Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 22

on campus

I’m happy to be off the road for a while after two back-to-back campus visits this month. It’s tiring but so worthwhile—I definitely miss teaching and so it’s great to be back in the classroom or having one-on-one discussions with college students. Last week I was invited to Denison University as a speaker in their Laura C. Harris series; Bear S. Bergman and I answered the question, “What’s so subversive about inclusive kid lit?”  and talked about using indie publishing and micro-presses to produce radical kid lit. Flamingo Rampant is publishing so many amazing stories for kids—be sure to check out their selection of books representing all types of families. I don’t think I’ll ever became a publisher; it’s hard enough just trying to get my own work into the world! I got home on Friday and then early Sunday morning hit the road again. During the five-hour trip to Penn State, Altoona I did some quality dreaming and then used the subsequent snowy day to work on a few chapters of my Viking novel. I arrived just in time for the community dinner and joined their Afrofuturism-themed African American Read-In by sharing a bit of Dragons in a Bag. The next evening I gave a talk on my fantasy fiction for teens and wrapped up with a reading of Cin’s Mark. The weather turned treacherous last night and campus was closed today, but an intrepid prof drove me to the train station this morning and Amtrak got me back home to Philly. I have a few more events this month but they’re LOCAL. I do love visiting new places but I’m looking forward to staying put for a while…

melt with us!

I was thrilled to be a guest on Lori Tharps’ podcast My American Meltingpot—and the episode we taped last week is live today! Want to hear more about my Viking novel-in-progress? Then tune in! It’s a great way to start Black History Month and Lori provides lots of links on her website in case you want to learn more about the topics we discussed.

I also learned today that DRAGONS IN A BAG has been named a 2018 Notable Children’s Book by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC). BIRD also received that honor…ten years ago! I’m working with four editors these days because I have four books in various stages of production. As soon as we get one manuscript edited, another one needs my attention. Not complaining, though! Came down with a cold while I was in London so wasn’t as productive as I’d hoped but once these edits are out of the way, I’ll be writing again…

 

Have you seen her?

It’s wonderful to get daily messages from teachers telling me how much their students LOVE Dragons in a Bag! And now ARCs of the sequel are here…The Dragon Thief won’t be published until October but you can learn more about Book 2 by reading my interview with Edith Campbell over at CrazyQuiltEdi.

my girl

I haven’t come up with a name for my character yet so I call her “my girl.” Christina Myrvold is working on a stunning visual representation, which I plan to hang on the wall next to my desk. She’s a sad one, my girl, believing her mother got rid of her by giving her to a Swedish trader when really she was just trying to save her daughter from a worse fate. I’m not a romantic—I couldn’t stand Outlander—so I’m not going to pretend that my girl eventually comes to love her much older White husband. She’s twelve when he starts raping her and she takes her own life four years (and two babies) later. It’s grim, especially with R. Kelly in my newsfeed right now, and so I’m writing my girl’s words in verse. I want to reflect her inability to speak fully and/or fluently in a language she doesn’t understand. And I want to show the trauma of being young and alone and afraid with no real way of going home. I love to travel (well, I love being in new places) and I know it’s a privilege to book a ticket and simply fly away. I was unhappy in Toronto and because my father was in Brooklyn, I was able to move. Now I’m trying to arrange my life so that I can leave the US when I need to. Yesterday I booked a trip to London; I just got back from Sweden but that wasn’t an enjoyable trip, really. Necessary, and productive, but not fun. In London I’ve got friends waiting for me, and Rosa (who’s spending the month there) has already made a reservation for tea at Kensington Palace. My hotel room looks tiny but I don’t need much space, just a quiet corner where I can set up my laptop and write. I’m aiming to have three solid chapters and a complete summary/table of contents to share with my agent by the end of this month. I don’t see The Ring as a young adult novel but all the main characters are children or teenagers so that might be my best bet. It scares me a little, this story. It’s been unfolding in my head for years but now that I need to write it down…I wonder what I’m trying to say. We don’t need another mirror that merely shows Black girls being exploited and abused in the past. There has to be a path to healing hidden somewhere in my imagination. My girl has two daughters and there’s hope there, though they make very different choices in the way they live their lives. And there’s a boy who doesn’t quite grow to manhood but whose kindness sustains the three girls in various ways. I made a To Do list today—plenty of reading, organizing, and research to be done before London…

