Posts Tagged middle-grade fiction

Interview – Christine Virnig, author of A BITE ABOVE THE REST

By Patricia Bailey on August 26, 2024 / Articles, Author Interviews

I had the great luck to get to read an early copy of Christine Virnig’s latest middle-grade – a Halloween themed adventure set in the very unique town of Samhain,Wisconsin. And, even though Halloween is still a few month’s away, I’m sure my interview with Christine is going to have you itching to break out the wax vampire fangs and your best monster lawn decorations.

Please tell us a little bit about A BITE ABOVE THE REST.

First of all, thank you so much for taking the time to interview me! I really appreciate it!

A Bite Above the Rest is about a kid who moves from California to Samhain, Wisconsin, a tourist town where it’s Halloween 24/7. Halloween decorations stay up year-round, people wear costumes every day, and the town hall keeps vampire hours, of all things. Being the new kid is hard enough on its own, but then a terrifying encounter with the mayor causes Caleb to wonder: Could there be more to his new hometown than meets the eye? Could real vampires and werewolves and witches be hiding amongst the fakes? He immediately sets out to uncover the truth, aided by his quirky new best friend, Tai.

The premise of this book is super interesting and super fun. What inspired you to write this story?

I was inspired to write A Bite Above the Rest from the moment the main character, Caleb, popped into my head one day. The poor kid was walking around with a wooden stake in his back pocket because he was terrified that he’d encounter a vampire or werewolf or witch at any second. But as scared as he was, nobody around him was frightened. They were all just going about their business as though nothing was wrong. I was immediately filled with questions—Who was this kid? Where was he? Why was nobody else scared?—and A Bite Above the Rest was basically my attempt to answer these questions.

You tackle some very real issues in this book. A parent’s death, a new town, bullying, and anxiety among others. What do you hope readers will take away from Caleb and Tai’s adventure?

I actually didn’t write A Bite Above the Rest with any lessons or take aways in mind; my only goal was for readers to have fun reading it. But despite this, I do hope that Caleb and Tai’s adventure will show kids that we can all be brave when we need to be, especially when we’ve got a good friend at our side.

Caleb and Tai do a lot of research on monsters. Werewolves, vampires, witches, and merfolk all play a part in this book. Do you have a favorite scary being? If so, what about them do you love?

Probably vampires?? I find their lore absolutely fascinating, and I love the idea of living f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

I have always been terrible at coming up with Halloween costumes/decorations. The thought of doing it every day is exhausting to me, so I really appreciated Caleb’s approach. What about you? Are you a Halloween superfan? Do you have a favorite costume from your childhood? Do you go all out decorating your house now?

Apart from the candy, I actually didn’t like Halloween that much when I was growing up. A large part of this dislike was the costumes; they always made me feel awkward and exposed. I still feel this way as an adult, so I’m a huge fan of Caleb-style punny costumes myself. This year I think I’ll go as a fork in the road!

And no, I don’t go all out decorating my house for Halloween. But thanks to the throngs of spiders that LOVE living by our front door, we’re at least bound to have a bunch of very authentic-looking spider webs hanging about 🙂

Will you tell us a little bit about your writing process? In particular how did you go about tackling this story?

My writing process for fiction is supremely inefficient. As soon as I come up with an idea—which might be a character, a setting, a theme—I brainstorm just enough so that I can start writing, and then I let the characters do their thing. This writing style is definitely fun (for example, I didn’t know if Caleb’s suspicions about his new town would end up being real or not until I was halfway done writing, which meant I got to be surprised too!), but it does mean I need to do a lot of revising and rewriting once I finally finish my first draft.

We know no writer is created in a vacuum. Could you tell the readers about a teacher or a librarian who had an effect on your writing life?

Yes! When I was first considering writing for children, I asked the youth librarian at the public library in Verona, Wisconsin to point me towards a few of their most popular middle grade titles. Among others, she grabbed How They Croaked by Georgia Bragg. This nonfiction book was my first introduction to the world of FUNNY nonfiction, and it inspired me to write my first two books: Dung for Dinner and Waist-Deep in Dung. I wish I knew that librarian’s name so I could thank her for unknowingly giving me the inspiration I needed to just start writing.

