of course you do! 😊 I’ve mentioned this book on the blog before. I’m not expecting you to remember when. Even I don’t exactly remember when (and have not searched to find it). But it is one of my favorite books of all time. And it is only 112 pages. (Well, minus front matter.) Very different from my other favorites (The Lord of the Rings trilogy, Little Dorrit just to name two) that have hundreds of pages.
M. M. Kaye wrote this story during a spring holiday with a friend. She was inspired by Andrew Lang’s color volumes of compiled fairy tales. I have one of those.
She also illustrated it, having studied illustration in school.
Illustrations by M. M. Kaye
I have read this book countless times. Every time I read it, I’m sad when I reach the end. This is not a book with a ripped-from-today’s-headlines message. It is a story told for the pleasure of telling it. I love that.
I used to believe that big things (being handed a check for a huge amount of money; getting a contract or a promotion at work) have the biggest impact on my life. Yet those don’t happen every day. And hoping for/praying for/looking out for those things often distracts me from noticing the small things that have an impact on my life on a day-to-day basis! Like this for example:
I love this coffee. But lately it has been $11.99 at the grocery store. That might not seem like much. But if you only have $20 to last until you get paid next, it might as well be a million dollars. Consequently, I don’t often buy it. But to my surprise one day recently, I found it on sale at the grocery store for $7.99! That thing made my day.
Or this pen a friend suddenly handed to me as a thinking-of-you gesture.
Maybe everyone won’t be discussing this on TikTok or Instagram (especially since I am not on these platforms). Yet it made me smile that day and every day I see it on my desk.
Or the cashier at the grocery store who remembered my name on a day when I felt invisible.
Small things have the biggest impact because they often shift the trajectory of my day. Someone remembering my name causes me to want to remember to text friends I haven’t talked to in a while who might feel the same way. Someone handing me a surprise gift makes me want to surprise someone in some way. Something I saw on sale gives me room to maybe get that yarn to crochet a gift for someone. Small things can have a huge ripple effect in a life.
What little things have made a big impact on your day recently?
Lord of the Rings cover from Goodreads. All other photos by L. Marie. Illustrations by M. M. Kaye.
With me on the blog today is Steve Bramucci, one of my awesome VCFA comrades. He’s here to discuss his latest middle grade adventure novel, The Race for the Ruby Turtle, which was published by Bloomsbury on October 3, 2023. Steve is represented by Sara Crowe.
Check out this book trailer:
El Space: Please tell us why you were inspired to write this book at this time. How did your travels affect the story you wanted to tell?
Rough-skinned newts in the Nehalem Valley wilderness, where Race for the Ruby Turtle is set.
Steve: Besides writing about the flora and fauna of the jungle, small friendship conflicts are what I feel like I do best. So the book is an amalgam of what I’ve seen on my travels, the interactions I had as a kid with ADHD, and some of my own interpersonal relationships. With a villain who is sort of cribbed from Spaghetti Westerns.
When it comes to the environmental aspects of the book, I have sincere, big questions about the dominion that humans should or shouldn’t have over animals. And I wanted Hettle [the aunt of them main character, Jake] to be wrestling with these questions without being pedantic or a know-it-all.
Regarding conservation, I’m not certain there are any easy fixes. It’s going to take a million elements working in unison for us to create true see change and kids are crucial to that.
The South Fork of the Nehalem River, near Nehalem, Oregon.
El Space: So protecting nature is your inspiration for writing the book? Steve: It’s one of them. As is the experience of being a kid with ADHD—those are two tandem big thematic issues. As I mentioned, while I dip into more layered, complicated conservation issues, I think the most resonant idea is a simple one: That young people loving the natural world is the only way to save it.
Mushrooms foraged in the Tillamook National Forest.
El Space: What was your process for developing the characters for this book? Who is most like you? Least like you? Steve: I think, in part because the main character was just like me, a boy with ADHD and I knew that early on, I sort of “got on a roll” and pulled most of the characters of the book wholesale from my life.
Jake is me, obviously. And I took that pretty far, especially with how he navigates ADHD. Every piece of the ADHD experience, I just went in my head and asked, “What would I say in this situation?”
I was diagnosed with ADHD for the third time in my life before writing the first draft because I was really insecure about writing about it and taking ownership and speaking for that community or the neurodiverse community on any level. After diagnosis, I got friendly with my psychiatrist and said, “Hey can I vet a few things by you?” And I did for a time but eventually we were talking and he kind of laughed and said; “It seems like you’re just writing things from your perspective of how you would react. Well, you have ADHD. So you’re not going to be wrong as long as you stick to that rule.”
