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WNDMG WEDNESDAY – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO IDA B. WELLS

By Jennifer Swanson on July 13, 2022 / Articles, WNDMG

Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado

Happy Birthday Ida B. Wells

This month on We Need Diverse MG (WNDMG), we celebrate the July 16 birthday of Ida B. Wells. The 19th -century journalist, author, and activist would be 160 years old this year.

Test Your Ida Facts

To honor her birthday, I’ve put together a little booklist and a quiz … see if you can guess True or False for each of these statements about Ida B. Wells (answers below):

She was born into slavery.
She was an elementary school teacher.
She started her journalism career by writing for a white newspaper.
She marched at the back of the procession in the 1913 Woman Suffrage Procession.
She campaigned for anti-lynching laws.
She married young.
She visited the White House.
While riding on a train to work one morning, she was asked to move from the White car to the Black (Jim Crow) car. She did so quietly, vowing to dedicate her news career to fighting Jim Crow laws.

Answer Key:

T: She was born in 1862, before the end of the Civil War emancipated enslaved people.
T: Her parents died of Yellow Fever when she was only 16. To keep her brothers and sisters from being separated and farmed out to various relatives, she pretended she was an adult and got a job as a teacher.
F: She started her journalism career writing for a Black newspaper that was part of a social group she participated in, where they wrote and performed speeches.
F: March organizer Alice Paul asked to her to march in the back, to accommodate the wishes of the Southern women, but she refused. She marched in the middle of the parade along with the white women who had come with her from her home state of Illinois.
T: She wrote tirelessly about the crisis of lynching, and she used data-driven investigations to bolster her call for anti-lynching laws. Her data clearly supported what the Black community already knew: that the number of lynchings skyrocketed after Reconstruction and that they targeted mostly Black men, but also Black women. She also gave speeches all over the country and in the UK to drum up support for anti-lynching laws, but they were never passed during her lifetime.
F: She didn’t marry Ferdinand Lee Barnett until she was 33, which was considered old in her time.
T: She visited President William McKinley at the White House in 1898 to lobby for her anti-lynching law.
F: She did not quietly leave the white car for the Black car… she protested and refused. Ultimately, the train conductors threw her off the train!

Learn More About Ida B. Wells

Ida B. Wells, Voice of Truth: Educator, Feminist, and Anti-Lynching Civil Rights Leader, by Michelle Duster (Henry Holt and Co.) January 2022 *NOTE: Michelle Duster is Ida B. Wells’s great-granddaughter.
Discovering History’s HEROES: Ida B. Wells, Fighter for Justice, by Diane Bailey (Aladdin) August 2019
Who was Ida B. Wells? By Sarah Fabiny (Penguin Workshop) June 2020
It’s Her Story, Ida B. Wells (Graphic Novel), by Anastasia Magloire Williams (Sunbird Books) November 2021

5) Indigo and Ida, by Heather Murphy Capps (Carolrhoda Books/Lerner) Launching April 2023

((COVER NOT YET RELEASED))

((Like booklists featuring activists and journalists? Check out this and this post from MUF))

Ida Fought Today’s Battles

Yes, you read that right — the last book on the list is actually my debut! I’m so excited to join the collection of books about this amazing woman.

My book, INDIGO AND IDA, illustrates many of the pivotal moments in Wells’s life you just read about in the above T/F activity. That exploration happens as my main character, Indigo, reads (historical fiction) letters from Ida. Indigo is a 21st-century middle-school journalist, but what she realizes is that many of the battles Ida fought during her lifetime are the same or similar to the ones Indigo herself faces.

Ida knew she would not be able to finish the social justice work she so tirelessly pursued her whole life, but with her body of work, she left a powerful legacy of activism for future generations to pick up and carry to the finish line.

Happy Birthday, Ida, and thank you.

Cover Reveal: GOOD DIFFERENT, by Meg Eden Kuyatt

By Jennifer Swanson on July 7, 2022 / Articles

Cover Reveal: GOOD DIFFERENT

It’s cover reveal day at Mixed-Up Files, and we’re so excited! Today we get to reveal the cover for Meg Eden Kuyatt’s middle-grade debut: GOOD DIFFERENT.

Here it is!

Okay, okay, I’m just playing. That’s not exactly it …. and I PROMISE I really will show you in just a moment. t’s AMAZING and I’m chomping at the bit to share …. in just a minute or two.

