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Interview with Margaret Peterson Haddix and Giveaway of her latest!

Thank you for your enthusiasm and willingness to join us for this interview, Margaret. Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions about your career and your latest release, The School for Whatnots.

The School for Whatnots

The School For Whatnots is another thrilling page turner for middle grade readers.

No matter what anyone tells you, I’m real.

That’s what the note says that Max finds under his keyboard.

Max’s best friend, Josie wrote the note. But what the note means is the mystery that lies at the heart of this novel..

Max and Josie have been best friends since kindergarten. But, things change the summer after their fifth grade year, when Josie mysteriously disappears, leaving the note behind. Josie had also whispered something to Max about “whatnot rules.”

But why would Max ever think that Josie wasn’t real? And what are whatnots?

As Max sets to uncover what happened to Josie—and what she is or isn’t—little does he know that she’s fighting to find him again, too. But there are forces trying to keep Max and Josie from ever seeing each other again. Because Josie wasn’t supposed to be real.

The School for Whatnots examines disparity, friendship and parental roles in wanting and teaching what is best, and right, for children.

I’d like to begin by noting that The School for Whatnots is your 47th book! Congratulations! Given your prolific publication history, what is your writing process? Do you write every day for hours on end? Do you work on multiple projects at once? Do you plot out your works, or let the characters take you where the story should go? What does a day in the life of Margaret Peterson Haddix look like? (I know that’s a lot, but I really want to know…J.)

Process? Wait—I’m supposed to have a process?

Obviously I’m joking here (a little). The truth, though, is that I’m not sure that I’ve followed the same process twice, and there’s not really any such thing as a “typical” day. That’s one of the things I like about writing—the variability. But I do often complain at the beginning of a new book, “I don’t know how to do this! Writing this book is totally different from any book I’ve ever written before!” At least I am a bit more patient than I used to be about knowing that it’s going to take me a while to figure everything out. Overall, I would characterize my approach as being a hybrid between plotting things out ahead of time and making everything up as I go along. With The School for Whatnots, I did a lot more “figuring it out as I write” than usual. I had a lot of fun doing that, but then I also hit some brick walls where I felt really stuck and even despaired of ever finding a way to the end. Not planning ahead much also meant that I had to do a lot more rewriting during the revision phase. But I think that was necessary with this particular book. Each book seems to have its own personality.  

As for how my writing days usually go, I like being super-focused on writing in the morning when I am freshest, and then working on other things in the afternoon. But sometimes I am useless as a writer in the morning, and I just spin my wheels all day long. Other times I’m in the flow and suddenly realize I’ve written all day long—and avoided everything else on my to-do list. Mostly I try to work on only one book at a time, but I do sometimes weave in books at different stages—stopping in the middle of a first draft of one book, for example, to go back and revise a previous book when I get feedback from my editor.

As history has always been of great interest to you, and as a former journalist (is it possible to ever be a former journalist????), I know you go to great lengths to research time periods and locations in creating the worlds for your novels. Is there a time/location that you have found most fascinating in all your research?

The more research I do, the more I become fascinated with even the time periods/locations I originally find boring—which I think is a testament to the fact that the more you know about something, the more you want to know.

But I do have two time periods/locations I became particularly obsessed with while doing book research. One was Roanoke Island (in what is now North Carolina) during the late 1500s, a place and time period I focused on in the third book of the Missing series, Sabotaged. That was the site of what is billed as the first “permanent” English colony in North America—though everyone living there vanished within the first three years. I had learned about the Roanoke Colony as a kid, but then was intrigued to discover all the ways in which the history I’d been taught was either inaccurate or incomplete. I kept wanting to read and know more, even though there’s a lot about that era that can’t be known.

The other time period/topic I became obsessed with was the women’s suffrage movement in the early 1900s, which I researched for my book, Uprising. Based on what I’d learned in school, I thought the suffrage movement was all about Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the middle of the 1800s, then nothing happening for about seventy years, and then suddenly in 1920, women were allowed to vote. However, so much happened in those seventy years that didn’t make it into the history textbooks I had as a kid, and I was in awe of the suffragists who struggled so hard during those last twenty years or so before getting to vote. In some cases, they even risked their lives for it. Uprising focuses on the tragic Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire of 1911, but it also deals with the strike that preceded the fire—a strike where wealthy women trying to get the right to vote sided with poor immigrant women seeking rights as workers. It was such a fascinating juxtaposition, and, at least for a short while, the women involved felt connected by their gender even though they were very divided by their social class. I wanted to go back in time and interview all the women who took part in that strike!

