Book Lists

SPY ON HISTORY Book – Interview with Workman Publishing’s Editor Daniel Nayeri and a Giveaway!

By on January 16, 2017   /   Book Lists, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, Giveaways, Nonfiction, Publishing & Promotion  

Looking for an innovative way to experience history? Give this new series a try. It is AWESOME! I read the first book and loved it! Not only do you learn, but you get to solve mysteries as you read. Very interactive reading and totally fun. I’m thrilled to be able to introduce this book to you today and also give you a behind-the-scenes interview with the editor  behind this new series!


Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring introduces an exciting interactive series for middle grade readers Spy on History, where the reader gets to experience history in a whole new way.

Meet Mary Bowser, an African American spy who was able to infiltrate the Confederate leadership at the highest level. Enigma Alberti dramatizes Mary Bowser’s suspenseful story how she pretended to be illiterate, how she masterfully evaded detection, how she used her photographic memory to copy critical documents.

Using spycraft materials included in a sealed envelope inside the book, a canny reader will be able to discover and unravel clues embedded in the text and illustrations, and solve the book’s ultimate mystery: Where did Mary hide her secret diary?



What people are saying about this book:

“A gripping story that offers a window into a pivotal time in U.S. history and puts a face to a little-known figure.” — Publishers Weekly

“Alongside it being a great story, this will rise to the challenge to any curious-minded wannabe spies.” — Black Girl Nerds

“Sometimes, a very special book comes along that allows your mind, and the kids’ minds, to actively exercise and expand while tromping through a story and learning some history. Mary Bowser and the Civil War Spy Ring…is one such book.” — Geek Dad

The cool thing, or maybe I should say, the mysterious thing about this book, is that the author is unknown. This is done on purpose, to add to the intrigue of the book and also well, it’s just cool! So instead of interviewing the author, the editor of this amazing series has agreed to speak with us.

 

Meet Daniel Nayeri, Director of Children’s Books at Workman Publishing, editor, and author.

 

Daniel Nayeri was born in Iran and spent a couple of years as a refugee before immigrating to Oklahoma at age eight with his family. He is the author of How to Tell a Story, and Straw House, Wood House, Brick House, Blow, a collection of four novellas. Daniel is the director of children’s books at Workman Publishing. Before entering children’s publishing, he was a pastry chef.

 

Daniel, thanks for joining us today. We are so excited to learn about this book. Let’s jump right in!

1. How did you come up with this unique format?

Books like THE ELEVENTH HOUR by Graeme Base have always been enthralling to me. Escape Rooms, of course, are extremely popular. We wondered, what if there was a book series where a kid could read about little-known figures in history while also engaging with a larger puzzle? The puzzle could be contextually relevant to the story, using primary texts, and methods contemporary to the narrative. The only thing cooler than reading about Mary Bowser and her incredible spy craft would be employing some of your own to complete your own mission. It just seemed like the kind of book we would have all devoured as kids.

2. Why use an actual nonfiction fact as the focus point for the book?

There are so many unexplored nooks and crannies of history that are full of drama. We couldn’t imagine anything else. The series was always about these moments that read like thriller novels, but have the added import of being true.

3. How do the clues work to solve the mystery (without giving anything away of course)

Once we had the manuscript, our Art Director—Colleen AF Venable—and the illustrator, Tony Cliff, began an incredible process of layering clues and encrypting messages throughout the illustrations. There are several “threads” of clues that can lead a reader to the final solution, which is the codeword you need to decrypt Mary Bowser’s letter at the end of the book. Some of these threads are easy…they’re just a few steps…solve some Morse code here, compare it to a map there, and voila. Some are incredibly hard. My favorite—spoiler alert—is the thread that uses the language of flowers. Early in the book, Mary is told that some flowers means different things, and there is an illustration that gives the reader some examples. One flower, the snapdragon, means deceit. So on all the pages that have snapdragons on them (as border illustrations), all the clues are lies.

4. Was editing this book the same as editing any other book or were there more challenges?

Outside of the usual challenges in editing a nonfiction narrative story, we had lots of added issues with the hidden codes. I had to become fluent in Vigenere ciphers, but Colleen had to become a downright cryptologist by the end. You could say the puzzles were like a third layer of discourse (alongside the text and imagery). We had several vetters going through to make sure the puzzles worked and weren’t too deeply embedded.

5. Why is there a secret cadre of authors writing these books? Is that part of the mystery, too?

Mysteries upon mysteries!
The nature of a secret cadre of authors is that they are like any other cadre of authors: murderous if you give up their secrets. I wish I could tell you everything.

