Posts Tagged Middle-Grade Mystery

Why Writing Kid Constantine Was No Mystery for Ryan North

Mystery of the Meanest Teacher Cover

Mystery of the Meanest Teacher CoverRyan North, whose credits include an award-winning runs of Adventure Time, Jughead, and The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl recently wrote a middle grade graphic novel featuring John Constantine, one of my favorite DC Comics characters, and I got the opportunity to sit down and talk with him about it.

MUF: I’m Mimi. I write for From the Mixed-Up Files of Middle Grade Authors, a blog for people who love middle-grade books (parents, teachers, librarians, kids, writers, etc.). It’s an honor to be able to interview you. (My husband is also a fan. He’s the one who introduced me to Dinosaur Comics).  And congratulations on the Eisner nomination this year.

Ryan North: Aw thank you, Mimi!  That’s very kind.  I’m excited about it!  And say hi to your husband for me. 🙂

 

MUF: So, tell us about The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher?

Ryan North: The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher is a middle-grade graphic novel about a younger version of Constantine – Johnny Constantine, but he prefers you call him “Kid”.  Kid Constantine has to escape from the UK to the United States after one of his capers involving ghosts and demons goes wrong. When he arrives at his new boarding school in America, he discovers his spells don’t work as well as they used to, so he’s left scrambling, faking it till he makes it – but luckily he soon discovers he’s not the only magical kid there.  And he’s going to need all the help he can get when one of his new teachers seems to have it out for him personally, and might be a real-life witch…

It’s a stand-alone graphic novel, so you can read it knowing nothing of the character (or even DC Comics!) but if you do, there’s some fun little secrets you might pick up on.

 

MUF: I’ve gotta admit, Constantine is one of my favorite DC characters, but he’s not exactly kid-friendly, why did you choose Constantine for this project?

Ryan North: Right?  He’s basically the last DC character you’d ever expect to be in a middle grade graphic novel.  I was working with DC on another project that got bogged down unfortunately, and when they said “Hey, what about Kid Constantine?” I laughed at the idea – always a good sign!  And I quickly realized that he actually transforms into a 13-year-old version of himself very easily.  That idea of trying to cover for what you don’t know, trying to act like you’re super cool and in control even though you have no idea what’s going on – it’s something that I think feels pretty universal to most of us, and to both Adult and Kid Constantine.  So there weren’t actually a lot of changes I had to make!  The adult version has a lot of bad habits that we altered (instead of smoking, Kid has a lollipop sticking out of his mouth at the start of the book) but beyond that there really wasn’t a lot to change, to adapt for younger readers.  So I loved that the idea sounded so wild, and really wanted to see if we could pull it off.

 

MUF: You do a great job of capturing Constantine’s wit in a way that’s accessible for kids. Was writing young Johnny difficult?

Ryan North: No, it was actually pretty familiar!  Like I mentioned before, Constantine goes through some pretty relatable stuff, so all I had to do was remember what it felt like being the new kid, being somewhere where I don’t know anyone, and I could tap into that pretty easily for Constantine.  And while some of the fun is seeing him cover for what he doesn’t know, he’s also a really clever guy, and it’s always fun to write clever characters.  They get in the best zingers.

It’s funny – if you look at the Wikipedia article for John Constantine, there’s a section called “In real life“, where several (several!) of the authors who have written Constantine claim to have met him in real life.  I kept my eye out for any young kids in a trenchcoat while I was writing – it would’ve been way easier to write the book if I could just ask Kid Constantine what he’d say and do in particular situations! – but unfortunately I never spotted him. So far, anyway…

 

MUF: I love that you included Etrigan as a “young” demon and that his rhyming is forced. It’s such a cool nod to his lore. What other Easter eggs can eagle-eyed fans catch?Etrigan- A character in The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher

Ryan North: Haha, thank you!  Etrigan was the hardest character to write because he speaks in rhymes.  It would always slow me down when I got to him, until I finally started writing placeholder dialogue for him: it had what I wanted him to say, but didn’t rhyme, and then I got to go back and spend an afternoon composing poetry that said what I needed it to say.

