Today we shine the Mixed-Up Files spotlight on Rebecca Mock, author and illustrator of the debut middle grade graphic novel Dare You To Dance. Hailed by Publishers Weekly as an “eloquent and movement-filled portrait of ambition and self-discovery,” the book is available now from Random House Children’s Books.
MR: Congratulations on the publication of Dare You to Dance, Rebecca! I danced as a kid and was a dance mom (my daughter, Chloe, studied ballet for eighteen years), so I read your book with great interest.
RM: I’m both honored and impressed! Hopefully to you and Chloe, the ballet details rang true. Or, if they didn’t, I hope it was fun to read anyway.
Dare you to Dance: The Inspiration
MR: Can you tell readers a bit about the book?
RM: Dare You to Dance is about a summer intensive program in NYC, where we meet Gracie, a talented ballet dancer in her tweens who’s immediately swept into the drama and pressure of serious youth ballet—and has to decide whether to concede that she just doesn’t belong or forge a path for herself! It’s about the love of art as well as many other things. I really hoped to make a fun ensemble cast of characters, all of whom have their own journeys, humor, and fun moments. I pitched the book as “over-the-top!”—I wanted to draw something super high-energy! And what better than ballet?
Friendship Versus Rivalry
MR: Your plucky protagonist, Gracie, is looking for a rival to up her dance game. Sariah, the best dancer in the program, is more interested in friendship than competition. What were you trying to say about the nature of rivalry and friendship, particularly in the dance world? The two are often intertwined.
RM: It’s not only the dance world—I was drawing from my own experiences in painting, drawing, and theater. When it came to art, I made up many rivals—often creating competitions where there were none. I could be intense, like Gracie. I was also in Sariah’s role, to a degree—too caught up in pressuring myself to notice those around me. I also, consistently, found that I respected and appreciated those I felt “competitive” toward, and regarded them as comrades.
I think that mentality was influenced by the action/adventure cartoons and comics I loved. I had an active imagination. What I like about both Gracie and Sariah is though they’re very different, they share that quality of creating pressure and competition where there doesn’t need to be any, perhaps stemming from vivid imaginations. And instead of learning to let that go, they egg each other on and create games to motivate each other. And that works for them, that’s how their friendship works, and hopefully that’s a bit funny, and maybe you can think of a friend who you act the same way with.
Rebecca’s Dance Training
MR: I read that you studied dance as a child. What was your training like? Did you attend an intensive ballet workshop like the one you described in Dare You to Dance?
RM: I took ballet classes from about age three to eleven. I wasn’t dancing seriously—just one or two classes per week. I know young dancers at that age might take three or more classes per week! And truthfully, ballet wasn’t my strength—I was constantly struggling with posture and form! But I kept taking classes for one very important reason: One of my best friends took classes with me. We had so much fun together.
I also took tap and modern classes (I switched to modern and kept taking classes until thirteen, when I stopped dance classes altogether). I truly love to dance, still. Art as a form of expression is something most young people are drawn to, and love, naturally. But sometimes the classroom space can be oppressive, and friends are the main reason you keep coming back.
Dance and Body Image
MR: It’s no secret that dancers’ bodies are often scrutinized, with undue emphasis placed on the desire or necessity to be thin. From your experience and the research you did for the book, have any strides been made in the dance world to accept a range of body types? If not, do you expect the tide to change anytime soon?
RM: Since I haven’t been part of the dance world as a teen or adult, I skipped a lot of this scrutiny and pressure. I can’t speak from the point of view of someone who’s honestly dealt with that, but I can remember friends who had to deal with this scrutiny, and I tried to pay homage to their challenges. I had a friend in school like Sariah who was taller and bigger than most of the other dancers in her class, and admitted that it alienated her and made her feel othered. I remember being shocked. To me she seemed to be such a dancer, so elegant and graceful. How could she not fit in the ballet space?
In my research, I took careful note of how dancers talked about body image, and although I’m only seeing a small sliver of the dance world in videos and interviews, I’m seeing bits of both that old-fashioned body scrutiny and a more revolutionary re-imagining of ballet ideals. When you delve into the foundations and history of ballet which stretches back 500 years, our modern stereotypes about body types, gender roles, and appearances are all trends that emerged fairly recently. Ballet has evolved in many directions over the centuries, and I expect it will continue to do so.
Researching Ballet
MR: Speaking of research, what kind of research did you do for the book? There are a ton of ballet terms to know and positions to draw. It couldn’t have been easy.
RM: I did so much research! I read a few books about ballet, including a ballet textbook and the fantastic nonfiction book Apollo’s Angels: A History of Ballet. I followed dozens of ballet influencers and watched their vlogs, read their posts, used their dance videos as reference for practice drawings. I tried to seek out online ballet tutorials which explained each step of a sequence so that I could write down, and then double-check, each move. I even had a ballet consultant triple-check the book to be sure that even the side-talk and teachers’ attitudes were believable and added to the realism.
