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Kellee’s 7th Grade Lunch Book Club 2017-18

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Two years ago, towards the end of the year, I walked into our library, and I noticed a smattering of kids sitting around the library. They were doing homework, reading, eating, sitting silently, etc. I started talking to them, and they shared how they felt the lunchroom just wasn’t the place for them: it was too loud, too full of drama, or too cliquey. It was then that I asked them if they would be interested in a lunch book club–they all answered with a resounding YES!

This year was my 2nd year with my book club, and I am so glad that I can give kids a friendly place to eat lunch, but equally important, I am so happy that I can give them some amazing reading opportunities as well! Last year, we split our book club into Mock Newbery, Author Skypes, and Harry Potter clubs. This year, the students really wanted to have more opinions in what they read, so they voted to only do author virtual visits this year.

Funding: Book Grant

Our Orange County Foundation Grants has a grant that is given each year to middle school book clubs, and I was lucky enough to receive it! This grant funds my book club completely (books for the entire year and food for an end-of-year party), and I cannot thank the Foundation enough for having this grant that is funded by the License 4 Learning and the School District Education Foundation Matching Grant Program.

Choosing Authors and Books

I want students to not find the book club to be a burden to their free choice of reading that we give at my school, so I do not give much guidance in their choices. We met for the first time in late September after I was told that I had received the grant. To start, we visit Kate Messner’s amazing list of authors who are gracious enough to virtually visit with students who have read their books for free. From this list, I had the students pick their top 6 authors (one for November, January, February, March, April, and May). We were so lucky that all 6 of the authors we contacted were able to visit with us, and we were able to find Fridays that worked for them and us!

My students purposefully picked their authors. They said they wanted a mix of authors they knew and didn’t know, and a mix of authors of different backgrounds and ethnicity. After researching the list and looking up authors, they chose:

  • Michele Weber Hurwitz
  • Laurel Snyder
  • Eliot Schrefer
  • Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich
  • Dan Gemeinhart
  • Mitali Perkins

After we chose our authors and they had confirmed their availability, the group members were able to look at all of the author’s books and pick at least one title they wanted to read. They like doing it this way instead of the whole club reading the same book because it allows more freedom of choice. Once students chose their titles, I ordered them through the grant.

Set Up

The book club originally was going to meet only Tuesday and Thursday, but after a bit they all wanted to start meeting every day, and I was so happy to do so (though it was not required). The book club is quite informal for 2 weeks out of the month: we just hang out together and eat. Then about 2 weeks before the author virtual visit, we spend our Tuesdays and Thursdays lunch periods chatting about the books, usually separated into smaller groups by what book they read. During their book meetings, they would also come up with questions for the author. We also use our online component (Canvas) to do online discussions. This allows students to put their thoughts down on a discussion board while they were thinking about it. Then they can use this if they need help during their book meetings. Finally, the last meetings before the virtual visit we get our questions in order and assign who is going to ask them, making sure that everyone has something to ask.

Virtual Visits

Each visit was as wonderful as the last! I always wish I had recorded them because I am terrible about taking notes when listening since the authors are so brilliant and funny and awesome!

I cannot thank these authors enough for their generous donation of their time! My students love this experience, and I am so lucky to be able to give this once-in-a-lifetime book club experience!

Author Q&A with Lynn Brunelle, Author of Turn This Book Into a Beehive!

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Turn This Book Into a Beehive! And 19 Other Experiments and Activities That Explore the Amazing World of Bees
Author: Lynn Brunelle
Illustrator: Anna-Maria Jung
Published April 3rd, 2018 by Workman Publishing

Summary: What a promise! Actually, promises. First, here’s a book that teaches kids all about the fascinating world of bees. Second, fun exercises, activities, and illustrations engage the imagination and offer a deeper understanding of bee life and bee behavior. Third, by following a few simple steps including removing the book’s cover and taping it together, readers can transform the book into an actual living home for backyard bees. Fourth, added all together,Turn This Book Into a Beehive! lets kids make a difference in the world—building a home where bees can thrive is one small but critical step in reversing the alarming trend of dwindling bee populations.

Turn This Book Into a Beehive!introduces kids to the amazing mason bee, a non-aggressive, non-stinging super-pollinator that does the work of over 100 honeybees. Mason bees usually live in hollow reeds or holes in wood, but here’s how to make a home just for them: Tear out the perforated paper—each illustrated as a different room in a house—roll the sheets into tubes, enclose the tubes using the book’s cover, and hang the structure outside. The bees will arrive, pack mud into the tubes, and begin pollinating all the plants in your backyard.

Twenty experiments and activities reveal even more about bees—how to smell like a bee, understand the role of flowers and pollen, learn how bees communicate with each other through “dance,” and more. It’s the real buzz on bees, delivered in the most ingenious and interactive way.

