rest of of the trip and the long flight back to Connecticut on Christmas Day. Jackie named all the sisters, I named the cats, and Greg came up with all the crazy inventions like the talking refrigerator and the flying watering can. Little did we know then that something that started simply as a way to keep ourselves entertained would turn into a nine-book series from a major publisher.
Me: That’s awesome. So can we call you the original Octomom? (just kidding, of course!) What role did each of you play in the writing process? And how was it to work together–fun, exciting, stressful?
Lauren: When we got home from Colorado, just for fun I wrote the prologue and first chapter. I read it to Greg and Jackie, and then we all discussed what worked/didn’t work and what needed to happen next. That became the template for the entire series. So I did the actual writing, but The Sisters 8 would not exist without my co-creators. I can go through each book and see their contributions to our invention and those contributions are massive. I think for them it was always just fun and exciting – I’m the only one that would add stressful! But that’s because I was the one who was responsible for keeping what would eventually be over a thousand pages of continuous story in my brain. When we were working on the series, sometimes we’d go out for what we called “editorial brunches” to discuss things. But sometimes, the other two would be throwing ideas at me so fast with me scribbling on napkins and I’d feel like saying, “Can’t I eat my eggs first?” Still, despite the stresses of being “The Pen” I wouldn’t change having done this for the world. Nothing in my writing career has matched the joy of getting to work with my family on The Sisters 8 and I can’t imagine anything that ever will.
Me: I love that! There’s nothing more thrilling than to see children involved and excited about writing, books and creating. Does your daughter, Jackie, aspire to be a writer as a career?
Lauren: Jackie is 13 now. She does enjoy writing, but she also enjoys acting and singing, and she plays a mean electric guitar – all things that have guaranteed well-paying careers with full benefits! She also likes shows about house-flipping. Honestly, I have no idea what she’ll do for a career, and I don’t think she does either, but whatever she chooses I suspect she’ll be good at it and I hope she’ll be happy.
Me: It’s so hard to know what they’ll do. My daughter (and co-author) wants to go to the Olympics for archery. But it’s still fun to write together! It was hard facing rejections though. Did your previous relationships with editors, agents and industry professionals help ease concerns when working with a child author? Did it require convincing or were they unconcerned (perhaps even excited) about working with Jackie?
Lauren: I did have a prior relationship with our editor at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Julia Richardson. She’d also been my editor at Simon & Schuster where she’d bought three books from me and two from Greg. She’d even met Jackie before. So, no, they were not concerned at all, only excited. When we went to Boston to meet with everyone else at the company, they just loved Jackie, which is an easy thing to do. She’s funny, bright, creative and easygoing, so what’s not to love? A few months before the first two books came out, they had us do a group book signing at the New England Independent Bookseller Association’s annual conference. The night before, while out to dinner she talked me into buying her a large stuffed lobster, which she put in front of her on the signing table, signing books with a large feather pen she’d brought from home. People just couldn’t stop smiling at her. And I do believe she was on to something. Perhaps all authors should sign with stuffed lobsters. I know if Norman Mailer were still alive, he’d be more accessible with one.
Me: Too cute! I’m keeping that idea in my back pocket! So, The Sisters 8 series is traditionally published, but your Hat City series is self published, correct? Tell us a bit about that experience.
Lauren: The sad truth about traditional publishing is that even when something is successful on some measures and The Sisters 8 has sold 200,000 copies, it still can be not enough and the publisher has no plans to do more at this time. And yet, every day, I receive emails from kids – and parents, grandparents, teachers and librarians – telling me they love the series, sometimes even that they hated reading before discovering the books, and that they want more. If it were up to me, we’d be writing The Sisters 8 forever – and The Brothers 8! – and it’s immensely gratifying to think that something we originally did for ourselves has turned into a source of joy for so many. But it’s also been heart-breaking, having all these kids who want more and not being able to give it to them. So I decided to start a new series and publish it on my own. How it’s different: everything is on me, which makes it tremendously scary and tremendously wonderful all at the same time.
Me: One last question: Pistachio ice cream or lemon bars? Skittles or Dove chocolate? Elves and fairies or the creature from the black lagoon? (Okay, that was more than one…)
Lauren: Greg is a huge fan of pistachios but in nearly 30 years together, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him eat pistachio ice cream, and I can’t remember any of us eating lemon bars. Greg and Jackie are both Skittles and Dove chocolate, while I’m just Dove. We are all elves and fairies and The Creature from The Black Lagoon.
Me: I think we’d get along famously! Thanks for joining us here today, Lauren!
Lauren has offered to give away not one, not two, not three but four (yes, FOUR) books in The Sisters 8 series! Just fill out the Rafflecopter form below and leave a blog post comment and maybe you’ll be the lucky winner of the following four books! (open to U.S. only, please)
A rather large problem has befallen the Huit girls. (Sisters, actually. Octuplets to be exact.) One particular New Year’s Eve, the girls wait for their mommy to bring them hot chocolate and their daddy to return with more wood for the fire. But they don’t. Mommy and Daddy, that is. They’re gone. Poof! Maybe dead—no one knows for sure.
You must see the problem here. Eight little girls on their own, no mommy or daddy to take care of them. This is not a good thing.
