Padma Venkatraman | September 2018

Jacqueline Woodson

EXCERPT

Jacqueline Woodson was born in Ohio in 1963—a time and place that influenced her life and her work. The author of over thirty books for young people, she is an iconic figure in the world of young adult and children’s literature. Her work has won (and been listed as a finalist) for the most prestigious awards in this field, such as the National Book Award and the Coretta Scott King Award. In addition, she has won the Newbery Honor no less than four times. Her astonishing oeuvre, which spans fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and short stories, was recognized by the American Library Association when they awarded her a Margaret A. Edwards medal, honoring her lifetime contribution to literature for young people. She served as the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate until 2017 and, most recently, won the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Prize. She has confronted topics such as race, class, and gender in books such as Visiting Day (which tackles the issue of imprisoned family members) and Our Gracie Aunt (which deals with foster care). Her picture books encourage even the youngest readers to ponder their assumptions. Her sophisticated young adult novels, such as Beneath a Meth Moon, If You Come Softly, and Miracle’s Boys, force young adult readers to reflect and ruminate on the lives of young people who are subjected to prejudice or are marginalized in our society. And since the publication of Woodson’s adult novel, Another Brooklyn, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, she has been recognized as one of those rare writers whose work has the power to move readers of all ages.

Jacqueline Woodson has not only made a remarkable and timeless contribution to American literature that crosses genres and knows no age barriers, she has also worked tirelessly over three decades as an activist, speaking up with passion and conviction about the need to embrace diverse books. In this interview, she discusses her internationally acclaimed body of work, her process, aspects of craft, and the importance of social justice.

Padma Venkatraman: You are one of those extremely rare writers who has written for every age group, from picture books to literary novels for adults. Even more uniquely, your novels have won the highest honors for all these target audiences. How and when do you decide what age group you are writing for? Does the story enter your mind in such a way that the audience seems pre-determined or do you consciously choose to tell a story for a particular target age?

Jacqueline Woodson: Even as a young writer, I had never planned to just write for one audience or in just one genre. I wanted to try my hand at everything. I knew I loved children’s books as a child and as an adult, but there were also many “adult” writers I either admired or adored. So reading and re-reading those texts as well as dabbling in poetry and nonfiction lead me to write for lots of different audiences. That said, I usually get a feel for my audience based on the age of my character. If the character is a child living in their childhood moments, I know it will be a book that publishers will target toward young people. But if it’s an adult—even one that’s looking back on their childhood, then it will be a book targeted at adults. Mostly, I try to just keep writing and worry about the audience later. When I get a strong voice in my head and the dialogue starts flowing, then I begin to know the road my book is going down and just… let myself follow it.

Venkatraman: Does the age of the target audience impose any responsibilities on authors? Or should authors write without any regard for their potential audience?

Woodson: I have a deep responsibility as a writer—to be honest with my readers, to respect them, to show them new worlds through literature. I also have a deep responsibility to people of color and queer people and trans people, to poor people… my list goes on. I think given that I have this “gift” and my work in this world is to use it to give people a deeper understanding of what and who they don’t know (or think they don’t know.) So, I’m not ever going to write against anyone, and I’m always going to be aware of (as Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop writes of) the “mirrors” I’m putting in the world. So, while I am not thinking of a generic reader coming to my work, I am thinking about something and someone more specific, that one brown girl in the classroom, that one gay boy who has spent his childhood with no mirrors of himself in literature, and so on. I can’t say what any author “should” do. I just know what I must do.

Venkatraman: Some authors who write primarily for adults seem to feel there is an intrinsic difference between writing for adults and writing for children. Do you think there are fundamental differences? Do you think different target age groups present different writing challenges?

Woodson: Oh, definitely. If you can’t go back and remember, with depth and clarity, your own self as a child, you’re going to have a hard time writing for young people. If you can’t shut down that adult voice that says “I want to teach children... blah, blah, blah” then you’re going to write didactic fiction that no one will publish, and if it does get published, the reading of it will be pure punishment for the young person. I don’t know about writing for adults—I write what I would want to read because I’m writing it and reading it for years before it’s done. So, with picture books you have very little time and a very short attention span to work with. I do think these are the hardest to write—unless you’re a poet. I wish more poets wrote picture books. With Middle Grade, you can play and laugh and be whimsical or dead-on serious or both. You can talk about anything as long as you have a handle on how middle graders talk about it. As for Young Adult, here is where you can play with white space and huge ideas, get existential, throw in sex and gory death—whatever. You can go hard but again, you have to remember who you were and what you needed. You have to remember that this moment is pretty much all the reader knows. You have to think about it and teenager-hood and how adults were just annoying shadows who gave you food and money when you were this age. Adults—my own people—I’m still trying to figure out.

