Posts Tagged depression

Author Interview: Amanda Rawson Hill

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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Out of the Nest: Interview with Esther Ehrlich

nest jacketNest (Wendy Lamb Books, 2014) begins on a hot, hazy, and humid day on Cape Cod, when Chirp and Joey begin a friendship that will carry them through the tragic events of their sixth grade year. This debut novel by Esther Ehrlich has earned three stars and Kirkus calls it “a poignant, insightful story of family crisis and the healing power of friendship.”

It just so happens that Esther and I shared the same sixth grade teacher—although not at the same time—and so I reached out to Esther to talk about her amazing book.

JG: I love Chirp, the bird-watching heroine of Nest. Her nickname expresses her character too; how cheerful she tries to remain in spite of events and how se comforts herself by making a nest of blankets in her room. Which came first, the bird-watching idea or her name?

esther_ehrlichEE: I don’t really know which came first! When I write, everything develops in relation to everything else, so it’s hard for me to look back and tease apart what happened when. I do know that when Chirp was a baby she made a chirpy sound that her parents loved. The nickname “Chirp” stuck as Chirp’s love for birds declared itself!

JG: Chirp is Jewish, and occasionally her classmates make her feel like she doesn’t belong. How important to you was it to include the family’s faith in the story?

EE: Being Jewish is an integral part of who Chirp is. I think the range of feelings that she has—comfort and pride in who she is, but also that uncomfortable feeling of “otherness,” of feeling vulnerable and on the outside sometimes—is important to talk about. For Chirp and her family, being Jewish is a huge part of their backstory, a connection to the past. It also impacts their day-to-day life in a very real way, since there are so few other Jews in their community on Cape Cod. There’s a richness, I think, in exploring these layers of a minority identity.

JG: In addition to the challenges in Chirp’s life, we get a peek into her friend Joey’s life. This is handled so deftly and realistically—the helplessness of kids to do anything or even speak of something unspeakably sad. How did Joey’s role in the novel evolve?

EE: I had no idea that Joey was going to be such a central character in Nest. Originally, I imagined him as just one other kid who populated Chirp’s life. But he kept popping up. And I was captivated by his quirky, sweet, troubled self. I wanted to try and see behind the closed door of his family’s home. As I continued to write the story and Joey and Chirp had more chances to interact, Joey revealed himself as a layered, complex character. He became much more vital to the story because he kept proving himself as a loyal, courageous friend.

JG: Depression is so little understood as a disease, and you really capture the despair and lethargy. What inspired you to write about depression?

EE: Sadly, depression is just so common. I really don’t know if there’s anyone whose life hasn’t been touched by it in some way, yet there’s still plenty of stigma attached to it. Though I didn’t write Nest with a conscious agenda in mind, I do think it’s important to give voice to what we know—depression is mysterious, powerful, and can turn families upside-down. I’m convinced that Hannah would have been okay adjusting to the challenges of living with multiple sclerosis, but her depression on top of that was just more than she could handle.

JG: This is your first novel, and it’s getting rave reviews. Tell us about your love of language and story.

EE: Where to begin? I can’t remember a time when I didn’t love words and stories. As a young girl, I kept a running list of my favorite names and would speak the names out loud, just to hear the sound and “feel” of them. My mom was a poet and shared her poetry with me, which I think helped shape my love of words. I also had an amazing sixth grade teacher. She was insightful enough to set up a corner of our classroom as a living room and, a couple of times a week, we’d all get cozy on couches and pillows and she’d read to us! What a joy that was! As an adult, I was trained as an oral historian. I learned how to listen carefully to people’s stories, to hear the stories within the stories. It was deeply satisfying work for me. I think it helped me really listen to my characters as I worked on Nest.

JG: In Nest, Chirp takes an unauthorized bus ride into Boston. Have you ever run away from home?

EE: Yes, my friend Penny and I packed up our backpacks one Saturday morning and tromped down to the playground in our town. We were in fourth grade. We set up camp, which meant spreading out a blanket, lining up our books, and arranging our food in a neat row. Then we read, ate, lay in the sun, talked about everything we could think of, including how everyone was probably super worried about us. By the time the sun was straight overhead, we were hot, cranky, and bored. We stalled just a bit more to ensure that people would be really worried about us. Then we packed up and walked home. Of course, no one had noticed that we were gone, which seemed to us like a perfect reason to run away again. We talked about it but never quite put our plan into action…