About the Author: Lynn Brunelle is a four-time Emmy Award–winning writer for Bill Nye the Science Guy and author of over 45 books, including the bestselling Pop Bottle Science and Camp Out! She is a regular contributor to KING-TV’s New Day Northwest as a family science guru and NPR’s Science Friday.

Q&A with Author, Lynn Brunelle:

Unleashing Readers: How did you research and learn more about the mason bee?

Lynn Brunelle: First I went to garden stores and asked around about bees.

I learned that honeybees and social bees were only 2% of the bees on the world. 98% of the bees are solitary wild bees that do amazing work as pollinators. I saw some of the houses these garden centers were selling to attract these bees. Then I went online and did some digging. All honeybees are domesticated and were brought here by colonists. In fact honeybees have been domesticated for a loooooooong time! There are images of beekeepers carved into caves, chiseled into Egyptian art, painted on Greek pottery and minted into Roman coins.

The solitary bees like mason bees are native bees and they’re amazing pollinators. I found experts as well. I contacted the USDA mason bee lab in Utah and spoke with bee people from around the country. It was so interesting and really exciting to learn so much.

Then I made my prototype of a book-turned-hive and stuck it out in my garden. Mason bees came! It worked; my garden has never been so productive!!

UR: How did you generate the activities within the book?

LB: My favorite thing is to make big concepts accessible to people of all ages, especially kids. And I think using laughter and hands-on fun is a great way for kids to really understand a concept. So when I was writing all of the amazing things about bees, I was always keeping in mind what kind of hands-on activity I could share for kids to really absorb the content. The fact that bees are positively charged and flowers are negatively charged and that makes pollen leap to a bee is FANTASTIC! And you can show that with a balloon and confetti. The fact that bees are amazing smellers is a perfect lead-in for getting kids to tune into their own sense of smell.

UR: Which activity is your favorite?

LB: It’s the actual making of the mason bee home that I love. Turning the book into a hive and watching as things unfold in the garden.

With mason bees, every girl’s a queen—like a single mom she finds the house—usually a hollow reed or stem or any tube—even paper ones in an inside out book cover!!! She gathers food, makes a pile of food, lays an egg on top of the food pile and then gathers mud to spackle a wall. In a good hollow tube, she can make 6-10 little rooms with an egg and a food supply in each one.

UR: What’s something else we might learn about you, either as a writer or as a person?

LB: I love my job! I get to learn about new things and share them every day. I love the outdoors. My family and I love hiking through the woods with the dogs, kayaking on the water and paddle boarding in the summer. We enjoy camping and exploring. I have a happy garden, I make jewelry and fused glass and am learning how to weld. My sons and I play the ukulele. They are teaching me to tell the difference between rap artists and I play the trombone. I make a great hummus and am getting better at rolling sushi with the help of my patient husband.

We Flagged: 


Thank you to Lynn Brunelle and Workman Press for this interview!

 

Author Guest Post!: “Defeating Your Fear of Writing” by Jan Eldredge, Author of Evangeline of the Bayou

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“Defeating Your Fear of Writing”

“Fear is a steal trap,” Gran advises Evangeline, the heroine of my debut middle grade novel. EVANGELINE OF THE BAYOU is the story of twelve-year-old Evangeline Clement, a haunt huntress apprentice studying the ways of folk magic and honing her monster-hunting skills. As soon as her animal familiar makes itself known, the only thing left to do is prove to the council she has heart. Then she will finally be declared a true haunt huntress. Of course, things do not go as planned for Evangeline. And when she and her grandmother are called to New Orleans to resolve an unusual case, she must summon her courage to defeat a powerful evil that’s been after her family for generations.

Gran goes on to warn Evangeline, “Fear keeps you from moving forward. It binds up your courage as well as your smarts.” These wise words of Gran’s hold true for nearly any situation we encounter, whether it be hunting monsters or writing essays.

As the leader of a local writers group for the past dozen years, and having been a member of numerous critique groups, I’ve learned that one thing we creatives all have in common is fear. And we have a lot of them, like: showing our writing to family and friends, getting our work critiqued by other writers, not knowing how to begin our stories, not knowing how to end our stories, or not being able to come up with any new ideas. But one of the most common fears I’ve seen is that of simply getting started, rallying the courage to just jump in and begin the writing of that novel, memoir, or short story. I call it “freezing on the high-dive”.  Taking that initial leap can be scary, but it doesn’t have to be.

After discussing this topic with numerous fellow writers over numerous coffees and teas, I’ve come to suspect this particular fear stems from the mistaken belief that we have to get our words right the first time, that somehow a perfect stream of brilliance must flow straight from our head and onto the blank sheet of paper. This unrealistic expectation can lead to a lot of frustration and writing resistance. Fortunately, there are a few easy techniques writers of any age and any writing level can incorporate to defeat their fear of writing and get their words moving forward. These simple tips can be applied to everything from the writing of novels and essays, to the writing of thank you notes.

