My Name Isn't Nathaniel Hawthorne, It's Sydney Salter

So, yeah, I didn't write The Scarlett Letter. Or Crime And Punishment. Or any of the other old tomes that have been assigned long before I was a student and will be assigned long after my daughters graduate. No one complains about these books--except for the students!

Maybe in 150 years My Big Nose And Other Natural Disasters will be foisted on students so they can analyze our image-obsessed twenty-first century culture… 

But no one is currently using my YA novels in school. Teachers, however, do use me in the classroom--as an Author-In-Residence.  

Writing can feel absolutely frightening, especially to those students who are certain that they lack even a splinter of creativity. I've learned to play with my own writing without judgment, and I love sharing my fun, non-threatening, exercises and activities. I show every student that each piece of writing does have an element of promise--maybe a character with potential, a unique plot element, or even a few well-phrased words. Good writing comes with the building process of revision.

I love to read poorly-written passages from my diaries and show how I've turned those same words into polished fiction in My Big Nose And Other Natural Disasters, Swoon At Your Own Risk, or Jungle Crossing (middle-grade). I bring my notebooks packed with rejection letters to show how failure is more frequent than success. 

Mostly I try to emphasize that I'm an ordinary person living a normal life. Growing up, reading all those school-worthy books, I was pretty sure I lacked the mystique required to be a real writer. I loved The Great Gatsby, but I didn't really want to be an alcoholic like Fitzgerald. And I wasn't really in a position to go to war or lion-hunting like Hemingway. And he was an alcoholic, too!  

It took me years to realize that I could be a writer simply by writing and writing and writing. I hope that I've inspired a few students to go for their dream to write books. I know that I've proven writing can be fun. That's how I've ended up in classrooms, even though I'm not Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Using my books in the classroom (or not) - Jenny O'Connell

Oh my. Suddenly I feel terribly inadequate because I can't imagine any of my books ever being used in a classroom! Especially given the reaction I've seen from some adult reviewers - characters have sex! They swear! There's an abortion! They smoke weed! And drink alcohol!

I can't imagine any of that landing in a classroom without some parent calling the school and objecting, thereby quickly ending any of my books' short-live classroom experience. Even though none of those things (the sex, the pot smoking, the drinking, the abortion) are written in a way that makes them seem cool or encouraged, or even without consequences. They are part of the story because that stuff happens in teen lives and in the stories I've written, they seemed honest to the characters and to their stories. To ignore it, to me, would be to pretend it doesn't happen, and that's not true.

The thing is, I feel like if that's all a book is about, that's fine. If it's a book about a girl getting pregnant and her struggles to deal with that, fine. It's a "lesson" book. If it's about a girl struggling with addiction, fine. It "teaches." But if those things aren't central to the story, if they aren't treated like an "issue," then there's a presumption that they're dealt with cavalierly, as if they're inconsequential. Or trivial. And therefore the book they're in isn't heavy or substantial enough.

I get at least a few emails a week about THE BOOK OF LUKE. For some reason, this book really resonates with readers. Not one of them has ever said that they remember the sex. Instead, they talk about the relationship between Luke and Emily and how they could relate, how it was like they became their friends.

In PLAN B, no reader has ever mentioned that Vanessa and Reed smoke dope together, instead they talk about how much fun they thought the story was.

In RICH BOYS, no one ever mentions the abortion, just the characters and the story of Winnie and Jay.

And when readers send emails about LOCAL GIRLS, not once has any of them mentioned the sex that takes place.

While the premise for each book is different, they all deal with issues all teens deal with - friendship, loss, fear, first love, parents, siblings, school. All things any student in high school could relate to. And they learn lessons, of course, but they're life lessons, and I'm not sure the type of lessons welcome in a classroom.

And that's okay with me. I've seen the books read in my kids' school, how they have killed their love of reading because they are books for a curriculum rather than books that create a joy for turning the page, a connection with characters they could imagine meeting in real life, stories that become part of who they are. It's sad how much my kids hate reading now, how they don't pick up a book outside the classroom because they think most books suck.

I wish schools would introduce more books that are well-written, engaging stories that make kids want to read, even if they're not necessarily "school" books. Creating life long readers is so important. Not just picking from a list of educationally-approved texts, proven over time, read generation after generation, just because they're supposed to be "school" books.