I guess the character of Mia is probably the most unlike me. In part because of her lived experience as a Black female. But also, because she’s more precise and more focused and better at taking big ideas and forming them into a cohesive plan. And she’s not as impulsive—impulsivity has shaped my life to a large degree, so that’s a huge difference.
Her qualities made her a good counterpoint to Jake.
El Space: What do you want kids to take away from Ruby Turtle? Steve: A sense of self-acceptance. I want them to say, “Oh wow, here are some imperfect people doing their best and they actually achieve something cool.”
Then there’s the hope that a few people maybe decide to dig deep and go, “Hey, I’m interested in animal conservation!” I consulted with animal conservation experts during the process of writing the book. There are some valuable ideas about conservation that can be drawn from reading it but I chose right away not to hit people over the head with those.
Also, and I think this is important to say—I’m a storyteller before I’m a conservationist. So storytelling is crucial. I have a deep respect for anyone who is going to give me a sliver of their one life on earth by reading something I wrote. Meaning that I won’t just bog a book down with philosophy—I want it to really hum along!
So yes, I want some kids to learn self-acceptance and yes, I want some kids to get intrigued about conservation. But I would be well-satisfied just to know that kids had a good time reading. If someone came and said, “I spent a rainy Saturday reading this book and it resonated with me. It was fun. I wanted to read more,” that would be enough.
El Space: You wrote a previous adventure series, the Danger Gang, which we talked about here on the blog. Why adventure stories? How did your childhood dreams or experiences prepare you for writing these stories? Steve: I grew up in Oregon. As a young man, I needed to go and spend months at a time in Uganda and Vietnam and Madagascar and Indonesia and see wild spaces and animals in the wild that we don’t have in the United States. But as I meandered around the world, my parents, who were nearing retirement age at that time were like, “It’s hard to beat Oregon.” My parents would be going on hikes in Oregon and I would be going for hikes in Mozambique and they’d be like, “Your scenery is great. Can it beat ours?” They were always reminding me of how beautiful the state that I come from is.
When the pandemic hit, I knew I wanted to do a book that was a little quieter and less bombastic than the first two; something that took place in Oregon. There are these river valleys that cut between mountains before they empty into the sea and they are incredibly temperate—the Nehalem River Valley, the Rogue River Valley. They’re also the wettest places in the state.
I was deeply intrigued by these valleys. They’re as lush as most any jungle I’ve visited in New Zealand or Ecuador or wherever. So I decided to set a book in one of those valleys and settled on Nehalem because the pandemic limited my research time and I knew that area better from family trips as a kid.
Photos from the Nehalem River Valley, near Nehalem Falls, Oregon
El Space: What advice do you have for writers of adventure? Steve: The best advice I ever got about adventure writing actually came from one of our VCFA classmates, Caroline Carlson. She was an early reader on the first Danger Gang book. She wrote me a note that was like, “I have adventure fatigue at this point in the novel.” She articulated it beautifully in a letter but I remember that phrase “adventure fatigue.” What it taught me was that if you have a lot of madcap excitement with no quiet, character-building moments in between people don’t feel very attached to your adventures. They sort of want to hop off the train. If they can get those character moments like Indiana Jones—those moments on the plane where we see his self-awareness, those quiet moments between the chaos—then people can start to care about the characters.
From there, I developed a sort of “adventure book math” that I really practiced until I felt like my brain was well-tuned to when the adventure novel reader wants some excitement and when they want to slow down. I think this novel balances those aspects really well.
Quaint shops in Nehalem, Oregon. A mining camp on the South Fork of the Nehalem River that plays a role in Race for the Ruby Turtle.
El Space: It does! 😊 What will you work on next? Is there a sequel? Steve: Book tour is sort of shifting my feelings on the “what’s next” conversation because I’m meeting kids and getting a sense of what they are connecting with in this book and that shapes my thinking. I’m really interested in audiences. I’m not a “I’ll write what I write and you’ll take it!” type of writer.
I listen to audiences. Not out of some fear but because that makes the content-creation process more of a collaboration. It’s a dialog between me and my growing readership.
With that said, in all likelihood, the project I’m working on next will be a survival book set in competitive surf culture. The pitch is basically “Steve Bramucci doing his version of Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet in the surf world.” My editor, Mary Kate Castellani, is such a creative partner and she mentioned the germ of that idea in an email and I got really excited.
Since I’ve been working on a contemporary middle grade novel, I’ve thought a lot about slang. How much do I use? Should I make up my own?
I asked my sister-in-law, my niece, and a fellow writer friend who teaches the age level about current slang. They brought up the following, some of which I also had heard, but some of which I didn’t know.
