Kitty Felde says she used to explain government to grownups on National Public Radio and now she explains it to kids in books. Some years ago she wrote a middle grade novel about a 10-year old girl, Fina Mendoza who moves to Washington, DC with her first-term Congressman papa and her older sister Gabby. Welcome to Washington, Fina Mendoza, is a mystery mashed up with a family story with a generous side of Washington trivia and lashings of insight into, yes—how government works. The story involves a Washington Halloween legend, and it led to a series.

In State of the Union, a mysterious pooping bird sets off a wild Chickcharney (yes, look that one up!) chase that weaves its way through battles over immigration reform and questions about the right to protest. In Snake in the Grass, reptiles begin infesting Capitol Hill, in a funny, dramatic extended metaphor for the toxicity of partisan politics. Book 4, out this year, is Home of the Brave, in which Fina, now 11, is back in her Congressman father’s LA district, still alert and curious, still with a warm heart and an abiding sense of fairness.

My email exchange with Kitty Felde about the series ends up meandering through character, the Washington DC setting, giving kids agency, and lots more.

I wrote about This is a Door (I read it in e-galley form) back in July when doors of all kinds were on my mind. Here’s part of what I said back then:

I’d really enjoyed Nayeri’s autobiographical Everything Sad is Untrue and lost myself in the combination of fabled setting and ripping good storytelling in The Many Assassinations of Samir, Seller of Dreams. This one’s as dazzling in its own way.

After writing that post, and reading Nayeri’s PW interview I invited Daniel Nayeri to trade an email or three with me about the book. I’m delighted to share the resulting conversation.

Claire Hatcher-Smith’s middle-grade protagonist, Mizzy Maypole, is a kid with a purpose—she dreams of being a detective, and nothing’s going to stop her. In the first book in the series, A Skeleton in the Closet, Mizzy discovers an elderly relative’s diaries in a locked wardrobe and is off and running in short order, in pursuit of clues to what appears to be a most suspicious death. Now, “Mizzy the Marvelous” is back in The Shadow on the Wreck. She’s investigating a spooky shadow on the wreck of an old fishing boat. Only her cousins are doing some investigating of their own and they don't seem to want her help. Mizzy’s a lovable, quirky PI character, and the books trip along at a nice pace in her first person voice, an enjoyable ride from determination to despair and back again, and always with a dash of good humour. Here’s my interview with Claire about where this character came from, the settings in these books, and more.

The Plot Against America is driven by its alternate timeline in which Charles Lindbergh runs against Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who’s seeking a third presidential term. The unthinkable happens. Lindbergh wins and the lives of the book’s Jewish narrator and his family begin to unravel. In the context of an ordinary neighborhood in the Newark suburbs, the real-world timeline of history is twisted into imagined ones.

Next Monday is Canadian Thanksgiving Day, a national holiday since 1879. It’s observed now on the second Monday in October, a date affirmed in 1957 so as not to conflict with November 11, Remembrance Day—a case of one holiday shuffling aside to make room for another. Canadian Thanksgiving is a bit lower-key than its southern counterpart but it’s also a time to focus on gratitude. It is equally loaded with conflicting origin stories—Martin Frobisher arriving in Nunavut vs. Indigenous gratitude and harvest traditions predating European settlement. Because Christmas is still so far off, there’s no real post-Thanksgiving shopping craze. Here we sprint from Halloween to Christmas. For South Asian Canadians, Diwali, Gurpurab and Ramadan fall variably across this calendar. Gratitude gets its nod a month earlier.

All of which makes this a good time to think about my own particular reason to give thanks.

Looking at the Sky: How Janusz Korczak Fought for Children’s Rights, a graphic novel by Amanda West Lewis, opens with an epigraph, a quote from the subject of the book. Janusz Korczak’s words speak an essential truth we often fail to understand.

Children have rights. They deserve to be taken seriously. Here is the story of a man who cared deeply about them, a man who spent his whole life taking children very seriously indeed. Illustrated by Abigail Rajunov in line work framed with soft washes of colour, Amanda West Lewis’s book manages to convey the joy and purpose of a life that has ended in tragedy and to do so in a way that offers meaning to young readers.

Indentured labour is an integral part of the history of colonial expansion. It's often treated as an aside, a side-effect of the abolition of slavery, admittedly an evil but a lesser one. Yet this little known history reverberates through time, affecting generations after the actual events of indenture and the lives spent in servitude.

In Go-Between Girl: My Indentured Roots as Reclaimed Present, Andrea Gunraj explores the impact of her family history on her own actions and reactions, and on her sense of self. I’d never seen this history addressed anywhere so I was happy to find this book in my public library.

Fight Song is the story of a girl with voice and spunk.

“My name is Nokes Lasley. Nokes is short for Nópika, a name no one called me—its pronunciation isn't obvious, and it doesn't rhyme with any insulting words. Also, I didn't tell people my real name. Dad once told me Nópika was the name of a famous woman warrior who fought alongside the men of her tribe.”

Nokes is tall—six-foot-two, at the age of fifteen, on account of “a pituitary gland thing.” She describes her mother as “a mix of Native American and First Nations descent, but she died when I was five. Dad, on the other hand, was about as white as the driven snow and he wanted me to be too, so he made sure I had nothing to do with Mom's side of the family.”

Nokes plays hockey and she’s all set to be a superstar when her life is upended by her father’s arrest for murder. Escaping from a series of unbearable homes she’s placed in through the foster care system in Ontario, she crosses the border and manages to make her way to Minnesota. Starving and in stinking clothes, she’s in search of a friend of her dad’s who’s always sent her birthday cards. There’s optimism for you, and youthful determination, and a kind of fiery humour that flares up when she needs it most. And the girl can lie, which is what she decides to do. Height and skills on her side, she’s set to play hockey and build a new life. Only the past won’t leave her alone. It’s a coming-of-age story that refuses to look away from difficult issues, while playing out against the thrill and intensity of life on the ice.

I invited Kirk Van Brunt to write about the making of this book. I am an impulsive, disorganized, messy writer. I feel my way through drafts and sometimes I give up too soon. Kirk’s essay warmed my writing heart.

Florence Fortescue is an aspiring journalist. She’s also ten years old, that marvellous age of awareness when a kid lands at last in the double digits and the world is opening up but there are those pesky adults trying to hold you back in your bid to make a trail, strike a note, make a mark all your own. She’s also wonderfully bossy, with a dizzying faith in her own competence combined with solid reliance on plain old good luck.

Florence’s parents have insisted on moving her to the country and her best friend has been left behind and if that isn’t bad enough, there are ghosts.

Adi Rule is a VCFA graduate from the program where I taught for sixteen years and this is her new middle grade we’re talking about, Ghosts Chickens: Omelet From the Other Side. It’s peopled with eccentrics of all ages and species. Songwriter Dad collects glass owls. Mom designs submarines. The ghost chickens appear after Florence eats a weirdly glowing green egg.

But I get ahead of myself. Back up a minute. The book starts here:

WARNING

If you ever find a mysterious, glowing egg

beneath the rotten floorboards

of an abandoned chicken coop

in the dead of night,

do not touch it.

I asked Adi to write about an element of this joyfully weird little book that helped bring the story to life for her.