Venkatraman: Given that your work for adults is so well received and deeply respected, I am sure most people would agree that you have done an amazing job of figuring out adults! Regardless of target audience, however, most of your novels are told in first person. Sometimes, we hear that first-person narratives provide a sense of immediacy. The sense of immediacy a reader feels with your characters is such a hallmark of your writing. What attraction does the first-person point of view hold for you?

Woodson: I like the immediacy of first person. It allows me as a writer to get directly inside my characters and look out onto the world from their perspectives. It’s that “walk in another’s shoes” perspective. I walk through the world as and with my character all at once. From inside the body and mind of another, you can’t have judgement. You just have to be. From that being comes a deeper understanding.

Venkatraman: It’s certainly evident that you deeply understand your characters, in particular, and human nature, in general. As soon as I pick up a book you’ve written, the characters and their voices grip me. To what extent do your characters hail from reality versus from imagination? Any tips for aspiring writers on developing and deepening characters? Or the less tangible topic
of voice?

Woodson: My characters are the products of my thoughts and dreams and questions about the world. I think it’s very hard to teach depth to people who are living sheltered and/or shallow lives. I think there has to be a fearlessness to living that represents itself in the writing. So, to be a good writer you have to ask hard questions of the world and not be afraid of the answers.

Venkatraman: Your lack of fear in terms of approaching potentially difficult subjects is abundantly obvious. You have never shied away from dealing with complex, multi-layered, serious themes. In fact, if anything, I see you as an author who has embraced and shed light on sensitive topics for even the youngest audiences (such as your picture books The Other Side and Show Way, which unhesitatingly address racial tension and the history of enslaved peoples for the youngest of readers; and your young adult novels, Beneath a Meth Moon and Miracle’s Boys, which address drug addiction and gang violence). How integrated with theme are your characters—or, in other words, what comes first, character or theme, and is it always that same way?

Woodson: My books tend to be character driven so the character always comes first. But, because I live in the world, I’m constantly thinking, not only about the world, but also about my own impact and history’s impact on my characters and on my own life. Also, of course, as I’m writing the story, I’m thinking about how my characters are going to shape their own futures. What moral choices will they make? What will serve to move them forward? Keep them back? I think I would be lying if I was trying to write realistic fiction and didn’t set my characters in the context of the real world. So, in that real world, I must talk about my own truths and our country’s truths.

Venkatraman: Brown Girl Dreaming, your memoir, and, I believe, your only work of nonfiction to date, beautifully reflects and interweaves your true story with truth about our country and our society. It won one of our nation’s highest honors for nonfiction for young people—a Siebert Honor. How did the limits imposed by nonfiction (the necessity to stick to the facts) challenge and inspire you differently from writing fiction? What are the similarities underlying the techniques of storytelling, whether fiction or nonfiction?

Woodson: I was shocked when I heard Brown Girl Dreaming won a Siebert Honor and so excited! I think the great thing about writing memoir is that one is writing about one’s own memories. My memories of my childhood may be different from my siblings’ because of the different ages we were. My younger brother at three was experiencing the world very differently than I was at six and my older brother was at eight. At the same time, there were hard facts we all knew to be true—our migration from the south to the north, my best friend Maria, our religion, our mother leaving us with our grandparents to find a home for us in another state, and on and on. So, I did have a certain freedom living inside my memories, but I did also have to stick to some hard facts. I loved the challenge of this, the having to go back and research my own experience of a thing. It was scary and hard and heartbreaking to be inside my past for the many years it took me to write Brown Girl Dreaming, but, at the same time, it was nice to revisit those years. I had made a choice to step away from fiction for a while, and so there was always that pull to go back toward fiction because it’s what I knew, but I resisted. Nonfiction and fiction overlap in that in both—you need to tell a good story, whether that story is true or not. The reader won’t care if your story is just a deep navel-gaze. I needed to put my childhood in the context of the country, and this wasn’t hard because the country and what was happening had a direct impact on me and on my family.