I know authors are often asked by children which is your favorite book you’ve written. As an adult, I want to know which characters have found a special place in your heart?

Can I say, “All of them”? I know that’s not really a good answer. But I have to care deeply about my main characters to want to write about them. Josie and Max from The School for Whatnots are definitely among the characters I’ve loved the most. They were both so real to me from the very beginning, and I wanted so badly for them to work through their challenges—even though I as the author was the one throwing those challenges at them.

I love reading author’s notes, searching for what inspired the story. You offer in The School for Whatnots that this story stemmed from what you witnessed in the disparity of school districts and the disadvantages of the children who attend schools with fewer resources. Could you please elaborate for the benefit of our readers?

That was not the initial spark for the book, but it was an important factor. I began thinking about Whatnots at a time when I was doing a lot of school visits. When I started out as an author decades ago, it felt like most of the schools I visited were middle class. More recently (in the years leading up to the pandemic), it began to feel like I only went to schools where kids were either very rich or very poor. (I think this was partly because rich schools could afford author visits on their own, and poor schools could get grants.) At both types of schools, the kids were great—so bright, so curious, and so full of insightful questions about my books. But I noticed a huge difference in how the kids were treated, based on their socio-economic backgrounds (and, sometimes, their race.) A kid could ask a question at one school and be praised for his innovative thinking; the same question at a different school would lead to a kid being scolded for being disruptive and not staying on topic. This is a huge generalization, and I truly do not mean to call out educators here—I worked for a while as a substitute teacher and I know that it is impossible to teach anyone much of anything if there aren’t a certain number of rules. Educators have very hard jobs, no matter what. But it was distressing to me that the main message some kids seemed to be getting from school was, “Sit down and shut up—you’re nothing but a nuisance” while other kids were being encouraged to think and explore, and given every resource and encouragement to do so. I want all kids to have access to a good education, and the chance to live up to their potential.

So that was in the background of my thinking about Whatnots. I am okay with kids reading this book and seeing it only as a story about friends. But if it also makes them think more about wanting all kids to have a fairer shot at success, that’s great, too.

Congratulations on the Kirkus starred review for The School for Whatnots. The reviewer offered that your work is “An intriguing novel that highlights social class disparities and the importance of friendship.” Could you share a little bit about the friendship between Max and Josie?

When Max and Josie meet in kindergarten, they just get each other right away. Everybody should have a friend like that at some point in their life—and hopefully lots and lots of friends like that. But kindergarteners grow up, and as kids change, their friendships do, too. Max and Josie face very unusual challenges to their friendship, but I think most kids on the cusp of middle school can relate to looking at a long-term friend and suddenly wondering, “Who is this person, really? Are we still friends? Should we be?” Max and Josie are just so loyal to each other that they are convinced they can overcome any challenge for the sake of their friendship. But their friendship is not perfect, and one of my favorite parts of the book is the section where the narrator pretty much says, “You know how I’ve been telling you only the good parts of Josie and Max’s friendship? Well, all this other stuff happened, too. And they’re still great friends. Being good friends doesn’t mean nothing bad ever happens—it just means that the friendship includes being able to forgive and get back to treating one another well after the problems.”

Along with the disparity in school districts, a theme in the novel is bullying, or rather, protecting from bullying at all costs. What messages were you trying to convey to your audience on this important issue?

I’ll answer with a story: When my son started kindergarten, he came home every day complaining about the boy he had to sit with on the bus. Let’s call this kid Mark, even though that wasn’t actually his name. That first week of school, Mark kept poking my son in the side during the bus ride; when I told my son to tell Mark, “You need to keep your hands to yourself,” it didn’t help. At the start of the second week, I had every intention of asking the bus driver to put my son or Mark in a different assigned seat. But I hesitated, because I didn’t want to be “that” mother. It was a five-minute bus ride—I could just imagine the bus driver telling me that I was being ridiculous. It’s a good thing I hesitated, because when my son came home from school on about Day 8 and I asked, “Did Mark bother you on the bus today?” my son’s answer was something like, “What are you talking about? We’re friends now.” Mark became the kid who was always over at our house, and he and my son were inseparable; when Mark and his family moved away at the end of that school year, my son and I were both distraught.

