Posts Tagged Author Interview

WNDMG Wednesday- Interview with Anna E Jordan

By Shifa Safadi on August 9, 2023 / Author Interviews, WNDMG

Illustration by: Aixa Perez-Prado

WNDMG Wednesday – Debut Author Interview

I’m super excited to be able to introduce you and interview debut author Anna E Jordan today. Anna’s new book is SHIRA AND ESTHER’S DOUBLE DREAM DEBUT (Chronicle Books) and it launches on October 10, 2023.

I am extra excited to do this, as Anna and I are Agent siblings! I can’t wait to hold a copy of Anna’s book in my hands, and I am eagerly waiting for my preorder to arrive in October.

About SHIRA AND ESTHER

A fun middle grade book that draws on the fun switched identity in THE PARENT TRAP and comedic tone of THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL, this beautiful book features two Jewish girls navigating family, friendship, and faith.

Description taken from the publisher:

When Shira and Esther first meet, they can hardly believe their eyes. It’s like looking in a mirror! But even though they may look identical, the two girls couldn’t be more different. Shira dreams of singing and dancing onstage, but her father, a stern and pious rabbi, thinks Shira should be reading prayers, not plays. Esther dreams of studying Torah, but her mother, a glamorous stage performer, wishes Esther would spend more time rehearsing and less time sneaking off to read books. Oy vey! If only the two could switch places . . .

Would Shira shine in a big-time televised talent show? Would Esther’s bat mitzvah go off without a hitch? What’s a little deception, when it means your dreams might finally be within reach? One thing is certain: Shira and Esther are going to need more than a little chutzpah to pull this off. But if they do, their double dream debut is sure to be the performance of a lifetime.

Interview with Anna E. Jordan

I loved getting to talk to Anna about her new book and I think you will enjoy meeting her and Shira and Esther as well.

SSS: What is the inspiration behind Shira and Esther?

AEJ:

On a trip to the Society of Illustrators in the spring of 2014, I saw an exhibit of Drew Friedman’s book Old Jewish Comedians. I hadn’t gone to the museum to see it, but one drawing and explanation card caught my eye. It was about a comedian, Benjamin Zuckerman, whose father wanted him to be a rabbi, but he wanted to be a comedian. What if, I thought, there were two kids and they each wanted what the other had. From there, my research led me through the evolution of Jewish theater and comedy in this country.

SSS: So many important and wonderful themes in your book – could you elaborate on which themes resonate the most for you, and that you hope will be the most impactful for young readers.

AEJ:

I resist having themes or a lesson when I start to write the book and hope that by the end, I pose more questions than deliver answers to young readers. The characters struggle with some big questions in the text including: When and how should you follow your dreams? What does it mean to obey your parents? How can family and community support young people as they dream? What are different ways that we express our culture and are they all valid? How can we make room for magic in our everyday lives?

I’m sure that young readers will come up with their own big questions. Hopefully, they will find interpretations I didn’t even consider when I wrote the book. That’s the best part of sending a book baby out into world!

SSS: How are Shira and Esther similar? How are they different? Was it difficult to write a book in two points of view?

AEJ:

The book is actually told by a 3^rd person omniscient narrator, but you are absolutely right about the difficulties involved with having two main characters.

Shira, the rabbi’s daughter, is a confident risk taker. She wants to sing, dance and tell jokes all the time. As you can imagine, that frustrates her father—the rabbi.

Esther, is happiest with her nose in a book and especially in books that teach her more about Judaism. Esther has big questions about the world and her place in it while her mother just wants Esther to take the stage.

A lot of the revision work that I did with my first editor was about honing the differences between the two characters. Not only their character traits, but also their wants, needs, and faults. We wanted to make sure that the reader knew each character well before they switched places, so they could root for each character throughout her journey. Like the movie Parent Trap, the characters pretend to be the other character. When Esther became Shira, she still had to have her essential Esther-ness, and Shira had to hold on to her Shira-ness as Esther.

SSS: The subject of music and theater is important in the book—can you talk more about how you became inspired to write about music and the performance arts?

AEJ:

I sang, danced, and performed from the time I was six through high school. My two sons were also very active in school theater. I loved supporting their theater programs with makeup and set design and creation. As a 5^th-grade teacher, I help with the annual production in my school too. It’s wonderful to watch students shine outside the classroom. Like writing, theater allows the artist to step out of their own life story and into another character for a time.

