Katie Isn’t Her Real Name by Shanna Heath

Two months ago, a mom-friend called me around 8 PM and I almost didn’t pick up. Everyone knows I’m in bed by 9 PM (don’t judge…my kids wake up at 6 AM like nefarious cuckoo birds cawing from a clock), so a call at 8 PM must be an emergency.

And it was.

“Shanna,” she said, “Katie just told me she’s gay.”

Katie was ten years old and an elementary school student in Florida, the state where teaching about the existence of LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) people in elementary schools is being debated. 

The mom continued. “Her brother asked her how she knew she was gay. She answered, ‘Well, I just know that when I grow up, I want to marry a girl.’” 

Questions like this are commonly posed to LGBT people of all ages. I defend and educate others on my sexuality every day. If you want insight into how zany this feels to LGBT people, check out The Heterosexual Questionaire and see the questions reversed (note: this piece is from 1977 and not all language is up-to-date, but it’s the gold standard for this activity).

“Shanna, how do we support her? What do I do?” she asked.

There is one word that solves every problem in my world: BOOKS. I went to my local Kalamazoo indie bookstore Bookbug and built Katie a care package. Contents included: an inclusive LGBT pride flag, a rainbow bookmark,  THIS IS OUR RAINBOW (edited by Katherine Locke and Nicole Melleby), and HURRICANE CHILD by Kacen Callendar. I wrote a note that told Katie how much I admired her strong sense of self and that she could be free to be who she wanted and love who she wanted, no matter what that looked like throughout her life. 

I also sent my mom-friend a laundry list of local and national organizations that support LGBT youth, like GLSEN and The Trevor Project. 

Fast-forward two weeks and there’s a package at my doorstep from Katie. I cut the tape and dug through copious amounts of crinkly packing paper. I sniffled. Whatever was inside this package was going to make me cry. Ugly cry.

There was a small canvas underneath all the wrapping. It was a colorful rendition of the Lesbian and Inclusive Pride flags painted with great care. 

I held that painting and cried. A lot. It wasn’t for Katie, though. Katie was solid. Katie had support from so many places. I cried for ten-year-old me, who had none of those things. And then, as tears so often do, my cheeks perked into wet, shiny apples and the sobs transformed into chuckles. The laughter release valve lifted my spirit and reminded me that one gay kid in Florida knows that her family and friends have her back.

That’s a success.

As children’s authors and illustrators, our profession is sacred. Our books have the potential to make lifelong impacts on our readers, and if we’re lucky, the children of our readers. Books for and about gay kids and families can have an even larger impact: they can save a life. 

June is Pride Month across the world. Take a moment to click on any of the links in this post and explore more about the lives of LGBT youth. They exist, and they deserve to live with honesty and dignity. If you’re a member of the gay community, take a deep breath. You’re doing great.

You might have guessed that this ten-year-old kid’s name isn’t really Katie. I’ve also covered up her signature on her painting above. She’s not ready to “come out of the closet” yet. It’s safe in her family, but not in her school.

While Katie is waiting, so many children’s book authors and illustrators will be providing her with new worlds to explore with kids who are like her. When she’s ready to be known for who she fully is, we’ll be here still, sustaining her spirit with stories.

Isn’t that the essence of what we do, after all?

Shanna Heath is a member of the SCBWI MI Equity and Inclusion Team. She’s the author of scary stories for all ages. Read her newest story for adults in the upcoming OTHER TERRORS: AN INCLUSIVE ANTHOLOGY (July 2022 HarperCollins). Her next spooky read for kids will represent Ohio in SCBWI’s forthcoming HAUNTED STATES OF AMERICA. She lives happily in Kalamazoo with her wife and two kiddos. Get in touch with her on Instagram @mother_marrow or Twitter @shannalheath or on her website shannaheath.com.

Welcome Shanna Heath to the E&I Team!

 

Please help SCBWI-MI welcome Shanna to the Equity and Inclusion team. We appreciate her passion and are excited that she is joining the team!