Now, that story does not address situations that are truly bullying. It also could have been a different story if it’d been a boy picking on a girl, or a child of one race picking on a child of a different race. But it’s so hard for parents to tell sometimes about situations that are borderline. I found out later that Mark was the fourth of five children, and he was used to rough-housing with older brothers—apparently the actions that my son perceived as annoying and painful were actually meant as offers of friendship from the very beginning. I’m glad my son and Mark ultimately figured out how to get along without any adults intervening. I definitely believe that adults need to intervene in some situations, and again, I don’t want to downplay the fact that bullying can be a very serious issue. But parents do their kids a true disservice if they try so hard to protect their kids that they don’t ever allow their kids to be in situations where they might make mistakes, where they might be hurt, where they themselves might unintentionally hurt others—or where, while rebounding from problems, they might learn how to interact with others in a healthy way. As much as we parents would like to, we can’t wrap our kids in bubble wrap and protect them from every risk and every potential pain. And it can undermine kids to even try to do that. This is a more important message for adults than for kids, but I don’t think it’s a bad thing for kids to realize that adults can make mistakes, too.

I loved many of the sentiments in the text, but especially this line, “Was it possible to want to be hovered over and want to be left alone—both at the same time?” I think this sentence reflects the intended audience perfectly…wanting to be cared for and cuddled, but at the same time, not bothered, as the desire for independence sets in. Do you have any favorite lines from this book?

I so enjoyed writing this book from the perspective of the snarky narrator—or maybe I should say, “poignantly snarky narrator.” I don’t think it’s too much of a spoiler to say that she’s had more experience with life as a fifth grader than most people get. So it was fun to slip in lines like, “From the vantage point of the last day of school, summer always looked endless.” And then,  near the end of the book, “But there’s something about the last day of summer that makes everything seem uncertain. It makes you feel like anything could end.” Those are sensations I remember vividly from being a kid myself; that’s how the cycle of the school year felt then.

In December, Publisher’s Weekly featured a story on the long-awaited sequel to your first novel, Running Out of Time. I know that you have written books that you expected to be stand-alone novels yet became one of a series. Will The School for Whatnots be the first in a series?

I don’t have any plans to write a sequel to The School for Whatnots. But I’ve learned to never say never—I also didn’t have any plans to write a sequel to Running Out of Time for the first 25 years or so after it came out!

Finally, what other new Margaret Peterson Haddix books can we look forward to reading soon?

I have another book coming this year that I am also very excited about: The Secret Letters, which will be the first book in the Mysteries of Trash and Treasure trilogy. It’s due out September 20. The Secret Letters is about two kids whose parents run rival junk removal companies. When Colin and Nevaeh discover hidden shoeboxes full of letters that two other kids wrote to each other about fifty years ago, it sets them on a path toward solving three different mysteries—with an unexpected connection to Colin and Nevaeh themselves.

And then after that, the Running Out of Time sequel, which is called Falling Out of Time, will come out in the summer of 2023.

Thank you, Margaret, for spending time with us here at From the Mixed-Up Files of Middle-Grade Authors, and for offering a complimentary copy of The School of Whatnots to one of our readers.

Enter the giveaway for a complimentary copy of The School for Whatnots below, note only residents of the United States, please.

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Interview with Newbery Author Donna Barba Higuera

TLC

Interview with Newbery Author Donna Barba Higuera

The Last Cuentista by Donna Barba Higuera won the Newbery award this year! I recently had the immense pleasure of speaking to the story’s author about this beautiful and powerful book.

TLC

Newbery Award Winner

Winning the Newbery

APP: Congratulations Donna !! How does it feel to win a Newbery award as a Latinx writer?

