Wednesday, April 12, 2023

Unraveller, by Frances Hardinge

My hold on the newest Frances Hardinge came in! [Insert more gushing about the wonders of libraries.] I shall settle in my chair with it and not come back to reality for a good, lovely while.

...

I don't even know why I try to review Frances Hardinge's books. They are so hard to describe. And also, you should just read them because they are always brilliant and wise and will wind their tendrils around your heart and into your brain and leave you feeling like the world is more magical and people are more multi-dimensional than you had ever understood.

Unraveller is about curses and hatred and despair, and loyalty, healing and love, and how all those things can exist within one human heart, and that's what makes us human and worth the time and effort and love it takes to understand and heal us.

"I'm good at hate. I'm better at it than anything else I've ever done! This is the only power I've ever had!"

Every Hardinge book is completely different from every other Hardinge book (I'm pretty sure I say this in every review, but it's important to remember), but Unravelled reminds me most of Cuckoo Song. It has the same creepiness, and the inhabitants of the Wilds have a lot in common with the Besiders. Hardinge is wonderful at taking folktales and teasing out the logic behind all the weirdness to create a coherent, shiver-down-the-spine otherworld with its own terrifyingly logical rules. The Wilds are a swamp-forest, spooky and dripping with menace, inhabited by beautiful and terrifying monsters that are almost familiar.

As I was reading, I found a scrap of paper and wrote down "wildly inventive" and "stunningly coherent," because I think those are the best ways to describe a Hardinge novel. The curses in this book are folktale weird, like being turned into a tree that's then cut down and made into planks which are made into a boat. Kellen is the unraveller, because he can sense the nature and origin of a curse and unravel it, transforming even the planks in a boat back into a person. He is travelling with Nettle, who is having trouble readjusting to being herself again after Kellen unravelled her curse. (No, she wasn't the boat. I won't spoil the reveal of her curse.)

At first it seems the novel will be about Kellen and Nettle finding cursed people and learning their stories so Kellen can fix them. But it turns out that people, and curses, are a little more complicated than that, and so is the novel. But it all makes so much sense—that's what I mean by coherent. It's quite delicious and satisfying the way everything comes around in the end. You recognize the character and story elements because you've seen them in folktales, but also because you've seen them in yourself and the people you know. Everything is a brilliant metaphor for the workings of the human heart. Anger and trauma and patience and forgiveness.

Hardinge's books have a darkness in them, because she doesn't shy away from the hard things in people's souls; she sees them so clearly; but she sees them with deep compassion. She's a lot like T. Kingfisher that way. That's what keeps me eagerly waiting for the next Hardinge novel; her ruthless compassion, and her brilliant writing.

I do not like humans. Your hearts smell of earth and sweat. you miss notes when you sing. You bleed too easily. You walk in with stories tangled around you like briars and do not notice. You trip over everything and break it. You are too real, and it is wasted on you. I lose patience.

Friday, April 7, 2023

Author Interview: Michael Roth and River's New Friend

I'm excited for you all to meet Michael Roth, picture book author! I met Michael at a writer's conference, and I've been privileged to watch the development of his very cute book, River's New Friend. Michael kindly agreed to answer a few questions about dogs, llamas and writing picture books.

Did you grow up owning dogs? Do you have a favourite childhood memory of a dog?

As a kid, I had asthma and a dog allergy. As a result, I grew up afraid of dogs. 

Then, one summer, when I was 16, my father (who also did not like dogs) and I took a trip out of town together. While we were gone, the rest of the family held a vote and with the two dissenting votes absent, unanimously decided to get a dog. When we returned home, we were greeted by the new family dog, a miniature schnauzer named Hans Von Schnauzer.

It took me a while to warm up to Hans. Fortunately, schnauzers were a breed of dog that I was less allergic to. Somehow, I was appointed the head dog trainer of the family, which helped me get over my fear and discomfort with dogs. By the time I left for University, I had grown to love Hans quite a lot.

At the time, the moment of getting out of a car and being greeted by a surprise puppy was upsetting, but now looking back and thinking of the good times I had with Hans and with all the dogs in my life that he paved the way for me to love, my first meeting with Hans is now one of my favourite childhood dog memories.

I understand this story was inspired by your own dogs. Tell us about the real River and Willow. How much of your story was based on Willow's actual behaviour?


River (age 7) and Willow (age 4) are both 65-pound goldendoodles. They are half-sisters, so they share many of the same physical features and mannerisms, but at the same time manage to be completely different dogs. 

River is calmer, more dignified (a bit uppity even), loves people but is “meh” about other dogs, and enjoys sitting outside in the yard for hours watching the birds. Willow is a mischief maker, loves sneaking food from countertops and hunting for used Kleenex tissues in the trash, is over-eager and a bit anxious, and loves all the attention.