Venkatraman: Any chance we may hope for a sequel to Brown Girl Dreaming?

Woodson: I never say never about sequels, but I can’t imagine it right now.

Venkatraman: On a more personal note, I’d like to ask how your growing awareness of the creative impulse (which we witness in your memoir) changed you and helped determine the shape of
your life?

Woodson: I feel like each narrative leads to the next. If I hadn’t written Brown Girl Dreaming, I don’t think I could have written Another Brooklyn. I was aware of my desire to be a writer from a very young age, and I feel like everything I did in my life was to move me toward being able to do this work full time. So even as a young adult, I took jobs that allowed me to write.

Venkatraman: Congratulations on Another Brooklyn, which was a National Book Award finalist for adults and thanks for the insight on the relationship between this monumental work and your memoir. How biographical is your other work? What role does personal experience play in terms of inspiration, and how do you draw from your past to inform your characterization and storytelling?

Woodson: Once you read Brown Girl Dreaming, you can go back and find little parts of my life in most of my books. It’s not intentional—I didn’t even know it until I started writing Brown Girl Dreaming. As I wrote, I was like “Oh, so this is where that story began…” But again, in the moment of writing something, unless it’s nonfiction, I don’t know the impetus for the story—and, honestly, I don’t really want to know. I like going in “blind” and seeing what the story becomes. In the end, there is very little of my life in my novels. At the same time, there is the experience I had while writing the books, which is its own life.

Venkatraman: As organic as your writing process is, and as character-driven as your novels are, they are also phenomenal examples of successful plots that are what I believe the industry usually calls “quiet” plots (plots that aren’t filled with fast-paced, dramatic action). How do you determine the small yet astonishingly effective movements in your plots? Have you any words of wisdom on plotting “quiet” novels—whatever the age of the target audience?

Woodson: Sadly, I don’t have any words of wisdom. Plot happens. You put two people in a room, and you have everything you need—dialogue, conflict, and once they start talking about what they want, you’re moving toward plot.

Venkatraman: Each Kindness, one of your many deeply sensitive and brilliantly executed picture books, is so impeccably plotted. There are so many books about bullying for the picture book age group, yet yours is a gem that stands out in so many ways—among them, because of the unusual choice to tell this story from the bully’s point of view. What inspired this story? Was it a specific event that you witnessed, or something more general, such as an article you read about bullying?

Woodson: Again, in order to deeply understand someone, you have to look at the world from their perspective. So, with the character of Chloe, I knew I had to become her (or remember when I was her—because at some point we are all unkind). The story was inspired by watching second grade girls in my daughter’s class. One said something really unkind to the other and while it wasn’t truly meant to be so, I saw how it caused the other child to shrivel a bit, go inside herself. And this broke my heart because I know it happens every single day—people not being aware of how their actions impact others. That was the seed for the story. It was also my mom’s death. My mom died suddenly, and I remember thinking “Wow, I was going to talk to her more—tomorrow.” That tomorrow never came. So, I was thinking about this idea of how people believe they have “tomorrow” and the truth is, tomorrow is so not guaranteed. But also, as a writer there was the responsibility to not show Maya in this pitiful light. So in rewriting, I had to show where she held her own (jacks champion, jumping around the school yard without stopping to Chloe’s amazement). As I mentioned earlier, Dr. Rudine Sims Bishop talks about the importance of mirrors and windows—how young people need both. I didn’t want the Mayas of the world to see themselves as just someone on the page bullied. I wanted them to see their strength, too.

Venkatraman: In addition to your ability to captivate audiences of all ages, you also expertly employ a variety of ways to tell your stories. You have successfully wielded so many forms—from verse novels to lyrical, literary prose, to award-winning epistolary novels (such as Peace, Locomotion, the sequel/companion to the National Book Award Honor-winning Locomotion). Does the theme of a novel suggest a form? How do you decide on the most suitable form to tell a particular tale? Why write a certain story in prose and another in verse?

