All Writing is Political. Or is it?

There’s an argument to be made for that statement, but I’m not going to make it.

Especially since my realm is writing for young readers, I’m not going to opine about whether Creepy Pair of Underwear, in which Jasper Rabbit deals with a glowing pair of underwear that won’t go away, is politically motivated. Even if it is, (is that glow radioactive?) what a joy-sucking situation it would be if all literature for young people was politically motivated. And yet, a quick look at the NYT bestseller list for YA turns up, for instance, The Hate U Give, Stamped, and Dear Justyce.

It was George Orwell who stirred up the “all writing is political” conversation in the first place with his statement that “no book is genuinely free from political bias. The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is in itself a political attitude.” This reason for writing—one of four, according to Orwell—stems, as he says, from “a desire to push the world in a certain direction.”

Rather than argue the point, I’m just going to skirt the whole question by saying I don’t know about anybody else, but my writing is political, in the sense that I do have a desire to push the world in a certain direction.

That said, I don’t set out to write about issues. I set out to tell a story.

But in stories, as in life, issues arise. As a writer (and as a human being) I can choose to ignore those issues, try to tackle them, or at least acknowledge that they exist.

In some of my books the issues take center stage: Village of Scoundrels (Amulet Books, 2020) is about a bunch of teenagers standing up to fascism in WWII France. Shadow on the Mountain (Amulet Books, 2012) has similar themes but is set in Norway.  Sometimes issues aren’t at the center of the story, but still raise their ugly little heads. Even the very light-hearted The Littlest Voyageur (Holiday House, 2020) acknowledges that because of the fur trade (in which the voyageurs were engaged) beavers were driven to within a hairsbreadth of extinction.

The Silver Box—and the other two books of the Enchantment Lake mystery series, Enchantment Lake and The Clue in the Trees—take place in northern Minnesota, a wild place, full of lakes and forests. It is a resource-rich area, and consequently suffers from its share of issues:  copper-nickel mining, pipelines, lakeshore overdevelopment, corporate potato farming (think water pollution from herbicides, pesticides and chemical fertilizers the next time you order fries at MacDonald’s), plant theft from public lands, climate change, and probably some other issues I’m not remembering at the moment.

These stories are not about these issues. Rather, the issues are an inherent part of the stories, because of the setting, but also because of me. Because I have a desire to push the world in a certain direction, and that direction is to take better care of our planet and each other.

Author’s note: This post was first published on www.ladyunemployed.com.

The Silver Box: Questions vs. Answers in Stories for Young Readers

Questions are often the inspiration for writing stories. At least they are for me. And questions always arise as you are writing, too. We write to find out, right? We write to try to understand something, and, really, I think, if the question is a really good one, it probably doesn’t have an answer.

My favorite kinds of questions are those that make us ponder, and mull, and maybe talk about with others.

These are the kind of questions I like to pose to the reader: why do some people triumph over adversity while others are crushed by it? What makes some people willing to risk their lives to help others? These are also questions that have inspired some of my historical fiction, including the recent Village of Scoundrels (Feb. 2020). Sometimes my characters ask the questions I myself wonder about:. What is our responsibility when terrible wrongs are being committed? Are we contributing to the problem if we don’t speak up?

Even though The Silver Box, as a mystery, is a little more light-hearted than some of my historical fiction, it still contains unanswerable questions. What if, my protagonist Francie wonders, her mother may not be who Francie hoped she would be? What if her mother is a criminal, and if so, is she, Francie, doomed to follow in her footsteps? How much are we shaped by our family and how much responsibility do we bear to our friends and family? Is it fair to involve her friends in what may be a dangerous adventure? Francie both longs to include them, yet doesn’t want to endanger them—what is the right thing to do?

I don’t attempt to “answer” questions like these, or to deliver a moral, or try to tie things up.

Life rarely, if ever, ties up neatly, and I usually try to leave the story showing the character moving forward with life, probably still with lots of questions, but also with hope! I guess I want my reader to know that life is full of questions, some of which will never be fully answered, and that’s okay. (The mystery, of course, is solved by the end of the story. That is nonnegotiable!)

Studies show that readers of fiction are more comfortable with ambiguity and with disorder and uncertainty—"attitudes that allow for both sophisticated thinking and greater creativity.” So I feel fine about posing questions that probably won’t be answered in the course of the story (at least not by me!) and leaving my young readers with questions of their own!

