Public Puking, Presidential Races and Social Justice: Props for 8th Grade Super Zero

In honor of Random Acts of Publicity Day 2011 - a fantastic idea concocted by writer and teacher Darcy Pattison I thought I would give props to the fantastic Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich, who has given me so much support as I've entered the wild and wooly world of kidlit.

From her visionary Patchwork Collective mentorship group for children's writers of color, to her To Mama With Love mother's day project to the personal support she's given me as now (huzzah! huzzah! halloo! hallay!) an agency sibling with the most fantastical Erin Murphy, Gbemi (as she is known to her friends) has been welcoming, instructive, encouraging, supportive and downright inspirational.

And you know what? So's her 2010 book from Arthur A. Levine, 8th Grade Super Zero.

Reggie "Pukey" McNight is a Nerd-ling Everyman. Having begin the school year by losing his breakfast in front of the entire student body, eighth grade can only go up. Er, maybe. With his best friends, activist Ruthie and aspiring rapper Joe C. by his side, Reggie negotiates the complicated issues of middle school social politics, family conflict, race relations, spirituality, community involvement and social justice without ever being anything less than flawed, real, heartfelt and quite wonderful. Will Reggie's father get a job? Will his sister be less than awful to him? Will he be able to galvanize a group to work in the local homeless shelter? Will he have a chance in the school election? And will the most beautiful Mialonie ever look his way? You can find out by picking up a copy of this complex, hilarious, and skillfully written novel.

For other children's authors, Gbemi's book is a terrific study in how to negotiate potentially difficult social issues without slipping into a didactic voice. It is also a study in building three dimensional, dynamic characters fully located in their environment (in this case, Brooklyn). 8th Grade Super Zero is breathtakingly real, without ever losing its engagement as a story. As a reader, I was just as invested in the broader issues of how a group of students can help each other engage in their local community as I was in Reggie's romantic life or his school presidential campaign.

This excerpt from an interview with Gbemi relates her perspective on social justice in children's literature rather perfectly:

Q: Reggie finds great satisfaction in helping a local homeless shelter build community. How did your own experiences with service shape this aspect of Reggie’s story?

A: Reggie had the opportunity to see, as I did, that any type of service is a two-way street. He did not 'save' or 'rescue' anyone, and no person that he encountered acted as a talisman or magical figure whose primary purpose was to ease his guilt or facilitate his transformation to hero. He entered into relationships, with multi-dimensional people (I hope). The themes of small victories and personal action in the book were also major lessons learned in my own life. I found that there was just as much value (perhaps more) in being the person who offers a loving listening ear and a snack as there is in being the Big Speechmaker and shiny celebrity.


(smart answer, no? see why I like her and her book so much?)

So celebrate social justice and great children's literature by picking up a copy of 8th Grade Super Zero, and also blogging, linking, talking or otherwise cheering about your favorite kidlit books!

 

Dear Melissa - Interview with Middle Grade Author Melissa Glenn Haber (and giveaway!)

From From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors:

Welcome author Melissa Glenn Haber to From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors!

Melissa is the author of several books for MG readers, including  The Heroic Adventures of Hercules Amsterdam (Puffin Paperbacks, 2004, recommended for 9+); Beyond the Dragon Portal (Dutton, 2005, a Keystone State Reading Association Book Award nominee, recommended for 9+); The Pluto Project (Dutton, 2006, a Junior Library Guild selection, recommended for 11 and up).
Since Melissa’s latest release Your Best Friend, Meredith (Aladdin, previously released as Dear Anjali, Aladdin 2010) is a novel in letters, we thought we’d conduct her author interview a bit differently! Below are some questions from, erm, kind of imaginary readers, and Melissa’s thoughtful answers. (Dear Abby has nothing on this MG author!)

1. Dear Melissa, In your novel, your character Meredith types (and writes) long letters to her friend Anjali. Only problem is, Anjali has recently, and unexpectedly died. What inspired you to write a novel about a girl writing letters to her dead best friend? Were you worried it would be too dark? Signed — BFF in Boise

Dear BFF:
I mostly always start a novel because a first sentence comes to me, and that’s what happened here. Meredith just started speaking to Anjali in my head, and then I was writing this potentially depressing novel. I did worry a little about the novel getting too heavy, though it’s as much about friendship and first love as it is about death; to deal with that I tried to balance the times Meredith’s really despairing with goofier material.  (My favorite: when Meredith’s at her lowest and suddenly loses the “e” key on the typewriter).  I guess it worked, because the most common comment I hear from kids about the book is that they thought it was really funny. Which is a little bizarre.  I mean, I have books about baby sisters turning into dragons, and three inch tall boys living with mice, and kids pretending to be spies and finding out that what they pretend to discover is actually true, and it turns out that the book about the dead girl is the laugh riot.  Go figure.

