WOW Reads: MSRAP Reads Away by Megan Freeman

Join the Worlds of Words Center Middle School Reading Ambassadors (MSRAP) as we recap our experience around Alone (and Away) by Megan E. Freeman.

In this episode, we talk about... 

• The ways we are prepared, or not, for an “imminent threat” event.
• Books in verse and how poetry and prose differ.
• The importance of “what if” questions and how they can be suppressed.
• Megan’s openness, careful acknowledgment of others and her supernatural approach to story inspiration.
• Pascal Campion’s book cover illustrations and ways to interpret them.

Biggest takeaway: Keep Your Phone Charged!

Best suggestion: Publisher should name the 3rd companion book, “Afar” (Due: January 2027). Cheyenne came up with this idea on the spot, and we all agree.

Best intention: We would definitely read the 3rd companion book and the sequel. 

This podcast was recorded in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL) in the U of A College of Education.

Producer/Host: Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words Center Associate Director
Literature Discussant: Narges Zandi, U of A COE Graduate Assistant 
Audio Engineer: Alexis Mendoza, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Art Major
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Nursing Major
Digital Collaborator: Melanie Reyes, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A First-year Student

Music is "A Day In The Life" by Grant Green

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

Welcome to WOW Reads, a podcast that centers middle school and teen voices on books written for them. 

Worlds of Words Center of Global Literacies and Literatures 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. 

World of Words ambassadors engage in a university experience of children's literature within the University of College of Education.

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 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.

Megan E. Freeman attended an elementary school where poets came into the classrooms every week to teach poetry, and she was a writer ever since. She writes middle grade and young adult fiction, as well as poetry for adults. An award winning teacher, Megan has a decades of experience teaching in the arts and humanities, and is nationally recognized for her presented workshops and speaking to the audiences across the country. 

When twelve-year-old Maddie's scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends goes awry, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She’s utterly alone, left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned.

We are certainly not alone now, you may or may not be able to hear our whole group on just the other side of our quiet wall. My name is Rebecca, I'm the associate director for Worlds of Words. We met with Megan E Freeman today, and we talked about the book "Alone." If I were alone, I don't think that I would have tried to escape my sweet little town.

If I were alone, I feel like I would try to escape because it's scary and I don't know how to react.

If I were alone in a situation like that I would probably just stay put where I am because I basically have everything I need to survive for a couple of months.

If I were alone, I would probably drive away to find civilization.

If I were alone, at the beginning I would try to drive away.

If I were alone, I drive away to look for civilization and if I saw any pets I would try and free them to see if they would have a chance of surviving. 

If I were alone, I'd definitely stay put and stare at a wall for a few hours.

But again, we aren't alone. We had one of our most well attended author events of the year. We had guests from the children's literature course, which was cool, and guests from the public, and then we all showed out. So that was fantastic. Would somebody like to talk about what our author event was like today?

I think the author event went really well. So basically she came and we all asked her questions, and then it was really nice because the questions just kept coming and flowing, and there wasn't really a lot of awkward silence. Sometimes no one has any more questions and or we don't get to finish all the questions because the author takes too long, but the pace was really great and I think everyone got to ask everything they wanted. 

I say our author went really well as well, because our author really knew how to express herself in a way and it just helped all the questions flow. She gave really specific answers, they weren't really open ended answers and that helped us get a feel for how she writes, while also having different experiences with what she used to do and what she would always be involved with.

Let's talk about the book. What did you think about the book? 

When I was reading the book, when I found out that Maddie got left alone, it was pretty shocking because I thought that her phone wouldn't be close to dead. I thought it was going to be at 50%, but it ended up to be like 10%. Then over the night, it died, and people were texting her and calling her to see where she was so that she didn't get left behind. 

Do you have a phone? 

No. 

Okay. Does anybody here have the phone?

I do. 

Okay, so several hands went up. At the end of the day, what is your battery power like? 

Like 30 degree- or- 30%

*Laughing*

Yeah. 27 or 30.

0.

I have a tablet and a watch. My watch, at the end of the day it's at 50%, and I do a lot of things on it. But I have it on battery saver, that's the thing, so I save the battery.

I feel like on battery saving it always it's a trick and it actually makes it go out faster, so I never put it on battery saving. 

But do you think maybe to her point this book would make you think about maybe using battery saving? 

Yeah.

I've never really read books in verse, so this was kind of a first experience for me, and I think it was written really well. I really connected with the characters, and I was scared with her, or happy with Maddie, for whatever was going on. Like when there were the burglars, I was scared, I was anxious for what she was going to do. Compared to when she grew her first radish in the garden and she was able to eat it. I just felt like, wow, I'm happy for her. I could really experience what she was doing. 