Rizz (short for charisma; like saying, “you got game” or “you’re hot”) Drip (clothes and jewelry or confidence about the way someone looks) Sus (suspicious) Fire (the new version of “that’s cool”)
If you frequent TikTok, YouTube, or Reddit, you probably know these terms. (I’m not on TikTok and seldom on Reddit.) Many times, once adults start using slang, many teens either mock them or move on to different terms.
The ironic thing about slang is that though kids and teens genuinely use it, nothing dates a book quicker than slang. Consider how much teen vernacular has changed in the last twenty years, especially with the advent of social media. Consequently, dated slang runs the risk of being mocked by the very population for whom the stories are written.
So what is an author to do? Well, Amy Heckerling, who wrote and directed Clueless, a 1995 adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel, Emma, made up her own slang.
“I compiled a dictionary,” she told Susan Wloszczyna who interviewed her for RogerEbert.com. Even with teens carrying mobile phones the size of bricks, the dialogue of Clueless still holds up well.
Cher (left, played by Alicia Silverstone) and Dionne (played by Stacey Dash)
Since I’d love for my book to be read, rather than avoided or ridiculed, I’ve got some thinking to do about slang.
Have you heard the terms above? Used them? Avoided them?
Cher and Dionne photo found somewhere online. Amy Heckerling photo found on Pinterest. Other photo by my sister-in-law.
I’m thrilled to have on the blog today one of my grad school advisors, the amazing Mary Quattlebaum, who is here to discuss her latest book, Queen Elizabeth II, which was published by National Geographic Kids/Penguin Random House on April 4.
Mary: Linda, thank you so much for including me on your blog. I always love the opportunity to catch up with you and to see what you’re working on—your many editing and writing projects! El Space: My pleasure! The door is always open for you, Mary. 😊 You’ve written many books for National Geographic, including Brother, Sister, Me and You [picture book]; Hero Dogs and Together Forever: True Stories of Amazing Animals [chapter books]; and Adorable Animals and Hedgehogs [early readers].
Now you’ve written this early reader biography on Queen Elizabeth II. How was the project presented to you? How long was the writing process? Mary: I love writing nonfiction for kids. There is always the chance to learn something new and the intriguing challenge of sharing information with kids in a way that hopefully both educates and entertains them. As you know, especially with books for emerging readers—early readers and chapter books—this involves considering angle on a topic, sentence structure, vocabulary, a presentation and details that connect with kids, possible visuals, word count, and often sidebars and back matter. For me, researching and writing nonfiction is much like solving a delightful puzzle.
I especially enjoy writing about animals and the natural world, but I was thrilled when my editor asked if I might be interested in doing a biography of Queen Elizabeth II. Right off, I knew that the biggest challenge would be trying to share the story of her long, full life in the narrow confines of the early reader format. This book involved reams of research, careful selection and distilling of key information, and trying to provide glimpses of the person behind the monarch. In other words, striving for a balance between, for example, the queen’s duties as head of state and interaction with Parliament and the Prime Minister and her love of her many dogs and horses and delight as a child in a two-story playhouse with running water.
The book was largely researched/written/revised during a two-year period (while I also worked on other projects) but was halted for several months during the Covid shutdown. My editors were extremely knowledgeable and helpful throughout, and I am grateful for their expertise and that of the historian who vetted it.
El Space: What, if anything, did you discover about the queen that was surprising? Mary: So much! Some of my favorite facts: Princess Elizabeth (she was not yet queen) took her favorite corgi, Susan, with her on her honeymoon; and at their wedding, her husband, Prince Philip, cut their 9-foot-tall wedding cake with his sword. The queen also helped modernize the monarchy in many ways, including supporting a change to a centuries-old law that made boys first in line to the British throne. Today, the oldest child of the ruling monarch, male or female, is the heir.
Princess Elizabeth in 1943. Photograph by Yousuf Karsh
El Space: How have kids and teachers responded to or used your books in their classroom learning? Mary: Visiting schools is probably my best chance to see how kids respond. For example, for Adorable Animals, I focus on how what makes an animal cute is also what helps it to survive, find food, and avoid predators. In other words, its cuteness can also be its superpower. In this way, kids’ fascination with superpowers leads to greater awareness of biology and ecosystems. And for Hedgehogs, kids are often intrigued to learn that the creature’s sharp spines are made of the same stuff as their hair and fingernails. They become more attuned to how humans and animals are connected and often similar.
Mary’s dog, Lucy, looks a bit like the fruit bat in Adorable Animals.
El Space: What advice would you give to kids who might someday want to write about animals or famous people? Mary: Kids have such passion! Many are already writing their own reports and stories about animals in their lives or that they’re curious about or people they admire. My only suggestion to them would be to keep following that curiosity as it may lead them to embrace work someday as a science writer, animal scientist or trainer, humane shelter advocate, or a writer of nonfiction for kids.
