Posts on realistic fiction

Back in September, Lee Wind posted a blurb for a new young adult book called Mousetraps (Carolrhoda, 2008), by Pat Schmatz. Intrigued, I added it to my to-read list. Fast-forward a month to the SCBWI Wisconsin conference. Who’s one of the very first people I meet? Pat Schmatz. Small world!

I bought Mousetraps, Pat signed it, I read it, I dug it. I asked Pat if she’d be interested in a blog interview (my first!), and here we are. But first, a little more about Mousetraps.

Maxie’s junior year of high school begins with a surprise: Rick is back. Rick, the boy she was best friends with, before he became a bully magnet. Rick, who moved away in seventh grade after he was brutally gay bashed.

Rick wants to rekindle his friendship with Maxie, but she’s not so sure. Rick’s as much of a target as ever. And there’s something different about him these days. There’s a look he gets in his eyes sometimes, cold and hard, that scares her.

Maxie is a sensitive, yet matter-of-fact, narrator who occasionally dips into the poetic but never dives into melodrama, even when things get dark—and they do get dark. She’s a cartoonist—way back when, Rick designed crazy, Rube Goldberg-esque mousetraps, and she drew them—and her lively drawings (penned in real life by Bill Hauser) are integrated perfectly with the text.

Mousetraps also touches on nontraditional families, interracial relationships, and a bit of romance. I especially appreciated that Rick experiences homophobic bullying irrespective of his sexual identity. He’s clear proof that homophobia hurts everyone, not just individuals who are GLBTQ.

The notoriously difficult-to-impress Kirkus Reviews says of Mousetraps, “Rick and Maxie’s thought-provoking story, juxtaposed against Hauser’s renderings of Maxie’s cartoons, is unexpectedly, richly dark, with no easy answers. Both chilling and sweet.”

Now, without further ado, here’s Pat!

LC: Coming dangerously close to the dreaded “where do you get your ideas” question, I was wondering if you could pinpoint the initial germ that evolved into Mousetraps.

PS: I kind of hate to admit it, but Mousetraps started in my mind the day of Columbine. I was home for lunch and Columbine was on the news, and even as I was watching the event transpire on TV, I had an impression of Rick. From that day on, I was completely obsessed with the topic and read everything I could get my hands on, and the whole time, I had Rick’s voice in my head.

LC: Rick could have been only a martyr or psychopath; instead, he’s a fully-realized, sympathetic character. What were the challenges in shaping him without veering into Jekyll/Hyde territory?

PS: First of all, thanks for saying that about Rick. I have huge affection for that character, and he’d hate to be seen as a martyr or a psychopath. When I read news stories about school shootings, I never see those kids as one-sided, no matter how the media portrays them. I suppose that’s because I’ve known enough people, personally, who have survived these kinds of challenges that I know they aren’t one-sided, or even two-sided, and the character of Rick is a conglomerate of several kids I have known well.

LC: Since 2000, we’ve seen a number of dark teen novels responding to the Jonesboro and Columbine school massacres of 1998 and 1999 (e.g., Todd Strasser’s Give a Boy a Gun, Walter Dean Myers’ Shooter, Nancy Garden’s End Game). Mousetraps, too, could have ended in tragedy. What made you steer toward a more hopeful conclusion?

PS: I wrote six sharply different conclusions to Mousetraps over the nine years I worked on it. One editor a few years ago rejected the book, but in her editorial letter she suggested yet another option for the ending, and I gave it a try. That took me in a totally different direction.

I still see all of the conclusions as continuing to be Real and True in some sort of parallel simultaneous universes. We have crossroads moments where we can step this way or that way, and like the mousetraps, whichever direction we choose sets off an entirely new chain of events. So experimenting with the different conclusions was like imagining…what if, in this moment, this character stepped this way instead of that way? Either choice is emotionally possible, and my job as the author is to be true to the chain of events that would follow.

Finally, the ending I chose—with a lot of help and guidance from my editor, Shannon Barefield—felt right. Also, it was the clearest choice for the story that I wanted to tell, which is Maxie’s story—although of course Rick has a huge part in it.

