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Interview with Kendra Levin, Editorial Director at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers!

By JROSEN on October 30, 2019 / Articles, Editor / Agent Spotlight

Hello Mixed-Up Filers!

We are in for a treat today! As many of you know, this past spring I went on a retreat for Jewish Literature and was fortunate enough to have been in a workshop taught by Kendra Levin, Editorial Director at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers. Besides leading a great workshop, she couldn’t have been nicer! If you don’t know her, you’ll get to know her now!

Hi Kendra, thanks for joining us today!

JR: To start with, I had a great time in your workshop and learned a lot. I know that you do a lot of coaching as well. I’m sure that must be very rewarding for you. How did you get started in that?

KL: I’m so glad you got so much out of the workshop! I became a life coach in 2008. A few years before, when I was new to publishing, I met a woman at a party and asked her what she did for a living. “I empower women,” she said. I thought, Wow! I’d like to be able to do something like that! She was a life coach, and by getting to know her, I found out about a field I hadn’t heard of before then. Around the same time, I’d been getting a little too deeply involved in my friends’ lives and challenges, and needed to find a healthy way to channel my desire to help people. So I enrolled in a year-long certificate program and my life as a life coach began. I love coaching, and though my work as a coach has remained a sideline to my publishing career, I’m grateful for the ways my coaching expertise helps me in my work with authors and with my colleagues.

JR: Could you tell us a little bit about your path to becoming an editor in children’s books?

KL: Publishing wasn’t a career I was aware of as a young person, but I had the good fortune to get an internship in college working for the amazing Joy Peskin, who was an editor at Scholastic at the time. We became friends on day one, and she introduced me to so much about the publishing industry and made me want to pursue editing as a career. After working full-time at Scholastic after college in the Book Clubs, I joined Viking Children’s Books, an imprint of Penguin Young Readers, where Joy had become a senior editor, and getting to work with her again cemented my interest in being an editor. This is such an apprenticeship-based business and I’m so grateful to have had a great mentor throughout my career!

JR: What was the first book you worked on?

KL: As an intern, I loved working on the Magic School Bus books, but the first book I ever acquired was The Great Wide Sea by M.H. Herlong, which Sharyn November helped me acquire as an assistant editor, and which went on to become an ALA Best Books for Young Adults in 2010.

JR: How did you land at Simon & Schuster?

KL: I spent fourteen amazing years at Viking and made my way up the ranks from editorial assistant to editorial director. Working under three different presidents, two different publishers, and through the merger into Penguin Random House, I got to bear witness to so much change and reinvention. Even so, I reached a point where I was curious what it would be like to work somewhere I hadn’t spent most of my adult life, so when Justin Chanda asked me to come to Simon & Schuster to become editorial director of Books for Young Readers, I decided to take the leap, and I started there in September 2019.

JR: That’s some interesting journey! What do you enjoy the most about your job?

KL: Mentoring, coaching, and managing a team. As much as I love editing and publishing my own list, it brings me so much joy to help other editors do the same. I love watching junior folks discover what publishing is all about and grow in their knowledge and experience, and I’m so proud to see some of the editors I’ve worked with go on to shine in the industry. One of the aspects of working at S&S that I’m already loving is getting to work with some great junior folks there, like Amanda Ramirez, Catherine Laudone, and Dainese Santos. Keep your eye on them—they’re going to be the rising stars in the industry!

JR: What sort of books do you look for?

KL: I always try to cast a wide net, because the variety is part of what I love about being a children’s book editor—on any given day, I could be working on a funny picture book, a heartbreaking YA novel, and an adventure-filled middle grade all at the same time, not to mention graphic novels and nonfiction, all of which are in my wheelhouse. But the threads that run through all the formats and age levels I work on are empowerment (stories that will empower young people), transporting (stories that will take me on a trip and allow me to see a new part of the world or an imagined world), and representation (stories that will allow a child to see themselves reflected in a new way).

JR: How do you like to work with your authors?

KL: I try to adapt to their style and communicate clearly to find a way of working that makes sense for both of us. Some authors like to take my editorial letter, go away, and reappear on (or at least near, hopefully!) their deadline with a draft; others prefer to chat on the phone throughout the process, bounce ideas off me. I like to be flexible—again, I enjoy the variety of working with different personalities and different processes.

JR: That’s great that you vary your style to suit your authors. What’s the state of publishing right now?

