In Which I Recommend Another Amazing, Diverse Magic School Book

Though the last book in the series was published almost 20 years ago now, thanks to the popularity of the movies and the theme park attractions based on them, the HP magic school books are firmly ingrained into our culture. 

However, there are new magic books coming out that I have hope may someday dethrone that series in the hearts of children. Last month I told you about Claribel Ortega's Witchlings, which I still highly recommend. But Witchlings isn't alone in creating an imaginative, fun, diverse magical world that holds its own against the HP world. Another fabulous contender is Dhonielle Clayton's The Marvellers, which came out this spring and which I just finished reading. 

In The Marvellers, Clayton imagines a magical society that mostly lives apart from the non-magical, whom they call Fewels. The Marvellers have built floating cities in the sky as well as a school that changes the way it looks every year known as the Arcanum. Starting at age 11, marveller children go and learn to harness their light at the Arcanum. Over the course of their first year, they are exposed to the five Paragons, and at the end of the year they learn their talent and join one of the Paragons. I love that the students aren't immediately boxed into one identity upon arrival. The MC of this book, Ella Durand, is from a magical family but not a Marveller family. Ella is from a Conjuror family. Conjurors are the descendants of slaves living in the Americas and the Caribbean. The Middle Passage changed their magic. They are in charge of the underworld and they use magic differently. They live in enclaves within Fewel cities. Marvellers have looked down on Conjurors for centuries, despite their shared history. Thanks to a change in Marveller law that her own parents pushed for, Ella is the first Conjuror to attend the Arcanum. Any Conjuror child is now welcome, but Ella is the only one who is brave enough to go. She encounters a lot of hate and prejudice, but also makes new friends, including a girl raised among Fewels who hates her magic and a boy with a secret who can talk to animals. The villain in this book is truly nuanced, and there are quite a few morally grey characters. The story tackles prejudice and racism head on, but is able to look at it differently because it takes place in an imaginary world. It tackles tough issues, but it feels like an engaging fantasy adventure and not at all like an issue book. The airborn world of the Marvellers is detailed, well conceived, and incredibly charming. I really want to visit the Arcanum and the floating cities. One thing I love about the book is that the students come from all over the world, which makes for a naturally diverse cast. The language issue is handled by having the students wear magical translation necklaces. As long as two people are wearing their necklaces, they'll hear each other in their native language. One student can be speaking French and another Swahili and there will be no communication problems. This book has so much to offer that the HP world lacks. It has made its way to the New York Times bestseller list. I hope it gets its own movie (or streaming show, which could actually reach a bigger audience) and earns a place in pop culture.

In Which I Gush About Some Queer Middle Grade Books

Before LGBTQIA+ Pride Month ends, I need to get to the post I've been meaning to write recommending some queer MG I've read this summer. First, these books I'm recommending are far from the only ones out there. There's more and more queer kidlit making its way into the world, which is a very good thing. It's a good thing for the queer kids, who are finally able to see themselves in books. It's a good thing for the kids working through their identity to see characters with similar questions. It's also a good thing for cishet kids to see queer kids in the books they read. Both so they understand the struggles those kids can go through and so they see the struggles and joys that are common to all of us, regardless of our sexual and gender identities. Especially in today's climate, when states are passing laws stopping trans kids from getting gender affirming care and/or preventing teachers from talking about LGBTQIA+ people in the classroom, we need to get these books into the hands of kids.  I believe it's my kids' generation that's going to turn the tide and make real progress to stop that toxic heteronormativity of western culture. I still sometimes struggle with "they" as a singular pronoun (even though it's been used in English for hundreds of years to refer to a person whose gender is unknown), but it slips off my kids' tongues naturally. They found out my cousin was gay and marrying another man and they were like, "Hope they have a great marriage." A teen at our church came out as nonbinary, started using they/them pronouns, and changed their preferred name, and my kids along with all the kids in the youth group just rolled with it, even though our church is on the conservative end of the UMC spectrum.