LC: How do you think homophobia and bullying in America's schools have changed since you were a teen, if at all?

PS: When I was a teen, this stuff wasn’t called “homophobic,” or even “bullying.” We all just knew that some kids were mean, and some kids got picked on. Now that we have words for it, and we use them, I’d like to think things are at least potentially different. Kids actually know to say things like, “the biggest homophobes are usually gay themselves,”—that was a comeback and a concept that didn’t exist when I was a teen. Also, people like Maxie’s uncles do exist, as out gay fully-functioning adults, and they not only can help kids maneuver their way through this stuff but are visible as role models. Bullying still happens, probably as bad as ever, but I do think the kids who are getting bullied have a better chance to get support and backing. Even if an individual kid isn’t getting adequate protection, s/he can find the concept of support on line, in books, and even on the news. That’s a big plus.

LC: Did you envision Mousetraps as an illustrated novel from the beginning?

PS: Not at first, but the better I got to know Maxie, the more I saw her drawings in my head. For a while I was hoping to have Mousetraps be a graphic novel but I didn’t have the skills to do the drawings myself. The design team at Lerner worked with me on the current form, sort of a hybrid.

LC: Please tell us about your path to publication and about your first two books, Circle the Truth (Carolrhoda, 2007) and Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO (Blue Works, 2001).

PS: Mrs. Estronsky is a middle-grade novel about a girl who sees a UFO with her piano teacher. I sent that one out, time after time, using Writer’s Market as a guide. Of course I was thrilled when Windstorm Creative picked it up for their youth division, Blue Works.

Meanwhile, I became involved in the Minneapolis writing community, which led me to Andrea Cascardi of Transatlantic Literary Agency. I sent her the manuscripts for both Mousetraps and Circle the Truth, a younger YA about a boy in a blended family who, as he questions truth and reality in his life and his home, finds that those lines keep shifting. Andrea agreed to represent me, gave me some terrific editorial advice on the manuscripts, and then started to send out the revised versions. Each manuscript went to a number of houses over a three-year period before Carolrhoda made an offer on Circle, and then contracted for Mousetraps as well.

LC: How did you stay positive through the long submission process?

PS: It wasn’t so much a matter of staying positive, as staying busy. I started Circle the Truth immediately after finishing the first draft of Mousetraps, so my focus was there. Also, I was getting enough positive feedback—nice rejection letters, a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and the huge boost of getting Andrea as my agent—to keep me rolling.

LC: You grew up in rural Wisconsin and live there today. In what ways does that setting and culture manifest in your books?

PS: Mrs. Estronsky and the UFO is completely grounded in rural Wisconsin. I wrote it when I was living in California and was incredibly homesick for the upper Midwest. As a child, I spent a lot of time alone outdoors and I still tend to see the world through that lens. Although the next two books both take place in urban settings, weather and season play a definite emotional role in each story. Also, all three books take place in the upper Midwest, which certainly has a particular cultural flavor.

LC: Can you expand on that, for readers who have never had the pleasure of living in the upper Midwest?

PS: I find the upper Midwest—both rural and urban—to have a particular kindness, something almost like innocence. That’s not quite the right word, but it’s a related concept…and so characters with a gentle sort of progressive political sensibility, like Maxie’s parents and the Unks, and Toby’s family in Circle the Truth, can be found everywhere. Also, the region tends to be very weather-focused, even in the cities, and many people are involved in outdoor sports like ice fishing or skiing. And of course, there is always the snow that must be moved one way or another, and people have different ideas about how that should be done. I don’t know if that particular discussion is peculiar to the upper Midwest, but it seems like snow blowers are more universal, for instance, on the east coast.

LC: Mousetraps and Circle the Truth have a very different feel. Maxie narrates Mousetraps in matter-of-fact first person, while Circle the Truth is told in a more lyrical third person voice. What do you find to be the challenges of writing in first versus third person? How do you decide which to use?

PS: I tried both books in both first and third person, and in each case tried to find the voice that best suited the story. I find first person much more difficult in general. Crazy-making, actually, because the narrator is so strictly limited in what s/he can perceive and how those perceptions can be expressed. But it does allow for a more natural voice, and I like that.

