Lesléa Newman is the author of 64 books for readers of all ages including the short story collection, A LETTER TO HARVEY MILK; the teen poetry collection, OCTOBER MOURNING: A SONG FOR MATTHEW SHEPARD; the middle-grade novel, HACHIKO WAITS and the children’s books, A SWEET PASSOVER, JUST LIKE MAMA, THE BEST CAT IN THE WORLD, THE BOY WHO CRIED FABULOUS, and HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES. Her literary awards include poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Massachusetts Artists Fellowship Foundation, the Dog Writers Association of America’s Maxwell Medallion, and a Highlights for Children Fiction Writing Award. A past poet laureate of Northampton, MA, she currently teaches writing for children and young adults at Spalding University’s brief-residency MFA in Writing program.

You’ve said that you wrote the groundbreaking HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES because certain kids and families were being left out of the children’s book conversation. As we observe Banned Books Week, can you reflect on how alternative stories and voices are marginalized in children’s publishing?

Back in 1989, when I first wrote HEATHER, there were no children’s books that showed a family that consisted of a child with two lesbian moms. A woman approached me on the street and said, “My daughter doesn’t have a book that shows a family like ours. Somebody should write one.” And I knew by “somebody” she meant me.

I also knew firsthand what it felt like to not have my own family portrayed in a book, movie, or on TV, because I grew up in the 1950s and never read a book about a little girl with curly brown hair eating matzo ball soup with her bubbe on Friday night. I read books about children being visited by Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, which were things my family did not do. So I felt different. Which is why I wrote HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES.

Things have definitely changed since 1989, when a friend and I published the book together, funded by ten-dollar donations from dozens of people. Several years ago, Tricycle Press actually invited me to write a set of board books for children with two moms and two dads; they also joyfully published my book, DONOVAN’S BIG DAY, which takes place on the day Donovan’s two moms wed. But we need many more voices to truly represent the diversity of our society.

You’ve been called a “dangerous” writer by those who disagree with and seek to ban books such as HEATHER HAS TWO MOMMIES. As you formulate ideas for your stories and poems, how does this expectation that your books will be controversial affect how you write and what you write about?

I never think about audience when I write. I always tell writers, if you’re going to worry about offending someone, you might as well put your pen down now (and I actually still do write with a pen!). In fact, I assume someone is going to be offended by what I write (though that is never my intent). You can’t please everyone, and I am not trying to please anyone.

When I sit down to write, what I am trying to do is tell the most beautiful, truthful, and authentic story that I can. Writing and publishing are two different and distinct acts. Though I can’t think of anything that I’ve ever written that I’ve hesitated to publish. I would rather have people have strong opinions about my work (positive or negative) than not to care about it at all.

Your new book, OCTOBER MOURNING: A SONG FOR MATTHEW SHEPARD, tells the story of Matthew’s tragic murder in 1998. You were the keynote speaker at the University of Wyoming’s Gay Awareness Week when Matthew, who was a student there, was killed. How did your proximity to the violence influence the poetry you wrote for him?

Since October 1998, I have been haunted by this hate crime. Matthew Shepard was a member of the University of Wyoming’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered Association, and one of the last things he did on the Tuesday night of his attack was attend a meeting to finalize the plans for Gay Awareness Week.

When I gave my keynote speech, there was an empty seat in the front row, and I kept picturing him sitting there (I had seen his photograph in the newspaper). I met some of his friends and promised them I would dedicate all my gay rights speeches from then on to Matt’s memory, which I have done.

As far as the poetry goes, when I started writing OCTOBER MOURNING, my experience in Wyoming came rushing back as though it had happened yesterday. I knew there was no way I could find out what truly happened at the fence that night, so I used my imagination to explore the impact of Matt’s murder in fictitious monologues spoken by the silent witnesses to the crime: the truck Matt was kidnapped in, the fence he was tied to, the moon that watched over him, the deer that kept him company all through the night.

In hindsight, I can see that what I was looking for (and found) was the compassion shown by so many others in the face of such hate.

Beginning Monday, we’re observing “Bullying Prevention Week” on the Engage blog. You travel to schools and deliver an anti-bullying message entitled, “He Continues to Make a Difference: The Story of Matthew Shepard.” What have you found to be the most effective way of approaching the topic with students?

First of all, with high school students, as with anyone, you have to be real. I begin by talking about myself and my story: what it was like for me to come out. Then I read some of the poems from OCTOBER MOURNING while showing photos of Matt, so that my audience sees that he was a real person. Before he was “Matthew Shepard” the martyr, the icon, the headline, the cause, he was “Matt.” He was a kid with a family, with friends, with dreams and hopes and fears, just like the kids in the audience.

Then, after I read for a bit, I lead the students through a guided visualization in which they imagine a world that is safe for everyone, and I have them think of one thing they can do to stop the hate. Then I have them make a commitment to the person sitting next to them to do this one thing within a week. And then we have a discussion.