The first step is to think of the writing process as one that uses two distinct parts of your brain: the creative side and the editorial side. Going into a project while trying to use them simultaneously is when many of us run into trouble. The two parts do not play, or work, well together.

Once you’ve accepted the fact that you’ve essentially just carved your brain into two halves, the next step is to hush that editorial side. Reassure it that it will have its turn to make corrections and clean things up later, but for now it’s Creative’s turn to play. Allow your imagination to run wild and free. Let go of rules and logic. There are no right or wrong ideas in this phase of your project. Don’t worry about choosing the perfect word, and don’t worry about things like spelling and punctuation. That’s Editor’s job for later on.

If you’re still having trouble coming up with ideas, here’s another helpful tip: just start writing. Write anything, even if it’s simply the words, “I don’t know what to write.” There’s something almost magical about the act of putting pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, that gets the creative tap flowing. Taking away all those expectations of perfection will conquer that fear of not being able to think of anything to write.

Now that you’ve got some great ideas and images, and maybe even some really cool lines of dialogue, let your creative side take a rest. This is the time to set your internal editor free. Allow it to get to work picking and choosing what elements to use, what order to put them in, and making sure the grammar, spelling, and punctuation are all up to snuff.

This is the technique I used while writing EVANGELINE OF THE BAYOU, and I’m using it now as I work on the sequel. Keeping the creative half of my mind separated from the editorial half has helped me defeat my fear of just diving into the writing. It’s helped me overcome my worry that my writing is too sloppy, nonsensical, and filled with mistakes. I know that by setting my creative side free to do what it does best, it’ll provide me with fun, fresh, and unexpected ideas. Sometimes it delivers more ideas than I can use, or ideas that are in need of further research and tweaking, but that’s okay, because I know I’ll soon be unleashing my editorial side to make my words all shiny and clean.

About the Author: Jan Eldredge was born and raised in Louisiana. She now lives in Celebration, Florida with her husband, their children, and a house full of cats. When she’s not writing, she spends her time reading, going to theme parks, and exploring old cemeteries. She is particularly fascinated with monsters, magic, and all such eldritch things.

Evangeline of the Bayou
Author: Jan Eldredge
Illustrator: Joseph Kuefler
Published May 1st, 2018 by Balzer + Bay

About Evangeline of the Bayou: Evangeline Clement is not just your everyday twelve-year-old. Upon her thirteenth birthday, she will officially become a haunt huntress just as talented as her mama and Gran, descended from a long, proud line of haunt huntresses in Louisiana. That is, if her animal familiar shows up, her powers emerge, and she can prove to the Council that she has heart (whatever that means). Because she couldn’t possibly be a middling, born without any magical abilities, right? She can’t be the end of Gran’s line.

Fear is a steel trap. It keeps you from moving forward. It binds up your courage, as well as your smarts.
— Gran Holyfield, haunt huntress

Citizens have been calling for Gran’s help to send troublesome creatures like Bayou Banshees and Johnny Revenants back where they belong. As her apprentice, Evangeline has learned not just the cures to any local supernatural afflictions but also how to navigate the bayou, how to climb trees, and how to fight – all while wearing her signature silver-tipped gator-skinned boots! Now in an unusual request, Gran has been called from the swamp to New Orleans to undertake an emergency case. But after a string of undeniable signs indicating that death is near, can Evangeline protect her aging grandmother and save the city of New Orleans – whether she’s a haunt huntress or not?

EVANGELINE OF THE BAYOU will inspire young readers to trust their gut no matter how terrifying that might be.

Thank you so much to Jan for your honest and inspiring post!

Author Guest Post!: “What Kinds of Storybook Characters Teach the Best Lessons” by Patty Costello, Author of Catalina and the Kind’s Wall

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“What Kinds of Storybook Characters Teach the Best Lessons?”

Do you want to teach your students prosocial behaviors? What are good ways to teach children about sharing, caring, helping, honesty, fairness, and responsibility? One popular way is through storybooks, which have been a part of children’s lives and schooling for hundreds of years. Storybooks entertain, but they can also teach important life and moral lessons. But what are the best kind of characters in storybooks to teach children prosocial behavior? Does one type of character work better than another? Many stories for young children often contain animal characters who are anthropomorphized: they take on human characteristics and can talk, walk, eat, and get into all sorts of mischief too. A group of researchers at the Jackman Institute of Child Study in Toronto found that in a review of over 1000 children’s books, more than half the books featured animals, and only 2% were realistic depictions of the animals; in other words, 98% of the animals in over half of picture books feature anthropomorphized animals. People on all sides of the picture book equation – teachers, students, parents, authors, and illustrators – all have assumed that children are naturally attracted to animals and therefore in using anthropomorphized animals, a story may be more enchanting and its lessons more accessible to children’s young minds. And the bigger assumption is that children may be more likely to act in agreement with the moral of the anthropomorphized animal story.

