Posted on June 12, 2015 at 8:00 am
The Chicago Tribune asked actors and filmmakers what books they would like to see adapted for the screen. “Selma” director Ava DuVernay picked Octavia Butler’s time travel story Kindred
Posted on May 20, 2015 at 3:54 pm
The wonderful Claire LaZebnik has written another terrific YA book. This one is Wrong About the Guy
I loved the book’s heart and humor and I was thrilled to have another chance to interview LaZebnik.
Jane Austen famously said that with Emma she was creating a character that no one would like. Did you think that at times about your main character, Ellie?
You know what’s funny? I loved Ellie from beginning to end. My own teenage daughter is sort of charmingly irreverent and disrespectful (but only when we’re joking around). I saw Ellie as being like that–quick with a funny insult and a little overly confident, but fun to be with, whether you’re another character or a reader. So I’ve been a little surprised when some people who’ve read it have said they didn’t like her. I love her! I love all my heroines, no matter how flawed. But she does get humbled in the course of the book and becomes an even better person by the end.
We hear the story in Ellie’s own voice. As an author, what are the advantages and frustrations of a first-person account?
I love writing in the first person. It feels so much more engaging to me: the reader gets to go through the journey WITH the character, learning things as she does and falling for the same deceptions. But of course it’s frustrating that anything that happens away from the narrator’s presence can only be described to her. Sometimes the most dramatic scenes have to be boiled down to a bit of dialogue because you just can’t justify having the narrator in the room. And the fact that you can’t see into other people’s minds is also limiting. But I’d say the benefits outweigh the frustrations.
Ellie’s privileged life is very different from what she and her single mother had when she was younger. How does that affect her world view?
I wanted her to have clarity about the way people suck up to you when you’re famous and it seemed like she’d have more perspective on it if she hadn’t always lived with it. It made her a little less Emma-like (Emma is very much to the manor born) but more interesting to me as a modern character. She and her mother also aren’t used to being waited on and living in the lap of luxury, so they still appreciate those things and don’t take them for granted. It makes them more relatable.
Because her stepfather is famous and wealthy, she is reluctant to trust some of the kids at school who try to befriend her, and yet is still taken advantage of by one of them. How does that affect her other relationships?
I know some kids out here with famous parents and they really are besieged by attention from people who want access to their house and relatives. It’s a lot of work to sort out the real friends from the ones who are starstruck—and of course it’s not always a simple either/or. You can have a good friend who also gets a thrill from being around your famous father or mother. So it’s complicated. I think you learn to be wary. I explored some of this in my first YA novel EPIC FAIL, where one of the main characters has two movie star parents and is very distrustful of anyone he hasn’t known for years. And in this one, part of the reason Ellie desperately wants her best friend to go to the same college as her is because she wants someone she can trust completely at her side there.
Even though she is careful not to be too trusting in some cases, Ellie misses some important signals of less than trustworthiness in others. What makes her vulnerable to those mistakes?
Ellie’s problem is hubris: she thinks she knows everything. And she does know a lot–she’s actually very smart and fairly intuitive. But her very intelligence makes her overly confident. Once she thinks she’s figured something out, she assumes she’s right and ignores any evidence to the contrary. And that leads her down the wrong path several times in the novel. She also doesn’t like being disagreed with or told she’s wrong—it’s not something she’s used to—so she stops listening when someone tries to point out the flaws in her thinking.
Ellie is in some ways most wrong about herself. How does that crucial rite of adolescence, the college application essay, help her see herself more clearly?
Oh, I had so much fun talking about college essays! I really do think they reflect so much of what teenagers are trying to figure out about themselves and the world in general. Ellie tries to write about her passion for global community work, but eventually her tutor forces her to admit she hasn’t actually done anything to help people who are suffering in other countries. So then she tries writing something that’s more honest, about how she means well, but falls short of her ambition to be a good person. I think that’s true of so many of us: we want to think of ourselves as do-gooders, but we really just sit on the sidelines and try to stay out of trouble. She accepts the reality that she’s not nearly so involved or caring as she likes to think she is, and that makes her resolve to do better in the future.
Ellie’s mother and stepfather have a strong, supportive, close relationship, but it is hard for them to talk about what is going on with their son. Why is that and what role does Ellie play?