In the story, “River’s New Friend”, River is excited when Mom and Dad bring home a new sister, but very quickly realizes that sisters can be challenging when they eat your food, play with your toys, make messes, and take away from your time with Mom and Dad. This is all true to what happened in real life. River was initially very excited, but then learned that having a puppy disrupted her routines and meant sharing food, toys, and attention, which she was displeased with to say the least.

Four years later, River and Willow aren’t really what I would call friends, but they peacefully coexist. They play together occasionally and every once and a while I will even catch them snuggling. To me, they are a good representation of many human sibling relationships where there is “love” but not always “like”. 

Part of my inspiration for writing the story was to present a sincere and honest look at this type of sibling relationship and let kids know that the mixed feelings they may have for a sibling are normal and that they are not “bad” for feeling sad, frustrated, or lonely when a new sibling arrives.

Do you have siblings? Are any of them monsters?

I have two, a younger brother and a younger sister. In the story of “River’s New Friend”, River describes Willow as a monster because Willow steals food and toys and takes away from River’s time with her parents. Based on this definition, yes, my siblings were both monsters. My brother especially, who is the older of my siblings and four years younger than me, struggled with health issues and learning disabilities, which meant he required a significant amount of my parents’ attention as a child. This was a difficult adjustment for me.

Funny enough, even though “River’s New Friend” is all about the challenges involved with the arrival of a new sibling, my own experience as an older brother and my relationship with my siblings never once crossed my mind as I was writing it. This was a story about River and Willow, not me. It was only as the story was nearly finished that I realized I had written a story that spoke to many of my own struggles and feelings as a child. This discovery was strangely cathartic and actually helped me process some of my childhood experiences in a new way.

I think that is the cool thing about art, whether we recognize it or not, we are pouring ourselves into it and it becomes a reflection of us. It is one of the reasons I am not overly concerned about artificial intelligence replacing artists as storytellers.

Have you ever met a llama?

I have! My wife had a coworker who lived on a llama farm. Every year, they would throw a giant party called “Llamapalooza”, where you could come and hang out with the llamas. We attended one year and met many llamas.

Did you have any idea how hard it is to write a picture book when you started? How long did this one take you, from first concept to finished book?

I wrote the first draft of “River’s New Friend” in an afternoon. I shared it with a few family members and friends who said, “hey, this is pretty good!” I could have stopped there and said I had written a picture book. Based on my experience reading many self-published picture books, I think this is where a good number of people fall into the trap of calling the book “done” and move ahead with publishing. But I wasn’t happy with it yet. 

After writing the first draft, I decided I wanted to improve as a writer before continuing, so I started taking online writing classes, reading books on craft, and watching countless YouTube videos on how to write. I joined a critique group to get honest, unbiased feedback on my writing. I revised the story again and again. Hired a professional editor and revised it some more. By the time the story was finished, I had been working on it for a year and a half, not including the year off I took to level up as a writer.

Did you write stories when you were a kid? What were your favourite kids books?

Nope. Not at all. I didn’t start writing until I was 34 years old, which makes me quite an outlier as a professional writer.

My favorite kid’s books were a series of middle grade sports mysteries written by Matt Christopher. The protagonists were always some young athlete investigating a strange happening that was impacting their team. Sometimes the stories were even a bit supernatural, like a magic goal-scoring hockey stick or a batter who could only hit home runs. As a kid who loved sports, I read these books over and over again.

What's one thing you wished you had known before you started the self-publishing process?

Don’t worry so much about social media. I spent a year trying to develop Instagram and TikTok accounts in advance of my book launch, hoping it would be helpful in marketing the book. But social media algorithms are fickle, the sites are unreliable ways to reach your target audience, and just because you have “followers” it doesn’t mean you have potential customers. 

At this point, after a year of work and the lucky break of having a video go viral, I have 4,200 Instagram followers. But I can only point to a couple of book sales that have come from my Instagram marketing.

If you enjoy social media and do it well, then by all means, lean into it and use it to your advantage. But if it isn’t something you enjoy or that comes naturally to you, your time and energy will be better spent writing books than composing social media posts. And most importantly, never feel guilty for not doing social media if it isn’t something you want to do, your writing career will go on just fine without it, I promise.

Why do you think llamas are so appealing?

First of all, they are fluffy and humans, in general, are a big fan of fluffiness. Second, they have a comical appearance. They look like sheep doing a giraffe impression. And their faces have a dopey cuteness that makes them look like they are perpetually in a state of having just woken up from a nap. Third, we have all fallen for the pro-llama propaganda pushed on us by Disney’s “Emperor’s New Groove” which depicts llamas as a vehicle for spiritual redemption of the morally bankrupt, when in reality, not a single Incan emperor was ever redeemed through llama transformation (a seldom known fact).

What did you love most about the whole writing-publishing process? What was the hardest thing?