El Space: What will you work on next? Mary: An editor at a company that is expanding their nonfiction line has asked for a few proposals, so I’ve got my fingers crossed that one or two may lead to actual books!
Looking for Queen Elizabeth II or any of Mary’s other books? Check your local bookstore, Amazon, Indiebound, or Barnes and Noble or at your home, since one of you will be given a copy of Queen Elizabeth II AND one of Mary’s books mentioned on this page (your choice) simply because you commented below.
Princess Elizabeth photo found at British Heritage Travel. Author photo and some book covers courtesy of Mary Quattlebaum and her website. Other photos by L. Marie.
With me on the blog today is the amazing Lyn Miller-Lachmann, who has come to discuss her picture book, Ways to Play, which will be published by Levine Querido on August 8. Ways to Play was illustrated by Gabriel Alborozo. Lyn is represented by Jacqui Lipton.
El Space: You’ve written so many kinds of books, Lyn. I’m glad to see you make your picture book debut. Please tell us how you came to write this book. Lyn: In fall 2020, the famous Arthur Levine of Levine Querido put out a call on a certain social media platform for a picture book text by an autistic author. Wanting to help him out because I love Levine Querido’s books, I recommended several authors. A few months later, Arthur emailed me, saying basically, “We were really looking for you.” He wanted an autistic writer to collaborate with Gabriel Alborozo, the acclaimed illustrator of This Old Dog, written by Martha Brockenbrough.
Gabe is also autistic and this would be a pioneering collaboration between an autistic writer and an autistic illustrator. I looked up Gabe’s work and noticed that he loves dogs. I love dogs too, and miss my playful bichon frise, Charlie [below], who crossed the Rainbow Bridge in 2019. So I decided to write an ode to Charlie and to play. After working on drafts with the help of my agent, Jacqui Lipton, my critique group, and my writing partner, Susan Korchak, I sent it out. Gabe loved it, and so did Arthur.
El Space: What were the challenges of writing a picture book? How did your story evolve? Lyn: Years ago, an editor told my former agent that she shouldn’t send out any more picture books of mine, that I didn’t have the sensibility to write picture books. Maybe I’m just not funny enough, I thought, so when Arthur put out his call, I knew I wasn’t the one to help him out. My biggest challenge was overcoming the feeling that I couldn’t do this. What helped me was seeing Gabe’s gallery of illustrations, which gave me so many ideas. I could connect his universe to my own experiences of playing with toys in ways that were different from the other kids when I was younger, along with my 15 years of being Charlie’s significant human.
The story evolved in interesting ways in the course of illustration. I had envisioned Riley as a girl like me. Gabe illustrated the protagonist to present as a boy. Writing in first person left that question open, and I was actually heartened to see that I’d created a story so universal that Gabe saw himself in it. And changing the gender also serves to show that the toys themselves aren’t “girls’ toys” and “boys’ toys.” The theme that there’s no “right” way to play works on multiple levels.
El Space: I absolutely love this book and Riley’s sense of himself and the value of the way he liked to play with toys. What did you learn about yourself in the writing of this book? Lyn: Thank you! I started writing this book after finishing my chapter book biography of Temple Grandin in the She Persisted series. In researching that book, I saw that her mother was also worried about the way she played, tearing newspapers into strips or sitting on the beach running sand through her fingers for hours. I enjoyed these kinds of sensory experiences as well, and in a way, they were practical in that nature becomes a plaything. Certainly for Temple Grandin, it did, and it helped make her the prominent scientist she is today.
I liked playing with my dolls, not always the dolls that the other girls preferred either. My favorite of the Barbie universe was the younger boy doll, Ricky. And I played with dolls long after girls my age had given them up, which embarrassed my mother but ultimately I can tell her it contributed to my becoming a children’s book author. And an author whose main characters are boys as often as girls. So I think the most important thing I learned is that every way of playing develops something in terms of skills and interests and becoming part of the world.
El Space: What was it like working with your illustrator? Lyn: Most picture book authors and illustrators never meet, and Ways to Play followed this pattern. Gabe lives in the U.K. and we worked on this project during the Covid era of limited travel. As a writer of picture books, I like the idea of leaving room for the illustrator as a co-creator. I also have a lot of experience working with collaborators like Zetta Elliott for Moonwalking and Tanisia “Tee” Moore for Film Makers: 15 Groundbreaking Women Directors and welcome the ways in which these talented individuals enhance my work. One of the appeals for me of picture books is seeing what the illustrator does with my story.
