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Cover Reveal and Interview! The First Magnificent Summer

By on November 21, 2022   /   Author Interviews, books, For Librarians  

One of my most anticipated middle-grade books of 2023 is THE FIRST MAGNIFICENT SUMMER by R.L. Toalson, so I was thrilled when she agreed to an interview to celebrate the wonderful cover her book has received.

Here’s the description from Simon & Schuster:

Judy Blume meets Barbara Dee in this tender and empowering middle grade novel told in journal entries and poetry about a young writer on the verge of becoming a woman whose summer with her estranged father doesn’t turn out the way she’d hoped.

Twelve-year-old Victoria Reeves is all set for her “First Magnificent Summer with Dad,” even though it’s been more than two years since she last saw him. She’s ready to impress him with her wit, her maturity, and her smarts—at least until he shows up for the long road trip to Ohio with his new family, The Replacements, in tow.

But that’s not the only unpleasant surprise in store for Victoria. There are some smaller disappointments, like being forced to eat bologna even though it’s her least favorite food in the world. And then there’s having to sleep outside in a tent while The Replacements rest comfortably inside the family RV. But the worst thing Victoria grapples with is when she begins to suspect that part of the reason Dad always treats her as “less than” is for one simple reason: she’s female.

As Victoria captures every moment of her less than magnificent summer in her journal, she discovers that the odds are stacked against her in the contest-no-one-knows-is-a-contest: Not only does her wit begin to crumble around Dad’s multiple shaming jabs, but she gets her first period. And when Dad does the worst thing yet, she realizes she has a decision to make: will she let a man define her?

R.L. Toalson is the author of two other middle-grade novels: THE COLORS OF THE RAIN and THE WOODS, both published by the Yellow Jacket imprint of Little Bee Books. THE FIRST MAGNIFICENT SUMMER will be out from Simon & Schuster on May 30.

Samantha: Welcome to From the Mixed Up Files, R.L.! What inspired this book?

The First Magnificent Summer written by R.L. ToalsonR.L. Toalson: There is no simple answer to this question; it has several parts!

A story like this one has been sitting in the back of my mind for several years, but I was always afraid to pursue it. I had a similar experience to the one Victoria (the main character) has in the book—and it is not an easy story to tell. So I didn’t. For such a long time.

And then some questions started building in my head. Why is this the way things are? Why did I feel, as a young girl, like a man had the authority to define who I was and who I would one day be? Who else needs to hear this story?

That last question–who else needs to hear this story?–made me brave enough to pick up my pen (and it was a literal pen–I write all my stories longhand in a Yoobi composition book).

There’s a lot of me in this book. There’s a lot of what I wish I would have done and learned long before I actually did. There’s a lot of hope. And I guess that was the last step of the inspiration process: I wrote hope and love and healing into my own 12-year-old story, and out came Victoria and her journey to define herself.

Samantha: What was the most challenging part of writing it?

R.L. Toalson: Every story an author writes is different; I often feel, when I open my notebook to write, that I’m completely out of my depth for what this story requires. That was especially true for THE FIRST MAGNIFICENT SUMMER, proven by the many drafts that changed the structure of the story entirely. It started as a prose story. Then I wrote it as a novel in verse. Then I changed it back to prose. And then I experimented with journal entries. That structure stuck, because it felt right for the story. There’s still poetry and some humorous mini-essays that Victoria includes, but the main narrative is told through her own journal entries. Sometimes she breaks the fourth wall, which is fun.

It was also challenging to write in a consistently humorous way. I have experience writing humor, but mostly in essay form. Humor is really difficult to get right. You don’t want to rely on cliches and easy laughs; you want to mine for the unexpected, which takes quite a lot of work and energy. And the daily writing of humor gets a little tedious on the days you don’t feel much like laughing.

And it must be said that writing such a difficult-to-tell story, one that delved some of the depths of my own childhood story, took its toll on me emotionally. I have an amazing therapist who helped me through the tricky bits.

Lastly, I spent a lot of time and care writing the author’s note, so…even if you’re not the type who reads author’s note, read this one.

Samantha: I always read author’s notes, but will definitely be reading this one. What was the most fun part writing this story?

R.L. Toalson: I know I said the humor was one of the most challenging parts, but it was also one of the most fun parts about writing THE FIRST MAGNIFICENT SUMMER. As I’ve mentioned several times already, this is not an easy story. I felt like it needed humor to lighten places that felt heavy and that give readers important things to think about and consider. And those were some of my favorite places to write.