KL: That’s a big question! Though I’m not sure I can answer that succinctly, or that I have a real answer, I would say that from where I sit, publishing is facing challenges, but that’s been true since the day I walked into Scholastic as a nineteen-year-old and I’m sure was true well before that. And I’d also say that publishing is also full of opportunity. We’re seeing such an exciting moment right now for voices that have historically been underrepresented by the books selected by mainstream publishers, and I think many of my editorial colleagues and I are pushing ourselves creatively and asking ourselves questions we might not have before—questions that can lead to not only a more inclusive future for publishing, but a future in which publishing is seen as more relevant, more crucial, by the society it’s supposed to be representing.

JR: Besides being an editor, you’ve also authored a self-help book for writers, The Hero Is You. Is it difficult to take your editor’s eye on your own books?

KL: Haha, I would say it’s more difficult to stop applying my editor’s eye to my own work and get out of my own way! Writing The Hero Is You was one of the biggest challenges of my life, and while I’m glad I did it and proud to have a book that represents a decade of everything I learned and observed as an editor and coach about the creative process, the hardest part was hitting pause on that critical voice in my own head.

JR: What advice can you give to authors?

KL: Read my book! 😉 Seriously though, most of the advice I have for writers and other creative artists is in The Hero Is You. I spent six years filling it with all the wisdom I could draw from my career and my interviews with working writers, so it’s kind of a container for all my most useful insights.

JR: I’ll make sure everyone buys the book! 🙂 What books do you have coming up that you’re excited about?

KL: I’m in a transitional period because books I edited are still coming out from Viking and, while I have projects in the pipeline at Simon & Schuster, they won’t be emerging for a while. On the Viking list, I’ve had a year I’m incredibly proud of, with books like SHOUT by Laurie Halse Anderson, Lovely War by Julie Berry, and All the Greys on Greene Street by Laura Tucker, and I’m very much looking forward to seeing A Phoenix First Must Burn, a YA anthology of fantasy and sci fi stories by Black women and gender nonconforming authors edited by Patrice Caldwell, come out in 2020. I’m also looking forward to The Blackbird Girls by Anne Blankman, a middle grade novel about friendship set against the Chernobyl disaster.

JR: What was your favorite book as a child?

KL: I would never have been able to pick just one! I was a voracious reader as a kid and had a different favorite book every year, maybe every month. Lois Lowry was one of my top authors—I think I read every one of her books—and I adored All-of-a-Kind Family, Paula Danziger, Katherine Paterson. My mother was an elementary school teacher for many years, so I had a lot of Newbery winners on my shelf!

JR: What’s one thing from your childhood that you wish could make a comeback?

KL: Unstructured play. I had the privilege of growing up with a backyard, and I spent so many hours out there running around in imaginative play, or inside drawing and creating, constructing worlds with my Legos and dolls. Kids seem very programmed right now, and parents very focused on optimizing their childhoods, mostly with good intentions, but I worry about kids not having the space to be bored and then find a way to entertain themselves. (Adults, too—I just read How to Do Nothing by Jenny Odell and it makes such an important statement about unstructured time.)

JR: Agreed 100% about unstructured play. Definitely not enough. Before we go, is there anything else that you’d like us to know, that I might not have asked?

KL: If you know a person of color who’s interested in becoming an editor, or even who may simply be a book-lover looking for a career path related to their passion, please direct them to the Representation Matters Mentor Program, which senior editor Joanna Cardenas and I co-founded in January 2017. It’s a free mentoring program that pairs editors with mentees to give them exposure to the industry and vice versa, and to date more than two dozen mentees have found internships and/or full-time jobs in publishing.

JR: Where can people find you on social media?

KL: You can find me infrequently on Twitter @kendralevin and Instagram @kendra.levin, sporadically writing for Psychology Today on my blog The Heart of Writing, and always at my website, kendracoaching.com.

JR: Thanks again for taking the time to speak to us today!

That’s it for now, Mixed-Up Filers, wishing you all a very Happy Halloween!

Jonathan

Scary Stories Via Podcast – Halloween Isn’t Just for Books

By Jennifer Swanson on October 25, 2019 / Articles

It’s the most wonderful time of the year ….. for scary stories and books about things that go bump in the night! Halloween lovers rejoice as visions of zombies, witches, ghosts, werewolves, even cuddle bunnies (thanks to MUF contributor Jonathan Rosen) dance eerily through our heads.

