For Writers

Animal-Human Connection: Creating Compelling Animal Characters

Over the last twelve years, my husband and I adopted and raised three rescue dogs.

After spending more than two decades of my life in India without pets, it began to occur to me that animals could become our family, teachers and healers when we were thousands of miles from our dear ones.

My reason for writing a thesis on this topic for my MFA program at VCFA was because of my growing desire to understand their emotions and incorporate them into my own fiction.

Let’s take a look at some books that show us these things:

  1. Can animal characters in novels lead rich emotional lives?
  2. How do authors draw a line between imagination and reality?
  3. What makes readers care?

Animal stories fall into at least three different categories –

1. Where animals act just like humans like E.B. White’s Stuart           Little.

 

 

 

2. The second category is where animals are secondary characters and behave more like themselves like because of        Winn-Dixie.

 

3. The third category is where animal characters stretch                   believability, and the reader feels the inner life without               turning the character into a human like Charlotte’s Web.

 

In these three categories of books, the animal characters make a connection with the readers and show us their behaviors in the environment they evolve in.

Now, we will look at three contemporary middle-grade novels –

 

The gorilla in The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate

 

 

The pig in The Adventures of A South Pole Pig by Chris Kurtz

 

 

The hound dog in The Underneath by Kathi Appelt

 

 

I will focus on some of the tools these authors use to draw the reader into the emotional core of the animal characters.

What do the three novels have in common?

  1. In many ways, they are a close reflection of Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web.

First, like Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web, Ivan, Flora and Ranger are held captive by their human friends. Second, like Wilbur, Ivan, Flora, and Ranger have minimal or no conversations with human beings. Third, Ivan, Flora and Ranger have best friends outside their species, just like Wilbur trusts Charlotte, the spider. Fourth, all these stories have animals as main characters.

  1. These books have also gotten a strong reception from readers, reviewers, and other critics. They have been nominated for state lists and won prestigious awards, and have received starred reviews from well-acclaimed review journals in children’s literature.

Making readers fall in love with a character isn’t easy, especially if the author is avoiding turning the animal into a substitute human.

So, how do these authors make readers care?

  1. The authors put their animal characters in extreme conditions.

Ivan is forced out of his natural habitat and is kept in a strange, unfriendly enclosure with no access to nature.

Flora is displaced from the security of her barnyard to the extreme living conditions in Antarctica.

Ranger is tied and chained underneath the porch by his cruel human owner.

  1. The authors use metaphors to help the reader feel the inner life of the character.

Through various metaphors, the reader discovers how Ivan might see the world and his sensibilities through his point-of-view, the deeper emotions and struggles of Flora, and the tender emotional core of Ranger.

  1. The authors also show the characters’ feelings using real animal characteristics including these:
    1. Odors
    2. Vocalizations
    3. Body Language

Ivan uses odors to understand the humans around him. He also watches TV, draws pictures and sometimes he throws me-balls at the humans coming to see him. Ivan knuckle-walks and uses his movements, bared teeth expressions and chest-beating to communicate his intentions.

Flora uses odors to form perceptions about her environment. Flora also responds to feelings of surprise and shame with her sounds. Sniffing objects, nosing, massaging, nibbling, scampering, rubbing, stretching and yawning are her common body language signals.

Ranger’s use of smells shows us how he feels around his friends and his abuser. His vocalizations show us his suffering in isolation of living in the underneath. Ranger also exhibits feelings of love towards his kitten through the process of licking.

Applegate, Kurtz, and Appelt had three different animals to work with, and they use methods and tactics that give Ivan, Flora and Ranger their own actual stories.

Ivan’s story is one of empathy, empathy for humans and animals with hope that we can all commit to changing our world.

Flora learns to be the best at being herself. Kids struggle the most when they must be popular and liked by everyone to be successful in school, so they connect with the theme, which is being who you are while stretching for what you long for, and watching out for the help that will come along to help you on the path to your dreams.

The Underneath is also a story of empathy. It is a moving story that brings an unusual family of animals together in unity and danger, and the reader feels huge empathy for these animals and relates with them at a human level.

These novels belong to a beloved category first developed by authors like E.B. White where these craft elements provide opportunities to develop empathy, respect, sympathy, and make the readers care for the animal characters. Most importantly, they intensify the emotional pathways – between animals and humans, between the animal characters and the readers. They help writers create work that is memorable and makes a true animal-human connection. Do you have a favorite book that fits into any of the categories discussed above? Share with us in the comments below.

Dia!

I had the opportunity to attend the 33rd annual Virginia Hamilton Conference at Kent State University in early April.  The event is the longest-running event focusing entirely on multicultural literature for children. One of the highlights of the program is the awarding of the Virginia Hamilton Literary Award. This year’s honoree is Pat Mora, author of over forty books for children, teens and young adults.

Pat is also the founder of El día de los niños/El día de los libros, (Children’s Day/Book Day), or simply Dia.