But is this true? These same researchers – Nicole Larsen, Kang Lee and Patricia Ganea – realized in 2017 that no direct psychological or child development study had ever asked this question – are anthropomorphized animals better at promoting prosocial behavior in children compared to a book featuring human characters? The researchers realized that it was unclear as to whether children can learn prosocial moral lessons from stories with anthropomorphized animal characters and then act accordingly.

The researchers designed a study to help answer this very question: Can children learn prosocial moral lessons from stories with anthropomorphized animal characters? Do stories with anthropomorphized animal characters work better than stories with human characters at teaching kids lessons?

How did they study this? They first picked a book called Little Racoon Learns to Share by Mary Pacard. The book has a sharing theme and a moral lesson – that sharing makes you feel good. The story features anthropomorphized animals as the main characters. The researchers took the book and used Photoshop to create the same book, only with human characters instead.

All children in the study (males and females ages 4 – 6) had a vocabulary test first to make sure that they were all at a similar language ability level. Next, the children were allowed to choose 10 of their favorite stickers from a huge pile of stickers. They were then told that there was a child their same age that could not be there that day and therefore would not get any stickers. The children were told that they could share some of their stickers with this (imaginary) child by putting them into an envelope when no one would be looking. This was the pre-test or baseline measure to get a sense of their sharing level before they heard the book about sharing.

Next, students were divided into three groups of 32 children each. The first group heard the sharing story with the human characters. The second group heard the same story, but with the original animal characters. The third group, the control group, heard a story about seeds. The children in the control condition were also asked to choose between reading either a book about human characters or a book about animal characters. This question was asked to determine whether children would prefer to read the animal book or the human book when given a choice. If the argument that using anthropomorphized animal characters makes a story more captivating to young children is correct, then children should be more likely to choose the book about animal characters. I’ll cut to the chase on this one – the children in this control group picked each book equally – there was not a clear preference for the animal book over the human book.

After the three groups heard the book, the same sticker sharing task was given with new stickers (post-test). The researchers measured the differences in sticker donation before and after the story reading. Again, the researchers were wondering whether reading storybooks with a sharing theme could significantly increase children’s generous giving relative to reading the control story about seeds. More importantly, they examined whether the story in the animal condition with anthropomorphized animal characters and the story in the human condition with real human characters would have differential effects in promoting generosity in young children, that is, would the children share more stickers after hearing the sharing story with animals or humans, or would it even matter?

What happened? I bet you are very curious by now! Reading a book about sharing had an immediate effect on children’s sharing behavior: Children who read the book with human characters became more generous with how many stickers they donated to the fictional child. In contrast, there was no difference in generosity between children who read the book with anthropomorphized animal characters and the control book; both groups decreased how many stickers they gave.

Here is the chart I adopted from the study:

Condition Before the book: How many stickers did they donate? After hearing the book: How many stickers did they donate?
Human characters 2.03 stickers 3 stickers ↑
Animals characters 2.31 stickers 1.7 stickers ↓
Control condition – book about seeds 2.14 stickers 2 stickers ↓

Why did the researchers think this happened? Maybe children see anthropomorphic characters more as animals than humans. Maybe they are not able to interpret the anthropomorphic characters as being similar to themselves, and as a result, the lesson in the story is not absorbed. This does not mean that children should never hear stories with animal characters, but it’s important to keep this in mind.

Future research future should look at whether anthropomorphism in books has the same effect on older children as on younger children as this study was done on 4 – 6-year olds.

It’s fun (at least for me as a cognitive neuroscientist!) to think about storybooks from an academic perspective – maybe the assumptions we hold are not true – studying these assumptions in a systematic way can provide real answers and guidance for future generations of teachers and parents.

This post was adopted from the following article should you like to read it yourself: Larsen, N.E., Lee, K., Ganea, P.A. (2017). Do storybooks with anthropomorphized animal characters promote prosocial behaviors in young children? Developmental Science, pp. 1-9.

About the Author: Patty lives in Boise, Idaho with her husband, a zany awesome toddler, a dog named Pippa, and a dog named Spencer. She grew up in the Twin Cities and is a Minnesotan at heart (you betcha!). She has a BS in Psychology from the University of St Thomas and a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Minnesota. She currently works in higher education. Her first book, Catalina and the King’s Wall, released May 5th, 2018 from Eifrig Publishing. At all hours of the day (and night) she can be found standing at her desk, helping her university run smoothly and working on her next children’s book. For fun, she likes to trail run, mountain bike, cross country ski, and hike. She is also a voracious volunteer for various local organizations.

