Treat Your-shelf to these Summer Reads 📖
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Ten News Road Trip Remix
Ten News Road Trip Remix: 📖 The team is headed to their local library and listening to our interview with E. Lockart, Author of the graphic novel, Whistle, along the way. 🤔 In need of some good summer reads? 📚 We've got you covered with our top book recommendations, including the Skyfall trilogy and the Keeper of the Lost Cities books by best-selling author Shannon Messenger. 🎧 Which reminds us, let's listen to our interview with Shannon on our way to the beach!
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TRANSCRIPT:
Tracy Kaplan 0:03
Oh my gosh. I've hit the jackpot. Sorry, sorry. Excuse me. How many books am I allowed to checkout?
Sound Bit 0:11
Four at a time.
Tracy Kaplan 0:13
But, what if I want to check out 12? Could you make an exception?
Sound Bit 0:16
No. No exceptions.
Ryan Willard 0:19
Yo, Kap! Let's get our read-on, baby.
Tracy Kaplan 0:23
Ryan, respect the library. Keep your voice down.
Ryan Willard 0:28
My bad. I'm just so hyped. There are so many cool books here.
Tracy Kaplan 0:32
I know. Me too. What'd you find?
Ryan Willard 0:34
I found a cool graphic novel called Whistle by E. Lockhart. It's about a 16-year-old girl in Gotham City who also happens to be the first Jewish superhero.
Tracy Kaplan 0:43
No way. I love Whistle. You know, we had E. Lockhart on the Ten News, right?
Ryan Willard 0:48
E. Lockhart was on the Ten News!?
Sound Bit 0:52
Sir, if you don't control yourself, I will put you in time out.
Ryan Willard 0:58
Sorry. Wait, they do timeout in the library?
Tracy Kaplan 1:01
I told you to respect the library. And yes, E. Lockhart was on the show. Do you want to hear the interview?
Ryan Willard 1:08
Of course, I do. I'm Ryan Willard. That's Tracy Leeds Kaplan and this is a Ten News Road Trip Remix.
Various Voices 1:18
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.
Bethany Van Delft 1:29
We're so happy that you're here with us. We are so excited to learn about a new comic book. Tell us about it.
E. Lockhart 1:37
Whistle is about a teenager living in Gotham City. And if you don't know this already, Gotham City is where Batman lives and along with Batman, all of the villains that Batman fights including the Riddler and poison ivy, and Killer Croc, who show up in my book. Anyway, she lives in Gotham City. Her name is Willow Zimmerman and she is a Jewish teenage activist, struggling to work nights to help support her family. Her mom is really sick and they don't have any health insurance. And long story short, she gets superpowers and has to figure out whether she can do anything with these powers to save her neighborhood, which is under attack by various supervillains.
Bethany Van Delft 2:29
How does she use her powers to protect Gotham City?
E. Lockhart 2:33
Well, they are their dog-related superpowers. And when I got the chance to invent a superhero, the first thing I thought was, that I would like to have a dog sidekick that I could talk to if I was going to be a superhero. So I invented this character who has a Great Dane, a beautiful big black and white Great Dane and her name is Leibowitz. And she becomes Willow’s dog. And the two of them get superpowers together. They have like a mind meld and they can talk to each other. And, Willow also develops super-powered hearing and super-powered smell like a dog, as well as a lot of dog impulses that are kind of funny. Like she has the urge to chase things and fetch and rollover and things like that every now and then. And she also developed a super-powered whistle that can call all the dogs in the area to come to her aid. So those are her powers. And together with Liebowitz, she becomes this superhero Whistle.
Bethany Van Delft 3:41
I love it. That's the name of the book, Whistle. Absolutely love that. And I love the sidekick. That's such a classic, classic pairing and comic books I love. I love that you're bringing that back.
E. Lockhart 3:55
It is classic, but Liebowitz is the first ever female superhero dog.
Bethany Van Delft 4:00
There you go. Love the first. Thank you for it. Is this why it was important to you that Willow be Jewish? And how does her being Jewish influenced the story if at all?
E. Lockhart 4:13
So my hero Whistle is living in a neighborhood that has a long Jewish history. And she cares about the institutions of that neighborhood, which are not all Jewish because a whole bunch of different kinds of people lives there. But she's very connected to the community centers and the synagogues and the delicatessens and the bagel stores, which have Jewish history. And so she's a local superhero, right she's connected to her city and I feel very connected to my city of New York City and to its Jewish history.
Bethany Van Delft 4:48
Willow did have to make a difficult choice. She had to make this tough choice between getting to be part of this world that she just got to be part of or choosing the right path, it was a real tough choice. But she made the choice to do the right thing. Would you make the same choice?
