Boy Bites Bug: A Review and an E-Book Giveaway!

Congratulations to Rosi Hollinbeck who won BACKFIELD BOYS from last week's blog. Rosi is my California counterpoint since she reviews and gives away books too. You might want to follow her blog!

Many of my faithful blog followers have read about how Rebecca Petruck has mentored me while I've written Half-Truths. She's guided me through countless revisions with an amazing talent to see the forest and tell me which trees need to be felled.

Rebeca can do this, because she's a gifted author. (Here's my review of her first middle grade book,  Steering Toward Normal.)

Now I have the privilege of introducing her second book, BOY BITES BUG (Abrams, May, 2018). 

Although you might look at this amazing cover and fun title and think this is simply a humorous book for boys. But I can assure you that the story takes the reader on a much deeper journey than that.  And of course, girls will enjoy it too!

REVIEW

Seventh grader Will Nolan has a problem. In fact, he has more than one. Stinkbugs have invaded the school library "bobbling like weather-worn boats on a calm sea." (p. 5) His best friend, Darryl, decides to squash them using Will's copy of Wrestling for Dummies. 

Knowing the stench that would produce, the new kid, Eloy, intervenes with, 

"Are you crazy?!" 

"No one asked you, cholo," Darryl snapped back.

Will inhaled sharply. It felt like the world went into slo-mo. (p.6)

Will is caught off guard. There are other Hispanics in their Minnesota school, but Darryl's attitude makes Will uncomfortable. Things go from bad to worse when the boys start daring each other to eat a stinkbug. When Darryl responds with,  

"Me? No way. Dare the Mexican. I've seen stuff on TV--they eat bugs all the time." 

"Dude, I'm from Rochester," Eloy said. 

Will didn't say anything. His tongue was frozen in shock at hearing the friend he'd known since kindergarten talk like that. The Mexican?... He knew better than to talk trash about people because of where they came from. (pp. 9-10)

Will takes the heat in order not to look like a prejudiced redneck, tosses the stinkbug into his mouth, and "Bug Boy" is born.

But not without serious fall-out.

Rebecca skillfully portrays Will's journey of self-discovery and figuring out who his friends are in the events that follow like falling dominoes. This serious theme is against the backdrop of Will's development as a wrestler and the humorous interplay and drama of boy vs. boy. 

In this snippet, you'll glimpse how Rebecca accurately captures the boy's voices and Will's internalization. This scene takes place after Simon, one of Will's friends, anonymously sends him 1000 crickets.

Back at school Monday morning, Will unloaded books from his backpack. 

And freed half a dozen crickets.

He banged his forehead on a locker door, repeatedly.

"Bug Boy strikes again!" Simon said. He nudged a cricket that hadn't taken off yet and hooted when it arced through the air. He poked into Will's backpack. "What are you doing with the others?"

Will froze, head still pressed against the metal lockers, cold seeping into his brain. He turned slowly. "So it was you?"

 "A thousand crickets? Of course it was me! So what will you do with them?"

Will imagined "nudging" Simon and watching him arc through the air. "Why didn't you warn me?"

"Are you kidding? I wish I could have seen your face. A thousand crickets are funny!"

"Not when they escaped in my house and I had to kill them!" 

.........

"What did you do now, losers?" Darryl leaned against a locker, acting extra casual.

Will darted an instinctive glance toward Eloy's locker, but he wasn't around, which was strange but for the moment kind of OK.

Ever since Darryl had stomped off to the library last week, he and Will had been weird together but trying to act normal until they got back to normal. Calling one another losers was an ordinary thing, a razz just because.

But after killing all those crickets, Will felt like a loser for real. He tried to shrug it off. (p.116-118) 

As I mentioned, Rebecca has helped me dig deeper into Half-Truths. As I read BUG, I realized that Will's journey into discovering his own subtle prejudices was similar to what Rebecca encouraged me to probe about Kate Dinsmore, my protagonist.

With the risk of including a spoiler, towards the end of the book, Will has the following "Aha!" moment:

Eating grasshoppers wasn't exactly part of Eloy's day-to-day life, but it wasn't weird, either. It was even ordinary when he visited his family in Mexico. But Will had treated it like it was weird and worse than weird, a trick to get back at someone. 

Eloy had put up with Will a lot longer than Will would have if the situation was reversed. The only person who had done anyone a favor was Eloy. He'd given Will the benefit of the doubt, trying to make him see. (p.198-9)

As I teach my writing students, figurative language, or Muscle Words, are the engines that drive good writing. Here are three of my favorites. Can you guess what the first one describes?

Brown-and-beige banded antennae twitched at Will from a too-small head resting on extra-wide shoulders. It looked like a miniature football player in pads. Speckles like dimples on a golf ball dotted its brown body and thick outer wings. (p.9)

The day had started so normal. But it had gotten chased around the mat and pinned like a lightweight taken down by a heavyweight. (p. 30)  (Note: I love how Rebecca used the wrestling theme to highlight what Will was feeling.)

When Mr. Taylor took attendance, Will felt as if someone were pulling his belly button through his back. (p.136) 

There are tons more examples in the book--you'll just have to get a copy to discover them yourself!

For fans of STEERING TOWARD NORMAL, the ending of BUG ties neatly back into Rebecca's first book. And since a book on entomophagy would be incomplete without recipes, Rebecca has included three that are from The Eat-a-Bug Cookbook  by David George Gordon.