First up in my rundown is Michael Leali's lovely contemporary debut, The Civil War of Amos Abernathy. The writing and narrative style themselves are worthy of note. MC Amos' voice is classic middle grade and a treasure trove for a writer wanting to learn how to master voice. The novel is written alternating Amos' letters to a Civil War soldier who would likely have identified as a trans man if he had lived today with a present tense narrative covering one important day. The narrative combined with the letters slowly reveal what's happening and how important it is for Amos and his community. Amos has spent most of his life volunteering at a living history park of which his mom is the director. He has been out as a gay boy since elementary school, and he suddenly realizes in seventh grade that there are no queer people portrayed at the LHP. Along with his best friend and a new friend on whom he's developed a crush, he goes searching for queer people in the 19th century, including one I won't name who will likely surprise you. Amos' new friend and crush is from a conservative Christian family and he struggles with his feelings for Amos because he's been told his whole life that they're wrong. One thing I especially love about this book as a queer identifying and LGBTQIA+ affirming Christian myself is that Amos' family are also faithful churchgoers. They just attend a different, open and affirming church. So often religious characters in queer novels are painted exclusively as bigots, or at best as people who are reluctantly accepting but not happy about it. While that is absolutely the case for a portion of people of faith, that doesn't describe anywhere near all of us and I was glad to see both sides shown in this novel.

In the Key of Us by Miriam J. Lockington gives us two queer Black girls experiencing first love at a prestigious music summer camp. I know from twitter interactions with the author that the camp was inspired by a camp that my brother attended for many years and, based on what I know of it from him, the portrayal of the environment at a camp like that was pretty spot on. In addition to giving us a sweet first love story between two girls, this books addresses what it's like to be a BIPOC in a heavily white environment. It also tackles issues of grief, guilt, self-harm, and family pressure. Told in dual POV, this book and is thoughtful and tackles important issues without feeling like a heavy "issue book".

The Mirrorwood by Deva Fagan is a secondary world fantasy loosely inspired by the story of Sleeping Beauty. While the MC, Fable, is cishet, I believe it deserves a mention in a rundown of queer kidlit because the world Fagan has created is queernormative. Fable has a nonbinary sibling who uses they/them pronouns and this is not in any way remarkable. Families with two dads and two moms are mentioned in the villages Fable visits as a matter of course. In the world created for this book, being queer is just a part of some people's identity. There's no indication that they encounter prejudice or pushback of any kind. Both queer kids and cishet kids (and adults!) can benefit from seeing a world like this.

If forced to name the queer MG book I read this summer that's the most important, it would have to be David Levithan's Answers in the Pages. It's a short little book (I read it in one afternoon) following a boy whose mom starts a campaign to have a book his teacher (who is gay) assigns based on one sentence at the end about the two boys in the book loving each other. The MC's story is interspersed with chapters from the (made up) book showing just how incredibly innocuous and age appropriate the book is. A third narrative, which seems to sit apart from the other two until they all dovetail at the end, follows two junior high boys whose friendship is growing into a mutual crush, and who aren't sure how to handle their feelings for each other. This book resonated with me as a parent because, when my 17yo was in elementary school, my reaction to a book with two boys who might be in love with each other would have been closer to the MC's mom's reaction than I would like to admit to myself. I don't think I would have moved to have such a book removed from the classroom, but I would have been uncomfortable with it and would have at least thought internally along the lines of the argument his mom gives. She's not portrayed as a bigot who hates all gay people. She just has an idea that kids don't need to think about their sexuality until at least high school and for that reason it will just confuse them to have gay people mentioned in books they read in elementary school. That's a pretty common view for Gen Xers and millenials who are the parents of kids in school right now. We were never exposed to gay characters in books until high school at the very earliest and it can feel weird to us for our kids to read the books available now. Yes, some of the people (maybe even most of the people) moving to ban books really are hateful bigots. Others are like the MC's mom, people who have a generational misunderstanding of what kids can "handle" in the books they read, and whose minds can be changed (as this mom's mind is) when they stop to really listen to the other side.

I hope you'll pick up some of these books if you haven't read them and consider passing them on to the children in your life. If you have other great queer kidlit recs, I'd love to hear about them in the comments.