El Space: What picture books inspire you? Lyn: I read fairly widely and unsystematically in this genre. I love the wacky postmodern picture books but could never be that clever. I save my metafiction for YA. Some of the picture books that inspired Ways to Play are the excellent titles by other autistic authors, including Too Sticky! by Jen Malia and Benji, the Bad Day, and Me by Sally J. Pla. Although the author isn’t autistic, I very much appreciated Jenn Bailey’s A Friend for Henry and the new chapter book series that follows Henry as he moves through school and makes new friends.
El Space: What will you work on next? Lyn: Most of my writing is YA historical fiction, including verse novels. I have a verse novel coming out in spring 2024, Eyes Open, which portrays a teenage girl who writes free verse to honor her boyfriend, a political prisoner under the right-wing Salazar dictatorship in Portugal in 1967. And I’m starting a new YA verse novel set in the midst of a little-known but important event in twentieth century U.S. labor history.
My friend Sharon sent this article on why adults need to read children’s books. It was written by Katherine Rundell, who writes children’s books.
Now some might think, She’s a children’s book writer. Of course she’d say adults need to read children’s books, and then go on about their business. But as someone who writes books for children also, I agree with Katherine. She has a great argument for her premise, so I would not be insulted if you stopped reading this post right now and clicked on the BBC Culture link above.
I’m not naïve enough to think that I can instantly convince you. Back in the days before electricity, when the abacus was cutting-edge technology, I was a college student who loved books for kids. But in my writing program, you weren’t considered a writer unless you produced a GAN—Great American Novel. This was eons before the worldwide fame of the Harry Potter series made everyone look like a fool who believed that “real writers” shouldn’t bother with children’s books.
These days, I find myself drawn to classic children’s books—the books I loved back in the Stone Age when they were still written on papyrus—because I find myself living in a war zone. Every day, I’m reminded about who needs to be castigated, who is superior, who is the enemy. I can’t watch a movie trailer or a movie review without being reminded of the overt message—that I need to take a side in a fight I didn’t ask for.
This is not to say that many classic books aren’t about battles. You can’t read The Lord of the Rings and think this trilogy is about the Olympics or pasta chefs. But the battles were part of the craft of great story writing.
I read to relax, so I don’t tend to choose books that remind me of what’s in today’s headlines and whose neck I need to kneel on. This is not to say that I don’t read news articles. But when I’m relaxing, more than likely, I will pick up one of the many fairy tale books I have around my home.
Or, I’ll read a behind the scenes movie development book that features wonderful art by people who love their craft.
These books inspire me to write the kind of stories I wanted to read when I was a kid, and still want to read now that I’ve discovered that (1) the world has electricity and (2) I don’t still have to avoid pterodactyls on my way to the grocery store.
How about you? Are you a read-to-relax reader? Love children’s books? Other kinds of books?
Pterodactyl from clipground. Rundell book cover from Goodreads. Other photos by L. Marie.
I recently read this great post at Writer Unboxed on editorial feedback. It caused me to think of some exchanges I have had with authors who asked me to read their manuscript, but who came away shocked that I dared to suggest that the manuscript might require some changes. Yet their goal was to be traditionally published. (If you went to VCFA, I’m not referring to you. Please go directly to the next paragraph.)
Those who were shocked about suggested changes were authors new to writing who also had, I’m guessing, a preconceived idea not only about manuscript quality but also about how much time the manuscript process “should” take. If you’ve written a book and revised it to a polished stated, you want to be done with it. I get that. No one relishes the thought of going back through a manuscript yet again, especially if you’ve lived with it for some time. But agents may request that you make changes, even if your manuscript already is highly polished. Editors certainly will. Changes take time and energy. The route to traditional publishing is sometimes slow and fraught with people asking for manuscript changes.
Even if your book has sold to a publisher and you spent years writing and revising it, that will not exempt your book from being edited. Many editors have edited authors who have won the gamut of awards: Nobel, Pulitzer, Newbery, Printz, National Book Award—you name it. Their subsequent works are edited. Yours will be also. That’s a given!
And with that said, it’s time to reveal the winner of Shari Swanson’s book, Gertie, The Darling Duck of WWII.Lyn, expect a copy!
Thank you to all who commented.
Editing illustration from clker.com. Author photo courtesy of the author.
El Space: Like your other picture book, Honey, Gertie is narrative nonfiction. How did you hear about Gertie? What made you turn this story into a picture book? [To see photos of the actual Gertie, click here.] Shari: Years—maybe decades—ago, poking through a used book store, I found a book: Reader’s Digest: Animals You Will Never Forget. It had an account of the Gertie story, and I was captivated. For me, the story represents everything good—people coming together toward a common goal, kindness, concern for others—and it was a powerful beacon of hope in a dark time. True to the title of the book I never forgot Gertie’s story. At one point in time, I was writing a daily devotional and wrote a brief summary of the Gertie story as a devotion based on Psalm 91:4: “He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness will be your shield and rampart.” This is how I will always think of this story. But, even with time, still the story persisted for me; my time with Gertie wasn’t done. When I was pursuing my MFA, I returned to Gertie’s story, dove deep into the research, and crafted it into the final picture book.