2. Dear MGH, What made U decide 2 write a novel in ltrs? I mean, doesn’t everyone IM these days? xo — techwiz999

Dear Techwiz999, Ah: you discovered the secret!  I originally set the novel when I was 13—back in 1983.  That’s why Meredith is writing on what she calls a typerwriter.  My agent suggested that I update it to the present, which meant all sorts of small changes in technology (I think there are still some LP records that stayed in by mistake). I kept the typewriter in part for the reasons Meredith says (she claims it lets her write in the Heming way), but also texting and IMing are not very useful when it comes to working out what Meredith would call your Inner Feelings (TM) For that, a diary—which is sort of what Meredith’s letters become—is necessary.  It also turned out there was a major advantage to writing a novel in letters—aside from the fact that writing unanswered letters felt like a fitting metaphor for reaching out to someone who can’t reach back.  Writing in letters dealt with the fundamental problem with the first person: unless the first person is written in the present tense, the narrator knows what’s going to happen.  Here, Meredith was in as much in the dark as the reader.

3. Dear Author, In your novel, the three main characters are from three different religions – Meredith celebrates Christmas, so she seems like she’s Christian. Her friend and crush Noah is Jewish. And Anjali is Hindu. At the end of the book, Meredith even writes a letter to God. What role did spirituality and faith have in this novel? Yours Sincerely, Spirited and Spunky


To read the answer to this letter, and a few more, as well as to qualify for the giveaway, please visit here!

Say My Name, Say My Name: Writers on Naming

It started with Kate DiCamillo's The Magician's Elephant. I was reading the novel on a plane and kept wanting to turn to my fellow passengers (none of whom I unfortunately knew) and read the beautiful words aloud. These were words meant to be spoken, sung, shouted, I thought. But, for fear of being hauled off by the TSA, all I could do was keep them to myself, rolling them around and around in my mouth, feeling their heft and weight and beauty.

As I read, I kept thinking about the wonderful community of my new literary agency (The Erin Murphy Literary Agency, EMLA), and how meaningful it was to me to have so many differing communities of support around me, some who knew me well, and some -- like EMLA -- where many just knew my name. But even in that "just name knowing" - there was something so vital and beautiful being built - one more net beneath my various, precarious high-wire acts.

I was almost completely undone by one passage where DiCamillo reminds us what powerful magic names are:

Deep within herself, the elephant said this name, her name, over and over again. She was working to remind herself of who she was. She was working to remember that, somewhere, in another place entirely, she was known and loved. --- Kate DiCamillo


As a writer whose 'day job' in medical humanities is steeped in examinations of intersubjectivity, what Martin Buber called the "I-thou" relationship, I suppose it's no surprise that I am particularly moved by writing regarding names and naming. As DiCamillo shows us, a name connects us to those who know and love us, those who, in the Levinasian sense, recognize our very face. 

In fact, one of my favorite writing exercises in any group I teach begins with the prompt: "Tell me the story of your name." It's a relatively low-risk exercise - certainly every person in the workshop or class has a name, and certainly every name has a story. Yet, it's an intensely personal exercise as well - calling forth stories of family, ancestry, history, identity, immigration, community, pain, loss, aspiration, and dream. Inevitably, there are tears and there is laughter when each member of the group reads aloud their own unique tale of their own unique name. And in the process, we recognize and honor the presence of each and every individual. From strangers, we become a community.

But it doesn't explain why every novel I seem to read lately has the most beautiful passages about names and naming. This week, it was Rita Williams Garcia's georgeous and powerful One Crazy Summer:

A name is important...Your name is how people know you. The very mention of your name makes a picture spring to mind, whether it's a picture of clashing fists or a mighty mountain that can't be knocked down. -- Rita Williams Garcia

In the book, a name given and refused leads to the loss of a mother. A mother who herself has given birth to a new self, a new avatar, a new name.

