For Writers

The True Value of Sensitivity Readers

By on March 3, 2017   /   Diversity, For Librarians, For Teachers, For Writers, Writing  
Sensitivity readers used in the publishing of multicultural books have been in the social media conversation recently.   A sensitivity reader, sometimes called a cultural consultant, reads a manuscript from a standpoint of membership in a racial, ethnic, linguistic, or spiritual community and evaluates the story for authenticity and makes revision recommendations.
It’s all very Captain Obvious that writers should be checking their cultural research and using a member of that culture to do so. But it’s easy to overlook the deeper value of a sensitivity reader when we employ them only at the end of the process, and only when we are writing outside our racial or religious culture. I have used cultural consultants to help me understand the culture of military families and maritime professions. And I have used cultural consultants to help me more fully understand characters who share my own ethnicity and religion. Membership in the race, ethnicity, or religion of your characters doesn’t automatically
make you an authority on your characters particular situation. There are a multitude of life experiences and ways to live within every racial or ethnic group. Don’t short change yourself in the research just because you are writing from a home culture.
Here are three benefits to consulting a sensitivity reader early in the process of writing a book.
  1. Gain access to research materials 
The best thing you can ask at the beginning of a book research process is “what should I read, see, hear, taste, study, and visit in order to fully understand this aspect of the culture.” A good consultant will know. For example an early consultant for The Turn of the Tide suggested, since a trip to Japan was out of my budget and my questions were ecosystem specific, that I talk to the horticulturalist at the Japanese garden about the flora in my Japanese setting. I could have just read a field guide but seeing and hearing and smelling the trees made all the difference. I’ve made valuable personal connections through research consultants and I’ve gained access to unpublished research and off-display museum materials which did much to round out my understanding of a culture. And because I used a consultant early in the process, I could efficiently make the necessary changes.
  1. Embrace the need for substantial change in your story 
Sooner or later you will come across a topic in your research that stymies you. Written resources don’t mention the information you are looking for. People you interview give vague or wildly disparate information. Suggested contacts don’t return your queries. And sometimes a sensitivity reader will recommend explicitly that you leave an entire topic alone.
Listen. Seriously. Listen.
And change your story accordingly. It doesn’t mean you can’t write about a culture, but there are things within a culture that simply do not belong in your story. And your reader is not making this suggestion to make you fail. She is actually hoping you will succeed and trying her best to help you do so. It can feel like a defeat but really it’s an opportunity to reimagine your story in a way that will make it more respectful and also more robust in its narrative structure.
  1. Open your heart to a change in your world view. 
The joy and challenge of writing fiction is the opportunity to submerge yourself in another person’s experience. If you enter into that work wholeheartedly it can change you. If you have the assistance of a good consultant it can change you for the better. I had a real gem of a consultant for The Turn of The Tide. She is a Japanese language teacher and initially I just asked her to check the Japanese words to make sure I was using them correctly. But we ended up having a much longer conversation because my main character is biracial & she is raising biracial children. And she is from an area devastated by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami. She had much to say about the contemporary experience of Japanese American students and the impact of the tsunami not just on the land but upon the broader Japanese culture. I was truly touched by her words and have thought differently about Japanese culture and many global issues, particularly the impact of rising oceans on indigenous peoples in the Pacific, ever since. As for the story, I went back to the beginning with my biracial character and reexamined every bit of internal and external dialogue to make it more reflective of what I’d learned about the grief particular to a tsunami survivor. I didn’t need to change any major plot points but I did uncover the soul of the character in a way I hadn’t before.
So after all that work do I have a bullet proof story?
Nope!
And if you think using a sensitivity reader will exempt you from criticism for the cultural representation in your story, you are going to be disappointed. Because there is no single correct representation of a culture. If I had consulted with a different Japanese person I would have gained a different perspective and made different edits. In my opinion a writer is better served by letting go of the goal that nobody will ever be critical or offended by your story in favor of the goal of deeper, and more specific cultural understanding in order to write your characters and story bravely and whole heartedly.
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HAPPY 50TH ANNIVERSARY MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER!