Because my own son has autism and I’ve written a couple of books about that, I’ve really studied how families react to concerns about their children. Ellie’s brother is a late talker and often throws tantrums. His mother thinks something must be wrong; his father thinks she’s overreacting. This is really a classic dichotomy: mothers tend to worry and fathers tend to be dismissive. Ellie loves her brother just the way he is, so she sort of agrees with her stepfather that they should just let him be. At the same time, she’s very close to her mother and wants to support her too. She finally realizes that her role is to help both parents really LISTEN to each other. That’s all that matters in the long run. Just listening and working together to figure everything out.
In Austen’s book and in “Clueless,” also inspired by Emma, the main character encourages her naive young friend to pursue a young man named Elton, with disastrous consequences. Your re-interpretation of that part of the plot is very creative! What led you to that variation?
I’m sure you know the Bechdel Test, based on a cartoon strip by the wonderful graphic artist Alison Bechdel. A movie fails the Bechdel test if there isn’t more than one female character, if the women never talk to each other, or if the female characters only discuss men when they DO talk. Even though I was borrowing a lot from Austen, I didn’t want the two young women in my book to spend most of their time talking about men, but I still wanted my main character, Ellie, to steer her naive friend in the wrong direction. So I switched Mr. Elton to Elton College! It’s the school Ellie wants to go to, and she wants her friend to go there too. It’s hard to get into, but Ellie’s a good student and very smart and her stepfather’s famous—she has a good shot at getting in. Her friend, on the other hand, is really out of her league with this school, but Ellie refuses to see that and keeps pushing her to apply early. The storyline follows the arc of the one in Emma, but it’s not about young women pursuing men—it’s about young women trying to figure out the whole college thing.
Did your own experiences as a teenager inspire any part of the story?
For the most part, no—I grew up on the east coast and this is very much a Hollywood novel. The only area that I’d say I drew from my own life for was the discussion about writing college essays. That hasn’t changed much in the last few decades—too many kids still try to sound like someone they’re not in those essays and I think the phoniness will always come through. I actually wrote a humorous essay about being the youngest of five siblings. It was weird and totally personal . . . and I got into to my first choice college. And my son wrote one about his lousy sense of direction. (Also successfully.) So I’m a big fan of doing something weird and unique.
Posted on May 20, 2015 at 8:00 am
Reading Rainbow’s Kickstarter project has announced that its “Skybrary,” a subscription-based online library for kids, is here. Families can get access to more than 500 carefully selected books that children can read on smartphones or tablets, with new content added every week. Families can sign up for a free trial period to test it out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kIUXdmhEfg
Posted on May 2, 2015 at 3:39 pm
I really enjoyed The Jottery: Thought Experiments for Everyday Philosophers and Part-Time Geniuses
In ten words or fewer, explain why it’s useful or stupid to ask people to explain things in ten words or fewer.
List a handful of elevator tension-breakers, and a handful of elevator tension-makers.
A service specializes in planning vacations that seem unremarkable at the time, but that people look back on with an almost unbearable fondness and longing. Suggest a few itineraries.
List at least ten groups about which you could grandly announce, “These are my people!”
Selsberg’s books (Dear Old Love: Anonymous Notes to Former Crushes, Sweethearts, Husbands, Wives, & Ones That Got Away
Posted on March 1, 2015 at 3:37 pm
Rad American Women A-Z: Rebels, Trailblazers, and Visionaries who Shaped Our History . . . and Our Future!
Where did the idea for this project come from?
The idea came when my daughter (who’s now 5) was about two. She’s such an amazing kid, and I want her to grow up to be empowered and inspired. I’m very conscious of the images of women and girls in the media, and want her to see a wide range of possibilities for who she can be and what she can do. We have a house full of great books, but I wanted her to have something more to read—something fun and bold but also educational and inspiring, to teach her about history in a way she could appreciate once she was a little older. I couldn’t find the book I wanted, so I decided I’d try to write one myself. After I had my son, I felt even more motivated to create it, because it’s not just young girls that need powerful female role models—it’s boys, too.
Did you have female or feminist role models when you were growing up?
