Blog

Mixed-Up Files interview with Dan Abdo and Jason Patterson, authors of, Barb the Last Berzerker!

By on September 29, 2021   /   Articles  

Hello Mixed-Up Filers,

Wow, you have me three times this month! How I envy you! Well, we are in for a treat today! We have the authors of the new graphic novel series from Simon & Schuster, Barb the Last Berzerker, by Dan Abdo and Jason Patterson.

JR: Thanks for joining us over at Mixed-Up Files!

Dan: Thank you so much for having us! It’s an honor!

Jason: Thank you so much!

JR: I was fortunate enough to have a chance to read Barb the Last Berzerker already, and found it to be so much fun! For those who don’t know, can you tell us a little bit about the book and where the idea for Barb came from?

Dan : Sure. Jason and I are writers, cartoonists, and animators. We were bouncing ideas off each other over sandwiches in Manhattan. We are huge fans of orcs, dragons, magic swords, and all things dorky. We knew we wanted to come up with an adventure story and we also knew we wanted to design a hero that our kids could look at and see themselves in. A real hero who did the right thing, even when doing the right thing is hard. Especially when it’s hard.

Jason: I think we were both in a place in our lives where we were creatively a bit frustrated. We hear the word no a lot! And so Barb is kind of this champion who never takes no for an answer. She never gives up! She really inspired us. It’s funny to say but we really do think of her as a real person.  The more we got to know her, the world of Balliwick just kept unfolding in front of us in a really exciting and organic way. It felt more like a place we discovered rather than a place we created. Side note: Are italics kind of annoying? I can’t tell.

JR: They don’t bother me at all! There is a lot of humor in the book, as well as some more touching moments. How difficult is it to strike the right balance?

Jason: I think in all fiction, but especially  fantasy, you have to really ground the reader. Action is a blast, but unless there is a real emotional story underneath, things can start to feel flat. Barb’s backstory was a really important element to get right.

Dan : Barb’s backstory and her relationship with her mom is one of things that makes Barb real. The comedy just flows out of these characters and the crazy predicaments that Barb and her pal Porkchop find themselves in. I grew up in a household with a single mom, and had never really seen an honest and fun relationship between a kid and a single parent portrayed in a fantasy adventure story. Barb’s relationship with her mom is rich and complex and gives us lots of places to go as writers and cartoonists.

JR: When reading the book, I doubt that this was in your minds, but I got a kind of Groo by Sergio Aragones vibe from it. Were you fans? Who were some of your influences?

Dan : We LOVE Groo! Sergio Aragonés is a genius cartoonist and we’re huge fans. I have always loved comics and cartoons that can really mix adventure and comedy. Teenage mutant Ninja Turtles has been a huge influence on me my whole life. The Scrooge McDuck comics and the Ducktales cartoon are also reference points I always go back too. Jason and I are always chatting about film and TV too. I think we’ve learned a lot about story telling by deconstructing some of our favorite films, like

Jason: Totally! Groo meets Conan!  I think that could be the elevator pitch. Going over to Dan’s house after school and reading comics together was always such a blast. We would both just sit on the floor and get lost for hours. I remember one time in particular when Dan was super excited about a TMNT storyline where there was a dinosaur from the future. It was such a wacky idea but still totally worked in the world. It was so rad!

Dan : Triceratons rule!

 JR: I could write a thesis about how much I love Duck Tales! The two of you have been friends since high school. What’s it like to work with your friend?

Dan : It’s a never ending nightmare I can’t wake up from.

Jason: Ha! I think Dan is joking. (God what if he’s not. This would be an amazing place to find that out. ) The best part is that we are in this together. It’s hard to make a comic. (probably not quite as hard as Barb defeating Witch Head, but close) What makes it easier is that as I sweat over my pages I know Dan is sweating over his pages too. When one of us starts taking this too seriously (usually me) the other one (usually Dan) can offer some perspective, we get to make comics everyday!

JR: Funny, I also like to tell my friends what I think that they’re doing wrong. What is your process like, and are there ever any disagreements over your projects?

Dan: We write and draw and do everything together. In all honesty, I feel super lucky to have a creative partner who is so talented and so fun to work with. I feel like I’m always running to keep up with Jason’s drawings and writing  which makes me a better artist. Jason has one of the funniest and most twisted senses of humor I’ve ever encountered and I am constantly in stitches. We never really have huge disagreements.