silver

I got my first silver bangle when I was fifteen. My father and his second wife took us to Jamaica and I came back to Canada with a thin engraved band around my wrist. I went to Nevis when I was thirty; I gave my aunt some money to help with her expenses and instead she used it to buy me a thick silver bangle. Over the years I acquired more and more until I couldn’t write on the board without treating my students to a jangling symphony. My favorite bracelet wasn’t a bangle at all—it was a series of linked silver cowrie shells. I don’t remember now why I stopped wearing my bracelets. I hardly wear any jewelry these days but when I went to the Swedish History Museum today and saw the hoards on display, it reminded me of my magpie tendencies—I like shiny things and I collect them but rarely put them on display. The Vikings exhibit in Philly didn’t include any cowrie shells but the one I saw in Colorado a couple of years ago did. For three years I’ve been gathering these connections, trying to make the Viking world feel familiar in some way. Yet here in Sweden I feel very foreign. I don’t speak the language, I haven’t seen many Black women, though a sister from Cyprus stopped me on the street to ask for money. I thought she wanted directions at first but with a map in my hand, I clearly wasn’t equipped to do that. But I guess I looked privileged—and I am. My social anxiety makes travel pretty challenging sometimes, but yesterday I had everything planned: got up and went for a run; did some laundry and then packed; I got to the train station in Philly, took Amtrak to Penn Station, got the A train to JFK, got my bag checked with the help of a kind desk agent, and then seven hours later I was in Stockholm! I’d bought my bus ticket in advance and when I got off at Central Terminal, I just asked the teen at the information desk to point me in the right direction. I’d already printed out a city map and had my hotel route traced. Got checked in, got cleaned up, and went over to the museum, which is just a ten-minute walk away. Everything felt easy and yet I felt a little blue at times today…not sure why. I think the language difference is real; you just feel shut out even when people aren’t talking to you. Almost everyone speaks English as well but I don’t know Swedish culture and history the way I know the Brits. In the UK I can take a lot for granted, plus I have friends there. I’m on my own here in Stockholm but I’ve got plans—back to the museum tomorrow before the Vikings exhibit closes, then a walking tour of the Old City, and then I’ll hopefully start to write. There’s limited daylight here—sun’s up at 8:30am and gone by 4pm. I missed the Northern Lights and the museum at Birka is closed for the winter, so I’ll have to come back. On the ride from the airport I kept noticing how many birch trees were growing in the fields. I feel like I’m HER, in a way—this frightened girl I’ve dreamed up who left her mother, her home, her entire world in Iraq/Iran to start again in Birka. If she arrived in wintertime, the snow and cold would have been a shock…and then birch trees. I’ve always loved them but for a girl accustomed to palm trees and brown-skinned people and a warm climate, what a shock—“Even the skin of the trees is white…” I’ve reached out to a migrant settlement group to see if I could donate some books. And I might attend their free language class on Tuesday! Couldn’t keep my eyes open a while ago and now I’m wide awake. Will read my new book and see if that puts me to sleep…Christina Myrvold is hard at work on a cover for The Ring. All my girl needs now is a name…

hometown love

I don’t generally think of Toronto as my hometown, but I did grow up in the GTA (Greater Toronto Area) and lately they’ve been showing me a little love. Today I have an article in The Toronto Star and last week Booktuber Njeri Damali Sojourner-Campbell posted this wonderful review of CIN’S MARK on her channel Onyx Pages. She has a keen critical eye so it means a lot that my novel resonated with her.

