Guess what? I have another new book out. It technically came out yesterday, but we’ll just pretend that I’m organized and have been properly marketing my new book release. It’s called THE GREAT VOYAGERS: EARTH’S INTERGALACTIC AMBASSADORS. If you or your kids enjoyed SELFIES FROM MARS, you’re gonna like this one too.
This book takes readers on a journey through the solar system all the way to interstellar space. The Voyager space probes are the farthest reaching human-made objects are have been out in space for more than 45 years! And wait until you read about the Golden Records. They really are quite the incredible NASA mission.
I’m really excited to have another STEM nonfiction books for kids to get excited about space. I recently did a school visit where I talked all about Opportunity’s incredible journey on the Red Planet and my process of writing, revising, and publishing SEFLIES FROM MARS. I can’t wait to bring THE GREAT VOYAGERS to classrooms as well.
What space mission should I write about next? I have a couple in mind, but I’d love to know what your favorites are.
Book blurb:
Take a grand tour through the outer planets and beyond the solar system with the NASA Voyager space probes. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 were the first spacecraft to explore all the outer planets and the first human-made objects to reach interstellar space. They each hold a golden record with the sights, sounds, music, and languages of Earth. These great Voyagers continue to reach for the stars as Earth’s intergalactic ambassadors.
The thing about grief is that each person experiences it differently, and it encompasses many different emotions. It can change over time, but it can also revert back to that fresh grief in unexpected moments. And it never goes away.
Recently, I was driving two of my kiddos to a travel soccer game. They were both in the back of the minivan, my 10-year-old reading and the 13-year-old playing on his phone. I had the radio tuned to the local alternative rock station that plays 90s music on the weekends, my favorite kind of music. The sun was out, the kids weren’t fighting, and I was in a good mood.
Kylene (left) and Katie (right) around the ages when we were singing “Dumb” in the car together.
Then, the song “Dumb” by Nirvana came on, and I was transported back to another car ride, one that was more than 20 years ago. It was a similarly nice day, and I was on the way to play beach volleyball with some friends. Instead of my kids as companions, I had my sister Kylene. She loved to sing and had a beautiful voice, and she wasn’t afraid to sing loudly in front of others. Not like me, I kept my tone-deaf voice to the confines of the shower and my car.
So when “Dumb” came on the radio, we were both singing along, Kylene considerably louder than I was. The song got to the end where Kurt Cobain, the lead singer, repeats the line “I think I’m dumb” over and over again. Only, that’s not what Kylene sang. She was belting out “African dough” over and over again. I cracked up, tears rolling down my cheeks, because she had no idea that she was singing the wrong lyrics.
Of course, being the amazing older sister that I am (and also a teenager at the time), I not-so-nicely pointed out that she was singing the wrong lyrics and her lyrics made absolutely no sense. When we got to the beach, I told all our friends of her mistake, and it became a running joke every time we heard that song. For the rest of her life…which turned out not to be that much longer because she passed away when she was only 16. (I’ve written about this before in “Still Mourning Kylene 20 years Later.”)
Fast forward to hearing “Dumb” in the minivan with my kids, and I once again had tears rolling down my cheeks. I had my sunglasses on and my kids were paying no attention to me. I didn’t want to upset them or have to answer any questions they might have asked, so I kept them oblivious to my silent tears. We’ve talk about Kylene, and they know it was a very hard thing to go through, but in that moment, I wanted to be alone in my feelings. When it got to the end of the song, I quietly sang “African dough” instead of the correct lyrics, a little smile breaking out on my face.
Hearing that song and having that punch of a memory hit me, it made me miss my sister so much. It brought up fresh grief mixed in with all the old grief. The sadness that my kids will never get to meet their Auntie Kylene; the weird emptiness of her not being here anymore, even when I have no idea what she would be like now or what our relationship would be like; and the loss of all the things that she never got to be and do, whatever those things might have been. There was also the humor and fondness of the memory.
Even now, all these many years later, the grief can be overwhelming and complicated and hard and unique. It’s no wonder themes of grief often pop up in my writing. There’s my upper middle grade book Witch Test where Liza is being bullied by her ex-best friend, which brings up all sorts of feelings about her late mother. And my YA Hamlet retelling Only Dark Edges where Delta is haunted by the ghost of her sister and spirals into a deep depression of grief. And my work-in-progress picture book about a little girl, whose sister named Winnie recently passed away, goes looking for Winnie-the-Pooh in the woods.
I’ve always said one of the reasons I write is to try and make sense of the world. Kylene’s death will never make sense to me. But writing about it helps me sort out my feelings. And when I publish works about grief, my hope is that it will help kids who experience grief realize they are not alone in their feelings.
Earlier this year, I stood up against book banning in my town when a few parents challenged the inclusion of the Heartstopper graphic novels by Alice Oseman in middle school libraries. I spoke and wrote about this experience across all my social media accounts and sent letters to school officials and my local media outlets. You can read my open letter and find links to some of the news coverage sparked by the attempted book ban in my post “Heartstopper by Alice Oseman Should Not Be Banned From Middle School Libraries.”
While the book ban attempts in my town were defeated, there are many towns across the United States where this is not the case. The American Library Association just released their “2024 Preliminary Book Ban Data.” It shows a small decline in book challenges from 2023, but the numbers were still way ahead of the numbers prior to 2020. This data is pulled from reported instances and media coverage, but all book challenges and bans are not given these, so the numbers don’t give the whole picture.
The ALA also noted that data doesn’t take into account soft censorship. They stated, “Additionally, instances of soft censorship, where books are purchased but placed in restricted areas, not used in library displays, or otherwise hidden or kept off limits due to fear of challenges illustrate the impact of organized censorship campaigns on students’ and readers’ freedom to read. In some circumstances, books have been preemptively excluded from library collections, taken off the shelves before they are banned, or not purchased for library collections in the first place.”