Author’s note: This blog post was first published on www.cksorens.com.

Finding inspiration out of the window

In my writing house, which is snuggled into the woods behind our house, there is a big picture window that looks out on a little creek. I see a lot of things out this window. Some of them have weaselled their way into my imagination and from there into my books. And there are some things out there that can’t really be seen. More on this later.

As I write this, what I’m seeing out the window is a lot of snow. Both on the ground and falling. It’s been going on all day—at first a few stray flakes, then in a downpour, as if a large bag of powdered sugar had been opened, and then emptied overhead. Snow and winter seem to figure somewhat prominently in several of my books: Village of Scoundrels, Shadow on the Mountain, West of the Moon, The Legend of the Ladyslipper (a picture book), and most definitely in The Silver Box. Perhaps this is because I spend so much time looking at snow out my window. Winter around here can last until May—and this year it seems to have already started in October.

My writing time is divided between writing and staring out the window.

There’s a lot of wildlife to be observed: Deer wander by, sometimes looking right into the big window in front of my desk. There are ducks and a mink, who is suddenly much more visible now that the ground is white. The yard is full of migrating birds, stalled by the snow, along with the resident chickadees, nuthatches, pileated woodpeckers, and yesterday, a hand-sized saw-whet owl.

There is a real bossy red squirrel, the inspiration for the character of Jean Pierre Petit le Rouge of The Littlest Voyageur. I had only to watch his comic antics high in the trees or listen to him rolling his r’s “better than the Frenchest of Frenchmen” to know what to write about that day. The Enchantment Lake mystery series, of which The Silver Box is a part, have benefited from my observation of the woods and waterways both at home and at my lake cabin.

It’s a pleasure to be able to write about the sounds of birds and critters I hear through the screens of my cabin porch, the smell of fall, and the bite of a cold, crisp winter day—all so familiar.

But some of my books are set in faraway places: France, Norway, Japan. Of course, those books require a lot of research, and also research trips. And yet, looking out the window at a northern Minnesota landscape is still the way I find, on a daily basis, no matter where the story is set, what to write. I don’t think you have to have a beautiful view . . . or a view at all.

Some writers even prefer to face their desk to a wall so they won’t look out the window. This would never work for me. It isn’t even really what I’m looking at, but that I’m looking—looking past the screen, past the blinking cursor, and past what I know. It is, in fact, a way of reaching—reaching with my eyes, I suppose, for something that seems always just out of reach: The better word, the better sentence, the thing you really want to say, the thing you’re trying to get at, finding a way to express the inexpressible. And maybe, if you look hard enough, it’s out there somewhere, past the forest and the trees.

Author’s note: This post was originally published on www.itsalannajean.com.

The Page 69 Test for the Village of Scoundrels

Marshall McLuhan, author of The Gutenberg Galaxy (1962), recommends that the reader turn to page 69 of any book and read it. If you like that page, then you should absolutely buy the book. It works! 

Margi applied the Page 69 Test to the Village of Scoundrels, and reported the following:

Page 69 of Village of Scoundrels is in the middle of a very tense scene in which one of the character’s mother is about to be deported from a French internment camp to Poland (to Auschwitz, but they don’t know that yet). This scene is a nearly verbatim retelling of the true-life story of Hanne Liebmann, the inspiration for the character Henni, and the person who related the tale to me. Even so, it was the single most challenged scene by my editor, managing editor, CE, and several other readers, who couldn’t believe things could possibly transpire the way that they did. Read it to see for yourself, but I’ll tell you in advance it is true, and it really happened the way I describe it. Read more >

Middle Grade Ninja Podcast Episode 90

Margie Preus and Middle Grade Ninja host, Rob Kent, chat about the path to publishing HEART OF THE SAMURAI and being a Newberry Honor as well as the final book in her ENCHANTMENT LAKE series, THE SILVER BOX. She shares some lessons she learned from legendary writing instructor, John Gardner, and how she overcame the success of her first novel to complete SHADOW ON THE MOUNTAIN.

The two also talk about writing and producing children’s theater, rules for writing historical fiction, why some triumph over adversity when others are crushed by it, having a separate writing house, meeting Joe Biden, sharing a bed with a ghost, horse breaking, and so much more. Learn more >

Middle Grade Ninja is available on Soundcloud, Stitcher, itunes, Podbean, Podblaster, RadioPublic, blubrry, Listen Notes, Google Play, and many other fine locations.