Also, as I mentioned previously, my research led me through the evolution of Jewish theater and comedy in this country from the Yiddish Theater and Vaudeville, to stand-up comedy in the Borscht Belt (the group of hotels in the Catskills that were owned by Jewish families for Jewish families when we weren’t allowed in other hotels), to television and finally Hollywood.

SSS: Diverse books are so important (and a passion of mine!). How does the Jewish Faith play a role in your book and in Shira and Esther’s lives?

AEJ:

The Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group with an identity, culture, language(s), and religion. Judaism is our religion but we experience it in different ways. Shira has been raised as a practicing Reform Jew and Esther has been raised within the vibrant Jewish culture of the Yiddish theater. Each character goes on a journey to learn more about being Jewish and coming to understand their own experiences.

Ultimately, both Shira and Esther embody pieces of my own Jewish Journey: the part of me that strives to study Torah and the part of me that wants to be immersed in my culture and community.

As the narrator of the book says:

“There is a saying that if you assemble ten Jewish people in a room and ask them a question about Judaism, you’ll get ten different answers. This is one of the most wonderful things about being Jewish: No one is Jewish in quite the same way.”

One thing that was important to me as an author was filling a space in the children’s book market with Jewish Joy. So often, Jewish books have to do with the 3Hs: History, Holiday, or Holocaust. With the rise of anitsemitism in the U.S., it’s important that Jewish and non-Jewish children read about the positive aspects of Judaism such as education, social justice, community, and yes—humor and joy.

SSS: Will there be more Shira and Esther in the future?

AEJ:

As we say, “From your mouth to G-d’s ears.” Seriously though, one of the supporting characters, Benny Bell, has been talking to me more and more. I need to give him space in my writing time to listen to his story.

We’ll see!

Writing Process

SSS: How long did it take to write SHIRA AND ESTHER? And was it an emotional process (as a fellow author, all my books seem to come from personal experience. Was this the same for you?)

AEJ:

I’ve had other wonderful publishing experiences in my 22 years as an author, but I’m so proud that SHIRA AND ESTHER’S DOUBLE DREAM DEBUT is my first published novel. The seed of the book was in 2014, the manuscript was purchased in 2021, and now it’s 2023. That nine-year period includes two agents, a divorce, raising two children as a single mom, a variety of day jobs, many moves, many submissions and rejections, a pandemic, and the death of my father. It was a very long and emotional process.

Bonus!

SSS: Bonus question! Is there anything I haven’t asked that you’d like to share with us?

AEJ:

I’m grateful that Shira and Esther found a publishing home with Chronicle Books. The team there gave this book so much time and attention. I had a double dream team of editors—Taylor Norman, who helped me hone the story and characters, and Daria Harper who worked with the sensitivity readers (for Yiddish and Jewish accuracy) and with the copy edits, mechanicals, and design. The designers did an amazing job as did the cover illustrator Marco Guadalupi (visit him on Instagram @marcoguadalupi85) It’s such a long process, and I feel so lucky.

Thank you so much Anna for answering my questions!

I hope everyone picks up a copy of your beautiful book.

AEJ:

Yes, please. Preorder, post, and review! Thanks so much for this lovely interview.

Those who preorder from Anna’s local independent book store will receive a signed book and swag!

Politics and Prose preorder link

You can also preorder on

Bookshop

For more Middle Grade diverse books, check out this wonderful book list on our site!

About Anna E. Jordan

Anna E. Jordan, an author and middle grades educator, was the recipient of the 2013 PEN New England Susan P. Bloom Children’s Book Discovery award and has an MFA from the Writing for Children and Young Adults program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. SHIRA AND ESTHER’S DOUBLE DREAM DEBUT (Chronicle Books, 10/10/23) is her first novel. In addition to the rhyming picture book THIS PUP STEPS UP, her poems appear in the anthology THE PROPER WAY TO MEET A HEDGEHOG AND OTHER HOW TO POEMS (Candlewick, 2019). You can also find her work national magazines including Ladybug, Babybug, Highlights High Five. Follow Anna on Facebook and Instagram @annawritedraw or on her blog Creative Chaos (annaejordan.com).

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STEM Tuesday– Entomology– Author Interview

By STEM Tuesday on July 25, 2023 / Entomology, STEM Tuesday

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview & Book Giveaway, a repeating feature for the last Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re interviewing Brenna Maloney, author of Buzzkill: A Wild Wander Through the Weird and Threatened World of Bugs. This book is for anyone who’s ever watched an ant crawl across the kitchen counter and wondered, huh, where is that little creature going. And why? Brenna follows her own curiosity and relates her own up-close-and-personal moments with insects in a book that heavy on humor and fun facts.

