Posts Tagged contemporary realistic middle-grade fiction

A triple Book Birthday for Mixed Up Files Author Michelle Houts

By on March 16, 2018   /   Author Interviews, Book Lists, Curriculum Tie-in, For Kids, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, STEM  

It’s always a treat to feature the book birthdays of Mixed Up Files members and especially today when we are celebrating a new series from our long time contributor Michelle Houts, the author of the novels The Beef Princess of Practical County, Practical County Drama Queen, and Winterfrost; the biography Kammie on First; and the picture book When Grandma Gatewood Took a Hike. Michelle has headed off into new territory again with a young middle grade series for 1-3rd grade readers. It’s called Lucy’s Lab and here are her first three covers. Nuts About Science and Solids, Liquids, Guess Who’s Got Gas, came out last fall and the newest title is The Colossal Fossil Fiasco. 

1) Were you a science loving kid? What inspired you to make science the focus of your series?

 

 

 

 

I wanted very much to be a science-minded girl in the 70s. In fact, I begged for a Chemistry Kit, and got one the likes of which would never be legally sold these days! It had all kinds of chemicals and glass beakers and tubes in it! The sad part is that I don’t remember doing a lot with it. It wasn’t that I lack interest. I lacked confidence. In recent years, I have seen how important it is to build girls’ confidence in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. So, initially, as a writer of middle-grade novels, I set out to write a middle-grade science girls series. I thought of it as: The Babysitter’s Club meets Bill Nye the Science Guy.

Okay, interrupting this interview to say–how is that not a thing? Please write this series! I know, you’re busy. I’ll write it with you! Or ask our fellow science writer extraordinaire Jennifer Swanson. We could do this!

Michelle here, jumping back in to say, NO WORRIES! My hope is that Lucy will grow into that series for which she was originally intended. I mean, she can’t stay in second grade forever, right? So, ideally, someday that amazing middle-grade series will exist – with Lucy at the center! Back to you, Rosanne!

And also I can’t resist sharing a picture of my science girls and their project on on fermentation that involved home-brewed rootbeer using champagne yeast.
And now back to our scheduled interview.

2) You’ve written stand alone titles before and for older readers. What prompted you to switch to series writing for a younger audience?

My idea for that middle-grade series was quickly derailed by my other job. In my non-writing life, I was a Speech-Language Pathologist.  As a school-based SLP, I worked with second graders. I heard their stories, listened to their interests, and quickly realized that girls identify as science-minded (or not!) long before the middle grades. By seven years old, many girls I met had already decided that math and science were “hard” or “for boys” or “gross.” I knew then that my science series needed to target grades 1 – 3. 

 (Did I mention that the art for this series is done by the truly fabulous Elizabeth Zetchel!)
3) Do you have a favorite research story?
So far, my favorite topic in the series to research has been fossils. Lucy’s Lab Book #1 is about Habitats and Book #2 is about States of Matter, both of which I felt I had a decent knowledge of.  But Book #3 is about Fossils, and I found myself fascinated by all the research, digging deeper (no pun intended!) than I needed to simply because it was so interesting. When I discovered that one of the most famous nearly-intact fossils every found was named “Lucy,” I couldn’t believe the coincidence! 
You know I had wondered when I first saw the series if she would be a paleontologist because of the Lucy fossil. I’ve also heard that a surprising number of great fossils finds have been made by children.
4) Do you have a fact checker at your publishing house?
There isn’t anyone whose sole job it is to check facts, but my amazing editor, Alison Weiss, is a master at asking questions and she’ll look up anything that seems not quite right. I feel a lot of responsibility to make sure I have my facts straight before I turn in a manuscript. 
Shout out to the wonderful Sky Pony Press who publishes your books, and from this bookseller’s perspective, is doing a great job of promoting it to indie bookstores.
5)How far ahead do you plan the series and do you have science topics picked out for future books? Do you have a larger character arc for Lucy across several books or do you take them one book at a time?
As of this moment, there are three books in the Lucy’s Lab series, but more are proposed, and, yes, each has a science topic I’ve hand-picked for the first – third grade reader.  I do have thoughts about how Lucy, her sidekick and cousin Cora, and her classmates grow over the course an entire series.  Stay tuned for more news on this subject! 🙂
The cousin relationship was the other thing I loved about this book. Most kids have cousins they love and very few books have a cousin relationship.
Congratulations on your beautiful series from all of us at The Mixed Up Files. I hope we see lots more of Lucy and her lab in the future.
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Reading Roundup: Three Middle Grade Standouts

By on March 14, 2018   /   Book Lists, For Librarians, For Parents, For Teachers, New Releases  

It’s hard to keep up with all the exciting new releases in middle grade fiction that have crossed my desk in the last few months. But there are three from Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers, I need to crow about. They couldn’t be more different from one another. But each has a plot that will leave young readers breathless and each has characters that will win hearts and minds.