It’s important for high school kids to know that they are the ones who have the power to stop bullying in their schools. It’s got to come from them. Not the adults around them.

During your education you had the incredible opportunity to be mentored by poet Allen Ginsberg, who faced obscenity charges for his poem “Howl.” What did you learn from Ginsberg that was helpful or applicable when others have tried to ban or silence your work?

Allen, or “Ginzy” as he liked to be called, was the kindest, most generous person I ever met. When I worked with him, my job was to answer his mail, and he had no concept of hierarchy. Whether the letter was from a very famous writer, a senator, Ram Dass, or a farm boy in Kansas who was gay and didn’t know who else to write to, Allen paid the same complete attention to every single letter. When I was drifting about, he let me stay in his apartment for several months, until I got my feet back on the ground.

So I learned to be kind and generous from him, especially to other writers. He took great joy in the success of his students and I learned from him that when one of us succeeds, all of us succeed. I also learned the importance of his writing mantra, “First thought, best thought,” which doesn’t mean that the first thing you put down on paper is perfect and doesn’t need to be revised. It means go with that wild, crazy idea that pops into your head out of nowhere (like “write from the point of view of the fence Matthew Shepard was tied to” for example). And then revise, revise, revise.

As far as being silenced goes, Allen would have none of it, and I will have none of it. If you don’t like what someone else is writing, write your own story in response to it. When I was growing up, the worst thing you could say in my house was “shut up.” It’s important to use your voice, and write your letter to the world, as Emily Dickinson so famously said. Or as we used to say during the AIDS crisis in the eighties, “Silence = Death.” And lastly, in the words of the great poet Muriel Rukeyser, “The world is not made of atoms. The world is made of stories.” And we need those stories, every single one.

© 2012 International Reading Association. Please do not reproduce in any form, electronic or otherwise.

K-12 Reviews: 30th Anniversary Salute to Banned Books Week

5 Questions With... the legendary Judy Blume!

Ellis Weiner’s writing has been making kids and grown-ups laugh for more than 30 years. Ellis skewered popular culture at NATIONAL LAMPOON and SPY Magazine, and entertained the preschool set as a writer for such beloved TV shows as BEAR IN THE BIG BLUE HOUSE, READING RAINBOW, and EUREKA’S CASTLE. He is the author of several humor books for adults, including YIDDISH WITH DICK AND JANE, and ARFFIRMATIONS: MEDITATIONS FOR YOUR DOG. In addition to his busy writing schedule, he teaches humor writing at UCLA and performs frequently with his jazz band, The Status Seekers.

Ellis, you’ve been an editor for NATIONAL LAMPOON, a columnist for SPY, and the author of such titles as DROP DEAD, MY LOVELY and HOW TO RAISE A JEWISH DOG. Oh, and you used to write for TV, too. So what made you want to become a middle grade novelist?

It occurred to me that very few adult “comic novels” actually made me laugh—a fact that led to me to believe that anything I would write in terms of adult (i.e., for adults, not…you know…sex) humor would have a hard time getting published.

This happened around the same time that I absorbed through the cultural atmosphere the sense that Lemony Snicket was writing the kind of thing I wouldn’t mind either reading or writing. (He had been at it for years, but his work had only recently caught my attention.) So I read his first three, and was delighted to see that my sense of what one could get away with, when “writing for kids,” was decades out of date.

I knew I could amuse myself—not to mention indulge my inner pedant—by writing about smart kids interacting with oblivious adults. All I needed was a basic framework. When I thought of the Professor, and the idea of treating different colleges and academies as various enclosed microcosms, I knew I had it.

It’s sort of like STAR TREK, now that you mention it: the crew—professor, kids, dog—go from planet to planet, pursued by twin Romulans.

Let’s talk about THE TEMPLETON TWINS HAVE AN IDEA. Whose idea was it for you and the Narrator to team up on this project?

Well. It was my idea, although The Narrator does have an antecedent in my previous writing.

In around 2006 I decided I needed to have a web site. But I didn’t want to present a disingenuous, self-centered thing in which I pretended I wasn’t promoting myself. So I looked at other writers’ sites, and saw that Ian McEwan’s was written and maintained not by him, but by an academic.

So I invented an academic named Renee Willis (an anagram of my name), whose ostensible role was to curate a web site about Ellis Weiner. Except that when you read the descriptions of my books, my bio, and everything else on the site that he’d “written,” you realized he hated my guts—probably for having rejected his attempts to sell freelance material to the NATIONAL LAMPOON years before.

This worked better than I’d expected—more than one person wrote me emails, asking if I was aware that some maniac was insulting and mocking me on a website supposedly dedicated to my work.

Willis turned out to be a touchy, snide, superior, fussy, condescending jerk—does this start to sound like someone we know? I’ll leave it at that.

Kirkus Reviews said, “The scene-hogging narrator steals the show in this clever series opener.” Ellis, how do you feel about the Narrator hijacking your novel?