They shared this data ahead of Banned Books Week, which is happening right now. But the fight against book bans shouldn’t only be talked about one week of the year. Book challenges happen all the time, and there are ways to combat them.
Be Proactive. Write an email to school administration saying you trust the professionals (i.e. school librarians and teachers) to select books for school libraries, even if there are no book challenges in your area. Find out what the policies are in your communities. Show support to your public librarians by mentioning how you appreciate the Banned Books or Pride Week displays. Read banned books, and not just the classics. Check out the banned books lists and support the living authors who are being affected by these bans.
Pay attention and make your voice heard. I was alerted to the book challenges in my town when I happened to come across an article from a local newspaper on my Facebook feed. Then I went to work to educate myself (I had already read the books in question and had lots of resources at hand), so I could respond quickly and share my voice in support of the books. So often, it’s the would-be book banners that have the loudest voice, and those of us in favor of freedom of reading need to be loud as well.
Volunteer or run for officein your community. This one’s a bit harder as it usually means a significant time commitment. But if you do have the ability and time, positions that support schools and libraries include running for a Library Board or Board of Education position or volunteering for your local library group (often called Friends of the Library).
ELIXIR BOUND is the book that made me an author, but it’s so much more than that. This book and its sequel, ELIXIR SAVED, are memorials to my sister Kylene. In ELIXIR BOUND, Katora, who has a sister named Kylene, goes on a quest to become the guardian of a secret healing Elixir. The Elixir Chronicles are like a wish in book form. A wish for more for my sister.
I’ve written about Kylene a bunch of times here on the blog (see “Still Mourning Kylene 20 Years Later”), and her too-short life continues to be a large influence on my writing. One of my works-in-progress is a picture book about a girl who loses her sister.
Mourning is a life-long process. Writing is one of the ways I try and make sense of this wonderfully complex thing we call life. Naturally, my feelings about Kylene come up a lot in my writing.
Yet, the Elixir Chronicles are fantasy quests with magic, whimsy, and adventure. There are deaths — particularly one in ELIXIR SAVED that is a bit devastating — but death and mourning aren’t main themes. The books are more about living. The characters are figuring out what kind of life they want to live and trying to put that into action.
In that way, it’s like giving Kylene — albeit a fictional one — a second chance at life. Second chances are a main theme of ELIXIR SAVED. Yup, these books are big wishes that I know won’t come true. But it still felt good to write them, even when the writing was incredibly hard at times.
The ebook of ELIXIR BOUND is currently on sale for $1.99. It’s part of the Narratess Indie Sale, which officially kicks off tomorrow. There are over 370 fantasy, sci-fi, and horror book by indie authors and publishers on sale or even free.
The next book in the Family Holiday Tales series GRAMMY’S HALLOWEEN SCARE is out in the world! Once again, illustrator Phoebe Cho has created an atmospheric setting for characters that pop off the page. We get new characters in Grammy and her black cat Jellybean, but we also get the return of a bunch of spooky kids who you might recognize from the other books in the series. Grammy’s tale is the culmination of many things I love with Halloween, witches, and crows all making an appearance.
GRAMMY’S HALLOWEEN SCARE can be found at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, and Kobo. It took a surprising amount of research to make this book come together, so here’s the story of what inspired me to write it.
A witchy page from the book THE BEDTIME KNIGHT, written by Katie L. Carroll and illustrated by Erika Baird.
Halloween is my favorite holiday. Anyone who’s ready my middle grade novel WITCH TEST knows I have a soft spot for witches. A “witch” even makes an appearance in my picture book THE BEDTIME KNIGHT.
When it came time to figure out what holiday I wanted to highlight for the third Family Holiday Tales book, I wanted to do something other than Christmas, so Halloween was the obvious next choice for me. I’d already featured a mom and a dad in the other books in the series. A grandparent was a logical next choice, and a witchy grandma felt like a no-brainer!
I also had to figure out what I would use as the rhythmic inspiration for the book. MOMMY’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS is based off the famous poem by Clement C. Moore “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas,” and DADDY’S 12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS can be sung to the tune of the classic Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” For my witchy grandma, there wasn’t anything obvious that came to mind. It also had to be something that was in the public domain.
Then I remembered this song I used to sing in music class around Halloween time. It started with kids singing, “There was an old woman all skin and bones, ooo-ooo-oo-ooo.” It end with a deep-voiced “boo!” for a jump scare. A quick search, and I found the musical version from when I was a kid. There was no YouTube back then, so we didn’t have a video to go with the music.
I loved that silly, slightly scary song. A little more research led me to the book SCARY STORIES TO TELL IN THE DARK by Alvin Schwartz and illustrated by Stephen Gammell. Those books terrified me as a kid…in a way that I loved! The book version (below as performed in the audiobook by George S. Irving ) was even more disturbing than the one I used to sing. It also gave me the important clue that it was from an old folk song.
Even more research led to me to more versions of the song, each one seemingly more disturbing than the last! The different recordings of the song were simply haunting (see “Skin and Bones” sung by Jean Ritchie and scroll down for this unknown singer performing “Skin and Bones”). I wasn’t able to trace the exact origin of the song, but my research showed it was certainly old enough to be safe to use as inspiration for my book.
GRAMMY’S HALLOWEEN SCARE is more fun than scary. It can be sung to the tune of the song I grew up singing, and I included sheet music with my lyrics in the front of the book. I’ve done a couple of read-alouds of the book, and the young audiences have loved singing along on the “ooo-ooo-ooo” part. Here’s a video of me singing the book!