DBH

Donna Barba Higuera

DBH: How does it feel? I mean, my initial reaction was shock!  Having a story like this represented as a Newbery, where they’re looking at all books, and all cultures is huge to me. I never thought that a book like this would get noticed because it does represent my culture and kids like I was who need to see themselves in books. But I also think that a reason that it’s important to me is because kids from outside cultures can pick up a book that is not about their culture and they learn something. So I love that this book will allow some children to do that.

APP: I agree, it’s such an important book for the Latinx community but also for those outside of the community to learn something about it, including some Spanish sprinkled throughout. Can you give us a quick summary of your book for those who haven’t read it?

DBH: Basically It’s about a girl, Petra, who is leaving Earth for the last time, and has to choose something to take that is most important to her. For her that’s story. But story is threatened to be erased by people going into the future. What it means to be human, Earth’s folklore, history, and mythology are all threatened. Petra, is trying to protect that.  I hope that this book is one that kids will pick up and say, okay if I was leaving Earth for the last time, what would I do if I were Petra? What would I take with me?

Overcoming Challenges

APP: Yes, I’m sure kids will wonder what they would take with them, I know I did. Petra is an interesting character because she is very smart and capable but also has a major vulnerability. She has a serious vision challenge. Why did you decide to integrate that into her character?

DBH fam

Mother, Father, big sis and Donna

DBH: My mother had retinitis pigmentosa, it’s a degenerative eye disease, and I’m an eye doctor. But I also wanted to show that someone like Petra, or my mother, are not defined by their disease. Just because Petra had a visual dysfunction that did not deter from her journey, or what she wanted to do.

It presented a challenge at times but I wanted to show a character who lived with that like my mother did. I wanted to show kids who are reading this that they may have challenges but they can overcome them. It’s okay to have challenges, we don’t have to fix everything. Challenges are part of who we are as humans.

The Power of Stories

APP: That is so true, and also so hard to accept sometimes. It is great to see a character that has a trait that can’t be fixed and has learned to live with. Like you, Petra is a storyteller. She tells cuentos (stories) told to her by her Abuela. In a way this grandmother, Lita, is on the journey as well though she is left behind on Earth. I felt that you were telling us that we can carry our history, the people we lose, and ourselves through stories. Is that something you were trying to do?

DBH & abuela

Donna and her Abuela

DBH: Yeah, that makes me very emotional. The opening scene was absolutely me getting to say goodbye to my grandmother. The things she taught me when I was younger, it wasn’t just about cooking and culture, it was the stories she told me. Some of them were incomplete. She didn’t remember or didn’t know them fully. They had been told to her as well. She stopped going to school when she was ten or eleven years old. Much of what she knew was through the tradition of oral storytelling.

I carry the stories and the things that my grandmother taught me throughout my daily life. This story allowed me to go back and revisit that, and what my grandmother meant to me, and the gifts that she gave me. Oftentimes, it was while she was cooking, or we were working in the yard, that she would tell her stories. Everything had a story. I look back on that and I think that  storytelling isn’t always what we think of in the western way of telling stories. It isn’t always sitting down with a book, or a teacher telling a story that is very structured. A lot of storytelling in cultures happens naturally throughout life.

((Enjoying this interview? Read more from Donna Barba Higuera))

Difficult Choices

APP: That is so true, and I think that is a very common experience in many Latin American families. Our stories are part of what holds our families together. We carry our grandparents stories throughout our lives, even after we lose them. That is such an important and beautiful message in your book where the people who leave Earth have to leave so much behind. How did you decide what each person would take with them for your book, and what would you take if you had to make that choice?

DBH father and grandmother

Donna’s grandmother and father

DBH: You know, that’s such a good question. I decided I wanted to show people’s
personalities. They had a small amount of space, they could only take one or two things. I wanted to show based on people’s personalities, what they valued and what was important to them. Petra’s brother, Javier, brings his book. That was what was important to him. Petra brings a pendant from her grandmother. Her father brings a rosary. It wasn’t just about religion, he had made that rosary with his own hands, and with his daughter. He had made every single bead.

For me, it would be books. I would have to figure out a way to bring them all. I worry about getting older and losing my memory. Maybe this book is about getting older and losing your memories and my fear of losing my memories, and stories, and wanting to hold on to them. I’d be like Petra. She panicked and I would panic if I was going to lose all my stories. And of course, for Petra, the worst thing happens to her, which is probably my biggest fear. People lost their memories. What if that had been her, and she had lost her memory of love of story and the things she’s passionate about?