 

Shanna Heath writes horror for all ages, because it is an ancient genre that has always embraced weirdness. Her short stories have been published in BURROW PRESS REVIEW, CEMETERY MOON, and the upcoming anthologies OTHER TERRORS: AN INCLUSIVE ANTHOLOGY (Clarion/Mariner) and HAUNTED STATES OF AMERICA (Henry Holt). Shanna lives with her wife and two kiddos in Kalamazoo, where they keep Halloween decorations out all year long. Shanna is a member of SCBWI and the Horror Writers Association (HWA). Connect with Shanna on Instagram @mother_marrow, Twitter @shannalheath, or through her website shannaheath.com. 

Equity & Inclusion Corner: It's All a Bunch of Queer Hocus Pocus! by Shanna Heath

The Equity and Inclusion Corner features quarterly posts written by members of the SCBWI-MI E&I Team and guests. Learn more about the E&I Team, upcoming initiatives, virtual Town Hall meetings, and how to become involved here: https://michigan.scbwi.org/2020/07/30/equity-and-inclusion-e-i-team/

Our fall 2021 post is by author Shanna Heath who also contributed to the Mitten Blog last month and led a community-wide Shop Talk: The Terrifying Terrific Toolkit: Scary Secrets for Writing and Illustrating Thrilling Kidlit. The recording is viewable for a brief time here: https://michigan.scbwi.org/events/kast-shop-talk-free-community-wide-webinar-with-shanna-heath/

Thank you for sharing your knowledge and experience, Shanna! Read her E&I Corner post below.

IT’S ALL A BUNCH OF QUEER HOCUS POCUS!

by Shanna Heath

It’s the spookiest month of the year, and if you’re into all things creepy like me, you finally feel at home in the world every October. That cozy sensation of belonging is fleeting, however, because I’m queer. But one Halloween in 2018 held a magical and queer children’s literature moment for me.

I was in Salem, MA on a sunny October day, browsing the stacks of Wicked Good Books on Essex Street. Three familiar faces caught my eye: Mary, Sarah, and Winnifred Sanderson. Hocus Pocus! Of course, I’m a fan. I scanned the cover and read, “and the All-New Sequel.” 

A sequel to Hocus Pocus? Okay. I’m here for it. The more witches in my life the better. I bought the book and settled in at an outdoor table at the Village Tavern. I cracked the book open (isn’t that the best feeling in the world?) and sipped from a pint of hard cider.

I expected the sequel to be straight. Most books are.

The very heterosexual Max and Allison in the 1993 film Hocus Pocus.

But the sequel to Hocus Pocus is gay. Not subtle gay. Gaaaaaaaay. The protagonist, Poppy Denison, is a lesbian and she’s in love. The daughter of Hocus Pocus couple Allison and Max, Poppy crushes hard on Isabella Richards. And Isabella is a black teen who returns Poppy’s affections! The story of their love is a major through line of the book. 

Illustrations of the three protagonists of the Hocus Pocus sequel. Poppy and Isabella are left and center.

I choked on my cider. “Excuse me, waitress? Have we been sucked into an alternate dimension?”

I was thirty-seven-years-old at that moment in time. A long way from childhood. Yet, when I read about Poppy and Isabella, my inner-child rejoiced. I was goosebumps-and-misty-eyes-level moved. Seeing myself reflected in the beloved Hocus Pocus universe shifted my heart one notch closer to self-acceptance. Toward self-love. Queer self-love.

Did you know that lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth contemplate suicide at almost three times the rate of heterosexual youth? The rate for trans kids is even more dire. Was I one of these kids? You betcha. If someone would have handed me the gay Hocus Pocus sequel, what may have been different for teenage me?

I would have seen myself mirrored in literature. “Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us,” wrote Rudine Sims Bishop. “When children cannot find themselves reflected in the books they read, or when the images they see are distorted, negative, or laughable, they learn a powerful lesson about how they are devalued in the society of which they are a part.”

Rudine Sims Bishop: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AAu58SNSyc

The windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors that Bishop writes about are essential not just for LGBTQI+ kids. Poppy and Isabella’s love story is for straight kids, too. 

