I'm Still Wild About Harry by Jim Hill

A little over three weeks ago my son turned nine, and, as promised (more on this to come), we began our family read-a-loud of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Two nights ago we finished.

I loved every minute of it.

That’s probably not a shock after all this is a blog for middle-grade writers (and readers – can’t be one without the other), and HP is the epicenter of the twenty-first-century kid lit phenomenon. Among the kidliterati, it is expected that you’ve read the series at least once. You may have waited in line for midnight book releases. Maybe even dressed up as Harry Potter for Halloween (the Boy Who Lived… to Middle Age!). Or freaked out when the Sorting Hat named you a Hufflepuff instead of Gryffindor. (I claim Gryffinpuff or Huffledor–who’s with me?)

What I loved most about this read through was sharing it with my family, and experiencing the story through the eyes of my son. You see, we made him wait to read the story, and see the movies (books first always). It’s not that he hasn’t asked. Or, you know, begged. It’s that we wanted him to be ready for it. Not just as a reader, but as a person. We wanted him to appreciate the emotional arcs as much as the action and humor. Sometimes it must suck having a writer for a parent.

As a reader, he could’ve sailed through it in second grade. He’s read a ton of the 39 Clues series, several Fablehavens, the entire Wings of Fire series, and all of Amulet. The boy’s a reader, through and through. As a family, we’ve read lengthy series – The Cold Cereal Saga by Adam Rex, the Wondla series by Tony Deterlizzi, and The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates series by Caroline Carson – that have taken months and had complex storylines with a large cast of characters and deep worldbuilding.

And still, we said no to Harry.

No books.
No movies.
No spoilers.*

This is no easy task in a world where HP is a cultural touchstone and a marketing phenomenon. We did cave (a little) to see Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, and he has the game of it on his iPad. Still, that’s a parallel story, not actual-Harry-Potter.

It was worth it. As a fancy-pants writer with a grad degree in Writing for Children and hundreds of children’s books consumed, it’s too easy to get caught up in the mechanics of any story and miss the hypnotic escapism inherent to the best of them. Hearing the gasps, giggles, and shrieks of this enraptured, enthusiastic kid stripped the analysis out of my head and allowed me to live this story from the child’s perspective.

It was glorious.

Tonight we’ll watch the movie.

Tomorrow we’ll start The Chamber of Secrets.

My Favorite Harry Potter Joke

Q: How did Harry Potter get down the hill?
A: Walking. JK Rowling.


* Okay, very few spoilers. He caught about twenty minutes of the movie at a friend’s house. Much to our horror.

Dr. Fell and the Playground of DOOM

Happy Book Birthday to David Neilsen and Dr. Fell!

And Now for the Review

Dr. Fell and the Playground of DOOM is creepy, funny, and perfect middle-grade horror for those kids with a taste for the dark side (Hmmm, tastes like chicken). 

Dr. Fell arrives in the quiet neighborhood of Hardscrabble Street, takes over a long abandoned home, and turns the front yard into the titular playground overnight. The local children are seduced by the endless adventures offered by the playground as it takes the shape of whatever they imagine it to be – rockets, castles, pirate ships, climbing walls, mad tea parties, catacombs, etc. The kids love it, even when the injuries start piling up – sometimes grave trauma. But injuries are no problem for the doctor, who swoops in and performs miraculous feats of medicine behind the closed doors of the formerly abandoned house. In no time, Dr. Fell mesmerizes the entire town (including the parents!), and it's up to the heroic efforts of the three main characters to somehow save the day from Dr. Fell and his ancient horrors.

Author Neilsen's background in storytelling and theater shows in the language which lends itself to quality read-a-loud activities for families, libraries, and schools. This book will find a home among shelves cluttered with R.L. Stine, David Lubar, Adam Gidwitz, and Neil Gaiman.

Just be sure to have a night light handy. 

The Interview Portion of Our Entertainment

How did this story come to you? It's your first book for kids. Did it start out that way, or did you realize that when you were into it?

David Neilsen

The idea for the book came from an illustration by the late children’s illustrator Trina Schart Hyman. It had been hanging on the wall of my in-laws’ for years before I ever really looked at it.  It shows a man in a suit and top hat leering down at a little girl, who looks back at him suspiciously. The man has a large basket strapped to his back out of which are sticking various arms, legs, and heads of little children. It’s labeled “Dr. Fell” and Hyman drew it when asked to create an image from her favorite fable or fairy tale. Curious, I looked up Dr. Fell online and discovered the four-line poem written in 1680 which I’ve included at the beginning of my book.

I loved the picture, and right away all sorts of questions jumped into my head. Who is this guy? What is he doing? What happens when he comes to town? The story began to take form when I went about answering these questions.

From the start, I knew this was a book for kids. It’s actually my second book. My first book, which has yet to be published, caught the attention of an agent who took me on as a Middle Grade/YA author, so I’d already started down the path of writing Middle-Grade fiction when I began to put this story together.

How does your storytelling experience inform your writing? Do you read your work aloud as you draft?