El Space: Please give a quick snapshot of your process for researching. Shari: I am so fond of research and all the treasures that are uncovered along the way. For Gertie, I poured over the 1945 editions of the Milwaukee Journal as my starting spot. It was fascinating to watch the rise of the little duck story until she was sharing the front page with very consequential events in WWII. Even the ads in the newspaper, many of them duck-centered, were fascinating to understand the time and how important Gertie became to people. From there, I rounded out my research with all the secondary sources I could find about Gertie, with help from the Milwaukee Public Library and Milwaukee County Historical Society (photo below), and then took a dive into WWII itself so I would feel grounded in the time and place.
In general, I absolutely love research and tend to go quite deep and broad as pretty much everything fascinates me. I love primary sources; all of the quotes in both Honey and Gertie are sourced. I love the contemporaneous quotes I find because they draw me right into the time and personalities of the speaker. But, in general, very little of what I discover ultimately finds its way into the book. For example, with Gertie, I researched why the river by Gertie’s nest was so dirty—sewage emptied directly into the river!—and how the flushing station worked. I also became fascinated by bridges that open to let big ships pass by. I’ve tucked what I learned there into my quiver in case that might turn into a future book down the line.
El Space: What draws you to historical settings? Shari: I love that there are some things about humans that are universal and some that are dependent on time and place. I’m interested in how people respond to the specific challenges from the time in which they find themselves. With history, we can see where we are and look back to where we were and consider the impact past events have had on our present.
The 1940s
One of the things I found tremendously compelling about Gertie’s story was how everyone rallied around her and around the war effort. Everyone helped. In these times of division, that kind of unity uplifts me.
In researching Honey: The Dog Who Saved Abe Lincoln, I was fascinated with the ripple effect of kind actions. We know who Abraham Lincoln came to be, and how important he was to our country, so tracing those ripples back to an original kindness, like Honey saving his life, felt very powerful. Without Honey, no Abe.
El Space: What do you think are the ingredients of a great nonfiction story? Shari: So far, I’ve written narrative non-fiction which means that all the elements of a fictional story are right there in the non-fiction: characters, time and place, a dramatic arc, a climax, and resolution. Personally, I love when a non-fiction story has each of these elements. In Honey, the climax turns on whether Honey will rescue Abe when he is stuck in the cavern. That is as consequential as any fictional story could be. And the resolution when Honey comes through, bringing help, is so rewarding, particularly when we know who little Abe grew up to be.
At Shari’s book launch party
In Gertie, again, the stakes are life and death. Will the bridge tenders be able to save Gertie and her brood when the eyes and hope of the whole world are on them? When juxtaposed with the concurrent events of the war, this little duck’s struggle takes on new depth and meaning.
To me, these high stakes stories make for page-turning non-fiction. The happy resolution in both of these stories leave the reader with a sense that all is right, or can be, with the world, and that people (and dogs) can accomplish great things when working together.
El Space: What inspires you as you write? Shari: I love children and want to give them stories that will feed their souls as well as their intellects. Hopeful stories of people coming together inspire me and, when I find a good one, particularly if there are animals involved, I’m eager to pass it along with hopes it will inspire others as well.
Shari with her granddaughters, Ella and Lily
El Space: What are you working on next? Shari: I’m not sure what will be my next published book, but I’m at work on several: a non-fiction picture book gold rush journey, a middle grade fantasy, a non-fiction-inspired picture book about a prisoner’s daughter, an early chapter book fairy tale, and an early chapter book legal fiction which I hope can be a series. I’m focusing on finishing, and then we’ll see where things go.
Thanks, Shari, for being my guest!
Looking for Shari? Look for her on her website, Twitter, and Facebook.
One of you will be handed a copy of this very book! Comment below to be entered in the drawing. Winner to be announced sometime next week.
Book launch photos by Todd Swanson. Author photo courtesy of Shari Swanson. Animals You Will Never Forget book cover from Open Library. Photo from 1940s from Wallpaper Safari. Gertie cover photo by L. Marie.
