Hiding Out at the Pancake Palace is in Paperback: April 10th

 

As an author, I'm beginning to notice things about book design that I never saw as a reader. 
Check out the paperback version of Hiding Out At the Pancake Palace.
Notice the information you get from the front cover. At the top is a one sentence teaser that tells what the book is about (I did not come up with this clever one liner.). They also managed to get the "an NPR Best Book of the Year" placed in the top left corner. At the bottom of the cover, there's the title of my other book so that the reader can make that connection. 
And then there are the lovely images. The sunglasses hint that someone is hiding (and they make the book look fun!). Even the blueberries are there for a reason. In Aunt Emily's Pancake Palace and in the Pinelands of New Jersey (where the book takes place) blueberries are important. And how can anyone resist the yummy stack of pancakes with the gooey font of the title melting right over them?   

In the back of the book there's a longer description to give the reader a better feeling for what the book is about and some quotes from the reviews. Sometimes when you put a lot of text into a small space it looks overwhelming.  But not in this case. That is because the quotes from the reviews are served up on white plates with a fork right next to them!  

By the way, those blueberries that are on the back cover are also featured in the beginning page of each chapter.

Thank you Square Fish for making the book look so delicious and for the time, talent and care you put into the design.

The paperback comes out on April 10th!

Why I write middle grade: It started with an apple

Down the block from where I grew up, there was an old house with a beautiful garden. Unlike the other homes in Massapequa, this one had a chain link fence surrounding the front lawn. I'm not sure exactly how high it was but when you're in third grade and about 4 feet tall, the fence appeared insurmountable.

On each side of the walkway leading up to the house, there was an apple tree.

Now my memory could be playing tricks on me, but that year, there was this apple that appeared fully grown the moment the tree blossomed and stayed on that tree until it dropped its leaves in late fall.

Every afternoon, my friend and I would walk by that apple.  (For privacy reasons, I'm changing my friend's name and calling her Eve).

"It's going to be gone. It's too perfect not to pick," Eve would say when we rounded the corner before we reached the house.
But the apple was still there.

"They don't want it. Otherwise they would have eaten it by now." 

Eve agreed. "If someone doesn't pick it soon, it will fall to the ground and rot".

But it never did.

Oh sure, there were other apples on that tree. But none of them captured our attention like this perfectly formed, brilliant red, amazingly round thing of beauty. 

"Maybe we could knock on the door and ask them if they'd give it to us," Eve suggested. But the gate was always locked. So we'd slow down, stop to tie our shoes and linger, hoping to find someone outside. There was never anyone around (which is a funny thing since gardens like this don't happen by themselves. Somebody had to be tending to it).

We talked about what that apple would taste like.  We even talked about hopping the fence, climbing that tree and picking it.

"It would have to be me," I'd say. "I'm a better climber." But that fence was high and that tree wasn't an easy one to climb.

Every day we'd come up with a new scheme, but we never picked that apple. Eve wasn't the type of girl to do it, and I was too afraid I'd get caught.

Looking back, I wish I had.

Yes, I know. I'm talking about trespassing and theft so I'm not exactly proud of my wishful thinking. 

Here's the thing: If my friend and I were book characters, the story would have ended differently.

Those two girls would have gotten to that apple, and whatever the consequences, it would have been an adventure.

That's one of the wonderful things about middle grade novels. It allows readers to go exploring and do things they normally wouldn't do.

If you ask me why I write middle grade,  I'd tell you how important books are to people that age and how important they were to me when I was young. I'd also wax poetic about how so many MG books are beautifully written, talk about character arcs and themes, and ramble on and on about my favorites.

But maybe there's another answer.  Maybe the real reason I write middle grade stories is because someplace deep inside me, there's a third grade girl reaching for an apple.