Beyond the lollipop visual reference I mentioned earlier, there’s also elements in what Constantine and his new friend Anna wear that references the costumes they wear as adults.  The artist of the book, Derek Charm, told me that the challenge in designing the characters was that we wanted them to look like their adult versions, but still look credible as kids: their outfits had to be something a 13-year-old would wear.  Constantine wants to look cool all the time, so it’s no surprise to me that he’d have a t-shirt printed with a design that makes it looks like he’s wearing a tie.  I wanted a shirt like that when I was a kid.  Still do, really!

 

MUF:  Also, was it hard coming up with all of those rhymes and/or was it difficult to make them sound stilted?

Ryan North: Hah – well, the secret is that it’s never hard to make a rhyme sound stilted, so that was good at least!  As hard as Young Etrigan was to write, Adult Etrigan would be even harder, because there he’s got his rhymes down pat.  I tried to use iambic pentameter for his rhymes at the start until I realized Etrigan is speaking a second language here, and he’s definitely not as good at it as his adult version is, so that became a bit less precise in his speech.  But honestly, I just went for walks and tried to think of different ways to say what he wanted to say until I came up with one that worked!  I like to think out loud when doing character voice writing, so my Secret Writing Technique is to wear a headset with a mic on it when I’m walking.  That way, passers-by think I’m a very important businessperson on a very important call and not a random guy trying to make a demon in his head have better rhymes.

Kid Constantine in The Mystery of the Meanest TeacherMUF: In the book, Constantine and Anna have a few tricks up their sleeve, what do you wish that you had a magic spell for?

Ryan North: Kid Constantine mentions at one point having an anti-blushing spell, and for most of my life before 20 I would’ve loved to have that power.  But these days I’d love a spell that would let me learn faster.  Every time I try something new there’s such a gulf between what you want and what you can accomplish, and yes it just takes practice, but that means you make a lot of just okay cookies before you unlock the really good stuff.  So that’s a shortcut I’d gladly take, thanks magic!

 

MUF: And similarly, if you were able to sneak into an otherworldly candy shop, what would be your go-to snack?

My favourite food is ice cream, so if I could find a ghost who’s spent their entire afterlife perfecting the art and craft of ice cream production, unlocking levels of flavour and delight that simply aren’t reachable or teachable within a standard-issue human lifetime… I would be there in a heartbeat.

MUF: I read in your bio that you studied Computer Science. How do you go from Computer Science major to creating award-winning graphic novels?

Ryan North: I always kinda did both at the same time!  I started my webcomic, Dinosaur Comics, in 2003, when I was in undergrad. (It’s still running today – you can read it at qwantz.com!)  Then I kept up the comic through grad school (I studied computational linguistics) and then when I graduated I faced a choice: keep doing comics, or get a real job.  And it was really easy to keep doing comics, because all I had to do was fail to get a real job!  Super easy.  So since then I’ve used my CS knowledge to develop different services that help comic creators, and get to live the best of both worlds.  It’s an unusual career path but it’s one that I recommend!  All of us have lots of interests and I don’t think you should have to pigeonhole yourself so early in your life – do different things!  If you can, do different things simultaneously! 

MUF: What were your favorite books and/or comics as a kid? Who were your influences?

Ryan North: The earliest book I can remember loving is The Monster At The End of This Book

The Monster at the End of this Book Cover

by Jon Stone and Michael Smollin. If you haven’t read it, it’s a great Little Golden Book where the fourth wall doesn’t exist, and Grover is afraid because he knows there’s a monster at the end of the book.  He does all he can to stop you from turning the pages of the book – building walls that you smash through with your mighty page-turning strength, and so on, until you reach the end, and he finds out the monster… is him, loveable ol’ Grover!  And then he’s really embarrassed.  It just blew my mind that books could do that, that you could have this object in your hands that was physically like all the other books but told a story in a different way.  I still love that, and lots of my projects involve playing with the potential of the form like that.  That’s actually one of the things I love about comics: it’s still a young medium and there’s still discoveries about the basic form being made.  You can do things in comics that haven’t been done before, and I think that’s really incredible!