Slime and blood, clacking bones and freakishly long teeth, and of course a soul-rending howl or two — they’re all the stuff of a good MG scare. Plus, they might also pack an added benefit by showing children ways to navigate some of the darker emotions they’ll face — fear, anxiety, anger — in a safe space. (As long as they do, in fact, live in a safe space they can return to when their book is finished.)

But the printed page is not the only place we can expose our children to scary Halloween-esque fiction. In today’s on-demand world, scary stories via podcast is also an increasingly popular way to get your fix of a good scary yarn.

The Podcast

The online world of pre-recorded storytelling is growing by leaps and bounds, and we’re about to meet a new and quite talented contributor to the genre of fiction podcast in just a minute. But before we get to that, let’s just be clear. Listening to stories isn’t new. Audiobooks have been around for decades — formerly quaintly known as “books on tape.” (Like, you know, cassettes. Smile.)

The Golden Age of Radio

Before that … some of us (like me) are old enough that our parents actually listened to books on LIVE RADIO. “Let’s Pretend,” “The Lone Ranger,” “The Amazing Adventures of Superman,” and more were serialized fiction nearly a hundred years ago, in the 1930’s. Of course, the offering wasn’t nearly as culturally or thematically diverse as today’s fare, but then neither were the printed books.

The War of the Worlds

Some of those stories were QUITE scary.

The War of the Worlds was a fictionalized news broadcast aired on CBS radio in 1938. The radio play narrated an alien invasion in progress–and panicked a whole generation of listeners. Its effects were enormous–so many people believed it was actually happening, they jumped in their cars, trying to escape. For author Elie Lichtschein, creator of the podcast The Creeping Hour, (produced by WGBH radio in Boston, MA) that thrill of fear inspires his writing today.

The Creeping Hour

The Creeping Hour podcast is a five-episode anthology — plenty of opportunity for scary stories via podcast. It’s hosted by “The Creeps” — teenage friends and monsters themselves. WGBH bills the broadcast as “family-friendly horror… for kids ages 8 – 12 but parents shouldn’t be afraid to listen along as well.”

Each “chapter” or episode of The Creeping Hour is hosted by “the Creeps,” three teenage friends who became monsters after hearing too many scary stories.

Interview with Elie Lichtschein, creator of The Creeping Hour:

We had a chance to interview Elie about his podcast and how he created the vibe of an old-time horror show for today’s listeners.

MUF: What’s the origin story for “The Creeping Hour?”

EL: Great question! The short answer is that last autumn I approached Nina Porzucki (who’s the Managing Producer of Podcasts at WGBH) about co-producing a horror anthology series podcast for kids and was thrilled to find that she was as excited by the idea as I was. Nina brought in Hillary Wells, the executive producer on the series and director of youth media at WGBH, and Kate Ida, a fantastic producer there, and The Creeping Hour was born!

The longer story is that several years before then I was working as a journalist for NewsCorp, covering the news by day and writing dark and weird kids horror stories at night. My team launched an in-house news podcast, which inspired me to try to do the same for the stories I was writing. My first iteration was called Middle Grade Horror was much more low-fi and DIY-feel and published on the Jewish Coffee House podcast network. But it was instrumental in teaching me the ropes of writing kids audio and also helped me meet people who were and remain strong champions of kids audio programming, and helped pave a path to The Creeping Hour.)

Podcast or Print?

MUF: Why did you choose to go with scary stories via podcast for your distribution rather than print an anthology and turn it into an audiobook?

EL: I was thinking mainly of speed – I wrote these episodes with my co-writer, Annie Kronenberg, in April/May of this year and they’re out in polished final form now, in October! That speed from ideas to script to production to final product is just incredible and not something I’d have found as easily if I tried to publish an anthology and then convert it / sell it as an audiobook.

MUF: Why did you choose to team with WGBH instead of an independent production?

EL: I was looking for a production partner who could nicely complement the skills and experience I’d be bringing to the project. WGBH, with its resources, reach, and bevy of fantastic projects, seemed like a great co-partner. And they absolutely have been, at every part of the pre, production, and post stage of creating these five episodes. It’s been beyond a pleasure to work with them, especially Kate, Hillary, and Nina, and this project would look and sound vastly different without their contributions.

Writing the Shows

MUF: Who writes the stories/episodes, and are they also available in book form – or is there a plan to publish the anthology?

