WOW Reads: Episode 3 - MSRAP Reads The Hidden Knife by Melissa Marr

Join the WOW Center Middle School Reading Ambassadors (MSRAP) as we discuss The Hidden Knife by Melissa Marr.

This podcast was recorded in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL) in the UArizona College of Education with assistance from the UA COE Tech Team.

Co-Producer: Rebecca Ballenger, WOW Center Associate Director
Co-Producer: Sara Logan, Literature Discussant and COE Graduate Student
Audio Engineer: Liam Arias, Student Employee and Radio, TV, Film Major
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, WOW Student Employee and Nursing Major

For more information on the WOW Middle School Reading Ambassadors (MSRAP), visit wowlit.org. 

We Can Promote Global Literature Together!

The Worlds of Words Reading Ambassador program is completely free for participants who receive a book for themselves and a book to share with their school librarian, ELA/English teacher, or other school entity. If you would like to support this program, please make a gift on-line through the University of Arizona Foundation.

Thank you for listening and keep reading!

Transcript

Episode 3

[00:00:00] Hello. Welcome back to WOW Reads, a podcast of the Worlds Of Words center of global literacies and literatures, which is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together, thereby opening windows on the world. We encourage thoughtful dialogue around global literatures so that children reflect on their own cultural experiences and connect to the experiences of children across the globe.

Today we're speaking on this third episode. With our middle school Reading Ambassadors. Worlds of Words, center of Global Literacies and Literatures Middle School Reading Ambassador Initiative offers middle school students a college experience within the University of Arizona College of Education that focuses on books, teens and middle schoolers.

Ambassadors learn about young adult literature under the direction of faculty and staff with expertise in children's literature, education, library science and marketing. We respectfully [00:01:00] acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona's home, 22 federally recognized tribes with Tucson being home to the O'Odham and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion.

The university strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign native nations and indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service. Would you be willing to get rid of all of your emotions in order to right a wrong? The Hidden Knife by Melissa Mar weaves together a story of friendship, loss, and family, and an intriguing fantasy story full of plot twists.

Vicky lives with her family, secluded from everyone. She's an expert with words and swords. Vicky's happy with her life in the woods with her family, but when a shock and twist of events occurs, she's thrust into a whole new world. She soon finds herself at a school called Corvus; one that her parents have warned her about.[00:02:00] 

Let's start with introductions. I'm Sarah Logan. I am a graduate student here at the University of Arizona, and I help, um, run the literature discussions with our middle school reading ambassadors. I'm Nia, I'm a middle school reading ambassador. I'm Lily and I'm also a middle school reading ambassador.

I'm Quinn and I am a middle school reading ambassador. I'm Rebecca, I'm the Associate Director of the World's Of Words Center. I'm Carmen and I'm a middle school reading ambassador. I'm Renee, and as everyone else has said, readings, uh, middle school reading ambassador. I'm Avery and I'm a middle school reading ambassador. And I'm another Quinn and a middle school reading Ambassador.

Quinn, since you read our introduction, why don't you tell us what the one thing about this book that stood out most to you? Well, the main character, Vicky, [00:03:00] she lives, she is very secluded from everybody else. And after, um, well something terrible happens to her family, she ends up deciding to get rid of her emotions.

And what did you think about that? I thought that it was; well, she had a goal in mind and she knew that the pain inside of her was too much to deal with, and she thought that by getting, by obliterating these emotions, she was feeling this darkness. She would feel better when in turn all it did was make things worse.

How about anybody else, Would you, how would you feel? That's such a weird question. How would you feel getting rid of your feelings? I wouldn't. You wouldn't? Why not? I personally just think it's not worth it, you know? I mean, [00:04:00] it'll get better anyway. Why have to go through…And it's painful too, apparently painful to get your emotions removed

So why would you do that? It just, Go ahead and explain the process of having your emotions removed in the, in the hidden knife in this world. So in this world, essentially you take like three different potions first for some reason, cuz it needs three. And then someone kind of just walks up, grabs your shadow and quite literally stabs it out of you.

And it doesn't seem very fun personally. It just, it looks, it's supposed to be painful and it takes away all emotions except I think pain. So it's the only emotion you would want to take away besides like sadness or, So it doesn't seem worth it. I don't think it would be worth getting rid of your emotions because I feel that your emotions sort of make you who you are.

And by getting rid of them, Vicky lost her ability to be compassionate. I agree with what both of them said, but [00:05:00] I can see why Vicky chose to, like if you knew someone, I think then you guys, everyone else, that the pain is so immense that you just wanted to be gone. So I can see why Vicky did that because she didn't want to died and she didn't wanna feel that pain anymore.

But I don't think that was the right choice, because then she couldn't get better off. Did it help her in her quest? No, I don't think it did. It kind of just was like, oh, yay. No more sad. But then she became kind of like an alter ego and it did absolutely nothing for her Quest. So it was kind of just like a plot point really.

And how and how did it help or hinder her creating relationships with other characters? She didn't exactly want to be friends with some of the characters that she meant, she meant in the book, and they actually ended up being very helpful to her. I think if Vicky had had her [00:06:00] emotions, she would've recognized sooner that these people were good and that they were her friends and that she should rely on them more.

One of the characters in the book that, uh, I am so tickled with are the gargoyles and I remember. I, I, I want, I want you to say… gargoyle feathers. Exactly. Allister! What happens? What happens, with gargoyle feathers that so tickled you? They hit people in the head, and it's funny, they hit Allister on the head, and I, it really has nothing to do with the book at all, but like, he's the best character we know, like Allister.

Yeah, the gargoyles follow Allister around, so the feathers are constantly falling on his head and they're still stone, so it hurts as well. It's hard to figure out like, do they like him or not? I mean, they follow him around so [00:07:00] they must like him, but they also both. Yes, there's a lot of interesting characters we have.