 

MUF: What advice do you have for someone wanting to write comics or videogames or basically just be like you?

Ryan North: The greatest advice I have for someone looking to do writing is to start doing it, keep doing it, and put that work online.  This has two benefits: it makes your commitment public, so now you have to keep writing to keep that commitment up (this is why a webcomic works so well: if you say you’re going to every day, you’ve got to do it!) and of course the more you write the better you get at it, even if you’re not trying to improve.  There’s no way you can spend a few years writing a comic and not get better at writing comics, it’s just how our brains work.  The other thing putting your work online can get you is an audience: people who like your work and want to support it.  This helps you in a bunch of ways, but one of the first things it does is make you realize you’re not alone and people are interested in hearing what you have to say.  For an early writer, that was really big for me.  It made me feel like there was a purpose to it, that it wasn’t just me talking to myself!  And of course, when your work is online people can see it and maybe, on day, say “hey, I really like the writing that person did, I wonder if I could hire them to write for me?” and that’s literally how I went from writing a webcomic for free to being paid to write comics for other people too.

Ryan North Comic Books

 

MUF: What would fans be surprised to find out about you?

Ryan North: I’m really tall, but also, taller than you think even if you think I’m really tall.  I’m that tall.  Other than that I don’t think I have that many secrets!  Unless of course this is a ruse to get people off the trail of my many startling secrets!

 

MUF: What are you working on now?

Ryan North: I’m working on a few unannounced projects I can’t really talk about, but I will say that Derek Charm and I have been trying to do more books together for a while and hopefully some of those will bear fruit soon!  I’m also working on something that’s sort of a spiritual successor to my first nonfiction book, which was called “How To Invent Everything: A Survival Guide for the Stranded Time Traveller”.  (That book has also found a lot of middle-grade readers: turns out we’re all kinda interested in seeing if we can rebuild civilization from scratch if we ever get sent back in time!)

MUF: How can people follow you on social media?

Ryan North and Noam Chompsy

 

Ryan North: I’m not really active anywhere but Twitter, where I’m @ryanqnorth !  I’m also @qwantz on Instagram, where I sometimes post pictures of my dog, Noam Chompsky.

MUF: And, that’s all I’ve got. Thank you for your time, and the opportunity to interview you.

Ryan North: Thanks Mimi!  These were really thoughtful questions – I appreciate it!

 

The Mystery of the Meanest Teacher is out now! And I enthusiastically recommend it to anyone who is interested in spooky, mysterious adventure comics with smart, sarcastic heroes, as well as anyone who is a fan of the grown-up Constantine comics.

Writing Bingeable Books

What makes a TV show “bingeable”? What makes you click ‘next episode’ on your streaming service or faithfully plop on the couch when your favorite shSecrets of Sulphur Springs Splash Pageow comes? It’s something that I think about when I watch TV, and I watch a lot of TV. One show that I recently binged was The Secrets of Sulphur Springs on Disney+. In it, a 12 year old boy and his family move into a run-down and supposedly haunted hotel. As strange events occur, they boy and his best friend try to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of the young girl who they believe is haunting them. It’s the kind of spooky, mysterious, and slightly science-fiction story that is guaranteed to pique my interest.

But after binging all 11 episodes of the first season, I started to realize what kept pulling me in hour after hour. Each episode is a puzzle onto itself, and its resolution would provide small clues to the overarching mystery of the series. These clues were tiny, just enough to get me to continue watching until the next episode.

It made me start looking at my own stories, and how I plot them. How can we, as writers, create bingeable books? I think that it’s by giving our characters a goal and making sure that the resolution of that goal contributes to the larger story just enough to make the reader want to turn the page and see what happens next.

Our namesake, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler is a great example of this, and more mysteries can be found on the following booklists:

From the Mixed Up Files Cover

Mysteries in Bookstores and Libraries, at Book Fairs and Festivals, in Literary Landmarks, and Other Literary Places

Middle-Grade Mysteries, Spy, & Sci-fi stories featuring South Asian Characters: Interview and Giveaway with Sheela Chari

Diversity in MG lit #19 August 2020 Mysteries

But a book doesn’t need to be a mystery to be “bingeable”. What are some MG books that you couldn’t put down?