Catalina and the King’s Wall
Author: Patty Costello
Illustrator: Diana Cojocaru
Expected publication: May 5th, 2018 by Eifrig Publishing

About Catalina and the King’s Wall: When Catalina overhears the king planning to build a wall, she fears her family won’t ever be able to visit. Catalina tricks the king into building walls that droop, drip, swirl, and swoosh away. But now the king demands an impenetrable wall. Luckily, Catalina has the perfect ingredients to bake up a family reunion! Through beautiful illustrations and enjoyable prose, kids learn how to stand by their convictions of inclusivity and kindness even when powerful people tell them not to.

Thank you, Patty, for a look at this study and for sharing your book!

Author Guest Post!: “Digging into Fantasy and SciFi: An Anthropological Approach” by Darby Karchut, Author of Del Toro Moon

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“Digging into Fantasy and SciFi: An Anthropological Approach”

Like many authors, I came to writing via a circuitous route. A childhood obsession with The Lord of the Rings led to a fascination with history and other cultures, which led to an undergraduate degree in anthropology, which led to teaching 7th grade social studies, which led to writing middle grade and YA fantasy. See? Circuitous.

This is particularly true with my upcoming book, Del Toro Moon, a tale about a boy and his family—descendants of Spanish knights and aided by talking Andalusian war horses—who hunt monsters in the modern-day American Southwest. Del Toro Moon incorporates all my feels: fantasy, horses, the history and legends of the Southwest (I’m a proud New Mexican native now living in Colorado), and powerful familial bonds, especially between fathers and sons.

Since I write mostly fantasy, my school visits often focus on reading and writing in that very popular genre. One writing trick I share with upper elementary and middle/high school students is to have them scrutinize literary worlds as an anthropologist would—another cross-curriculum tool between literature and social studies.

Part One

I begin by reviewing the eight elements or universals found in all human cultures. I do include this caveat: if a group of people does not have all eight elements, then it is probably a social group, not a culture as an anthropologist would define it:

Elements of Cultures

Religion

  • Religion answers basic meanings about life
  • Can be formal and elaborate or informal and peripheral to the culture

Language

  • One of the strongest unify forces of a culture
  • Variation of a language is called a dialect (local form of a language that may have a distinct vocabulary and pronunciation)
  • Idioms, metaphors, sayings, and cuss words – so fun for writers!

History

  • Actual as well as mythical
  • Shapes how a culture views itself and the world
  • Stories about the challenges and successes of a culture support certain values and help people develop cultural pride and unity
  • Cultural holidays mark important events and enable people to celebrate their heritages

Daily Life (Food/Clothing/Shelter)

  • Secular and holy meals
  • Clothes and weapons or tools, including information technology
  • Housing, including the building, furniture, gardens, etc.

Social Groups

  • People can belong to more than one social group based on age, gender, interests, etc.
  • The family is the most important social group
  • People act differently in different groups (socialization)
  • Ethnic group: a group that shares a language, history, religion, and sometimes, physical traits

Arts & Crafts

  • Expresses what people think is beautiful and meaningful
  • Can also tell stories about important figures and events in the culture
  • Music, visual arts, dance, performing arts, literature, crafts

Government

  • People need rules in order to live together without conflict
  • Limited Governments (restricts the power of its leaders)
  • Unlimited Governments: (leaders are all-powerful)

Economy

  • A system that determines what goods and services are produced, how to produce them, and who will receive them
  • Four main types of economic systems:
    • Traditional: barter and trade
    • Market: capitalism
    • Command: communism
    • Mixed: a blend of two or more

Part Two

Next, the students divide into teams of two or three. Using a simple web graphic organizer (I’ve included an example—feel free to use it), each team takes apart a favorite book, movie, or TV show and determines if that book/movie/show/etc. has those eight elements. Some common favorites are:

Star Wars                                Harry Potter                 Star Trek         Percy Jackson

The Lord of the Rings            The Hunger Games        Warriors          Others?

The students must include a justification. For example, if a team is examining Star Wars and puts “Jedi” in the Religion circle, they must explain why they placed it there as opposed to History or Government.

Part Three

Finally, I have them complete the same exercise with their own work-in-progress. This is also a useful tool to aid in plotting a story prior to writing the first draft. I’ve had some pretty amazing discussions during this activity. One of my favorite was a debate focused on whether information technology should be listed under “Tools” or “Religion.”

I’d enjoy hearing about other ways teachers and librarians are connecting various disciplines, especially between the humanities and STEM. Please share with me and thank you!