LC: Who are your favorite/most influential authors?

PS: S.E. Hinton’s The Outsiders is my most influential book, and my most loved. Other influential books include A Wrinkle in Time by L’Engle, Henry 3 by Krumgold, The Forgotten Door by Key, and To Kill a Mockingbird by Lee.

As a kid, I loved everything by Beverly Clearly, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Jim Kjelgaard, and Mark Twain. As an adult, my favorite authors include Markus Zusak, Anne Patchett, Stephen King, Kate DiCamillo, and E.L. Konigsburg.

LC: What can we hope to see from you next?

PS: I’ve been working for several years on a YA novel called Bluefish. I haven’t hit it quite right yet, but I think I’m getting there. I also have an as-yet untitled adult novel and a picture book in the works.

My last beach read of the summer (not as long ago as it seems in this October drizzle) was Stranded in Harmony, by Barbara Shoup. I've had it since meeting Barbara at the first Kidlitosphere Conference, and the right time to read it finally came around.

Barbara (who also blogs) has been getting a fair amount of attention in the kidlitosphere lately. This year has seen the release of her YA novel Everything You Want (my thoughts here) and the reissue of her 1994 award-winner Wish You Were Here. It's much-deserved attention, I should say. Barbara writes interesting characters with authentic voices. She draws compelling stories out of everyday circumstances. Stranded in Harmony is no different.

High school senior Lucas has no reason to be unhappy. He's captain of the football team, has a family business to step into after college, and has a loving family, best friend, and girlfriend. Yet Lucas feels trapped in his small Indiana town. Is he being lulled into complacency? He idealizes and longs for the turmoil of the 1960s, when people stepped out of their comfort zones to stand up for their beliefs and fight for change.

When Allie Bowen—a woman who was herself a protester in the 1960s—moves to town, Lucas feels as if he's finally met a kindred spirit. A hero, even. But Allie's got some dark secrets to go with her glamorous past.

I found Lucas a highly sympathetic character. He might have come off as spoiled—lucky to have such middle class problems. But his problems are universal. Who hasn't, at times, wanted to branch off and reinvent themselves completely—yet been too comfortable with the status quo to do so? Who hasn't had moments when life ought to feel perfect—yet it doesn't? Like Emma, the lotto winner in Everything You Want, Lucas finds that having "everything" isn't always enough.

Stranded in Harmony also got me to watch Meatballs, Bill Murray's first feature film, for the first time. A really fun movie, especially if you went to summer camp as a kid.

Girl, Hero, by Carrie Jones (Flux, 2008)
When it comes to men, 14-year-old Liliana's surrounded by losers: her seemingly clueless biological father, her sister's abusive husband, an uncle who can't keep his hands to himself, and her mother's sleazy, live-in lover. With Liliana's beloved stepfather dead, the closest thing in her life to a hero is John Wayne. Liliana's seen his movies so many times that she's memorized every tough line he's got—but will it be enough to save herself and the people she loves?

While I enjoyed Jones' debut Tips on Having a Gay (Ex) Boyfriend, I felt Girl, Hero was stronger in every respect: characters, plotting, style. The prose is tight, the characters realistic and well-rounded, the situations painfully serious yet never devoid of hope. I loved Liliana, with her tough exterior, compassion for others, and refusal to dissolve in self-pity. The John Wayne motif unifies the story without becoming overbearing or distracting. Highly recommended for junior high on up.

Also (and more extensively) reviewed by Charlotte's Library.

A la Carte, by Tanita S. Davis (Knopf, 2008)
Lainey dreams of being a TV chef like her hero, (Saint) Julia Child. Unfortunately, while her cooking's great, the rest of her life is sort of the pits. Her on/off friend/crush Simeon is threatening to leave town and wants Laine to cover for him. Can Lainey help the boy she loves without losing her mother's trust and her self-respect?