Woodson: The theme definitely helps decide the shape the novel will take. For example, Locomotion is about a boy discovering his poet self. Hence, it would be dishonest to the narrative to write it any other way than in verse (that whole “show don’t tell” thing). With Behind You, there’s an urgency to the narrative that only vignettes can speak to. With the picture book, Show Way, there’s an internal rhyme going on that is about the way enslaved people had to hide their various resistances (escaping, reading, writing, etc.) So, I do pay a lot of attention to not only the story I’m telling, but also how I’m trying to tell it and what form best shapes the narrative.

Venkatraman: All your work is poetic, whether it’s prose or not, so it was
hardly a surprise when you were appointed the Young People’s Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation. What role should poetry play in the lives of young people today? What suggestions do you have in terms of teaching poetry to young people?

Woodson: The Poetry Foundation’s website has a lot of info about how to best introduce young people to poetry. I think teachers could start each day with a poem. I love reading the work of everyone from Kwame Alexander to Jenny Zhang. The poetry foundation and the Poetry Society of America are great places to start for finding poems and figuring out how to teach them. Margarita Engle is the new Young People’s Poet Laureate and she is amazing. I love her work and I’m excited to see what she does going forward in this role.

Venkatraman: Yes, it is wonderful to see Engle’s wonderful work respected and recognized. Her language sings—as does yours, which makes me suspect that you are a music-lover? In one of your many Newbery honor-winning books, After Tupac and D Foster, the link to music is clear both in terms of theme and in the rhythmic, metaphorical and lyrical language. In what ways, subtle and explicit, has music influenced your work—especially your poetry?

Woodson: I’m not afraid to listen to any kind of music and will fixate on anyone from John Denver to Kendrick Lamar to The Staple Singers. When I’m writing, I have a playlist that I listen to every time I sit down to write. The first thing I do is put on my headphones, drown out the world with the music that is usually themed to the narrative (i.e.—a Tupac playlist for writing After Tupac and D. Foster, a ’70s playlist for Another Brooklyn). The music influences both the cadence of the narrative and the narrative itself. When writing poetry, I don’t usually wear headphones but have to have a quiet space to write in. This quiet helps me to get at the pauses needed.

Venkatraman: Speaking of pauses, in your verse novels, how do you strike a balance between moving plot forward and sheer elements of language? How do you choose your scenes? Is it based on the intensity of their emotional punch, or does something else guide your scene selection?

Woodson: I’m mainly guided by what the story is trying to say and what the character wants. No matter the form, this is where I begin. On this journey, I am constantly paring down the language to get to its absolute essence. And also, once I know this, I know what scenes need to be added or taken away.

Venkatraman: Your work is such a marvelous example of succinct eloquence and knowing what to say when. Which authors influenced your understanding of the power of understatement?

Woodson: Raymond Carver and James Baldwin.

Venkatraman: What role does editing play (whether it’s self-editing or an editor’s comments) in helping you attain the perfect balance between saying too much and saying too little?

Woodson: Between my editors and myself, there is a lot of paring down of already very pared down narrative. I self-edit by reading what I write out loud, and this helps me hear what is redundant, what isn’t working rhythmically, what can be added to create a better flow, etc. I trust the white space on the page and trust that my readers are willing to bend in and meet me inside the narrative. I don’t ever want to over-explain even as I’m “showing rather than telling.”

Venkatraman: What is your revision process usually like, and are there any overall hints you may have on self-editing?

Woodson: I think if you believe deeply in the importance of the story you’re telling, the story unfolds. Writing takes a certain kind of faith and patience that I don’t know how to explain. Every story and every person is different so the writer has to find their own sweet spot in the editing process. I know what works for me, but I don’t know that it will work for someone who is writing in an entirely different form telling an entirely different story. I do believe that some elements of writing can be taught, but a lot of the process is experiential. When my writing is not working, I literally feel it is going wrong. When the narrative is falling apart, I know. I think most writers know and there are no hints I can give other than keep writing, keep digging, keep doing the hard work and letting the story or poem fall apart and reshaping and rebuilding until the writing gets where it needs to be. There is no shortcut to writing really well. It’s an ongoing process that takes years and years and way too many rewrites for a nonwriter to ever feel comfortable with!

Venkatraman: When your work is taught in schools and colleges around the nation and the world, what would you like to see emphasized—language, emotion, social context? Or all three?

Woodson: All of it!