EL: I wrote the scripts with Annie Kronenberg, a fantastic writer I met through a friend who oversees the Writers House editorial internship program, which we both went through. Annie took the lead on writing the second episode, “Out of the Wind,” and I took the lead on the others. There’s no current plan in place to publish the stories in other formats, although the idea is tempting!

MUF: If they don’t write the stories, are the three hosts authors? Actors?

EL: All three of them are screen and VO actors, but Kizzmett Pringle (who voices Axe) and Alexis Collins (who voices Weta) do more screen and stage work, and Matthew Gumley (who voices Toro) is also a rock musician and performs a bunch.

The Creeps:

Behind the Stories

MUF: What are the inspirations for the episodes?

EL: Hmm, I mean I’d say the overall inspiration is to scare kids ;-). But we tried coming up with stories that could be aurally frightening in new ways. These include building scares by focusing on repetitive words (like the “Dirt spy! Dirt spy!”) in “Meet the Creeps”) or through pairing creepy monster sounds with creepy natural world noises ( like the monster / weather-based scares in “Out of the Wind”), or using a creepy piece of music as almost a character that uses sound to latch onto its victims (as in the season finale, “The Beat,” which comes out on Halloween).

MUF: What’s your favorite episode – the one you’d point new listeners to?

EL: I really love what we did with the final episode of the series – “The Beat” – and can see it being a great starting point to get listeners listening. (It’s not up yet, though, so I don’t have the link unfortunately)

MUF NOTE: “The Beat” will drop ON HALLOWEEN …..

I also think the second episode, “Out of the Wind” (Click on link to listen to a snippet of this episode.)

MUF: What’s next for “The Creeping Hour?”

EL: Good question! Well, there are still two more episodes yet to drop in this first season, but hopefully we’ll keep telling creepy stories that continue to scare kids in ways that make creative use of the audio medium.

Elie’s Halloween Book List and Podcast List

MUF: What are your favorite middle-grade fiction podcasts that AREN’T yours?

EL: I loved Mars Patel and just came across Adam Gidwitz’s Grimm podcast with Pinna, which looks incredible, can’t wait to dive in.

MUF: What are some of your favorite printed spooky Halloween books for middle grade readers?

I just read Apocalypse Taco, which is a graphic novel by Nathan Hale, and LOVED it. An old classic is the Tintin story, Flight 714, which brings the intrepid boy reporter face to face with aliens and mind control and villains’ lairs hidden deep inside active volcanoes. Also, I can’t get past Eric Kimmel’s picture book, Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins, which has some of the most horrifying monster illustrations (done by Trina Schart Hyman) in any kid book I’ve ever come across (and also riffs lightly on the “Shaydm” that appear in episode three of The Creeping Hour). Also, you can’t go wrong with Neil Gaiman’s Coraline and I loved Jonathan Auxier’s The Night Gardener. Cf course then there’s Goosebumps – some of my favorites are The Horror at Camp Jellyjam, Deep Trouble, and A Night in Terror Tower.

The Creeping Hour Artwork

EL: The artwork for the series was done by the incredible Parker S. Jackson. Just want to give him a shout out because he’s so great!

And WGBH made these incredible Snapchat filters that can turn you into a Creep! You can find them here: https://thecreepinghour.org/articles/transform-yourself-into-a-creep-s1!e3f16

How to Find The Creeping Hour:

Listen here.

Thanks so much, Elie; it’s been a pleasure.

And … HAPPY HALLOWEEN to all our MUF creeps!

Elie Lichtschein

Elie Lichtschein is a writer and producer based in Manhattan. He’s the writer and co-creator of The Creeping Hour podcast (WGBH/PRX, October 2019). His fiction has appeared in It’s A Whole Spiel (Knopf, September 2019). He’s currently working on a middle grade adventure novel with PJ Library. Visit him online at elielicht.com or on social media @elielicht

Books About Museums

By Patricia Bailey on October 21, 2019 / Articles, Book Lists

I’ve spent the last few weeks in Italy – eating gelato and losing myself (and sometimes my husband) in the museums of Rome and Florence. I already miss it, and since I can’t really pull a Claudia and live at the Uffizi, I figured I needed to bring life in a museum to me. Which is why I put together a list of books about museums to share.

Pieces and Players By Blue Balliett

THE PIECES

Thirteen extremely valuable pieces of art have been stolen from one of the most secretive museums in the world. A Vermeer has vanished. A Manet is missing. And nobody has any idea where they and the other eleven artworks might be . . . or who might have stolen them.