Last night, I gobbled up DiCamillo's Because of Winn-Dixie, in which Opal, the young protagonist, adopts and is adopted by a dog on the loose in a Winn-Dixie grocery store:

"Here boy," I said again. And then I figured that the dog was probably like everybody else in the world, that he would want to get called by a name, only I didn't know what his name was, so I just said the first thing that came into my head. I said, "Here, Winn-Dixie."

And that dog came trotting over to me just like he had been doing it his whole life. -- Kate DiCamillo


Tonight, I'm reading Ann Patchett's State of Wonder, in which the Indian American physician protagonist (hm... why does that sound familiar?) is searching for answers in the death of her colleague Anders. She has traveled to the Amazon, where she meets a young deaf boy named Easter who was the last to see Anders alive.

Marina could see him sitting on a log, a pad of paper out across his knees, Easter pressed in close beside him. Of course he could teach a boy how to make his letters. He'd done it three times before. It wouldn't make any difference to him that Easter couldn't hear. This is who you are, Anders tells him, pointing to Easter's name. Then he points to his own, This is who I am. 

Marina and her companion, Dr. Swenson, wonder at Anders teaching the boy to write both his own name, and Anders' as well. Finally, Swenson concludes,


Maybe he felt it was a way to be remembered. -- Ann Patchett



What are your favorite quotes about names?

Thembi Ngubane's Story: HIV and AIDS Acceptance

“Our parents struggled against apartheid, they wanted to be free. And it is the same with HIV/AIDS. This is the new struggle.” – Thembi Ngubane

Thembi Ngubane was a 19-year-old South African woman from Khayelitsha township, outside Cape Town. She never thought she would inspire people from around the world with her life’s story. Surely, she never thought she would continue to be an inspiration even after her death.

But when Thembi was given a tape recorder by NPR’s Radio Diaries, and asked to record the day to day experiences of her life as one of South Africa’s millions of HIV+ youth, everything changed. In light of the severe social stigma that remains around HIV and AIDS in Southern Africa, Thembi had until then been relatively silent about her condition. Even when Radio Diaries played segments of her story on National Public Radio in the U.S., she did not want her story broadcast in her home country.

Yet, in the personal to political tradition of so many social change movements in the U.S. – the 1970’s feminist movement, the civil rights movement, and now the body acceptance movements – Thembi took her personal story and connected it to a broader global movement around HIV and AIDS acceptance. She traveled to the U.S. and met with former President Bill Clinton and then-Senator Barak Obama. In March 2007, she spoke to the South African Parliament about the need to address AIDS-based discrimination in her country. Indeed, in the sheer act of telling her story, Thembi galvanized a movement around acceptance of HIV and AIDS both in South Africa and around the world.

To read the rest of this blog, please go to Adios, Barbie!

Multicultural Kidlit: A Case for Not Explaining Yourself

To 'splain yourself, or not to 'splain yourself.

Ah, that is the question.

For authors of children's literature commonly called "multicultural", the issue is often one that's front and center.

From agents who say "Oh, I'd like to learn more about that custom/ritual/holiday."

From editors who urge, "Draw out the protagonist's cultural conflict."

From fellow writers who say, "But this passage is so esoteric, isn't it?."

And of course, the job of a writer is to draw a reader into a world - whatever that world's culture, history, time and space - certainly not shut readers out or make readers so preoccupied with what they do not know that they cannot go along for the plot's ride along with the protagonist.

Yet, some of the best 'multicultural' books I've ever read don't always explain. In fact, the authors sometimes don't explain on purpose.

Take Salman Rushdie, whose novels first taught me that Indian expressions, inside jokes and cultural nuances could be sprinkled liberally through a novel without remorse. Rushdie even plays fast and loose with cross-cultural grammar. Indian suffixes like an honorific -ji are added wily-nily:  "Auntie-ji" "Uncle-ji"; alternately, Indian words are given Anglicized endings like "chutney-fication." Indian patterns of speech, like repeating and rhyming a word pop up all over the place: "writing-shiting." Film references and 'insider' jokes abound - some of which I, as an Indian American, catch and some of which I don't. But in the end, it doesn't matter. His worlds are so rich and nuanced that I happily enter them, giving in to the atmosphere, the world-building, the linguistic high-jinks, and of course, the plot's ride.

