Tag Archive for Books for Boys

Asking “What If” Questions & Pulling on Threads: A Short Sample from “Justin Fisher Declares War!”

I’ve always loved the writing process, how a jumbled ball of yarn becomes an actual sweater. Conversely, it’s amazing to me — pulling on that thread and watching how the fabric unravels.

Back in September, 2008, I wrote this on my blog:

I have an idea for a character who gets into trouble at school. The book is about this kid, and, in part, the surprising relationship he builds with the school principal. But how and why does this boy get into trouble? What does he do? What kind of hilarious escapades can I conjure? Then one notion hit me over the weekend: He smuggles a goldfish into school!

I love that idea. I can WORK with that idea. That is: There are possibilities that appeal to my sensibilities. So then begins the series of questions: How does he do it? Why? What goes wrong (because something must go wrong)? I’ve already daydreamed over a host of options — involving a thermos, soup broth, and a swallowed goldfish — but I know I’m not there yet.

Below, please find a brief scene from my upcoming middle-grade book, Justin Fisher Declares War! (Scholastic, August 2010). The scene represents the realization of those bloggy wonderings. Yesterday I read this passage aloud to a group of foruth-graders. We’d been talking about the importance of asking “what if” questions. In this case, what if a boy wanted to smuggle a goldfish into school. How might he do it? The answer to that question is the scene you write.

If writing fiction is anything, it is asking “what if” questions, following the logic and playing with those possibilities — thinking it through. After all, “what if” questions are at the core of what’s now called “Speculative Fiction” and, I hasten to ask, what brand of fiction is not speculative? We’re all daydreamers here.

Here’s the scene:

Justin understood that he’d never get past the front door carrying his sister’s goldfish bowl. She’d freak out and wail like a siren, and his mother would end up yelling. No, Justin needed to come up with a foolproof plan. And after a few minutes of heavy-duty thinking, he did.

The next morning, he asked his mother for tomato soup for lunch.

“You never eat it when I give it to you,” she said.

“This is different,” Justin assured her. “I really need soup today, Mom. It’s like . . . Soup Day in school and . . . all the kids are bringing in different kinds of soups and –“

“Soup Day?” His mother raised an eyebrow.

“It’s a guy thing. You wouldn’t understand.”

“Okay, okay.” His mother relented. She opened the cupboard, shifted a few cans around, and said, “Sorry, we’re all out of tomato. How about chicken noodle?”

“Perfect,” Justin clucked.

Operation Goldfish was in effect.

At the next opportunity, Justin snuck into the bathroom, dumped out the soup, and rinsed the thermos clean. Then, on tip-toe, he entered the forbidden zone — his sister’s room. The room itself was hideous, a monstrosity of purple and pink, with Disney posters and stuffed animals. Justin couldn’t imagine how his sister managed to sleep in there.

Justin paused by the door, listening. Lily was downstairs, eating Pop-Tarts. Justin poured water from the goldfish bowl into the thermos, spilling only a small puddle on the rug. With a net, he fished out the goldfish and dropped it into the thermos.

What about air? Justin wondered, as he screwed the cap on. I can’t suffocate my sister’s fish.

He thought about trying to find a hammer and nail. Maybe he could drive small holes into the screw top.

“Justin? What are you doing up there?” his mother called. “You better get moving if you want to make it to school on time!”

“Coming!” Justin hollered. He placed the thermos back into his lunch box, stuffed that into his backpack, and hustled down the stairs. He figured he’d open and close the cap every hour or so, just to make sure the goldfish got enough air. He might have been a little mischievous, but he wasn’t a cold-blooded fish murderer.

I’ve called this “my rebound book,” since it comes after the more serious, precise Bystander. This one is loose, light, short, funny. Rereading my early notes from the blog, I realize that I changed Justin’s relationship from the principal to his classroom teacher, Mr. Tripp. That struck me as more immediate, more natural, and allowed me to make his teacher more sympathetic. Originally, I conceived of the teacher as sort of a one-dimensional uptight obstacle, but it got much more interesting when he became a well-rounded person — a first-year teacher, nervous and well-intentioned, who makes some mistakes in handling an attention-seeking student.