Venkatraman: Indeed, all three aspects are inextricably linked in your work, and your life. Not only do I see you as a path-breaking writer, but also as an activist. To what extent do you see your work as dealing with issues of social justice?

Woodson: I truly believe that we all have a right to walk through the world safely. That’s my baseline. It’s what I was raised to believe and what I continue to believe and what shapes my stories.

Venkatraman: Some of your novels for young adults—such as The House You Pass on the Way and Behind You—feature characters from the LGBTQ community. Have you seen any positive shift in terms of how books with LGBTQ protagonists are received now versus when you first wrote such characters into your books? Would you speak to the importance of including books featuring LGBTQ characters in libraries, schools, and reading lists for young people?

Woodson: I am seeing more books being published that deal with LGBTQ themes and that’s great. Sadly, there is still a lot of work to be done about how these books enter (or don’t enter) the classroom. I think there are teachers and caregivers who are still uncomfortable with certain topics—and because of this—don’t always know how to approach the introduction of books with queer characters or themes. Very rarely do you hear a book introduced as “a book about a straight girl” or a book about a “white boy” but often, when the theme or character is seen as “other,” it becomes qualified. So that’s one of the glaring problems… Once people realize things are not as complicated or “problematic” as their biases perceive them to be, we can move forward a lot faster and more thoroughly.

Venkatraman: You have always been a strong advocate for diversity, especially in books for children and youth. Recently, you have assisted the We Need Diverse Books movement, but then again, you have been fighting for diversity and multiculturalism for decades even before this movement started soaring. Would you please speak about some of your work along these lines, and on changes you have seen, and where you think the publishing industry needs to go to make progress in the future?

Woodson: I believe strongly in diversity. I believe that everyone has the right to tell their story. I believe people have a right to be represented in the world. I think having grown up with so much invisibility in media and literature, I didn’t want that history repeated for my own children. Or for myself as a grown up. So, I worked hard to get my own stories into the world.

What I learned from a really young age is that any gift you have, any way you can, you give back to the community and you give back to society. So that’s why it’s so important to me, all the diversity. For the young people in my life to see parts of themselves in the narrative and to grow up and write their own narratives is important. And in order to be able to write their own narratives and to be able to tell their own stories by any means, they need to feel their presence legitimized in the world somehow.

All of my books, everything from I Hadn’t Meant to Tell You This to From the Notebooks of Melanin Sun to After Tupac and D. Foster, talk about experiences and existences that haven’t always been in our literature. I think the publishing industry is making slow progress and is, I guess, doing what they know how to do. But there is so much to do. I don’t think there are bad people in publishing. I don’t think there are people who want to keep doors closed. I think what people want is to make money, and they don’t always know that the need for diverse voices goes beyond the making of money and is also lucrative. I don’t know how to better say it, we want our voices. We want to see our voices, we want to hear our voices, we want to use our voices, and because of that the work is important, and publishers need to hire more people of color, to hire more trans people, to hire more queer people. Their work is to publish the literature of more voices, and I don’t know what more to say about that.

Venkatraman: On a related note, do you feel that authors have a social obligation? Is the role of authors for young people even more crucial in terms of their potential to shape society as future citizens?

Woodson: You know, I think hopefully our own moral compass moves us forward and shows us the right thing to do. I know for myself—I can’t speak for everyone—I can’t sit up here and say, “This is what you should do.” I know what I have the power to do as a writer is use my voice to get people to think, to get people to act, to get people to move forward. If that’s everybody’s job, does everybody have a social obligation?

I would love for everyone to believe they had a social obligation, but is it my job to say “you have a social obligation”? I don’t think so. I don’t think there’s one role for authors of young people. I think they are many ways we can approach our young readers, and for me I have a very specific way of approaching them. It works for me, and it works for them.

I think, yes, we definitely have the potential to shape how they think about the world, because the literature we’re creating is the literature that for so many of us, stays with us and molds us from a very young age. So, we have that potential, and I think some people know that and want to do what needs to be done to create a greater good, and I think some people just want to write books.

I think for myself (and again going back to myself and not trying to talk about everybody) I really believe that I was sent here with a job to do with a certain gift, and I want to do my work. I always quote Audre Lorde who says, “we should wake up knowing we have work to do, and go to bed knowing we’ve done that work,” and I want to feel that. I want to feel like I’ve done the work I was sent here to do and be able to sleep at night knowing I’m part of a greater good, knowing I’m part of social change, knowing I’m part of creating something that’s better, lasting, and safe for young people and all people.

