April ☕️: On Ramona Quimby

An essay on my favorite heroine + some behind-the-scenes of RACHEL RILEY! ✨

Well, looky here—Coffee With Claire got a glowup! (Actually, more like a simplify.) ✨ I switched platforms because MailChimp was constantly buggy + I already had a substack account. But don’t worry; this particular newsletter is 100% free + always will be. Thanks for joining us!

I recently checked Ramona and Her Mother out from the library. (This is why I can’t ever make fun of adults who go to Disney World solo. I’m a 30-year-old woman with zero shame about my Beverly Cleary obsession.)

I love Ramona Quimby. Love her, and really, really love that particular book. That desire in the second grade for people to see you as helpful and mature rings so true. I love the parents fighting about the pancakes. And when she tries to run away and her mom helps her pack her bag?! I can’t. Mrs. Quimby is parenting #goals.

But as I was reading it, I couldn’t help but think…this would never get published today.

What’s the plot? What are the stakes? Well, she wore her pajamas to school and got really hot.

I recently thought the same thing about another beloved series from my childhood, The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. I tried to tell my husband what those books meant to me growing up and started *crying*. So what happens in them? He asked. Um…well, they share some pants. One of them works at a Walgreens. One of them gets a crush on a boy in Greece?

Nobody brings down any social systems or gets accepted to a secret school or saves the world, that’s for sure.

Maybe I’m wrong. I certainly don’t claim to be an expert in all things kidlit! But look at the books on today’s shelves, including my own.

Adventure. Time travel. Major social issues. Magic spells. Revolutions. Quests. Public consequences. Major illness.

Big issues, is what I’m saying. Loud issues. Not the impossibly real feeling of anger that your sister can sew a skirt and you can’t even make slacks for your stuffed elephant.

I read a lot of middle grade, but I have to admit that I gravitate towards these quieter stories. And when it comes to these bigger stories, I keep finding myself saying they’re…

…fine.

It was fine. It entertained me on a Saturday evening or a long car ride. It didn’t make me roll my eyes, except for that one annoying character. It was enjoyable. Worth a library check out. Maybe an Instagram share. It was fine.

It was fine, but I won’t be thinking about it in 20 years. It was fine, but it didn’t change the way I thought about friendship. It was fine, but it didn’t tie itself into a knot around my heart, imprinting me with its subtle feelings and nuances and hopefulness.

So, what? Maybe I’m 30 now, and that’s just how it is. 30-year-olds aren’t moved by Ramona Quimby or Phoebe Winterbottom or Amanda Beale. The only reason these books mean anything to me at all is because I read them in a vulnerable moment, or because everything seems monumental when you’re 7 years old. I loathe the good-old-days talk, as if there was ever a time in literature when things were perfect. More kids can see themselves in books now than ever before and that’s a good thing. Magic isn’t new, either. Hello—Harry Potter was in its heyday in my own middle grade years.

But maybe there is a subtle shift in children’s literature, one that leads towards magic or huge societal changes. Wizards. Spells. Protests. Quests. Maybe quiet books about little sisters just aren’t around as much.

I guess I just don’t want the modern-day Ramona Quimbys to feel like their problems don’t matter anymore. I don’t want Carmen Lowell to be seen as boring, or plain, or quiet, when she and her traveling pants changed my life.

I don’t want the everyday kid problems to get overshadowed by the Chosen One who has to go on a mission to save the world. I want Beezus’ haircut to matter. And Mary Lou Finney’s weird cousin from Absolutely Normal Chaos, and the heart-wrenching friendship triangle of Rachel/Steph/Allison from Just as Long as We’re Together (when she nicknames the actor she has a crush on Benjamin Moore…JUDY BLUME, I LOVE YOU 4EVER.)

All of this to say: here’s to the quiet books. Ramona, I’ll read you until the day I die, and I can’t wait to share you with my own kids. And if they want to read epic tales of horses and knights and battles, that’s great, too. But I hope they still find a little corner of their heart for the girl from Klickitat Street.

(This is not the cover—just a fun image I mocked up! I’ll be sharing the cover in early summer, hopefully.)

I haven’t been talking too-too-too-much about What Happened to Rachel Riley? because of the pub date being pushed to January 2023. I was pretty disappointed when this happened, and also grateful that I could slow down a bit on promo stuff. I don’t think people realize just how much authors do to market their own books (…a lot) and the fact that this summer is a busy one for the Swinarskis was going to hinder me a bit.

That being said, I did want to share a bit about the genesis of What Happened to Rachel Riley?

I was looking for a new middle grade book to write, and I kept getting an image of a girl sitting at a lunch table all alone. The social dynamics of middle school are both intensely complex and ridiculously simple: kids (and adults, to be fair) can turn on one another for the crime of laughing at the wrong joke, but also have all kinds of unspoken rules and regulations that they think everyone should be living by.

I listened to a lot of podcasts.

I’ve always wanted to write a middle grade book that wasn’t simply narrative; I loved books told in mixed media format as a kid. Letters From Camp by Kate Klise will forever be one of my favorites. It’s so quirky and mysterious and the way it slowly reveals the truth is just brilliant. But what letters are being written in 2022? No letters, really. But texts. Instagram DMs. Notes passed in class. Out-of-the-box school assignments, where someone might decide to make a podcast.

I thought about an entire class of kids keeping a secret. A new girl, desperate to belong. A group of kids, backs turned to her, whispering.

This is how books come together, in a sort of holy-dreamy-alchemy that’s glued together by long playlists and drives up north. A scrap of a scene here and a hint of dialogue there, and before you know it, Anna Hunt emerged, as well as Rachel Riley, a girl everyone seems to hate.

And there was kind Jordan, and quiet Cody, and obnoxious Blake, and big sister Nik, who snores like a banshee and can code like a genius. There was Principal Howe (yes, from The Kate In Between! It’s the same school, so many teachers are back!) and my old social issues teacher who had long gray hair and tried to sell me climate change t-shirts. What Happened to Rachel Riley? has a true ensemble cast. During copyedits, you get a list of every single character in the book, from the most minor of teachers to the major players. The list of this book is l-o-n-g, and my editor + I even talked about if kids would be able to track all of these people. But they all seemed so vital to the story.

I hope you trust me with What Happened to Rachel Riley?. It’s quite a bit heavier than my earlier two books. It tries to do a lot more. It doesn’t shy away from the very real problems our middle schoolers are walking through. But that isn’t what books should do, is it? Books should be companions.

Books should be there, when it feels like nobody else is.

And lastly, a book I’ve loved lately for…

Kids: Rain School by James Rumford. We had a great conversation about what it would be like to have to build your school every year, the climate in Chad, and being grateful for our education! (By great conversation I mean they listened to me for about 17 seconds and said, ‘Oh, yeah, that would be crazy!!!’ They’re 5 + 3 + 11 months. My expectations are low.)

Middle graders: I won’t shut up about A Place to Hang the Moon by Kate Albus because it was so deliciously cozy. A true must-read.

Adults: I’m slogging my way through Les Miserables by Victor Hugo this year, so don’t get offended if this is my adult book for the next few months. Listen, Victor: I love your descriptions of Javert and a sense of duty being morally corrupted. But cool it with the Waterloo ranting.

Thanks for reading along!

-Claire-