I’ll start with CHECKED by Cynthia Kadota, because although I’m not usually interested in sports books or hockey, I loved it! To the story’s protagonist, eleven-year-old Conor, nothing is more important than playing hockey – and his policeman dad, who was a hockey player himself, supports his son’s dream of playing professionally. But when Conor’s beloved Doberman, Sinbad is diagnosed with cancer, everything begins to change. The dog’s treatment is barely affordable and Conor begins doing odd jobs around the neighborhood to help out with the costs. Soon he begins noticing other people’s problems, like those of his elderly neighbors. Conor is the kind of kid you’d want your kid to be. And his dad is the kind of dad you wish every kid had. The relationship between them is real and totally heart-warming. You can’t help believing in these two. What great role models for young readers!

  The electrifying ESCAPE FROM ALEPPO by N.H. Senzai, takes place at the beginning of the Arab Spring in 2010. It’s the story of twelve-year-old Nadia, who becomes separated from her family as they flee the bombing of Aleppo. Her harrowing journey to reunite with them at the Turkish border brings readers deep inside the danger and uncertainty of the escape. Together with Ammo Mazen, a mysterious old man who takes her under his wing, Nadia makes her way through the city where soldiers and rebel gangs threaten their existence. But as Ammo Mazen weakens, Nadia must develop the courage and resourcefulness to help herself and her friend. It’s a hopeful ending, but young readers won’t soon forget this emotionally wrenching exploration of the war in Syria and its awful cost.

  At the beginning of Avi’s book, THE PLAYER KING, a 15th century scullion named Lambert Simnel is working in a rough tavern in Oxford. Lambert has no family he knows of. He isn’t even sure of his age, which he guesses at “nine, ten or even thirteen.” But because of his resemblance to young Prince Edward, the missing heir to England’s throne, Lambert is purchased by two villains, Brother Simonds and the Earl of Lincoln, who forcibly educate him in the ways of royalty. The villains’ purpose is to have Lambert claim Prince Edward’s identity as the true king, opposing King Henry VII, who sits on the throne in Edward’s stead. It’s an Avi tale for sure—the kind in which the Newbery Award-winning author brings the twisted history of Medieval England to life with all the intrigue and color of the times. Fast paced and action-packed, this new release is sure to please the author’s many fans!

 

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A Possibility of Whales with Author Karen Rivers

By on March 7, 2018   /   Author Interviews, For Kids, For Librarians, For Teachers, Giveaways  

Are you up for a pre-book birthday celebration?

Great! Because I have the amazing Karen Rivers here to chat about her upcoming release A POSSIBILITY OF WHALES. Her book birthday is in six days.

Here’s a peek into Karen’s book.

The heartfelt story of a girl who–thanks to her friends, her famous single dad, and an unexpected encounter with a whale–learns the true meaning of family.

Twelve-year-old Natalia Rose Baleine Gallagher loves possibilities: the possibility that she’ll see whales on the beach near her new home, the possibility that the trans-gender boy she just met will become her new best friend, the possibility that the paparazzi hounding her celebrity father won’t force them to move again. Most of all, Nat dreams of the possibility that her faraway mother misses her, loves her, and is just waiting for Nat to find her.

But how can Nat find her mother if she doesn’t even know who she is? She abandoned Nat as a baby, and Nat’s dad refuses to talk about it. Nat knows she shouldn’t need a mom, but she still feels like something is missing, and her questions lead her on a journey of self-discovery that will change her life forever.

In her unique, poignant narrative voice, Karen Rivers tells a heartwarming story about family, friendship, and growing up, perfect for readers of Katherine Applegate and Rebecca Stead.

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Hi Karen! It’s wonderful to have you visit us. Did you always want to be a children’s author and what’s been your biggest surprise from doing so?

