Interview with Liz Garton Scanlon, author of Lolo’s Light

Twelve-year-old Millie is thrilled to work her first babysitting job, however her world turns the other way up the morning after, when she learns that her four-month-old cost, Lola, has died of SIDS. In her second center grade novel, Liz Garton Scanlon superbly depicts a center schooler navigating an unspeakable tragedy.

Let’s begin with this e-book’s placing cowl. In the e-book’s acknowledgments, you write that one of your greatest associates created the embroidery that serves as the quilt picture. How did this come about? 
I can’t recover from that artwork, truthfully. Jill Turney, Amelia Mack and Angie Kang (the e-book’s designers and design fellow) conceived of the picture—a mashup of stitchery and sorcery. And then—it’s true!—they partnered with my buddy Kathie Sever, founder of Fort Lonesome, a chain-stitch embroidery studio in Austin, Texas, the place we each dwell. The artwork was made on a weighty piece of black linen, and I believe it speaks to the center and soul of this challenge, piercing darkness straight by means of with the abiding potentialities of love and lightweight.

How did Lolo’s Light begin for you? 
The first scene I imagined was the one in Chapter 3, the place Millie finds herself within the beautiful airiness of the Acostas’ home, babysitting for the very first time and enraptured by the significance of her circumstances. It all appears virtually too good to be true, which is an excellent place to start out a narrative, on the cusp between the earlier than and after. I teetered there for some time with Millie, after which we fell headlong into the story.

Tell us extra about Millie, who she is and the place she’s at because the novel opens.
I believe Millie is like many of us at 12 years outdated—completely happy and likewise stressed. She has associates and smarts and good canine and confidence, however what she actually desires is to be grown up. That craving to be on the opposite aspect of the invisible line between childhood and whatever-happens-next—it’s so palpable and so common. But, of course, it’s additionally inevitably extra difficult than we expect it will likely be.

After Lolo dies, Millie should confront all types of feelings. As you created her journey by means of grief, what was most necessary to you to get proper about her expertise? 
I wished to have a look at grief truthfully—particularly this primary, nice grief—and to permit all of the nuances of it to play out for Millie. I wished to indicate, for instance, that whereas it’s unbelievably onerous to really feel accountable, it’s additionally heartbreaking whenever you understand you’re not, that no one is, that there was nothing anybody might have performed to alter what occurred. 

It was additionally actually necessary to me to depict grief as a journey, as one thing shifting over time, as one thing Millie navigated and grew inside and perhaps even finally understood. I simply aimed to see her by means of it, and there have been so many layers and aspects and phases to light up alongside the way in which.

Let’s discuss concerning the adults on this novel, as a result of there are a bunch of actually nice ones. Why was it necessary to you to encompass Millie with so many adults, notably when kids’s literature typically goes out of its strategy to get rid of adults from narratives? 
I wished to verify Millie was not alone as she walked by means of grief. It’s so simple as that. Even when she felt alone, I wished her surrounded by knowledge and expertise and kindness and love. Not each grownup in the true world is sweet at this. Not each grownup can stroll alongside children as they wrestle and crack and develop, however I wished Millie to have some of the nice ones—the courageous ones. She wanted them. Every child does.

Millie’s class’s egg-hatching challenge works so superbly inside the story. Based in your acknowledgments, it appears like you might have skilled related actions as each an elementary faculty scholar and as a dad or mum. Did you by any probability try to re-create this challenge for analysis? 
Ha—I didn’t re-create the challenge however simply you asking makes me want that I had! I did hatch eggs in science class as a child and I did win the possibility to take one of the ensuing chicks residence. It wasn’t till I used to be on the college bus with an enormous field on my lap that I spotted the chick was already turning into a rooster who wouldn’t do nicely with my canine or upon the highest of my dresser. That poor chook was quickly rehomed!

What are some stuff you assume novelists might study from studying or writing image books?
Picture books heart the kid and the kid’s perspective in a most outstanding means. There is one thing about having to contemplate the very youngest people—the pre- and early readers— having to witness and replicate what they love and worry and need and want that may assist us within the observe of writing by means of and of children reasonably than to or for them.

Although this isn’t your first novel, you might have written many image books. What do you discover difficult about novels? 
I’m a short-form author at coronary heart, so writing a novel is a really actual effort in opening up, in giving every second and each character slightly extra respiration room. It’s a matter of attempting to evoke which means and feelings with the identical efficiency I would in an image e-book, however holding the reader’s gaze whereas I do.

You addressed a observe that accompanied advance editions of this e-book to “adult readers.” In it, you wrote, “The grown-up world has not, historically, done a great job of acknowledging or attending to young people’s feelings.” What would you say to an grownup who thinks that kids’s books shouldn’t embrace the varieties of topics and feelings depicted in Lolo’s Light? 
I’d say, “I understand your worry and your love, but kids are simply young human beings who wonder about and reckon with things like loss and grief and heartache just like we do! When adults suggest that kids shouldn’t read or know or think about those things, kids feel shame and confusion and loneliness and fear. Let’s not do that to them. Let’s not make things worse. Let’s, instead, keep them company.”

What do you hope a child who finds themselves in the same state of affairs to Millie’s would possibly take away from Lolo’s Light? 
Honestly, I hope all children in every single place develop to know that there’s a lightweight they will depend on, a lightweight that may be seen by means of cracks and curtains, in friendships and in household and in themselves. Even on the darkest days with the sharpest edges there’s nonetheless a dwelling, buzzing, human mild—a bioluminescent beacon—there to see them by means of.

Lolo’s Light incorporates some egg-cellent puns. I’m curious: If you had the chance to call a flock of chickens, what do you assume would make some egg-ceptional hen names? 
Oh now THIS is a enjoyable immediate. I’m going to go for a lady group—we’ll name them The Chicks— made up of Eggetha, Yolko and Henifer. They’ll be an influence trio.

Author picture of Liz Garton Scanlon courtesy of Elizabeth McGuire.