About the Author: Darby Karchut is a multi-award winning author, dreamer, and compulsive dawn greeter.  A proud native of New Mexico, she now lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where she runs in blizzards and bikes in lightning storms. When not dodging death by Colorado, Darby is busy at her writing desk. Her books include the best selling middle grade series: THE ADVENTURES OF FINN MacCULLEN. Best thing ever: her YA debut novel, GRIFFIN RISING, has been optioned for film. Her latest book, DEL TORO MOON, releases Fall 2018 from Owl Hollow Press. Visit the author at www.darbykarchut.com

Del Toro Moon
Author: Darby Karchut
Publishing September 2018 by Owl Hollow Press

Summary: Bad enough Matt Del Toro is the greenest greenhorn in the family’s centuries-old business: riding down and destroying wolf-like creatures, known as skinners. He must also learn how to match his father’s skills at monster hunting. Odds of doing that? Yeah, about a million to one. Because Matt’s father is the legendary Javier Del Toro—hunter, scholar, and a true caballero: a gentleman of the horse.

Now, with the skinners multiplying, both in numbers and ferocity, Matt is desperate to keep his father and hot-tempered older brother from killing each other, prevent his new friend, Perry—a horse-crazy girl who recently moved to their small town of Huerfano, Colorado—from discovering the true nature of his odder-than-oddball family, and save a group of paleontologists from getting skinner-ed.

Luckily, Matt has twelve hundred pounds of backup in his best friend—El Cid, an Andalusian war stallion with the ability of human speech, more fighting savvy than a medieval knight, and a heart as big and steadfast as the Rocky Mountains.

Serious horse power.

Those skinners don’t stand a chance.

www.darbykarchut.com

www.owlhollowpress.com

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35183477-del-toro-moon?from_search=true

Thank you Darby for sharing this look at writing from a cross-curricular viewpoint!

 

Blog Tour with Author Guest Post and Giveaway!: “The Importance of a Diverse Cast of Characters” by Carolyn O’Doherty, Author of Rewind

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“The Importance of a Diverse Cast of Characters”

One of the lessons most writers learn early in their careers is to write what you know. This is generally good advice, since understanding a place or a topic or an emotion makes it much easier to write something that sounds real on the page. The rule is not, of course, meant to be taken completely literally. Fiction is, by definition, made up. Having spent time in one city, it isn’t a huge stretch to place a story in a city one hasn’t visited. If you understand what it feels like to be scared or excited you can believably expand that experience to portray the emotional impact of say, being kidnapped or winning the lottery without suffering (or enjoying) that fate yourself. But how does “write what you know” apply when we’re talking about characters with different cultural backgrounds than their authors?

Diversity in books has become a hotly debated topic in recent years and for good reason. Too many readers feel alienated because an overwhelming percentage of books on the shelves are about exclusively white, middle class, straight characters. This limited perspective doesn’t just alienate people who don’t fit this narrow profile, it is a lost opportunities for everyone as books are an ideal way for people to immerse themselves in other cultures and life experiences. The challenge for an author is how to accurately create diversity when that is not “what we know.” It’s a challenge that must be approached with care. Getting the neighborhoods wrong when your character wanders the streets of Chicago is mildly annoying; using a stereotype to show a teenager is gay or African American is both damaging and offensive.

So what is an author to do? I am a white, middle class, woman who has mostly lived in cities. I don’t feel confident about accurately portraying the life experience of someone in a poor rural community who faces racism on a regular basis. What I can do is create a world for my characters that is not solely populated by white, middle class people, and I can do that with confidence because the world I live in is chock full of people from every background, shape, and color. Basically, I can follow the rule to write what you know while adding this important corollary: pay attention. I set REWIND in my hometown, so to make the scenes feel realistic, I had to pay attention to the people I actually see every day. Who passes me on the street when I head to work? Where is my grocery store clerk from? What kinds of accents do I overhear when eating out at a restaurant? Writing a multicultural community is not only the “right thing to do,” it is also the accurate thing to do.

In REWIND I have to admit to a little bit of a cheat. The teenage protagonists in the novel are orphaned and have been raised their entire lives in an Institutional Center. This set-up allowed me to include characters of various races without having to portray multiple cultures. Or, what is probably more accurate, I could place them all in my own culture without that feeling false within the context of the story. My first person point-of-view character is white, but other characters in the book are not. (I looked up census data and matched the ethnicity of the remaining teenagers—all of whom share a random genetic trait—to the reported census distribution in order to accurately reflect the region.) I did sometimes mention someone’s race as part of a character description, but tried to add that detail to white characters as often as I did with minority ones, in hopes that “white” wouldn’t be the assumed default just because no race is mentioned.

