WOW Reads: S3, E1 - MSRAP Reads Miracle by Karen S. Chow

Join the Worlds of Words Center Middle School Reading Ambassadors (MSRAP) as we recap our experience around Miracle by Karen S. Chow.

In this episode, we discuss... 

• Everyone needs an editor -- and multiple kinds! SO to the copy editor who led Chow to her eventual decision to have the characters play The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild throughout Miracle.
• Relationships and mind reading and how we can short ourselves and those around us when we start to guess what other people are thinking.
• And Rebecca gets corrected by Emaline. Chow says, "Oh, yeah, yes, yes, yes, many, many times," when asked if it made her sad writing a book about her father. You can't get anything past these Middle School Reading Ambassadors!

We are grateful to Karen for opening up to us. That was "really cool."

Bonus Book Mention:
Front Desk by Kelly Yang.

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

Producer/Host: Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words Center Associate Director
Co-host and Lit Discussant: Kait Waterhouse, U of A COE Graduate Assistant
Audio Engineer: Liam Arias, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Radio, TV, Film Major
Audio Engineer In Training: Alexis Mendoza, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A First-year Student
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Nursing Major

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

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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

Worlds of Words Reading Ambassadors engage in a university experience with children's literature within the University of Arizona College of Education. Reading Ambassadors learn about literature for young people under the direction of faculty and staff with expertise in children's literature, education, library science and marketing.

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of Indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the O’Odham and 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.

Karen S. Chow started writing novels when she was a sophomore at ASU, where she earned a degree in electrical engineering. Now she is an engineer by day and a middle grade novelist by night. She lives in Gilbert, Arizona with her family, and she invites you to visit her online, online at kchowrites.com.

Amie has spent her life perfectly in tune with her father. She plays the violin, his favorite instrument. She loves all his favorite food, even though he can't eat them during his cancer treatment. And they talk about books, including Amie's favorite series, Harry Potter. But after Baba dies, Amie feels distanced from everyone close to her, like her mother and her best friends Rio and Bella. More devastating still, she loses her ability to play the violin. The notes that used to flow freely are now stilled and sharp. Will Amie ever find her way back to the music she once loved?

With hope and harmony lighting the way and with the help from people who love her most, Amie must find the strength to carry on, even if it means learning that healing, while painful, can be its own miraculous song.

Hello, and welcome to our first episode of season three of Wow Reads. My name is Rebecca Ballenger. I'm the associate director of Worlds of Words, and I played the flute for three months in sixth grade.

Hello, my name is Cheyenne. I play clarinet.

Hi, I'm Kait, and I was first chair in concert choir in high school.

Hi, my name is Carlos and I play the piano.

Hi. My name is Emiline. And, I've played the baritone, the viola and ukulele. And I learned how to play a couple songs on drum and bass.

Hi. My name is Christian. I tried playing the guitar once, but it didn't really work out.

Hi, my name is Jacob, and I play jazz. I played in a jazz band for a year on bass, and I also played Mariachi on guitar for about a year too.

Hi, my name is Alice and I play the clarinet.

Hi. My name is Nia and I play the flute and piano.

Hi, my name is Gabriel and I also play the piano.

I am so excited that this is our first episode of season three, and we're launching it with our Middle School Reading Ambassadors who just met with Karen S. Chow, author of the middle-grade book Miracle. Let's just start off by talking about what it was like meeting the author today.

It was very interesting to meet the author, just based on the book. Like, parts of it are very sad, but I found her to be very, like, nice and bubbly, and upbeat. And I found it, like, interesting that a lot of the book is about sadness and grief, but she is just this very happy person.

I like to, I like how, I like how the, the author was like, like a very nice person like she said too. And the only bad part is she went to ASU. I'm kidding. So, but, like, she --

We won’t hold that against her.

-- Yeah, but she was a really nice person, even though. And her book, there was she was she wrote about her book. It really reminded of a friend of mine. And like, he's been going through a lot, but, like, it just reminds me, like, while, like, while reading that book, it just gives me all these thoughts of what happened to my friend.

So, I thought it was really fun to meet the author, and I think it was really cool how she persevered through talking about the hard times and everything of writing the book. I agree with Alice. I thought it was interesting how she partially included parts like the hard parts of her own life in the book, and was able to do that and show that to the world. On how, even though such bad things happened to her, she got through it.