Aside: I think the single worst character in the Harry Potter series — the character I consider a major failure — is the one-dimensional Dolores Umbridge, appointed High Inquisitor of Hogwarts in the fifth book, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. Lacking all shade and substance, she ruined much of the book for me.

I hated her, but not in the way J.K. Rowling wanted me to hate her.

A Comment from Geoffrey Hayes: Books for Boys

I don’t usually highlight a reader’s comment in this way, but comments to old posts tend to get lost in the slipstream. I recently heard from author/illustrator Geoffrey Hayes, recent Geisel Award winner, in response to something I’d written a while back.

Commented Mr. Hayes:

Dear James,

I just happened upon your site and was surprised to find my book “PATRICK AND TED” mentioned so warmly. It seems like I wrote this story so long ago, but you reminded me that I’ve always written from feelings and emotions first. I never thought of this as specifically a “Boys Book”, maybe because it doesn’t focus on those things that one traditionally finds in books for boys. In my opinion there is a narrow view in today’s publishing world about just what boys will and won’t read — stories with a female protagonist for one. For every generality you can apply to boys (and girls) we tend to forget that each child is an individual and therefore multifaceted. Thanks again for your kind words and fond memories.

Sincerely,
Geoffrey Hayes

I agree with every word, and it’s a message I’d like to shout from the mountaintop.

But mountains are so darn high, and so awfully hard on the tootsies, let’s save our strength and just blog about it. Besides, if I’m up on a mountaintop, I can shout ’till my lungs burst and nobody’ll ever hear me. Why? Because I’m up on a mountaintop! That’s the last place you’d go to spread a message. Who makes up these ridiculous expressions anyway?

Thank you, Mr. Hayes — and congratulations on the well-earned award.

Fan Mail Wednesday #71

I’m gong to interrupt my interview with Deborah Kovacs — click here for Part One — because “Fan Mail Wednesday” is upon us. Come back tomorrow for Part Two of the interview.

This one isn’t exactly fan mail — it’s more of a note from an old friend. I’ve changed the names for the usual reasons, but I believe the essences remain intact. I have to add that I’ve received 5-6 similar notes about Bystander, filled with stark memories, all from men. It’s strange to hear  exclusively from men, since we all know that women are the primary gatekeepers of children’s literature and make up the overwhelming majority of adult readers. That is: it’s cool (and rewarding) to hear from guys who have that visceral connection to the book.

Hi Jim,

I just finished Bystander today and wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed it. It’s still a real kick for me reading something you’ve written — holding a book, a hardcover, with your name on it. Amazing.

Needless to say, I could “relate to it ” as the kids say (oh wait, we were the kids who used to say that). It captures our home town perfectly. And 7th grade. 7th grade was a really traumatic year for me so your book brought up a lot of — mostly unpleasant — memories. That was the year everyone started splitting off into cliques. By the second day of school it seemed as though all the kids I’d known throughout elementary school were suddenly identifying themselves as either greasers or jocks, or else were being defined by others as “fags” (somehow the word nerd was not popular at that time).

I became a “hippie” — the only one in my grade, so I just didn’t make sense to anyone. My best friend Tommy changed abruptly and became a hellraiser, a mix of both greaser and jock. By the beginning of 8th grade we were not even speaking anymore. The clincher though was when his right-wing friend Chris, who hated my antiwar attitude, tried to get me to fight him — which I wouldn’t do (especially since Chris was a good 50 pounds heavier than me). So Chris basically pummeled me as I walked the half-mile home, unable to get me to fight back, my “friend” Tommy walking along just watching the whole thing. You got that part dead on, the guys just watching, not doing anything to stop it. I’m sure I must have done it too at some point.

I don’t remember any troubled kids with Griffin’s appeal. The top greasers I knew were either sociopaths or psychopaths (take your pick). One, by the way, was Richie K. I recall him once bending my fingers back until I was on my knees. Somehow I avoided getting thrashed, but he beat up a lot of other kids.

I’ll probably read this to my son fairly soon. He just turned 10 so he’s a little young, but he starts middle school next year, so by next summer we’ll read it together. I can absolutely see in him the ability to go either way, bystander or ally. I guess we all have that duality.

Anyway, it’s a real good book and I hope it’s doing well.

Take care,

B.

And in case you missed it last week,

some things never change.