THE SILVER BOX ~ An Enchantment Lake Mystery: Interview with Award-Winning Author Margi Preus

Welcome to my interview with Award-Winning Author, Speaker, and Educator Margi Preus! We’ll explore her latest release THE SILVER BOX: An Enchantment Lake Mystery – book 3 in the series. Margi’s stories hold breathtaking and bold journeys such as found in her books Heart Of A Samurai and Village Of Scoundrels.

The Book📚

THE SILVER BOX: An Enchantment Lake Mystery

The Silver Box ~ An Enchantment Lake Mystery

by Margi Preus

In the final Enchantment Lake mystery, Francie’s search for the truth about her mother—and herself—plunges her into danger during a North Woods winter.

Everything depends on a small, engraved silver box. If only Francie can follow its cryptic clues to the whereabouts of her missing mother she may finally understand the truth about who she really is. But one ominous clue after another reveal that Francie possesses something so rare and so valuable that some people are willing to do anything to get it. When her pursuit leads her into the snowy north woods, It is only to find out that she, herself, is being pursued.

BOOK 1 & BOOK 2

 

The Interview🎙️

It’s wonderful to have you join us here on the Mixed-Up Files, Margi. Let’s begin with your young self. What was she like? Did she enjoy reading? Writing? Was she adventurous?

Young Margi had the independence of Francie (the protagonist of The Silver Box) if not the bravery. As the last of six kids who spent summers at a lake cabin along with dozens of cousins, I had a prodigious amount of freedom and independence. I roamed around like a stray (mostly wet) dog all summer. So, yes, adventure was a big part of life. There was plenty of reading. I like to think I wrote, but I recently found my childhood diary, which is 99%empty, so probably not. However, I used to make up plays with my friends which we would perform for unsuspecting relatives.

Sounds like a wonderful childhood. It also gave you lots of material to write about, I’m sure. (Flannery O’Conner from your answer below😊)

Readers have watched Francie, your main character/modern-day sleuth, grow over the course of the previous two books in THE SILVER BOX Series. Why will young readers be drawn to her?

I imagine that Francie’s life of independence—kind of a more grown up, somewhat more serious Pippi Longstocking—would be appealing to kids. She lives on her own and makes her own decisions—not all of them good ones. She also gets herself into some hair-raising adventures. As a kid I would have been drawn to all of those things.

What do you hope readers learn from Francie’s journey?

I don’t presume to know what, if anything, readers will learn or gain from any of my books. I would be thrilled even if it is simply to have an enjoyable reading experience—one that makes them want to read more!

That would be a wonderful takeaway!

This series has been described as a great read for fans of Nancy Drew and those who enjoy cozy mysteries. What makes this series and THE SILVER BOX: An Enchantment Lake Mystery as its final book, unique? Were you sad to finish it?

I think the setting is one of the unique things about these stories, and it’s been fun to write a book set in a place I know so well, which is northern Minnesota lake country. And it’s been fun to live vicariously through Francie’s dangerous adventures. (Especially when you know she’s going to make it out somehow or other).

Haha! Yes, I’m sure.

It is always sad to leave a character you have grown to know and love. But she is graduating from high school now and it’s a little like sending a kid off to college.

A More Personal View🦋

Your books all have a sense of timelessness about them. How do you believe you accomplish this?

Thank you! And I have no idea! I do try to avoid slang for the most part, mainly because it’s impossible to stay current, but also because it does have a tendency to date a piece of writing. Our constantly changing technology is also a challenge. If you’re writing a story set in contemporary times, you have to acknowledge our ever-present phones, laptops, tablets, and other devices, but fortunately, there are plenty of places in the Enchantment Lake area where cell service is spotty—and of course the cold weather drains batteries rather quickly, so our heroes often have to solve their problems the old fashioned way: resourcefulness, bravery, quick-wittedness.

On your website, you mention being inspired by family members and their stories. Who have you used specifics of their stories and turned them into something unique for your characters and the world they live in?