My storytelling and my writing are two sides of the same coin. I have brought stories I’ve written into my work as a storyteller, and have taken stories I crafted as performance pieces and sold them as short stories. I have a theater background, so I do tend to read my work aloud when I’m going over it, to make sure it reads well and isn’t too clunky. I have always read aloud to my kids at night, and I like to think that parents will read my book aloud to their kids. I keep that in mind as I write, and make sure that everything flows the way I want it to. I teach a writing workshop for kids through Writopia Labs and always advise my students to read their work aloud, even if alone in their room, because you may realize that what looks good on the page may not actually sound good out loud.

What horror authors for kids have influenced you? 

Obviously, when you think of children’s horror, you think of R.L. Stine, and while I’ve read several Goosebumps books. I’m more partial to horror of the mind, rather than jump scares and gore. Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book and Coraline are two fantastically creepy tales. I also liked Jonathan Auxier’s The Night Gardener. Recently, I devoured Claire Legrand’s amazing novel, The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls. I loved the truly disturbing descriptions of the home itself, as well as the darkness into which the plot descends. A great book.

What were the challenges of bringing a Lovecraftian themed story to life in a middle-grade book?

I think Lovecraftian themes are perfect for Middle Grade. Behind the tentacles and the madness inherent within Lovecraft’s work is the overarching theme of Forbidden Knowledge--the truth is worse than you could imagine and there is a terrible price to be paid for learning what you should not have learned. Children at this age are spreading their wings, as it were and their worlds are becoming larger by the second. Our job as parents is to guide that learning in the right directions. With Dr. Fell, there is obviously a terrible secret to uncover, but at what cost? The children are definitely changed by their experience and encounter with Dr. Fell, but changed for the better?

And then, of course, I did have to have some sort of tentacles in there as well. Because I love tentacles.

Is there a sequel?

While there’s nothing officially in development, I think a lot about a sequel. It took me a long time to figure out how to best craft a sequel without breaking the rules I set up in this book. I wasn’t entirely sure one existed. But things fell into place, and I figured out what I wanted to do, and so I’ve started putting notes in order and writing a few chapters. My next book is a stand-alone novel coming next August tentatively titled Beyond the Doors. And I’ve written another book after that also not related to Dr. Fell. But I do hope to return to the bad doctor sooner rather than later. I’m excited to the tell the next chapter of his story.

Cthulhu for President?

Isn’t he already running? I once saw a banner online which read something along the lines of “I’m voting for Cthulhu so that he’ll devour my soul last.” If Cthulhu wins humanity loses, but if you support him, you’ll get a few more days to live. Eating humanity takes time.

Dr. Fell on Tour

David and Dr. Fell are the making the rounds of several other blogs. Here's the list for those that to learn more about the book, the author, and the Evil Dr. Fell. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Date	Blog
8/1/16	My Brain on Books
8/2/16	The Boy Reader
8/3/16	Fandom Monthly Magazine
8/4/16	Batch of Books
8/5/16	The Book's the Thing
8/6/16	books4yourkids
8/7/16	Book Monsters
8/8/16	Middle Grade Ninja
8/9/16	Project Middle Grade Mayhem
8/10/16	The Children's Book Review
8/11/16	Seraphina Reads
8/12/16	5 Girls Book Reviews
8/13/16	I'm Shelf-ish
8/14/16	Books Complete Me
8/15/16	Satisfaction for Insatiable Readers
8/16/16	Books, Movies, Reviews. Oh My!
8/17/16	The Book Report Network: Kidsreads
8/18/16	YABooksCentral.com
8/19/16	Kid Lit Reviews
8/20/16	Book Blather
8/21/16	Word Spelunking
8/22/16	Reader Girls
8/23/16	The Book Wars
8/24/16	Cracking the Cover
8/25/16	Blackplume
8/26/16	MARGIE'S MUST READS
8/27/16	Ms. Yingling Reads
8/28/16	Carina Books

Reading Out Loud to the Older Crowd by Paul Greci

Last month I was invited to read a chapter of Surviving Bear Island at the Alaska Literacy Council’s Annual Conference. As I dug into the themes of the conference I discovered that a big focus was the value of reading out loud to students of all ages. The keynote speaker, Steven Layne, had just published a book, In Defense of Read Aloud, exploring the benefits of reading out loud.

When I started teaching English at an alternative school program for at risk teens in the mid 1990’s, I had a classroom full of reluctant and struggling readers and writers in 9^th through 12^th grades, and I built my instruction around reading out loud.

I read whole novels, short stories and essays to my students and designed writing assignments around our readings. With some of the fiction I read, I’d often stop at a particularly suspenseful moment have the students write the next part of the story and then invite them to share what they’d written.

I did every assignment along with my students and it was then that I discovered that I liked writing fiction.

So, I thought it was fitting that I got read a chapter of Surviving Bear Island out loud to a conference focusing on the value of reading out loud, since the book’s creation is rooted in reading out loud.

Reading out loud to my older students helped some of them to connect with the written word and lessened their resistance to engaging in independent reading.

