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Editor's Corner September 2009 Want to know what excites an RHCB editor? Tune in to the Editor’s Corner each month to get the inside scoop on a different editor’s latest and greatest project, from tomorrow’s bestseller to a literary masterpiece!
I feel like
my working relationship with Laura Resau has been charmed from the
moment her first novel, What
the Moon Saw, showed up in three chapters and a synopsis
under a mountain of slush submissions. Newly arrived at Delacorte,
I asked that a note be put in the forthcoming SCWBI national newsletter
that I was accepting submissions. It was only
a matter of weeks before I could barely find my computer under the
piles of hand-addressed manila envelopes. I got everything: Christian-themed
memoirs, "nonfiction" accounts of the lives and customs
of faeries (specifically, the faerie clans native to Texas), and
my personal favorite called Ashtray Pals Come to Earth that
featured an adorable band of aliens who came to Earth (via ashtrays)
to warn kids of the dangers of smoking. I'm not going to lie to you: I despaired. But then
something amazing happened. I picked
up a submission that began like this: The moonlight touches them both tonight, despite the thousands of miles between them. . . In Walnut
Hill, the moonlight pierces through the girl's open window onto
her eyelids, keeping her awake. . . She tiptoes downstairs, slips
out the sliding glass door, and walks to the edge of the yard, surveying
the stretch of identical houses as far as she can see. They look
like flimsy toys, like flat cardboard cut-outs, scenery for a play.
. . What is real? she wonders. There is something more real than this, something deeper, something pulsing and swimming underneath all this. It is a rhythm, a current she can feel. When she holds very still she feels it in the wind - a whisper, a song, a low drumbeat. Sometimes she wants to scream, to dance wildly, to run and run until she gets to the edge and takes a leap into what is real. I was enchanted.
I read the first three chapters in the most cynical state of mind
imaginable: surely this story would fall apart at any moment. But
it didn't. And then I requested the rest of the manuscript, and
it was just as good, if not better. I worried that Laura would already
have sold the book at auction, or be a nightmare to work with -
instead she accepted our modest offer and accepted all of my suggestions
with the utmost grace. About twelve
months later, a second manuscript arrived, called Red
Glass. It was a more complicated story, about an orphaned
illegal immigrant all of six years old, and the characters that
grow to love him. It was about a girl who fears everything learning
what truly matters in life from people who have lost everything.
It was about fear, love, loss, and the magnificent power of hope.
It made me cry, a lot. I've said
this before, but I want to live in the world Laura writes. In an
age where we're constantly being reminded of the issues that divide
us, Laura writes a world where we are all truly the same. Her characters
are three-dimensional, unique, and yet all driven by the same forces:
love, hope, and respect for nature. They’re not political symbols,
just people doing the best they can with the hands they're dealt.
In many cases, their greatest triumph is the fact that they have
survived at all. I got to
meet Laura for the first time when we both went to IRA, where Red
Glass won the IRA Award for Young Adult fiction. As you
can probably imagine, she was lovely: friendly, a fascinating dinner
companion, great with the teachers and librarians she met, and incredibly
thankful for everything we've done for her books. Her next
YA novel, The
Indigo Notebook, which comes out in October, is the first
in a series. Each book is titled by the different colored notebook
our fifteen-year-old protagonist writes in as her flighty mother,
Layla, uproots the duo each year to live in a different country,
meeting new people and encountering exciting, and sometimes dangerous
adventures along the way. The
Indigo Notebook follows Zeeta and Layla to Ecuador, where
Zeeta becomes involved with an American boy searching for his birth
parents. It’s a great mother-daughter story, a touching young love
story, and like all of Laura's books, a warm and evocative story
about finding yourself in the least expected place. And about
a year ago, Laura's agent sent me a surprise bonus - an early middle
grade novel called Star
in the Forest. She explained that Laura was inspired to
write it - the story of a young girl in a family of illegal immigrants
whose father is deported - by a real young girl she met at a school
event. This girl, whose family was also illegal, loved What
the Moon Saw and identified strongly with Clara, the heroine
who travels to Mexico to visit her grandparents. The girl's parents
had recently separated, and her father had been deported back to
Mexico . At the challenging age of thirteen, the girl was starting
to fight with her mother - and every time they did, she told her
mom, "I want to be like Clara and move to Mexico to be with
Dad!" Hearing
this story, Laura's heart broke a little. Because as an illegal
immigrant, this girl couldn't visit her dad, or she wouldn't be
allowed back into the United States. And in her hometown in Mexico,
she couldn't get more than an elementary education. Laura realized
that so many of her readers don't have Clara's options; for many
of them, Mexico is a land they'll never see again, and relatives
who go back there may be lost to them forever. Star in the Forest is another enchanting story, dealing with the reality of living in this country illegally, but filled with the hope of imagination and joy in simply being alive. Laura's ability to capture that is what makes her writing so special, and it's the unexpected gift of her talent that gives me hope every time I'm faced with an overwhelming submissions pile.
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