I Need a Book Suggestion

Lurkers, uncloak! I’m working on a story that features a relationship with a young,  earnest teacher and a boy who tends to do inappropriate things in the classroom. He gets in trouble a lot. They butt heads. The new teacher, clinging to his authority, is afraid to let loose, afraid to smile. No one is having a good time.

In the end, they come together. But that’s a process, as you know, not a Golden Moment. So it hit me that  they could bond over a funny book. The teacher loves literature; the boy, Justin, loves to laugh. Maybe the right book could bring them together . . . just a little. Or at least help break the ice.

But: Which book? Any suggestions? I’m thinking about a title that would definitely be read and enjoyed in a fifth-grade classroom.

A little help, please.

“Bystander” Reviewed, Sort of, by Author Andrew Smith

Author Andrew Smith, in addition to writing YA novels and teaching in a high school, writes a lively, informative, open-hearted blog. He’s nothing if not tireless. Though we’ve never met, Andrew and I seem to share a lot in common. We publish with Feiwel and Friends, have more than half-a-dozen brothers between us, blog regularly, love music — and we both share the (fading) dream of one day becoming catwalk models for Dolce & Gabbana.

Andrew’s debut book, Ghost Medicine, earned a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was listed as an ALA Best Books for Young Adults. But that’s nothing. VOYA said, “This book is a pitch-perfect coming-of-age tale destined to be held aloft alongside other classics of young adult literature. The story flows like stark, lovely poetry shared by best friends around a mountainside campfire.”

Great review. My only quibble is that whenever I’ve sat around a mountainside campfire with friends — which I did a few nights ago, in Vermont — the only things we shared that “flowed” came in cans, and it sure wasn’t “stark, lovely poetry.” (I must be hanging out with the wrong class of campers.)

His upcoming book is titled In the Path of Falling Objects (September, 2009). Man, I love that title. There it is, already a suggestion of menace, of trouble coming, violence. Yet at the same time, flat, even-handed, clear. Just a sign on the side of the road. First paragraph:

The only shade there is blackens a rectangle in the dirt beneath the overhang of the seller’s open stall. The girl stands there, behind a row of hanging wooden skeletons that dangle from the eaves.

Nice, right? The specificity and clarity of the language. The concreteness. A whiff of Cormac McCarthy there, don’t you think?

Anyway, last week Andrew blogged about my upcoming book, Bystander. He began by talking about his desire to highlight that rare, most misunderstood of creatures, the book for boys. While I don’t see Bystander as exclusively for boys — I sure hope it’s not, as compared to, say, Six Innings, which pretty much is — the book does center on the male variants of middle school bullying (with a crucial female character, Mary O’Malley, going through her own thorny friendship issues and cyber-struggles).

Andrew hopes to continue to feature books for boys in upcoming posts, so you may wish to bookmark his most excellent blog. He writes of Bystander:

If you’re a middle-school teacher, I think you should buy an entire class set of James Preller’s Bystander, a tense, suspenseful, fast-paced study of bullies, their victims, and the consequences involved with being a “bystander.”

Ultimately, bullying connects all of these players, whether they see themselves as intentional participants or not . . . . Every boy who’s gone through junior high and high school has found himself in these same situations that Preller sets down so clearly in Bystander. The real value for boys here, I think, is the no-nonsense realism of the plot: There are no tidy and clear-cut answers; and just being “good” isn’t always good enough.

Boys are going to love the fast-paced arc of this story. The first 20 pages build so much understated tension that it’s impossible to stop reading. Most importantly, Bystander is a powerful and valuable resource for any school looking for additional perspectives on educating kids about bullying.

Recommended for ages 10 and above.

Thanks, Andrew!

NOTE: I have to say this. I recognize that at its worst, the kidlitosphere is filled with back-slapping and suspect praise. A cynical reading would deduce that we all read each other’s books and blogs, and praise each other, so that we in turn will “earn” some praise, that we’re an inbred group, that we’re a “we” at all, and that it all amounts to a swirling vortex of sycophantical blather. I get that. I really do. And I guess you could submit all of the above as evidence of that crime. But, but, but. In the end, as my father would say, you have to consider the source. And judge for yourself. I now throw myself on the mercy of the court.