Dreamers

APP: It’s really scary to think about! And there is so much more going on in this book, it’s hard to talk about it all without giving it away. One thing I wanted to ask you about that intrigues me was the weaving of Javier’s picture book Dreamers into the narrative. How did you decide to use this book and did you talk to Yuyi Morales, the author, about using her book as an element in your story?

Dreamers PB

Award winning picture book

DBH: Another great question, I don’t think anybody’s asked me this. Originally, I started writing my book before I’d read Dreamers and had another placeholder book in that spot that didn’t quite fit the narrative of what I wanted. Then when I read Dreamers I thought, this is the book.

We had to make sure that the lines that I used were the ones I felt were most powerful for this book. You can’t just use the whole thing, we had to get permission. My editor got permission from her publisher to use those lines.  Now people  who hadn’t read Dreamers before are discovering it and finding it is so powerful and so emotional. I wanted to show things without feeling preachy, or trying to teach someone.  I’d rather have a child read and they determine what message they can get from a story on their own. I know Yuyi Morales and am a fan of her writing. This is a tribute to her wor

Loss

APP: Absolutely, I love her book, and it was definitely the perfect choice for Javier. Your book is  about adventure but also about love, family, and loss. How did you balance all of those big topics and did you worry that it would be too much for an MG audience to handle?

DBH: Yeah, I will say, I think that there are some readers where it may be too much. It’s an emotional book and it’s an emotional journey. I believe that when you have a message that may be sad or difficult to hear, you have to try and balance it with moments where you can take a breath. You need a slow scene, a family moment or humor. A moment where you can laugh and feel it’s okay again, a reset. It is difficult to write.

When I go back through revisions, I will go wow, that’s a lot! I need to dial it back a little bit. It’s a lot for middle grade and we debated moving it up to YA. The irony is that the YA audience has found it, and are reading it. Ultimately, I think it’s a book for all ages. People will get different messages from the reading at different ages. I remember when I was a kid reading Where The Red Fern Grows and just weeping. There are books like that. We need books that make us cry too.

What it means to be human

APP: Yes, often those are the books we remember the most because they have such an impact. We really care about the characters. In your book, I was very much drawn to the character of Voxy and his need for connection through cuentos. He will probably face a greater challenge than anyone as the story ends. Without giving away any spoilers, let’s talk about him for a minute.

editor

HS Yearbook Editor

DBH: I love that character. What I wanted to show is that you can change humans in certain ways, but you can’t breed the curiosity and wonder out of a child. He’s kind of like this little trickster guy, he sneaks around to hear the stories. I wanted to show that. He was willing to take big risks so he could hear these stories. But I wanted to show his innocence too. Even though he’s part of this ‘Collective’ that seems so structured and so driven, he is a human. He has his own feelings, and emotions and curiosity. I wanted to show that.

Sibling Love

APP: I love Voxy, and how he reminds Petra of her little brother and his antics back on Earth. That sibling relationship between Petra and Javier is so meaningful. Both before and after they get on the ship. Their relationship turns into something we would never experience in the real world. I won’t delve too much into what happens between them, so as not to give it away, but how did you come up with that idea? I was completely taken by surprise.

DBH: It was in the very beginning when I was thinking of the story itself and dealing with time.  That idea came to me. I said, oh my gosh that would be the most horrific thing to happen, and then I thought I had to do it.  It was one of those things where my weird imagination was at work, probably while driving in my car. There were a few scenes that were really difficult to write, including that last scene with Javier.  That was a very hard scene to write. I think a lot of the scenes in the book relate to the separation of families and how it just feels out of control. I wanted to show the horror of what happens when families are torn apart. It came about in a way it had to be told, but it was very difficult to write.

Family Separation

Abuela and Tias

Storytellers in the family: Abuela & Tias

APP: Yes, family separation is such an important and timely topic among many Latinx families. This book feels like a story within a story within a story. I loved it. Let’s talk about the ending. We are left wondering what will happen to characters as the story ends. The final sounds we hear leave us with a feeling of hope, but without a certainty of what will happen. I’m thinking (hoping) there will be a sequel, am I right?

