Posts Tagged debut authors

AUTHOR INTERVIEW: Sarah Scheerger on debut OPERATION FROG EFFECT

By on February 25, 2019   /   Articles, Author Interviews, Diversity  

I just read an absolutely delightful debut called OPERATION FROG EFFECT (Random House), by author Sarah Scheerger. It’s funny, sometimes sad, has a wonderfully diverse cast of characters, and even includes a graphic novel element.  The multi-POV novel traces one transformative year in the life of teacher Ms. Graham’s fifth-grade students. Because of her innovative teaching style, students learn to rely on their own ingenuity, deepen their empathy for each other, and fight for what they believe in. Their story is told through their journal entries and drawings.

As I often do, I drafted my middle-grade son to read with me, and he loved it too, so when I got the chance to interview Sarah, I included some of the questions he had for her as well.

Interview with Sarah Scheerger

The Origins of OPERATION FROG EFFECT

MUF: What inspired you to write this book?

My fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Nubling, was innovative. He took risks, he made us think, and he understood when we made mistakes. He had a “growth mindset” before that was such a popular concept. He actually had us build our own model rockets in class and shoot them off on the school fields. (This probably wouldn’t happen today, but this was the eighties.) Mr. Nubling only had four fingers on one hand. One year (not my year), a student accidentally shot off his rocket while Mr. Nubling was still securing it in place. And despite losing a digit, Mr. Nubling continued to shoot off rockets every year with his fourth graders.

When I thought of writing a middle-grade novel, my upper elementary years jumped out at me as the most memorable. My character Emily has the voice most similar to my own fifth-grade voice. I connected with her need to belong and her confusion as her friend group shifts. All the characters in this story are fictional, of course.

MUF: Why did you decide to use a multi-POV approach?

I love the way multiple points of view provide the opportunity for misunderstandings, for unreliable narrators, and for a quick moving pace. I love the use of the graphic novel component (Blake’s voice) for multiple reasons. I see how my own children gravitate toward reading graphic novels, and I wanted a way to incorporate some of that element in this story. I thought perhaps the graphic novel component might widen the potential readership. Plus. . . I love how illustrations can convey emotions. Also, I wanted to create a character who has his own unique learning style. Blake is a student who struggles with writing but loves to draw.

Teaching Tolerance

MUF: I was fascinated by the Whistler/Non-Whistler project. Is that a real teaching model?

My fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Nubling, did this experiment with our class. To be honest, my memory is fuzzy, so I’m not sure whether he did an eye color experiment or based it on gender. I only remember my feelings of injustice! I was confused and upset… and that experiment has stuck with me ever since.

When writing this book, I researched the eye color experiment. It originated with a teacher, Jane Elliot. She talked about it on “Oprah” back in the nineties. Here’s a clip. https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/01/02/jane-elliott-race-experiment-oprah-show_n_6396980.html

In my first version of Operation Frog Effect, I considered doing the actual “eye color experiment”. But after much thought, my editor and I decided the point would be most poignant if I selected something entirely random, like the ability to whistle. (By the way, I cannot whistle myself.)

About that Frog…

MUF: Frogs are an important symbol in many cultures – often indicating a need for transformation or cleansing, for a new perspective on life. I can’t help but wonder whether this symbolism tied into your choice of the frog as a class pet? Ms. Graham’s class had an incredibly transformative year!

You’re totally right. This was a transformative year for Ms. Graham’s class.
Sweet Kermit was an addition during my first round of edits. My editor and I were brainstorming titles and ideas for metaphors and themes. We decided that a class pet frog could bring out Blake’s nurturing/caring side, had the potential for fun complications (oops—frog on the loose!) as well as created fun cover art. (My heart melts for the frog on the cover of the book.)

The frog symbolism was important too. You’re right that frogs are an important symbol for many cultures, and my editor and I also loved the concept of making ripples. Frogs make ripples in the water, and my characters made ripples in the world. (I love the ripples on the cover too!)

