At this point I was really grateful for the fall I spent interning at Scholastic Publishing. While working in their PR department I was exposed to which books were targeted for certain age ranges. Once I had almost hit the end I started remembering the books geared towards 8-12 year olds or middle grade books. And poof my YA dreams had magically transformed into middle grade dreams.
Full disclosure: I still totally read middle grade books. This past semester I was assistant teaching at a middle school and helping seventh graders choose independent reading books. Their classroom library was full of authors that I loved as a kid like Phillip Pullman and Eoin Colfer. It also had books that I read now by more recent authors like Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series. Middle grade is this really cool point where kids are just starting to grow up and think about things outside of their immediate circles. So I realized that writing for middle schoolers might be a unique opportunity to help kids learn.
When I go back to edit this second draft I will be keeping my new target audience in mind. And I've started to get really excited about it. When kids are in the 8-12 range they still enjoy being read to occasionally, which is something that I used to love. So one of my biggest goals for Guardians is to write a story that kids love and parents love to read to their kids.
Tomorrow I'm going to cover some of the nuts and bolts of reorganizing a draft. For now enjoy another scene from Guardians of Cornerstone. In this part Rafi has just insulted Kalynn and he needs to apologize.
“Kalynn please listen.” She kept
her back to him, fiddling with the tulip. Handsome Rafi might be but tactful he
was not.
“Please
turn around. I want to apologize. I have a temper.”
She
took a quick glance at him. His expression was blank so she couldn’t tell if he
was being genuine. Turning around she went back to the tulip.
Two
hands latched onto her shoulder and spun her.
She
glared at Rafi. “So? We all get angry. And I understand that this can’t be easy
for you. But I wouldn’t waste my breath calling one of the only people who can
help you a freak!” Self-consciously she rubbed her pointed ears. “Don’t you think
I’m aware of what I look like? I’ve been studying charms and potions to
disguise myself in your world for the past two years. Did it ever occur to you
that I might like the way I look?”
Silence. Kalynn
watched Rafi wondering what he was thinking. He kept staring at her; his gaze
shuttling up and down her body until it settled on her eyes.
Her breath hitched. She swallowed, suppressing
a cough. There was no chance she was going to be the one to break the silence.
“I never thought
of it that way.” Rafi finally mumbled a response. He seemed to realize that he
was staring and looked at the ground. “You just have to understand, that I
haven’t had a lot of time to process. Until a few minutes ago I had no clue
that, um, what are you exactly?”
She bit her lip to
stop from smiling. “An earth sprite.”
“Yeah, well I had
no clue that earth sprites even existed until about five minutes ago.”
He looked so lost
and ashamed. Kalynn didn’t feel bad for yelling at him but she did want to move
past the fight. Until Ben and Rafi went home she and Shana were all they had
and Shana had already proven that she wasn’t ready to accept the Others. The boys
shouldn’t have to deal with two angry Guardians.
Impulsively she
reached out, squeezed his hand, and let go. “Well we are real. And know you
know.” This time she did grin at him.
Slowly he smiled
back.
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