In Which I Tell You About a Really Awesome Book About Young Witches That You Need to Read

Okay, five or so faithful readers, I promised I would be back later to share some of my summer reads. Well, guess what, I'm back the very next day. Write this down, because it will probably never happen again. I'll write a post later this summer with a rundown of multiple books I've read, but for now I want to tell you about a book that everyone who likes middle grade fantasy should read, but you should especially read if you (or your kids) are a Harry Potter fan.

Just to be clear, I was a serious HP fan for many years. The books didn't come out until I was an adult, and I didn't discover them until book four came out when I was in graduate school. Despite this, I embraced the books and their world wholeheartedly. I got all the new books from #5 on on release day, read them within a couple days, and shared them with friends. I stood in line to see the first three movies the day they were released. I was all in.

Then I found out recently that the author is not a particularly nice person, to put it lightly. She is a vocal advocate against transgender rights in the UK. As if that wasn't bad enough, she has repeatedly told trans readers on Twitter that the message of belonging and acceptance that they found when they read her books as children was not meant for people like them. 

I believe it's possible to separate an artist's work from the artist and I have no plans to disown people who still enjoy the world. It really is an exceptionally cool and well-crafted world (though there are some problems and contradictions which, as my 17yo likes to say, produce plot holes big enough to drive a lorry through). However, after finding out this information about the writer I looked at the books with a more critical eye and realized there's prejudice baked into the books that I was blind to when I first read them. Just as one example, the books are rife with fatphobia. Can you name a single fat character from those books who is an admirable person? Ethnic and racial stereotypes that I didn't notice offhand as a white American reader are also all over the books. The author literally used two Chinese last names for Cho Chang's name. 

So I've stepped away from that world but I was longing to find another magical world that didn't have the same problems with either the author and the world. There's lots of great middle grade fantasy out there. I adore all of Rick Riordan's books as well as the books from his imprint that uplifts writers from marginalized cultures, Rick Riordan presents. Rick is pretty much the opposite of J.K. Rowling. He is actively trying to raise of the voices of cultural minorities and sexual and gender minorities and to do everything he can to make the books he writes as inclusive as possible. However, his books and the books from his imprint, while amazing and delightful, are a different type of fantasy from the Harry Potter books.

I'm happy to report that there's a recently released middle grade fantasy written by a nonbinary author of Dominican descent that is similar in vein to HP without all the negative elements above. The author, Claribel Ortega, was actively trying to create a world similar to the HP world in which people like her would feel welcome and see themselves. Claribel has succeeded admirably with Witchlings from Scholastic. 

The middle grade reader and HP fan at my house has not yet read this, but she was excited right away by a cover that showed that the main character and important supporting characters are girls. The cover really is delightful. I want to credit the artist Lissy Marlin and jacket designer Christopher Stengel.

The book is already an NY Times Bestseller, and I hope it finds its way into the hearts of countless MG readers and MG loving adults. There's lots of room left for multiple sequels and the story would make a great movie. Just like in the HP world, there's a magical world that lives alongside our modern world. One difference I love is that magical kids (witchlings) aren't shipped off the boarding school. There are schools within the magical towns that they attend during the day. There are whole witch families that are part of the plot, which I love. Claribel, by the way, circumvents that wizard/witch gender binary in HP by calling magical people of all genders witches. Boys and men are witches, girls and women are witches, and nonbinary people of all ages are witches (or witchlings if they haven't reached their full powers).

Kids are sorted in houses in a special ceremony at the age of 12. You can even find out which house/coven you would be sorted into by taking this quiz. The sorting kicks off the action when MC Seven Salazar isn't place in House Hyacinth with her best friend as she always dreamed but rather is one of three witches who are designated as "spares", an underclass within the magical community. Seven and her fellow spares turn out to be more formidable than anyone would have imagined. But I'll leave it to you to find out what else happens.

I recommend you run, not walk, to your nearest library or bookseller, to pick up this book. If buying a new book isn't in your budget and your library doesn't have the book, put in a request. I can't speak for all library systems, but our system is nearly always willing to buy my requests, especially if they're bestselling children's books.

