From Avi: As I did last summer, I’ve invited 13 admired middle grade authors to write for my blog for the next three months. I hope you’ll tune in each Tuesday to see who has answered these three questions. You should have a list of terrific books to read and share and read aloud by the end of the summer … along with new authors to follow!
Your favorite book on writing:
Through the lens of movies and TV shows is how I relate to the written word because I’m from a world on the other side of the tracks where most people by middle school quit reading books, and we turn to a lifetime of getting great storytelling cinematically. Life Magazine called my Red Hook projects in Brooklyn, NY “One of the Worst U.S. neighborhoods” and the high school dropout rate is over sixty percent, so by second grade I stopped reading.
As a boy, I didn’t hate books, but, like those around me, we felt books hated us since we did not see us in the written word. If we were in books, we weren’t main characters, complex, amazing, and worthy of respect. That turned us off to books and onto TV and movies.
My mother kept giving me books saying “This is like that show you watch” or “This is like that movie we saw” and that tiny reading-flame in me grew into my passion to try and write books how some of the best TV shows and movies did—storytelling done right while righting wrongs of exclusionary, dehumanizing books.
So, years later, when I was at a Brooklyn house party for writers and met a guy who was writing a book about what works in TV and movies to help writers write better, I couldn’t wait to read it. And Matt Bird’s The Secrets of Story has since become my favorite book on writing. Through his examples from movies and TV, readers see where to lift writing of plot, character development, and more. Readers across our globe say my books “better become movies” (also the recent words of sixth, seventh, and eighth graders whose school I visited) and it’s The Secrets of Story that helps my books be that to readers. Bird’s book overflows with visual media references to make writing more dynamic.
Reading aloud from my books:
ABBA has a song called “Take a Chance on Me” and I’m honored that Nancy Paulsen Books/ Penguin Random House took a chance on me and let me narrate three of my audiobooks—Tight, What Lane?, and Hands.
I just returned from a Hands tour where kids in different states hotly debated which book of mine is their favorite to read aloud. However, there is no debate amongst educators—educators decidedly start with read-alouds of my books because they find it sparks everyone to read.
I stay shocked from author-visits when students stop me as I start reading to ask, “Can I read it out loud?” Some students even argue over who’ll get to read!
The School Library Journal and other publications have written about how my books are used as a “One School, One Book Read” across our nation in schools where all grades and faculty unite to read one book. That usually culminates with schools having me visit to read aloud and meet their school. I love all of this feedback and these visits.
While my most recent book, Hands, is not composed in poetic stanzas, the book is praised as poetry and used by schools during Poetry Month. Adam Gidwitz, Newbery Honor-winning author, says, “Hands is a poetic page-turner.” Bookpage says, “Hands is narrated in a poetic, stream-of-consciousness style.” Hands had to be poetic because it revolves around boxing which is “poetry in motion” with rhythm, pace, and explosiveness. So I hoped Hands could be on par with how a boxer-poet in Hands—Muhammad Ali—would recite his poetry.
That said, I find myself toe-tapping and nodding to many read-alouds of my books done by kids. It adds to that awesomeness when adults tell me during or after a kid’s read-aloud, “You got a kid who hates to read to not just read but read aloud in front of an audience.” Who knows? Maybe someday we will read these students’ books. That’s my hope as a teacher and a writer—create, inspire, and build future storytellers.
Where do you write most often?
I write wherever and whenever I can. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have the same uninterrupted place to write as a boy? I do most of my writing in Brooklyn and it’s the one place in my heart that I most write from. Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz says, “There is no place like home” and the music group TLC sings, “Please stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to.” Sticking to Brooklyn is a wellspring for my book ideas.