No, absolutely not. I honestly don’t think I would have thought it was possible. I didn’t even entertain the idea, although I was always writing. (It’s a bit of a mystery to me now, why I thought of authors as some realm of human beings so far above me that I didn’t even consider it.) I wanted to be a vet.  At certain points, I thought about acting, about law, about medicine, but I didn’t really consider writing as a possibility until after I’d written a book and sold it (it was an adult book that I don’t think I started believing it would ever be anything) and only THEN did it occur to me that I could go back to my first love, which was the books that mattered the most to me in my life, which were the books that I read when I was in middle school and in high school.

The mere blurb of A Possibility of Whales made my heart flutter. What was it like writing this poignant story?

I loved writing every word of this book. I had wanted to write a book that was a nod to ARE YOU THERE GOD, IT’S ME, MARGARET, a book that was about puberty and that transitional feeling of being in-between childhood and adulthood, being uncertain and even afraid of what the physical changes mean. That was my starting point. But when I dug deeper, I thought about my own kids, and how hard it has been for my son to be the boy-child of a single mother as he navigates puberty, so I wanted to give my character a single dad. I love Nat’s dad, who was loosely inspired by The Rock (with a touch of Matthew McConaughey thrown in). I love their relationship, their tiny family, the way they are a unit, but also the way that he can’t be a mother to her, he can’t be everything she needs. I loved exploring the ways that she found what she needed with her friendship with Harry and with The Bird. I loved bringing Harry to life, giving him a voice to be himself and not just a token character. His story is also rich and full and he has so much to say. And of course, I love the whales, both literally and symbolically. It all came together in my head in this complete piece and every day I got to spend with these characters was a joy.

I love the family aspect of this story!

Nat is a hopeful soul, but she has a lot going on. How did you use her sense of hope, yet spotlight her internal conflicts without dousing her positive outlook? And what can your young readers learn from this?

At certain points, Nat has a choice where she could allow the rejection and loneliness to take over, and she always manages to reach the lifeboat before she sinks. I think that kids instinctively do this, certainly not consciously, especially if they do – like Nat – have an adult who is 100% on their side. I think it’s harder for kids who don’t have a parent like Nat’s dad, who are not getting that kind of love and support from at least one person. My son’s therapist is always reassuring me that it just takes one. Kids need ONE person who is an anchor in their life, who creates the scaffolding for them to safely be themselves. I hate to think of teaching young readers a lesson, it somehow becomes didactic if I’m conscious of it, but what I’m always trying to do in my books (all of them) is to take a character who may, on the surface, seem like they are not OK or they are not going to be OK, and at the end have them realize – not from something external, but from something internal – that they ARE OK. I feel like readers at this age are all struggling with that question, “Am I OK? Am I going to be OK?” And I want to speak directly to all of them and to say through my books, through my characters, “YES. You are OK. You will be OK. You’ve got this.”

What aspect of Nat’s story do you think children of this age will relate to most?

I think the idea of feeling like you want to pump the brakes as puberty starts to loom is pretty widespread. In ARE YOU THERE GOD, the kids all seemed to want to rush towards puberty, to be the first. But amongst my kids and their friends, I see something different. I think life moves so fast now that kids are in less of a hurry to get to adulthood. Maybe we aren’t selling it well. But I think the mixed feelings about physical changes are top of mind to a lot of kids. I also think that kids will love Nat’s dad. I wrote him as a kind of idealized dad, a dream dad. 

Any advice to parents who read this book with their children on how to start a heartfelt discussion about some of the issues Nat deals with?

My best and only advice to parents is always to just create space where you can truly listen to what your kids are trying to tell you. So many times, we go into these conversations armed with what we think are the right things to say because we want to get it right, and we forget to really listen, to truly hear what they are saying. Make space! Don’t assume anything.

So, what do you see and what can your fans expect next on your horizon?

I have so many books in various stages of production right now! My next middle grade with Algonquin is called NAKED MOLE RAT SAVES THE WORLD and it’s about a kid who has a really unusual “superpower” and has to use it to, well, save the world (in the small picture, that is). It’s another book with a single parent, a kid who feels ‘different’ and about the way we seek and find our people and our place in a world that doesn’t always seem to understand us; it’s about expectations and figuring out how to be who you are.

Thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Karen! Wishing the all the best in the future.

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Karen Rivers grew up in British Columbia, where she takes loads of photos, goes on lots of walks, and writes books. She believes that stories are all secret passages to alternate worlds where we can be safe to explore the unsafe, the unsettling or the unfair hands some people have been dealt.  She also believes in you. Find Karen on her Website and Twitter.

Want to own your very own copy of A Possibility of Whales? Enter our giveaway! (*Winner will be announced via Twitter on March 14th.)

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