For Writers

Interview with Newbery Winner, Erin Entrada Kelly

By on April 12, 2018   /   Diversity, Fiction, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers  

I recently had the pleasure of talking to 2018 Newbery Winner, Erin Entrada Kelly, about her her newest middle-grade novel You Go First, which hit bookstores this week. In addition to winning the Newbery for Hello, Universe, Erin has won many other awards for her middle-grade novels, including the 2017 APALA Award for The Land of Forgotten Girls and the 2016 Golden Kite Honor Award for Blackbird Fly. You Go First was a Spring Indie Next Pick and a Junior Library Guild Selection.

Erin was raised in Louisiana, but now lives in the Philadelphia area. She is a professor of children’s literature in the graduate fiction and publishing programs at Rosemont College. Erin is also a short story writer. Her short fiction has been nominated for the Philippines Free Press Literary Award for Short Fiction and the Pushcart Prize. Erin has a bachelor’s degree in women’s studies and liberal arts from McNeese State University and an MFA in creative writing from Rosemont. Welcome, Erin!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First let me say congratulations on winning the Newbery Medal and on the release this week of your fourth middle-grade novel. I know that you’re also an accomplished short story writer, and I’m wondering what attracts you to writing for the eight-to-twelve-year-old reader. In my opinion, it’s one of the most important phases of life. Tweens are not quite children, but not quite teenagers. At that age — particularly 11 and 12, which is the age of virtually all my characters — you’re looking for acceptance from your peers and trying to figure out who you are as an individual. Unfortunately, these two things don’t always go hand-in-hand. You want to be yourself, but you also want to fit in, so the pressure to conform is palpable. It’s a difficult age. It takes resilience to emerge unscathed. I remember being 12 as easily as I remember yesterday. That’s how weighty, difficult, and impressionable that phase was for me.

You Go First is such a heartfelt novel about two lonely kids who live far apart. What was the spark that gave you the idea to write about these two characters? Thank you! I wanted to write about two people who struggle with the pressures of middle school and tweendom while dealing with their unusual adult sensibilities. I love writing about underdogs and outcasts, and Charlotte and Ben are both of those things.

One of the many things I loved about You Go First was all the interesting facts at the beginning of Charlotte’s chapters. I pictured your head spinning with all of that wonderful knowledge. I’m curious as to whether you were like Charlotte and had been collecting these facts all your life or whether you looked them up specifically for the novel. Most of Charlotte’s “rabbit holes” were specifically researched for the book, but there were several that I already knew. I’ve traveled down many rabbit holes in my life. When I was a kid, I loved looking things up in the encyclopedia. This was before the internet, back when people actually had encyclopedia sets. I would sit down, pick a letter, open a page, and start reading.

One thing that struck me while reading the two point-of-view characters in You Go First is that although you’re writing in third person, it feels like first person. We’re so much in the minds of these characters. Can you share your secret on how you do this? I wish I could! I’m not sure how it happens. My characters come to me fully formed before I ever put a word on paper. I get to know them very well.

The characters in your novels tend to be outsiders. Is there a reason you’re attracted to writing that type of character? Because I was an outsider, and I know how difficult it can be. I have an affinity for kids (and adults) who veer away from the beaten path. It takes moxie to be an outsider. And they are often underestimated — by themselves and others.

I know you’re a professor of writing, and I’m sure our readers, who might also be writers, would love to hear a couple of your best tips on how to create the type of characters you write about–characters with a great deal of depth, heart, and authenticity. What an incredible compliment! A few pieces of advice I like to give: Know what your character is most afraid of. Know what they want most out of life. And find out how they feel about their name. Names are very personal. You’d be surprised the things our characters will reveal when we ask them how they feel about theirs.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with us? I’m currently working on my first MG fantasy, which is inspired by Filipino folklore. I can’t wait to share it with readers. It’s tentatively scheduled for summer 2019.

Thanks so much for taking the time to answer these questions. Thank YOU! 

