About pandemic, for the kids
Children’s author makes sense of the virus,
Eric Walters had an idea on April 22. Forty-one days later, that idea is a book.
This is not the way things usually work in publishing; between writing and editing and designing and printing, it can be years before copies — digital or physical — are on the shelves of your local or virtual bookstore. But necessity is the mother of invention — the necessity in this case being a desire to help kids during a pandemic and give a boost to a small publisher whose sales, like other publishers, have dropped during a pandemic. Here’s how it happened:
As COVID-19 closed schools for a few weeks, and then months, Walters says he began to get emails from teachers, students, librarians. They wanted to know when he was going to write a pandemic book.
“I was just saying I don’t think I’m going to be doing that at this point,” says Walters. He’s known for being prolific: He’s got 115 novels and picture books to his name, and almost as many awards. But the emails kept coming, and teachers kept saying kids they knew didn’t understand elements of what was going on. They were confused.
So, on April 22, he figured out a way to tell it, in a book aimed at middle grade kids ages nine to 12.
“What I was trying to do,” says Walters, “is not just entertain, but educate.”
On April 23, he phoned up Andrew Wooldridge at children’s book publisher Orca Books.
“My first thought with Eric is almost always yes,” says Wooldridge. “He has lots of ideas and he really does know the market. So when he had this thought, I thought, definitely, we’ll give it a go and see what happens.”
And on April 24, says Walters, “I started writing.” After a week of 14-hour days at his computer, standing to eat while he walked around the room, he turned in a first draft of around 18,000 words.
Here’s the story: The kids at Switzerland Point Middle School find out school is closing because of COVID-19. Their teacher, Miss Fernandez, takes great pains to explain how social distancing works, how the virus spreads and so on. The kids, with main character Quinn, live through social distancing, holding Zoom classes, making masks and trying to figure out how to deal with the looming cancellation of the spring dance.
He handed it in and handed it out to a group of beta readers at the same time. Normally, a book can take several rounds of editing to get a book to where it should be.
“In this case, it was a much more severe edit right away,” says Wooldridge. The editor made her suggestions, Walters made the changes.
The beta readers, too — teachers, students, librarians — were getting back with their feedback on the book: what they thought the kids were doing and saying, what videos they were watching and music they were listening to.
One of those readers was Kristen Badger. She’s a library media specialist in Florida, at Switzerland Point Middle School. Sharp readers will notice the name of her school is the same as the school in the book.
“I know after other big events that have occurred like hurricane Katrina or even 9/11 it took several years for there to be fiction books about those events,” she said in an interview. “And to have a book so recent and current, it’s amazing. I’m wondering if it’s going to change the writing and publishing industry … because people realize that they can actually help kids at the time, instead of looking back.”
Badger’s daughter, Maddie, is in Grade 8, just like the kids in the book and was also one of Walters’ beta readers. “There was one comment she had,” notes Badger. “One of the characters talked about her future career and how she wanted to become a (doctor) and my daughter commented that she didn’t really think that was necessary.”
That bit stayed in, but Walters said he did change dialogue and a few names based on some of the feedback he received.
Keep in mind: This all happened with the first eight or nine days of the book being turned in.
“The team was also working at home — so there weren’t a lot of group meetings,” Wooldridge says. It was mostly by email although the marketing team, designers and editors did meet on Zoom a few times.
The idea of this being a digitalfirst book (a print version will be released in the fall) also speaks to some of the challenges facing publishers right now. With booksellers closed to all but online sales, revenues are down. “As print sales have largely collapsed, we have seen renewed interest in ebooks and digital content,” says Wooldridge.
And so, this becomes an interesting project — an interesting experiment in nimbleness, pivoting and offering something in a way that wasn’t possible before.
“This is an interesting project,” says Wooldridge. “It began because we have such difficulty right now actually reaching the market with print books. Our timeline can (normally) be so long because we send out review copies, we’re trying to get the review attention before the book comes out.
“You need to get the data together, which is a much bigger process than it used to be in terms of all the information that has to go out to all of our partners so they’re able to list the book and make it available for sale.”
While not all writers are able to do this, Walters decided not to ask for an advance, and he’s asked Orca to delay when they actually pay him any royalties. When he does get paid, he’s donating a portion of the proceeds to Lakeside Hope House in Guelph.
“I want this book to help support the company … I want this book to help them through a difficult time and for them to be able to pay other writers during this time,” he says.
Now, 41 days after inspiration first hit, “Don’t Stand So Close To Me” is for sale in digital form in virtual bookstores across North America with a pricing structure that allows for individual ($7.99), classroom license ($29.99) and school license ($59.99) purchases.
And, in this process, what Walters might also have done is given kids hope. Knowing that they’re going through the same thing as the characters in the book. And knowing that, Badger points out “makes them feel that they’re not alone.”
If we’re all in this together, that’s a good place for a book to be.