I’m from an era where baseballs broke windows. Lest you wonder when baseballs stopped doing that, let me explain. I was born and raised in Chicago. When I was a kid playing baseball back in the dark ages, during one game, the batter made a line drive that would have been celebrated had it not broken a neighbor’s window. No, I was not the one who was at bat. And yes, I am not lying. I got into enough trouble on my own without having to borrow someone else’s trouble. But I thought about that incident when someone the other day mentioned being from an era where parents made you go outside and play.
My parents didn’t have to make my brothers and I do that. In the summer, we went outside as soon as breakfast was over and didn’t return inside until lunchtime. After lunch, back outside we’d go. In the fall, we went back outside as soon as we threw our book bags inside the house after school. We practically lived outside. Being kids, usually trouble found us in the form of broken windows; forbidden fences climbed (that was me); doorbells rung, followed by fleeing feet (again, me). Dennis the Menace (a character created by Hank Ketcham) has nothing on me.
Lest you think, “You hooligans,” we were just average kids. In elementary school, the neighborhood bullies beat you up at 3:15 (after school) or threatened to sic their dogs on you. That was about as dangerous as it got. If you had an older sibling like I did, you might get provoked into a fight once or twice by a bully in your grade who liked living dangerously. But when your older sibling got involved, the bully soon got the message to leave you alone, at least until your older sibling went to middle school or high school. You were on your own then. I got into more fights in middle school than any other grade.
I’m a product of my era and environment. This doesn’t mean I can’t change or that I want to remain in outmoded thought patterns. It just means that the years created a texture within my personality, adding layers that make up who I am. There is an authenticity to this shaping of years.
This is why I usually heave a troubled sigh when I read a book or see TV productions set in a specific historical era but the enlightened attitudes and mode of speech of the characters are purely twenty-first century. Ironically, I loved A Knight’s Tale, starring Heath Ledger, a movie with anachronistic dialogue and songs on purpose. It worked for me, because I understood that purpose.
I’ve heard some showrunners and editors say that people (teens in particular, since that’s the audience I think about the most) today can relate more to vernacular in use today.
Some words are built out of an era. It’s like the layers I mentioned earlier. When an author casually drops them into the dialogue of someone in an era that hasn’t yet produced the factors that would shape that language, I wince every time, despite the presumed accessibility to a modern audience. Take the word subtext, for example. It had a completely different meaning in the 1800s (see this post for why) to what its meaning became in 1950. (See the same post highlighted in the previous sentence.) Yet I have seen this word used in books with the 1950s meaning, but spoken in the dialogue of characters in the Regency period or even earlier. You might think, Oh my goodness, are you nitpicking. And you’re probably right. But I can’t suspend belief that I am in a specific time period and a character is using words and idioms that would only mean something to someone born two hundred years after this character is supposed to have existed, just because people today use them.
I’m just rambling today, sorry. Sometimes my mind goes in a direction and I just go with it. Feel free to put me in my place in the comments below.
Broken window from apexwindowwerks. A Knight’s Tale album image from Amazon.
With me on the blog today is the amazing and gracious Louise Hawes, author extraordinaire and member of the faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts! She’s here to discuss her recently released middle grade novel, Big, Rig, published by Peachtree. I love this book, so I’m thrilled to have Louise here! Louise is represented by Ginger Knowlton.
El Space: Louise, what inspired this story? This might sound weird, but as I read your book, I thought of Route 66—the iconic route discussed in the first Cars movie, though that route is not a focal point of this book. Cars made me nostalgic. I had a strong sense of nostalgia as I read Big Rig, the trucking industry being so iconic. Back in the day, when my family traveled, we stopped at truck stops. Louise: Honestly? What inspired Big Rig is the same thing that inspires all my books—a character. I never start with a story, you see, or even a premise or idea. It’s always a beating heart, a voice, that grabs me. Of course, Hazel, my 11-year old protagonist grabbed me harder than most and held on longer, too. She insisted on having her way as we hit the road together. She made it clear that she’s highly allergic to those two words, THE END. And even though my inner writing teacher tried to tell her about turning points and resolution, she just wasn’t buying it; she didn’t ever want to our story to end. She got her way, as folks will see when they read the book!
At Louise’s book launch—McIntyre’s Fine Books in Fearrington Village, Pittsboro, NC.
And that’s funny about Route 66. I wanted the book’s flyleaves to feature the major U.S. truck routes in a double spread. I never won that battle, but we did get road signs as chapter titles! Oh, and I wore a route 66 tie to the book launch!
