Episode #93: What was the hardest scene to write?-with Veera Hiranandani
WELOME BACK! We are so excited to be back in the swing of things here with the Kids Ask Authors podcast. Today we ask authors Grace Lin and Veera Hiranandani the question, “What was the hardest scene to write?”
TRANSCRIPT:
Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book, author and illustrator of many books including the middle grade novel, When The Sea Turned To Silver, and the picture book, A Big Mooncake For Little Star. Today, I'm here with Veera Hiranandani, the author of middle grade novels such as, The Whole Story of Half A Girl, The Night Diary, and How To Find What You're Not Looking For. Hi, Veera.
Veera Hiranandani: Hi.
Grace Lin: Thank you so much for joining me today.
Veera Hiranandani: Oh my pleasure.
Grace Lin: I'm so glad that you're here because I have a great kid question for you. Are you ready for it?
Veera Hiranandani: I am ready. Okay.
Grace Lin: Today's kid question is from a person named Madeline, and Madeline asks, what was the hardest scene to write?
Veera Hiranandani: Yes. Well, there are so many scenes that I've struggled with. So it often centers around when I'm writing an adult that is somebody who's maybe a little difficult for the kids around them. They're complex. They don't always seem as generous or is nice as maybe their children want them to be, and they don't seem very vulnerable. And then I often have a scene, I had one in The Night Diary with the papa character and one in my new book How To Find What You're Not Looking For with the mother character named Ma where suddenly something happens where they do have to be really vulnerable and this strong, stoic character suddenly has to soften and seem more vulnerable and more accessible. And that's always a struggle for me because I have to change the way I'm portraying the character from the young person's eyes looking at their parent, usually, in a whole new way. So there's just always so much going on I a scene like that and I want to try to write it as accurately as I can. So that tends to be a tough kind of scene for me to write.
Grace Lin: I can see that because it's like you are writing it from the character's eyes and you're seeing them change and it's like you need to do it through double layers, right?
Veera Hiranandani: Yes, exactly. And then, of course, filter it through my own self as a parent and then my own memories being a young person. So there are a lot of layers to unpack there.
Grace Lin: So what is the scene that you were mentioning? You said it was in How To Find What You're Not Looking For. You said there was a specific scene that you found [crosstalk 00:02:44].
Veera Hiranandani: Yes. So, at one point, without giving, hopefully any spoilers to the novel, the Ma character, she's really a very competent, strong character who has a lot on her shoulders, but she's not always the most generous or the most sensitive person, and her daughter finds that frustrating. Even though she feels loved, but she finds it frustrating sometimes to connect with her mother. And, at one point, Ma get sick, and so in that moment of having vulnerability because she's not feeling well, Ari, Ariel, the main character, does have to suddenly, she suddenly sees her mother as vulnerable and much softer and even sweeter than she's used to and she has to come to terms with that. Because you rely on your parent in a certain way, to be a certain way. There's some comfort in the consistency, even if your parent isn't always the way you want them to be. And so Ariel is shaken by her mother's sudden vulnerability when she gets sick, and so I had to write a scene between them and show Ariel looking at her mother very differently very quickly. So that that was tricky.
Grace Lin: Oh, well, it sounds like it's going to be a beautiful scene though. I can't wait to read it.
Veera Hiranandani: Thank you.
Grace Lin: It's so funny because when I was asking you this question, I was trying to think, oh, what was the hardest scene for me to write? And I came at it from a completely different way, because yours, you came at it as a hard scene to write emotionally, showing all the different layers.
Veera Hiranandani: Yes.
Grace Lin: And I was thinking, oh, you know what was a really hard scene for me to write? I was writing a scene in Where The Mountain Meets The Moon where it's the tiger, there's a tiger character attack attacks the dragon character, attacks the main character, Min Lee, and also has this conversation with these other characters. But the tiger doesn't speak. It has to all be through roars and I remember thinking, how many times can I write the tiger roared? After a while, it was just "the tiger roared", "the tiger roared."
Veera Hiranandani: Oh my gosh. I wouldn't know where to begin.
Grace Lin: After you write "the tiger roared" three or four times, it gets a little repetitive.
Veera Hiranandani: Yeah, I would imagine. And I hadn't written too many animals in my books, even though I'm an animal lover. I love dogs, but I have a cat and I'm very close to my cat, and I've only written a few cats in a few stories. I haven't done the animal thing, or a non-human creature.
Grace Lin: Oh. Well, then, one of the kid questions that I have coming up because we get kid questions through the website all the time, and one is, will you ever a book about ponies?
Veera Hiranandani: Maybe cats. I don't know about ponies. I like ponies.
Grace Lin: That's funny. You could say you're going to do a book about pony cats.
Veera Hiranandani: A cat who wants to be a pony maybe, a pony that wants to be a cat. I don't know.
Grace Lin: I have not asked that question yet to an author, but maybe I'll save that for the next time you're on.
Veera Hiranandani: Okay, sounds good.
Grace Lin: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for answering Madeline's question, and Madeline, thank you so much for asking it.
Veera Hiranandani: Yes. Thank you.
Grace Lin: Bye.
Veera Hiranandani: Bye.
Today’s BOOK REVIEW comes from Grace! She is reviewing the book, The Whole Story of Half a Girl by Veera Hiranandani.
The book I would like to share is The Whole Story of Half a Girl by Veera Hiranandani. This book is about an eleven year old girl named Sonia Nadhamuni, whose father was born in India and her Mother is jewish which makes her half Indian and half Jewish. She faces struggles with family, friendship and her own identity.
When Sonia’s father loses his job, everything goes downhill. Sonia and her sister, Natasha, can’t go to their private school anymore because now they can’t afford the tuition. She faces another struggle when she learns that her father is also facing a deep depression. Sonia and her sister transfer to public school and on her first day, Sonia notices that there are distinct groups of students. For example, the popular kids are all friends and they sit at one table. She thinks that this is kind of weird because at her old school her class was like a big family, where everybody fit in. Kids ask her, “What are you?” They are trying to make her fit into a racial group and Sonia realizes that she does not know where she fits.
I recommend The Whole Story of Half a Girl if you are interested in reading books with a theme of friendship and fitting in. These are things that resonate with me as I get ready for the transition to middle school next year. Sonia opened a new window for me that allowed me to see what it is like to struggle with your own identity and religious background. Sonia showed me the importance of being yourself and finding who you are even when you may at first want to be like someone else just to fit in.
Thank you so much for the review Grace!
More about today’s authors!
Veera Hiranandani is the author of The Night Diary (Kokila), which has received many awards including the 2019 Newbery Honor Award, the 2019 Walter Dean Myers Honor Award, and the 2018 Malka Penn Award for Human Rights in Children's Literature. The Night Diary has been featured on NPR's Weekend Edition, is a New York Times Editor's Choice Pick, and was chosen as a 2018 Best Children's Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Amazon, School Library Journal, and Kirkus Reviews. She is also the author of The Whole Story of Half a Girl (Yearling), which was named a Sydney Taylor Notable Book and a South Asia Book Award Highly Commended selection, and the chapter book series, Phoebe G. Green (Grosset & Dunlap). She earned her MFA in fiction writing at Sarah Lawrence College. A former book editor at Simon & Schuster, she now teaches creative writing at Sarah Lawrence College's Writing Institute and is working on her forthcoming novel, How To Find What You're Not Looking For (September 2021, Kokila).
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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