In Which I Reflect on Book Bans

There's been a lot of outrage in the press and on social media lately about the removal of the holocaust centered graphic novel, Maus by Art Spiegelman, from the 8th grade curriculum in McMinn County, Tennessee because it was determined to be inappropriate due to "nudity and profane language". Given that the "nudity" cited is nude mice and the profanity is fairly tame and nothing the average 8th grader wouldn't have heard before, it's pretty clearly posturing on the part of the district. The district did later release a statement saying that they do believe it's important for students to learn about the holocaust and that they were looking for a more "age appropriate" book to use. Since the unit was reportedly coming up soon, unfortunately what's most likely to happen this year is that the holocaust unit will be cancelled. But even if it's continued with a more "age appropriate" text, the probability is that whatever text is chosen won't convey the horrors of the holocaust the way the true story of a holocaust survivor does. While I love historical fiction and think it's a good gateway to introduce the topic of the holocaust to younger children, the fact is too much of it either doesn't touch on the worst parts (such as Anne Frank's diary, which ends before the was captured and sent to a concentration camp) or focuses on the heroism of gentiles (such as Lois Lowry's Number the Stars). I love both of the mentioned books and am not saying kids shouldn't read them, but that can't be where the lesson stops, particularly not for older students. 

Some people try to give book removals and bans a positive twist, saying that kids will for sure want to read a book that's been banned and will run out to buy it or check it out of the public library. This may happen with a few kids, but the fact is that the majority of kids either won't be inspired to read a banned book or might want to but won't have access to it. Eighth graders are 13 or 14. They can't get to a library or bookstore on their own, and they most often don't have their own money. If their parents don't want them reading Maus, they won't get access to it.

While the removal of Maus has gotten a lot of attention, it's just one example of a nationwide trend of books being banned or just quietly removed from classrooms, school libraries, and even some public libraries. The most commonly banned/removed books are those written by BIPOC and/or queer authors featuring BIPOC and/or queer kids. Just glancing through my 11yo's bookshelf, I found three books that I know have been the subject of bans. In some cases the authors have had school visits booked and had the visits cancelled last minute because parents protested.

In these cases as well, some misinformed people are saying that authors should see the bans as a badge of honor and saying that bans only increase sales. The problem is, while bans might give an author a slight bump in sales, those sales will be to adults and are unlikely to get the books in the hands of the kids who really need them. For most of history, children's books featured white cishet kids almost exclusively. On the rare occasion the protagonist wasn't white, the author usually was. While the representation is still far from even, now more and more books about BIPOC kids written by BIPOC authors are being published. Some, like Jerry Craft's New Kid, which won a Newbery, are even winning major awards. However, that does not make them immune to being challenged. New Kid, along with a huge number of other books starring Black kids, is being challenged around the nation as part of the push against "critical race theory" being taught in public schools. Which is so far off the mark it would be laughable if it weren't so serious. The two other books pictured, Drama by Raina Telgemeier and The Insiders by Mark Oshiro, have been challenged because they feature queer characters, which, in the view of some parents, makes them "inappropriate" at best and "pornographic" at worst. A list of books removed for review in one school district over potential "pornographic" content includes picture books about transgender children.

For authors, these bans are bad for a few reasons. First of all, many queer and BIPOC writers decided to write for children specifically because they didn't see kids like them in books growing up and they wanted to give that experience to children. More practically, these bans are causing income loss for authors. Not only are fewer books selling because schools can't buy them, but the authors either aren't scheduling school visits or are having already booked visits cancelled. School visits are often a huge part of the income of children's writers.

Most important, I think, is the effect these bans have on children. For some kids, especially those in low income areas, the classroom and school library are the places they have access to books. It's incredibly valuable for these kids to read books whose heroes look like them. Queer kids from conservative families can be particularly hurt. Some school librarians report kids reading books during library time that their parents would never allow them to bring home. These kids might know they're gay or transgender and not feel safe telling their families, or they might be starting to ask questions about gender identity and sexuality that they don't feel they can ask at home. Books featuring queer kids can be a literal lifesaver for these kids, who sadly have a higher suicide rate than the general population.

Even for white, cishet kids, reading books about BIPOC and queer kids is incredibly valuable. They need to know that these kids exist, that they can be heroes of fantastical adventures or, alternatively, that they also have normal lives and normal kid problems and really aren't so different after all. Kids from Christian families need to see Muslim kids, Jewish kids, and kids from other minority religions in the books they read.