But what about children's novels? Aren't they held to a different standard? Are the same practices that seem erudite and the signifiers of a global sophisticate just downright unfair in a novel for young people? Don't we need to explain more lest middle grade and teen readers get confused, angry, turned off, or worse still, bored?

I'm not so sure. Take my son, an avid reader 8yo, who, a couple of weeks ago, said to me:

Son: "Mom, that was a huge kwi-wee at the airport yesterday, wasn't it?"

Me: "A what?"

Son: "A long kwi-we. You know, Q-U-E-U-E."

Of course, I had to explain that the word, no matter how it looked, was actually pronounced "cue." To which, he said "well, that's silly."

But beyond that moment of cuteness, my actual point here is that, as a huge Harry Potter fan, my son obviously read the word somewhere in one of J.K. Rowling's books. And although he's never heard it in his day to day life, he was able to pick up the meaning from the context. And more importantly, it didn't bother him. Not. One. Whit.

And what I've learned, at least about my son, is this: If the story is good, he will go. Even if he doesn't pick up on every sign post along the way. (I blogged a while ago about him missing, totally, the few pages about menstruation in Lisa Yee's delightful Millicent Min Girl Genius. Did I stress about those pages, unnecessarily? Yes. Did it bother my son not to get what Yee was talking about there? Nope, not at all. It remains one of his all time favorite books.)

I just finished reading Nnedi Okorafor's delightful, imaginative and magical Akata Witch, which is set  firmly in the soil, context and often, language of Nigeria. Yet, Okorafor skillfully makes plenty of room for the non-Nigerian reader by creating characters who are themselves "in between." - one American boy and one Nigerian girl who was raised in the U.S. before returning to Nigeria again. (she's in between in other fascinating ways too, but I'll let you read the book to find out) 

There were pieces of culture and context that I loved learning about - but there were plenty of things I'm sure I didn't catch. Only, I was so occupied following the characters and exciting plot, that I honestly didn't notice. Instead, I felt pulled in - as if I was wading through the river of Okorafor's imagination - and it didn't really matter if I didn't know the river's name, I got the other side (and felt the rush and wet and pull of the water) just the same.

Explaining too little or too much is of course a fine balancing act. I'm sure each reader's tolerance for "not getting something" is a little different. And I'm definitely sure that our cultural tolerance for being "outsiders" to another's cultural nuances has changed drastically over time. But ultimately, good novels aren't anthropological treatises on far away cultures - they are doorways into characters' lives and stories. And like Alice down her rabbit hole, readers don't always have to understand every spectacular sight in a new place to appreciate the journey.

What are your favorite novels that introduced you to new worlds? Did they 'splain, or just let you dive into, as Rushdie would say, their stream of stories?

Tiger Mothers and Summer Reading

I realized today I'm a tiger mother. You know, like Amy Chua of "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior" infamy.

And it's all the fault of my local summer reading club.

I know, all those adorable graphics draw you in at first, lulling you with their multicultural adorableness. (I mean, it's a cute brown girl sitting on a globe while reading -- three of my favorite things, how could I resist?)

One world, Many Stories. Peace, love, and reading. Hands across the library, and all that.

I didn't realize I was following in the pawprints of maternis tigris.  I mean, there is no forcible playing of the violin in our household. We don't even OWN a violin.

I blame the librarians (for everything, actually, but that's a longer blog entry) They drew me in, those book loaners, with their disarming, narrative ways. They lured my children too, with their promises of plastic compasses and adorable graphic-ed buttons (a purple elephant reading a book! With his front legs crossed! Halloo! Hallay! Oh Happy Day!)

We were so drunk on their storied seductions, we actually signed up for not one but two local reading clubs this year. That was SOO the librarian's fault too! "Oh, you can do more than one reading club," says she, all beaming and friendly-like. "Ours is on-line this year!" And then she pointed out to my 8yo the celebratory Harry Potter book event she was hosting the following week - in which kids would get round glasses made from pipe cleaners and she would be serving every flavor jelly beans.  She even hinted she might make some butterbeer. Butter beer! I tell you, there was no resisting. Those librarians are merciless.

And so my kids have been reading, and recording what they've been reading. On-line at aforementioned butter-beer maker's library, and in person at another other den of bookish inequities -- there, the kids have to actually talk about their books to teen volunteers with pusher-like names such as "Miss Emma" and "Miss Monique."