Writing the Book

MUF: What is your favorite part?

I love Blake’s sections. Gina Perry did a fabulous job. I’m hopeful that his sections will reach kids in a different way than the traditional text. Interestingly, I rewrote all of Blake’s sections for the audiobook. It was a group effort—I worked together with the producer to transform the illustrations back into inner dialogue… what Blake would have been thinking as he was sketching. (This was so fun—the producer and I met for coffee and worked together!)

And the counselor in me loves the little tidbits of social-emotional learning that Ms. Graham shares with her class.

MUF: What was the hardest part of the book to write?

Oh, great question! I did find it challenging to keep track of threads and details across characters. I kept lists and charts. I wanted to give each character equal playing time, make sure they each had their own arc, their own strengths, and their own weaknesses. I wanted to be sure the voices were different enough to be distinct. I also took extra care with the representation of my diverse characters. I had seventeen different authenticity readers! Each reader shared different insights, from his/her own perspective. It was really important to both me and my editor that we take extra steps to be sure we represented each character authentically.

(Cool fact: the audiobook is narrated by nine different diverse voices. This was really important to me, and I’m so thrilled with the end result.)

MUF: How many times did you have to rewrite?

Too many to count! Let’s just say that I started this book when my daughter was born. And now
she’s four and a half!
I do love revisions, though. Once I have the skeleton of the book written, I enjoy going back and fine-tuning.

Writing Multiple POV

MUF: Multi-POV books can be a real challenge in revisions – how did you approach that challenge?

This was definitely a challenge! There were so many layers of revisions with this book. I managed this in a variety of ways, but mostly I followed these steps:
• I went through and revised threads/overall plot
• then went back through one voice at a time, looking carefully at how this specific change impacted each specific character (for example, all of Kayley’s entries, then all of Cecilia’s, etc.)
• And then… I went back through the whole manuscript from beginning to end.

These multi-layered revisions occurred many times throughout the revision process. One change in a single plot point impacted each character in his/her own unique ways. Each time I went through I found more details to change.

MUF: My son and I both had the same comps in mind as we read – BECAUSE OF MR. TERUPT by Rob Buyea, and THE LAST FIFTH GRADE OF EMERSON ELEMENTARY by Laura Shovan. Did either of those influence your writing or your choice to do multi-POV?

Perhaps on some level, the book Wonder impacted my choice to do Multi-POV. I have a huge author crush on that book. R.J. Palacio reached so many kids, and I’ve enjoyed watching how teachers have incorporated Wonder into their curriculum. Since I’m a school-based counselor, I love it when teachers find creative ways to incorporate social-emotional learning and empathy-building into their curriculum.

I think Because of Mr. Terupt and The Last Fifth Grade of Emerson Elementary are great comps too. In fact, you’ll find all these books (as well as tips about classroom activities) in the School Stories Educator’s Guide at the following link: https://images.randomhouse.com/promo_image/9780525644125_5528.pdf

Thank you for reading Operation Frog Effect! Here’s a link to the audiobook clip: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/575577/operation-frog-effect-by-sarah-scheerger/9780525644125/

OPERATION FROG EFFECT, published by Random House, will be on shelves TOMORROW, February 26, 2019.

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Author Interview: Amanda Rawson Hill

By on September 10, 2018   /   Articles, Author Interviews, Giveaways, New Releases  

Happy Monday, everyone!

I’m excited about this author interview because it gives me a chance to introduce our Mixed-Up Files community to one of my favorite middle-grade writers, Amanda Rawson Hill. Her debut novel,  THE THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC (Boyds Mills Press), drops on September 25.

And what’s more …. we get to give one lucky reader a copy of THE THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC! After you read our interview with Amanda, scroll down and enter the Rafflecopter to win.

Author Interview with Amanda Rawson Hill

My son and I read THE THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC at the same time, which allowed us the fun of collaborating on an author interview with Amanda about the amazing Kate and how her brand of magic came to be.