So far, book bans have not reached my district. I'm blessed to live in an area that's pretty progressive for Kentucky, and our district has been headed by a Black superintendent for the past six years, which I think is likely to ward off books being removed under a false charge of teaching "critical race theory". That doesn't mean my district is definitely safe, though, and I'm prepared to challenge the school board if the bans make their way here. In the meantime, I'm doing my part to see that my white, Christian, cishet (at least as far as I know) fifth grader reads books starring all kind of kids and not just kids that look like her and believe the things she believes.

In Which I Share Some Holiday Reads

 When I started this blog I had a goal of updating it at least monthly. Since my last post was nearly two months ago, I have clearly failed at that. I apologize to my tiny handful of faithful readers. My excuse is that I was wrapped up in trying to finish the steampunk airship adventure I started this spring. I succeeded and have now done a lot of edits based on feedback from critique partners and beta readers. I've sent out just a few queries to test the waters, but I'll be surprised (pleasantly of course) if one of these early queries results in an offer of representation. My instinct is that I probably still have some polishing to do before it will really shine for an agent. I'm focusing now on entering it in the Author Mentor Match mentorship contest and have picked out the four mentors I'm going to apply to. Just for fun, here's the latest aesthetic I created for my book. 

I'm not just here to brag about the book I finished, though. Since it's Christmas Eve, I figured I'd share some holiday reads I've enjoyed. And I say holiday reads as opposed to Christmas reads because one of them is about a holiday (actually two holidays that share a name) I don't celebrate.

As you may remember from last December's post, my family has a lot holiday reading traditions and I love Christmas books. For years I had a habit of reading Tony Abbot's beautiful Santa Claus origin story, Kringle, every December. However, this year I tried to read it and just couldn't get into it. I think I've read it too many times and just need to take a break from it. However, for those who haven't yet read it, I highly recommend it. It's a Santa Claus origin story told in the form of an epic fantasy including elves, goblins, and a rune that stops time. It even gives a nod to the Christian origin of the holiday, which the average Santa Claus story doesn't often do.

Last year, through #MGBooktober on Twitter, I discovered what might be my new favorite Christmas read, Kate Milford's Greenglass House. This fun mystery with just a hint of the paranormal is a wonderfully enjoyable book to curl up with in December. Even better, it has a sequel that also takes place at Christmas, Ghosts of Greenglass House. 

Today, instead of reading Kringle, which I brought with me on my Christmas travels just in case I felt inspired to read it, I'm reading another book that was recommended to me on Twitter. Like Greenglass House, this story is a mystery of a sort and takes place at an isolated hotel, but it is otherwise quite different. I'm really enjoying it so far. The book is Winterhouse by Ben Guterson.

This year at Advent my family moved away from the middle grade reading trend to read an adult novella by well known dog book writer W. Bruce Cameron. Even though it's written for adults, by my ten year old and my sixteen year old really enjoyed A Dog's Perfect Christmas, and I can confidently recommend it as a family read if you have children who are upper elementary or older.

My last recommended holiday read is a short story collection I read this fall, focusing on a holiday that is not mine. Once Upon an Eid is a collection of stories by Muslim writers from a variety of backgrounds that feature families celebrating both Eid Al Fitr and Edi Al Adha. I found the stories delightful and enjoyed learning about two holidays that are quite different from any of the holidays I celebrate. This book is a great example of how books from outside of our culture and experience can serve as windows into experiences different from your own.

If you celebrate Christmas, Merry Christmas Eve! I hope you have a wonderful holiday. If your winter holiday has already happened or is still to come, I hope it is or was a joyful time, in spite of any changes this never-ending pandemic caused. I'm thankful that my entire immediate family is now vaccinated along with my parents, brothers, and sister in law, so we can all gather (relatively) safely, but I still long for a day we can celebrate with larger groups of people without having to think so much about it. In the meantime, books, both holiday books and other books, will be here for us. In books we can peek into scenes from holidays we celebrate an holidays we don't celebrate. We can travel without need for a test, mask, or passport, to places that exist in our world and places that don't. 

In Which I Reflect on Books as Mirrors and Windows

 For a really long time, nearly all books were written by white men, or white women who were pretending to be white men. Eventually things opened up a bit and it became acceptable for women to write books, especially children's books. Still, the overwhelming majority of these writers were white.

Even now that publishing is making moves to put out more books by diverse writers, there's still pushback. Recently, Newbery Award winner Jerry Craft was uninvited from a school because someone decided that his book New Kid, which tells the story of a Black boy at a mostly white private school, teaches critical race theory. Think about that. The very fact that a book chronicles the experiences of a Black boy makes it offensive.