A Bite Above the Rest ends with Caleb getting some worrying information. Can you give us a hint about what we can look forward to next from you?

Of course! As much as I’d love to revisit the world of Caleb and Tai and Samhain at some point—and I already have some ideas!—my next book is another standalone that I hope fans of A Bite Above the Rest will really love. Slated to come out in late 2025, it features a cast of ghostly main characters who attend Phantom Academy, a school for underaged ghosts. I also have a picture book coming out sometime in the next few years, but those details are still hush hush.

Christine Virnig is a fan of books, candy, spooky stories, poop jokes, and coffee…in no particular order. As a former physician, Christine now spends her days writing books, reading books, and working at a library where she is surrounded by books. Christine lives in southern Wisconsin with her husband, two daughters, a ridiculous number of dust bunnies, and one incredibly lazy cat. You can visit her on the web at ChristineVirnig.com.

A BITE ABOVE THE REST is out now and available for purchase here or at your favorite bookstore. You can follow Christine on at her website or on Instagram.

Are you ready for some Halloween fun? If so, let us know in the comments.

Interview with New York Times Bestselling Author Gayle Forman

By Melissa Roske on August 22, 2024 / Author Interviews

Today, we’re thrilled to welcome New York Times bestselling author Gayle Forman to the Mixed-Up Files! Best known for her wildly popular YA novels, including the If I Stay series, Gayle is also the author of Frankie & Bug, which Kirkus lauded for its “superb” storytelling. Her latest MG, Not Nothing, described by Wonder author R.J. Palacio as “A life-affirming gem,” is out from Aladdin/Simon Kids on August 27.

Chatting with Gayle

MR: Welcome to the Mixed-Up Files, Gayle! It’s an absolute pleasure to have you here. Before we dive in, you should know that I finished Not Nothing in one sitting. And that’s not nothing. I’m a slow reader!

GF: Wow, that is high praise for an author. I love the experience of an immersive, addictive read so when I learn that I delivered that to someone else, I’m very happy.

Not Nothing

MR: Not Nothing is about a 12-year-old boy, Alex, who must endure court-mandated community service at a senior citizens’ home—but the story is so much deeper, and more nuanced, than that. Can you tell MUF readers more about the novel?

GF: At its core, Not Nothing is a book about what happens when you are not invited/encouraged to be your better self—or worse, when you are enticed to be your worst self—and the incredible things that happen when you are invited to rise to the occasion of your life, whatever that means to you. It is also a story about the power of intergenerational friendships, finding commonality with people who seem outwardly so unlike you, and about how stories can unlock so much within us.

Josey: A Bold Narrative Choice

MR: The story is told from the perspective of Josey Kravitz, a 107-year-old Holocaust survivor. For a middle-grade novel, having an elderly narrator is a bold choice. What prompted this authorial decision? (It’s a brilliant one.)

GF: I’m so glad you think so! Josey has always been the heart and soul of this book, and at first I didn’t see how I could do a children’s book with him as narrator. Maybe that’s why at first I tried it as an adult novel, which didn’t work because this book was clearly meant to be what it now is: a middle-grade novel for all ages. So why the old man narrator for a kids’ book? I wanted Alex, and by extension, readers, to benefit from Josey’s experience and perspective. It took some figuring out to have Josey be the narrator and have the voice sound like Alex’s, but once I got there, the unconventional choice of narrators made such sense.

The Power of Words

MR: When we first meet Josey, he hasn’t spoken for five years yet he opens up to Alex about his painful past as a young man in Nazi-occupied Poland. Alex, in turn, is able to address his own troubles, which he’s had to tamp down in order to survive. What is it about the power of words—and the exchange of stories—that’s so transformative, and so healing?

GF: Why do we read novels about total strangers who are made-up people? Because something about the transfer of story from storyteller to listener/reader creates connection. It is why storytelling is so essential in our evolution. Alex cannot begin to grapple with his own reality, and is trapped in a cycle of resentment and anger until he hears Josey’s story. Then he can see his story through another story and the parallels allow him to think about what he has done. And what he can do. When people say that stories change lives, I think this is what they mean.