So let's, let's talk about what connections we made. We I heard some of you already talk about connections you made. What are some of the other connections that you had with this book?

Well, for one, she included various references to Harry Potter and Zelda, so there's that.

Do you enjoy those games? Gabriel?

Harry Potter yeah, yeah.

Not a game, but do you enjoy Harry Potter and Zelda?

Harry Potter? Yes. Zelda?

No.

I also like Zelda, but I wanted to say I related to the book because I also get mad at my clarinet a lot when I'm playing high notes and I squeak and I get mad at myself, because I think I should know how to play them better. But. And then she perseveres past it, and I and I tried to do that, but it's hard sometimes and it takes like time. So I thought I could relate to her.

Then, I talked with Karen about how her book reminded me of another book I read, called Front Desk and how Karen said she struggled with being like, not Chinese enough or not American enough. And that was, one of the main problems for the, antagonist and the other book.

Yeah. So what it was she said earlier about, about that about clari- getting mad at your clarinet. But I just got back on, playing base again for, like, my church and, like, you know, I've been it's been really hard now because I've been having play like a ..., like, in, like, three years. Because I played a jazz band in fourth grade and just reminds me that of, like, I was getting mad about it and all that.

I feel I can relate to, what she said, because I also play clarinet and I squeak all the time, and it's especially when I get home and I'm, like, trying to relax, play some clarinet, and then all of a sudden, my reed just stops working, which is.

And I'm curious what you all thought about the relationships in the book. Did anybody have connections or find similarities? Kind of like what Jacob was saying a little bit ago about thinking about friends who've had similar experiences? What connections can you all make?

Yeah, kind of in that area. My mom and I have a really good relationship, sort of like how, Amie did with, Baba and, like, we're just very close. I could go to yoga with my mom, and we go shopping together and a lot of our lives, like, we just hang out a lot. And I feel like that is, like, related to that. Baba and Amie, they they like the same books. They like the same music and stuff like that relates to the connection I have with my mom.

I have a friend who went through a similar thing because of a parent dying, and I thought I could relate to this, to kind of Bella, because I know that it could be hard for her, and sometimes she would have these outbreaks and she would get really mad. But and that's what happened in the book when when Amie wasn't really talking to Bella and they were kind of mad at each other, and I kind of understood Bella there. But I also finally understood my friend more and why she would get mad, and how maybe I should have been more understanding sometimes.

That's what happened to my brother. I mean, me and my brother have a really good relationship, like, And we both love football. Basketball. We like some of the same teams. We, like, like we both like the, like the Phoenix Suns together, but we like, really well, but sometimes we can't, like, understand each other. Sometimes, like, sometimes we'll say something like wrong or like, we won't. We won't understand sometimes. Then we'll start fighting. Sometimes. Or sometimes with each other. Like we'll be on a good side with each other. And sometimes we have to be on a bad side with each other. It's like kind of like something like that. But we've managed to have a good relationship though. But like, at the same time, we still fight a lot.

I can kind of relate to Amie and her mom because me and my mom kind, don't get along that much because, in 2023, I had a homeschooling year, so we were together a lot, and it was, too much. So we kind of got tired of each other. And my grandma moved out in like late 2022. And so I feel like I really connected to Amie when she was like, mad at her mom.

I really connected when, like, so like home, she would always get in fights, but also be in really good terms with her friends, Rio and Bella and I just relate to that because with my friends, I'm either on good terms with them or I'm either not really wanting to be with them.

So in the book, our main character, Amie, sometimes makes assumptions about what her mother or her friends are thinking. And, while we were trying to sort of think our way around that, Kait had us practice mind reading. Somebody talk about how that went and and how it, how it changed the way that maybe you thought about Amie and the way that maybe you thought about your, your relationships.

Mind reading, like, changed my mind about Amie a bit. I mean, it's really the only thing you can do when you don't have much else to go off of. You just got to, like, predict based off past events or just swing it. After that, when she she had a mind doing it, made it sound like that. It made her get mad more at her mom. It made it feel like that she got more like more mad at her mom about what's going on because she thought that her dad like Baba, that's what she called her baba. She got she thought that, like, she was like, like, like Baba was doing okay, but like, everything was like, should I do, like, a little mind reading?