A library system is currently the subject of community protest and demands that its funding be revoked after it shared a Facebook post publicizing its LGBTQIA+ children's collection. If parents don't want their kids to read books with queer content that's one thing. I think it's unfortunate, but it's not my job to control the choices of other parents. But attempting to push their views on a library system and get its funding pulled is another thing altogether.

Even when there's no protest around books by BIPOC and queer writers and about BIPOC and queer kids, too many people often assume that those books are only for kids who identify with those groups. Librarians and teachers might recommend New Kid to Black students but not to white students. Or if they know one of their students identifies as nonbinary they might point them to a book about a nonbinary kid. But if a kid is cisgender, why would they need to read that book?

I'll tell you why. Because books don't need to only serve as mirrors. There still aren't nearly enough, but there are more and more books being published starring the kinds of kids who didn't see themselves in books for most of history. But even white, abled, cishet kids need to read books by kids who are different from them. Because the more we read about people different from us, the more likely we are to accept them.

I only lightly police what my 10yo daughter reads. She's not ready for heavy romance or violence, for instance, so I won't let her read The Hunger Games even though she has friends who has read it. But she's read a lot of books (including New Kid) that feature kids who are different from her. Black kids, queer kids, poor kids, immigrant kids. I could go on. This has given her an understanding that not everyone is like her and that's okay. When a teen from our church came out as nonbinary this year, my daughter didn't bat an eye. She doesn't have any peers that identify as nonbinary, but she was familiar with the concept because she'd read about it.

I'm excited about new books coming out that will continue to expand the number of kids who can see themselves in books as in a mirror and the number of kids who can look through a window at someone who's different from them and recognize that they might not be that different after all.

Just for fun, I'll end with a couple pictures. I recently rearranged my bookshelves. I'd been putting books in randomly wherever I could cram them in. The end result was that I might have to visit four different bookcases and two different floors of my house to find all the books in a single series. Now the books are categorized (but not alphabetized, that's way too much order for my ADHD brain) and all the series books are back with their friends.

I knew middle grade fantasy was my greatest love, but I didn't know just how much it outweighed all the other books I own. The two pictures below show my three shelves worth. Poor MG contemporary only takes up part of one shelf. And mystery is a lonely four book collection. All of middle grade fares better than adult, however. In all categories that takes up exactly two shelves. You might look at my shelves and think I'm a parent of voracious readers, but, no, I'm just a middle grade writer.

In Which I Write A Story for #FallWritingFrenzy 2021

 #FallWritingFrenzy is a fun writing contest created by agent/author Kaitlyn Sanchez and author Lydia Lukidis. You can read more about this year's contest here. I first heard about #FallWritingFrenzy last fall, but I wasn't brave enough to try to attempt to write anything. This year I decided to give it a go. The rules are that you choose a fall themed picture from a series of photos and write a story of no more than 200 words that's inspired by it. The story can be for picture book age all the way up to young adult. Because middle grade is my heart, of course I created a story for that age group. My daughter attends a Spanish immersion school and I'm a former Spanish teacher, so the picture that immediately caught my eye was a Dia de los muertos ofrenda. The picture and story are below.

Dia de los muertos/ Melinda Young Stewart- Bing

Homecoming

I knew most of my classmates were making ofrendas for their dead dogs. Or maybe their grandparents. I was the only one remembering my twin.

I hid it in my closet. I knew Mom and Dad wouldn’t approve. They don’t like anything that reminds them of her.

Mom hid all her pictures, but I unearthed the box from under a pile of old clothes in the attic - her clothes?

I added her favorite stuffed cat - I'd put it at the back of my closet when Dad boxed up her toys- along with some candy corn and black licorice. Gross, but she loved them.

Before I left to trick or treat I added the most important thing - her pink ukulele. She learned when we were five. She used to play me to sleep with it and wake me in the morning with a tune. 

I fell asleep that night dreaming of my sister. In the morning soft notes awoke me. She sat on the edge of my bed, strumming her ukulele and chewing on a licorice strand. Still ten years old. Forever ten. 

“Finally!” she said. “I’ve been trying to get through for three years.”

“Welcome home, Petra.” I smiled.

In Which I Recommend Two Fall Reads

 There are new books coming out all the time, and I have neither the time nor the money to buy and read all of them. I can solve the money problem by instead requesting that my local library system acquire the books, which I highly recommend. To my chagrin, however, that does not increase my time.

However, two books came out recently that I thought I would love enough I went ahead and bought them. The first is a debut novel and the second is the writer's second book, a companion to their first novel that takes place in the same small Appalachian town.