A WORD FROM THE AUTHOR

I asked Rebecca why she chose wrestling as the boys' sport. She responded: "I fell into wrestling simply because I wanted to do something I don't see as often as other sports in books, and then it ended up being perfect for the story. Wrestling is all about the mind, about committing to those six minutes. You can lose a match before ever stepping on the mat if you don't believe in your skills or yourself. It's a wonderful metaphor for Will's journey because he's made a commitment to not only Eloy but also to himself and the kind of person he wants to be, and he has to see it through. On one hand, it is him alone on the mat, but he also has the support of his coaches and teammates so he's never alone, and that's true for Will off the mat, too."

PRE-ORDER BOY BITES BUG

One way we support authors is by pre-ordering their books. You can find BOY BITES BUG on Amazon or on Bulk Book Store if you want to order it for your classroom. It would make a great classroom resource to open up conversations about prejudice as well as ways to feed the planet in the future!

GIVEAWAY

I can't give away my arc because the book is "on tour" and goes to the next reader. 

Rebecca encouraged all readers to write
comments in the arc. What a great idea!

But, Rebecca is giving away an e-copy. Leave a comment by March 9 and I'll enter your name. Share this on social media (and tell me what you did) and I'll enter your name twice. If you are new to my blog--welcome!--and please leave your email address.

Revision and Seeing the Big Picture- Part II and a Giveaway!

In last week's blog, Rebecca Petruck shared how she created an overall plan for revising her soon to be released book, Steering Toward Normal. In this second post, she discusses what to do when the thinking is done. Rosi Hollenbeck, one of my newer but very faithful blog followers, won last week's critique from Rebecca. Don't despair--Rebecca is offering it again!

Once I had journaled about my characters’ WHYs and the theme, I drew a map of what needed to be added to or changed in the book. I didn’t map the entire book again, I only charted the new or different things that needed to happen. I also did a plot clock of the entire book, just to have it in my head, but once it was done, I didn’t use it much. The map was my constant reference point—written in pencil and with post-it notes for easy updating, moving around and reminders as I went along. (In the photo: purple notes are info that needed to be added somewhere; orange are new/revised scenes; green are additional notes from critique partners.)

I can’t emphasize enough how important this planning period is and how much time and heartache it can save you. If you have three weeks to revise, it may seem crazy to take an entire week to THINK about the revision, but the writing goes so much faster when you do. Especially if you only have three weeks to revise, know what you’re going to do before you do it.

Then, it’s all about making sure the dominoes line up. I wasn’t a slave to the plan—small things changed, were moved around, one whole scene was cut unexpectedly—but generally, I had the big picture.  

In a way, a novel is a logic problem: If - Then. Every scene, chapter, act and novel must have an If - Then. In WIRED FOR STORY, Cron calls it the action-reaction-decision, which I think is brilliance on a stick. If - Then focuses on plot. Acton-reaction-decision focuses on character. To quote Cron, “Stories are about how we, rather than the world around us, change. They grab us only when they allow us to experience how it would feel to navigate the plot. Thus story is an INTERNAL journey, not an external one.”

Character and plot are Siamese twins. We must have plot to navigate so that we can experience how it would feel, but we only care about plot in how it reveals a character’s experience and feelings (her reactions). When I critique, all I’m really asking of the story over and over is WHY? To quote Cron quoting Julian Barnes (nesting doll!): “Books say: she did this BECAUSE. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you; life is where things aren’t.”

It’s tempting to think you can use an editor’s letter, notes from a critique partner or marked-up pages as a checklist and just get started, but that’s likely to result in a choppy manuscript and kind of misses the point. For one, your reader may comment that a scene doesn’t work, but it’s not really that scene. It’s that the scene three beats before wasn’t set up properly. You can revise the pointed to scene ten times, and probably none of them will be right because of the wonky early scene. Critique notes, even from an editor, are not a to-do list but a series of arrows saying, “Something’s off here; make it better.”

More importantly, every revision is an opportunity to re-imagine your novel. Use notes from your reader to really think about what you want to say with your book, then take the time to say it even more effectively than you already have.

Which brings me back to my thesis that you need a rest period between drafts. As you write, you have to get so close to the moment to write each scene, it can be difficult to see the big picture. The rest stop lets you shift your focus, like with those magic-eye pictures, so you can pull back and see what you’ve got. I have been surprised as heck by some of the stuff I learned about myself and what I was REALLY writing about—and I think that’s an excellent sign. If you can surprise yourself, it’s likely you’ve hit something deep and true that will resonate with readers long after the last page.

********

Thanks, Rebecca! I hope that between my break from my manuscript and your suggestions, I'll come up with a new vision for Half-Truths!

Rebecca is again offering another giveaway. You can win either a 10-page critique from her, or a copy of WIRED FOR STORY. 

Here are the rules:

• Post this blog on your social media site of choice OR become a new follower of this blog and I'll enter your name once. 
• Post this blog on two different social media sites OR become a new follower of this blog AND post it on a social media site and I'll enter your name twice.
• Either way, leave a comment with your email address (if you are new to my blog) with what you did. 
• Winner will be drawn on Monday morning, August 12 - so get those entries in!

Rebecca Petruck is a Minnesota girl, though she also has lived in Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, England, Connecticut and, currently, North Carolina. A former member of 4-H, she was also a Girl Scout, a cheerleader, and competed in MathCounts. She reads National Geographic cover to cover. She is represented by Kate Testerman of kt literary, and her first novel, STEERING TOWARD NORMAL, will be released by Abrams/Amulet Spring 2014. Please visit her online.