Episode #151: Do you think this is the best book you’ve ever written? with Adam Borba
Welcome back! On Kids Ask Authors today, we welcome special guest author, Adam Borba! Adam and Grace answer a wonderful kid question: “Do you think this is the best book you’ve ever written?”
TRANSCRIPT:
Adam Borba: I think I continue to become stronger at creating emotional themes that feel clear and universal, like the underlying message of my stories or creating tension to keep readers turning pages.
So the more you write, the more you learn what's important and figure out little tricks that work for you to do those things better. I try to keep my stories unexpected and I try to avoid repeating myself so the storylines of each new book becomes less expected than the last.
Writing is one of those things that's affected by experiences you have in real life and also in front of your keyboard. Everything in your life and in the world is connected. So as you grow as a person and have new experiences, those things alter how you'll do things in the future. So the more you live and do, the more you'll have to draw from and the more tools you'll have to tell your stories.
My first book is called The Midnight Brigade, and I could never have written it if I didn't meet and fall in love with my wife. She is from Pittsburgh and that's where this book is set and because I fell in love with the city on these yearly trips we took to visit her family.
Pittsburgh has over 400 bridges and they're beautiful. On one of those trips I was staring at a bridge and I thought about how much fun it would be to find a troll living under there. Then I thought about how much fun it would be to keep that troll secret with your friends and that's the jumping off point for the Midnight Brigade.
The main character of that book, Carl Chesterfield is a quiet kid and like a lot of young readers, he's an introvert. I definitely was as a kid and I'm often still now. Carl is all heart and he's constantly observing and worrying about other people, but he keeps those things to himself.
In my latest book Outside Nowhere, the main character, Parker Kelbrook, he's an extrovert, he's funny, he's charming, he talks a lot. He's the opposite of Carl, and that was a thing that was an intentional choice. Again, I didn't want to repeat myself and I thought it would be fun to have a main character without a filter.
When Outside Nowhere starts, Parker's more concerned about himself than other people. So in terms of a character, he has a lot of room to grow.
In Outside Nowhere, we meet Parker and he's funny and he's charming, but he's a slacker. After he pulls a prank that goes a little out of control, his father sends him halfway across the country to work on a farm. That farm has three rules. Do your chores, stay out of the farmhouse, don't eat the crops.
Parker's fellow coworkers on that farm are a bunch of kids that are roll-up-your-sleeves type and get the work done so he doesn't really fit in. And they don't find him quite so charming and funny because he's not getting his chores done and he's kind of making more work for everybody else.
So Parker needs to figure things out and learn to grow and when he does, magical and mysterious things start happening. Like one morning he wakes up and he discovers a cow on the roof of his barn. That's when Parker discovers that things on this farm aren't as they appear.
I'm really proud of Outside Nowhere and the Midnight Brigade. And though I love the Midnight Brigade, if you're putting my feet to the fire, Simon, I would say Outside Nowhere is my best book, but it only exists because of the work and experiences I had on my first book. Hopefully, my next book will be the best yet, until it's topped by my fourth book.
But listen, I'm biased. So really you should be the judge and read them all for yourself and decide.
Grace Lin: I love that. And I think I completely agree with you with the idea that the best book you've written is your next one.
When you were telling that story about how, especially the last lines you were saying about how you couldn't have written Outside Nowhere without writing the Midnight Brigade, it just reminded me of myself when I first started. I remember I wrote this story and I thought it was the best story in the world, and I was like, "It's awesome. It's wonderful." I can't wait until it was published. I sent it to like all the publishers and everyone rejected it. I was like, "What? How can they not see this is such a great story?" I was like, "Ugh," and I kept getting rejected. Finally, I was, like, "Fine," and I put it in a drawer.
I wrote another story, and then I wrote another story and I wrote another story and so finally, I was published.
After I was published, I was like, "Huh. Well, what about that story I wrote that was so awesome, that first story? I should get that out and show them." Then I went to my drawer, I went and found it. I read it over and I realized, "Oh, that story was awful. It was terrible." It was, like, not the best story. It was far from the best story and I was so glad that it was not published.
But just like you, but obviously, your Midnight Brigade was much better than my first story, but I could not have gotten to the book that was published without writing that really bad story, just like I couldn't have gotten to the book that I am now without writing the first book. So I think the idea that your best book you ever going to write is the next one is a really good idea, a really good theory to go with.
Adam Borba: Yeah, and I feel like a lot of people connect with that. And it's just kind of exciting to keep writing and move ahead and kind of look at what you have coming.
Grace Lin: Do you have a best book coming up that you feel like sharing or is it top secret?
Adam Borba: Top secret pretty much. Grace, I feel the same way as you where it's always like I'm always writing something and then outlining something else. And I always, no matter what it is, more excited about the thing that's outlined. It's like, "Oh, I can't wait to get to that and dive in because it's going to be incredible."
Grace Lin: And that was going to be the best one.
Adam Borba: Yeah, but it also it motivates you for what you're doing currently. It's just like, "What can I do to improve this story to make it just as good as the thing that I haven't written yet?"
Grace Lin: Exactly. Yeah, I think that's true and I think that's what keeps us going as authors, right?
Adam Borba: Absolutely.
Grace Lin: Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Adam, for answering today's question and thank you, Simon, for asking such a great one.
Adam Borba: Thanks, Simon.
Grace Lin: Bye.
Todays KID BOOK REVIEWS are from Pierce and Dalton! They are both reviewing, Outside Nowhere by Adam Borba.
Hi my name is Pierce. The book I would like to talk about is Outside Nowhere, by Adam Borba. This book is about a kid named Parker who pulls a prank and is sent to a farm. At the farm he hates it but then thinks its great and decides to go there next summer. I liked this book because it has a good plot. I also liked this book because it is meaningful. The book is meaningful because it has a good life lesson.
Hi my name is Dalton. The book I would like to talk about is Outside Nowhere, by Adam Borba. This book is about Parker Kellbrook, who can wiggle out of anything except when he was sent to work at a farm. But weird things happened so it’s all up to him to solve it. I liked this book because it’s funny and it has inventive characters. My favorite page is page 36, where the name “Chet” is used many times. I found it funny because using a word as many times is like a tongue twister.
ADAM BORBA is the author of Outside Nowhere and The Midnight Brigade. When he’s not writing, he makes movies like Pete’s Dragon and Peter Pan & Wendy with his friends. He is a graduate of Palm Springs High School, the University of Southern California, and the William Morris Agency mailroom. Adam lives in California with his family. Little, Brown Books for Young Readers will publish his next novel, This Again?, in 2024.
Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.
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