The Central Story

MR: One of the most important stories Josey shares with Alex is about Olka, a seamstress-turned-resistance-fighter from his hometown in Poland, who saved his life—literally and figuratively—by teaching him to sew. Can you tell us more about Josey and Olka’s story?

GF: Among the many things of today’s world that saddens me is our propensity for sorting people into fixed binaries: good or evil, kind or mean. We are so much more complicated than that and we are often all of these things at different points in our lives and we can change. At the start of the book, Olka is angry and frustrated, shrinking rather than growing, because of what she (rightfully) perceives as the unfair circumstances of her life. She does something that could have sent her tumbling down a rabbit hole of resentment but because of an almost offhanded decision of Josey to ask her to teach him to sew, her life goes in the opposite direction and she winds up saving Josey—and so many other people’s—lives.

Real-Life Inspiration

MR: In the Author’s Note, you share that the novel is based in part on the true-life story of Jerzy Bielecki and Cyla Cybulska, an interfaith couple—he was Catholic and she was Jewish—who met as prisoners at the Auschwitz concentration camp. What was it about this story that inspired you to reimagine it as material for a middle-grade novel?

GF: That part of the story—aside from the star-crossed love story—was a classic heist adventure. It does not play out with Josey and Olka the way it did with the real-life couple, but I definitely incorporated some of the true story. If I say any more, there will be SPOILERS.

It’s All in the Research

MR: Since a good portion of the novel takes place during World War II, in Nazi-occupied Poland, what sort of research did you do to ensure authenticity?

GF: This is the second book I have written that takes place in that time frame (the other one is an audio-only book that draws on my family history), and both books rely heavily on the incredible resources of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has, among other things, thousands of survivor testimonies.

I also found a lot of the more granular small moments in memoirs written by both survivors from Krakow as well as allies, like the owner of the Eagle Pharmacy, a real-life pharmacy in the Krakow ghetto that features in the book. I also drew from my only family history—my grandparents fled Nazi Germany in 1938—and that of some of the elderly people I have become close with over the years at various assisted-living facilities. And finally, I was very lucky that the copy editor of the book was a daughter of a survivor and had incredible insights.

Presenting Difficult Topics for a Younger Audience

MR: An overarching theme in the novel is what prompts a “good person” to become “evil” and a not-so-good person to become good—or even heroic. You also explore the power of redemption. These are weighty topics for a middle-grade audience, yet you present them with a light, deft hand. What’s the secret to presenting difficult concepts for a younger audience without coming across as preachy or heavy-handed? It’s no mean feat.

GF: Thank you! I’m pretty allergic to anything preachy or performative so that helps me avoid it in my own writing. I would argue that teaching young people about morality and what it means to be aiming toward their better selves is not weighty. It’s exhilarating. To teach someone how to feel good while doing good to others is teaching them how to create, give and receive joy. I don’t think there’s a secret to it beyond trusting your readers, and having written for young people for my 25-plus year career, I know how much they are capable of. It is my job, through my books, to invite them to rise to the occasion of their lives.

Lucky 7

MR: Not Nothing took you seven years to write. What was the process like for you, from initial idea to finished novel?

GF: My new process seems to be to write a novel, think it’s terrible and irredeemable, leave it on my hard drive for a few years, come back to it, see how it’s meant to go. I initially conceived of this as an adult novel (the terrible version) and once I realized it was middle grade, I showed the terrible version to my editor, Kristin, along with an editorial letter of how I would fix it. Once I nailed how to have Josey tell Alex’s story, it clicked, and things moved relatively quickly from there.

Writing MG

MR: Not Nothing is not your first novel for middle-grade readers. Your debut MG, Frankie & Bug, was released in 2021. As a hugely successful YA author—including the If I Stay series, the Just One series, and several stand-alone novels—what prompted you to turn your writerly attention to MG?