6. Can you tell us about the next book in the series?

This, I can do. The next book is called VICTOR DOWD AND THE WORLD WAR II GHOST ARMY. It follows an amazing unit of soldiers made up of painters, composers, and other artists whose job was to create decoys to fool the Nazis. They painted inflatable tanks to look life-like and trick the German spy planes. There are moments in the story where a tiny group of sound engineers hide in a forest and project the sounds of an entire battalion marching through. If the Nazis only knew, they could have walked right into the forest and captured them.

7. Workman creates such neat and interesting books. Many of them are interactive. Can you tell us why you feel this is a great thing for your readers?

The editorial mandate I have for the group is to make “Art Objects for Great and Terrible Children.” To us, this means a great number of things. First and foremost, it means we take our work seriously enough to call it art. Of course, we’re not too precious about it. We know a good fart joke is an art form to kids. And we call them objects because we care about the “thingness” of books, the format, the interactive possibility of a book that wants to speak, but also wants to listen. In other words, a book that asks for input, a book that wants kids to learn, certainly, but also make and do. Those are all perfectly synchronous behaviors as far as we’re concerned. A book as an act of play is no less a literary endeavor than a book as a lecture. To us, the interaction is even more compelling when trying to inform a child on a nonfiction topic.

8. What future Workman titles should our middle grade readers be aware of?

We have so many exciting titles in the works. Of course, we just launched WHO WINS, which is an interactive book with 100 biographies of historical figures. We’ve also got the third book in our DOODLE ADVENTURES series, which is like a visual Mad Libs where kids draw in parts of the story. One title on the same list as SPY ON HISTORY 2 is a history of archery called THE MOST DANGEROUS BOOK: ARCHERY. It tells the history of archery in war, in battles like Agincourt, and in folklore. It shows bow designs from all over the world, and explains the physics of arrow in flight. The book also turns into an actual bow. It shoots paper ammunition (included in the book) at papercraft hay bales, and a William Tell apple (papercraft targets also included). I can’t wait to see the grown-ups’ faces when that one launches.

Sounds fantastic, Daniel! Thanks so much for joining us today and giving us a behind-the-scenes look at this awesome book.

Since we already offered a giveaway of this amazing book last week, we are offering a different book as a giveaway. Daniel mentioned it above, it is called, Who Wins and is a fantastic book for spurring discussion in the classroom.

Simply enter a comment below for a chance to win.

Jennifer Swanson is a huge nonfiction nerd and loves all things science and history. Throw in a mystery and she is hooked! You can read more about Jennifer at her website  www.JenniferSwansonBooks.com 

 

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Happy Book Birthday to the Quartz Creek Ranch series

By on January 12, 2017   /   Book Lists  

Amber J Keyser is one of the Mixed Up Files  newest member and she’s got the first book birthday of the year. New Year’s Day saw the publication of her MG series Quartz Creek Ranch. It’s published by Darby Creek and all four books came out together. Here’s the description of the series:

Every summer, the gates of Quartz Creek Ranch swing open for kids in trouble. Under the watchful eyes of lifelong ranchers Willard and Etty Bridle, these ten to twelve-year-olds put their hands—and hearts—to good use, herding cattle, tending the garden, harvesting hay, and caring for animals. Aided by two teenage horse trainers, the kids must forge a bond with their therapy horses, grow beyond the mistakes that brought them to the ranch, and face unique challenges in the rugged Colorado rangeland.

I loved to ride horses when I was a kid, although it was a rare treat when I got the chance, usually in connection with Girl Scout camp. Do you have a childhood memory of horses that you drew on for these stories? 

Many, actually! Hurtling through the filbert orchards bareback and dodging low hanging branches. Leading two horses, getting stuck in deep muck and losing my rubber boot. Cantering through summer meadows in the Bob Marshall Wilderness Area. A lot of specific pieces of my childhood made it into the pages of these books, but the emotional power that suffuses all of them comes from a lonely, socially-misfit kid (me, obviously) who connected on a deep level with horses. The connection that can form between a small human and a huge animal is magical.

That’s Amber on her childhood horse Jeannie.

One of my favorite venues for a book event was a thing I did with Suzanne Morgan Williams, the author of BULL RIDER at the Reno Rodeo. We sold a ton of books and I met a fabulous woman who did respite care for teens in foster care at her stable. She did not have trained therapy horses, but in the challenging experience of being a foster child, those horses where an anchor and source of great comfort to a generation of foster kids in Nevada. What drew you to write about therapy horses specifically?