It's a good story for (again) junior high and up, but any foodie will agree that the best part of A la Carte is the descriptions of Lainey's favorite recipes. Davis (whom Kidlitosphere readers know better as TadMack) writes mouth-watering play-by-plays as Laine finds comfort in creative cooking. As a bonus, each chapter break contains a recipe for one of Laine's easy vegetarian favorites.

I was having a gingerbread craving the other week, so of course I latched onto the recipe for Ma Dea's Gingerbread. Two thumbs up. I used the low-fat variation, the cayenne pepper substitution, sugar reduction, and crystallized ginger. No pan size was listed, so I used a 9x9", which worked nicely. The outcome was a rich, moist, red-brown cake, spicy and just the right level of sweetness. Yum! I'll have to try it again when I have fresh ginger.

Check out Jama Rattigan's interview with Tanita Davis!
Also (and more extensively) reviewed by Cheryl Rainfield.

Another blog-recommended winner from my past couple weeks’ reading is Quaking, a contemporary YA novel by Kathryn Erskine.

Fourteen-year-old Matt—prickly and isolated, sensitive and smart—is facing the latest in a long line of foster homes. She’s not expecting life with Quakers Sam and Jessica, and their autistic foster son Rory, to be any more stable than what’s come before. She just wants to get through the next two years of high school and move to Canada.

Of course, life isn’t that simple. At school, Matt finds herself singled out by her jingoist World Civ teacher, Mr. Morehead (Warhead) when, in her homework, she quietly voices her criticism of the United States’ Middle East policy. A bully she dubs the Rat has also singled her out for no apparent reason. Meanwhile, Quakers and other peace activists in the community are being threatened by “patriotic” hoodlums.

The real story, though, is Matt’s journey toward inner peace. You might expect someone with such an acerbic wit and strong opinions to be outspoken and fearless. Wrong—dead wrong. Instead, Matt’s response to the vandalism and bullying is to hide. The reason why is revealed slowly over the course of the story, as Matt begins to learn that flight is not the only alternative to fighting.

One of the book’s greatest strengths is Matt’s distinctive and compelling voice. Another is the realistic relationships between Matt and her foster family. No overnight miracles here—Matt is reluctant to let anyone get close, and though Sam seems to have infinite patience for her frequently rude behavior, Jessica does not. Most touching, however, is the slow evolution of Matt’s relationship with the developmentally delayed foster brother.

A couple of quibbles. In spite of a couple suggestions of hidden pain, the book’s villains, Mr. Warhead and the Rat, are just that: villains, unsympathetic, whose targeting of Matt seems sudden and arbitrary. Also, the ending seems rushed. After such a high-energy climax, I would have preferred more of a denouement than the two-page resolution readers get.

Even so, the positives far outweigh the negatives, making for a highly enjoyable read. And certainly the book provides plenty of timely fodder for discussion as the U.S. continues its controversial role in Iraq and the Middle East. It would be interesting to compare and contrast reluctant activist Matt with the socially conscious and outspoken Cassie of Brian Mandabach's Or Not. Strongly recommended for readers junior high and up.

Bloggers who led me to the book: Boys Blogging Books (Review and interview)

Filed next under the heading of books whose reviews on various blogs sold me: Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You, by Peter Cameron.

This is one of those books where everyone tells you it’s great, and it turns out they’re right. Eighteen-year-old James has always been a loner, always been a little depressed, but at times lately he’s been wondering if he wants to live. At the very least, he’s decided he doesn’t want to live the way his family and peers expect him to—namely, going to college, where he’ll be surrounded by all those dreaded people his own age.

James sounds stuck-up, and he is, a bit. But he’s also dealing with the pain of feeling so different and isolated from his peers—perhaps the rest of the world. Highly intelligent and sensitive, James has learned how to keep others from getting too close to him. His conversations with others are hilarious and sad, as he again and again turns others’ questions and comments back on themselves. His ridiculous conversation with his father in chapter 2, regarding whether James is gay, is what hooked me into reading to the end.

The book is definitely character-driven; it’s quiet, and only a couple of things could be said to “happen,” action-wise. Like any book about a disaffected teen boy, it’s been compared to Catcher in the Rye. In this case, it’s a very apt comparison, though to be honest, I enjoyed Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You rather more! It also reminded me of The Bell Jar, not just because of the depression aspect, but because of James’ frequent lapses into poetic musing and metaphor. When authors wax poetic, my eyes tend to skip. I had to be careful not to do so here; I would have missed some great images.