What are some of the other kinds of characters? Uh, there was Eva, the Chimera, who,  she's probably my favorite. There were the Kelpies, there's Milan, the educated Street thief And there's the Queen, which is probably my favorite character because she has a lot of depth to her. Like at first she seemed  all deep and shallow who just killed Vicky's parents.

But then you find out that there's more to her, and that she's a lot like Vicky and that Yeah, she's more, she has a lot. There's Algernon, who is the son of an alchemist. There's Rupert, who is one of the gargoyle wars. There's Mary, who is a fellow…. Sarah remind me when we, when we [00:08:00] listed all the characters earlier, you had pages of 'em.

Mm-hmm. Many, many, yeah. I wanna say 20 or more. I have ‘em all. Yeah. Close to 20. I'm sure there's more than that. Um, I think Algernon, I had Master nightshade. I found him to be really interesting. He was the Queen's chief poisoner, um, kind of the Master Alchemist. Um, he housed street thiefs, um, and had them work for him.

Which his son thought that he was kind of killing them off, but he was actually giving them better lives.

So we had an opportunity to talk to Melissa. She came down and she talked to us and she had done a lot of research and a lot of research in.. which countries do you guys remember? She was in the Netherlands. Mm-hmm. somewhere in Europe because of [00:09:00] the architecture, which inspired the. I think she was in London because it takes place in the Victorian era and that was, the entire setting is kind of based off of that area.

Before we go on to like stuff like that, I'd like to throw out a big fancy literature term that I least, I think is a literature term Chekhov’s gun. I've heard of it a few times before and it seems to apply to this story very well. It's. Theory that if you introduce a gun or some kind of special power or something into a story, it should go off before the end.

And I thought that was something interesting to bring up for this book. Did we, what was, what would our gun be and did it go off? I'd personally say the gun itself would be Vicky, just all the things she can do but didn't do per se. And that's just, that's something we brought up for something like this.

did she go? No, I don't think so. Like she has, she supposedly has these super [00:10:00] strong, magical powers, but she practically never uses them.

Another weak point that all of us found was the ending. Apparently, uh, according to an editorial suggestion, Melissa Marr cut it a bit short despite her protests. I mean, there's a, she came out with another book, so the new book is The Hidden Dragon, and you've started it? I have started it and it's, it's a good book.

I definitely say it's a nice follow up. It doesn't exactly follow the exact same plot or characters, but it's still a nice thing to read and it's in the same universe after. Also, if you wanna see more of the characters, it's a nice place. So the editor maybe helped out and that we got a second book, but maybe, uh, this story didn't go how we would've planned it.

Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah. [00:11:00] So the ambassadors, you all wrote, um, a review in, they were all published in Pine Reed's Review. So if you want. ,um, see more of those. You guys can, uh, the public listening public can, um, google Pine Reads review and look up these reviews. Do, do you guys remember what you said in those?

No. Mine was mostly about how great the world building was, and there was just a lot of interesting in-depth characters that really added something to it. But of course, I think all of us had something about the ending in there not being what we thought it could be or would. But all in all, it had good things to say about it.

Besides that, I'm pretty sure my review was just about gargoyle feathers, but I can't really remember . Yeah. So, um, so the book is really engaging. We, we like the world building, we like the characters and we like most of the plot. We were just still waiting for the gun to go off. per se, Yeah.[00:12:00] 

Is there anybody, would anybody like to talk a little bit about what it was like to meet Melissa? Oh, she was amazing. She was super. Engaging with the audience. And she gave these beautiful explanations to all of the questions that we asked her, and she was super nice and it really helped, uh, it helped me at least to understand the story more and to get more in depth with the characters.

And after meeting her and after having these discussions, I liked the book even more because, It's not really a book you can just read. You have to insert yourself into the city. You have to walk with the characters. You have to be there to understand what's going on and to fully fall in love with it.

Meeting with Melissa Marr also opened me up to a new book series that she co-authored the Blackwell pages, along with some other books that she wrote, and [00:13:00] that was really nice. I could just be wrong about this, but it seems pretty dedicated that she really went to different places to find information about the settings of her story, cuz that just seems really dedicated to her work, to what she wants to do.

And it's just really cool to know that she took inspiration from actual things in the real world for it. Yes, I noticed that the characters closely resembled the nature of real people, like really deep and complicated, um, important social issues were addressed such as the poverty of the street thief and shifts in power that Vicky not only discovers in other people, but in herself.

Also, we know that purple is her favorite color. Yes. And purple is also popular among this group. There's a purple water bottle on our table. Um, and she brought us purple pens. Mm-hmm. Carmen used to have purple hair. I [00:14:00] had purple hair when she came, it faded out to pink. But I was very honored when she complimented me because she is amazing.

She also had purple hair. She also had purple hair,

Well, that's great. Thank you guys so much for sharing your thoughts about The Hidden Knife. Would anybody like to share what our next book is? Our next book is The Many Assassinations of Samir, the Seller Dreams, and we're gonna meet Daniel Nayeri, when.. Oh wait, sorry. The Tucson Festival books.

Oh, wow, yes, from one to 2:00 PM on How do you pronounce them? I pronounce it Samir. I guess I'm just wrong on that one. Wait, no. Pronounce Samir. Pronouncing it. Samir. Well, this is exciting because this will be something that in our next episode that we can, um, really pin down because we will have him, we will meet him and we will get to [00:15:00] find out what, what that is.

All right. So I'd like to thank everybody. I'd like to thank Sarah Logan, our lit discussant. I would like to thank Liam Arias, our sound engineer and podcast guru. We are recording from the DIALL Lab in the University of Arizona College of Education, and so shout out to them. Thank you so much.