Jason: That’s not true Dan, we do argue about stuff.

Dan: No we don’t!

Jason: Yes we do! Side note: Dan is an amazing story teller and artist, I have to run to keep up with him! I think his brain never stops.

 

JR: You’ve been responsible for projects in TV, movies, comics, and now graphic novels. What are the differences/pros and cons in each of these formats, and which do you prefer?

Dan: Right now we are all in on comics. It’s so great to be able to make something start to finish, with just a few people. One of the most frustrating parts of television and film development is that you can work for years on a project, and then in the blink of an eye it can go away. You can be left with literally nothing to show for it. Where in graphic novels there will always be a book, a physical thing, that you can hold. And the experience of reading a book is so exciting, so laugh inducing, and often more intimate and personal than watching something. We love film and TV, but dang comics are just so rad I can’t praise the art form enough.

Jason: Totally. It’s such a fun medium. Literally every part about making comics is fun. The writing, the first pass of thumbs, adding color, even answering questions about making comics is fun!

JR: When you do projects for TV/movies, how much autonomy do you have, as opposed to when you work on your graphic novels and can decide everything for yourselves?

Dan : Every project is a little different, but generally you have much less autonomy in TV/film. TV/Film is such a collaborative process, which is part of what’s amazing about it, but also there can be  so many cooks in the kitchen  that often all the edges get rounded off, and things become homogenized. Lots of metaphors there, but you get the idea.

Jason: With comics you can make changes up until the last second, which is so great. It gives the story a much more spontaneous and I think natural feeling. Like Improv Jazz . Animation has its own set of wonderful attributes, but you really can’t make changes once you lock picture. It’s just a much bigger boat and takes so much longer to change direction. Oops, switched metaphors there… I mean animation is more like a thirty piece orchestra.

 

JR: What are you working on next, and also, what’s next for Barb?

Dan : We have a graphic novel series called Blue, Barry, & Pancakes out with First Second books. It’s very different from Barb — these are super fun, surreal, stories of friendship between Blue a worm, Barry a frog, and Pancakes, a big fuzzy rabbit. They are aimed at a younger reader and are chock full of comedy, adventure, and heart!

Jason: Barb is definitely going to three books. We just wrapped the second book this week called “Barb and the legend of the Ghost Blade.”  We will take a few minutes off…then it’s onto MORE COMICS!

JR: Thank you so much for joining us, and best of luck to Barb the Last Berzerker!

Dan and Jason: Thank you so much for hosting us and posing such thoughtful questions. We can’t wait to chat with you again! Cheers!

Well, that’s it for this time, Mixed-Up Filers! Hope you enjoyed, and make sure you go out and get Barb the Last Berzerker!

Back to Top

STEM Tuesday — Reptiles — Interview with Author Sneed B. Collard III

By on September 28, 2021   /   Reptiles, STEM Tuesday  

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the fourth Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re interviewing award-winning author Sneed B. Collard III, author of One Iguana, Two Iguanas: A Story of Accident, Natural Selection, and Evolution. In its starred review, Kirkus declares the book a “fresh and accessible approach to an important scientific concept.”

Mary Kay Carson: Tell us a bit about One Iguana, Two Iguanas. How did the book come about?

Sneed B. Collard III: Being a reptile nut, I had been thinking about marine iguanas for a long time, and even devoted a section to them in my book Sneed B. Collard III’s Most Fun Book Ever About Lizards, which has garnered a surprisingly large following over the years. When my family and I got to visit the Galápagos in 2016, seeing these unique animals instantly became one of the highlights of my life. Besides their incredible adaptations, the animals’ fascinating history intrigued me as a beautiful example of how new species arise from accidents and evolution, and I wanted to share that story with both children and adults. Coincidentally, a fairly recent scientific paper had used genetic markers to establish the timeline for when marine iguanas and Galápagos land iguanas split into different species, and I thought it would make a great story for young readers. I sat down to write the story and my editor at Tilbury snapped it up.

MKC: Care to share a favorite research experience?

Sneed: After reading about marine iguanas for so many years—and watching nature shows about them—just seeing these lizards dive into the ocean sent chills up my spine. Another thing that made a deep impression on me is that the Galápagos had recently come out of an El Niño year, in which warmer waters surround the islands and the lizards’ favorite marine algae dies back. This often leads to widespread starvation, and as we walked one island we found dozens of marine iguana skeletons littering the coastline. Since climate change is predicted to increase the frequency and severity of El Niño events, the skeletons were a sobering example of how urgent it is for we humans to cut our global CO2 emissions immediately.