E. Lockhart 5:08
Well, one thing I was really interested in is what is it like to be a teenager in Gotham City? Right? Gotham City is full of really, really corrupt, terrible people doing terrible, but very interesting things. And so what happens to Willow is, because she needs money, and because she needs a job that is better than the all-night job that doesn't pay that well, that she's working currently, she gets a job working for the Gotham City underworld and gets pulled into kind of the wealth and glamour, of, of, of that, those criminal elements. And then when she really realizes what those people are up to, what they do, and what it means to be in that in that world, she has to make the choice to betray some of those people in order to become a hero and operate on the side of right. And, you know, I was interested in the moral complications of being, you know, trying to be a hero or having relationships with people who are maybe not great people. This is something lots of kids have in their lives, right? One way or another. And you have to fix you know, nobody is always a perfect person. Right? The question is just how do you make your decisions? And can you live with them? And you know, when do you compromise your principles, and when do you not compromise your principles? And I think superhero stories are actually a really cool and fun way to get at some of those really important questions.
Ryan Willard 7:05
Okay, E. Lockhart is awesome. I'm definitely checking out Whistle today. Any other good recommendations?
Tracy Kaplan 7:12
Have you ever read the Skyfall Trilogy? Or the Keeper of the Lost Cities books?
Ryan Willard 7:16
No, I haven't. Are they any good?
Tracy Kaplan 7:17
Are you kidding me? Sheesh, oops, sorry. They're amazing. Shannon Messenger is a best-selling author and they're as cool as it gets. My daughter Naomi, and I interviewed her on the show, too.
Ryan Willard 7:31
How were you getting all these amazing authors?
Sound Bit 7:34
Sir, you have been warned! It's timeout time.
Ryan Willard 7:37
Oh, come on.
Tracy Kaplan 7:39
Ryan, I'm gonna send you the Shannon Messenger interview to listen to in your time out. Hi, Shannon, it's so great to have you with us here today on the Ten News, we are big fans. I will say that we are even super fans, and we're really excited to talk to you.
Shannon Messenger 8:08
Well, I'm so excited to be here. This is so much fun, especially since we don't get to go out in person as much. It's so nice to get to meet with readers and fans. And you know, have a nice morning together.
Tracy Kaplan 8:19
Wonderful. And I'm joined today by my daughter, Naomi Kaplan, who's going to help me out with some of our questions and questions that we were sent in from our tenors. We have a good audience that loves your work. And I think where we want to start off is hearing from you. How did you come up with the world for Keeper of the Lost Cities? What inspired you to create this epic adventure?
Shannon Messenger 8:44
You know, I mean, it really came from all different places. It was not one of those instances of just you know, I sort of woke up and went I know this entire story in this entire world it kind of happened very gradually. I knew that I wanted to write about elves. And I had from you know, starting a short story that was actually with Fritz's character.
Naomi 9:06
Oh right! I knew that!
Shannon Messenger 9:09
Yeah, I had I had created fits for a different books that I was working on and created the elves just very loosely for a different book that I was working on. And I got stuck. And so I was kind of just trying to, you know, unstuck that story by writing from one of the side characters POVs and out came Sophy into that story. I don't really know why she just sort of popped in somehow I decided that that story was going to be about fits, meeting a girl and realizing that she was like him and she was an elf and him having to tell her that and in proof that maybe short stories aren't always my best form. You know, the dramatic ending of that story was just him basically saying, hey, so you're an elf and her being like cool.
Naomi 9:56
The short story ended when she found out that she was an elf, and then yeah.
Shannon Messenger 10:01
Not the greatest ending you. I mean, I know I'm known for my cliffhangers. But I feel like that's an even worse cliffhanger than like what I do in the series. It just, it wasn't satisfying at all and it but it got me to realize that that's what the story was. I just kept thinking to what is going to happen to this girl now now that she knows she's an elf? What does she have to leave? Does she have to go live in the Lost Cities? And why was she hidden away? And that's when I realized there's a story there. And I need to kind of figure those questions out.
Tracy Kaplan 10:31
So, can you tell us how do you put your characters together?
Shannon Messenger 10:36
You know that is the one part of my writing process that is kind of a mystery even to me. Which is a bummer, because it's the question I get asked most often because my readers always want to know, how did you come up with these characters? And they, they kind of form themselves? They really do. My brain has a very vivid imagination. And so I tend to start to see the character kind of fully formed. The one question that I do always ask a character before I start writing them is I asked, What is this character hiding from me, because I feel like we all have secrets. And once I know that character's secrets, I kind of get them, I kind of own them in a way. And it doesn't always mean bad secrets. I mean, the secrets can be a crush, or they can be you know, a secret dream that they want to have that they haven't shared. Or it can be things that they're afraid of, or things that they're embarrassed of, or anything like that, usually it's a mix. But I feel like once I know those things that really tells me everything that I need to know about the character. And the rest is just kind of discovery. As I write, I try to really think of them as real people. And I try to really, when I'm writing the scene, sit down and think, okay, so given what I know about this character, and given what I know about the situation that they're in, what would they do? It makes my life as an author a lot harder, because sometimes the answer to that question is, like, well, but that doesn't go along with what I need them to do. So what am I gonna do now, you know, but it means that I have to follow some curveballs. But I think that ends up making the story feel more authentic because I really am kind of letting the characters run the show. And I know that my mom is always like, you know, they're not real, right? And I'm like, I know, but I have to treat them. Like they're real in order to write them in a way that makes them feel real on the page. And so, yes, they're not real, but they're also real at the same time.