I must admit, that despite being directly involved in children’s literature for nearly twenty years as both children’s book festival founder (www.clairesday.org) and children’s book author, I knew nothing about Dia.

So, what is Dia? And what can we do as writers of children’s literature to participate and promote the initiative?

Dia’s roots began in 1925 at the first World Conference for the Well Being of Children in Geneva, Switzerland. Children’s Day was established after the conference, intended to bring attention to children’s issues. Many countries, including the Soviet Union, encouraged the publication of children’s books.

The Parade of the Red Army, Soviet Union, 1931.

In 1996, Pat Mora proposed connecting the celebration of children with literacy. The following year her concept was endorsed by REFORMA, the National Association to Promote Library and Information Services to Latinos and the Spanish-Speaking. The Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) is now the home to Dia.

Dia is intended to be a daily commitment to connecting children and families to diverse books, languages and cultures. April 30th is designated as the culmination of the year-long celebrations.

Libraries across the United States celebrate Dia with book clubs, bilingual story times, and, (yay!) guest appearances by children’s book authors and illustrators.

ALSC has a website, where book suggestions, toolkits and great resources can be downloaded to help with a Dia Celebration. Check it out: www.dia.ala.org

The website has a locator tab to find a Dia event near you: http://cs.ala.org/websurvey/alsc/dia/map.cfm

Pat offered in her comments to the audience at Kent State University that we in Ohio were not doing enough to spread the mission of Dia. There is only one event listed in the national registry in my home state. Pat is right. We can do more.

My hope is to somehow bring together a collaborative effort to celebrate Dia with our partner library system, the Toledo-Lucas County Public Library, and our Claire’s Day event. Stay Tuned.

What will you do to support this important mission of connecting children with books? Perhaps you could read of one of your works at your local library. Or, maybe volunteer to share multicultural books with children at your nearby school. Or, even just share the Dia website with your local school and/or library.

I’d love to hear your thoughts!

Book Fiesta, written by Pat Mora, illustrated by Rafael Lopez.

 

A Chat With Author Trudi Trueit & A Giveaway of My Top Secret Dares & Don’ts!

Please give a warm Mixed-Up welcome to Author Trudi Trueit and her latest release My Top Secret Dares & Don’ts. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to interview Trudi. Plus, this is my first post for MUF, so if I sound overly-excited don’t worry. It will eventually wear off.

Twelve-year-old Kestrel must battle evil twin sisters and overcome her own worst fear to prevent the foreclosure of her grandmother’s beloved lodge in this fresh, funny M!X novel.

Description: Kestrel and her family are headed out to Vancouver, BC, to help out her grandmother at her beautiful ski lodge. It’s been in the family for generations, but the business is in trouble—and there are lots of people looking to take over the property.
Kestrel is determined to help her family retain their precious business—one that her grandfather built literally from the ground up. But two evil twins—who happen to be the daughters of a property developer determined to drive the lodge out of business—prove to be her nemeses in every way possible. Can Kestrel help save the lodge and beat the twins at their own game?

Sounds amazingly sweet, doesn’t it? Well it was. Want to know how I know that? Trudi was gracious enough to share a copy with me. Feel free to read my thoughts HERE.

Hi Trudi! It’s wonderful to have you here. I’m intrigue by writers who are successful in writing both fiction and non-fiction. Mind sharing  your reasons and inspirations for writing fictional tales, and how do those differ from your nonfiction work? 

I’ve always loved to read! As a kid, I couldn’t wait for the Scholastic Book Club order to come in so I could lug home my stack of new books. I started writing stories and plays when I was in early elementary school, inspired by writers I admired, such as Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume, E.B. White, and E.L. Konigsburg. Although I adored the book Mixed Up Files, my all-time favorite book is Kongisburg’s Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth. I identified closely with the main character and it taught me the most powerful thing a story can have is relatable characters.

Fiction and nonfiction have more in common than you might think. With both genres, you must be clear and succinct, write lively prose, and tell a good story. Fiction is the ultimate in creativity; there are a million different choices you can make about where the plot will go at any given point. You are in complete control. With nonfiction, you are telling stories that aren’t your own, yet you still have decisions to make about the angle, the narrative, and what to include (and leave out). I especially enjoy the research aspect of nonfiction; interviewing experts and unearthing new gems of information. Can you tell I was a TV journalist before I wrote for children? Also, nonfiction can have as much lasting power as fiction! A book I wrote on the water cycle more than a decade ago is still being used in school curriculums today.

Great point about writing techniques being the same. And those SBC order forms … Yes! I always had a hard time dwindling my choices down to one or two. 

I’m a character name fanatic and the name Kestrel is definitely unique. What about this character told you her name should be Kestrel?

I am a character name freak, too. I try to select a name that reflects personality and struggles. Several years ago, I met a Native American woman named Kestrel. She was a volunteer at a wildlife rehab facility, helping injured eagles and hawks (a kestrel is a type of falcon). I tucked the name away with the idea that one day I would give it to a character, who needed to spread her wings. When I started thinking about my main character in Dares & Don’ts, who was small in stature and hiding behind her fears, I knew she needed a name to aspire to. She had to discover she had it within her to fly! Kestrel seemed like the perfect fit. BTW, Kestrel’s grandmother is named Lark – another bird!