All kids need diverse stories. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, in her TED talk “The Danger of a Single Story,” discussed her childhood in Nigeria, where she read books mainly about white children. She explains “[…] how impressionable and vulnerable we are in the face of a story, particularly as children.” When we don’t have access to mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors, adults and children cannot get an accurate view of the world. “The consequence of the single story,” she continues, “is this: It robs people of dignity. It makes our recognition of our equal humanity difficult. It emphasizes how we are different rather than how we are similar.”

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9Ihs241zeg

Visibility matters. To everyone.

This Halloween season, gift the gay Hocus Pocus sequel to the young adults in your lives. Read it together. Then, seek out more. Poppy and Isabella’s relationship is just one single story. The LGBTQI+ community is as diverse as any. More representation equals more stories, and more stories create compassionate kids.

“When there are enough books available that can act as both mirrors and windows for all our children,” Sims continues, “they will see that we can celebrate both our differences and our similarities, because together they are what make us all human.”

I’ll be doing a Poppy and Isabella re-read this October. Grab a cozy blanket and join me. 

Shanna Heath is an author and monster slayer who writes horror for all ages. Childhood can be terrifying. Shanna makes monsters, then shows kids and teens how to defeat them. Her favorite young horror read is Coraline by Neil Gaiman. She lives in Michigan with her patient wife and two spooky kids and is a proud member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and the Horror Writer’s Association (HWA). Shanna is represented by Paige Terlip at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. 

Connect with Shanna:

https://www.instagram.com/mother_marrow/

https://twitter.com/ShannaLHeath

Author website: https://shannaheath.com/ 

Author’s Note: This blog focuses on visibility in regard to LGBTQI+ representation. Diversity is an enormous universe. To find books that mirror the many varied ways in which humans live and love, check out We Need Diverse Books. 

Find more windows, mirrors, and sliding glass doors into the LGBTQI+ universe here:

Stonewall Book Awards for Children’s and YA Literature

The Rainbow Book List

Lambda Literary

A Sneak Peek into the Terrifyingly Terrific Toolkit: Scary Secrets for Writing Thrilling Kidlit in any Genre by Shanna Heath

 

Terror struck me the first time I read Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney.

I was terrified in a good way because I love horror—especially when I find it in unexpected places.

I was cozy in bed with my three-year-old reading Llama aloud and I turned to the middle spread, the climax of llama drama, and existential dread said “boo” to my soul. Llama’s expressive face is hidden, leaving only his teacup saucer eyes, unblinking, pupils small against the big emptiness of the recto.  The quilt is limp and offers no comfort. Inky blue darkness swallowed the bed’s headboard. Llama quivers in an abyss of shadow slashed with black and yellow. 

“What if Mama Llama’s GONE?”

Llama’s dark night of the soul in Llama Llama Red Pajama by Anna Dewdney

Like this petrified llama, children are haunted by primal fears. They are as early humanoids were: gazing up at the stars and seeing monsters or hearing the anger of gods in summer thunderstorms. The world is huge, and children are small. Adults have power, and children do not. This can be terrifying.

"Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern," said Maurice Sendak, author of the wonderfully frightening Where the Wild Things Are. “To master these forces,” said Sendak, “children turn to fantasy: that imagined world where disturbing emotional situations are solved to their satisfaction." Mama Llama does come back. Sendak’s Max returns home from the kingdom of Wild Things. And in the process, children have experienced a terrifyingly terrific climax that speaks to the vulnerabilities of being a child.

This is the essence of why I write horror for children. I create monsters and show kids how to defeat them. 

Whether or not you’re interested in writing traditional horror, you can still utilize the tricks of the genre to create terrifyingly terrific conflicts and climaxes, just as Dewdney and Sendak have done. 

In my free community-wide webinar, The Terrifyingly Terrific Toolkit: Scary Secrets for Writing and Illustrating Thrilling Kidlit in any Genre, I’ll show you how. Mark your calendar for September 26, 2021 from 3:00-4:30PM EST. Access more information and the SCBWI-MI webinar link here.

While you wait, here’s a sneak peek.