One of my most memorable read aloud experiences as a teacher was reading Anthem by Ayn Rand. I was team teaching with a very talented social studies teacher who suggested the title. While I read the book and did some writing exercises with the class, he put it in historical context for the students, and then played the Rush album 2112 for the class and did a few lessons on the lyrics as they related to the book.

Do you have any memorable read aloud experiences as students or as teachers?

For the Fun of It by Dianne K. Salerni

School started for me at the beginning of this month. This is my 25^th year of teaching, and on the first day of school I gave my 5th grade reading classes a survey on their reading interests and habits.

The first question on the survey was: How often do you read for fun and not for school? Thirty percent of my students circled Rarely or Never. Thirty percent. Almost a third.

I know not every student loves to read. Some struggle at comprehension. Some can’t sit still. I wish I could say that a lot of those students just prefer active sports activities to reading, but sadly more of them spend their time playing video games. The saddest of all, I think, is when students come from families where reading is simply not valued. I’ve had adults in the community complain to me about the Summer Reading assigned by my school (which is 4 books of the student’s own choosing). 

“Summer is supposed to be fun!” one mother told me indignantly. “I told my daughter she didn’t have to do it. She deserves a break.”

There are so many things wrong with that statement, I hardly know where to begin. Should I start with the idea that children are entitled to fun? Or that reading can’t be fun? Or should I begin with the idea that this woman’s daughter deserved a break after months of suffering through an education that girls in other parts of the world risk their lives for? And let’s not get into parents overruling a school assignment because it doesn’t sound like fun to them.

One of the most powerful tools I have for combating a negative attitude toward reading (especially when it is learned from home) is read aloud. It circumvents comprehension problems, homework non-compliance, and parents who don't encourage reading. I’m already compiling a list of titles to engage this year’s students.

Before the end of this year, some of the students in that thirty percent will:

• Check No More Dead Dogs out of the school library because they want to find out who’s sabotaging the school play before anyone else.
• Laugh out loud when Old Shep blows up and when they guess the ending to Little Britches’s poem, even though I don’t read that word out loud.
• Gasp when they realize Mary Hightower lives in the “ghost” of the Twin Towers and when they find out who the McGill really is.
• Argue over who lives and who dies, based on the Underland Prophecy of Gray.
• Put their heads down on their desks in sadness and shame when they hear what Jack Will says about Auggie on Halloween.
• Ask their parents to take them to the local library – possibly for the first time in their lives.

I’m getting ready to do battle with apathy, entitlement, and a lack of wonder and imagination. I’m going to teach them what fun really is.

Watch out, my lovely thirty percent. I’ve got some books for you.

The Best Part of Being a Fifth Grade Teacher ...

… is introducing kids to literature through read aloud.

Over the 24 years of my career as a teacher, I’ve seen education fads come and go. Holistic language vs discrete skills. Top down vs bottom up. Direct teaching vs student inquiry.  And through it all, I keep reading aloud to my students.  Even when it’s not in fashion.

There are some books I read every year. I think I’ve read NO MORE DEAD DOGS by Gordon Korman to two classes per year for the last six years, which makes at least 12 times I’ve read that book, not counting when I first discovered it. How can I stand to read a book so many times?  It’s the reaction of the kids.  It’s always the reaction of the kids that makes reading a book out loud worthwhile.

I practice (even after 12 times) getting the comedic timing down perfectly when Wallace Wallace, football star of NO MORE DEAD DOGS, changes the words of the school play so that the maudlin line: “We must look deep within our souls to accept this tragedy.” becomes: “Your dog died. Get used to it.” 

I also practice certain lines from THE TEACHER’S FUNERAL by Richard Peck, hoping to say them without my voice quavering: “You could have knocked us over with feathers. Flopears had captured us all in his notebook. And we were so real, we almost strolled off the page. We'd gotten him wrong. He wasn't a dunce. He was an artist. According to these pages, he saw us all a good deal clearer than we'd ever seen him.” 

Okay, I never can manage that bit without choking up, just as there are always tears for the ending of A LONG WAY FROM CHICAGO, also by Richard Peck, when Grandma lights up her house with lanterns so her grandson Joey, passing by on the WWI troop train, can see her waving from the doorway.

And it doesn’t go unnoticed, either. A parent once told me at conference time that her daughter came home and shared a story about Mrs. Salerni bursting into tears during read aloud. “Thank you for showing my daughter how literature can move you,” she said.

I’ll never forget the year I closed the final page of AIRBORN by Ken Oppel and a struggling reader in the class held out his hands for the book. He’d already asked me if he could take it home and read it all over again after I was finished. It was well above his reading level, but I handed it over with confidence.  Because I’d already read it aloud, I knew he would have reasonable success trying it on his own – and he’d grow a little bit as a reader while doing so.

His mother hugged me the next time she saw me. 

This year, I had the opportunity to read one of my own manuscripts out loud. My two classes had a sneak preview of THE EIGHTH DAY, and reading my future book out loud was an incredible experience. Terrifying. But incredible.  I’ll have to share that in another post. 

For now, I want to finish up by saying how excited I am to join the Project Mayhem team – as a teacher and a writer of MG literature -- and I’m looking forward to getting to know you all better.