Other, somewhat silly, personal reasons for loving it: First, James’ habit of checking online real estate listings for cheap houses in the Midwest. I guess I'm justified, being 700 years old and actually somewhat ready to "settle down," but I do this more often than I should. (Even though I already live in the Midwest, non-condo real estate around here is basically unaffordable.) Second, James’ attitude toward his dog, Miró, who is given to looking at James “judgmentally.” The paragraph where Miró’s lying in the bathtub when James goes in to pee is priceless. Cameron must be a dog owner, no question.

Bloggers Who Led Me to the Book:

• KT at Worth the Trip
• Leila at Bookshelves of Doom
• Barbara Shoup interiewing Peter Cameron at The Edge of the Forest (I'm afraid this link will break as of May 1; I will try to fix it then)
• Probably a bajillion other people

I owe many of my reading choices to the blogs I read. For my job, I read tons of book reviews, but my eyes start to glaze over after a while. It takes a pretty spectacular review to make a book stick in my mind to look for two, three, months down the line when it actually arrives at the library.

That’s why blog reviews, without the usual journalistic constraints (space, a professional audience, whatever), are so great. I get to know bloggers’ individual reading tastes and read their honest (and sometimes scathing) opinions of books new and not-as-new.

After a spell when I wasn’t enjoying anything I picked up, I’ve had a couple weeks of reading total winners. So, I’d like to highlight some of them and the reviews which led me to them. First up: The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, by E. Lockhart.

When Frankie returns to Alabaster Preparatory Academy for her sophomore year, with new curves and her frizzy hair tamed, she immediately attracts the attention of charming, popular, good-looking senior Matthew Livingston. He and his friends are so funny and smart; it’s not hard to leave geekdom behind for a chance to be with them. Soon, however, it’s clear they’re keeping secrets from Frankie. In fact, it turns out they’re at the core of Alabaster’s secret all-male society, the Order of the Basset Hounds.

As time goes on, Frankie grows resentful of Matthew’s secrets, her exclusion from his inner circle because of her sex, and the boys’ unwitting, but nonetheless damaging, lack of respect for her and other females. Frankie’s as witty and intelligent as any of Matthew’s friends, yet it seems more important to him that she comes in a “pretty package.” When the King of the Basset Hounds leaves town for a few days, Frankie seizes her opportunity to prove she’s can do his job better than anyone, subverting the secret order to her own whims. But will Frankie get what she really wants? (For that matter, is she sure what she really wants?)

From some of the reviews I read, I thought this might be sort of a fluffy book: boarding school, secret society, hilarious pranks, yadda yadda. But while the book has many hilarious moments and more witty banter than you can shake a stick at, it also has a lot of depth and provides plenty of fodder for discussion. Frankie’s hijacking of the Bassets has some serious consequences, and it’s up to readers to decide whether the gains outweigh the costs, or how/whether Frankie should have acted differently. Likewise, there are no true villains here, except perhaps the institutionalized sexism of American culture.

I’ve enjoyed E. Lockhart’s other novels, but this was the first that grabbed me from the get-go and made me go, “Wow.” I think the voice had a great deal to do with it—sort of academically distant, yet dryly hilarious. Though never identified, the narrator really stands out as a character of her or his own. And all the characters are three-dimensional and sympathetic.

Part of what makes Frankie’s character so credible is that while she becomes keenly aware of the sexism inherent in the Old Boy traditions, her initial motivation for interfering with the Bassets is simply that she feels left out; her boyfriend and his friends, whom she adores, have this special camaraderie she will never, ever be a part of. Frankie’s feminist consciousness grows from a very personal, nonpolitical place in her heart. And even when she’s orchestrating pranks with political undertones, those feelings of loneliness, competition, and jealousy trump any sense of righteous indignation, keeping her fully human—someone to whom readers can relate.