I just felt that Maddie gained a greater sense of confidence and leadership in herself, while also not fully losing who she was prior, but gaining a different perspective of how she lived. She had the hope that her parents were still alive and everything, but after she realized that anything could have happened, she started taking matters into her own hands. Realizing that she was going to be by herself for a long time, with George, she was just going to try sticking through it while also learning new things along the way. 

I think the book was honestly pretty good, I really like the storytelling elements that were put in it to make it feel immersive and connecting in some way. However, there are some parts that I find a bit unbelievable. Like during the sleepover, I would have expected in a crisis where an entire state has to be evacuated, I would think there would be like a national security emergency broadcast system on the television.

Even if the television power is out? 

Well, at first when she woke up, the television worked perfectly fine. So I don't get why they didn't do that.

So Megan addressed this to a certain extent, does anybody want to talk about how Megan was troubleshooting this question as she wrote?

I feel like if they were evacuated, there wouldn't have been that much news coverage on it, because I feel like they would be more focused on evacuating everybody rather than having news about it, and even in state news about it.  

Well, I think that Maddie's mom and dad, they would look for her because they know that they're not at their house, they think they're at each other's house. They could also look at their friend's house, ask their friends, go to their grandparents house, see where Maddie could be, so she wouldn't get left behind. Maddie could have called her mom or dad, but when she found out that their phones were taken away, she was pretty disappointed.

So one of the things Megan asked us was if any of us had been involved in an evacuation, and I think one person was, but for the most part, none of us have been. So there's that that rush of things. We know that may start when Maddie's in her grandma's apartment and she hears the voices, and that was the voices of people leaving the apartments. But also, I wonder for your generation, what is your go-to to get news if it's not going to be your phone, your phone is at 10% or it's out of battery, which we already trouble shot that. But Altair, would you immediately turn on the TV and look for that? Do you watch the news right now? 

I mean, I don't necessarily watch the news that often. Sometimes when I want to know the news, I watch it. But if I wasn't able to access the television, I would probably use a radio. 

Do you have a radio? Do you know where to tune your radio? 

Well, I'm not sure how to use a radio and I would need to ask my dad on that, but I do have a hand crank radio.

That's so cool, I want a hand-cranked radio! So she did, as she wrote it, she did a lot of troubleshooting, and I think she caught most of the places where I think the average person might know to get news or to look for information, but she wasn't expecting an emergency, you know, she wasn't expecting it. So maybe the delay before she realized it was an emergency might have had something to do with it. But Megan told us about presenting this to a group of kids who grew up in farmland. And what was their immediate question? 

They wanted to know if there was gonna be another book.

Wasn't it like, why they didn't hook up a generator?

Why she just didn't hook up a generator. So, yeah, I think we do have to suspend our disbelief around some places and it might matter what part of the country that you're in, into what your emergency response would be. I want to go back a little bit, when Alice said she'd never read a novel in verse, a few of you nodded your head. Megan talked about that a little bit in the book, the paperback, anyway, the version that we have, had a little passage that was written in prose versus a little passage that was written in verse, and she read that allowed to us. Will somebody talk about that moment? 

Well, when Megan was talking about all of that, she was telling us how there's a difference between prose and poetry. She was telling us how prose describes while poetry evokes. And what that means is that prose is the facts and what you need to know in a nutshell, while poetry explains more without really telling you what you're supposed to be searching for. It tells you with clues of what you think it should be. It leads you to an ending, but it doesn't give you that ending in specifics. 

Yeah, that's a great explanation, Christian. I think that that use of poetry combined with what you were talking about, Altair, is this sort of not knowing anything that led to the sort of atmospheric mystery that you asked about during our session. Did you have something you wanted to add? 

Yeah, I thought that like in the poetry version, it did draw more attention and you get to see, you know, when she was talking in the prose version, it was like "They could do that. They could do this." But once it's coming from a first person point of view, it makes it more mysterious and like it is their thoughts.

So what were your impressions of Megan? 

She was really interesting and really cool, and she had a bunch of good connections with the book. When she answered questions, she really answered them thoughtfully, and she put in a lot of effort.

I mean, when she started talking and answering questions, I could tell that she knew what she was talking about. She knew how to express herself, and that's what a lot of poets do. So you could tell that, okay, I'm not trying to be stereotypical, but you could tell that in some way she uses poetry to her advantage. You could tell that she had strong belief in her answers that. Even if her answers weren't right or wrong, she was always open to any possibilities, always acknowledging other people's opinions, showing that she understood what others were saying. But also took into consideration what she thought. 