In Which the State of My Inbox Compels Me to Buy Oreos

The writing life is tough. I mean, yeah, it's amazing to dream up whole worlds and I don't want to stop doing it. But it's also really tough. I've been actively trying to get an agent for nearly two and a half years now. With four different books. In all that time I have only ever had one agent request a full manuscript and two request partial manuscripts. The partials were for the same book. Two of my manuscripts never got any requests at all.

I've learned a lot over the past two and a half years. I know that each book has been better than the last. Every time I finished a book I was sure that book was going to be "the one". The one that got me an agent and then a book deal. Every time (so far) I have been wrong. But, looking back, I can see why the first three books didn't do that. I can see that I still needed to grow as a writer.

But this most recent one. I was so sure it was special. The pacing is on point. There's a cliffhanger ending at 10 pages, at 30 pages, and at 50 pages, the three increments agents normally ask for. It's unique. It has disability rep. It has queer rep. It has an environmental message. It even has a fox as a service animal.

Still, my inbox is crickets. I got two partial requests from agents who only ask for a query, but both ended in rejection. The advice is to query in small batches and change up  your query and opening pages if you don't get requests. So I've been doing that. I've had agented writers look over my query letter and opening pages. They've been pronounced great and sure to get requests. Still, agents don't seem to be getting the message.

Maybe it's not getting in front of the right person, people say. Is there a magic wand telling me who that right person might be? (Maybe you're an agent reading this after I queried you and you're that person? I can hope). Otherwise I just need to keep sending it to agents I think I'd like to work with who rep middle grade sci fi and seem like they might be interested. Maybe this will yield the results I'm looking for. Maybe the book is in the right inbox right now. There's no way to know that.

What I do know is that I'm not going to stop writing new stories. What I also know is that, if this round of queries doesn't go anywhere, I need to set this book aside. That doesn't mean it will be dead forever. My dream is that after I get an offer of rep for whatever book does that for me, my agent will be interested in eventually sending all of my books on submission to editors. There's no guarantee of that. But it's well within the realm of possibility. But at this point I need to protect my heart. I was so sure this was the book that was doing to get requests early and in spades. It has so many things agents are supposed to be looking for: disability rep, queer rep, and environmental message. I really don't know what it's missing. Or if it's missing nothing and the right person simply hasn't seen it.

That's one of the super frustrating things about writing. It can be really difficult to know if it's you or if it's them. But there are really two choices for writers facing piles of rejections. You can give up or you can keep writing. I'm not going to say I will always keep writing no matter what. That it doesn't matter at all if I never get published. I just feel compelled to tell stories. That's true for some people, but I'm not sure it will be true for me long term. If I'm still nowhere near publication in five years will I keep plugging away? I have lots of idea, so maybe. But maybe not. 

I love books, especially books for young people. I will never stop caring about them. But will I stop writing them if there's no hope they will ever make it on shelves? I just don't know. I hope I won't, but my battered heart can only take so much. If there comes a time when writing never brings me any joy I think it will be time to take a long break, at the very least.

Speaking of breaks, my kids are out of school for the summer, so I've decided to take a break from significant writing work. I might still write, but only if it brings me joy. Otherwise I'm going to enjoy spending time with my kids and I'm going to read a lot of books. 

Oh, and I mustn't forget the Oreos. One day last week when I was feeling particularly bad about the state of my inbox I found Fireworks Oreos at the store and I bought them. These are special edition Oreos that only come out in the summer. They have something like pop rocks in the cream. The rest of my family thinks that is super weird and will not eat them. So these are the only Oreos that are safe from my teenage son, who is basically a food black hole. So I get to eat my feelings and my family doesn't have more snack food tempting them. Everyone wins.

I've read some great books already this summer. I'll be back soon to share about some of them.

In Which My Son Attends a College Visit Weekend and I Come Away with Writing Advice

 My 17yo is starting to look seriously at colleges, and this weekend he attended an overnight visit event at Asbury University, which is his current top choice and only about 45 minutes from our house. He wants to study media production, and Asbury has a very well respected program. This weekend's visit was aimed at students interested in the media program and was capped off by the college's film festival on Saturday night. For the film festival weekend, there were judges and other visitors from the film industry on campus, giving talks and meeting with students and prospective students.