A few days ago I turned in my revised poetry manuscript (yay!). I’m heading to Sweden in a few hours and love the anonymity that comes with travel. But being invisible in Canada isn’t something I enjoy, so it feels good to finally have my voice heard. Here’s a bit of what I wrote for The Star:

It’s not easy being a Black child in the Great White North. I grew up on the outskirts of Toronto; in the 1970s and ’80s I had no Black teachers and no one working at the library looked like me. Black children were largely absent from the books I read as well. I adored fantasy fiction but fairies, unicorns, and magic carpets belonged to White children in England — not awkward Black girls in Canada.

So when I wrote my first picture book as a teen, my adventurous little girl was White and her family looked nothing like mine. Like Mary Poppins with her remarkable umbrella, Violet grabbed hold of a kite and sailed away for the day. I had been invisible for so long that I automatically erased myself without ever considering that I had a right to create and inhabit magical worlds.

If I’d had something like Onyx Pages when I was a teen, I might have felt less alone as a fantasy reader and emerging writer. I have no regrets about leaving Canada for the US but most Black kids can’t follow in my footsteps; things have got to change in the Great White North…maybe my article can start that conversation.

See you in Stockholm!

2018 MG & YA Books by African Americans

2018 is drawing to a close and that means it’s time for us to compile our annual list. Edith Campbell tracks new releases all year round and then shares her results with me. If we’ve missed a middle grade (MG) or young adult (YA) title, please let us know in the comments! This looks like a big improvement from previous years, especially in terms of debut authors. What do you think?

I’m interested in what’s being published by US presses, so scroll down to find some titles from foreign publishers.