Andi Diehn: I love the tone of this book! How did you come to choose an informal, conversational voice for this book?

Brenna Maloney: I actually had to fight for this. I had a very specific tone in mind for this book—I wanted it to feel like the reader and I were having a conversation. A lot of nonfiction is written in a way that keeps the writer out of it. Largely because the writer doesn’t want to become part of the story; the writer wants to present facts and sound like a voice of authority. But, I’m no authority. I’m not a scientist. I’m not an entomologist. I didn’t want to appear as if I was claiming any specialized knowledge that the reader can only have access to through me. I’m just a regular person who was curious about how insects are vital to our world. So, I asked a lot of experts questions and I had a lot of interesting first-hand experiences with insects, and I wanted to share those with readers and let them know that they can try these things, too.

When I wrote the book proposal, I wrote it using that voice—very conversational, a little conspiratorial with the reader, playful and fun and excitable. Because those really were the things I was feeling, and I didn’t want to cover that up.

I had a handful of rejections. A lot of publishers thought I was too weird or that the book wouldn’t sell because readers didn’t want to have a conversation. But there were two publishers who expressed interest. I spoke to each at length about the voice. I said: This is how I want it to sound. And of the two, only one said: Yes, we know. We like it. Be you.

It’s a wonderful and rare blessing when a publisher says that and means it. Luckily, mine did.

AD: I’m fascinated by the discussion of African killer bees – what a story! Why is it important to learn about different species that were created through human intervention?

Brenna: Terrifying, isn’t it? That poor fellow. He was trying so hard to build a better bee. His intentions were good. But Mother Nature has a way of doing her own thing. So, when those bees escaped….

This story is important, though, because it reminds us of how interconnected everything on our planet is with everything else. Nothing happens in a vacuum, and nothing happens without consequences. If you don’t understand these things, you can do more harm than good.

AD: It’s so interesting to read about your personal connections to different insects. Are these stories where you got the idea to create a whole book?

Brenna: No, actually! Most of these things happened as a result of me wanting to directly experience things I was learning about the insect world for the book. The more research I did, the more I wanted to interact directly with the natural world. To read about something gives you one experience. To connect directly with that thing gives you a different perspective. A personal connection. And this is something that I hope I passed along to readers. I know insects aren’t everyone’s cup of tea. That’s okay. But readers are probably interested in something. And you can learn a lot about your something if you just seek out information, which is what I did. I wanted to know. So, I made an effort to find out.

AD: A very predictable question: what’s your favorite insect and why?

Brenna: Impossible to pick! There are so many insects that I still don’t know about.

AD: Love your story about making cricket cookies because it shows us that eating insects doesn’t have to be crunchy. Can you talk a bit about this and why you framed it that way?

Brenna: More than anything, I wanted to make what I was learning accessible to other people. Eating bugs sounds gross. And, well, it certainly can be. Or, it can be tasty and even a little thrilling to try something new. I think we grow as people when we step out of our comfort zones and try to expand what we know.

Many people are quick to reject ideas or experiences because they seem too different from the things they know and are comfortable with. But, when you open yourself up—even a little—to something new, you gain so much. If you eat a cricket cookie and you hate it, that’s okay. But you’ve now tasted something that people in other parts of the world rely on as a food source. And because you were “brave” and tried it, you won’t judge it in the same way as you might have before you tasted it. That builds your understanding and your empathy.

AD: OMG – boiling the deer head! How important are insects as decomposers?

Brenna: Well, if you read Chapter Four, you know that insect decomposers are absolutely essential to life on Earth running smoothly.

Things die. All the time. Animals, yes, but plants, too. And what happens to those things when they die? Nature needs to clean up after itself. A good number of insects play the role of decomposer. By breaking things down, valuable substances—like water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen, phosphorus, and calcium—can be used again. You can start to see why decomposers are critical in the flow of energy through an ecosystem. Without insects, all this dead stuff would pile up and keep piling.

AD: The section on climate change, extinction, and the dangers to various insect species was hard to read, but important. Why include this kind of topic in a kid’s book?

Brenna: Ah. Well. I’m going to let you in on a little secret: I didn’t write this book for kids. Not really. A lot of kids already understand the perils our planet is facing and already acknowledge and value the importance of balanced ecosystems. I really wanted to reach adults because adults are the ones whose behaviors need to change the most. One industry expert I talked to said: “No adult will ever buy this book.” He said that adults don’t like to be told what to do, and they would never listen to my advice. I think that fella is wrong. I think most people—adults and young people—want to do good things. They want to help solve problems. But they may not always know how. So, I thought if I could get them to understand how important (but at-risk) insects are and then if I could offer some ideas of how we can change our behaviors to help insects, it would be a winning combination. But I couldn’t get anyone to believe in the project for adults. Everyone said a book like that would only sell to children. I still don’t really understand that. But book publishing is kind of a weird industry.