I have these radiant memories of being with horses and feeling like those animals understood me better than anyone. I could be my whole, true self with them. In fact, if I wasn’t my true self, the horse wouldn’t respond well. Riding forces you to be open, to listen, and to focus. And those were “regular” horses. (As if anything as amazing as a horse could be regular!) Therapy horses take that one step further—these are animals that have been trained to be particularly responsive to a wide variety of needs. I reaped such intense benefit from my casual interactions with horses. For these books I wanted to imagine how much more could come from a relationship between a girl and her horse when the entire point of the interaction is to provide space for healing.

So about that… Why do you suppose that horse books are almost always exclusively marketed at girls?

Sigh… I am making a sad face right now. In the proposal we wrote for the series, Kiersi and I had one book with a male main character, but our European publisher requested that all of the main characters be girls. I get really frustrated with the gendering of books—as if a story should only appeal to one kind of kid. Rosanne, you wrote an amazing book about a boy and his horse. (Go read HEART OF A SHEPHERD, y’all. It’s one of my favs!) Lots of the classics, like KING OF THE WIND and WARHORSE, are about boys. I don’t know why it’s this way. Maybe because our society is hung up on boys actually having feelings like the kind I had as a young rider.

Kiersi and I did not want to write a series with stereotypical “mean girls” set in a fancy-pants barn. Neither of us grew up that way, and we wanted to write much more authentic relationships. Each book has an ensemble cast with four to five kids, both girls and boys, plus pivotal adult characters like ranch owners Mr. Bridle and Ma Etty, ranch manager Paul, and of course, the trainers Madison and Fletch, who are college-aged.

I absolutely loved writing the scenes with all the kids together. When I put all these unique characters together, the scenes became noisy and full of life. Often surprises would emerge. Things I didn’t expect would happen. Characters would say things I never could have planned. That richness came from putting all this diversity together.

It can be such a struggle even with a very supportive publisher to get them to move beyond the tried and true sales formula. Thanks for sticking to your convictions and keeping your larger cast of characters gender diverse. And speaking of diversity, how did you go about choosing which race or ethnicity or economic background for a character?

First, let me say having a diverse cast of characters was really important to me and Kiersi. By diverse, I mean in all ways: ethnically, economically, and personally. This was the most challenging part of our work on the series. For the series, we created nineteen kid characters and six primary adult characters plus assorted parents, neighbors, camel-owners, etc!

Each one had to have a distinct personality and unique issues that brought him or her to the ranch. In some ways it was a giant chess game to figure out the right combination of characteristics for all of them. We would have conversations like, “We already have a girl with anger issues,” or “This set of kids is all too quiet.” It was a head-spinner, but honestly, the ethnicity of the characters—and about half are kids of color—came pretty organically. It just made sense for them to be from around the country and from all kinds of backgrounds.

The upside of this crowd of characters is that there is LOTS of opportunity for conflict!

What a minute! Camel owners? Really! You’re just going to toss that out there and not say which book they’re in? Sorry guys, I guess you’re just going to have to read the whole series.

A ranch for troubled kids sounds like the sort of story that could have gone in a YA direction and you’ve written YA before. Why MG for this series?

In my mind, the key distinction between MG and YA is this: MG characters are trying to find their place within the milieu of their family while YA characters are trying to find their place in the broader world.

I read a parenting book when my kids were young that said a parent needed to be a fixed point of stability, and at different developmental stages, kids needed to pull away and make forays into the broader world, but they always needed a home base to return to. For the kids in our books, the summer they spend at Quartz Creek Ranch is that adventure outside the family, and in the end, each character brings new insights and new strength back to their family of origin.

It’s hard for me to imagine these books as YA. I mean, I can imagine writing a YA novel about a girl and horse. Certainly she’d have bigger, edgier problems than the characters in these books. No doubt she would also connect deeply with the animal. But the difference, I think, is that she wouldn’t take those lessons home. She would take them and leave home. And that’s a different story.

I always think of MG as a more circular story with a character venturing forth and then returning home, rather then the more linear path of the YA story. Which scene (or scenes) was all joy to write? 

 There are two scenes in THE LONG TRAIL HOME that I loved writing. In the first one, the vet, Carla, comes to check on a pregnant horse and does a manual inspection of the foal. It involves a glove that goes up to the armpit. (This still makes me laugh.) The other scene that was great to write was the birth of the foal. It is very messy!

Oh! I wrote a calf birthing scene in Heart of a Shepherd. That was a blast. So deliciously earthy! One last thing. Do you have a horse in your life now?

I do! I’m riding at a barn called Harmony with Horses. Almost all the horses there were rescues. Mostly I ride Tucker. He was in bad shape when he arrived, but now he is a total love!

 

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