Being a kid is like having two permanent police officers watching you all the time – even when you’re going to the bathroom. At least that’s how it feels to Billy March. He’s been grounded for 63% of the past month. Every time Billy almost gets his parents’ trust back, his mind wanders off, and he causes another disaster! Now Mom and Dad are threatening to send Billy to a psychologist. They may even make him take brain drugs! But deep down, Billy worries that Dad wishes he had a different son. Maybe he doesn’t belong in this family at all. But maybe, just maybe, talking to a “shrink” won’t be as terrible as Billy thinks.
In Billy March, Stephanie Guerra hands us one energetic, impulsive, frustrating, and endearing 10-year-old who is doing the best he can even though it sure doesn’t seem like it. Guerra’s text tells Billy’s funny and poignant story, enriched by illustrator James Davies’ whimsical graphics that plunge us straight into Billy’s wild imagination. Billy the Kid is Not Crazy is coming to book shelves in October.
Where does Billy come from?
Billy’s a product of my life-long love of characters with wild imaginations and frequent misbehavior. Anne of Green Gables, Pippi Longstocking, Toad from Wind in the Willows, and more recently Joey Pigza are among my favorites. I love how porous reality and fantasy can be in childhood, and I think some children have a special gift for slipping past that boundary and creating endless diversion for themselves. Billy came about because I wanted to write a child who was so enmeshed in his fantasies that the world became a stage for his imagination—resulting in lots of trouble, of course.
What influences from your life found their way into Billy’s story?
Billy gets in trouble so frequently that his parents take him to see a child psychiatrist. I kept those scenes brief—I didn’t want them to take over the story—but they’re important. My mother is a child psychologist, and I grew up with lots of dinner-table talk about the therapy process. My mother sometimes shared the struggles that young clients were going through (without revealing their names, of course). She had tremendous sympathy and love for the kids she worked with, and she didn’t believe in such a thing as a lost cause. She is a strong supporter of therapy without drugs when possible, and that certainly worked its way into Billy’s story.
One of the most important things I learned from my mother is that therapy is not for “bad” kids. Lots of children have to visit a psychologist or psychiatrist at some point, whether for testing, help with a temporary problem, or support with something long-term. And there are times in all of our lives when we could use someone to talk to.
James Davies’ illustrations add both humor and poignancy as they take us deep into Billy’s psyche. Tell us about your process for blending the text and graphics.
I’m delighted with how Davies’ illustrations turned out. He’s a very talented artist, and he intuited and added to the whimsical spirit of my characters with style and humor. Our process was simple: I described the basic content of each cartoon strip, including action and dialogue. Davies then translated the scene into cartoon strip form. I love the funny details in his settings and the way he brought Billy and Keenan alive with dynamic body language.
Our readers will be interested in your teaching with young women incarcerated at the King County Juvenile Detention Center. Please describe what you’ve learned about your own writing through that work.
Working with the teens at the correctional facility has impacted my own writing tremendously. I pick up rhythms of language, characters, and culture in a way that I’d never do otherwise. The girls have brought home to me the power of writing to heal, vent, and connect. They’ve showed me what writing in a community looks and feels like. I’m moved by how they support each other and listen respectfully and lovingly to sometimes very painful memoir pieces. Writing as community has been an important lesson for me; I’ve always written in a vacuum.
Can you give us a hint about what’s on your middle grade horizon?
I’m revising the final draft of a middle-grade/YA crossover about a fourteen-year-old Italian American boy navigating life in Mob-infested Brooklyn of the eighties. The working title is BROOKLYN SOLDIERS. I think older middle-grade readers will love that one. I also have two young adult novels coming out in 2015 (OUT OF ACES and sequel) which are keeping me busy.
After that . . . I have a weakness for Pilkey-style potty humor. I’m not sure I could pull it off, but I may try just for fun. During my MFA, I wrote a middle-grade novella about farts coming to life on Halloween. I never showed it to anyone, least of all my professors, who were literary novelists for adults. But the story has lingered in the back of my mind all these years.
What’s something about you that we wouldn’t guess if we met you in person?
My sister and I are planning to film a series of videos for YouTube in which we reenact some famous Groucho and Harpo Marx scenes (and invent some new ones). I’m Harpo. I really want to do this, although it may seriously embarrass my husband.
Stay tuned for more great stories from Stephanie Guerra (and keep your eye on YouTube!). In addition to writing for middle grade and YA readers, Guerra teaches courses in writing and children’s literature at Seattle University, which is where our paths first crossed. Read more about her writing instruction with teens in detention — it’s an amazing story! And visit Stephanie at her website stephanieguerra.com.
A chance to win an autographed copy of
Billy the Kid is Not Crazy!
Simply post a comment describing what intrigues you about this book or
(if you’re a teacher), how you think it would grab your students.
Winner to be announced on Saturday, September 28!
Katherine Schlick Noe teaches beginning and experienced teachers at Seattle University. Her debut novel, Something to Hold (Clarion, 2011) won the 2012 Washington State Scandiuzzi Children’s Book Award for middle grade/young adult and was named a 2012 Notable Social Studies Trade Book for Young People. Visit her at http://katherineschlicknoe.com.
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I work in the library at a school for dyslexic children, and I have a feeling this book would connect with a lot of our kids. Due to their learning difference, many tend to act out or become the class clown in reaction to feeling frustrated in academic areas and they often come to us feeling like a “lost cause”. Our kids tend to be very imaginative and creative and I think they would be able to empathize with Billy in many ways!
I have a daughter that we have been thinking about getting help from a child psychologist, and I am amazed with her thoughts about the whole process. It is easy for kids to think that they are bad or messed up when they need a little extra help once in a while. I haven’t found a good fiction book out there that addresses this concern in an upbeat and funny way. Thanks for sharing, and congrats on all of your book success!
I think that this is a book that kids with ADHD or similar challenges could relate to even if they don’t want to admit they can relate to it.
Thanks for sharing it!
Non-readers are going to gravitate towards the comic strip drawings. As one told me the other day “I only read books if there are pictures and even then I look at them first before reading anything else.” This would make a great title for a small reading group mixed with reluctant readers and those that devour every title in sight. Good luck with Billy the Kid. He sound like a few kids I know.
It sounds like Billy may have ADD or ADHD and I’m intrigued to learn more. It’s a great topic for all kids to read and learn about, whether or not they have special needs.
As a former family therapist, now a teacher, I look forward to reading this!
I love the idea of a book that has a kid going to a psychiatrist.
I can’t wait to read this. Joey Pigza is as real to me as the many kids (not always boys) I taught over the years, in special services and in classrooms. I couldn’t agree more that no one is a lost cause, and that’s true even into adulthood. Fingers crossed.
I love the idea of a book that explores the fantasy world vs. real world balance of someone like Anne of Green Gables, but from a modern boy’s perspective! This is a must-read for my kids.
As a school librarian, I’m grateful to see a character that several of my students, especially boys, can identify with. I’m also eager to read this book, thinking I might develop more empathy with those kids who keep calling out in discussions, but can’t seem to control it. Thanks!
Great interview Katherine. Thanks!
Stephanie, I liked that you didn’t base your character of Billy on one of your mom’s cases. That would have been the easy way out. Making him a combination of favorites makes him unique. I would guess this wacky combination helped create more humor too.