How to use TOUCHING THE SURFACE in the Classroom--Kimberly Sabatini

This month we are talking about how our books can effectively be used in the classroom. My intention was to be concrete in presenting a guided tour of TOUCHING THE SURFACE, but it didn't feel like a good translation of what's beneath the cover.  

TOUCHING THE SURFACE was meant to be consumed in the way it was written--organically. Like a writer using a writing prompt, I believe SURFACE is a jumping-off point for important exploration and growth.

TOUCHING THE SURFACE is a YA Book that can be used as a vehicle for teens to confront their own mortality. 

It's a safe way to explore death. 

We all live in a post 9/11 world. 

Most people know someone sent to war.

School shootings are like water cutting through rock--forever changing the landscape around us.

Too many teens text and drive which leads us to frightening but foregone conclusions.

Bullying results in suicides. 

Between chemical-laden fast food and eating disorders, we have some children who die of obesity and some that die of starvation--all in the same country. 

At the very best--we all eventually lose someone we love. It is inevitable.

Life altering mistakes are meant to alter lives...

TOUCHING THE SURFACE is also about the power of making an epic mess of things. It's a story about forgiveness--a reminder that there's no shame in being human. 

We all screw up and we usually spend a lot of time focused on that. Rarely do we pause to ponder the benefits of the things that are almost too heavy to bear.

Discussions of death, mistakes and forgiveness belong in the classroom because there are real people in those classrooms.

TOUCHING THE SURFACE is a book about understanding death--but it's also a book about the beauty of life.

“What if there is endless free choice and not a single choice is right or wrong? Could every choice be a possibility? What if every option feels good or bad based only on our perception of it? Or if all the 'rules' aren't really rules? What would happen if just being in the moment was an option?” ― Kimberly Sabatini, Touching the Surface

What books do you believe we NEED to read?

Of Texas, Angels, Faith in American Culture, Romance and Other Subversive Classroom Discussion Topics

I honestly have no idea how many classrooms use my Dreaming Anastasia series (click here for a link to the on-line discussion guides) or The Sweet Dead Life. TSDL does have a Common Core educator’s guide coming, supposedly when The A-Word releases. (Soho Press, May 2014) It’s a great guide that I’d love to present to you here, but it is currently somewhere in the hands of someone within Soho Press/Random House getting prettied up from my original draft. What I can tell you is this: As I wrote the The A-Word, which is the sequel to TSDL, it became apparent to all of us that there really were numerous wonderful areas of discussion and thought to be had in the duology.

The intro I wrote last summer included this:

Part mystery, part angel book with a Texas twist, Joy Preble’s SWEET DEAD LIFE series is at its core a Vonnegut-esque sibling story of love, loss, faith and belief, of what it means to be good and the inherent human failings that cause us to fall from that.

Through the eyes of its young teenage narrator, Jenna Samuels, TSDL presents its readers with an epic battle of good and evil set in the modern wasteland of the Houston suburbs. A fifteen year old girl and her not-so-angelic guardian angel brother find themselves fighting a global conglomerate that has weaponized memory drugs with the real potential of controlling human society. (All against the backdrop of mall culture, fast-food tacos, and Texas high school football.)

So yeah— a lot of serious stuff, right?

And some of it is sort of subversive and tricky, which as a former high school English teacher I find is the best of the serious stuff, you know? The things that make readers think and re-evaluate and wonder and ponder how they feel about all this. Because if your editor has started saying your writing in the books is ‘Vonnegut-esque’ well, you better dig deep and root around for what it is could actually be discussed in classrooms or libraries or books clubs. Of course there’s always the surface stuff: the plot and the characterization and the setting and in The A-Word there’s Jenna’s first love relationship with Ryan Sloboda set against the back drop of a bunch of failed romances for everyone else around her.

But there is also that business of angels and the potential to research their literary history from Milton (or before that) to modern day. And a great opportunity to read various non-fiction cultural commentary on Faith in America Culture. And bunches of possible novel/film pairings to analyze American suburbia and its effect on us and on culture. We can do the same with the issue of families and death. And numerous possible musings on humor and parody and how we use these in books and film to approach those difficult, often soul-wrenching topics.