I suppose most characters have some elements of people we know. None of my characters are direct one-to-one matches to anyone in particular, most are built of a combination of various traits and characteristics of people I know or imagine. I used to say that the somewhat loopy great aunts in the story were based on my own aunts and my mother—I have recently realized that, actually, maybe I am one of those dotty old aunts myself!

I’m sure you’re a wonderful aunt!

You had a lot of ‘odd’ jobs before you began writing for young readers. How have those experiences helped you become a writer and how can aspiring writers look to their current circumstances or situations and turn them into writing fuel and material?

Wasn’t Hemingway a big proponent of having a lot of experiences so you had something to write about? But then there was the genius Emily Dickinson who never went anywhere. And Flannery O’Connor famously said, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”

So, far be it from me to offer advice about whether to live large or stay home and write, but I personally am glad for all my experiences and my many very “odd” jobs. Although I don’t know that I have written specifically about any of my oddball work experiences, they have given me a wealth of experience, introduced me to a wide swath of humanity, and no doubt broadened my horizons.

This is such a wise and insightful answer. It’s really making me think.💡 Thank you!

What have been your biggest obstacles when a story idea came upon you and what have you found helped you the most in overcoming them?

The obstacles are familiar to all writers:  doubt that your idea, that what you’ve written, and that what you’re about to write has any merit. That challenge rears its head pretty much on a daily basis. The way forward is, as Robert Leckie advised, to “go up and shoot that old bear under the desk between the eyes.”

For Our Teachers and Authors🍎🏫🎒

What is your favorite aspect of in-person or virtual school visits and how can authors be more accessible to students? Do you have any favorite online platforms or activities you use during your visits?

Thanks for asking about virtual visits, which I have done through Skype and more recently Zoom and Crowdcast, but would use whatever platform the school or group is using. Of course I love the energy of being with a whole room or auditorium full of kids, but I am looking forward to doing more virtual—and interactive—visits. Some things I’ve done lately include creating a story together, and a virtual treasure hunt.

Ooh . . . creating a virtual story with students for your visit. Now that sounds like something students would love!

I am currently working on developing a game to accompany The Littlest Voyageur (Holiday House 2020) which would be great for any group reading that book or studying the fur trade. (Read-aloud chapters of The Littlest Voyageur are available on my YouTube channel.)  I am also planning a Zoom conversation with some of the people I interviewed for Village of Scoundrels (Amulet/Abrams, 2020) which I will record and make available as a resource to accompany that book or for holocaust studies. As for The Silver Box or any of the mysteries, I think it would be very fun to construct a mystery with students, which would give us a lot of opportunity to talk about story construction, building suspense, developing characters, and all kinds of other good stuff.  Of course, I am also available to talk about writing and my books in general

In this world that seems so upside-down, what reading and writing advice can you share with our teachers and librarians?

All I really want to say to teachers, librarians, and parents is thank you. Thank you for hanging in there and for taking care of the kids. Please take care of yourselves, too! We appreciate you. And if you really want some reading/writing advice, email me with your specific questions. Seriously.

💚💚💚

Inquiring minds are super excited to hear what they can expect next from you. Please share!

Thanks for asking! I have a couple of picture books in the pipeline. They won’t be out any time soon—but 2020, the pandemic year, was my year for books—I have three out this year: Village of Scoundrels, The Littlest Voyageur, and The Silver Box— thank you anyone for noticing!!

And thanks for taking this time to check in with me, Mixed Up Files!

Picture books . . . Yay! You have so much work releasing soon. So exciting! Thank you for sharing your wisdom and writing self with us. You are inspiring.

The Author

Margi Preus is a New York Times bestselling author of books for young readers, including the Newbery Honor–winning Heart of a Samurai.Author Margi Preus Among her other novels are Village of Scoundrels, Shadow on the Mountain, West of the Moon, and The Bamboo Sword, as well as the previous two books in the Enchantment Lake series, Enchantment Lake and The Clue in the Trees, which were published by the University of Minnesota Press and received the Midwest Book Award and the Midwest Booksellers Choice Award. She lives in Duluth.

Find Margi: Website | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram

Love learning about authors? Here’s a recent author interview in our MUF archive.

The Giveaway

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