Lisa Frenkel Riddiough's debut Elvis and the World As It Stands is a delightful read. I mean, how can you beat a story narrated by an adorable kitten and featuring a host of friendly and cute pets? This book is so much more than a cute pet story, however. It has a deep and important message about family and belonging. As we approach the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it's also the perfect book for the children of those of us who were teens or young adults on that day. Its gentle but real treatment of the subject including Elvis's girl building a LEGO model of both the World Trade Center as it was before 9/11 and the Freedom Tower is a great way for young readers to enter that historical moment in an accessible way. Most importantly, though, it's a well written and enjoyable book.

Sure it's only September 10th, but at least where I live there's a chill in the air in the mornings and the season is beginning to turn from summer into autumn. In my mind, this means it's time to think about Halloween. I love Halloween, but maybe not in the way you think when you hear about people loving Halloween. I love witches, but only when they're friendly and use their magic to help people. I love skeletons, when they're smiling and dancing. My Halloween aesthetic isn't Haunted Houses and bloody, skeletal hands coming out of graves but rather cute black kittens and smiling bat families. And of course pumpkins. Give me all the pumpkins and all the pumpkin flavored food and drinks. 

A lot of people enjoy watching scary movies and reading scary books as the autumn winds blow.  I am not one of those people, but I do appreciate just a little bit of spookiness. If you're like me, Ash VanOtterloo's second book, which was released this week, may also be for you. A Touch of Ruckus is a delightful romp in a haunted Appalachian forest. But not too haunted, because that would give me nightmares. It has excellent queer rep (the MC likes both boys and girls, and her new friend is nonbinary), rural Appalachian rep, and mental health rep, as well as a sneaky environmental message. It was everything I hoped it would be, and a great follow up to Ash's debut, Cattywampus.

Do you have any favorite fall reads? I'd love to hear about them in comments.

In Which It Still Isn't My Turn, But I Keep Moving Anyway

 There's lots of good writing news in the middle grade twitterverse recently, and from my closer community of the #MGWaves. It feels like every time I check Twitter or Slack someone has just signed with an agent or announced a book deal. I've gotten to know some of these writers well and read works from many of them over the past year since I jumped into the writing community with both feet, and I can say with confidence that everyone I've seen announce news heartily deserves their good fortune. Most of them have been working toward this goal for years, some even longer than I have.

It's good to remember that what might look like an "overnight success story" could easily be that writer's sixth manuscript that they queried for a year and had just decided it was time to shelve when they got the full request that led to an offer. One of my friends who just signed with an agent received the email asking to set up a call to talk about representation literally 24 minutes after sending a text telling her critique partners that she was officially shelving the manuscript.

I'm still waiting for a story like that to happen to me. I'm actively querying a version of the second book I finished, which went through such a major rewrite that I kind of consider it my fourth book. I have not gotten any bites, but I recently rewrote my query and opening pages and just started sending that version a week ago, so there's still hope. In the meantime, I still have a small handful of queries out for my third book, the one that I should probably have shelved months ago, but that I keep firing off an occasional query for because I love it so much I can't bear to completely shelve it until I've run out of agents I'd like to work with who might love it. This one has also gone through not quite a rewrite but a very thorough revision including changing from third to first person since I began querying it late last year.

In the meantime, I'm plugging away at my fourth (maybe fifth, depending on how you count) book, which I currently think is the best one yet. Whether that actually proves to be the case will only be seen if I can actually finish the thing. This first draft has taken way longer than any other first draft I've ever written because I have my fingers in so many pies right now. I keep going away from it to tweak the books I'm still querying and fire off a few more. Add to that the days I just can't bear to look at it because I'm sure it must be a flaming pile of you can guess what despite my feelings about it and my critique group members' feelings about it, because if I actually knew how to write surely my inbox would be flooded with full requests.

Add in the mental fatigue from the pandemic that never ends, and keeping at the writing game can feel like a Sisyphean task. Push that boulder of a finished manuscript up the hill, and the rejections will come crashing down on you and push you right back down. So, why do I do it? Why do I keep creating these stories and throwing my babies out to the cold, cruel world? Why don't I just get a regular job that doesn't come with a regular side of rejection? Because rejection is and always will be part of the writing game. Once you get an agent, editors start rejecting you. Once you get a book in the world, readers start rejecting you. There is no stage at which a writer is entirely shielded from rejection.

First, I realize I'm in a place of incredible privilege because I don't have to work another full time job on top of writing just to keep a roof over my head and put food over the table. Yes, my kids are demanding and a 24/7 responsibility in some fashion (even the 16 year old), but it's not as if there aren't parents out there who have a full time job in addition to writing. 

