MUF Contributor Books

A Reason to Read

Obie

My daughter and her horse, Obie.

It’s often said if you want to befriend a horse, you earn its trust by standing still, then turning and walking away. The hope is that the horse will follow.  When my oldest daughter had no desire to read, I was at a loss-what books would entice her to follow me down the literary path? She loved hearing me read aloud, but bucked when it came to reading for school or on her own.

Then my family’s horse genes kicked in, with all four hooves. My grandpa on my dad’s side had worked on a ranch, and my maternal grandpa had raised ponies. I’d grown up in the saddle and obsessed over all things equine as a girl. So of course I was delighted when my daughter’s tween years became “the barn years.”

HorseClassics

Hoping this new-found passion would lasso her into reading, I offered her my favorite horse books. And even though it was hard as a homeschooling mom, for an entire year I left my daughter alone-no book reports, no quizzes, no pressure. Just a girl and her horse books. She began to devour them and beg for more. I signed her up for monthly book clubs, and she galloped through the pages. Recently, she was helping her younger sister pack before her wedding, and my daughter grabbed up her horse books and hugged them. “I’m taking these home,” she declared, and I couldn’t help but smile remembering the little girl who had once hated to read. (Two of my favorite books that aren’t pictured above are National Velvet by Enid Bagnold and Misty of Chicoteague by Marguerite Henry.)

HorseSeries

Now my daughter’s dream  job (besides being a professional barrel racer) is to become a librarian. On average, she says she reads five novels a week.

I’m convinced that the way to get a child to befriend books is simply by finding the right hook, whether that be sports, humor, or horses.

For more great horses and reading posts, check out this MUF post by Jen K. Blom and this MUF post by Jaye Robin Brown.

What are your favorite horse books? What books were the “hook” for you or your reluctant reader?

stacks_image_46Louise Galveston is the author of BY THE GRACE OF TODD and IN TODD WE TRUST (Penguin/Razorbill). She grew up on horseback in Oklahoma. This is not one of her more sensible moments.

A Mixed Up Files Book Birthday for DORI HILLESTAD BUTLER

Dori-220x250-72dpi-ColorWe’re celebrating the book birthday of our own Dori Hillestad Butler and her newest title in the Haunted Library series, A GHOST AT THE FIRE STATION. Dori is the award winning author of 12 picture books, 7 middle grade novels, and 2 chapter book mystery series, The Buddy Files and the Haunted Library. I struggle to get a book published every 2 or 3 years so I’m completely dazzled by Dori’s productivity. We had a brief opportunity to meet at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association trade show this fall and I was so charmed by A Ghost at the Fire Station, that I immediately gave it to my local school library. Here is our conversation about her books.HL6_PbCover

  • This is a charming twist on the usual chapter book kid detective. Was this a packaged deal that a publisher approached you with or did you come up with the concept entirely on your own? What was your initial spark for the idea?

Thank you. No, I came up with the concept on my own. I got the idea when I was writing book 6 in my Buddy Files series. That book is called The Case of the School Ghost, so of course there’s a plot thread involving a ghost. But when I was talking through my outline with my husband, he thought I was getting a little too carried away with the ghosts. The Buddy Files is about a school therapy dog who solves mysteries. My husband said, “If you want to write a ghost series, write a ghost series. But this is your dog series. You can’t introduce a whole world of ghosts into this series now.” He was right. And that was the beginning of the Haunted Library.

  • Oh I’ve had that happen too. A character showed up in a story and completely derailed the whole thing. I had to take her out and write an entirely different book for that girl. I was a huge Encyclopedia Brown fan as a kid. Did you have an inspiration for your main character Claire?

Not so much for Claire, but there is someone who inspired Claire’s “Grandma Karen,” the librarian in the series. And that’s my friend, Karen Stierler. Karen works with the teens at the Coralville Public Library in Coralville, Iowa. She’s interesting, fun, and always up for trying something new. She genuinely likes and respects teenagers and knows how to talk to them, inspire them, and make them feel welcome at the library, when they may not feel welcome anywhere else. Every library needs a Grandma Karen! Last I knew, Karen Stierler did not have a pink stripe in her hair. And when I returned to Iowa for my Haunted Library series launch party last year, she was off biking in the Himalayas. But if she could have been there, I have a feeling she would’ve put a pink stripe in her hair for the party.

  • The Himalayas? That’s one intrepid librarian. Lucky Coralville to have such a treasure running their library. How do you strike the balance of thrilling enough but not too scary for young MG readers?

It is a balancing act. Young readers like scary stories, but they don’t want them to be too scary. For me, the key to writing a ghost series with the just right amount of “scare” is to think of my ghosts as “transparent with people with superpowers” rather than to think of them as dead people. That was my editor’s phrase…and it really helped! Transparent people with superpowers is FUN. It’s not scary.

  • I love that description too. I have a lot of conversations in the bookstore about finding the book that’s exciting enough without provoking nightmares. Did you plan out the entire series from the start with an overall plot arc or are you working more loosely making the plot of each one fit with what’s gone before as you write?

Funny you should ask me this. Yes, I had a series arc. From the very beginning, I had a general idea of how the series was going to move forward with each book and a very definite idea for what was going to happen in the last book. The final book would truly end the series. I thought book 8 (which I just turned in a couple weeks ago) was going to be the last one, so I wrote the story that I had saved for the end. Two days after I turned in the final revision, the publisher asked for two more books!  It took me a couple days to wrap my head around the idea of continuing a series that in my mind was complete. Of course, there’s always a way! I rewrote the last couple chapters of book 8 and now I’m ready to keep going. I’m thrilled that my publisher wanted to continue it after all and I’m excited about spending more time with Kaz and Claire. But from here on out, I’m not really thinking “series arc” anymore. Now I’m really just building on everything that’s come before.