There’s some hard stuff in this book. You can’t shy away from talking about things because they are hard. Or because they aren’t as entertaining. I believe that people are smart, and they can handle difficult, complex information. My hope was that readers would either finish this book knowing more than when they started OR that they’d have enough of an interest in insects and our planet to pursue more knowledge from other resources.

AD: I’m so glad you included citizen science opportunities in the back matter! How does citizen science benefit both the world at large AND the people doing the science?

Brenna: We all live here, right? It’s our only planet. So, we have to take care of it. I think people do care, and most people would like to help, if only they knew what to do. I tried to write as many examples of engagement that I could think of—really simple things and more involved things—so that everyone who reads the book, if they are so inclined, could try to do something. We have some amazing scientists and researchers who are studying our planet in as many ways as they can. But it’s a big job. Having data really helps. Our observations as regular citizens can contribute to their data-driven work.

I also tend to believe that little things matter. If each of us does one small thing, then together those small things add up to a bigger thing. You only need to look at bees to see that this is true. A bee is a tiny thing. During her time on this mortal coil, a worker bee will produce about one-twelfth of a teaspoon of honey—barely enough for you to taste. The smallest of things. She’s one bee. Yet she and her sister bees work together. To produce one pound of honey, those bees will visit two million flowers. One trip at a time.

That’s our path too. You, me, and anyone else we can get to help us. Each of us has to Be the Bee. We have to work steady and work hard and contribute in whatever ways we can to help Mother Earth until she feels more in balance. If we do enough small things, it starts to add up. I know small things matter—just ask the bee.

YAY for New STEM/STEAM Books!

By Jennifer Swanson on July 21, 2023 / Articles, STEM

Looking for a new great read? Check out these new releases from some of our STEM Tuesday team!

That’s right, they don’t just write great articles about STEM, this team is also amazing authors in their own right.

Save The…Polar Bears
by Chelsea Clinton (Author) Christine Taylor-Butler (Author)

A collaboration that Christine Taylor-Butler wrote with Chelsea Clinton. It’s all about polar bears from birth through adulthood, why they’re endangered and what kids can do to help save them. Plus! NASA announced a 20th population of polar bears no one knew existed. They don’t depend on sea ice to survive.

Funky Fungi: 30 Activities for Exploring Molds, Mushrooms, Lichens, and More by Alisha Gabriel and Sue Heavenrich

FUNKY FUNGI: 30 Activities for Exploring Molds, Mushrooms, Lichens, and More (with Alisha Gabriel) was awarded the 2023 AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize for Excellence in Science Books in the Children’s Science Activity Book category.

The Fire of Stars: The Life and Brilliance of the Woman Who Discovered What Stars Are Made Of
by Kirsten W. Larson (Author), Katherine Roy (Illustrator)

A poetic picture book celebrating the life and scientific discoveries of the groundbreaking astronomer Cecilia Payne!
Astronomer and astrophysicist Cecilia Payne was the first person to discover what burns at the heart of stars. But she didn’t start out as the groundbreaking scientist she would eventually become. She started out as a girl full of curiosity, hoping one day to unlock the mysteries of the universe.

The Pie That Molly Grew
by Sue Heavenrich (Author) Chamisa Kellogg (Illustrator)

Using “The House That Jack Built” rhyme scheme and beginning with the planting of a single seed, the journey of bringing a pumpkin to harvest comes to life. At the end, Molly’s pumpkin is turned into a delicious pie for one and all to share in a celebration of gratitude. All from the seed that Molly sowed.

Spacecare: A Kid’s Guide to Surviving Space
Jennifer Swanson (Author)

Have you ever wondered how astronauts stay healthy in space? What if an astronaut gets sick on the space station? Does snot run in space? This fascinating photo-illustrated look at space and medicine explores how scientists and physicians study astronauts in space, how they help keep them safe, and what we’ve learned about the human body through space exploration. Questions from real kids and answers form from astronauts, along with photos from NASA, combine for an out-of-this-world exploration of health.

So, head to the library and check these awesome books out OR go to your favorite local bookstore and get a copy!

GO STEM/STEAM books!!

Posts Tagged Author Interview

WNDMG Wednesday- Interview with Anna E Jordan