By on March 2, 2017   /   For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers, News  

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of From The Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg (Atheneum, 1967). I’ll bet the majority of people stopping to view this post have a memory or two connected to their first reading of the beloved classic. As a New York City kid (Brooklyn, really), I was fifteen when I first began visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art where most of the story takes place. The idea that Claudia Kincaid, a month away from twelve, and her brother Jamie, age nine, had run away to live secretly inside the “Met,” was delightful—and infuriating! Why hadn’t I ever thought of that?

Reading ‘Mrs. Frankweiler’ again, after I’d published a few children’s books of my own, prompted a different thought–“How in the world did E.L. Konigsburg ever get her editor to accept such a long title?”

I still go to the Met when I can. These days I think of it as my “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”; the calm, orderly place where nothing bad can ever happen. But sometimes, out of the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of a child’s knee or elbow behind a Greek funerary urn and the place takes on a more adventurous air. And when I need a dose of the author’s fine sense of gumption and wonder, I take out the autographed copy I snagged at a long-ago writer’s conference, and reread it straight through.

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

Seven years ago, the writers and readers who formed our group named it after E.L. Konigsburg’s unforgettable book. Our goal was, and still is, to bring “awareness, enthusiasm, and celebration” to middle grade works like From the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. Here some of us share recollections of how we felt when we first read the story. I invite you to submit your memories, as well.

Rosanne Parry: I really connected with Jamie Kincaid because I too have a bossy big sister and he was a bit of a card sharp. Around the time I read the book I also learned to play poker and had a brief torrid affair with gambling in elementary and middle school. Apparently I out grew it because I haven’t gambled in years. I also really loved that they planned their running away in such detail. I had quite a lot of freedom to roam growing up in the 70s, so I remember by the time I was 9 or 10 taking solo excursions to the library and science museum and zoo on the city bus. And because of the book I was always looking for places where a kid could hide and live outside the notice of grownups. The idea appealed to me a lot.

Tricia Springstubb: I didn’t go to a museum till I was in college, but what child doesn’t have fantasies (good and terrifying) of being locked in somewhere overnight? (Mine were of the library.) I was a bossy sister myself, with two younger brothers, but had none of Claudia’s daring. How I admired her ingenuity! I remember especially the little royal bed (was it Marie Antoinette’s?) By now I’ve been to the Met dozens of times, yet it still holds mystery and the promise of the undiscovered. I love watching its kid visitors!

Dorian Cirrone: I grew up in South Florida where there were no big museums and very little reliable public transportation. So even though I was older when I read the novel, I was still amazed and kind of jealous that kids the ages of Claudia and her brother could actually get somewhere without their parents driving them. When I was seventeen, I visited New York City for the first time. Since then, I’ve been to the Met dozens of times. And I’m sure I still haven’t seen everything there.

Julie Artz: This book, like The Lion, The Witch, & the Wardrobe, and Harriet the Spy, became an instant favorite of mine when I first read it in elementary school. The feeling of freedom and independence that book gave me came back each time I did a lock-in throughout middle school and high school–being in a big empty building at night, escaping reality (and parental supervision) for a few precious hours before having to go back to real life always felt like such a huge adventure.

Sean Easely: I remember reading this book in my third grade teacher’s class. Mrs. Weeks was the elementary teacher who understood my ADHD/hyperactive/falling-out-of-my-seat-bored self better than any other. She taped a list of projects for me to undertake whenever I finished my work before everyone else, and one of those was to read about the kids going crazy in the MET. I remember feeling like them, like I saw things that other people didn’t see, and that the freedom to look at things in different ways (like when you’re hiding out where you’re not supposed to be) was exactly what I needed to do something really, really cool.

T.P. Jagger: I must confess that I didn’t read FROM THE MIXED-UP FILES… as a kid. However, when I started teaching fourth grade, I found a copy of the book in my classroom. It ended up making a wonderful end-of-the-day classroom read-aloud!

Michele Weber Hurwitz: Somehow the book passed me by as a kid, but I read it as an adult in a mother-daughter book club. I was an aspiring middle grade author at the time and I remember the story prompted so many unique opinions among the girls, mostly about whether they’d run away or not 🙂 Listening to their varied thoughts about the plot and characters helped me realize how readers see things differently!