Venkatraman: Could you speak to the continuing need for awards such as the Coretta Scott King and the NAACP award (both of which your work has won numerous times)?

Woodson: It’s so hard to even articulate the importance of awards that address the importance of our own voices. I don’t know who I need to explain that to. I think if someone doesn’t understand it’s because they have a resistance to us having our voices in the world and I think at fifty-four, I’m kind of tired of having that conversation. It’s not my work anymore. I think white folks need to talk to white folks about this and be allies. I think as people of color, as queer people, as trans people, as First Nations people, we’re tired of having this dialogue and explaining, and we don’t feel like it’s our work anymore. Those awards are there for a reason, and it’s no longer my job to deconstruct it. Those awards are there so that people whose stories are being told can be rewarded for telling their stories. There are plenty of awards that only white people seem to get.

I don’t know what more to say about this, but they are important. I could spend a whole interview talking about why they’re important, but again I don’t feel like it’s my place to do anymore.

Venkatraman: What do you feel about #OwnVoices (people writing about their own cultures from within, as opposed to people writing about cultures outside their own)? How important are diverse authors, in addition to diverse books?

Woodson: I think that I wrote about this in The Horn Book back in the 1990s when I wrote the piece Who Can Tell My Story. I think, historically, we’ve been silenced and now the door is open, and our voices are getting heard. I think some people think that diversity means telling stories about people who have historically been silenced or people who have historically been oppressed, but no that’s not what #OwnVoices is. #OwnVoices is us telling our own stories, not someone else telling our story. The history is that people have tried to tell our stories, and it hasn’t always worked. So, I think diverse books and diverse authors are very important because we live in a diverse world, and we want that world to be represented everywhere. I know I do—I know other people who don’t—but I know I do.  

Venkatraman: I certainly do, too, and as a parent, I hope very much that you’ll revisit writing for young people soon—but given the success of Another Brooklyn, are we to expect instead a period in which grown-ups will be so lucky as to receive more of your books and attention? What’s your next project, and who is the target audience?

Woodson: I’m working on a book of nonfiction for adults, a novel for adults, and a middle grade book. I couldn’t stay away from young people’s literature for long. I love all genres and hope to keep writing for all people.

Venkatraman: A hope that I echo, most sincerely. Thank you for your contribution to literature for readers of all ages.

 

Padma Venkatraman’s novels, A Time to Dance, Island’s End, and Climbing the Stairs received numerous honors, and won national and international awards. She is currently a Hanse Wissenschaftskolleg fellow in Germany, and her next novel, The Bridge Home, is scheduled for release. www.padmavenkatraman.com.

 

Excerpt

From Harbor Me

An hour after class started on that Friday, Esteban came in, his head down, his hair slicked wet against his forehead, his Yankees cap dripping with rain. He walked straight to his seat without looking at the rest of us. I watched him sink into his seat so sadly and heavily, it felt like the whole room shivered. His jacket was way too big for him, the shoulders hanging down his arms, the sleeves falling over his hands. I didn’t know Esteban yet. I didn’t know anyone but Holly, really. But I wanted to go over to him, hug him hard. I didn’t care how dripping wet he was. No one should ever have to look that sad.

Do you have a late pass for me, Esteban? Ms. Laverne asked. She was standing at the front of the room, her arm stretched out toward the smart board. I don’t remember what was on it, maybe a globe. Our tiny group that year was a fifth/sixth grade class—this too was a school experiment.

Is everything okay? Ms. Laverne’s dark brown face was crisscrossed with worry.

Esteban shook his head. I don’t have a pass, he said, his voice breaking. We think they took my papi. Nobody knows where he’s at. He put his head down on his desk, his face turned toward the window.

Ms. Laverne went over to Esteban’s desk and bent toward him, her hand on his back. They spoke softly to each other. Maybe they spoke for five minutes. Maybe it was an hour, I don’t remember. That was a long time ago. So much can change in a minute, an hour, a year.

Excerpted from Harbor Me, by Jacqueline Woodson. ©  2018 Jacqueline Woodson
Used with permission from Nancy Paulsen Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House. All rights reserved.