DBH: So, I think so. I’ve already written what happens next, we just chose not to use it in the novel. My editor was right. He said, that’s you as a writer needing closure and clarity on what happens to the characters. I do think it will come. I’m working on a different project right now but I do think there will be a sequel someday. I don’t know when. I wrote two or three more chapters, but not enough that’s formed into a book. I have different ideas of what a sequel would be. We could go in all different directions.

 

APP: That is so true, and I can’t wait to see where you will take this story as well as many other writing projects to come. Thank you so much for talking to me and sharing this beautiful book with all of us! And now for a giveaway! Donna has generously agreed to give away a copy of her award winning book to one lucky MUF reader. US entries only please!

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The Impression of a Great Story

My sister and I like to swap conspiracy theories. It’s a favorite activity at family gatherings, and this past Christmas, after we established that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle probably aren’t robotic clones, we got onto the subject of the Mandela Effect.

The Mandela effect was coined by paranormal researcher Fiona Broome in 2009. The name comes from her discovery of a commonly held belief that former South African president Nelson Mandela died as a political prisoner in the 1980’s. In reality, he passed away in 2013 at the age of 95. Nonetheless, countless people seem to share a false memory of Mandela’s death in the 80’s and his subsequent funeral.

Thanks to the marvels of the internet, there are now dozens of places to find lists of other, similar phenomena (starting with Broome’s own website, which documents the history of this discovery), and the name “Mandela Effect” serves as an umbrella term to describe these commonly held false memories.

Any amount of research on the subject leads to the inevitable question of “why?”.

Why do we misremember things so easily?

Or maybe…why are we so quick to dismiss our memories when they’re challenged?

I’m not particularly interested in solving this problem. Like most writers, I’m happier opening doors and asking questions. And since I’m especially interested in how this phenomenon ties into the kidlit corner of the world, I’ve sifted through the lists to find the three best literary examples of the Mandela Effect. Ready to do some head scratching?

There are no Berenstein Bears

Even as I write that title, Google is telling me I’ve got it wrong. But if it wasn’t for spell check, I’d challenge anyone who questioned my spelling. I mean, hey, I have two little kids. I read books about a lovable family of anthropomorphized bears on the regular. So how could I have it so wrong? What about you? And be honest. The Berenstain Bears would want you to be honest.

A Tale of No Tail

This is one I had to personally check for myself, which isn’t a great sign for my overall sanity. It’s true, though — despite all taxonomical evidence to the contrary, George is a good little monkey who’s always very curious…and inexplicably lacks a tail. Some devoted fans point to the tendency in the 1930’s to group smaller apes (who do not have tails) with monkeys, hence the confusion. Others have proposed the equally reasonable suggestion that in an alternate reality, George does have a tail, and several parallel timelines have actually merged together to create this memory conundrum. Maybe in that other universe George does take the chocolates at the end of the book. I get that he was full, but I never understood why he didn’t just hang onto them for later.

Down or In?

Here’s another one I had to go digging for on my kids’ bookshelf. The Big Bad Wolf tells the pigs he’ll huff and he’ll puff and he’ll blow their house down, right? 

RIGHT?

Maybe you’re faring better than I did in this exploration of collective recollection, but I was 0/3 in my research. The wolf does, in fact, promise to blow the pigs’ houses in. To be fair, there are a hundred spinoffs of this story, and I’m fully confident that in one of them, I’ve got the wording right. Have I personally checked this? Nope! This is as far down the rabbit hole as I’m willing to go, but be my guest and let me know in the comments.

One of the inevitable questions when we do this sort of thing is what really makes a book memorable? Is it these little details, which we apparently have a tendency to muddle, or is it something less tangible? As a kid, my favorite book was James and the Giant Peach, but until I reread it as a young adult, I couldn’t really tell anyone the plot. I just knew that I loved it. I remember a strange sadness when the stack of pages in my right hand grew thin, and I knew it was almost over.

As authors, those are the feelings we dream of conjuring up in people, and it goes far beyond a title or a memorable line or an artistic decision. So whether you’re a reader, a writer, or a little of both, we can probably all agree that the impression of a great story lasts a lot longer than the details, no matter which reality you’ve merged from.