The highlight of my visit down there, however, happened on our last day of snorkeling. My daughter, son, and I had just climbed back into a zodiac boat after swimming with sea turtles when another snorkeler shouted that a marine iguana was feeding underwater right next to him. I quickly pulled on my mask and snorkel and leaped back into the water. I swam over there just in time to see a large iguana grasping a rock about three feet below the surface, using its teeth to scrape algae off of the rock. It is a sight I will never forget!

marine (l.) and land (r.) iguanas

MKC: How would you describe the book’s approach?

Sneed: To me, evolution is one of the most remarkable stories on earth, and so for One Iguana, Two Iguanas, I just wanted to tell the story of how the marine iguana came to be. The recent genetic research made that fairly easy. I just imagined that first pregnant female lizard (scientists think it was a kind of ctenosaur lizard) somehow floating on a raft hundreds of miles when dozens—perhaps hundreds—before her had perished at sea. Somehow, though, she made it to the Galápagos, and turned a brand new species loose. After introducing the lizards, I just launched into the story of how the islands were created, how new life reached them, and then used our best understanding of evolution to recount how that new species established itself on the islands and eventually split into the two species of iguanas we have today. This approach allowed me both to use my best story-telling skills and slip in the science of it all at key moments. Sidebars and other excursions allowed me fill in the rest. It ended up being one of the favorite books I’ve ever written!

MKC: To whom did you imagine yourself writing to while drafting the book?

Sneed B. Collard III is an award-winning author of more than 85 children’s books, including his newest titles, Waiting for a Warbler and Beaver and Otter Get Along . . . Sort of. He is a popular speaker and has spoken at schools and conferences in 46 states and four foreign countries. To learn more about him and his books, visit his website www.sneedbcollardiii.com. Also follow the birding adventures of him and his son at fathersonbirding.com.

Sneed: Actually, both of my parents were on my mind while I was writing. Both were biologists who had unfortunately passed away before their time in the years before my visit to the islands. I knew how much they would have loved to visit the Galápagos, but they never did. I could almost feel them smiling over my shoulder as I worked on the story, though. Another huge inspiration was Dr. Jack Grove, a scientist, Galápagos guide, and former graduate student of my dad’s. Jack and I have developed a special friendship over the years and he has shared many Galápagos stories with me. I dedicated the book to him, and he actually provided a number of its outstanding photographs.

MKC: Do you choose to write about STEM books?

Sneed: When I write, I don’t think, “I am writing a STEM book.” STEAM and STEM, after all, are just artificial constructs that, I think, sometimes mask the fact that this is a really great book or this is an amazing story. I simply set out to write about things that interest me and that I think will help get other people excited about this incredible planet we live on. I don’t want only a science teacher to pick up my book. If I’ve done my job well, I want everyone to read it without partitioning their interests according to the academic categories we’ve been taught. I’ve worked with and mentored a lot of young people, and whenever I can I tell them, “Take an interest in everything. We only get one life. The more you learn, the more you will appreciate what a remarkable journey we are on.”

Win a FREE copy of One Iguana, Two Iguanas!

Enter the giveaway by leaving a comment below. The randomly-chosen winner will be contacted via email and asked to provide a mailing address (within the U.S. only) to receive the book.

Good luck!

Your host is Mary Kay Carson, author of Wildlife Ranger Action Guide, The Tornado Scientist, Alexander Graham Bell for Kids, Mission to Pluto, and other nonfiction books for kids. @marykaycarson

Back to Top

How to Stop a Boulder

By on September 27, 2021   /   Articles  

The bell will be ringing soon, but there’s a different sound coming from the intercom in my classroom. It’s the triple beep of an announcement, followed by the voice of our head principal. Even through the tinny speaker I can tell she’s deathly serious. She even does the thing where she pauses mid-sentence to make sure everyone is listening. 

I stop handing out papers and wait. I’m just as curious as my students. We don’t usually get announcements directly from the principal.

You’ve probably heard of the latest trend on Tik Tok, she says. 

I haven’t, but I nod my head anyway because it doesn’t take much to lose street cred with middle schoolers.

The trend, our principal explains, encourages students to vandalize school property. Break things, steal things, deface things. I gather that you do these bad things and then post a video of said bad things online for other people to see. This is all new to me. I thought Tik Tok was dance videos. Or maybe it was cat videos. Isn’t there one that’s just cat videos?