Twelve-year-old Charlotte Lockard and eleven-year-old Ben Boxer are separated by more than a thousand miles. On the surface, their lives seem vastly different—Charlotte lives near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, while Ben is in the small town of Lanester, Louisiana. Charlotte wants to be a geologist and keeps a rock collection in her room. Ben is obsessed with Harry Potter, presidential history, and recycling. But the two have more in common than they think. They’re both highly gifted. They’re both experiencing family turmoil. And they both sit alone at lunch. Over the course of a week, Charlotte and Ben—online friends connected only by a Scrabble game—will intersect in unexpected ways, as they struggle to navigate the turmoil of middle school.

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STEM Tuesday Field Work — Writing Craft and Resources

By on March 20, 2018   /   Field Work, For Writers, STEM Tuesday, Writing  

This month we’ve focused on books about scientific field work. What about the field work of a writer? Whether their subject matter is fact or fiction, frogs or fractals, writers have important research to do out in the field.

We all know that sensory details help to create a more engaging read, but how do you craft those sensory details? Research in the field!

 

 

 

 

Here is an exercise to help you with auditory information. It will train you to become more aware of the ever-present sounds around you, will help you gather specific sounds on site, and will strengthen your descriptions of sound qualities.

Creating a Sound Map

The set-up:

  1. Place yourself “in the field.”
  2. On a plain piece of paper draw the largest circle that will fit.
  3. Put a dot in the middle of the circle. The dot represents you. The circle represents the furthest edge of your hearing.

Listen:

  1. When you hear a sound, record it on the map in relationship to the dot and the edge of your hearing.
  2. Record the sound as a word, color, shape or symbol – whatever represents it best.
  3. Try to indicate qualities of the sound: is it loud? moving? staccato? raspy? repeated?

Keep going:

  1. Continue listening until your map is full.
  2. Do you notice any trends in what you have recorded? Are there more human or natural sounds?  Are there more sounds on one side? Why? Were their sounds that surprised you?
  3. Try writing about the sounds of this place in a descriptive paragraph.

Sound maps have become one of my favorite tools for collecting sensory data. Try them in a variety of places and you will grow your ability to enrich your writing about scientific field work.

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Heather L. Montgomery writes for kids who are WILD about animals. She reads and writes while high in a tree, standing in a stream, or perched on a mountaintop boulder. www.HeatherLMontgomery.com

THE O.O.L.F. FILES

This month, The Out Of Left Field (O.O.L.F.) Files look at field work options for young people.

Want science you can do while fishing? Or at the beach? Or in a sports stadium? SciGirl has got you covered!

http://pbskids.org/scigirls/citizen-science

From tracking the seasons through tulips to tracking hummingbird migration, students can get busy collecting data with Journey North.

https://www.learner.org/jnorth/

If you prefer to do field work from the comfort of your living room – or classroom – Zooniverse is for you. Tons of opportunities to help scientists spy on cheetahs, count cute seals, or train an algorithm to detect plastic on beaches.

https://www.zooniverse.org/

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A Sense of Atmosphere

By on March 19, 2018   /   For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, Writing  

As an artistic quality, atmosphere is easy to spot—sometimes. A moment of high suspense in a scary movie, for example, is highlighted with an accompanying soundtrack; a musical comedy in a theatre might showcase brightly painted backdrops and set pieces. In literature, though, atmosphere must be conveyed through descriptive phrases and other text details. It might be a little more challenging to cultivate atmosphere in books, but it’s just as important for the audience. A convincing sensory environment in a story makes for a tale in which one can get lost, a quality sought by all readers—and certainly by middle grade. Memorable and fulfilling books allow the reader to step inside, breathe the air, sense the mood—these are books with atmosphere.

