Daddy Clay: Today in The Lab, we talk to three buzzworthy authors for young adults and hear
their picks for further reading. BabyBjorn, Swedish design, cool as can be,
dad friendly, BabyBjorn. Deborah Wiles: Countdown takes place in 1962,
during the Cuban missile crisis. It's about a little girl named Frannie who is in 5th
grade and feels she's invisible. She's a middle child and she can do no right. And in love
with the boy across the street. Has a best friend who's about to betray her, all the
sort of things that kids today can relate to I think. All during this time there's this
backdrop of being afraid she won't wake up tomorrow because the Russians have put missiles
in Cuba. Well, it's a documentary novel. We made it up. And because I like to read as
a kid with lots of photographs and hands on kind of materials, I asked Scholastic if I
could put into this book, scrapbooks that I envisioned made by the young Frannie that
have photographs and song lyrics and biographies. And interspersed every few chapters you'll
find a scrapbook. Jim Benton: Dear Dumb Diary is a series that
I write for middle school girls and I write in the voice of a middle school girl, Jamie
?. And this particular book is because a lot of people over time have asked me how can
you write in the voice of a middle school girl. The things that I write about are universal
themes. They're envy and anger and greed. But in this book, I sort of address that question
that I get quite often. Jamie is bitten by a little boy. Her friend convinces her that
maybe now she has superpowers from the little boy. And she understands the male brain now.
And so this book is written as the male writing the female writing about what it means to
be male. Raina Telgemeier: When I was in middle school,
specifically 6th grade, I was running with some friends one evening and tripped and fell
and knocked out my two front permanent teeth. And it took about 4 and a half years for me
to go through braces and surgeries and head gear and all sorts of dental reconstruction
in order to look normal again. I think most 6th and 7th and 8th graders feel vulnerable.
Even if they look completely normal. And so Smile is actually a lot about sort of building
your own self esteem and moving past something physical about you. I think comics are well
suited to tell this story because it's a story I had been telling people for years, ever
since it happened to me. Anytime I met a new dentist, anytime I made a new friend, I wanted
to tell them what had happened with my teeth. And telling is one thing, but being able to
show it is an entirely different thing. So being able to draw everything that I went
through and to be able to depict every emotion and every procedure I think gives it a little
bit more power because you feel like you really understand what the character who's me went
through. Jim: I would recommend, there's a book called
My Name is Aram and it's by William Saroyan. This is one of the only books that my dad
recommended to me. It's hilarious. It's about a little Armenian boy and this is written
a long time ago. And it wasn't until I re-read it recently that I realized it had things
in common with Dear Dumb Diary because it's a little boy. It's written by a man. He's
speaking the voice of a child. It's first person. And Aram is kind of a naughty kid,
the way that Jamie is so I would recommend My Name is Aram.
Raina: There's a book called Zita the Spacegirl and it's also a graphic novel, but it's a
fantasy novel about a girl who gets sucked into this vortex looking for a friend of hers.
And ends up on a strange planet surrounded by all kinds of strange creatures and she
has to find her way home. Deborah: When you ask me that, the first one
that came to my kind is The Watsons Go To Birmingham 1963 by Christopher Paul Curtis.
Fantastic family, fantastic dad, fantastic kids. It's a great great book.
Daddy Clay: I really want to thank the great people at Scholastic for making the authors
available for these interviews and also of course to our sponsors, BabyBjorn, who make
this show possible. On a personal note, I brought copies of all these books home, put
them out on the kitchen table, and my daughter, who's 9, really gravitated to Smile. She picked
it up, became engaged, finished the book in just 2 days, passed it off to another little
friend, who's a boy, he read it in two days and it ended up with my youngest child who's
6 and he read it in a couple of days. There's something really compelling for elementary
school kids about the peril and problems of having your front teeth knocked out. There's
something that's really compelling and exciting for them so I really recommend this book to
you. See you next time in The Lab.