GF: I know this sounds somewhat grandiose, but the stories demand it. With Frankie & Bug, the story I wanted to tell—about how it’s incumbent upon all of us to hurry toward justice—needed to be told in the near past and needed to be about younger people. With Not Nothing, I knew that Josey would be the narrator at the end of life (sorry, no spoiler, he’s 107!) and the grist of the story about his relationship with someone at the start of life.

Gayle’s Writing Routine

MR: What does your writing routine look like? Do you have a particular time of day when you prefer to write? Any habits or rituals?

GF: In my new version of slow novel writing, I actually spend much less time at the computer than I used to. (Would-be writers: this is not an excuse to slack; I think I had to spend all those hours to get to where I could spend less and create more, but it’s also an example of not pushing on a story when it’s not ready.) Maybe I write two or three hours a day when I’m drafting. After that, I run out of steam and the work suffers. When I’m revising, I can spend hours working and they fly by. This is when I get into the flow state. But other than coffee, I don’t really have rituals. I can work anywhere (I’m typing this from a hotel lobby between meetings), although I am probably a better writer in the morning.

MR: What are you working on now, Gayle?

GF: I have a young-adult novel called After Life coming out in January of 2025, so I’m putting the finishing touches on that while starting to think on my next MG and YA novels.

Lightning Round!

MR: And finally, no MUF interview is complete without a lightning round, so…

Preferred writing snack? Any leftovers that are in the fridge are like manna to me. No cooking, only re-heating!

Coffee or tea? Cappuccino. I make them myself. I’m a decent barista.

Plotter or Pantser? Cruiser

Superpower? Getting stuff done. I know that sounds boring for a super-power but it’s pretty awesome. You can be the best writer in the world but if you can’t finish a novel, it’s going to be a harder road if you want to do it professionally. And I get lots of stuff that isn’t writing done, too.

Best piece of writing advice? My old journalism professor had a sign on her door that reads: A real writer is one who writes. If you want to be a writer, write. And then revise.

Favorite place on earth? Brooklyn

If you were stranded on a desert island with only three things, what would they be?

My dog
A solar-powered e-reader with 1000 Libby library books on it that never expire. And enough blank pages to write.
I was going to say my family but having been through Covid lockdown, I know this would make them miserable and crazy so I’m just bringing the dog who would be so happy to spend all his days with me.

MR: Thank you for chatting with us, Gayle—and congratulations on the forthcoming publication of Not Nothing!

GF: Thank you!!!!

About Gayle Forman

Award-winning author and journalist Gayle Forman has written several bestselling novels, including those in the Just One Day series, Where She Went, and the #1 New York Times bestseller If I Stay, which has been translated into more than forty languages and was adapted into a major motion picture. Her first middle grade novel, Frankie & Bug, was a New York Times Best Children’s Book of 2021. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, with her family.

Melissa Roske is a writer of middle-grade fiction. Before spending her days with imaginary people, she interviewed real ones as a journalist in Europe. In London she landed a job as an advice columnist for Just Seventeen magazine. Upon returning to her native New York, Melissa contributed to several books and magazines, selected jokes for Reader’s Digest (just the funny ones), and received certification as a life coach from NYU. In addition to her debut novel Kat Greene Comes Clean (Charlesbridge), Melissa’s short story “Grandma Merle’s Last Wish” appears in the Jewish middle-grade anthology, Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories (Albert Whitman). Learn more about Melissa on her Website and follow her on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.

Filling the Gaps in Middle Grade

By Susan Koehler on August 19, 2024 / Oh MG News

The middle grade market has been a bit discouraging lately. Perhaps you read about The Middle Grade Slump in a recent Mixed-Up Files post. Well, we’re back to let you know about two gaps in the middle grade market that present an opportunity for authors.

According to agent Kelly Dyksterhouse of the Tobias Agency, “Right now there is a need for middle grade novels that bridge the gaps between age categories.” Dysterhouse identifies two areas where books are needed to help kids transition from one category to the next.

Early Middle Grade

According to Dyksterhouse, there is a need for “younger middle grade novels for readers who are ready to move on from chapter books but who might find the 40k+ word count that has become so common in middle grade intimidating.”

