Book Birthday Blog with Jack Cheng

 

Welcome to SCBWI-MI's Book Birthday Blog!

Where we celebrate new books from Michigan's authors, illustrators and translators.

 

Congratulations to Jack Cheng on the release of The Many Masks of Andy Zhou

 

Cover Art: Yuta Onoda

The idea for your first middle grade novel, See You in the Cosmos, came from hanging out in your younger brother’s room and spotting a Carl Sagan book. How did you come up with the idea for your new book? 

I don’t know if there was a singular moment for this book like there was for Cosmos. I originally wanted to write about my experience moving back to Detroit in 2014, and often finding myself in situations where I was the only Asian American in either majority-Black or majority-white spaces. I wanted to see if there was anything my outside perspective had to say about intergroup dialogue. But as I dug into that idea, I realized that I hadn’t reckoned enough with my own Chinese-ness and my Midwestern upbringing. What you see on the page is a result of many false starts—a lot of overwriting and then cutting back. 

What is something you hope your readers will take away from your book?

 

The power of art in helping a kid define, for themselves, who they are and who they want to be. I’ve always had lots of creative hobbies, and as I enter into the fortieth year of my life I appreciate, more than ever, how much art has come to help me understand who I am and what I’m all about.

 

According to your website, you’ve traveled all over the world presenting to students about your path to becoming an author. What advice do you have for a budding creative?

 

To follow your weird interests. And not get ahead of yourself—take it one step at a time. I think this is actually an area where a lot of students are less inhibited and self-censoring than we adults are. This was certainly my case when I was a kid—I would pursue my different interests simply because it was fun to do so, not because I saw a career path. A lot of times, I wasn’t even aware that a particular hobby was a full-on vocation until I’d already been doing it for years. By then, I’d developed enough skill to pursue that hobby full-time.

 

You worked in technology and marketing before writing your first book. What inspired you to start writing?

 

I owe the writing of my first book to the Morning Pages exercise from Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way. I tried to sit down every morning and fill three pages in my journal, and after a few weeks, I found myself writing scenes that would eventually form the basis for that first book. But thinking back, I often wrote short stories and entered essay contests as a kid just for the fun of it, or just because I was moved by something I read and wanted to emulate it.

 

What's next for you?

 

I’ve been co-writing my first picture book manuscript with my partner Julia. We’ve taken it on as part of this season’s Picture Book Challenge for BookSmitten, a kid lit podcast I co-host with fellow Michigan-based authors Kelly J. Baptist, Heather Shumaker, and Patrick Flores-Scott. I’m also finishing an online post-graduate architecture program called Building Beauty, which I’ve sharing lessons from in my weekly newsletter. I'm not an architect, and don't plan to become a full-time architect anytime soon. But I guess it's just another example of following my interests without knowing where they'll lead!

 

A little bit about the book . . . 

 

Creative and brave sixth grader Andy Zhou faces big changes at school and at home in this new novel by the award-winning author of See You in the Cosmos.
 
Andy Zhou is used to being what people need him to be: the good kid for his parents and now grandparents visiting from Shanghai, or the helpful sidekick to his best friend Cindy’s rebellious plans and schemes.
 
So when Cindy decides they should try out for Movement at school on the first day of sixth grade, how can Andy say no? But between feeling out of place with the dancers, being hassled by his new science partner Jameel, and sensing tension between his dad and grandfather, Andy feels all kinds of weird.
 
Then, over anime, Hi-Chews, and Andy’s lizard-inspired artwork, things shift between him and Jameel, opening up new doors—and also new complications.
 
No matter how much Andy cares about his friends and family, it’s hard not to feel pulled between all the ways he’s meant to be, all the different faces he wears, and harder still to figure out if any of these masks is the real him.

 

Publisher: Dial Books for Young Readers

A little bit about the author . . .

Jack Cheng is a Shanghai-born, Detroit-based author of critically acclaimed fiction for young readers. His debut children’s novel, See You in the Cosmos, won the Golden Kite and Great Lakes, Great Reads awards for Best Middle Grade Fiction. He has visited schools across the globe speaking with students about finding their paths as writers and artists. He is a 2019 Kresge Artist Fellow.

Instagram: @jackcheng
Mastodon: @jackcheng@indieweb.social

Website: https://www.jackcheng.com/

 

Photo Credit: Jarod Lew