I also really, really love all the asides Victoria has throughout the narrative. She uses her humor and her melancholy and her personality to process through things that are happening in the narrative, and it was delightful to craft those asides. She has one called “Things I Like About Camping,” a poem comprised of multiple choice answers where she invites the reader to figure out whether (a), (b), (c) or (d) is what she likes about camping–and all of the choices are so sarcastic and grumpy, and then she has the last choice: (d) absolutely nothing. And you know that’s the right answer from all the other answers. It was so much fun to write. I hate camping, too. I empathize with Victoria. 🙂

Full jacket image for The First Magnificent Summer book written by R.L. Toalson

Samantha: Ahh, camping. And that brings us to the wonderful cover. Tell us about it.

R.L. Toalson: This cover was designed by Svetla Radioeva and is absolutely perfect and gorgeous and perfect (it deserves a repeat). Victoria is front-and-center, hiding away in a tent, with a notebook open on her lap. In the background’s tent opening, you can see her father with a little girl next to a grill and a camper, and from the two juxtaposed images you get the sense of her isolation. There are all sorts of little lovely details you’ll only notice if you look closely–like a package of Womanhood Supplies (Victoria’s name for period products) by her left foot. It’s delightful. I spent several long minutes noticing all the little details that make this cover so remarkable, and I really cannot have asked for a better representation of Victoria and her first magnificent summer.

Samantha: Yes, the details are fantastic. And I love that they included them on the whole jacket, not just the front. (Readers, check out the pic.) What else should we know about this book and you?

R.L. Toalson: As the mom of several boys, I have to mention that I don’t believe in books for girls and books for boys. Yes, this book has a female protagonist, and yes she starts her first period in the book, and it’s a big part of her story. But that doesn’t mean it’s not a book for boys, too (and don’t get me started on how if we just talked about periods more it wouldn’t be so taboo in the first place). Girls AND boys watch their parents divorce. Girls AND boys sometimes have a parent who leaves. Girls AND boys feel the hurt and confusion and instability that comes from that, and girls AND boys wonder if their parent left because of them. Girls AND boys need to know that they are magnificent just the way they are. And that’s what this book tries to communicate to its readers: Be your magnificent self.

So I hope boys won’t be afraid to read Victoria’s story, too. We all need to be reminded that we’re magnificent.

Samantha: I love that! And I can’t wait to read this MAGNIFICENT book.

Readers, check out R.L. Toalson’s other books on her website and pre-order THE FIRST MAGNIFICENT SUMMER.

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Ukraine for Middle-Grade Readers

By on November 18, 2022   /   Book Lists, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers  

Before Putin’s Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, many people elsewhere knew only a little about the country. Recent nonfiction and fiction books on Ukraine for Middle-Grade readers can help them understand what Ukrainians are fighting so fiercely to defend.

Most of these books appeared in 2022, and many of their publishers will contribute sales profits to Ukrainian relief.

NONFICTION:

Ukraine is known for  the beautiful golden-domed architecture of its cities and the richness of its culture and language. It is also called “The Breadbasket of Europe” because other countries in Europe and the world depend on its abundant harvests of grain for food.

Blue Skies and Golden Fields: Celebrating Ukraine, by Ukrainian children’s author Oksana Lushchevska (Capstone Press, 2022), covers Ukraine’s  history of withstanding invasion and domination by other countries, including Russia.  Lusgchevska also aims to immerse young readers in the Ukrainian culture. There is one whole section on sunflowers, the national flower and symbol of Ukraine. She includes instructions on how to plant your own sunflower and a Ukrainian poem to recite while you water it! Ukrainian Easter eggs are world-famous, and she tells how to dye eggs with natural dyes. She’s even included a guide to learning the Ukrainian alphabet and some key phases. Bright photographs illustrate Blue Skies and Golden Fields.

More list-like  is The Great Book of Ukraine: Interesting Stories, Ukranian History & Random Facts About Ukraine, by Anatolly Drahan (Independently published, 2022). Learn here not only about Ukraine’s past, but about pop culture, folklore, food, music, religion, celebrities & symbols, and why Ukranians celebrate two different New Years.

Ukrainian is  one of the most lyrical languages in the world. Enjoy learning some of it from Ukrainian Picture Dictionary Coloring Book: Over 1500 Ukrainian Words and Phrases for Creative and Visual Learners of All Ages (Lingo Mastery 2022).

FICTION:

These four Middle-grade novels take place in other times of great conflict and invasion in Ukraine’s past. The situations the young characters must face are grim and terrifying. But these are stories of resilience, courage, and hope, the qualities most needed in war-torn Ukraine today.

The Memory Keeper of Kyiv, by Erin Litteken (Boldwood Books, 2022), takes place in the 1930s, a time known as The Holodor, The Great Starvation. Russia’s Soviet ruler, Joseph Stalin, occupied Ukraine and tried to erase its culture. The Soviets claimed all grain produced in that fertile country and starved  4 million Ukrainians to death. In The Memory Keeper of Kyiv, 16-year old Katy at first sees village neighbors disappear for resisting the Soviets. Soon she herself is engaged in the struggle for survival. Author Litteken is the granddaughter a Ukrainian refugee from World War II.

