Nicole Kornher-Stace is the author of the Norton Award finalist, Archivist Wasp, and its sequel, Latchkey, which are about a postapocalyptic ghosthunter, the ghost of a near-future supersoldier, and their adventures in the underworld. You can find Nicole on Twitter @wirewalking, where she is probably semicoherently yelling about board games, video games, hiking, aromantic representation, good books she’s read recently, or her cat. She lives in New Paltz, New York with her family.
Carlos Hernandez is the Cuban-American author of the award-winning middle-grade novels Sal and Gabi Break the Universe (and Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe). He has a PhD in English with a special focus on creative writing and is currently a visiting creative writing professor in Western Colorado University’s Master of Fine Arts program. He designs games, loves hot sauce, and lives in New York City with his genius wife.
Both Nicole Kornher-Stace and Carlos Hernandez have a penchant for adventures that take their characters beyond the world they know via scientific discovery. In JILLIAN VS PARASITE PLANET, Nicole explores the potential trials and tribulations of space exploration through the survival tale of Jillian and her nanobot sidekick SABRINA. Carlos bends the very substance of reality when his character Sal learns to reach into alternate universes as a means of dealing with grief and death.
Here, they talk science, friendship, and resilience in middle-grade books.
How did your books come about?
CH: I suspect Nicole and I approached our books from similar vantages: we found that middle-grade didn’t cover a few topics/ideas that we thought were important, and we covered them. Rick Riordan Presents as a publisher has the goal of introducing a wide range of voices to new audiences, so that part was baked in to Sal and Gabi. For another example, I also wanted to include diabetes as a formative part of Sal’s character, both because the Latinx community has shocking numbers of Type I and Type II diabetes, and also because middle grade could use more depictions of people with conditions or disabilities as being awesome, capable, as just as able to wield cosmic powers as anyone else. In terms of science, I think as a culture we are more able now than perhaps we have ever been of using science as metaphor and allegory. Using Many Worlds theory to explore grief is something now that our middle-graders are able to do: for the first time in human history!
NKS: Exactly what Carlos said! I wanted to write a science-forward hard(ish) SF adventure story for kids with a girl protagonist, because for whatever reason the protagonists of those kids’ stories are still usually boys. And I wanted her to have a generalized anxiety disorder because my kid has one and I was frustrated with how fiction tends to depict anxiety in kids as “shyness” at the exclusion of just sooo much more. But overall I knew that if I was going to write a kids’ book it was going to be an equal balance of Science! and Adventure! because I (and my kid, who I wrote the book for) love both of those things equally. Jillian vs. Parasite Planet has Science! in the form of green tech, nanobots, artificial intelligence, and mind-control parasites that are very much based on the kind of real-life parasites we have right here on Earth. I wanted to explore all these concepts in a way that was kid-friendly and integrated into the story without ever getting into infodumps or lecturing. After all, I’m in no position to do that even if I wanted to. I’m not a scientist (even if my dad is). I just think this stuff is fascinating.
CH: Nicole, I think your depiction of anxiety alongside Science! and Adventure! is a great and important contribution to middle grade! I’ve had kids and parents reach out to me to thank me for providing in Sal and Gabi simple meditation techniques. It is so important as a middle-grade author to remember how much good you can do in with your writing.
NKS: Oh wow. That’s really super cool that you were able to help kids directly (and got proof that it was working!!).
CH: Betcha you will, too, with Jillian!
Your characters deal with some very serious life-events. What do you hope your readers will get from reading about those events?
NKS: What I really want readers to take away from Jillian’s adventures–especially kids with anxiety–is that even though Jillian’s brain gets in her way a lot, and even almost keeps her from following through on her dream of going to space when she finally get the opportunity, it also helps her think her way out of trouble. The same part of her brain that likes to play the what-if worst-case-scenario game is also the same part that makes her good at planning and being prepared for those worst-case scenarios and not spiraling into panic when they occur. Incidentally, it helps in writing those scenes too–knowing a worst-case scenario to stick your characters into, and then making them think their way out of it, absolutely taps in to the same what-if part of the anxiety!brain that can make your life miserable sometimes. So I try to make the best of it. If I’ve got that kind of brain, I may as well try to make it work for me.
CH: Nicole, I love your answer on so many levels. One of the problems of ableist thinking is that it insists on single conceptions of the “best” way a thing can be done. The way you speak of Jillian’s anxiety hear reminds me of an article I read recently that posits that pessimism, melancholy, and what my genius wife calls “White Queening” (from Through the Looking Glass) is quite possibly a survival adaptation that has allowed for human flourishing! There are multiple paths through. There are many win-conditions, and most of them are ones we can define for ourselves. The reason that I brought up a number of serious issues in a comic novel is because when seriousness undergirds comedy, the characters in the story feel more like people and less like sit-com wit-spitters who are handsome humans written with zero interiority. Who has not suffered? There just isn’t such a thing as a person who hasn’t been shaped by their suffering, their worries, their grief, their losses, their denials, their dreams deferred. Even—as much as I wish it weren’t true—children. Children, however, often haven’t yet developed a vocabulary, a set of tools to help them understand and cope with their grief and setbacks. That is a second reason I included some pretty serious stuff in the Sal and Gabi books. I want to give children words and ways to deal with that which hurts them.
What would a friendship between Jillian and Sal be like? (I’m seriously hoping for a crossover fic!)
NKS: They’re very very different, but since when does that mean they couldn’t be friends? I love writing Unlikely Friendships, they are my whole jam. I feel like Sal is a lot funnier and better at people than Jillian is–honestly none of my protagonists are good at humor or people, but that’s why they need a foil like Sal to balance them. Yeah, I could see this working for sure.
CH: In some ways, I wonder if it would depend on what mood Sal was in when they first met. If he was in his full “showman” mode, I could see how he could be a little much for Jillian. On the other hand, I think Sal would see Jillian as “someone he could work with” because of her many gifts and talents. And I am remembering the way Jillian reacts (avoiding spoilers here) to a certain shapeshifting darling Nanobot Array, and I am thinking that, perhaps depending on the mood that she is in that day, there might be nothing Sal could do to surprise her! One thing’s for sure: Gabi would be friends with her in a heartbeat.