When we do a cover reveal here at Mixed-Up Files, before we show you the art, we love the chance to hear from the wonderful creators who turn an author’s themes and characters into covers that will lure readers to pick up the book. For GOOD DIFFERENT, that artist was Luna Valentine.

Meet Illustrator Luna Valentine

MUF: How did you decide which story elements to focus on for this cover?

LV: I’ve had a lot of input and help from an incredible design team. We’ve explored a lot of different ideas and in the end had a wide variety of ideas to choose from. I think early on the phrase “be a dragon” stood out to me personally and I tried to incorporate it as a design element in every idea we worked on. It’s really empowering to be a dragon.

MUF: Which elements did you enjoy working with the most?

LV: My absolute favourite part was the character design. I feel like you can connect to a story on a whole new level if you connect with the protagonist, and from the moment I got the character description of Selah I could just picture her so clearly in my head. Now getting her to look exactly like she did in my head was a challenge but it was so much fun.

MUF: What is your artistic process for cover art?

LV: Usually I start with super rough, teeny tiny sketches straight away after reading the brief, just to get my initial ideas down on paper. Then I’ll do an in depth character design, usually with a bunch of different hair styles, clothing choices, maybe even a couple of different expressions. I draw the character in a lot of different poses. The first sketches are always so stiff and lifeless, but when you get into it, and allow yourself the time to experiment with different ideas, different designs and even make some mistakes, your sketches will finally start looking the way you want them to. I think the key is not to spend too much time on artwork at first and then go back and refine it over days, even weeks until it starts looking the way you want it to.

MUF: What do you enjoy about illustrating cover artwork in general?

LV: Honestly my favourite part is seeing it in print, on a shelf in a book shop or on my doorstep. I love the feeling of a new book. And knowing I helped to create it is so satisfying.

About Luna:

Luna is a Polish children’s book illustrator, living in Nottingham, UK.

She works digitally, finding inspiration in folk tales, video games, cute Japanese food, under her bed and other places nobody thinks to look. Her art has been described as humorous, quirky and colorful. At Nottingham Trent University she studied Graphic Design and went on to receive her Masters in Illustration. Luna has worked with a variety of clients including Paper Rose, Paperchase and Arteza. When Luna is not drawing, you can find her traveling the world to find the perfect cup of coffee.

Stay In Touch:

Wesbite

Instagram: @lunavaltineart

Twitch:

The Cover Reveal

And now for the moment we’ve all been waiting for … drum roll …. the real thing! Here’s the cover for GOOD DIFFERENT, by Meg Eden Kuyatt.

About GOOD DIFFERENT

A extraordinary novel-in-verse for fans of Starfish and A Kind of Spark about a neurodivergent girl who comes to understand and celebrate her difference.

Selah knows her rules for being normal.

She always, always sticks to them. This means keeping her feelings locked tightly inside, despite the way they build up inside her as each school day goes on, so that she has to run to the bathroom and hide in the stall until she can calm down. So that she has to tear off her normal-person mask the second she gets home from school, and listen to her favorite pop song on repeat, trying to recharge. Selah feels like a dragon stuck in a world of humans, but she knows how to hide it.

Until the day she explodes and hits a fellow student.

Selah’s friends pull away from her, her school threatens expulsion, and her comfortable, familiar world starts to crumble.

But as Selah starts to figure out more about who she is, she comes to understand that different doesn’t mean damaged. Can she get her school to understand that, too, before it’s too late?

Meet Author Meg Eden Kuyatt

MUF: Did you get to weigh in on any of these details in this cover art?

MEK: I gave a description of Selah (the protagonist) and some ideas of what I was envisioning, as well as styles I liked. My main comment was that I really wanted a dragon integrated into the cover—and I LOVE how Luna did this!

MUF: Is there one element of this illustration that stands out in particular for you as the author or that resonates with favorite parts of your story?

MEK: My favorite parts are Selah’s dragon wings. I love how they’re built out of all these things Selah learns in the novel, like the sensory tools she discovers (like earplugs and sunglasses), or how she rethinks words she’s grown up hearing, like “weird.” I really love how it shows that the tools Selah learns about empower her, like dragon wings! I can’t imagine a better image that captures the heart of this story!

MUF: Anything else you would like to tell us about your cover and why it is special to you?