MUF: How did you come up with the concept for the Three Rules of Everyday Magic? And by that, we mean the theme of the book AND the three rules themselves?

Elizabeth Gilbert is a best-selling author and she wrote a book called BIG MAGIC that talked about the theory that ideas are actual THINGS that exist outside of a person and are just waiting to be found. That’s sort of what finding the theme and the three rules felt like. When I started writing the book, I didn’t know it was going to be about connecting with others through giving. I just knew it was about a girl and her grandma. When Grammy taught Kate how to knit a hat, that’s when I realized that the book was about giving. I actually worked on the book for about ten months before I did a major revision that added in the THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC. I was writing while on a cross-country drive and all of a sudden my fingers typed out Grammy saying, “That’s the first rule of Everyday Magic. You have to believe.” It wasn’t in my head before I wrote it, but all of a sudden it was there on the paper. And I thought, “What are the other rules?” That’s when it all came to me. Like it was one of those ideas just floating around in the air waiting for someone to latch onto it.

So I guess that’s a long way of saying, “I don’t know.” Sometimes…most of the time…I don’t feel like I did come up with the rules. I feel like they kind of exist outside of me and were just waiting to be discovered.

MUF: Did you conceive of Kate before the book? Or did she grow along with it?

A bit of both. There are certain things about Kate that haven’t changed at all since the very first words of the first draft. Her love of karate, her hatred for the color pink, her secret crush on Parker. But there was a lot of her that I felt like I really didn’t know after the first draft. So I opened up a blank document and completely rewrote the entire book trying to really tap into WHO KATE IS. I ended up writing that version in epistolary format. The whole thing was told in letters to her dad. It didn’t stay that way, but doing so allowed me to really get to know Kate because letter writing requires a certain vulnerability which Kate didn’t really want to show me (and I still struggled to get her to open up to me all the way, even in much later drafts.) That’s what the symbolism of the pink is all about. Kate becoming comfortable with being vulnerable.

MUF: The poetry in this book is simply lovely and we just loved the way Kate’s teacher structured the history lesson with poetry and self-expression. Have you done this yourself as a homeschooling mother?

I’ve done poetry with my kids before, but I haven’t done this specific kind of poem with them yet. I got the idea for it at a writing conference I went where George Ella Lyon herself was presenting about how to write a ‘Where I’m From” poem and how to help children write one. It was such a great class, and everyone shared lines of their poems and I loved it so much that I knew I had to use it in my book.

MUF: Another special piece of the poetry in this book is that Jane’s poem was written by Joan He, a friend who is also a writer. How did you come by her poem?

I actually asked Joan and paid her to write it just for this book. It was important to me that Jane’s poem was authentic to her experience as a Chinese American, and I just didn’t feel like I could do that justice, even if it was just a few lines. I felt Joan’s knowledge and authenticity would really add something that I couldn’t bring to it, and I definitely think I was right about that because the poem is amazing and beautiful.

MUF: The themes of loss and depression are tough to write about – and poor Kate has to cope with some terrible losses. How did you approach writing these themes for a middle-grade audience?

I started out approaching them much more simply, with Kate simply referring to her father’s depression as “the sadness” and describing it all about his eyes and just lying in bed all day. But when it sold, my editor made me get much more specific about it. She had me refer to it by name, call it a sickness every time. She wanted me to show the slow development of it, other ways it manifested, etc. Which meant that I then went and talked to a lot of different people who had experienced it, so that I could show it in several true ways. I think that’s important. There are lots of kids dealing with depression, whether in their parents or themselves, and so naming it and accurately portraying it is absolutely vital, even if it’s hard because we’d like to just simplify and shield kids from it, right? But that doesn’t end up doing anyone any favors.

However, I did still have to filter all this information through the eyes of a child. I think that’s where the hope comes in. That quiet, undying hope that everything can and will get better eventually. And when you let hope color these hard topics, even when you face them and the pain head-on, it makes it approachable for a middle-grade audience. That’s the number one rule. Hope. Always.