It's partly because I love it. Books have always been a huge part of my life, and I've had stories living in my head as long as I can remember. It's also because I believe my stories have a place in the world that isn't completely filled. I want girls with ADHD to have a character they see themselves in. I want kids with type 1 diabetes to see a kid like them accurately portrayed in a book. I want kids who feel different in any way to see characters who are outside the norm in some way going on adventures and just living life.

Someday I believe my books will be on the shelves of libraries and bookstores. It might be a version of stories I've already written, or it might be that those stories serve as a stepping stone for me to continue to polish my craft and what ends up on shelves is now only a seed in the depths of my mind. There may be an agent reading a query that will lead to a full request and then an offer right now. The agent who eventually signs me may not even be an agent yet. 

I hate this uncertainty, and I don't always have the mental fortitude to remind myself that if I keep working and don't give up I will get there someday. There are definitely days when I spend all of my time wallowing in self pity. If I want to make it, however, I can't stay down there. I need to get up, dust myself off, and do the next thing.

This summer my family took a vacation to the Rocky Mountains. It was breathtakingly beautiful. It's also a whole lot farther above sea level than Kentucky, and the thinner air literally can take your breath away. All my family members are in much better shape than I am, and there were times we were ascending on hikes when I wasn't sure I could make it. But I did it. One step at a time. Here's a picture of me at 12,000 feet. No, I did not climb all 12,000 of those feet.

In Which I Play Catch Up

 I had established this really great trend of posting monthly and then summer vacation happened. As of today, both my kids are back in school in person for the first time since March 13, 2020. Here's hoping that will give me more time to write. Of course, I'm also mildly terrified since Covid cases are at their highest level in Kentucky since January, but masks are required in schools, they're spacing students out as much as they can, and doing a lot of cleaning and handwashing and sanitizing, so I'm hoping it will be enough.

Summer trips got in the way of me blogging in July, but they did not get in the way of me reading. Our family drove to Colorado and back as our big family trip a couple weeks ago, which meant about 22 hours in the car each way, divided over two days. Since my husband prefers to drive on long trips, partly because he thinks he's a better driver (he really is) and partly because he's prone to carsickness if he's not driving, I had a lot of time to read. I made it through my entire To Be Read pile, which had been languishing because my daughter was demanding a lot of my attention since school ended. We're still being really careful about playdates and didn't send her to any day camps, so she wanted me to play with her all the time. As an aside, parenting an extraverted kid during a pandemic is really hard.

Some of my favorites were two other books I could have recommended in my last post about MG books with queer rep had I known they existed when I wrote that post. George by Alex Gino. The book follows ten year old George, who knows she is a girl even though everyone else believes she is a boy, on her journey to find the courage to speak out about her gender identity. I also read a companion book to this, Rick, in which we see the MC from the first book two years later, starting middle school as a girl named Melissa, but through the eyes of Rick, a boy who was a bully in the first book, but is beginning to asks questions of his own about gender and sexuality and beginning to wonder, as his peers starts to get crushes and he doesn't, if he is on the asexual spectrum. Rick's metamorphosis from reluctant bully to embracing his own possibly queer identity was so great to read. I'm glad books like this exist, both for kids who can relate to them and for kids who can't.

I also read the first book in a new Rick Riordan presents series, The Last Fallen Star by Graci Kim. This book is based on Korean mythology and is so delightful. I especially love that the deities at the center of the magical Korean community are goddesses.

I could go on about the books I've read, but I'll also catch up on the writing things I've done. I've sent out a few more queries for Anna Otto, including one from a late coming agent request after a Twitter pitch party that happened back in June. I've revised my query yet again since the first six queries haven't gotten me a request, and I think it might actually be really good this time. I'm hoping that, if nothing else, this books gets me a respectable number of full requests. When even your writing friends who aren't getting agent offers seem to be getting full requests left and right it can be discouraging. 

I'm still plugging away on Harbor Lightkeep, and hoping to make much more progress now that both my kids will be out of the house for six hours five days a week. My summer trip to Colorado gave me an idea for a picture book and a middle grade book, so I have yet more things waiting in line for whenever Harbor Lightkeep is out with beta readers, or if I need a break from it.

It's now been about a year and a half since I started taking my writing seriously and querying the first MG book I wrote (in retrospect, it was not ready). I was sure at that point that I would have an agent by now, probably even an offer. It turns out writing is much more of a waiting game for most people than I realized, but I'm still glad I decided to take the plunge and pursue traditional publication. I've met an amazing community of fellow writers, discovered resources to refine my craft, and found friends to lean on when it feels like it will never by my turn. I desperately want it to be my turn not just someday, but soon. But in the meantime I'm trying to find the beauty on the winding path I'm on.