Since setting and atmosphere are so intertwined, let’s break down setting first: How does a writer create a setting that pulls the reader along for a trip outside their ordinary? It’s a skill worth practicing if you write middle grade, and one worth recognizing if you are a parent, teacher, or librarian. Setting is a lot more involved than its old standby definition you probably learned in elementary school (the time and place of the action). Setting is indeed time and place, but also consider:

  • Weather
  • Hour of day
  • Season and month of year
  • Landscape
  • Geography (natural and manmade)
  • Color, lighting, and shading (of outdoor or indoor light source)
  • Regionalism (the dialect, customs, traditions, and local setting characteristics in a story)
  • Communication systems, language, and vernacular
  • Environment
  • Character observations
  • Socioeconomic factors
  • Back and forth flow of time: impact of past (events, family) and expectations of future

Whew! And when used effectively, the setting details can help this necessary story element become an extraordinary component—one that allows a reader to sink in for a more fulfilling read. All of these setting characteristics work collectively to create the offshoot of a well-composed, well-built world: atmosphere.

Atmosphere is tricky to define, but most literary terminology sources suggest it has to do with the mood or overall “feel” of the scene, based on the setting description, tone, and other literary devices. The mood of the character can match this mood in the air of the scene, but it doesn’t have to. In fact, sometimes the actions and attitudes of the characters can serve as a literary foil to the atmosphere, heightening suspense or making a bittersweet mood even more poignant.

How does a writer cultivate atmosphere? Imagery, word choice, and connotation all contribute, as do character reactions and pace. Some figurative language devices like symbolism and metaphor can add to the developed atmosphere, as well. When seeking inspiration for establishing atmosphere, writers might use photographs, illustrations, history, music, colors, travel experiences, dreams, patterns, and nature.

From my to-be-read pile, I chose a few middle grade openings to think about in terms of atmosphere: one realistic, one sci-fi, and one fantasy.

The Ethan I Was Before by Ali Standish – In the opening chapters of this first-person novel, the atmosphere is heavy and uncomfortable, much like the oppressive heat in Ethan’s new town of Palm Knot, Georgia. As a twelve-year-old boy terribly conflicted over the loss of his best friend, his narration has few lengthy descriptive passages. But Standish provides all the right details through environment, weather, temperature, and observations about this sleepy locale (a rusty parked truck, an untended baseball field, a cracked highway, a murky bay) that readers need in order to feel like they’ve stepped into its atmosphere.

Last Day on Mars by Kevin Emerson – This middle grade science fiction offers up opening chapters with a crisp, tense, nervy atmosphere in which the conflict increases at an alarm-inducing pace. Set in Earth Year 2213, humans living in a Martian colony must evacuate the planet and its rapidly deteriorating conditions. A prelude serves up danger and emotion before delivering a fearful and mysterious clue; here, descriptions are futuristically foreign, yet technologically familiar enough to pull readers in. The main characters resist an acknowledgement of the danger throughout the first chapter, which only serves to increase the suspense. As a solar radiation storm begins to flare, protagonists Phoebe and Liam start a quest of discovery in an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion.

A Single Stone by Meg McKinlay — This middle grade dystopian abounds with atmosphere from the first paragraph. Young protagonist Jena has a crucial job to perform for her isolated society—she is the leader of a small team of girls who must find harvests of mica inside the mountain. In the opening pages, Jena is crawling through a narrow, natural crevice with only a thin rope connecting her to the six other girls who follow her lead. In the dark, with the chilly rock of the mountain hugging her close on all sides, every movement and every touch seems amplified and intense; the reader immediately feels as if she too is crawling, squirming, wishing for a harvest spot, counting on having enough air to keep going. The dark, the mountain, even the bones Jena happens to grasp accidentally all work to establish a tangible, claustrophobic opening atmosphere—though, paradoxically, Jena seems to feel no such confinement.

The atmosphere of each title considered here had me invested as a reader from the opening chapters. Feel free to comment on the post if you know of a great, atmospheric MG to recommend, or with how-to ideas for writing settings and situations with strong atmosphere! Thanks for reading!

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