So yeah. Not just a comedic riff on a girl’s stoner brother turned guardian angel with very human bad habits in tact. You can see how thrilled I was when one of my favorite YA authors, Michael Northrop, recently blurbed The A-Word with this: “The earthbound angels are as authentic as the down-to-earth people in The A-Word, but where the book really spreads its wings is in the interaction between the two. Resourceful teens and heavenly beings team up to get to the roots of a very modern mystery, and the big questions of the universe share space with first dates and football games. The result: a smart, original (and slightly celestial) mystery with a distinctly Texan flavor.”

And why in my Educator’s Guide Author’s Note (this is only an excerpt and again, I have no idea how much of this will actually make it to the final copy), I’ve pondered this:

I could not envision Casey and Jenna’s story anywhere else but Texas. As the epigraph of book 1 says, quoting Davy Crockett, “You may all go to hell, and I will go to Texas.” In THE SWEET DEAD LIFE, this is exactly how I see Casey Samuels, the most unlikely guardian angel ever—a Texas boy through and through. Rough-hewn and far from perfect, but with a solid heart and an inherent urge to do the right thing. Which of course is why Management has chosen him…

TSDL does not connect its angel theology to any specific faith group.  This is a purposeful choice on my part. In fact, main character Jenna is far from devout, making her the perfect narrator since she has no preconceived notions – save for a generic idea of angels with halos and harps—of what a heavenly being would actually do or say. I enjoy using her sharp-tongued innocence to both comic and poignant effect. Of course, Jenna’s guardian angel sleeps in the room next to hers and shares her bathroom and doesn’t clean up after himself.

Like the characters in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings,” few humans in the series other than Jenna have any understanding of what they’re actually seeing. So my sense was that even without Management’s  ‘Damage Control’ techniques, the good citizens of the northern Houston suburbs would continue to be oblivious, even when they are subject to Casey’s angelic powers. His girlfriend Lanie falls into this category, as do the neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Gilroy, among others.

Will classrooms use this material? I really hope so!

Newsrooms make great classrooms -- Jen Doktorski

A girl accidently blows up her ex-boyfriend’s car, gets served with a temporary restraining order, and goes on a cross-country road trip to avoid further trouble. No doubt there are some teachable moments in my debut YA novel, HOW MY SUMMER WENT UP IN FLAMES (i.e. don’t play with matches and lighter fluid). But I think most people would agree with me when I say it’s not the kind of book that can be used in the classroom.

However my second YA novel, FAMOUS LAST WORDS, is a great fit for the classroom. It’s about a sixteen-year-old girl, Samantha D’Angelo, who gets a summer internship writing obituaries for a local newspaper. Readers definitely get a look at the workings of a real newsroom, and while the most obvious fit for this book would be in high school and junior high journalism classrooms, I believe the story lends itself to language arts curriculums as well.

 

FAMOUS LAST WORDS is a coming-of-age story and because Sam is a very innocent main character, both the content and language in this book are very classroom friendly. Sam learns a lot about life, love, and writing during her summer at the obit desk and I think her lessons could be a lesson plan for a writing program.

Here’s a page from Sam’s imaginary notebook.

1.      Always carry a notebook. (Or a tablet, or smart phone.) Great story ideas sometimes come at unpredictable times and in the unlikely places. Don’t let a good idea slip away. Write it down.

2.      Be observant. Great characters are often inspired by real people. Pay attention to the way people talk, walk, dress, sip their latte. No detail is too small. Sometimes it’s those little things that make a character come to life.

3.      Listen carefully. Wherever you are—the mall, the train, the hair salon, the cafeteria—listen to the way real people talk, even if it means eavesdropping. (Usually it does mean eavesdropping.) That’s the way Sam learns to get quote people accurately and it’s how fiction writers create real dialogue that rings true.

4.      Set deadlines. That’s how articles, short stories, and novels get written. Reporters often have daily deadlines. Fiction writers should too. There’s no substitute for getting words on the page every day.

5.      Do your homework. Some projects require more research than others, but it’s always important to get the facts right in both non-fiction and fiction. Triple check everything. Sam learns the repercussions of mixing up the names of a dead person and his very alive, and angry, son. No one wants to read about themselves on the obit page.  

