Hot, for Once (August theme) by Claudia Mills
I usually don’t write about hot topics, however “hotness” is defined. I tend to write books that have a somewhat old-fashioned sensibility, about small, timeless problems that children have faced for generations and will continue to face for generations to come. But for the first time ever in my career, I did just publish a book on a topic that is “hot,” or is at least about a “hot button” issue.
Zero Tolerance is
my exploration of zero tolerance discipline policies in public schools, where
students face harsh mandatory penalties for certain infractions, no excuses, no
exceptions. Sierra is a “perfect” girl who errs on the side of self-righteous
goody-goodyness until the day she brings the wrong lunch to school by mistake,
her mother’s lunch that contains a knife for cutting her mother’s apple. Sierra
turns in the knife instantly, but now she is facing mandatory expulsion under
her school’s zero tolerance policies regarding drugs and weapons.
When I first sent the idea to my
editor at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, she cautioned against the risk of
writing a “problem novel”: a book overly
focused on dutifully introducing young readers to some kind of social problem, a
book that serves more as propaganda than as literature.
To head off her worries, I did three
things.
First, I was interested first and
foremost in how my protagonist would change and grow as a result of her
encounter with the zero tolerance policies, as her fundamental assumptions are unseated
and her guiding expectations overturned. How does a good girl change when she’s
treated like a bad girl? Do the lines between “good” and “bad” begin to blur?
Second, I chose to focus on the
ethically complex elements of Sierra’s story rather than the ethically obvious
one. The ethically obvious point to make is: zero tolerance policies are unfair
and unjust. The ethically interesting question is: how do we respond to
unfairness and unjustness without becoming unfair and unjust ourselves?
Sierra’s attorney father is determined to destroy her principal at all costs. How is Sierra
going to respond to her draconian punishment? How should she respond?
Finally I tried to connect with the
universal emotional core that lay beneath the trendy, ripped-from-the-nightly-news
topic. At the core of Sierra’s story is an experience that all children will
have at some point in their lives: the experience of being treated unfairly,
and even more poignantly, the experience of being treated unfairly by someone
you loved and trusted.
Now that the reviews are coming in,
I’m finding that it’s fun to have written about a hot topic. Librarians and
teachers are eager to share their own zero tolerance war stories with me. The
book is being recommended for discussion groups because of its controversial
subject matter – though also, I hope, because of how I handled that
controversial subject matter. I may try to find another hot topic to write
about one of these days – or rather, hope that another hot topic finds me. For
in the end, writers can do justice to a hot topic only if they themselves
connect with the enduring issues that remain even after the topic’s current
hotness has cooled down.
Interesting, Claudia. I love how you found a way to go beyond the headlines to give us a character-based rather than a problem-based novel. Your beautiful book will be read long after the problem becomes history.
ReplyDeleteThis was such a good book. And an "easy" book talk. The what if is incredible...thanks for writing it and for sharing part of the journey!
ReplyDeleteThis is so true...If we don't address the emotional stickiness of hot topics, we don't have a book. I gotta get my hands on ZT, Claudia.
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