Mondays with Mira Invites Questions for Major Authors: Heidi Schulz, Philip Ardagh, & Michael Buckley for our new combo Middle Grade and Chapter Book Mastery course

It’s the beginning of the month and usually I have a sweet video to share but today I want to share my excitement about the new contributors to our upcoming Middle Grade and Chapter Book mastery course and ask your help. We realized that we could update our Middle Grade Mastery course to include Chapter Books by attending to the different needs of chapter books in terms of plot difference, subject matter difference, and age-appropriate thematic differences while maintaining the universals of character, setting, and language so that it too could be interactive helping both chapter book and middle grade writers and illustrator by creating a two-for-one course.

We also brought on a fabulous assoc. editor from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt/Clarion Books, Rachael Kelin, who is extremely brilliant and will be co-teaching the course every week, to join award-winning author Hillary Homzie and me. And then of course being the overachiever that I am, we are bringing in additional superstars beyond Crown VP Phoebe Yeh, Scholastic VP Andrea Davis Pinkney, agents Victoria Wells Arms and Sean McCarthy and major award-winners to help stud,ents in the course with brilliant contributions. Next week I’m interviewing Philip Ardagh, Heidi Schulz, and Michael Buckley. (be still my heart) and would love to hear from you in the comments Here’s a little about each of them…

Heidi Schulz is the New York Times best-selling author of the Hook's Revenge series  among  other books. She  imagines Captain Hook's daughter Jocelyn going off on a mission to avenge her father's death from the Neverland Crocodile and of course there's tons of conflict and mayhem. Reading this book, it's clear that one of the keys to it’s huge success is the voice the author uses to tell the story and how clever and ironic it is. So.... if anyone has any questions that they’d like to ask this brilliant best-selling author please comment at the bottom. 

Philip Ardagh is an extraordinary award-winning and best-selling British author of mostly chapter books and middle grade novels. He has a unique narrative voice that frequently lets us know how he wishes he'd done something different while writing a section and even has his characters do similar acts of breaking the fourth wall to let the reader know that they all know that they are in a book. Sounds dizzzying? It is and yet effortless at the same time. I love the ingenious and touching ways that he weaves his own personal narrative and insecurities into the stories in-between the fast-paced action and smart word-play. Philip is most known for the Eddie Dickens Trilogy and The Grunts Series. If anyone here is also a fan or has read any of his books and would like to ask him any questions about his craft  or journey as a writer, please leave a commnet in the comments section. I’m such a fan girl that I hope I’m not too intimidated when I interview him. 

And now for Michael Buckley, mega selling author of the Sisters Grimm and NERDS series. Michael is generously contributing to this course to help our students. Interestingly enough, like Hook's Revenge, Michael’s best selling series, The Sisters Grimm, also re-contextualizes old time literature with a contemporary feminist spin for a girl-power driven adventure series that mixes literary genres and fairy tale re-tellings. with a wonderful flair for language AKA voice and fabulous word play. Any Michael Buckley fans out there? What would you like to learn about his craft or journey?

I'd love to hear from you below. And if you'd like to learn more about this course (sorry the page needs updating) click here or apply for one of our scholarships here! I hope you enjoyed reading about these inspiring people and getting a glimpse of their work - Mira xox

PS Check back here on Friday for a fab bonus post from Brydie Wright about Dark Humor, something all of the authors above employ to great effect.

PPS We also have magical webinar December 14th that's an early holiday gift from us, so do check this out as well. http://bit.ly/AnAwesomeGIFT