Valerie Stein: .Mixed-Up Files was one of those books I read and re-read between 4th and 6th grades. When I needed that great, kind of brainy writing that appealed to me, the misfit, it was the perfect book.

Heather Murphy Capps: My first time reading MUF was on summer vacation in the back of a car when I was in maybe 5th grade?. The hatchback part, behind the back seat — which tells you how long ago it was! I was so enthralled, I coulnd’t stop thinking about the adventure of planning and executing the perfect runaway — and so I did exactly that. Urged on by me, my sister, the two sons of our traveling companions, and I all snuck out of the house we were staying in — at about 5 in the morning. We wandered the neighborhoods of the small town, perfectly safe. VERY LUCKY!! And the adventure was glorious. When a local policeman returned us to the house shortly after, I had a hard time feeling anything other than victorious — which I don’t think is exactly what Ms. Konigsburg intended when she wrote the book!!

Annabelle Fisher is the author of  THE SECRET DESTINY OF PIXIE PIPER (Greenwillow/HarperCollins) and the forthcoming sequel PIXIE PIPER AND THE MATTER OF THE BATTER (release date: 5/30/17).

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Another Pair of Shoes

By on February 17, 2017   /   Diversity, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, For Writers  

On a recent gray afternoon, during a desultory spin through the Twitter-verse, I came across a tweet that perked me up. It was from Sara Grochowski. To say Sara loves reading is to say flowers lift their faces to the sun. She and I have met at a few book events, and it’s been a deep pleasure to talk with her about my work, and to keep up with what she’s reading and thinking. (You can meet her yourself, at thehidingspot.blogspot.com or @thehidingspot)

The tweet I read the other afternoon said something like, “I always thought it was my parents who taught me empathy, but I’ve come to realize it was books.” This caught my attention for lots of reasons. One is that the need to see through someone else’s eyes, to walk in another’s shoes―lies at the heart of all my work.

Childhood is a self-centered time. Kids have an entire world to learn and process, so it’s no wonder that at first they put themselves at the center of it. Yet a baby gets upset when she hears another baby cry. The capacity for empathy exists from the very beginning, and in my books, that wondrous capacity is what makes characters grow and change, as they come to understand they’re not the center of the world, but are instead an essential, powerful part of it.

There’s another reason I loved Sara’s tweet. Even the best intentioned parents can’t do everything. Neither can teachers. A lot is up to our children themselves. For empathy to grow, they need experience. And next to real-life, a close second to actual experience, is reading.

A 2013 study published in the journal Science proved what most of us already know: reading good fiction increases sensitivity and empathy. https://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/10/03/i-know-how-youre-feeling-i-read-chekhov/

To read we need to understand motivation, make connections, note nuances, seek what’s beneath the surface. Picture books, where illustrations and text sometimes complement, sometimes contradict each other, introduce this. And middle grade fiction? Over the last years it’s been growing ever more wonderfully, deeply diverse. A reader, safe in her own familiar world, can have lead many lives vastly different from her own. We’ve all had the experience of feeling as if a writer had x-rayed our hearts, eavesdropped on our thoughts. Reading makes us feel less alone, yes, but more than that. I love the phrase “lost in a book”. When we read about others different from us, boundaries fall. We lose ourselves to become those others.

These days, lots of people are fretting we need empathy more than ever before. I don’t think we need to worry. Empathy and compassion are essential parts of us all, seeds waiting to be nurtured. This spring middle grade writer Shelley Pearsall and I are lucky enough to be doing a workshop at the beloved Virginia Hamilton Conference.  http://www.kent.edu/virginiahamiltonconference We are calling it “Seeking a Wider Window”, and we’ll discuss the challenges and rewards of being white, middle class writers creating characters with lives very different from ours. I’ll be sure to report back!

Tricia’s most recent middle grade novel is Every Single Second. The third book in her CODY series, Cody and the Rules of Life, will publish this April (and yes, one of those rules is to always ask yourself, How would you feel if it happened to you??)

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