Does this sound familiar? It’s reminiscent of an opinion piece that appeared in Publisher’s Weekly about a year ago. Melissa Taylor, founder of the Imagination Soup blog, wrote an article titled “It’s Not Me, It’s You: The Argument for Shorter Middle Grade Books.”

According to Taylor, “When looking at a book with a lot of pages, children might be intimidated, they might prefer quicker stories, they might be struggling readers, and/or they might have attention issues, among other factors.”

Early middle grade literature might be just what these reluctant readers need. Tara Lazar recently featured PJ Gardner’s post Early Middle Grade Needs You, Says PJ Gardner on her blog. Gardner says that “Early Middle Grade is where we start to lose young readers, and I think that’s directly tied to the limited number of books aimed at them.”

Gardner encourages authors to think creatively about how they can target this early middle grade audience. She says these books should include straightforward stories told in 5,000-10,000 words. For Gardner, there are just two major keys – “create believable characters and craft dynamic plots.”

Think of popular series like Judy Moody, Dog Man, and Geronimo Stilton. These shorter, more concrete books can form a bridge between chapter books and traditional middle grade novels.

Upper Middle Grade

So, what’s the second gap in today’s middle grade market? Dyksterhouse says we need “upper middle grade novels for readers who are ready to engage with deeper themes, tougher subject matters and more complex stories but are not yet ready for the intensity of YA that has increasingly focused on characters aged 17-18+ and experiences they encounter.”

This may sound familiar. School Library Journal’s Teen Literary Toolbox recently highlighted the same need in a guest post by author and middle school language arts teacher Laurie Morrison. Morrison’s piece is titled “Why We Need More ‘Developmentally Relevant’ Upper MG Romance.”

Let’s pause for a moment and break down the term “developmentally relevant.” Morrison says she discovered this term when library media specialist Steve Tetreault posted it on social media. She immediately embraced it as an alternative to the term “age appropriate,” which can invoke a connotation of judgment.

For Morrison, the words “age appropriate” do not “honor the fact that two kids who are the same age will have completely different life experiences, perspectives, and comfort levels with different kinds of content, and it raises the question of who, exactly, gets to decide what’s appropriate.” So, what kinds of “developmentally relevant” books are we talking about?

Upper middle grade books target readers ages 10-14 whose interests have grown beyond the literature written for 8-to-12-year-olds but who aren’t quite ready for the culture and content of YA. Morrison says that kids in this range are hungry for books that are relevant to them.

Leslie Zampetti, literary agent and owner of Open Book Literary agrees. She reflects on her years as a librarian, when she met younger readers who sought genres similar to what their older siblings were reading. However, they wanted stories that were relevant to their experiences and situations.

“Conventional wisdom is that young readers prefer to ‘read up,’ focusing on older characters,” Zampetti acknowledges. “But my experience was that it’s more nuanced: often, confident and mature readers want to read up, and publishing tends to focus on those readers. Less confident or sophisticated readers want to read books with characters their own age, facing events and emotions new to them and similar to what they’re experiencing.”

Morrison echoes Zampetti. In her classroom, Morrison encounters a number of kids in the 11-14 age range who are eager to read romance novels. While most are not ready for YA literature, they crave romance tropes that are relevant to (and dare I say appropriate for?) their age and experience.

Morrison lists books like Nashae Jones’s Courtesy of Cupid, and Wendy Wan-Long Shang’s Bubble Trouble, as well as her own Keeping Pace, as examples of books that fit this much-needed niche.

Authors may be wondering if the publishing industry is as hungry for these upper-middle grade books as the young readers seem to be. According to Zampetti, yes. She affirms that “editors and agents are definitely looking for ‘developmentally relevant’ books, whether classified as upper middle grade or ‘middle school’ or young YA.”

Good News for Authors

If you’re a middle grade author who’s feeling a bit discouraged these days, take heart. You may want to start brainstorming some ideas for straightforward stories that would fit into the early middle grade category. Or perhaps you want to ponder ways some popular tropes can become relevant to upper middle grade readers.

The good news is that opportunity exists. There are gaps to be filled at both ends of the middle grade spectrum. By addressing the need for books that bridge the transitions into and out of middle grade, we just might be able to engage young readers and reverse the slump.