There were several moments in the writing and illustration process where things felt like they just clicked into place. During writing, my story was feeling broken, but then I tried moving a piece from the end to the beginning and suddenly everything worked. That shift from “it’s not working” to “that’s it!” was the coolest moment of my writing career to date. There were similar moments during illustration where my illustrator, Zoe, would send me a character sketch or an storyboard for a page and I would have a sense of, “yep, that’s exactly it.” Those were the moments I loved the most.

The hardest thing about publishing was overcoming some of the self-doubt, much of which is tied to my decision to self-publish the book. When you traditionally publish a book, your work passes through several gatekeepers: a literary agent, editor, the publisher’s internal marketing team, etc. and each time you pass one of these gatekeepers, it can serve as a validation of your writing. An industry expert gave it their stamp of approval as being “good enough”. But when you are self-publishing, you don’t receive that same validation. To compensate, I surrounded myself with critique partners, beta readers, and a professional editor so that I would receive honest feedback and hopefully, once the book was good enough, validation that it was ready for publishing. 

Honestly, even now with the book completed, I still struggle with self-doubt. I worry if the story is good enough and how readers will respond. But I tell myself that I put in the work, listened to and incorporated feedback from smart and knowledgeable sources, and made the best book I could make, and I can feel proud of what I created.

Would you consider writing a spin-off series starring Rhama the llama?

One of the things that has surprised me about the early response to the picture book is the degree to which readers are enthralled with River’s friends in the story. The list of friends includes Basanti the shy bunny, Kameko the hungry cat, Earl the overwhelmed squirrel, Gustavo the grumpy goose, and Rhama the sleepy llama. Already, I have had requests for spinoff stories about the goose, the squirrel, and the llama. Spin-off books were never a consideration when I was writing the story, and the fact that people are asking for them (even if jokingly) is a testament to the incredible job my illustrator did bringing these side characters to life. Who knows, in the future there may be an extended River-verse with spinoff stories for everyone, including the llama.

Michael currently has a Kickstarter running to fund publishing River's New Friend. If you're interested in the book, or just interested in what a picture book Kickstarter looks like, check it out here. (It ends on April 15, so you have a week left!)

As part of the Kickstarter, Michael has organized a book donation drive to get donated copies of "River's New Friend" into the hands of kids and teachers in low-income communities. In addition to being able to pre-order a copy of "River's New Friend" for yourself, there is an option on the Kickstarter page to purchase copies of the book when will then be donated to a preschool or childcare center. If you would like to contribute, look for reward tiers on the Kickstarter page that mention a "Donation Book" in the description."

Monday, April 3, 2023

MMGM: The School Between Winter and Fairyland, by Heather Fawcett

I heard of Heather Fawcett because a lot of people are talking about her latest book for adults, Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Fairies. While putting that one on hold at my library, I noticed that she has a number of books for younger readers that were available to borrow. 

The School Between Winter and Fairyland is blurbed as "a fresh and exciting twist on magical boarding schools," and that it certainly is. I love that our protagonist isn't a student at Inglewood School: she's a beastkeeper. It's definitely a callout to Hagrid from Harry Potter, and anyone who has always wanted to spend more time with him and his magical beasts will love this novel.

I love that Autumn is part of a family, and that families are central to the plot and theme of the novel. Gran is the chief beastkeeper, and assigns chores to Autumn and her three brothers—and if you make Gran mad you'll be deworming the gwarthegs! I love the unique versions of mythical monsters Fawcett comes up with, and how they are all dangerous, but, like any wild animal, if you understand them and treat them properly you don't have to be afraid of them.

The plot was twisty and engrossing, with a real sense of peril but also lots of humorous and heartwarming moments. Autumn's love for her missing brother is a powerful thread driving all her actions; her reluctant friendship with Cai is beautifully developed. The boggart is another great character, loyal and frightening, and then there's Choo the relentlessly friendly dog.

This book was similar to The Phoenix Feather in the way it played with the trope of the Chosen One and notions of heroism. If the world isn't divided into people and monsters, us and them, good guys and bad guys, then a dragon-slaying hero isn't going to be much use. But there are still things that need fighting, and friendship, trust and understanding will be much more effective than swords.

Knowing that Fawcett is such a good writer, I'm now very impatient for my hold on Encyclopaedia of Fairies to come up! I've also put The Grace of Wild Things on hold: a fantasy retelling of Anne of Green Gables! And Fawcett is Canadian; she lives on Vancouver Island, not very far from where I am!

The Marvellous Middle-Grade Monday crew hangs out at Greg Pattridge's blog, Always in the Middle. You can always find great Middle-Grade picks, every Monday.

This Friday, I will be back with a fun author interview! Michael Roth will talk about dogs, llamas and picture books, and give a little insight into his self-publishing journey. Hope you can join us!