I stayed for the first talk before heading home, and I was pleasantly surprised that I took a lot a way from it as a writer. Asbury is a Christian university and the talk was aimed at that audience, titled "What every Christian needs to know before going to Hollywood". The speakers, a movie composer and a producer who are married to each other, emphasized that by "Hollywood" they really meant the entertainment industry in general, which is global, and that the principles would apply wherever the students ended up.

I was pleasantly surprised to realize that a whole lot of the advice applies to the creative life in general, including writing, and not just to moviemaking. It was also a good reminder that my son, who is severely dyslexic and doesn't read for pleasure (he can read, but it's a lot of work for him and he only reads when he needs the information) isn't quite as different from me as it would seem on the surface. At the core, he wants to build a life as a storyteller, just as I'm trying to do.

I won't share any of the specifically Christian advice on this general interest blog, but I thought some of the advice would apply to people of other faiths and no faith. Those points are as follows:

1. The importance of community. I've posted here about finding my writing community. Writing is most often a solitary occupation. When you're in the query trenches or agented but on submission to editors, it is also most often an incredibly discouraging occupation. If you have someone to share both your joys and your sorrows with, it's significantly more bearable.

2. Don't go into writing (they said filmmaking, but the principle is the same) because you want to be rich and famous. Go into it because you love to tell stories. That's what I try to keep in mind as I write story after story that no agents want to pick up so far. Yes, I want to see them on shelves and I hope to someday make some money from them, but it's unlikely that I'll get rich from it, which is okay. What I want to do is to tell stories that will both entertain and impact readers.

3. Show interest in other people in the industry. Don't always think about only yourself and what will benefit you. This may in the end open doors for you. I'm not sure if the "opening doors" part is quite as true in publishing, but, along with building a community of writing peers, I do think it's both helpful and important to establish relationships to whatever extent you can with writers ahead of you on the path. At least, they're more likely to read and hype your book if they already know who you are and have had good interactions with you.

4. It takes 10,000 hours of work before you become an expert in something. It may not take exactly 10,000 hours to write a novel that's good enough to get published, but in the case of the large majority of writers, it's not your first novel that ends up being your debut novel. Even if you do sell your first novel, the version that sits on shelves will go through sometimes significant edits and take a lot of work. Even established writers often say that they look back on their early published books and see all that they still had to learn. I can look back at my first three books and, even though I love the stories and hope to someday edit/rewrite them into books worthy of publication, I can see the things I still had to learn and the ways they're lacking. Not that my fourth book is perfect, but it's much better at this stage than the others were at the same stage because of everything I learned from writing them.

I returned to campus for the film festival last night, and I heard something there that was meaningful to me as a writer as well. The chair of the media communication department quoted a filmmaker whose name I immediately forgot (please tell me in the comments if you know who said this), who said "Make visible what, without you, might otherwise never have been seen." That really struck me, because that is half of why I write. First, because I love to tell stories, but second to make the marginalizations I identify with or am very close to, visible. This includes people on the asexual spectrum, girls with ADHD, and the diabetes community. Even if you don't identify with any marginalized group I still think this can apply. You might be making small town life visible, an unusual interest, an experience you've had, or something I haven't even thought of. Everyone has something unique to bring to their writing, and I believe there's a kid out there who could see a character like them in a book for the first time because of the story only you/I can tell.

To end, I'll share some pictures from the festival. I got to meet actor Joel McCreary, who played the prime minister of Genovia in the Princess Diaries as well as posing by statues of Kings Peter and Edmund of Narnia, which are actual set pieces from Prince Caspian movie. The media building as Asbury officially qualifies as a museum because of all the TV and movie artifacts it houses. They're all from projects that Asbury faculty and alumni have worked on.

In Which I Attend a Writing Conference and Come Home With a Business Card

When I started this blog a year and a half ago I set a goal of blogging once a month, and, given my record of 6+ months between posts on my parenting blog, I'm doing pretty well even though I've missed the mark a handful of times. I was sure I'd missed a month since I've been so busy this winter, but my last post was on February 1st and it's still March, so I haven't failed yet!