Black Girl Magic  by Mahogany L. Brown and Jess X. Snow (Roaring Brook Press)
Black Panther: the Young Prince  by Ronald L. Smith (Disney) Ages 9-12
Betty Before X  by Ilyasah Shabazz with Renée Watson (Farrar Straus and Giroux) Ages 8-12
The Journey of Little Charlie  by Christopher Paul Curtis (Scholastic) Ages 8-12
King Geordi the Great  by Gene Gant (Harmony Ink Press)
Let’s Talk About Love  by Claire Kann (Swoon Reads) Ages 13-18 DEBUT AUTHOR
A Sky Full of Stars by Linda Williams Jackson (HMH Books) Ages 10-12.
Martin Rising: Requiem for a King  by Andrea Davis Pinkney and Brian Pinkney (Scholastic) Ages 8-12
For Everyone  by Jason Reynolds (Antheneum/Caitlyn Dlouhy Books) Ages 12 and up
The Middle Passage  by Tom Feelings (Dial) Ages 12 and up REPRINT
The Belles  by Dhonielle Clayton (Freeform) Ages 12-18
Between the Lines  by Nikki Grimes (Penguin) Ages 12 and up
Bingo Love  by Tee Franklin, Jenn St Onge and Joy Sn (Image Comics)
# Prettyboy Must Die  by Kimberly Reid (Tor Teen) YA
Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Boy  by Tony Medina (Penny Candy) Ages 8-12
The Beauty that Remains  by Ashley Woodfolk (Pisces Books) DEBUT AUTHOR
Children of Blood and Bone  by Tomi Adeyemi (Henry Holt) DEBUT AUTHOR
Divas Don’t Cry (Hollywood High) by Ni Ni Simone (Kensington) YA
Hurricane Child  by Kheryn Callender (Scholastic) Ages 8-12 DEBUT AUTHOR
Like Vanessa  by Tami Charles and Vanessa Brantley-Newton (Charlesbridge)
The Parker Inheritance  by Varian Johnson (Scholastic) Ages 8-12
President of the Whole Sixth Grade: Girl Code by Sherri Winston (Little, Brown) Ages 9-12
The Poet X  by Elizabeth Acevedo (HarperTeen) Ages 12-18 DEBUT AUTHOR
The Stupendous Adventures of Might Marty Hayes  by Lora L Hyler (Henschell HAUS Publishing) Ages 8-12 DEBUT AUTHOR
Tyler Johnson Was Here  by Jay Coles (Little Brown and Co) Ages 12-18 DEBUT AUTHOR
We Kiss them with Rain  by Futhi Ntshingila (Catalyst Press) Ages 12-18
When Paul Met Artie : The Story of Simon & Garfunkel  by G. Neri and David Litchfield (Candlewick) Ages 9-12
Curveball  by Derek Jeter (Simon and Schuster) Ages 8-12
Dread Nation  by Justina Ireland (HarperCollins) Ages 12-18
Ghost Boys  by Jewell Parker Rhodes (Little, Brown and Co.) Ages 8-12
Love Double Dutch  by Doreen Spicer-Dannelly (Random House) Ages 8-12
Sunny  by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum)
Tifanny Sly LIves Here Now  by Dana L. Davis (Harlequin Teen) DEBUT AUTHOR
Undead Girl Gang  by Lily Anderson (Razorbill)
Learning to Breathe  by Janice Lynn Mather (Simon and Schuster) DEBUT AUTHOR
Monday’s Not Coming  by Tiffany D. Jackson (Katherine Tegen Books)
Running with Lions  by Julian Winters (Duet Books) DEBUT AUTHOR
Courage  by B. A. Binns (HarperCollins)
Wrong in All the Right Ways by Tiffany Brownlee (Christy Ottaviano Books/Henry Holt) DEBUT AUTHOR
Finding Yvonne  by Brandi Colbert (Little Brown Books)
Finding Langston  by Lesa Cline-Ransome (Holiday House)
Fresh Ink  by Lamar Giles, ed. (Random House) Ages 12-17
Getting Home (Attack on Earth) by Stephanie Perry Moore (Darby Creek)
Harbor Me  by Jacqueline Woodson (Nancy Paulsen Books) Ages 8-12
Scream Site  by Justine Ireland (Capstone Editions) Ages 12-18
So Done  by Paula Chase (Greenwillow) Ages 8-12
A Blade So Black  by L. L. McKinney (Imprint)
Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree  by Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani and Vivianna Mazza (HarperCollins)
Check, Please! #Hockey  by Ngozi Ukazu (FirstSecond Books) Ages 14–18
Dream Country  by Shannon Gibney (Dutton) Ages 12-18
Grand Theft Horse  by G. Neri, illus. by Corban Wilkin (Tu Books) Ages 12–up
Naomis Too (Two Naomis)  by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich and Audrey Vernick (Balzer/BrayHarperCollins) Ages 8–12
Pride  by Ibi Zoboi (Balzer and Bray) Ages 12-18
Tight  by Torrey Maldonado (Nancy Paulsen Press) Ages 10 and up
We Rise, We Resist, We Raise Our Voices  edited by Wade Hudson and Cheryl Willis Hudson (Crown/RandomHouse) Ages 8–12
Zora & Me : The Cursed Ground  by T. R. Simon (Candlewick) Ages 10-14
Crown of Thunder  by Tochi Onyebuchi (Razorbill/Penguin) Ages 12–18
Definitely Daphne  by Tami Charles (Stone Arch Books) Ages 9–12
Daphne Definitely Doesn’t Do Fashion by Tami Charles (Stone Arch Books) Ages 9-12
Daphne Definitely Doesn’t Do Drama  by Tami Charles (Stone Arch Books) Ages 9-12
Daphne Definitely Doesn’t Do Dances by Tami Charles (Stone Arch Books) Ages 9-12
Daphne Definitely Doesn’t Do Sports by Tami Charles (Stone Arch Books) Ages 9-12
Dragons in a Bag  by Zetta Elliott, illus. by Geneva B. (Random House) Ages 8–12
Home and Away  by Candace Montgomery (Page Street)
Lu  (Track #4) by Jason Reynolds (Atheneum) Ages 10–up
Odd One Out  by Nic Stone (Random House) Ages 14–18
The Season of Styx Malone  by Kekla Magoon (Wendy Lamb) Ages 8–12
Swing  by Kwame Alexander and Mary Rand Hess (Blink/HarperCollins) Ages 13–up
This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story  by Kheryn Callender (Balzer + Bray) Ages 14–up
Blended  by Sharon Draper (Atheneum Books for Young Readers)
Legacy of Light  (Effigies 3)  by Sarah Raughley (First Simon Pulse) Ages 12-18
Love Like Sky  by Leslie Youngblood (Disney Hyperion) DEBUT AUTHOR
Rebound by Kwame Alexander (HMH) Ages 10-12
The Magnificent Mya Tibbs: Mya in the Middle by Crystal Allen (Balzer & Bray) Ages 8-12