THE PLAYERS

Calder, Petra, and Tommy are no strangers to heists and puzzles. Now they’ve been matched with two new sleuths — Zoomy, a very small boy with very thick glasses, and Early, a girl who treasures words . . . and has a word or two to say about the missing treasure.

The kids have been drawn in by the very mysterious Mrs. Sharpe, who may be playing her own kind of game with the clues. And it’s not just Mrs. Sharpe who’s acting suspiciously — there’s a ghost who mingles with the guards in the museum, a cat who acts like a spy, and bystanders in black jackets who keep popping up.

With pieces and players, you have all the ingredients for a fantastic mystery from the amazing Blue Balliett.

Mrs. Brown on Exhibit And Other Museum Poems By Susan Katz, R.W. Alley (Illustrator)

Mrs. Brown loves museums — and so does her class! In fact, these cultural connoisseurs are just wild about field trips. Whether it’s sneaking up on an ancient Egyptian mummy, walking into a room of fluttering butterflies, or stomping through a giant heart, this class surely makes the grade when it comes to fun. They even take a tour of a skull exhibit and visit a lady who turned to soap! But the excitement doesn’t stop there — author Susan Katz uses a wide variety of poetic forms and unusual exhibits to show just how fascinating museums can be. Her text paired with the hilarious illustrations of acclaimed artist R. W. Alley will have readers grabbing their permission slips and readying themselves for a day of museum madness.

The Frame-Up By Wendy McLeod MacKnight, Ian Schoenherr (Illustrator)

When Sargent Singer discovers that the paintings in his father’s gallery are alive, he’s pulled into a captivating world behind the frame he never knew existed.

Filled with devious plots, shady characters, and a grand art heist, this inventive mystery-adventure celebrates art and artists and is perfect for fans of Night at the Museum and Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer. School Library Journal said, “This middle grade read paints fantasy, humor, and mystery into a satisfying tale about the power of friendship.”

There’s one important rule at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery—don’t let anyone know the paintings are alive. Mona Dunn, forever frozen at thirteen when her portrait was painted by William Orpen, has just broken that rule.

Luckily twelve-year-old Sargent Singer, an aspiring artist himself, is more interested in learning about the vast and intriguing world behind the frame than he is in sharing her secret. And when Mona and Sargent suspect shady dealings are happening behind the scenes at the gallery, they set out to uncover the culprit. They must find a way to save the gallery—and each other—before they are lost forever.

With an imaginative setting, lots of intrigue, and a thoroughly engaging cast of characters, The Frame-Up will captivate readers of Jacqueline West’s The Books of Elsewhere series. Booklist said, “This chapter book’s most memorable element is also its most unusual: the imaginative conviction that art is alive.” Includes images of the real paintings featured in the book.

Behind the Museum Door: Poems to Celebrate the Wonders of Museums By Lee Bennett Hopkins, Stacey Dressen-McQueen (Illustrator)

“This collection of poems touches on the sights and sensations a group of children experience on a field trip. Inside the museum, they encounter a suit of armor, a mummy, a dinosaur skeleton, an ancient wheel, paintings (Picasso, Cassat, Renoir), a modern mobile, a fossil, and an old tapestry. Selections are by such poets as Lilian Moore, Jane Yolen, Alice Schertle, and Myra Cohn Livingston—one per spread—shown amid the subjects they portray. Each of Dressen-McQueen’s folk-art-style “exhibits,” carefully crafted in acrylic paint, oil pastel, and colored pencil, successfully captures and reinforces the mood of its accompanying poem. For a poetic museum field trip from a child’s point of view, try Susan Katz’s Mrs. Brown on Exhibit (S & S, 2002). Both books can add excitement and fun to an impending museum visit or help inspire a class to summarize a recent trip.”—Susan Scheps, Shaker Heights Public Library, OH

And – who can forget?

From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler By E.L. Konigsburg

In this winner of the Newbery Medal from E.L. Konigsburg, when suburban Claudia Kincaid decides to run away, she knows she doesn’t just want to run from somewhere, she wants to run to somewhere—to a place that is comfortable, beautiful, and, preferably, elegant.

Claudia knew that she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away…so she decided not to run FROM somewhere, but TO somewhere. And so, after some careful planning, she and her younger brother, Jamie, escaped — right into a mystery that made headlines!

What are you favorite books that take place in museums and galleries? Help me out and share your favorite books about museums in the comments below. 🙂

Articles

Interview with Kendra Levin, Editorial Director at Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers!

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