Blogger that led me to the book: Little Willow at Bildungsroman

I chatted with Brian Mandabach at the First Annual Kidlitosphere Conference, and got a brief sneak peek at his debut novel, …Or Not? (Flux, 2007) I was enticed, but had five long weeks to wait before I could get my hands on a copy for real. (Note to library users: put quotation marks around the title, or the Boolean search engines'll get you.) Now I’m back to talk about it.

Just reading the jacket copy, you might think …Or Not? is the story of a confrontation between pinko Cassie and the right-wing jerks at her Colorado middle school. As it turns out, it really isn’t. Misconceptions aside, however, I enjoyed the story all the more for what it is.

Cassie Sullivan feels very deeply; I can think of no better way to put it. She’s smart and introspective and extremely sensitive to the pain in the world, particularly the pain of innocents. That’s why she’s a vegan, and that’s why she opposes America’s war in the Middle East. What sense does it make, she wonders, to counteract the terrorists’ killing of innocents on 9/11 with the killing of innocent families in Afghanistan or Iraq? Unfortunately, voicing her views in school does put her in a spot of trouble with some of her teachers and fellow students.

But as I said, that’s not where the real story lies. It’s just a catalyst for the real conflict: Cassie’s existential crisis. Living in a world filled with people doing such terrible things to each other and the planet, trapped in our routines of endless test-taking and kowtowing to authority, being so small and insignificant in a universe so vast, how can we go on living, day after day? Many days, Cassie wishes she could escape to her family’s rustic cabin in the mountains; some days she wishes she could escape the tethers of life completely.

In Jay Asher’s big debut Thirteen Reasons Why, the main female character finds reasons not to go on living. …Or Not?, in contrast, is about Cassie’s discovery of reasons to live, even when she’s feeling weighed down by the tedium and sorrow of life. It’s about finding the resolve to hang on, even when she feels helpless and hopeless.

I enjoyed and identified with Cassie as a character. You get the impression that she is a true individualist – not going against the grain for the sake of turning heads, but because she’s being true to herself, even when it’s unpopular. She does have a touch of righteous indignation about her, but Mandabach successfully prevents her from being insufferable by surrounding her with characters who respectfully disagree with her, and whom she respects in turn. Cassie’s prickly and wants to be left alone, yet she also longs to be loved. Kirkus' reviewer calls her "spoiled", and it's true that Cassie isn't facing dire circumstances; but as anyone who suffers from depression can tell you, life doesn't need to be dire to be difficult.

The whole time I was reading the school scenes, I wished I could break into the story and give Cassie and her parents a copy of The Teenage Liberation Handbook, by Grace Llewellyn. Cassie seems like a natural candidate for unschooling. She’s mature, intelligent, and driven in her particular areas of interest. She’s tortured by the rote learning, test taking, and stifling atmosphere of her school. Outside the confines of formal schooling, who knows what she might achieve? I can envision her writing books, learning to live sustainably, traveling the world to help people in need and causes she believes in. For that matter, her friend DJ might also be a good candidate for unschooling – not that his mother would ever go for it. He’s obviously remarkably intelligent (he writes a helluva love poem, anyway), yet barely scrapes by in school. He just doesn’t seem to be cut out it.

…Or Not? isn’t perfect. It runs almost 400 pages, which felt slightly long. The school harassment issues, which initially seem like the book’s focal point, drop out of the plot almost entirely, about a third of the way in, only to pop up again at the end as another incendiary event. Meanwhile, it’s suggested that a former friend of Cassie’s is behind the harassment, but the reasons for the end of their friendship and the ex-friend’s apparently extreme antagonism are never explained.

Nonetheless, I found …Or Not? to be a very enjoyable and thoughtful read. I imagine many teens will read Cassie’s story and think, “I thought I was the only one who felt this way about life!” And that by itself will give them hope as they learn to be.

At this point, the blogosphere’s kerfuffle over Pat Murphy’s middle grade novel The Wild Girls is such old news I’m not even going to touch it. If you’re really interested, you can read Paul Kincaid’s review, which led to Literaticat’s response, which prompted commentary at Shaken and Stirred, Chasing Ray, and Torque Control, among many others, I’m sure, including Paul Kincaid's personal blog.