Diversity in book is more than just having an international cast. One of my fears as a writer is that I inadvertently typecast a character. My efforts to avoid this have focused on another fundamental lesson for good writing: descriptions are strongest when they also illuminate something about the book’s world or about the character doing the describing. Saying “the Hispanic teacher handed out our assignments” does not create a compelling scene in part because real people are never defined solely by their ethnicity or sexuality or any other single factor. Writing a scene where our hero is at his friend Manuel’s family restaurant and Manuel is mocking his attempts to pronounce the Spanish words on the menu tells me something about Manuel as a person and his relationship with our hero. Having a non-Asian character step into an Asian grocery store and not be able to read the packing nor understand the people around her could be a great way to show her feelings of alienation. Like real people, characters should stand out as unique and multi-faceted. My hope is that by placing three-dimensional characters in a variety of realistic settings, a greater breadth of readers will feel at home in my novels.

I know that including a diverse cast in a book with a white point-of-view character is not the same thing as creating truly inclusive literature. In a better world, there will be more published authors who are able to represent the life experiences of underrepresented people with nuance and understanding. REWIND is my debut novel. As a writer, I am still exploring ways to better incorporate diversity. As a reader, I encourage all of us to seek variety in our reading choices, both to support those voices that sometimes struggle to be heard and to enrich our own life by learning what it feels like to be someone else. This is not because reading widely is a politically correct imperative—immersion in a wide array of experiences is the gift we give ourselves when we sit down to read a good book.

Thank you so much to Carolyn for this IMPORTANT post and for being willing to chat about diversity with us! 

About the Author: Carolyn O’Doherty lives in a much prettier and less dangerous version of Portland than her characters. She’s loved writing and books her whole life, but ventured into novel writing late. In 2011 she received an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in Creative Writing from Stonecoast. When, as a kid, she dreamed up the idea of freezing time, she only considered the benefits: always having the perfect snappy come-back, the right answer on the test, untraceable revenge. It was when she turned the idea into a novel that she delved into the dark side of this potential blessing.  Outside of writing, Carolyn has spent the last twenty years working with Portland non-profits to develop affordable housing.

Make sure to checkout her debut novel: 

Summary: [April 10th, 2018 by Boyds Mills Press] Sixteen-year-old Alex is a Spinner–she has the ability to rewind time to review past events. Hated and feared because of their ability to find the truth, the small population of Spinners is restricted to Centers–compounds created to house and protect them. Alex’s society uses the Spinners’ skills to solve major crimes, but messing with time comes with consequences: no Spinner lives past the age of twenty. At sixteen, Alex is in her prime–until time sickness strikes early. When she is offered an experimental treatment, Alex sees a future for herself for the first time. But the promising medication offers more than just a cure–it also brings with it dire consequences.

Don’t miss out on the other stops on the Rewind blog tour: 

Sunday, April 15
Unleashing Readers

Monday, April 16
Linda K. Sienkiewicz blog

Tuesday, April 17
Books by Pamela Thompson blog

Wednesday, April 18
YA Books Central

Thursday, April 19
The Brain Lair

Friday, April 20
Ms. Yingling Reads

And make sure to enter the Rewind giveaway!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thank you again to Carolyn and Boyds Mills Press for hosting the Rewind blog tour!

For more advice to writers about including diversity into your work, visit https://diversebooks.org/resources/resources-for-writers/.

Author Guest Post!: “Let Me Tell You a Secret” by Barb Rosenstock, Author of many nonfiction texts including her newest, The Secret Kingdom

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“Let Me Tell You a Secret”

It’s almost always the kids’ first question, “Where do you get your ideas?”

At school visits, I say the typical author stuff: I keep a file of items that I find interesting (true.) I read a lot of books and take notes (true.) I’m a veteran eavesdropper and will ask anyone almost anything (super true.)

But recently, I realized that I’m not being completely honest. All these above techniques give kids (their teachers and librarians) the impression that “ideas” are purposeful. As in, “I think I’ll write a book, which idea will I use?”

That kind of thinking is exactly why I remember disliking the writing I had to do for school (honestly, I hated writing, so if you know a kid that hates it, maybe she’ll be an author!)  I hope things have changed, but I remember school writing as a series of prompts: Write about an adventure. How would your dog talk? What if you lived on the moon?

Though I was a natural blabbermouth, writing prompts paralyzed me.  As a third grader faced with blank paper and a “creative writing” prompt, my overwhelming thought was, “What if a girl has nothing to say?” Which gave me the idea (still in there, btw) that I was somehow “bad” at writing. Because I couldn’t create on cue, didn’t like fantasy, and couldn’t write about what I didn’t care about.

