Allison's Book Bag

This is my second post about the 2018 Plum Creek Children’s Literacy Festival. Now in its 23rd year, the festival is for anyone who loves to read or write children’s books.

This week’s post will focus on the authors who write mostly for older readers. Notes are transcribed as I heard them, but at times edited or rearranged for a more cohesive read.

LAURIE HALSE ANDERSON

Laurie Halse Anderson is a New York best-selling author known for her children’s and young adult novels. In 2010, she received the Margaret A. Edwards Award from the American Library Association in 2010 for her contribution to young adult literature. I bought her book Speak with me to get signed as well as a title from her Vet Volunteer series.

This is her second time in Nebraska. A couple of years ago she visited Omaha and was greeted with lots of popcorn. The title of her presentation at Plum Creek was “Speaking up About Hard Things.”

Adolescence is hard; our culture often doesn’t know how to talk about it.

Anderson currently lives in Philadelphia. Her son is back from the military. He posted recently on social media about the need to listen to victims of sexual violence. This made her cry, because he obviously listened to her passion about this issue. She had five grandsons under the age of six; another grandson is on the way. Life is amazing for her now, but it didn’t use to be.

People who had known Anderson a long time ago and had tried to help her survive are surprised at her current life. As a child, she struggled with speech, attention, and reading. She loved being taken out of class by special education teachers to learn how to read. Once she figured out “the code of reading,” she read all the time and everywhere. On Thursdays, the library used to remain open a little late, and she’d stay to read books on her belly.

Silence poisons us and hurts our society. Identify those things which make you not comfortable and talk about them.

Adolescence was complicated for Anderson. Her family moved three times and she wasn’t happy in middle school. She was no longer a girl but growing into a women. She grew up in a culture of silence and wasn’t taught how to deal with periods. No one talked about changing bodies, relationships, race, or other uncomfortable issues.

Her dad grew up in a small town. He wanted to operate a gas station. Fighting in the war and seeing concentration camps changed his life. He saw firsthand what hate does and decided to live in love by becoming a minister. He wrote poetry and Anderson was inspired to write because of him. Then he developed post-traumatic stress disorder and began to drink. He became an alcoholic and lost his pastoral position. They were living in a parsonage and so they lost their home. Eventually, her dad figured stuff out, and he returned to the church.

The family continued to move, and Anderson hated high school. Their house was a dump. She was tall and didn’t fit in with her peers. In a three-week relationship with a guy, she allowed him to kiss her and he raped her. She didn’t talk about it because she was afraid her dad would shoot him. She values that her parents loved her, but the problem was that she was afraid they’d react out of love and go to jail. Instead she spent a year on drugs, but she had a gym teacher who encouraged her to pursue sports. He inspired her to stay clean and to do her homework. She started hanging out with people with healthier relationships.

Every author gets letters from kids who say they stopped reading at fourth grade, because the books are no longer fun or don’t connect with them. Those kids who aren’t reading at age 18 are another lost citizen. We do a disservice to young people when books don’t reflect their experiences.

Anderson read every book she could find, but not the books being taught in school because she didn’t see herself in those book. For 25 years, Anderson didn’t tell anyone about being raped. Even then, she only spoke up because she was a mother, but she was depressed.

When you’re surrounded by light, you don’t need candles. It’s in the dark that you need light. Even the “normal” kids are confused when they reach adolescence.

Her books are known as a problem novel, a term Anderson dislikes. To her, if a book doesn’t have problems, it’s a phone book. She prefers to call her books “resilience” literature, an ideal which she believes all kids need to learn this.

Her book Twisted was written in reaction to Speak. Only 27% are reported of sexual assaults reported; false reporting is only 2-7% which is the same as other crimes. Boys liked Speak but didn’t understand why the main character was so upset. Anderson said that society need to hear their reaction and to educate them. Guys might say “I pushed too far” “I took it too far” “It’s not rape.” Society needs to talk about boundaries. Her book Shout is a free-verse book that covers experiences of young people who have talked to her about sexual assault.

Her book Wintergirls is about anorexia, which has highest mortality rate in the US. A teen had her mom do a tattoo on her neck: “I am thawing.” Anderson said we all know adults who didn’t make it through their adolescence but are scarred today. We don’t want people to be scarred; we want them to be vibrant.

History is the study of gossip.