Photo by Karen Pullen
El Space: How did you research this book? Louise: Very unwillingly! At first, when Hazel popped into my mind and told me she and her dad had been traveling across the country for seven years in an eighteen-wheeler, I said to myself, and to her, “NO WAY! I know nothing about trucks, and I don’t want to know even the slightest thing about them.” But of course, after she popped into my mind, Hazel burrowed into my heart. And three years later? I know a LOT about trucks. I’ve researched trucks and the trucking industry. I’ve interviewed dozens of drivers, put plenty of miles in on big rigs. As a passenger. No, I’ve never driven one; at 100 pounds and 5 feet, I wouldn’t trust myself in the driver’s seat. I reached out to organizations like Trucker Buddy, who pair up individual drivers with classrooms; and Women in Trucking, who work with organizations like the Girl Scouts to publicize the fact that there are lots of women active in, and crucial to, the industry.
El Space: Hazel/Hazmat is a great character. She felt like an old soul—a marvelous blend of the past and the present. So confident and engaging. What was your process for finding her voice? Louise: As I mentioned earlier, I didn’t find Hazel, she found me. But as with any character that inspires one of my books, I needed to trust her before I could begin an actual draft. I have a notebook of free writes (in the form of first-person letters from her to me); that notebook was full of her voice, cover to cover, before I ever wrote a single page of the novel.
Canine book reviewers: (Left) Jenn Bailey’s pooch, Ollie. Jenn is a VCFA grad and author. Photo by Jenn Bailey (Right) Bella, the canine co-author of “BEAGLES AND BOOKS,” a blog by Laura Mossa, an Elementary School Reading Specialist. Photo by Laura Mossa.
El Space: You have such wonderful characters. Even Hazel’s mother’s ashes (not much of a spoiler, since you learn that on the first page) is a character with weight in the book. What was the most challenging part of writing this book? Louise: What a great question! I think the toughest moments to write were the ones where I needed to stay inside Hazel, and not give myself up to feeling sorry for her, which she never does for herself. The moments when she’s talking to her mom, or afraid of growing up, or angry at her dad—during all those times, she’s just right there in the moment, never feeling “poor me,” or “life sucks.” She’s just bringing her whole self to every experience, knowing better than most of us, that it will give way to a new one before we can truly catch hold.
The feline reviewer is an assistant to a Twitter follower and middle school teacher, Kate McCue-Day. Photo by Kate McCue-Day
El Space: What do you hope your readers will take away after reading Big Rig? Louise: Besides the fact that a good story doesn’t need a beginning, middle, and end? I guess I’d like readers to undergo the same change-of-mind I did about truckers and trucking. Drivers and their rigs are crucial to all of us—to the economy, to the culture, to our whole way of life. And yet we pretty much forget about them, once we grow past the age of 6 or 7 and stop asking them to pump their air brakes when we drive by. We forget about automation and the driverless trucks that may well be destroying and brutalizing a whole way of life. That’s a thread that winds through the entire book, and I’d hope folks pay attention.
El Space: What inspires you these days? Louise: Being outside, plain and simple. I need fresh air, and water in the form of the sea, or a lake, or a rainstorm. I need the bull frog in my pond with whom I engage in daily ten-minute dialogues. I need to see how relentlessly beautiful the world is, how it keeps going with or without us. I need something bigger than myself or my day. And nature gives me that.
El Space: What writing advice do you always share with your students and anyone else who’s asking? Louise: The same advice I’ve been giving ever since I set myself free from slaving over every word via free writes. My first drafts are still like other folks’ second or third passes, and that’s because I can’t leave a word or a sentence alone until I hear it ring true. But with free writing, the loose, free times I spend with my characters, I can relax into them, get out of me. Which is why, behind every chapter I write, painstakingly, laboriously, there is a poem or a free write that came first. So, whenever myself or one of my students has a writing problem that’s stumping us, I advise taking it to our characters. To let it go, turn it over. That doesn’t mean I won’t edit or revise those free writes, or advise my students to do the same. But it does mean that what’s at the start, the heart of our work is something unhampered and flowing, something free.
El Space: What will you work on next? Louise: I’m working on two things right now—one is a project I started a long time ago and am only finishing this year. It’s YA historical fiction, and the protagonist is Salomé, the biblical character who supposedly performed the dance of the seven veils and won the head of John the Baptist. The other project is a new novel for adults. The character who won me over there is a failed playwright who’s fallen in love with a dead poet. See? There’s just no telling with me, who’ll come out of nowhere and sweep me up and away!
Thank you, Louise, for being my guest!
Looking for Louise? Look here: Website, Twitter, VCFA,Facebook, Instagram
Looking for Big Rig? Look no further than Barnes and Noble, Indiebound, Amazon.
Comment below to be entered into a drawing from which one of you will receive a copy of Big Rig! Winner to hopefully be announced next week!
Other books by Louise:
Book launch and author photos courtesy of Louise Hawes. Tree photo by L. Marie. Other book covers from Goodreads and Louise Hawes.
El Space--The Blog of L. Marie 