Winterkill, by Canadian/Ukrainian author Marsha Forchuck Skrypuch (Scholastic, 2022), also  takes place in the time of the Great Starvation. In this gripping story, young Nyl is struggling to stay alive. Alice, whose father has come from Canada to work for the Soviets, sees that what is happening to the people is terribly wrong. Nyl and Alice come up with a daring plan. Will they survive long enough to carry it out?

In April of 1986, the nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, not far from Kyiv, melted down, poisoning the environment. In Helen Bates’ graphic novel, The Lost Child of Chernobyl (Otter Barry Books, 2021) two stubborn old ladies refuse to evacuate. Nine years later, forest wolves bring a ragged child to their door. The child has been living with the wolves in the forbidden toxic zone. Will the two be able to find his family after all this time?

In the suspenseful novel, The War Below, by Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch (Scholastic, 2020),  a Ukrainian boy smuggles himself out of a Nazi forced labor camp during World War II. He has to leave behind his dear friend Lida, but vows to find her again someday. IF he survives. Racing through the countryside, he struggles to evade both the Nazis and Soviet agents and finds himself in the line of fire.

MORE BOOKS ON UKRAINE FOR MIDDLE-GREAD READERS ARE COMING SOON: A NOVEL AND A WORDLESS BEAUTY

Maya and Her Friends: A Story About Tolerance and Acceptance To Support the Children of Ukraine (Studio Press, 2023) takes place in 2017. In that year, Russia conquered Crimea and annexed it from Ukraine. They also temporarily occupied parts of Donetsk and Luhansk. This is the story of families with children in Crimea, all with different family backgrounds. It shows how living under occupation and the shadow of war has impacted their lives. Ukrainian author Larysa Debysenk wrote this novel in Kyiv, with the roar of Russian gunfire in the background. She says, “I want to shout that the children of my country need international protection. The world needs to understand this.”

Yellow Butterfly: A story from Ukraine  will come out from Red Comet Press in January, 2023. Without words, and using the yellow and blue symbolic colors of Ukraine, children’s book illustrator Oleksandr Shatokhin shows a young girl’s view of the military conflict: her fear, her anger and frustration, and finally her hope.

Let’s hope, too, that by the time these last two books appear, the fighting in Ukraine may be over and rebuilding can begin!  Slava Ukrajini! 

 

 

 

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Interview with Adam Borba, author of Outside Nowhere!

By on November 17, 2022   /   Articles  

Hello Mixed-Up Filers!

We are in for a treat today! Returning to the blog is Adam Borba, who has a new book out, Outside Nowhere!

It’s a great read, and I’m thrilled Adam has agreed to come back.

Hi Adam,

JR: Welcome back to Mixed-Up Files!

Outside Nowhere was so much fun. Tell us a little bit about it, and where the idea came from.

AB: Thanks so much! It’s about a funny, charming kid named Parker Kelbrook who has a problem taking things seriously (the book gets into why, but I don’t want to spoil too much). Parker is a slacker who constantly gets into trouble. Think of him like a young Ferris Bueller. He loves pulling pranks, and in the opening sequence he’s fired from his summer job as a junior lifeguard for pouring 60 gallons of fruit punch mix into a community pool.

After Parker loses his job, his father sends him halfway across the country to work on a farm in the middle of nowhere. The farm has three rules:

  1. Do your chores
  2. Stay out of the farmhouse
  3. Don’t eat the crops

 

Parker’s fellow co-workers are a bunch of kids that are roll-up-your-sleeves, get-the-work-done types. So Parker doesn’t fit in and the other kids don’t find him charming or funny because he’s not pulling his weight and he’s making more work for them. Parker is out of his element. A fish out of water. And he needs to figure things out and learn to grow. And when he does, magical and mysterious things start happening on that farm – like one morning he wakes up to find a seventeen-hundred-pound dairy cow on the roof of the barn. And that’s when Parker discovers that things on this farm aren’t as they appear.

The idea was somewhat inspired by an organization called WWOOF – World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms. It’s a network of thousands of farmers in dozens of countries that offers young adults (or WWOOFers) the chance to do agricultural work in exchange for food and lodging. So, for a little manual labor, you can “see the world one rutabaga farm at a time.” The concept got me thinking about how something similar might work with younger participants and then wondering what secrets or magic might be growing in the fields of one of these farms.

The other important idea for this story came as a reaction to writing my first book, THE MIDNIGHT BRIGADE. That book is about an introvert kid named Carl Chesterfield who discovers a troll living under a bridge in Pittsburgh. I loved writing about Carl and being in his head, but I wanted to try something different. I wanted to tell the story of an extrovert. Someone who spoke without a filter—willing to share anything that popped into his mind, and used to being able to talk himself out of any problem. And then I wanted to put that character into a situation that couldn’t be talked out of.