Don’t get sucked into this trend, our principal warns. It’s a Level 3 Offense to vandalize the school. I look out at my classroom and gather that my students know very little about Level 3 Offenses but plenty about this Tik Tok thing. I can tell by the whispers that it must be popular. Maybe even more popular than cat videos.

I’ve done some research since that announcement (including trying to get my head around Tik Tok in general — the national PTA put out a very helpful guide for parents). Turns out the trend is very popular. Like, millions-of-views popular. Most of the videos are short. Kids ripping soap dispensers off walls or swiping things off teachers’ desks or breaking bathroom mirrors. I haven’t seen the videos myself — Tik Tok rightly blocked them and made searching for them on the platform much more difficult.

Even now, a few days after digesting all of this, I still can’t understand the appeal. All moral arguments aside, the risk/reward analysis doesn’t add up. You’re literally posting the evidence of your crimes online and hoping other people find it. How could you not get caught? I was a pretty savvy middle schooler and did plenty of questionable stuff, so this just isn’t making any sense to me.

But that’s the thing about trends — they don’t have to make sense to be popular. The momentum of a trend is enough to flatten most logical arguments like a boulder careening down the side of a mountain.

So did the announcement work? Did our school escape the clutches of the latest Tik Tok trend? We’ll see, but I’m not sure an announcement alone, no matter how long the mid-sentence pauses, can halt something with so much momentum. For that, change has to come from within. It has to be planted like a seed and grow into a sapling that grows into a tree that’s strong enough to stop a boulder. I only know of a few things that can do that in a person, and since this is a book blog you can probably guess what’s coming next.

Listed below are three incredible books that highlight the allure of trends, social pressure, and the power of transcending what’s popular for the sake of what’s right. Whether you’re a current middle schooler, a former middle schooler, or a very former middle schooler, I think you’ll be encouraged by the strong, sometimes refreshingly subversive characters in these books.

Shannon, the main character in this memoir-style graphic novel, spends most of the book trying to figure out whether she’s in or out. It could easily have been a story about a girl abandoning her moral compass for the sake of being popular, but instead it’s a much messier and more realistic portrayal of the delicate balancing act of fitting in and finding friends. Shannon is honest, self-aware, and painfully loyal. She’s also angry, scared, sometimes vindictive and confused. One thing she’s not is a follower, and that makes for a heartwarming and poignant story with a satisfyingly untidy ending.

 

Writing a story about a student with special needs is tough. Writing it in the first person is an even bolder choice, yet Leslie Connor navigates it beautifully. As a special education teacher myself, I started this book with some healthy skepticism, but I was quickly won over by Mason’s honesty, his charm, his way of seeing the world in such simple yet vivid detail. More than anything, Mason is who he is. He wrestles with his shortcomings, but he also has an elusive sense of peace about the kind of kid he is. He finds beauty in all sorts of things that others miss, and while other characters in this book are jockeying for popularity and approval, Mason is content in a world where there are simple truths like right and wrong. It challenged my own thinking more than I expected it to, which I’m sure Mason would not have intended but would be happy to know.

Jack Cheng set out to write an adult novel. He says as much in an episode of his Podcast about the development of See You in the Cosmos. In writing the story, he discovered the gentle, hilariously honest Alex Petroski. As the story developed, I’m so glad it eventually landed in the world of middle grade. Kids need to read more characters like Alex. He’s driven, but not in the cliche, success-at-all-costs way so many characters tend to be. His arc is refreshingly unique — an ever-widening net of relationships and perspectives, all set against the backdrop of a message to hypothetical aliens somewhere out there in the universe. Alex often plays the role of commentator, and it’s through this commentary that we see his resilience and his refusal to accept the things around him at face value. The story also serves as a reminder that bucking trends and pursuing truth doesn’t always have a perfectly happy ending, and loose ends don’t mean we were on the wrong path.

I’m sure there will be other trends. Something tells me Tik Tok isn’t going away any time soon. And not all trends are bad. Some of my educator friends were wondering if maybe bringing teachers coffee could go viral someday. 

It all comes down to decisions — I think that’s what our building principal was getting at. We balance the input of the world with the things we already know and hold true. Sometimes the decision lands us in the world of the Level 3 Offense, but on our good days we look more like the powerfully human characters in the books that shape our lives.

Back to Top