I've been in the query trenches for a few months now with my fourth middle grade novel with very little to show for it. It's disheartening since I was so sure this one was going to be "the one". It's not only the best written of my books (it turns out you do get better by writing more books), but it has both queer rep and disability rep (including an adorable glucose alert fox!) in addition to a climate change message. I mean, isn't that everything agents and editors are looking for? Apparently not, or at least not any of the agents I've queried so far. 

I've changed my beginning since the first set of queries, and a conference I attended this weekend showed me that I should try changing it again because both the agent in the First Pages section and my peer critique group were confused by the beginning. At the advice of a CP, I'd pulled a scene that was originally in chapter 6 and stuck it at the beginning to create more tension right away, and it doesn't seem to be working the way I intended.

So now I'm back to playing with what the best beginning might be. I'm even toying with starting with a prologue, which breaks all the rules, but if I do it for the right reasons it's okay to break the rules.

In any case, right now I'm trying to figure out how to cut some words since it's very long for middle grade and I have a feeling some of my rejections might be coming because of that. After I've done that, the right beginning might become clear.

Because querying and editing a middle grade book apparently isn't enough for me, I've started writing an adult contemporary romance. I never in a million years thought I would want to write for adults, let alone write romance, but the idea just fell from the sky on me and I felt compelled to write it. It's a romance between an asexual woman who has given up on love and her first crush who has just returned to their hometown, a widower with a young daughter who believes he buried his heart with his wife. The heroine owns the combination cat cafe and bookshop of my dreams, and there are plenty of cute kittens as well as tea and cookies. Basically all of my favorite things. Here's an aesthetic I worked up.

Despite writing the romance, my heart belongs to writing for kids, so, as I alluded to above, I attended the MidSouth SCBWI conference this past weekend. It was full of wonderful information, and it was also great to hang out with other writers.  I think the two most valuable things I came away with were the clear idea that my current first page isn't working and the business card of an editor from a small press. The second, of course, requires an explanation.

Saturday there was a gala dinner, and we were encouraged to dress as book characters. I chose to dress as Harbor Lightkeep, the main character from the book I'm querying. Because why dress as someone else's character when I can dress as my own? Here's a photo of my dressed for the banquet.

I was talking with a group of women at the cocktail hour and explained the costume and a bit about the book. One of the women asked me if I had an agent and I said no, I was still looking for one. She then handed me her card. She's an editor at a small press! I'm not naming her or the press because I have no idea what will come of this, but even if it doesn't lead to an offer or it does but I decide it's not the best fit, it was still exciting to have an actual publishing professional really love my idea.

In Which I Enter the Kids Choice Kidlit Writing Contest

I had a lot of fun entering the Halloween themed 200 word story contest back in the fall, so when I heard about this one I decided to throw something together for it, too. Plus, quite a few of my #MGWaves friends entered, and it's hard to fight peer pressure even at 46. 😂 You can read all the stories, including mine, here on Kailie Pew's blog, but I decided to post my story on my own blog as well. It's a short little PB idea I got when a chipmunk stole part of my lunch while I was hiking last summer. PBs aren't what I normally write and I'd never done anything with the idea, so I decided to roll with it. Maybe some kids will fall in love with it.

                                                                The Apple

Petra set her apple down for one second, just long enough for the chipmunk to grab it.

How unlucky could she get?

Chippy couldn’t believe his luck. A whole apple to himself! How would he get it into his den?

Chippy rolled it up to hole and pushed. 

“I’ll help you with that,” Redbud the squirrel said.

Redbud grabbed the apple… and ran up a tree!

Redbud couldn’t believe his luck. A whole apple to himself!

How would he get it into his nest hole?

He lined it up and pushed.

Poe the raven landed next to him. “I’ll help you with that.” He grabbed the apple in his beak

and took off!

Poe couldn’t believe his luck. A whole apple to himself!

As he flew over the creek he spotted Harry the red-tailed hawk. Harry dived.

Poe let out a screech and dropped the apple, soaring away.

The apple dropped into the creek as Petra hiked past. No way!

She took it out and dried it on her shirt.

“Would you like my apple?” she asked her brother. 

He grabbed it and took a huge bite. Petra burst out laughing.

“Wait till you hear where that apple has been!”