So now these little girls, must take care of themselves. Get to school, cook the meals, feed the cats (eight of them, too), and pay the bills. They can’t ask for help, oh no. Any self-respecting adult would surely call in social services, and those well-meaning people would have to split them up. After losing their parents, being split up would be completely unbearable.
At the same time, the question remains:What happened to Mommy and Daddy? The Sisters Eight (as they are called, affectionately and otherwise) are determined to find out. Luckily, they do seem to have someone or something helping them. Notes keep appearing behind a loose brick in the fireplace.
It’s a good old-fashioned mystery with missing (or dead) parents, nosy neighbors, talking refrigerators, foul-smelling fruitcake (is there any other kind?), and even a little magic. Eight little girls, eight cats, and one big mystery—let the fun begin!
Amie Borst and her middle-grade dauther, Bethanie, write fairy tales with a twist. Their first book in the Scarily Ever Laughter series, Cinderskella, debuts October 2013! You can find them at www.facebook.com/AmieAndBethanieBorst
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As a junior high teacher I’ve witnessed and engaged in my share of kerfuffles over the value of middle grade novels. A joke made at a recent writing conference I attended gets at the heart of the debate: “There’s high grade literature and then there is middle grade literature.” Many cases have been made, on this blog and others, in defense of middle grade texts. If I may, I’d like to add some slightly personal evidence affirming the value of this literature.
About six months ago my father passed away. Needless to say the last six months have been trying for me, my family, and especially my elderly mother. When tragedy hits, most of the world reads self-help books; English majors turn to fiction. Therefore, I attempted to understand and categorize my grief through the literary arts. I initially attempted to find a path through my grief by engaging with the the canon, relying upon what my collegiate studies and the literati consider “high literature.” I went through my Faulkner phase, and on a few occasions, put on Cash’s face, especially when dealing with the business side of death; as an only child, the loss of a parent brings more paperwork, phone calls, decisions, and meetings than is healthy. I went through my next phase of “high literature” and looked to poetry as I read or penned verse in my attempts to engage my emotions head-on. Frankly, this didn’t help much at all. None of my explorations into the literary cannon bore meaningful fruit and I found myself still adrift, feeling isolated, irrational, and impulsive.
I didn’t find any solace until I remembered a book. A middle grade book that, frankly, doesn’t bear the weight of hundreds of academics pressing its importance and relevance down on me. Maybe that is why it can speak so freely and deliver such individualized impact. In Walk Two Moons, Sharon Creech provided something that the literary giants didn’t bring to the table as I tried to process my grief—an honest and heartfelt exploration of what grief feels like in its rawest moments and what unexpected and personalized ways we find to cope with and make sense of it. For me, Faulkner, Whitman or Dickenson and their literary equals—despite the fact that I deeply appreciate their writing—offer predictable, academic, or metaphysical explorations of suffering. They explore the abstract concepts of human existence. But when one is adrift in an ocean of confusion and personal suffering, such musings lack an applicability. It’s difficult to connect to the intellectual when you are brought down to your own instinctual, confusing, and childlike yearnings for something out of reach that you can’t even seem to articulate. Finding myself amidst that experience only happened in the concrete realism of Sharon Creech’s Walk Two Moons.
Salamanca and Phoebe are two girls attempting to navigate their normal lives, but continually find themselves running into waves of fear, confusion, grief, and . . . at least one lunatic. Both girls have lost their mothers—one to death and another to abandonment. But the girls, in an attempt to deal with the pain, determine that Phoebe’s mother was really kidnapped by a lunatic, and they set off on a journey to find the lunatic and thus rescue the missing mother. Grief and loss are not philosophical investigations in this novel; they’re portrayed honestly, concretely, and as somehow simple in their complexity, because they bring us back down to the childlike impulses that drive us to do irrational and emotional things—the kind of impulses we all experience in times of trauma.
I’ve read and taught Walk Two Moons before, but it wasn’t until after my father died that I realized how logical Salamanca and Phoebe are. As adults we might try write off their response to grief as bizarre, juvenile, or irrational, but when one is in the midst of upheaval and loss, who is to say the juvenile response is not actually an appropriate reaction? Dealing with tragedy brings us all to the level of children, because we are once again yearning for someone to take us in their arms and tell us it will all be alright; we want someone else to fix it, and want to believe miracles can happen. Literature written for the middle grades has the ability to connect to the awkward, frightened, stumbling pre-teen in all of us. And like Phoebe and Salamanca, we could very easily find ourselves pursuing a mysterious lunatic or embarking on a journey across the country to find our lost parent.
So, to those middle grade nay-sayers and members of the real or even pseudo-intelligentsia, I suggest, as we read over and over in Creech’s text: “Never judge a man before you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins.” Don’t pass judgment on the value of any family of books until you’ve fully sampled from them. If “YA saves,” then I propose that middle-grade can heal.
Please let me know how middle-grade has mattered to you.
Bruce Eschler teaches junior high school students most of the year, writes speculative fiction for kids as much as he can, and is hoping he’ll soon be done with his pesky doctoral program. He has occasionally been spotted at www.bruceeschler.com.