JR: I was just about to bring that up. Just like with your first book, The Midnight Brigade, Pittsburgh is featured. In your mind, what is it about the city that lends itself to these types of magical stories?

AB: I love Pittsburgh. It’s where my wife grew up and most of her family lives. It’s big and strong, and filled with great food and wonderful people. The city is an absolute character with charm. It was the perfect setting for my first book because that story was an ode to food, but more importantly, Pittsburgh has over 400 bridges – which makes it the ideal place for a troll to hide. And it was the perfect starting place for OUTSIDE NOWHERE because it’s such a fun, comforting, and lively place to call home—the opposite of the farm where Parker is sent to work.

JR: Let’s talk about your main character, Parker. (By the way, my dog is named Parker, so I liked him immediately) He’s funny, (Your character, not my dog, though my dog is funny too) and also a bit of a prankster. I loved his character. How much of you is in Parker?

AB: Ha! I wish I was more like Parker. First off, he’s a much better dresser. He shows up to work on the farm in a blue and white striped seersucker suit (which, admittedly, isn’t very practical). As a kid I was more like Carl from my first book—quiet. And though I may have been able to come up with as many jokes as Parker, more often than not I kept them to myself.

JR: What’s the best prank you’ve ever done? (That you’re willing to share 😊)

AB: Well, nothing on Parker’s level. I mean, that kid is a legend. He threw a surprise semi-formal dance at his vice principal’s house, and once he snuck a pony into a movie theater.

I think the thing for me as kid was toilet-papering houses. Like Parker, there wasn’t anything malicious about it and I took pride in my art!

JR: I never got to do that as a kid. Maybe, there’s still time? With Parker, I love characters who are sarcastic or slightly obnoxious, but in a well-meaning way. When writing a character like that, do you have to sometimes force yourself to soften them a little?

AB: One of the great things about Parker is the kid has a good heart. Sometimes he goes a little too far for a joke, but he never does anything to be mean. That said, he has a lot to learn and room to grow, and that’s one of the bigger journeys in this story.

JR: Again, I feel like you do a great job of balancing the humor with sentiment. Do you outline or do you let the course of the story dictate how it’s going to go?

AB: Thank you! I am a huge believer in outlines. But a stronger believer in keeping those outlines loose. The characters need to have the space to make decisions and discoveries and share secrets. But it’s important to my process to outline to keep things structurally sound so I don’t get lost along the way and to keep the story moving. My outline is a document that grows and changes as I work through a draft of a manuscript. It’s not uncommon for my outline to triple in size between writing page 1 and finishing a first draft. When I start writing, there will be placeholder beats like, “something bad happens” followed by “and then something happens that makes that bad thing worse” and the closer I get to those points in the story, the higher the likelihood will be that I’ll know what those things are. In addition to story beats, I’ll track how my protagonist(s) will change in the outline and manuscript. And as early as possible in my process, I’ll attempt to establish a universal theme (or lesson) that connects my character’s growth to the overall story.

JR: There’s great camaraderie among the friends in the book. Do your own friends ever reach out to you and say, “Hey, that kid is definitely me!”

AB: A handful of folks are convinced they were the inspiration for the grumpy troll, Frank, in THE MIDNIGHT BRIGADE. They’re all kind of right.

JR: You also work in a capacity for Disney. You ever go into the office with one of your books and say, I have the perfect story for a movie?

AB: Absolutely! And I love both mediums, but movies take much longer to come together for me than books, so the adaptations are going to take more time.

JR: Will we see Parker in another book?

AB: As of now, I’m thrilled with the way things end in OUTSIDE NOWHERE. But in the off-chance I get an idea in the future that I just can’t shake—who knows?—I just might revisit Parker. He was a lot of fun to spend time with.

JR: What are you working on next?

I’ve been working with my editor, Alexandra Hightower, at Little, Brown Books for Young Readers on a new novel about the dangers of time travel and middle school called THIS AGAIN? It should be hitting shelves in the fall of 2023.

And I’m almost done with a live-action adaptation of PETER PAN & WENDY for Disney. It’ll be out in the world this spring.

JR: Adam, thanks so much for joining us today!

Thanks for having me! I hope everyone gets a chance to check out OUTSIDE NOWHERE and share it with a kid who believes in magic. You can order it here: www.bit.ly/OutsideNowhere

 To Follow Adam on Twitter: Adam Borba

Well, Mixed-Up Filers, hope you enjoyed! A special thanks to Adam Borba for joining us, and please make sure to go out and get OUTSIDE NOWHERE! 

 Until next time . . .

Jonathan

 

 

 

 

 

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