Minecraft: The Crash by Tracey Baptiste (Del Rey)


Mirage by Somaiya Daud (Flatiron Books) DEBUT AUTHOR


Star Wars: Lando’s Luck by Justina Ireland (Disney LucasFilm Press) Ages 9-12


Shai & Emmie Star in Dancy Pants! by Quvenzhané Wallis (Simon & Schuster) Ages 6-10
Shai & Emmie Star in To the Rescue! by Quvenzhané Wallis (Simon & Schuster) Ages 6-10

NONFICTION

Little Leaders: Visionary Women Around the World by Vashti Harrison (Little, Brown) Ages 8–12
History vs. Women: The Defiant Lives That They Don’t Want You to Know  by Anita Sarkeesia, Ebony Adams and T.S. Abe (Feiwel and Friends) Ages 12–18
We Are Not Yet Equal: Understanding Our Racial Divide  by Carol Anderson and Tonya Bolden (Bloomsbury) Ages 12–18
Resist: 35 Profiles of Ordinary People Who Rose Up Against Tyranny and Injustice  by Veronica Chambers, illus. by Paul Ryding. (HarperCollins) Ages 8–12
Just Mercy: A True Story of the Fight for Justice (adapted for young adults) by Bryan Stevenson (Delacorte)
Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow  by Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (Macmillan) Ages 9–12
The If in Life : How to Get off the Sidelines and into the End Zone by Rashad Jennings (Zonderkids) Ages 13 and up
March: 30 Postcards to Make Change and Good Trouble Card Book  by John Lewis, Andrew Aydin and Nate Powell (Chronicle Books)
A Child’s Introduction to African American History: The Experiences, People, and Events That Shaped Our Country by Jabari Asim (Black Dog and Leventhal) Ages 8-11
Facing Frederick: The Life of Frederick Douglass, A Monumental American Man  by Tonya Bolden (Abrams) Ages 10-14
A Few Red Drops: The Chicago Race Riot of 1919  by Claire Hartfield (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) Ages 12 and up
March Forward, Girl: From Young Warrior to Little Rock Nine  by Melba Pattillo Beals (HMH Books) Ages 10-12
Marley Dias Gets it Done (and so can you!)  by Marley Dias and Siobán McGowan (Scholastic) DEBUT AUTHOR
Proud: My Fight for an Unlikely American Dream by Ibtihaj Muhammad

FOREIGN PRESSES

Home Home  by Lisa Allen-Agostini (Papillote Press)
German Calendar No December  by Sylvia Ofili and Birgit Weyhe. (Cassava Republic)
The Secret of Purple Lake  by Yaba Badoe and Bgolahan Adams (Cassava Republic) ages 9-12
Lost Gods  by Micah Yongo (Angry Robot Books) DEBUT AUTHOR

Dragons & Daring in MG fiction

Does it really take guts to write about dragons? They’re loved by kids, teens, and adults but when you introduce Black authors and/or characters, dragon tales become potentially radical. I met Marti Dumas at the Kweli Color of Children’s Literature conference last spring, and Stephanie Burgis recently invited me to write a guest post for her blog. I decided to ask these two “dragon ladies” to reflect on the ways race and fantasy intersect in their books for kids. Let’s begin!

