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Author Interview and Giveaway: Kirk Scroggs – WE FOUND A MONSTER

Today, I am lucky enough to interview the multi-talented writer and artist Kirk Scroggs about his newest graphic novel,
WE FOUND A MONSTER.


Please tell us about your just-released book WE FOUND A MONSTER.

We Found a Monster is the story of a kid named Casey who has a few skeletons in his closet . . . and a She-Bat, and a zombie, some gremlins, a squid monster, and, oh yeah, Frankenstein’s in there too! Casey’s a loner who loves to draw monsters. About a year ago, shortly after his mom passed away, real monsters started showing up on his doorstep. Now he’s got a house full of them that he somehow has to keep hidden from his dad and the neighbors. He’s at his breaking point. He can’t possibly harbor one more critter. But there’s a new girl in town. Her name is Zandra and she needs Casey’s help. She’s found a monster too. A giant, furry, loveable behemoth named Spot. Spot needs a home but there are dangerous secrets lurking beneath his rainbow-colored fur. A dark past that has followed him to Casey’s sleepy little town. Someone, or some Thing, is after Spot. Casey will need Zandra’s help to protect Spot, but she is a bit of a mystery herself. Can she be trusted?

 

 

Casey’s Creature Exhibit showcases his monsters. Do you have a favorite?

It was a lot of fun mixing in some characters from DC’s vaults into this monster mash-up. She-Bat is a cool character. Half human half bat, she used to be a bat researcher before her body-altering accident. I think, for me, the favorite is an old classic- Frankenstein. Franky lives in Casey’s basement near the water heater and he’s got a few quirks. Since he was stitched together out of other classic monsters, he sports some interesting features, like an invisible arm and, when the moon is full, werewolf legs!

 

 

 

 

Casey is a bit of a monster purist – no Adorables and no Fantasticals. What about you? Do you think there’s a place for the fluffy and the fantastic?

Casey is definitely me when I was his age. I was strictly old school when it came to monsters. Dracula, Godzilla, the Wolfman. But, like Zandra in the story, I now appreciate fantasy creatures too and I’m willing to give them full monster status. I think watching the old Sinbad movies and embracing Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter has gradually opened my eyes. All monsters are cool! Even the adorables.

 

 

 

There’s so much happening on every page of WE FOUND A MONSTER. Could you tell our readers a little bit about how you go about creating a project like this? And, do you have any tips for budding graphic novelists?

With We Found A Monster, and The Secret Spiral of Swamp Kid, I definitely mashed a few art forms together—the graphic novel and the journal. It’s such a fun and freeform way to create a story. I like to sit with some plain white paper and just start scribbling and doodling, kind of like Casey does in the book. This journal format lets me experiment with different drawing tools and styles. If Casey is in a hurry, he just doodles out a quick black and white sketch. If he has the time, he pulls out the whole set of markers and draws a full-scale graphic novel sequence.

My advice to aspiring graphic novelists is to play to your strengths. If you’re better at drawing than writing, team up with your buddy who can’t draw so well but writes good stories. And vice versa. And remember to let the art do most of the hard work. No need to be overly descriptive when the art can convey the same information. And keep the dialogue short so it doesn’t block the cool pictures!

 

 

It’s pretty clear that you have a special affinity for monsters. Did you have a favorite when you were a kid? Do any of your childhood monster experiences come through in your stories?

I’ve always had a thing for the tragic monsters. Frankenstein, King Kong, Swamp Thing, Creature From the Black Lagoon—you kinda feel for these critters. They just want to be loved. I think everything I’ve ever written from Wiley and Grampa’s Creature Features to Swamp Kid, even the Muppet books, has woven in classic monster movie elements. I just can’t help it!


 

What can readers expect to see from you next?

There are certainly some follow-up ideas lurking in my head that I’d love to explore. Right now, I’m playing around with some animation proposals and I’m whipping up a top-secret graphic novel manuscript. I can’t say too much about it except robots, middle school, wolfpigs!

 

 

 

Thanks so much for chatting with us, Kirk. Readers, you can find WE FOUND A MONSTER at your favorite bookstores now. Be sure to follow Kirk at his website and on Twitter and Instagram.

 

If you love monsters as much as Kirk does, let us know your favorites in the comments below. And be sure to enter our Rafflecopter giveaway for a chance to win a copy of WE FOUND A MONSTER!

Mourning the Middle Grade Years and Finding Them Again by Donna Galanti

It struck me recently that I couldn’t remember the very last time I read a goodnight book to my son, Joshua. I asked him if he knew. As a teenager now, he couldn’t remember either.

“There was probably a night where you couldn’t read to me, Mom, because you were busy,” he said. “And then the next night we forgot about it. And the next.”

“So, it just faded away?”