MUF: What is your favorite passage?

Oh man! What a hard question! There are so many that I love. I think my absolute favorite though is, “Grammy said that magic happens when love becomes visible, when you give people something they can hold. But I think she was wrong about that. Because some things you can’t hold, not really. Like a firm squeeze that says it’s okay, or a song that makes you feel better. Like a family that’s always, always a family no matter what. You can’t knit that, or cook it, or draw it, or write it. But all those things are magic.”

Followed closely by this one that always makes me cry. “I’ve waited five months and twenty days to hear Dad say my name again, to say it like he knows me for real and forever, and when he does, it’s like somebody shaking up a root beer and pouring it over ice. All the foam comes spilling out from inside of me. ‘Daddy, please come home. Please come home. I can make you happy again. Mom will understand. I know you’re sad. But I’m sad too. And Mom’s sad. She needs you. We need you.'” (This passage hasn’t changed since the very first draft, which is kind of miraculous.)

MUF: We got chills AND tears in our eyes when we read that part, Amanda.

MUF: Congratulations to you, and good luck with your launch. And — thank you so much for offering to give away a copy of THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC!

Amanda Rawson Hill

Amanda Rawson Hill grew up in Southwest Wyoming with a library right out her back gate. She got a degree in Chemistry from Brigham Young University and now lives in Central California with her husband and three kids. THE THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC is her first novel.

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Librarians and Teachers, Take Note! Debut Author Groups Are Great Resources

By on June 20, 2018   /   Author Interviews, For Librarians, For Teachers, For Writers, Publishing & Promotion  

Kidlit authors Julia Nobel (Novel Nineteens) and Joy McCullough (Electric Eighteens) talk to us about how you can take advantage of author debut groups to introduce the year’s hottest new fiction to your middle-grade readers.

Author debut groups are a great way for librarians and teachers to get an early preview of books coming out for kids. They also help educators get to know their authors more personally. “I think debut groups can really help the children’s book market in general,” says Julia Nobel. Nobel founded the Novel Nineteens for middle-grade and young adult authors debuting in 2019. “Some books that might be overlooked get more exposure because there are a lot of other authors talking about them.” Nobel, whose first novel for middle graders, THE MYSTERY OF BLACK HOLLOW LANE appears next year, says that some debut groups concentrate on marketing. Others are focused on mutual support. They all share a mission to introduce their books to new readers.

Joy McCullough is a member of the Electric Eighteens whose debut verse novel BLOOD WATER PAINT published this year. McCullough says debut groups are a place for authors “to ask questions, vent frustrations, and remember that whatever we’re going through, someone else is probably going through the exact same thing.”

“Writing can be a fairly solitary experience,” McCullough says. “When going through the publishing experience for the first time, that solitude is paired with heaps of anxiety and uncertainty and the unpredictable, uncontrollable nature of the publishing business. Having a group of people who are all on similar journeys and timelines can be incredibly comforting and encouraging. There are no expectations to promote each other’s books, though that happens organically as we form relationships with each other and read each other’s books. But the primary purpose, as I see it, is as a support group.”

For Librarians and Teachers: School Visits, Giveaways, and Personal Author Connections

Debut groups offer a wealth of information for teachers and librarians looking for new fiction to share with young readers. The groups’ websites provide summaries of the novels, author bios and social media links. There are also opportunities for giveaways and promotions. This year, Nobel added a feature to the Novel 19s website specifically for teachers and librarians.

Nobel says the feature includes “an author locator for those of us who do school visits, and a list of comparative titles (in case you’re looking for a new book that’s similar to Harry Potter). It also features a document that organizes books thematically. So, for example, if you’re looking a book with LGBTQIA+ characters, you will find a list of titles to explore.”

Use the Hashtag: #Novel19s

Librarians and teachers can also plug in the debut group’s hashtag to keep up with other resources, contests, and giveaways.