Kestrel’s desire to help her family is admirable. How important is it to you, the author, to include a middle grader’s family and interactions with them in your books? Have you found it makes a difference to your readers?

It’s everything! Your family plays an integral role in your values and how you identify with the world. Unless you’re doing a story about an orphan, you can’t have a well-rounded story about a 12-year-old without giving him/her a sense of family (even then, an orphan’s friends become his/her family). Plus, it’s our intimate relationships that reveal who we truly are. If you read about a girl, who is kind to her friends but viciously insults her little sister, it speaks volumes about the person she is. There’s no better way to show readers the heart of a character than to peer behind the doors at home. And I do think it matters to readers. After my last book, The Sister Solution (the story of two sisters who are as different as night and day) I got many letters from readers saying, “This is exactly how my sister and I relate to each other!”

“…our intimate relationships that reveal who we truly are.” I love this. Great note for writers. If you could take Kestrel and drop her into a different book which book would it be and why?

I’d love to drop Kestrel into Stealing Popular, another title of mine. It’s the story of a girl, Coco, who decides to play Robin Hood in her middle school. She ‘steals’ from the popular kids to give to the misfits and outcasts, who never seem to get any breaks. Coco finds a way to get her best friend on the cheer staff and the least popular girl in school voted as Fall queen. With Coco’s courage and Kestrel’s tenacity, they’d make a great team!

What makes this book different from some of the other stories you’ve written?

This book, more than any other, tapped into my life during a very dark time – my mother’s death. After she passed, it took me a while to find my desire to write again, but I knew she wouldn’t want me to wallow. She was my first reader ever and my champion until the very end. The random thoughts I wrote down after her death sowed the seeds for Dares and Don’ts. Often, the first time kids face death is through the loss of a grandparent. In the book, Kestrel didn’t know her grandfather well (my grandfather died before I was born) and she doesn’t know how to comfort her grandmother through the grieving process. Kestrel is afraid she’ll say or do the wrong thing. She’s scared she may make things worse. Still, she doesn’t back away from Grandma Lark, which would be the easiest thing to do. She hangs in there and, in doing so, discovers it’s not her words or actions that matter – it’s her mere presence, her love, that is helping her grandmother heal.

I can only imagine. I’m sure it was tough to get back to writing, but we’re all glad you did. <3 

How do you navigate the social arena and connect with your readers when most of them are at an age where they aren’t connected via social media?

That is true, many young readers aren’t on social media but most do spend some time on the internet. The best way I can connect with them is by making it easy to find me. I have a kid-friendly web site, www.truditrueit.com where readers and their parents can log on to find out about my titles, read my bio, and drop me a note. I also put out an e-newsletter twice a year so they (or their parents) can subscribe to that to keep up on news or join my reader street team (a street team is a group of kids willing to read and review a new release). Another great way to reach readers is through the incredible people, who put my books into their hands: librarians! So I share news and run giveaways through social media channels like Facebook (facebook.com/truditrueit) and Twitter (@truditrueit)

This is fabulous! Again, writers take note.

Let’s leave your readers and writing admirers with your most valuable piece of writing advice in a tweet + hashtag.

Your first idea is rarely your best. Think of another. And another. #writersdigdeep @truditrueit

LUV! Guess what I’m hopping off to tweet? Lastly, what can your fans expect from you next?

I just finished (as in two days ago!) the first book in an action/adventure middle grade fiction series for National Geographic, which should be out this time next year. It’s an exciting project and I can’t wait to share more about it soon!

Oh wow! That sounds amazing. Looking forward to reading it. Thank you for joining us and for sharing your wisdom, work, and excitement. All the best to you always.

Trudi Trueit knew she’d found her life’s passion after writing (and directing) her first play in the fourth grade. Since then, she’s been a newspaper journalist, television news reporter and anchor, and freelance writer, but her favorite career is what she does now—writing for kids and tweens. She’s published more than100 fiction and nonfiction titles for young readers, including My Top Secret Dares and Don’ts, The Sister Solution, Stealing Popular (Aladdin MIX) and the Secrets of a Lab Rat series (Aladdin). She loves all things chocolate and lives with her husband and two cats north of Seattle, WA. Visit her

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Simon & Schuster Author Page | Trudi’s Fiction on Amazon

And guess what, Mixed-Up Files readers? Trudi is offering up a copy of My Top Secret Dares & Don’ts to one lucky winner! (US only.)

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Here are two more sweet reads by Trudi!

 

 

 

Click on the images for more! 

S.A. Larsen, known to family & friends as Sheri, is the author of the award-winning  middle grade novel Motley Education, numerous community interest stories, young adult shorties, and her soon-to-be released young adult novel Marked Beauty.