She realized, like, oh, you, wait, so Baba is not doing good at all. There's a chance that he's, like, going to get, like, like, be really sick some day, and she's not that. So basically, mind reading, like, just made her feel more angry and more sad and depressed.

Well, I might have heard the question wrong, but what I was going to say it was about mind reading, not really about the book, but when I was trying to read my friend's mind and I really wasn't able to, and I gave completely random guesses that weren't what she was thinking at all, I started thinking about how I can never really know what's going on in someone else's mind, and so it good to have an idea of what's happening around you, but you can't know what someone else is really thinking. So to not underestimate that, or to think that whatever you're thinking is what they're thinking, because most times it's not. And they just have a mind of.

The previous speaker, Alice, I've known her since kindergarten, and even though we've known each other that long, like we were partners together and we are trying to read each other's mind. And even though we had known each other for all those years, we were like, oh, wait, you're thinking something different than me? and I was kind of like, I felt different than what Amie and Rio had where, like, she could tell based on his tabs how he was feeling and stuff. And, yeah, like, we could kind of get around the idea just based on, like, body language and stuff somewhat. But, like, we didn't really like, connect on the exact point that you would have thought if we'd known each other for a large amount of time.

I think, Amie was overthinking. And so that led her to, like, mind read and expect that someone is going to do something or say something, and it's going to make her feel bad, because since her this current situation with their life, she, her and her mom are kind of tense. And so that makes people think that they're going to be mad at each other forever, like Amie did.

Let's switch gears up a little bit and talk about writing and the writing and editing process that Karen shared with us. Karen shared that people don't just come up with books in like a month and get it published and send. So Karen showed and shared with us how you have to have multiple years of editing and rewrites before it can even get out to the public.

I do not know where to begin, but like she also said something like like she does, she can just get it out in a week. So like one time, but then like, like she said that she can maybe get it out in a week, but then it took her like 27, like 27 like months to like, took like almost like two years of her, like a to like edit it. And then she and I felt kind of bad because, you know, we rewrote the whole thing and nobody likes doing that.

She also told us how in the editing process and all that stuff. And like home, writing a book is not a one person thing. Like she needed editors. She needed like agents. She needed all these things. And like, it wasn't really the fastest process either. And she always had to, like, she always had to do, things to like boost her book or to add things to what she already did.

So she told us it took her one month to write, which is very impressive for a book, during National Novel Month, which is in November, and then it took her 27 months to edit. So that's like two years and three months, and then another seven months to rewrite. And overall it was seven years till it actually went to shelves from that first time in November when she wrote it.

And it was just a very long process of going through different levels of editors and publishers and trying to get people to want to edit her book or represent her for their agents. And it was just this very long, long process that she had to go through.

I think that writing and editing is kind of like going through hardships because you get, you know, you get a lot of rejections and, you need a lot of perseverance to get through that phase of writing. And then you have a finished product in the end, and then you feel like it was all worth it.

Yeah, as a matter of fact, I wrote down her quote. She said, it was a lot of work. And she said, oh yeah. Yes, yes, yes, many, many times. Yeah. So she, she was she really did emphasize that. Alice.

So this is also under the publishing business part, but when she was talking about writing and editing the book, there was also that question about the hard parts. And when she was going in depth about the funeral scene, it made me think about how I kind of read that chapter as if it was another one, and I didn't really think about how that must have been really hard to write and really impactful and consuming and time taking for her.

So it made me kind of rethink that, that scene and how it must have been hard for her. Once you finish with all the unwanted scenes. Tha- that the publishers wanted to cut and all the edits, you're still not done. You got to try to convince the bookstores to accept your book. For example, during Miracle, she tried to pitch [an author event] to Barnes and Nobles, a famous bookstore retailer.