“We are really encouraging our authors use the hashtag when they are doing giveaways,” Nobel says. “That way, people can easily find them. Type the phrase #Novel19s into the Twitter search bar. You’ll find authors who are doing book giveaways, pre-order thank you gifts, newsletter goodies, and lots more. You’ll also be able to find new authors you want to connect with. A lot of us love interacting with educators on social media!”

McCullough agrees. “New authors are a great opportunity for schools and libraries to get in on school and Skype visits with an author at the ground floor. It’s important for authors to be paid for these visits. But at the same time, brand new authors are often charging lower rates. And some may not be charging at all as they get their feet under them with school visits. As for things like teacher guides and mailing lists, authors are super eager to connect with teachers and librarians. Author newsletters are a great source of insider info. You’ll find information on the process of publishing, extra content, and a way to connect with authors. A teacher or librarian who reaches out to a debut group asking for swag, teacher guides, etc., is likely to get lots of response!”

Big Trends in Middle Grade

I asked McCullough and Nobel if they were seeing any themes or trends in middle grade books debuting in their respective years.

“Contemporary is king in 2019! The majority of MG books in our group are set in our current time and place,” Nobel says. “Although a handful of those have a twist of magic thrown in. There are only a few fantasy novels, but they really are exceptional. Family dynamics are a common theme in every genre. So is dealing with loss. I’m excited by the number of different ways authors are approaching both those themes. With subjects including the war on drugs, baking competitions, secret societies, and living with nuns, no two books are alike, that’s for sure!

McCullough adds, “It’s been strange for me to debut as a young adult author, since I wrote a ton of middle grade before I got my debut. As a Pitchwars mentor, I’ve always worked with middle grade authors. I really feel like I am a middle grade author! Some middle-grade stand-outs [from 2018], from what I’ve read so far, include PEASPROUT CHEN: FUTURE LEGEND OF SKATE & SWORD by Henry Lien, THE THREE RULES OF EVERYDAY MAGIC by Amanda Rawson Hill, PS I MISS YOU by Jen Petro-Roy, THE UNICORN QUEST by Kamilla Benko, and LOVE SUGAR MAGIC by Anna Meriano. A few I’m super excited to read include EVERLASTING NORA by Marie Miranda Cruz, MEET YASMIN by Saadia Faruqui, FRONT DESK by Kelly Yang, THE HOTEL BETWEEN by Sean Easley.

A Community for Writers

Debut groups also offer a huge learning opportunity for writers. McCullough says, “It’s been fascinating to see the very wide a range of experiences in the publishing journey. It’s really helpful to have fellow travelers on the journey. It’s also incredibly important to keep your eyes on your own suitcase.” Nobel concurs. She says she’s amazed how many authors genuinely want to support each other. “There are a lot of people taking time out from their extremely busy schedules to work on the website, host Twitter chats, and create documents. Or to simply be there to answer questions and offer support. So far it’s been really great!”

Visit the Electric Eighteens at www.Electriceighteens.com and the Novel Nineteens at www.Novelnineteens.com.

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Julia Nobel is a middle grade author from Victoria, Canada. Her childhood obsession with The Babysitters Club turned into a lifelong passion for reading and writing children’s literature. She offers writing master classes and courses for writers in all genres. Nobel was also a Pitch Wars Mentor in 2017. Her 4-year-old daughter likes to help her write by unplugging her computer and pressing the escape key. Her debut middle grade novel, The Mystery of Black Hollow Lane, will be published by Sourcebooks Jaberwocky in Spring 2019.

http://julianobel.com; @nobeljulia

 

Joy McCullough writes books and plays from her home in the Seattle area, where she lives with her husband and two children. She studied theater at Northwestern University, fell in love with her husband atop a Guatemalan volcano, and now spends her days surrounded by books and kids and chocolate. Blood Water Paint is her debut novel.
www.joymccullough.com; @jmcwrites

 

 

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