IMG_2010-225x300

  • This series is not your first work in mystery writing. In fact you won a very prestigious Edgar Award in 2011. I’m just going to point out that the Edgar Award is the most adorable book prize ever! And I’ve heard that the Edgar banquet is a really fun event, very warm and collegial. What makes mystery so appealing to write?

I’ve always loved mysteries, and I think writers should write what they love. I love the adventure. You know your main character is going to be doing things. They have to if they’re going to solve the case. I love creating a puzzle, which again, is another balancing act. You want the reader to be able to follow the clues and solve the case along with your main character, so you need to create a trail that’s clear and logical, but you don’t want the reader to figure out what’s going on as soon as you drop the first clue. There’s a predictable structure to a mystery. And rules to follow. The reader knows that in the end the mystery will be solved and justice will prevail.

But I think what I like best about writing mysteries for kids is the fact that reluctant readers are often drawn to them. There’s nothing more satisfying to me than to hear, “I didn’t like reading until I read your [insert title here].” If something I’ve written leads a reluctant reader to try another book, then I’ve done my job. And I’ve made a difference in someone’s world. No award is worth more than that.

Wonderful! Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Dori, and happy book birthday!

Dori will be giving away one of these books to a commenter next week, so leave your questions or comments below.

A Mixed Up Files Book Birthday for Jennifer Swanson

Jennifer Swanson Author Photo We love book launches here at the Mixed Up Files and especially when it is one of our own bloggers. It was my great pleasure to read Jen Swanson’s new book Brain Games this weekend. It’s colorful and packed with great information in an accessible format. I have a confession to make, I’m a total brain anatomy nerd. So right off the bat I have to know which is your favorite lobe? Mine is the temporal lobe, always has been. I’m a musician.
 
HumanBrainI have to say that mine is probably the frontal lobe. I’m a scientist which makes me think and approach life logically all the time — sometimes whether I want to or not! Ha.
This book is so visually dynamic. National Geographic does a great job of making books that really jump off the shelf and into kids hearts. We sell lots of them at the bookstore because they are so vivid. So which comes first in the book making process, words? Images? A little bit of both?Brain Games_Cvr_FINAL (1)-small
 
Let me start by saying that this book was a huge undertaking. I was tasked with taking a very popular, heavily video-enhanced TV show and turning it into a 2-dimensional book, but without losing any of the excitement and interactiveness of the show. My first task was to watch all of the episodes of the TV show, Brain Games. Yep, all about 24 hours of them. Then, I had to figure out which challenges from the show would translate easily into a book. I did that by searching for images on the internet. When I submitted my first draft, it was full of images of the brain, images of challenges, and of course, all of the words to explain everything. I guess you could say that I worked with images and words simultaneously. That is not always how it happens with an NGKids book, but in this case, it was the only way to handle this one. 
 
One of the things I really appreciated about the book is that it wasn’t just an ad for the tv show. Which is great because lots of kids who will love this book may not have access to the show.
How did you got into the field of writing science for kids. Were you a total science nerd as a kid? Did you study science in college?
 
I have been a science geek since birth, I think. I started a science club in my garage when I was about 7. My mom gave me a microscope which was my prized possesion. We used to look at flowers, grass, trees, even water samples from our creek under it. I have carried my love of science with me ever since. I studied chemistry in college at the U.S. Naval Academy, and went on to earn my M.S. Ed in K-8 science from Walden University. My “day” job is as a middle school science instructor for John’s Hopkins University’s Center for Talented Youth, where I get to work with gifted students from all around the world. Yep, I’m a science geek extraordinare!!  
Did you have a science teacher that really inspired you?
UnknownAs for a teacher that inspired me, the one that comes to mind is my 7th grade science teacher, Mrs. Roth. You see, back when I was in school there weren’t many female science teachers. And she was the BEST!  It showed me that women could do science, too. Couple that with very supportive parents and I was destined to love science my whole life. After all, SCIENCE ROCKS! 
 
Speaking of science nerds, Hank Green did the forward for this book. How did that come about? Did you get a chance to talk to him? 
 
No, I actually didn’t get to meet Hank Green. My NGKids editor knows him. Although I do love the Crash Course videos. My daughter who is in high school has to watch some of them for her classes, which is very cool.
What’s up next for you?
SUPER GEAR FC_finalI have a book coming out with Charlesbridge in June 2016 titled SUPER GEAR: Nanotechnology and Sports Team Up!  It is an exciting look into the world of sports and how the microscopic of science is helping athletes to perform better than ever before. Want to hit a golf ball farther, swing a tennis racket with more oomph, or even swim faster? Nanotechnology can help with that!
 
51DbfLkvsRL._SX398_BO1,204,203,200_Plus, I have two more books releasing next year. NGKids Everything Robotics takes the reader on a peek inside the world of robotics and how it is changing our world as we know it. Forces and Motion by Nomad Press comes out in 2016 as well. It’s an interactive book full of experiments and activities to help kids learn more about the basics of physics.
Robotics book
Sounds like you’ve got no end of fascinating projects to work on. Blog readers if you’d like to win a copy of Jennifer’s newest title Brain Games, please leave us a comment below and we’ll pick a winner in one week. Jennifer will be glad to answer your questions in the comments section all day today. Thanks Jennifer for sharing this really fun book.