What’s important here is the flurry of discussion led me to seek out The Wild Girls myself. And I’m glad I did. I won’t count it among the best books I’ve read all year, much less my favorites of all time. I think it will find a fairly niche audience, actually – probably mostly girls, and not the Clique crowd at that; the bookish; the oddballs. But to those young target readers, I believe it may become a very special book indeed.

To back up, The Wild Girls is the story of two 12-year-old girls, Joan and Fox, who are a bit oddball themselves. They become close friends, sharing a love of imaginative play and writing. After winning a short story competition together, they are encouraged by Verla Volante, a professional writer, to join a summer writing workshop. Meanwhile, they cope with the changes in their individual families.

That’s the surface. The subtext (as Verla Volante would say) is the way writing positively changes the girls’ interactions in the world. By writing, and applying writing techniques to their relationships and actions, the girls become more confident in taking risks; grow closer to their families and friends by asking questions; and learn to see the world from others’ point of view.

It’s a fairly quiet book, focusing on the small ways Joan and Fox’s lives change as a result of their pursuit of writing. And for that reason, it’s also very empowering. By daring to ask questions, Joan gets her mother to openly discuss her marital problems. By putting her emotions into stories, she opens a new line of communication with her difficult father. Writing doesn’t win Joan popularity or solve her family’s problems, but it brings her closer to the people in her life, even as it helps her better understand herself.

So, why do I think The Wild Girls will win a special place in some readers’ hearts? To answer that, I have to climb in the time machine and set the dial for the mid-1980s.

I loved books from the get-go, thanks to my parents, but it was thanks to my second grade teacher that I loved writing, too. Ms. K was always giving us one-sentence story starters on a ditto sheet, and my stories inevitably overflowed the page and filled up several more. At the top of each one, she wrote, “Excellent!” That was the year I decided to become a writer.

A novelist, to be specific. I blame that on a middle grade book called Mom, You’re Fired!, by Nancy K. Robinson (Scholastic, 1981). In it, two girls are writing their Best-Selling Novel, which they plan to sell for millions of dollars. Of course, months of work have only gotten them half-way through the first sentence. It reads, “Little did Lady Penelope Pembleton-Harkness know that lurking in the shadow of the pomegranate bush…” My own eight-year-old noveling attempt only got me slightly farther (five pages!), but the seeds were sown.

I found further inspiration in Stage Fright, by Ann M. Martin (Holiday House, 1984), in which three girls try to set a world record with their several-hundred-stanza poem, “The Saga of Barbie and Ken.” Unfortunately, when they finish it, they mail their only copy not to the Guinness Book of World Records, but to movie star Sir Alec Guinness. Didn’t matter to me. Here were more girls my own age writing!

Harriet, the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh (Delacorte, 1964) was probably my next major inspiration. It feels almost cliché to cite Harriet. Wasn’t Harriet every young writer’s role model? Didn’t everyone long to fill notebooks full of clever observations on life? It took me considerably longer than Harriet to reach fourteen spiral-bound notebooks. But spiral-bound notebooks are still the only blank books I’ll use.

Finally, there’s Look Through My Window, by Jean Little (Harper & Row, 1970). Emily and Kate not only wrote poetry, they had a poetry club. In the attic. How thrilling was that?

Aside from tracing my own obsession with writing as inspired by middle grade literature, I’d like to make this point: Harriet aside, none of these books from my childhood is in print. They aren’t classics. You’ll be lucky to find a tattered copy at your library. But they were good books. Inspiring books. I wouldn’t have remembered them all these years if they hadn’t been so special to me – and, I imagine, all those other young girls who loved to write. I fully expect The Wild Girls will be on a future writer's own list of inspirations someday.

ETA, February 15, 2008: How could I have forgotten Daphne's Book by Mary Downing Hahn? I read this book again and again. A book about individuality and friendship, poverty and mental illness, it centers around two girls assigned to create a children's book together! It was lovely and inspiring - so much so that I tried to write my own mouse fantasy story, like the girls in the book.