Tracy Kaplan 12:33
We are going to jump to some of the questions from our Ten'ers.
Naomi 12:37
This is a question from Hazel.
Shannon Messenger 12:39
Hi Hazel.
Ten'er 12:40
How did you get the idea for the characters’ names?
Shannon Messenger 12:45
For a person who only recently had a child I own an abundance of baby name books. That was one thing that is kind of a character-building exercise for me I do like the names to have a meaning that says something to me about the characters some it's very on the nose, like kif means handsome. So you know that that name is very spot on. Some are a little bit more, you know, an impression of a character or like Sophie, it means wisdom. And I feel like that's something that Sophie brings to the last cities that she has this very unique worldview because she was raised with humans always feeling like an outsider, but was still believed that she was one of them.
Naomi 13:28
This question is from Nia, how did you write Tam so perfectly?
Shannon Messenger 13:33
Well, thank you. Um, you know, again, it just really comes down to putting thought into what I know about him, you know, and I knew a lot about his backstory, you know, everything all the conflict with his parents all of his time with Lynn on their own their time and exhilarate them, you know, what it's like to be a shade in a world that kind of values light above everything else, and your ability controls darkness, you know, just really kind of putting thought into all of those things. And, you know, he kind of came together as this slightly surly but also very funny and, you know, super emo kind of guy who speaks his mind and you know, but it's also kind of quiet. And you know, he's, he's a study in contrasts.
Tracy Kaplan 14:18
He's a very cool character, and then Nia had a follow-up question about his sister.
Ten'er 14:23
Oh, right. Does Lynn ever get a significant partner?
Shannon Messenger 14:27
Well, sadly, I'm not allowed to give spoilers. I would get in very big trouble. So I tenors we try. I can't answer that question without getting myself in a tremendous amount of trouble. So all I can say is I guess we'll find out as the story unfolds, I will also say I never plan relationship stuff. I anything, even the Sophie stuff. I let that unfold by asking myself what the characters would do, because I feel like I control the plot as far as like what the villains are going to do, and how many times they're almost going to die. and all of that, that's all me throwing stuff at them, but then how they feel about it, that's on the characters. And so something like a relationship. That's all to do with feelings. And so again, that's all something that I just kind of let unfold.
Tracy Kaplan 15:17
So, this came in from quite a few Ten'ers, looking for an update of what you can share for the next book.
Shannon Messenger 15:27
Okay, so book nine, because of the whole, you know, I had a baby. Just that. Nine has been a little delayed, I actually found out I was pregnant, the day I finished unlocked. Wow, yeah, I took a test and found out Oh, man. And I realized, I remember being like, it's fine, I've got nine months, I'll totally be able to write those entire nine months. So that's coming out November. And we should be able to start sharing things like title and cover and things like that a little bit earlier than we normally do. I think usually those things drop around like April or May. So stay tuned to my social media for anything else on that front. But it does have a title. And I actually have seen the cover, and it's amazing, and everyone is gonna go nuts. There's lots of excitement ahead. And I can also say that book nine is not the end, it has been announced that there will be a book 10 And book 10 is going to be the end. So right now, book 10 is slated to come out the following November. So November of 2023. Hopefully, I'm able to stick to that deadline schedule. We'll just kind of see how cooperative my child is. So yeah, stay tuned on that.
Tracy Kaplan 16:43
All right. Well, this was great, Shannon. It was so wonderful to have you here today. And we look forward to news about book nine.
Ryan Willard 16:56
All right. I started Keeper of the Lost Cities while in timeout. And I love Sophie. I'm gonna preorder her next book. Are you ready to check out, Kap?
Tracy Kaplan 17:04
Yeah, just one sec. Excuse me? What if I have nine books? Can I check out nine?
Sound Bit 17:09
Ma'am? How many times do I have to tell you? It's a four-book limit?
Tracy Kaplan 17:14
Got it. But what if I put one back and wanted to check eight books out? Can you bend the rules a little?
Sound Bit 17:20
Do you need the timeout too, ma'am? So you can think about the rules and why we follow them?
Tracy Kaplan 17:26
Fine. I'll just take seven and I'll bring one back tomorrow.
Sound Bit 17:30
It's time out for you to Ma'am, please come with me.
Tracy Kaplan 17:33
Ryan, I gotta go. Can you please close out the show?
Ryan Willard 17:37
I'm on it. But first, here's a quick note for the grownups. This has been a Ten News Road Trip Remix. Technically, we're off for the summer but look out for our road trip remixes and re-airing of some of our favorite episodes all summer long. I'm Ryan Willard, and thanks for listening to the Ten News. Hope you're having a great summer and staying cool, kind, and informed.