6.      Interview your subjects. Sam learns to conduct interviews to write news stories, but the technique can be applied to fiction as well. Some novels require research (see above) and sometimes that means conducting interviews with experts in your subject matter. But the interview works for characters too. Conducting interviews with your characters is a great way to learn everything there is to know about them, before you start writing.

There’s a scene in the book where Sam’s co-workers present her with a framed copy of her front-story. Jack, one of the editors tells her: “You can show it to your kids someday. Tell them it’s how people used to get their news before we all got chips implanted in our brains.”

Who knows? Maybe in ten years FAMOUS LAST WORDS will be found in history classrooms.

 

How I accidentally wrote a book schools like to assign: Girl, Stolen

Back in 2005 or 2006, I started writing a book based on something that really happened: a blind girl who was briefly and accidentally kidnapped when her parents left the keys in the car and someone stole it. Only in my book, the thief kept the girl and she had to figure out how to escape.

My editor at the time felt that kidnapping books were overdone.  He suggested I rewrite it from the POV of the kidnapper. That didn't seem right to me. How would readers understand what it was like to be blind? So I kept the book as it was, and my agent sent it out to a bunch of editors.  Christy Ottaviano at Henry Holt loved it the way it was.

What I hadn't thought of at all - what I think no one thought of - was that schools like to have students read books about characters with disabilities.  So that helped the book to find a wider audience. Also, it's about as clean as a YA can be, which I think also helped. The third thing that helped the book be assigned is that I tend to write books that test out at a fairly low grade level (even my adult books are like that) and that are about high-interest topics (sometimes known as hi-low books).

I started getting requests for a teachers' guide, and with the help of a teacher, I put one together.  You can see it here.

Since it was published, the book has been the winner or a finalist for 7 or 8 state awards.  Now I get emails every day from kids who have read the book because they were assigned it at school.

I'd like to put together a teachers' guide for some of my other books, but that will have to wait until I've met my latest deadline.  Does anyone have any tips for how to make the process easier?

A Book is a Many Splendored Thing (by Margie Gelbwasser)

There are so many books I love, each for a different reason. But if it wasn't for one teacher I had, Miss Margaret Schmeh, my love affair with books would have never began.

In my family, my older sister was the reader. She took a book to every party or event my family went to. I, on the other hand, avoided books like the plague. I wanted to do well in school, so I read whatever was assigned. And, when we had to do a book report each month, I read the required genre (always surprising myself when I liked the book). But on my own? Nope. I had to be forced to sit and read.

Then, I entered Miss Schmeh's seventh grade class. The first positive thing that lady had going for her was that her first name was Margaret. Until that point, I was the only Margaret I ever met. I figured this woman deserved a shot.

She had a huge floor-to-ceiling cabinet that was filled with books. In addition to whatever we were reading in class, we had to read at least one book a month from the cabinet. To check if we actually read the books (7^th graders can be sneaky), she would give us a 10 question quiz. Easy enough. Except that I hated reading.

The first time I walked up to that cabinet, I cringed. I stared a long time before finally choosing a book. The first book I picked was This Place Has No Atmosphere by Paula Danziger. This book was about a girl named Aurora whose parents have to move to the moon. She must leave her popular life behind and deal with new friends, boys, etc. At that time, sci-fi was my LEAST favorite book to read. The fact that this was considered sci-fi floored me and I devoured it. Many more gems came after. There was The Outsiders after which I just HAD to read That Was Then, This Is Now—both by S.E. Hinton. There was the Anne of Green Gables series, another surprise. I never thought I'd like historical fiction, but I was pulled into Anne's world immediately. The description captivated me, and I adored Anne's spunk and strength. After that, I read another surprise—The Secret Garden. Again, I was immersed in the details of the setting. That cabinet was magic. Whatever the book, I loved it.

The transformation that occurred that year was amazing. Books became friends. Books became escape. I finally understood why my sister toted books everywhere.

When I was in my twenties, I heard Miss Schmeh had passed away from cancer. There were many teens whose lives she'd never touch. I wish I had told her how she had changed mine. Thanks to her and her cabinet of books, I never looked at the world the same way again.