But underneath it all, I was remembering how it felt to be in ballet class. The sound of the teacher counting five-six-seven-eight, the chatter of students waiting for their turn at the floor sequence . . . One thing I avoided doing was watching any ballet movies or TV shows for the duration of working on this book. I didn’t want to accidentally transcribe any well-worn movie cliches into the story.
Portrait of an Artist
MR: Switching gears, you are widely known for your work as an illustrator, cartoonist, and book-cover artist. You also collaborated with Hope Larson on the hugely popular middle-grade graphic novels Compass South, Knife’s Edge, and Salt Magic. What prompted your decision to create a graphic novel on your own? Did it feel weird not having a collaborator?
RM: While this book isn’t my first solo story project, it’s definitely the longest! It’s my first time handling a story of this scale in every aspect, which was daunting and exciting in equal measure. Working with Hope taught me so much about comics, and her beautiful scripts always gave me so much room to play.
Once Salt Magic was done, I felt that I was ready to try writing my own long-form graphic novel. I pondered over what kind of story I’d have the most fun both writing and drawing, that would reflect my own sensibilities, which lean toward action, heightened emotion, and slapstick. What I learned in the process, was that I LOVE rewriting things on the fly. As much as the final book stayed more or less true to the initial outline, I altered and refined things at each stage, even adding scenes at the inking stage. Each change made the story truer to its core messages: that friendship transcends competition and that art doesn’t need to be “serious” to be good.
Writing and Illustrating Process
MR: What is your creative process for writing and illustrating a graphic novel? Do you write the text first and add the illustrations or vice-versa? Also, how does being an artist influence your writing?
RM: Having finished Dare You and another book since, I’ve refined and honed my process a lot. When I started Dare You, I only had experience planning out stories fifty pages or less, and that process involved almost no scripting. Now it goes back and forth. I first write an outline, and I refine that until it’s quite detailed, even including much of the dialogue. I break that outline into pages, to get a rough idea of how the book is paced. Then I draw thumbnails of each page, really small. I scan and expand those tiny drawings to be a bit larger, and drop in as much of the placeholder dialogue as I can—and I’ll rewrite a lot of the outline based on new ideas that the thumbnails inspired. These thumbnails-with-text are the first draft of the final script.
From there…
I draw more refined thumbnails and make further changes as I realize my first visual ideas could be better. And the dialogue gets a lot of edits too. Now, this is the final “script.” From here, final sketches and inks and colors can go smoothly, although I’ll still change and refine small things as I get closer to finishing. Sometimes I realize I need to completely redraw the first five pages, because drawing the final scenes gave me a better idea of how to open the story. Sometimes it’s making sure a character is consistently wearing socks. Being an artist allows me to “draw” my script instead of having to describe it. I still like working from other writer’s scripts, but there is a lot of fun to be had in diving into the story at the thumbnail stage and letting each new page feel like venturing into the unknown.
#Goals
MR: Do you have a specific routine or word-count goals? Any rituals?
RM: I don’t have word count goals as much as page count goals. When I’m doing those tiny little thumbnail drawings, I’ll set a daily goal, maybe four pages or maybe ten. It’s important to find the balance of staying consistent without pushing yourself so that you don’t burn out mentally. I want to feel like I’m not quite finished with a thought when I stop “writing” for the day, so that the next day I’m excited to finish it.
MR: What projects are you working on now, Rebecca?
RM: I’m wrapping up a short comic for a DC anthology of spooky Halloween stories, called Quoth the Raven . . . Whatever. After that I’ll be hopefully working on final sketches/inks of a new book, as well as teaching my storytelling class at FIT’s Illustration master’s program.
Lightning Round!
MR: Last thing: No MUF interview is complete without a lightning round, so . . .
Preferred writing snack? If I’m in a bind, if I need to really focus or just get out of a slump, my secret weapon is gummy candy. It’s an unhealthy secret weapon ONLY to be used in emergencies!
Coffee or tea? Coffee if I need to draw really complex things! Tea if I want to have a nice, steady day.
Zombie apocalypse: Yea or nay? Nay. I like my brains where they are.
Favorite dance style? I love watching swing dancing and tap dancing!
Favorite dance company? American Ballet Theatre—I used their studios as reference for a lot of details in the book!
Superpower? I love superheroes with electric powers. It would be cool to turn on my TV with a zap.
Favorite place on earth? My parents’ house, sitting by the window, looking out at the trees during a rainstorm.
MR: Thank you for chatting with me, Rebecca—and congratulations on the publication of Dare You to Dance. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I know MUF readers will, too.
{For more books about dance, check out this list from the Mixed-Up Files archives}
Bio
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, 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 Facebook and Instagram.
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