Zetta: Dragons in a Bag is about a boy who has to decide whether or not he wants the job his mother turned down: apprentice to a witch! Ma is about to retire but she needs help to complete one last mission—delivering three baby dragons to the realm of magic. Of course, things don’t go as planned and Jaxon has to prove just how resourceful he is in order to make things right. He almost succeeds but is foiled by The Dragon Thief (Book #2, coming next year). Tell us about your dragon tale, please!

Stephanie: The Girl with the Dragon Heart is the second book in my Tales from the Chocolate Heart series, set in a magical world full of dragons, fairies, and truly delicious chocolate. The first book (The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart) starred Aventurine, a fierce young dragon who went out hunting for a human to eat and instead was transformed herself into a human when she drank a pot of enchanted hot chocolate. The Girl with the Dragon Heart is the (standalone) story of her best friend, Silke, a fantastic human girl who’s already used her brilliant storytelling skills to win herself a waitressing job at the chocolate house where Aventurine works. Now, she’s offered the chance of a lifetime when the ruthless Crown Princess of Drachenheim hires her to spy on a group of mysterious and dangerous fairy royal visitors. Unbeknownst to the Crown Princess, though, Silke has her own personal history with the fairies of Elfenwald – and it’s going to take all of her courage and cleverness to protect both her fiery best friend and their entire city from the fairies’ sinister plans.

Marti: Jupiter Storm is about a little girl who nurtures a chrysalis, but instead of releasing a butterfly, her chrysalis births a dragon.

Zetta: Hugo Award-winning author NK Jemisin asserts that it’s political for a Black woman to write about dragons. Was that the case for you, Marti?

Marti: My mother, a black woman who was barely five feet tall, was one of seven children and the darkest in the family. Her name was Jacquelyn but her siblings used to call her “Black-lyn,” and it wasn’t meant as a compliment. She was also one of the smartest people I have ever met, no hyperbole intended or needed. I set out to write a story about dragons that I would have wanted to read as child, but as much as I intended to write something “cute” and “light” and “adventurous,” what happened instead was I wrote about my mother. My mother, who died of cervical cancer about 15 years ago, was the only character who would make the story go for me. No one else was so intelligent, so capable, and yet so incredibly discounted and overlooked that she would be able to raise a dragon right under people’s noses. So in that sense, yes. I suppose NK Jemisin was right. It was political.

What strikes me for you, Zetta, is less the how and more the why. Of all the creatures, all the symbols you could have chosen to put in a little mint tin, why choose dragons? Do you agree with Jemisin’s statement that it’s political for a black woman to write about dragons?

Zetta: Well, I’d already written about a phoenix and a unicorn, and I’m working on another City Kids book about gryphons so I was running out of mythical beasts! I’ve always loved dragons and my friend Marie sent me four tiny rubber ones as a gift. I wanted to carry them with me so, like Ma, I dumped out the contents of my mint tin and tucked them away in my bag! I’m not a witch but sometimes I do feel invisible—especially in the publishing arena. Black authors are generally expected to write realistic or historical fiction about oppression but if you’re more into speculative fiction, then YOU become the unicorn and they don’t know what to do with you. I’ve had to self-publish most of my fantasy fiction, and the dynamic of exclusion and resistance always feels political to me. Magic is about power and fantasy fiction helps young readers to feel empowered. It’s telling that publishers have denied Black and brown kids their fair share of magical stories for so long.

Stephanie, you’re a White woman and yet your protagonist is a Black girl, which is just as political. How did she find her way into your novel?

Stephanie: Silke was first introduced in The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart, where she became Aventurine’s best friend – and although Aventurine’s own main arc finished at the end of that first book, by that point I had fallen head-over-heels in love with Silke herself and knew she needed her own adventure. It was really important to me that the fantasy world of these books should be richly inclusive, so (among other things) the characters introduced in Book 1 had a variety of skin colors. As each story in this trilogy stars a different heroine (each of them a strong, compelling girl first introduced in Book 1), only one of those heroines (Aventurine) was White. (The third book stars the younger princess of Drachenheim, Sofia, who is biracial.)