Maybe it’s idealistic, but I’d rather kids want to write, not have to write—you know, the way most of them really want to talk. Rather than making it seem like real writers wrack our brains and go over idea lists when a project is due, it’s time to let you in on a secret

My ideas, almost all of them, are accidents. I’m doing one thing and something else comes up. I’m reading one thing and something else is mentioned. Writing is following your mind wherever it goes. It’s noticing what’s around you. Kids (those who love writing and those who don’t) are great at noticing! Yet, writing ideas are sometimes presented as if they are foreign objects a kid has to sweat over and hunt out. It’s not true. For example, I tripped on the idea for my newest book doing something most kids love, surfing the internet.

The Secret Kingdom, is the true story of an outsider artist in India named Nek Chand.  I had no “ideas” in a folder about Nek Chand, or his large art environment, the Rock Garden of Chandigarh. I knew nothing about outsider art. Instead, I was working on a draft of a Van Gogh picture book (now the book, Vincent Can’t Sleep) that was going nowhere. I was bored. I was frustrated. I spent hours on Twitter and FaceBook. Vincent was driving me crazy–I couldn’t come up with the right words to show how he loved being outside at night. I hated Van Gogh, and I hated writing. I sat in my office searching random things on my laptop, and accidentally googled something like, “artists working outside.”

Boom! There was a picture of a waterfall with oddly cool statues in front of it. What’s that? Wait! One guy made that? How? Out of recycled scraps? Where? In India? Vincent went into a file folder and I was off in search of the story that became The Secret Kingdom.

Every author works differently, but that’s how my books are born. They don’t come from lists of ideas, but instead from accidental encounters and questions. Books are born from what I don’t know. Books are born from, “Wow! Cool!” And since kids are the wow-est, cool-est people on the planet, hopefully we can all find ways to let their reading and writing reflect their passions.

One of the other common school visit questions (teacher prompted I’m sure) is, “How do you do your research?” Again, I usually answer, “in libraries, and traveling to the settings of my books.” For various books I’ve visited national parks, presidential homes and watched cars race on a beach.  When kids write though, schools typically can’t provide those kinds of experiences.  So, what do you do when you can’t visit?

I’d never really run into that situation before, but that was the case with The Secret Kingdom. Though I desperately wanted to travel to Chandigarh and see Nek Chand’s Rock Garden, a research trip to India was totally out of this picture book author’s budget.

How could I experience it instead? Look at every single photo, map and schematic of the Rock Garden I could find. Read every book or article ever written about Nek Chand or his artwork. Track down and talk by email to people around the world who knew Nek Chand, his work and had visited the place themselves. Discover that a small museum within driving distance had the largest collection of his work in the U.S. Contact the U.K. based foundation trying to support his legacy. Most importantly, ask people culturally familiar with the setting and Mr. Chand to read drafts and comment. The way Nek Chand picked up scraps of village life and built them into art is the way I collected people who helped tell his story. We became a community convinced that the story of one refugee who created a new home with his art was important for today’s children.

Here’s the secret about writing that I promise to share from now on. There isn’t a list. There isn’t a right way. Honor the way you think. Be open to what life throws at you. Surround yourself with people who care. Creating books or any other art is a lot like life, a series of lovely accidents.

About The Secret Kingdom: Nek Chand, a Changing India, and a Hidden World of Art, by Barb Rosenstock, illustrated by Clarie A. Nivola:

After the partition of India in 1947, Nek Chand Saini settled in the city of Chandigarh, with nothing but stories brought from his homeland. Dismayed at his stark new surroundings, Nek began collecting river rocks, broken glass, and cracked water pots found on the roadside. He cleared a section of jungle and for seven years he stockpiled odds and ends. They were castoffs and rubbish to everyone else, but to Nek, they were treasures. He began to build a labyrinth of curving paths, mosaics, and repeating patterns: his very own tribute to the winding village of his youth, a hidden land of stories. Nek kept his kingdom secret for fifteen years, until a government crew stumbled upon it and sought to destroy it. But local fans agreed in awe: the Rock Garden had to be protected. Author Barb Rosenstock introduces readers to the outsider artist’s stunning creation, while Claire A. Nivola’s illustrations bring to life the land’s natural beauty and the surreal world Nek coaxed from his wild landscape.

About Barb Rosenstock:

Barb Rosenstock is a children’s book author who loves true stories. Her work includes The Camping Trip That Changed America: Theodore Roosevelt, John Muir, and Our National Parks, illustrated by Mordicai Gerstein; The Noisy Paint Box: The Colors and Sounds of Kandinsky’s Abstract Art, illustrated by Mary GrandPré; and many others. Barb Rosenstock lives in Chicago.

Thank you to Barb for her amazing post showing us insight into author-dom!
If you haven’t read any of Barb’s amazing nonfiction picture books, you should get on that now! 🙂

**Thank you to Kathleen and Phoebe at Candlewick for connecting us with Barb!**