“Yup.” *Mom choke-up*

Since then, I’ve been bothered by the fact that:
1. I desperately want to remember when and what that last goodnight book was.
2. If I’d known it was the last time, I would have cherished it.
3. Bedtime reading to my son is forever gone and I’m just realizing the significance of this now.

I mourn something now long disappeared that I had not even known was gone.

Along with bedtime reading gone of current children’s books with my son, so has the reading of books to him that I received as a child over 40 years ago. My mother wrote my name in mine, the year I received it, and who gave me the book. The Tooth Fairy brought me books from Beatrix Potter to Laura Ingalls Wilder to Roald Dahl. These books have now long been collecting dust on my son’s shelves.

“Mom, can we pack these books up now?” he asked, pointing to his bookshelf of old and new.

“Never!” I protested and gently dusted of books, taking them to my office where children’s books will never die.

These included my son’s best-loved books like Wonder, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Big Nate, Warriors, Flat Stanley, Goosebumps, Genius Files, Joshua Dread, Captain Underpants (the lunch signs are the BEST!), and Charlie Bone (Mom, this is THE best series EVER! You have to read it). And I’ll never forget my son’s excitement when he found out that the Charlie Bone series author, Jenny Nimmo, was blurbing my first middle grade book, Joshua and the Lightning Road.

All too soon for me, my son left the middle grade world. He moved on to reading dark, dystopian young adult novels.

And I realized, sadly, he also moved on from all of our kid shows: iCarly, Big Time Rush, Good Luck Charlie, Pair of Kings, Drake and Josh, Sponge Bob Square Pants. Watching them with him made me nostalgic for my own shows I grew up with like Little House on the Prairie, The Love Boat, Benson, Greatest American Hero, and re-runs of The Carol Burnett Show and Leave it to Beaver.

Occasionally, I bring up our shared favorite episodes to him of middle grade shows buried in tv-land dust.

“Can’t we just watch a Sponge Bob episode tonight? How about the Frankendoodle one or Pizza Delivery or Best Day Ever?” I asked.

“No, Mom,” he laughed. “That’s kid stuff.”

“What about iCarly where Spencer pranks everyone and does the prank song?” I started bopping around.

“No, Mom.” He gave me an eye roll.

“Okay,” I said with a sigh.

It’s true that I’ve grown with my son as he’s grown, but in doing so I’ve also relived many of my own childhood paths through his middle grade books and shows – and I don’t want them to end. I’ve returned home to a place where I will always be young, laughing myself silly, on magical adventures, and experiencing so many wondrous ‘firsts’.

As a kid growing up in the 1970s and 1980s there weren’t books categorized “middle grade” and so I downed Sidney Sheldon, Stephen King, Jack London, Paul Zindel, and V.C. Andrews (all soooo not kid-friendly). They were my “middle grade” then, but now I have my son’s books, too (and age-appropriate!). And someday, I hope he’ll come back around to them just like I did. Maybe with his own children. He doesn’t need to relive his childhood now. He’s living it. And I realized, my son and his book world set me on my own journey as a middle grade author. What a wonderful legacy he gave me, even though he’s moved on.

He also doesn’t need me to be home anymore after school. He has his own business and drives to his restaurant job. He doesn’t need me to read him bedtime stories or cut up his meat. He doesn’t need me to do his laundry. He can do that simply fine (good!).

Don’t misunderstand me; I am enjoying the new phase of things. Watching him go to work, open a bank account, clean his room because he wants to (faint!), and calm his frazzled mom down when writing deadlines loom.

“It’ll be okay Mom,” he now says. “You’ll get it done. You always do.” He even helped me years ago in writing my first book when I got stuck on plot and character.

He may have said goodbye to middle grade for now, but I love sharing in the continued new wonders with him. I just won’t ever stop loving middle grade, not since I fell in love with it again through my son. I’ll keep writing it and reading it—and waiting for the day he comes back to it. *fingers crossed*

Have you ever mourned moving on from a phase in your child’s middle grade life? What were some of your favorite books as a child? What are some new favorite children’s books now?

 

WNDMG – Guest Post – Christina Li Why Kids Need Diverse Middle Grade

Christina Li
We Need Diverse MG

Artwork by Aixa Perez-Prado

 

Happy New Year,  from all of us at We Need Diverse MG … and WOW, are we excited it’s finally 2021!

For our first entry in 2021, we’ve got a real treat: a guest post from debut author Christina Li. We’re excited to tell you all about Christina’s debut novel, CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE (Quill Tree Books/HarperCollins) … but first, a great reflection from Christina on why kids need diverse middle-grade books.