Zetta: Is the demand for diverse books as high in the UK? I notice your publisher made two different covers for your book and the US one is particularly striking—a magical Black girl with an Afro!

Stephanie: There is a serious problem with lack of diversity in children’s literature in the UK, even more so than in the US. However, there is definitely a demand for diverse books, and I love the books of current BAME kidlit authors like Catherine Johnson, Candy Gourlay, and Emma Shevah. My international covers have always been really different from each other, and I love both my US and UK covers – but I have to say that the US cover is the one that looks most like Silke to me!

Zetta: The most familiar dragon narratives in US culture tend to come out of a European storytelling tradition. Do you write against or within that convention, Marti?

Marti: I wish that I could say that I was doing neither, that I was writing a story that came wholly of myself, but if I did it wouldn’t be true. I grew up in New Orleans. No matter how other-worldly and non-American it may seem from the outside, New Orleans is still the United States. So, just like so many others who grew up in the states, European standards have been fed to me since before I was aware enough to notice, sometimes without the people who fed them to me knowing that that’s what they were doing. Those standards, those stories are definitely in there and serve a baseline for my experiences as first stories so often are. I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad, thing, though. I found little pieces of myself in those stories, but so much of me was missing, too. So when I write about dragons, part of it comes from what I know of European mythologies, but so much more comes from what was missing for me when I was growing up. Those stories were closed. Even though they were fed to me, they were not for me. It’s only because I’m hard-headed that I wedged myself into them, but I intend to wedge a hole large enough for others to follow. The dragons in my stories are from all around the world, each steeped in their own local histories and remembered by their own mythologies. It just happens that the first one we discover is through the eyes of a little black girl in New Orleans and, besides the fire, goes very much against the European type. Which is only as it should be. He’s a Louisiana dragon, not a European one.

Is that true for you, Stephanie? Do you find yourself drawn to European narrative conventions?

Stephanie: I wrote these books very much within the Germanic fairytale tradition – in fact, I based the culture of my fantasy kingdom of Drachenheim on a late-18th-century/early-19th-century German kingdom (but with added magic, and the flexibility to give women and people of color more visible power all throughout society!). All of the chocolate-making described in the books is based on 18th-century recipes and processes, too. My only real tweaks to the fairytale tradition came in making a dragon the heroine rather than the antagonist (as in most fairytales!) in the first book – and in making my dragon a truly ferocious girl (even when she’s in human form). I always want more girl dragons in stories AND more ferocious girls in general!

Zetta: Why draw on German traditions when you live in Wales? There’s a dragon on your flag!

Stephanie: I love the dragon culture of Wales! And moving here definitely inspired me to write dragon books. Every time I walk through town, I see dragons in so many shop windows as well as on the national flag. We live surrounded by mountains which are often mist-covered, and my sons and I always tell stories about the dragons who live inside the mountains (just like the dragons in my books!) and only come out nowadays to fly around the mountains when they’re protected by the mist. When it comes down to it, though, the German fairy tales are the ones I was raised on – and in many ways, the city of Drachenburg in my books is based on Vienna, where I lived and worked for two years. So those are still the dragons that most influence my story-brain!

Zetta: I can relate—Brooklyn definitely shaped my stories when I lived there.

Stephanie: What was your favorite scene to write in Dragons in a Bag?