So earlier, Rebecca, you said that the, “Oh, yeah. Yes, yes, yes, many times.”, I think that was geared to “Did it make you sad writing a book about your father? And did you cry?” because her father died when she was 22 and she was still in college, and like the funeral scene, like she played piano, with her, younger siblings while they played viola. And she talked about how it was really hard for her to write about her father, and she did it because he was, like, such a positive person. And he- she wanted to write, to explore grief in this, like, young person. so she, just, it was very hard for her. Like she cries when she reads the first chapter she told us, or when she goes to a school, she cries during the second chapter because when her Baba is in the room with her at a school like that just brings like, oh, and she cries. So I think that, like when she started the book, she was kind of skeptical about it because she, she knew that it might dig a little deep in her feelings with her dad and her mom, and it took almost two years to edit because it's a really good story. And good stories take time.

And that that funeral scene came so late because it was so tough for her to write.

Yeah.

Her editor had to, like, force her to put it in she because her editor was like, you need to have the funeral there. And she only did it because she was told, oh.

Yeah, she had to be pushed to put it.

If not--

Yeah, I-- my personal philosophy is everybody needs an editor. And it sounds to me like she has a really good relationship with her editor. And then she also shared with us that she had a really good copy editor.

A mentor editor, oh yes, that kinda helps you a lot.

So she did have a series of mentor editors. But what, you guys remember what she said her copy editor caught?

Karen S. Chow’s copy editor caught that when she was creating a part where Rio, Bella and Amie were playing Zelda she had mixed up tons of different video games and attempted to make, non-existent video game. The copy editor told her that she had to find one game and do it about it, so she asked her brother, and her brother helped her find Zelda Breath of the wild, where she based that part of the story off of.

Yes. So props to that copy editor. All right. Any final reflections?

So, I think that it's a really great story overall, and I really liked how she, in the story, she explained in story from the, the topic and theme clearly. And that really helped a lot.

Karen Chow is a really interesting person to meet. Her father pushed her to go into engineering. She was a second generation Taiwanese American. She was like the oldest daughter and she was kind of a trailblazer for her younger siblings. And she just has, she's just such a positive person. And I really admired her way of dealing with grief and how, and kind of helping kids who are dealing with that as well.

I agree with what Emaline said, and I really liked meeting Karen, and I thought she was a really nice person. And she really I feel like she opened up to us, which was really cool, and she told us about herself and all of those things. So yeah, I really enjoyed reading her journey.

When I first met her, she was, like, she was like a really nice, person. I liked how, like the way, like she, like, she was like, nice, like nice to you. She looked like she had a very interesting, life to have, like. I mean, like, it's a sad life. And she she's like, sad, but she's still, like, happy, upbeat.

Maybe that's why. Maybe that's why she, wrote about Bella maybe. Like, maybe, maybe like like, like, what was her name again? for the Miracle? for the miracle? called Amie. Amie. Amie. Amie. Yeah, yeah. The main character, Amie, was, Amie was, like, supposed to be, like, the sad and depressed type of person and Bella’s supposed to be the happy one. Maybe that's like, I was reading the version of the two sides of her. Like, maybe like she's supposed to be depressed while she's writing the book. Or maybe Bella's supposed to be the part where, like, she's always happy to be nice to people. That’s all I gotta say.

I liked how she didn't just talk about the book, but she also talked about how her life experiences could relate to some things in the book.

And how she and how she also went through the same things. And she made that, and she made that connection, even though it must have been really hard for her in some parts, especially the death of her father.

All I can say is that meeting her and reading this book was an enlightening experience that teaches readers that, that, that teaches readers how to deal with death and and how to move past it.

Well, that's our show. And real quick, before I say our goodbyes, Christian do you have an announcement to share from the Reading Ambassadors?

Yes, I do. So the Reading Ambassadors have brought 41 middle grade and young adult authors to the College of Education for free public events. This is no small feat. We select the authors, read and engage in literature, literature, discussions, plan for the author, visit to set up, clean up for the event, interview the author with time for engagement from our guests and reflect on the processes through a podcast. This month Worlds of Words hosts a crowdfunding campaign to support our work. Please find the link in the WOW Episode summary.

Thanks to Karen S. Chow for visiting with us today, and for writing a book that we all enjoed. Thanks to Liam and Alexis who are co sound engineering for us today. Thanks to Kait Waterhouse, our lit discussant, the COE tech team; we are recording in the Digital Innovation and Learning lab at the University of Arizona College of Education.