MEK: I really didn’t have ideas for the cover, or a specific way I envisioned it, but it was really important to me that it would pull in kids who, like Selah, may also have a special interest in dragons. So I was incredibly happy to see this cover, which captured what I wanted, even though I didn’t know how to express it! It gives a magical touch (because writing is magic!) but still tells us this is a contemporary story, that you can find those little glimmers of magic in the real world. I’m in love with my cover!

MUF: Congratulations, and we’re so excited to read GOOD DIFFERENT!

About Meg

Meg Eden Kuyatt is a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee, and teaches creative writing at Anne Arundel Community College. She is the author of the 2021 Towson Prize for Literature winning poetry collection “Drowning in the Floating World” (Press 53, 2020) and children’s novels, most recently “Good Different” (Scholastic, 2023).

Stay In Touch and Preorder

Website

https://linktr.ee/medenauthor

Twitter: @ConfusedNarwhal

Instagram: @meden_author

Facebook: Meg Eden Writes Poems

Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/buwBXX

GOOD DIFFERENT comes out in March 2023. Preorder now from Bookshop.com!

Placeholders in the First Draft

By Hillary Homzie on July 6, 2022 / Articles, For Writers, Writing

When I was in my early twenties a psychologist told me that I had dysthymia, which is low-grade depression occurring for at least two years. Kind of like a low-grade cold all of the time. Not big enough to really stop me, but never abating either. It was a relief to hear this because before that point I didn’t have a name for how I felt.

Finding the right word to describe something is important when it comes to your health. Ditto with writing.

At the same time you don’t want to get so perfectionistic that you lose your flow, especially during a first draft. After all, you likely are going to cut your first few chapters anyway. At least if you are me. My plots never really get going until chapter three or four or even five or six. With my current WIP, I just chopped off sixty pages! Ouch and also—so satisfying.

Anyway, if you get too attached to your word-smithing during the first draft, it can be especially daunting to cut your “darlings” later, even when it doesn’t serve your story.

During a first draft, my advice would be to plow on, but if you’d like to mark words or phrases that appear tired or generic as placeholders, you can go back and change them later. Here are some examples of typical placeholders verbs:

Nod—sure sometimes people nod but not all of the time. Sometimes when I read my WIP my characters are acting like those little bobble headed dolls people stick on their dashboards. Try to find other physical actions that are more specific and reveal more about motivation.

Smile—yes, characters need to smile. But usually you’re just trying to show that they’re happy. What are other ways that a character can reveal their happiness? But if you absolutely must have your character smile, just what kind of smile? A smirk? Are they beaming? Grinning? Leering? Try to be specific and add some details. I bet you can!

Frown–this is the flip side to smile. And everything I would say about smile, I would say about frowning.

Laugh–this is obviously related to the smile issue. And my advice is the same. And whatever you do, don’t use laugh as a dialogue tag. For example, avoid this: “Do you really mean that,” laughed Hillary. Instead: “Yes, I do.” She laughed.

Walk—okay, it’s true. Your characters need to move from one room to another, but how do they walk? Do they shuffle? lollygag? Slink? Lope? Bounce? Clonk? There is so much you can say about a subject via the verb you select.

During the writing process of a first draft, you might feel agitated seeing all those spots that you have circled. But don’t despair. If you put the manuscript down for a few weeks or more, you’ll forget about some of the sweat and toil.

And you’ll also be able to appreciate all of those wonderful sentences.

Meanwhile, keep writing!

Yours,

Hillary

Hillary Homzie is the author of the Ellie May chapter book series (Charlesbridge, 2018), Apple Pie Promises (Sky Pony/Swirl, 2018), Pumpkin Spice Secrets (Sky Pony/Swirl, 2017), Queen of Likes (Simon & Schuster MIX 2016), The Hot List (Simon & Schuster MIX 2011) and Things Are Gonna Be Ugly (Simon & Schuster, 2009) as well as the Alien Clones From Outer Space (Simon & Schuster Aladdin 2002) chapter book series. She’s also a contributor to the Kate the Chemist middle grade series (Philomel Books/Penguin Random House). And her nonfiction picture book, If You Were a Princess: True Stories of Brave Leaders From Around the World is a look at historical and current princesses from many diverse lands who have made their mark (Simon & Schuster, August 2022). During the year, Hillary teaches at Sonoma State University. In the summer, she teaches in the graduate program in children’s literature, writing and illustration at Hollins University. She also is an instructor for the Children’s Book Academy.

She can be found at hillaryhomzie.com and on her Facebook page as well as on Twitter.

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WNDMG WEDNESDAY – HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO IDA B. WELLS