Zetta: That’s funny—I don’t think of separate scenes when I think about my books! I often think about how I felt when I was writing. I didn’t know in the summer of 2016 that I would be moving to Philadelphia a couple of years later, but I definitely felt the pressure of gentrification and that found its way into the novel. Brooklyn had been changing for quite a while but it no longer felt like a place where I could thrive as an artist. So I identified strongly with Ma—I felt weary, cantankerous at times, and impatient with oblivious newcomers to my neighborhood. Her early interactions with Jaxon were a lot of fun to write, and I almost laughed out loud recently when sharing with kids the passage where she interrogates him about the marshmallows…

* * *

Thanks for sharing your dragons tales with me, ladies! I look forward to following the adventures of your smart, feisty characters…

* * *

Stephanie Burgis grew up in East Lansing, Michigan, but now lives in Wales, surrounded by mountains, castles and coffeeshops. Her book The Dragon with a Chocolate Heart won the Cybils Award for Elementary/Middle Grade Speculative Fiction 2017, and her book Kat, Incorrigible won the Waverton Good Read Children’s Award for best début novel by a British children’s writer. She also writes romantic historical fantasy novels for adults and has published nearly forty short stories in various magazines and anthologies. You can read excerpts from all of her books on her website: www.stephanieburgis.com

Marti Dumas is a mom, teacher, writer, and creative entrepreneur from New Orleans. An expert in childhood literacy, Marti has worked with children and teachers across the country for the last 15 years to promote an early love of reading both in and out of the classroom. Her best-selling Jaden Toussaint, the Greatest series combines literacy with STEM skills, and humor, and adds much-needed diversity to the children’s chapter book landscape. Her latest book, Jupiter Storm, is a middle-grade fantasy that is already being heralded for its skillful combination of science, family, and magic. The Dragon Keep, the second book in the series, is coming in March 2019.

To learn more about me (Zetta), see my bio.

Protected: Dragons & Daring in MG fiction

This content is password protected. To view it please enter your password below:

Password:

body of proof

My little dragons are still getting around! They made it onto the list of Best Books of 2018 for Young Readers compiled by Prof. Ebony Elizabeth Thomas and her team at UPenn’s Graduate School of Education. I also spotted them in the holiday display window at Penn Bookstore, and then I read this amazing review over at Charlotte’s Library. Not a lot of bloggers are open to self-published books, but Charlotte is one of the few who has reviewed my indie and traditionally published titles. Her last line really hit home because I’ve been feeling the same way—I am not a debut author! And folks who love DRAGONS IN A BAG would probably love my CITY KIDS books, too…if they gave them a chance:

As I said above, it’s great to have a book like this–there really aren’t many. In fact, the only other diverse urban fantasy books for this age group that I can think of (you get more moving into middle grade territory of books for 9-12 year olds) are Zetta Elliott’s earlier City Kids books (with links to my reviews where applicable)–the aforementioned Phoenix on Barkley Street, Dayshaun’s Gift, The Ghosts in the Castle, and The Phantom Unicorn (which I haven’t reviewed yet, so it’s a goodreads link). These earlier books were all self-published. While it’s great to see Dragons in a Bag being traditionally published, with all the greater reach that offers, and I’m really happy about this, I am a teensy bit huffy about people saying Dragons is something new and different, when the other books are all excellent too, but the commenters maybe just don’t know about them…

Charlotte also runs KidLitCon and I’m happy to be heading back in 2019. Our panel is on “Diverse Fantasy in the Real World:”

Middle grade fantasy set in the real world can be a great escape for young readers, but just as importantly, it can offer new ways of seeing what is “real,” bringing attention to critical issues and making visible histories that maybe aren’t part of the standard curriculum.   And of course it’s important that we have books with diverse protagonists to reflect the diversity of the real world; every kid should have the chance at magic!  As well as addressing diversity gaps in fantasy, and how to fill them, this panel considers what makes good real world fantasy—how much magic do kids want? What stories resonate, and with whom? And how do gatekeepers know when the fantastical elements in a story warrant putting the little unicorn sticker on the spine, or when the magical realism of a particular culture falls on the side of realistic fiction?

Hope you can join us in Providence next March!

I slept well last night because this sparkly tweet came in as I was heading to bed. I really value Njeri’s opinion, in part because she exclusively (and critically) reviews Black speculative fiction on her YouTube channel, ONYX Pages. If you aren’t already following her reviews, check her out!