Absolutely. I was lucky enough to be raised by and around very strong, loving women. I’d cite my mother Barbara, and though she may not have identified as a feminist, my Nana as well. As a child I was always drawn to books about spunky, adventurous, bold girls—Harriet the Spy, Nancy Drew, the Anastasia Krupnik books. In middle school I wanted to be a journalist, and I loved (the TV character) Murphy Brown and MTV’s Tabitha Soren. And then I found feminist heroes in music: riot grrl, PJ Harvey, Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos. One thing to note about these figures is that they’re all white—outside of musicians and performers like Janet Jackson, Neneh Cherry, Tracy Chapman, and MC Lyte, I wasn’t exposed to a diverse array of feminist role models until later in high school (when I sought it out on my own) and then in college—that’s one thing I hope to remedy with this book.
Did anything surprise you as you researched the book?
Going into this project I considered myself to be relatively well-versed in women’s history—I quickly realized how much I don’t know, and how many fascinating women I’ve never heard of. It was also incredible to learn more about women I was familiar with. I often knew the basic gist of a person’s life and accomplishments (or thought I knew!) and as I went in-depth with my research I learned so much more. It was a humbling and exciting journey to explore and absorb all of these stories. Only 26 ended up in the book, but I learned about so many more!
What were your best resources for research?
I used a number of great books and websites. A Mighty Girl exposed me to a number of fantastic existing children’s books. I often visited the website for the PBS Makers project, as well as the National Women’s History Project and the National Women’s Hall of Fame. I visited the Oakland Public Library to check out specific biographies on individual women, but also used books like “The Reader’s Companion to U.S. Women’s History” and “What Every American Should Know About Women’s History” as frequent reference points. And of course I used your basic Google search, and actually found great value in the “suggested results” of these searches, which often led me to people I’d never heard of.
Why is it important for both boys and girls to learn about these women?
The term “women’s history” is significant, but also limiting, as it can imply that it’s a history only for or of interest to women—not for everyone. The women we profile are Americans, and their stories are part of American history, to be included in our textbooks and our collective consciousness alongside the many, many male heroes that we learn about. The majority of the women in the book are non-white, and for many reasons their stories have been left out of mainstream and traditional accounts of “important” historical events and individuals. Even when we do teach the history of women and people of color, it tends to rely on the same singular figures over and over. Children—and adults—should know that Amelia Earhart was not the only female aviator. Rosa Parks was not the only black woman in the Civil Rights movement. Susan B. Anthony was not the only one fighting for suffrage. These women were amazing and are absolutely important, but there’s so much more to the (hi)story.
Who were some of the women you most regretted having to leave out and will they be in some future edition?
For nearly every woman featured in this book, there are at least 3 others that were almost included. It was very challenging to decide. We do have plans for additional books, and are already planning several. Some letters just have more names to choose from—A, E, F, J, K, M, and S, for example—and some (Q, X, Y, Z) don’t. A was a big challenge, because it’s the first letter and it sets the tone—and because there are so many awesome, amazing As! It could have been Audre Lorde or Adrienne Rich or Abigail Adams or Anne Sullivan. F was almost Fannie Lou Hamer, but E is Ella Baker, and they were working in the same field at the same time, and we wanted as much variety as possible. I definitely want to include Fannie Lou in the next book! J was going to be Jane Addams, but when I learned about the amazing but not very well-known educator and activist Jovita Idar I decided to feature her instead. I love that M is for Maya Lin but I’d like to include astronaut Mae Jamison in a future book. S went through several iterations as well, and was almost Sister Corita Kent, an incredible nun who was a graphic artist, as well as Sylvia Rivera, a transgendered activist and Stonewall vet. Bottom line: there is no end to the incredible stories that deserve to be told.
Why is the X group so significant and what do you hope kids will get from that write-up?
X is significant because it reminds us of how much we don’t know, and how much is yet to come. It’s significant because the illustration and the text challenge how we define and perceive heroism and greatness—many of the images are of people doing “ordinary” things like reading, parenting, and working. You don’t need to be a nationally celebrated figure to be rad, to have an impact on the world. Hopefully readers will think of the many reasons why we don’t necessarily know the names of all the women who have done great, heroic things. Hopefully it will inspire them to consider the past but also look toward the future, and to recognize the radness in themselves and the people around them.