Terrifyingly Terrific Toolkit Item #1: Horror Isn’t About Monsters

The experience of horror isn’t made by the monsters. This fact may surprise you. Exploitative slasher films are what many people associate with the genre, but masterful horror doesn’t focus on the monster.

 

It’s the internal experience of a character that marks expert writing craft in the genre.

Horror isn’t about the monster. In 1963’s classic film “The Haunting,” based on Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House, the malevolent spirits are never shown on screen, yet the film is terrifying.

No matter your genre, you can use this technique to strengthen your writing.

My favorite non-horror example is from Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden. In this scene, cholera is killing young Mary Lennox’s family in horrific ways, and she is soon to be orphaned. There was an option to elevate the monster in this scene (cholera) to create the terrifying impact. A human body succumbing to cholera is grotesque.

But, this isn’t about the monster. It’s about Mary and her internal experience of the horror. Here’s how Burnett masterfully portrayed the horror of this scene through Mary’s internal experience:

“During the confusion and bewilderment of the second day Mary hid herself in the nursery and was forgotten by everyone. Nobody thought of her, nobody wanted her, and strange things happened of which she knew nothing. Mary alternately cried and slept through the hours. She only knew that people were ill and that she heard mysterious and frightening sounds. Once she crept into the dining-room and found it empty, though a partly finished meal was on the table and chairs and plates looked as if they had been hastily pushed back when the diners rose suddenly for some reason. The child ate some fruit and biscuits, and being thirsty she drank a glass of wine which stood nearly filled. It was sweet, and she did not know how strong it was. Very soon it made her intensely drowsy, and she went back to her nursery and shut herself in again, frightened by cries she heard in the huts and by the hurrying sound of feet. The wine made her so sleepy that she could scarcely keep her eyes open and she lay down on her bed and knew nothing more for a long time.” (Source: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/113/113-h/113-h.htm)

Dixie Egerickx plays Mary Lennox in the 2020 film adaptation “The Secret Garden.” In the novel, Burnett focused on her character’s internal reactions to a horrific situation, not graphic depictions of the “monster” cholera.

Find the Monsters in Your Own Writing

Look at a moment of tension in your own writing. What is the “monster” your child protagonist is facing? Are you centralizing the monster, instead of the internal experience of your character within the scene? 

Rewrite the scene, keeping close to the protagonist but allowing yourself the freedom of description that comes with a third person limited point-of-view. Choose moments of tension and description relevant to the protagonist’s experience of fear/terror/horror/anxiety and focus not on what’s happening outside, but the character’s interior experience. 

Want more? Add Doll Bones by Holly Black and Hide and Seeker by Daka Hermon to your reading list. These books include glimpses of the monsters, but the true tension is built within the minds and hearts of the characters.

More items from the Terrifyingly Terrific Toolkit will be revealed in my free webinar on September 26th from 3:00 to 4:30 PM EST. Don’t forget to add the date to your calendar and bring a writer friend! 

I hope to meet you at the free live webinar and see you on my Instagram @mother_marrow. 

Remember, childhood can be terrifying. Share horror with the children in your life. A reading list of my favorite spooky reads for all ages (including board books!) is available on my website: https://shannaheath.com/meet-shanna

Shanna Heath is an author and monster slayer who writes horror for all ages. Childhood can be terrifying. Shanna makes monsters, then shows kids and teens how to defeat them. Her favorite young horror read is Coraline by Neil Gaiman. She lives in Michigan with her patient wife and two spooky kids and is a proud member of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and the Horror Writer’s Association (HWA). Shanna is represented by Paige Terlip at the Andrea Brown Literary Agency. 

Connect with Shanna:

https://www.instagram.com/mother_marrow/

https://twitter.com/ShannaLHeath

Author website: https://shannaheath.com/ 

Coming up on The Mitten Blog:

Faith-based writing and publishing, plunging into Michigan history, website tips, a Writer Spotlight, Book Birthdays, and a post from our Equity and Inclusion Corner. But first, it's time for another round of Hugs and Hurrahs. We want to trumpet your good news! Please send your writing/illustrating/publishing news to Sarah LoCascio by Sept. 7th to be included.