Grudgingly reconciled. He’s funnier than I am, although I don’t think he is aware of that fact. If, in order to continue to secure his services, I have to agree with him that he is smarter than an 11-year old, I’m happy to do so.

Moving on: your twin protagonists, John and Abigail Templeton, are kidnapped by your antagonists, another set of twins, Dean D. Dean and Dan D. Dean, with a grudge about a bad grade. Did you write this in response to the ever-increasing emphasis on grades as a measure of success?

False answer: Yes. This book, and the entire series to come, is in fact a withering critique of the American educational system.

True answer: No. I just needed something to turn Professor Templeton’s nemesis against him.

Each chapter ends with “Questions for Review” that call on the reader to think critically about the story, but also give the Narrator a platform to taunt the reader a bit. How do you predict young readers will react to these unorthodox quizzes?

I think they’ll laugh at a lot of them and not quite fully get some of them, but if they consult with their parent, guardian, or academic advisers, all will become clear.

By the way, I don’t think the Questions for Review call upon the reader to think critically about the story, since most of them require the reader to think adoringly and worshipfully about the Narrator. But I do think the act of reading the book itself is an act of critical thinking.

It would be nice, in fact, if some readers have the reaction to the book that I had when, at the age of 13, I read my first MAD magazine. I thought—or at least felt, maybe in a nonverbal, visceral way—“I didn’t know you were allowed to do that.”

Come see Weiner at IRA’s 58th Annual Convention in San Antonio, Texas! He will be participating in the author panel, “And Then What Happens?! The Enduring Appeal of Series Fiction” on Monday, April 22, 2013.



Jamie Thomson (DARK LORD: THE EARLY YEARS) and Dirk Lloyd

Books that Make Us Linger

A reformed textbook writer, Steve Sheinkin has dedicated his recent career to making up for his previous sins by writing gripping narratives that would never make it past the school board. He is the author of several fascinating books on American history, including THE NOTORIOUS BENEDICT ARNOLD, which won the Boston Globe/Horn Book Award for nonfiction. His latest work, BOMB: THE RACE TO BUILD—AND STEAL—THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS WEAPON, was released earlier this week.

BOMB: THE RACE TO BUILD—AND STEAL—THE WORLD’S MOST DANGEROUS WEAPON is the story of the world’s first nuclear weapon. What makes this book a “global thriller,” as you’ve dubbed it?

Well, it’s got nonstop action and a cast of characters no novelist could invent, and the scenes speed around the world, from Berlin to Washington, D.C., from Moscow to the deserts of New Mexico. I love spy thrillers, novels I mean, and my goal was to try to recreate that almost dizzying pace, but to do it as nonfiction.

BOMB ends on a cautionary note about our nuclear future. How do you hope this book affects students’ notions of war and weaponry?

Unfortunately, this is an issue that’s not going to go away. I think students need to know about nuclear weapons—how and why they were originally made, how dangerous they are, who has them, who is trying to get them. Discussing and debating the decision to use atomic bombs in World War II can help students think about how such decisions should be handled in the future.

It would be nice to think we won’t face this question again, but that’s probably not realistic.

In BOMB, as in your other narrative nonfiction, you write about people and events that aren’t usually included in textbooks. How do you find the quirky or little-known facts that make your stories unique?

Like I tell students at school visits, I think of myself as a kind of detective. Okay, it’s a nerdy sort of detective work, but still… I find an interesting story or character in one source, and that becomes a kind of clue. I’ll follow the clue to other sources: books, journals, interviews, letters, wherever the facts lead.

I spend more time researching than actually writing, and I always end up with way more stories than I can cram into any one book. That’s the saddest part of the job—having to cut cool stuff because it just doesn’t fit.

On your homepage you confess that you used to write text books, but that you now “write history books that people will actually read voluntarily.” How do you bring life and excitement to material that might otherwise be considered boring and “academic”?

Really, history is just stories about people and dramatic events, so there’s nothing inherently boring about it. The problem is, if all kids know about history comes from textbooks, they think history is boring. So my job is to bust through the resistance by telling exciting and entertaining stories.

I try to take all the sources I find and craft the material into scenes, just like you’d do if you were making a movie. Hopefully, readers will have so much fun reading the book, they’ll forget they’re supposed to be learning. That’s what I’m going for with BOMB.

You also write regularly for the Interesting Nonfiction for Kids blog. What’s the goal of the site, and how do you work to achieve it?

That’s a great site, because it offers an inside look at the working process of all these different writers of non-fiction. Writers blog about research they’re doing, challenges they face in the work, upcoming projects, the craziness of the publishing world, and more.

When I contribute entries, I like to share obscure stories I’ve come across in my research, stuff that may never make it into any book. Basically, those of us who write nonfiction are convinced that true stories are every bit as fun and exciting to read as fiction, and the INK blog helps us prove it!