Anderson wrote Fever 1793 after reading an article about the fever epidemic in Philadelphia. She likes gross medical things and thought middle school students would too. While doing her research, she stumbled across a fact that changed her life: Benjamin Franklin owned slaves. In his later life he realized this was wrong, but he couldn’t change the situation in his lifetime, and so he released them in his will. Anderson began to research slavery and found a lot of things she didn’t know about the Civil War but hesitated before taking on the project of writing a book from the viewpoint of African Americans. She talked with her editor for six months about race before writing Fever 1793. He told her “Slavery is not the African American experience; it’s the American experience; We as white people owe our nation to learn more.”

Censorship is the child of fear and father of ignorance. Jesus didn’t just say NO; he told stories. When we engage with stories, we fill in the blanks and make connections.

Some of Anderson’s books have been censored. At first, she was hurt and then mad, but this wasn’t constructive and so she began to listen to what the censors had to say. She found out they were afraid. They don’t know how to talk to the kids. They believed if they didn’t talk about it, then bad stuff won’t happen. She’s tried to respect the fear and engage censors in conversation.

MEGAN MACDONALD

Megan MacDonald is the author of the popular and award-winning Judy Moody and Stink series. She is also the author of The Sisters Club and has written many picture books. I bought the first book in each of the series for her to sign. In her presentation, she shared a little about her life and a lot about the inspirations behind her books.

Her dad dropped out of school in eighth grade but was always a reader and instilled a love of reading in MacDonald and her sisters. Her dad’s nickname was “Little Storyteller” because he could turn anything into a story. The threat worked. One day MacDonald and her sister resolved to read all the books on the bookmobile. The sisters didn’t realize that the books were replenished every night and so there was no way to read all the books. Shed learned how to measure the value of a book from her sisters. If the last page made them made cry, the book was good. A family rule was no books at the supper table. Her dad made the threat he would rip out last page if anyone caught with a book.

As the youngest, MacDonald never got to say anything and so developed a stutter. Her mom tried to solve the problem by going to the bookstore to get a book about how to help kids who stutter. A bookstore person suggested Harriet the Spy instead, which inspired MacDonald to start taking notes. She didn’t want to spy on neighbors and so instead she spied on a local famous person. The guy had a big dog and the dog bit her. Her spying days were over, but she continued to journal.

At college, MacDonald picked creative writing to major. She wore her best turtleneck and black pants and tried to look the part. She met with the head of the English department. He told her to go home and rip up her poems. She jumped up to leave but he stopped her. He told her, “You’re a prose writer.” She ran home and looked up the meaning of prose in dictionary to find out who she was. Prose was defined as ordinary and dull. Somehow, she still became a writer. She realized it was okay to write about ordinary stuff.

MacDonald started with picture books. She was working at a public library and running its story time. Puppets were donated. She couldn’t find a story for the hermit crab and so she made up a story. The parents wanted to know where to find the book. She decided to write it down. Next, she wrote about tales from her dad’s life, from history, from illustrations. Some of her books became Reading Rainbow offerings and Sparks New Reader offerings.

Ideas can come from anywhere. MacDonald has a photo of her face down on the driveway. Her parents just wanted a nice photo, but she wasn’t having anything of it and threw a tantrum. This photo inspired the idea behind Judy Moody.

MacDonald wrote two drafts of her book. The first version was a set of random stories. Her editor suggested she find a common theme. Megan submitted a 300-page book. Her editor told her this was too long but suggested she write a series. And she did!

The illustrator took 200 tries to get the cover of Judy Moody right. Judy was too young. Too sad. Too scary. Then impish and just right. The publisher printed the artwork on a cover that looks like brown paper. McDonald’s editor didn’t want to tell her for fear she wouldn’t like it, but the idea worked because brown paper is what Megan grew up with.

Her books start out as an idea written down on whatever is handy. MacDonald wrote down Judy Muddy on a napkin. The idea turned into Judy Moody Becomes Famous. Judy Moody Gets Famous is her book that receives the most mail. Some kids think Judy should have gotten famous by doing something big. Others love that she was famous by a good deed.

MacDonald saved the napkin because the idea on it had turned into a book, but also because students kept telling her that she could sell it on Ebay for millions. She received a book made of napkins. Now she can keep a book of her ideas.

Yes, there is Judy Moody movie! She co-wrote the movie screenplay. The director wants action and so McDonald suggested a chase scene after Bigfoot. Judy Movie has an ABC gum collection: Already Been Chewed gum! The movie people made a gum board and labeled the gums and gave it to McDonald.

The idea of a series about Stink came from boy readers who wanted more about Judy Moody’s brother. The science stuff he likes is based on MacDonald’s interests. She was upset that Pluto was demoted from being a planet. In her town there is a zombie walk. She fed cereal to slime mold, the slime grew, and she took pictures that she sent to Megan. A nephew was the only boy at Shakespeare camp. And the list of ideas continues!