Christina Li

Photo credit: Bryan Aldana

Guest Post: Christina Li

See it and Be it: Why Kids Need Diverse Middle-Grade books 

By Christina Li

One of the texts I read at the beginning of high school was Emily Style’s piece, “Curriculum as Window and Mirror”, in which she described literature taught in education as a series of mirrors and windows. Later on, I also read a piece in which Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop added that literature can be viewed as not only mirrors and windows, but also sliding glass doors. More often than not, literature is made of books that are “windows”—in which you can peer through and see the experiences of others, or “sliding glass doors”, in which you can walk in and experience the author’s story as a participant. Sometimes, literature ends up being a “mirror”, in which you can view experiences that reflect your own identity, culture, and upbringing.

Growing up, I never had thought of literature as mirrors or windows or sliding glass doors—books were simply just escapes for me. I grew up as a shy child–the kind who, when the teacher called on the class to share their answers or their work, would silently hope to not get picked because even the thought of reading a paragraph aloud to the class terrified me. And so, naturally, I fell into books. I read about kids going on epic quests and facing down fearsome monsters and saving the ones they loved. I read about them standing up to bullies and finding a voice.

((Like Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop’s sliding glass doors perspective? Read this archived MUF post here which also investigates windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors.))

Seeing Through Windows

It didn’t really register in my mind that for the most part, the books I were reading had main characters who didn’t look like me. I didn’t realize that for the most part, I was looking through windows, until I read Where the Mountain Meets the Moon by Grace Lin. It was a Chinese mythology-inspired middle grade novel about a young girl named Minli who, upon hearing magical tales from her father, sets out to change her family’s fortuneIt wasn’t just that I fell in love with the book itself, with its enchanting magic, the sweeping quest of crossing lands to find fortune for one’s family, and the talking dragon (because who doesn’t love talking dragons?). It was that Minli was the first Asian protagonist I’d ever come across, and looked like me and spoke the language that I spoke and was clever and resourceful and caring. It was that the story referenced the cultural details that I also grew up with. It was that I was, for the first time, finally looking into the mirror.

Being the Hero

I didn’t realize for so long that I was seeing myself only passively portrayed in books—if at all—until I finally saw myself actively reflected in a story. I saw myself as someone who could be the hero of the story—someone who could take charge and speak up, someone who could go on her own adventures and actively shape her destiny. And moreover, I saw myself as someone who could write those stories as well. I raced through the rest of Grace Lin’s books, and just weeks later, I began slowly brainstorming story ideas of my own. And the following year, when the teacher asked for volunteers to share their pieces during the creative writing unit, I was one of the first to speak up and volunteer.

In my experiences as a reader and a writer, seeing yourself—your identity and background and culture—reflected in books is one of the most validating things in the world. You’re no longer a passive observer; you actively relate to the narratives in the story. You see little cultural elements and details included in the book that you’re familiar with and you feel a small, comforting connection. You see characters who look like you take on struggles and challenges and epic adventures with bravery and resilience, and you think, I can be brave too.

Serving as Mirrors

Over the years it’s brought me so much happiness, as an Asian reader and writer, to see and read more and more diverse middle grade books with protagonists of Asian descent. And it’s been such a validating experience to write Asian middle grade stories of my own. In my own debut novel, Clues to the Universe, it was an absolute joy to write one of the main characters, Ro, a biracial Chinese-American girl. I loved including small details from my own Chinese-American upbringing, from pastries to jasmine tea to having Ro’s mother address her with the same endearing term that my own mother addressed me with. And moreover, I loved having Ro’s character shine on the page, with her hopes and fears and dreams. She was a fearless and inventive scientist. She had sky-high ambitions but was also struggling with grief and loss. She embraced her Chinese culture. She wasn’t afraid to speak out on behalf of her friends and her family. And most importantly, she was unquestionably and uncompromisingly the hero of her own narrative.

And that is truly what diverse books do, and what I hope to accomplish with my books: to include narratives that help serve as mirrors. That can help readers feel seen. That help kids feel like they can—and deserve to be—the heroes of their own stories.

About CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE

Clues to the Universe

On the surface, Rosalind Ling Geraghty and Benjamin Burns are completely different. Aspiring rocket scientist Ro normally has a plan for everything. Yet she’s reeling from her dad’s unexpected death, and all she has left of him is a half-built model rocket and a crater-sized grief that she doesn’t know how to cope with. Artist Benji loves superheroes and comic books. In fact, he’s convinced his long-lost dad, who walked out on his family years ago, created his favorite comic book series, Spacebound–but has no way to reach him.

Ro and Benji were only supposed to be science class partners. But when a mix-up turns the unlikely pair into friends, Benji helps Ro build her rocket, and Ro helps Benji search through his comics—and across the country—to find out where his dad truly could be.

As the two face bullying, loss, and their own differences, Benji and Ro try to piece together clues to some of the biggest questions in the universe.

CLUES TO THE UNIVERSE publishes next week … on January 12, 2020.

Christina Li

Christina Li is a student studying Economics at Stanford University. When she is not puzzling over her stats problem set, she is daydreaming about characters and drinking too much jasmine green tea. She grew up in the Midwest but now calls California home. You can find her here:

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