On line they've been dictating "reviews" to me that go something like this:

The 8yo on R.L. LaFever's The Forging of the Blade: "5/5 stars. I would recommend this book for anyone who likes almost dying moments. I loved it!"

The 6yo on Anne Barrow's Ivy and Bean and the Ghost that Had to Go: "5/5 stars. There's a hole in the bathroom where the ghosts live - and they come out each night! Ivy and Bean don't want to go there but they have to use the bathroom!"

(New York Review of books, watch out.)

Just today, a dear (and very thoughtful) friend asked me if I thought that all this summer reading club stuff was bad -  encouraging kids to focus on the number of books or the silly plastic prizes (not just plastic, my kid won a WAY too big "one world, many stories" yellow cotton T shirt last week, people!). And my first reaction came out not like a whimper, or even a meow. It came out with a tiger-ish roar.

"So what?"

I honestly don't care that my kids are competing with each other ("Does my brother have 2 to report already? Oh, I better pick up the next Cam Jansen...") or diggin' the possibility of winning the library raffle each week. I don't even care if their motivation is the club first and the book second (which, by the way, I don't think it is.) And I certainly don't care that when faced with a possibility of bugging their sibling, or even picking up some Legos, the summer reading club helps them chose to pick up a book instead.

Today, author Hillary Homzie posted an interesting blog on reluctant readers.  And although, by her categorizations, I have two avid readers at home, I do recognize something: Like anything in life, reading takes a lot of practice. Kids often don't practice something that's at first hard. But if you make them practice, they will gain mastery. With mastery, comes confidence. And with both those things, comes inner desire, love, and passion, even.

I know, that sounds SOO tiger-momish, right? Like I'm looming above them in a tree - waiting to pounce - while they innocently read away below? (Oh, look, that's what IS going on in this graphic!)

I love books. I love that my children love books. And I love the structure that summer reading programs give me to help my children gain confidence in their reading of newer and more challenging material. I love the structure it gives us as a family to talk about books, visit the library every day (if not more than that) to report what we've read, or search for that next elusive book in a particular series.

The way my mom remembers it, back in my day, they didn't have all the plastic chachkies at the summer reading club. When I was five, I became an avid reader because our local library was giving out gift certificates to McDonald's and I apparently loved me some Macky-D's fries. So I plowed through a stack of Dick, Jane and Spot books and then, gorged myself.

I'm grateful our librarians are our local pushers. And I don't care if my children's love of books comes along with a plastic glow in the dark keychain compass or two. They'll need 'em to guide them home, after all their storied adventures.

Disability in Middle Grade Novels

Besides being classic tales, what else do Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie books, Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden, and Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol have in common? Well, to varying degrees of success, they each portray a child with disabilities. There is Mary Ingalls, Laura’s elder sister, who becomes blind as a result of scarlet fever; there is Colin, the ill tempered and bedridden cousin in The Secret Garden; and of course who can forget the trope of the crutch-using, impoverished but uncomplaining Tiny Tim in the Dickens classic?

Disability studies, a thriving academic field, can be used as a lens to understand portrayals of children with different embodied/cognitive conditions in middle grade literature. One way is to understand the different ways that disability itself is defined. Scholars have suggested there may be at least three historical models/theories of disability:

1. The Metaphysical/Spiritual Model: This is the predominantly historical idea that disability is caused by, or represents, some sort of spiritual failing. Consider, for instance, that in The Secret Garden, the character Colin becomes able to walk once he is befriended by Mary. As soon as his emotional failings (some serious bad attitude) are overcome, so too are his physical disabilities.

2. The Medical Model: This is the notion that disabilities can be primarily understood as physical impairments, and therefore, necessarily have medical solutions. This would be the perspective that all Tiny Tim needs is a visit to an orthopedic surgeon, or a physical therapist.

3. The Social Model: This perspective suggests that we all may have differing physical, emotional, cognitive, etc. abilities, but that environmental and social obstacles – from a lack of wheelchair ramps to prejudicial attitudes – are how disabilities are socially constructed. While Little House is by no means a perfect example of portraying disability, the fact that Mary’s visual impairment is considered in the context of her family, that Laura is often written describing their visual environment to her sister, and Mary, in turn, is an active agent – correcting Laura when she exaggerates, suggests a more social understanding of Mary’s disability.

So where does that leave middle grade novels portraying disability today?

To read the rest of this post please visit From the Mixed Up Files of Middle Grade Authors