Wait, to piggyback off of what you said for opening possibilities, I thought it was super cool that she was pushing talking about what if questions and how important those are. I thought that was so cool compared to how at school, instead they tell you "Stop with the what if questions, you guys have too many what ifs." It's like it's a completely different universe here in writing. They're like, "Yes, we want all the what ifs and that's what makes a story better." I just thought that was really interesting. 

One thing that I found interesting that she was talking about was about how she got the idea for 'Alone" she was talking about how a book idea would come to you. I thought that was something that a lot of writers don't talk about. Writers are like, "Oh, it came from personal experience." She was like "It just came to me, like the universe gave it to me." Something like that. 

I loved that too, She talked about muses. What did she say specifically? 

She said it was like supernatural. 

Yeah.

It just pokes you and it influences you to write about a certain topic. She even said that you lose the idea if you give up on it and that idea goes to somebody else. 

Yeah. She said she was in competition with her creative impulse. Oh!

That's what I was about to say!

And to agree with Alice, she said that most teachers don't want the what ifs, the what ifs can give you so many possibilities for something to happen or something else to happen. It can open a new world where everything can happen. 

Okay. Honestly, I think that relates to the way I answered when we started this is because if we are in this world where there are no screens, that's when you get the time to let your brain wander like that and consider things like that. So that informed my answer when we went around and introduced ourselves, just exactly what you were saying.

She took into consideration everything. There's a lot of rights and lefts, there's a lot of directions something can go in. Some of her scenes she was talking about she could have rewritten it for something else or it could have gone a different way. There were so many alternatives that even she took a long time to really think about this book. It took her 11 years to actually fully publish the book, meaning she really took a lot of thought into it. While also considering the fact that this could be somebody's life, and it could really explain other people, while also contradicting with other people as well. So it just goes to the fact that one situation can lead to so many other things. 

Let's switch focus for a second and talk about the book covers that we saw for "Alone" and "Away". it is the artwork, she said, of Pascal Campione? I don't speak French, obviously. He's French Canadian. So first of all, will somebody describe the cover of "Alone" and then somebody describe the cover of "Away"?

The book cover for "Alone," I think it really gives off a victory in a way. The way the light is shining on Maddie and the Dog. Even though there isn't really a scene in the book that looks like that, but still when you read the book you understand that does kind of give off summary what it would look like.

And with "Away" there's four characters but the person on the book, you can't really tell who it is, so for that you can figure it out by yourself the more you go through the story. The person is standing on the hood of a car with traffic, because they're also in an evacuation and they're trying to go somewhere that's safe. The person's just looking at the sun and the mountains, trying to figure out what to do.

The coolest part is that when we asked her about the cover of "Away", Megan said that she also didn't know who it was and that it was open to interpretation. It could even be Spiderman if you wanted. 

So our final question was about what can we expect from her next, So what can we expect from her next?

She's gonna make the third book in the series about one of the girls who was going to be at the sleepover with Maddie, and a couple other boys. 

She also said that she might make a sequel linking all three books. The third book is still in the stages of publishing. They're all going to correlate to the sequel. She still has like a lot of ideas for what she should do and everything. 

So "Alone" and "Away" are not sequels, they are companion books, they take place in the same timeline. The third book also is a companion book, takes place in the same timeline. Then there's a fourth that is going to combine all three. 

That's the sequel.

Wow, would you read it? 
``
Yeah. 

Yeah, definitely. 

Yes.

Okay, so our middle school reading ambassador Cheyenne said that the third book, the companion book, should be called: 

"Afar" 

So good. If they don't take it, if they don't use- That book doesn't come out until January 2027, so we'll all have to read that book. My hope is that it is "Afar" and Cheyenne came up with that on the fly. 

On the spot.

Yeah. So cool. 

It didn't take any minute, any second, it just popped. As soon as she finished, It just happened.

The supernatural. 

That's right. Maybe she was grabbed by the muse.

Any final reflections?

I think "Alone" and "Away" are really good, especially "Alone", because it really makes you think her whole journey like "Is this what I would do?" And how would you survive? I think it also upgrades your level of understanding what it is like to be alone and survive. 

Are any of you familiar with The Boxcar Children?

I think I might have read that. 

So that was a series that came out, it predates me just a little bit, but I remember thinking that I could totally do that. I could totally go live on my own in a box car and that I would spend my pennies on gumballs.
I thought I could live on gumballs. I was younger than you guys. So I wonder, do you feel that you would be as successful as Maddie in this scenario? 

No. 

Yeah. No. 

Probably not. 

I feel I would be successful in this scenario.

I could have had some of the similarities with her, but I feel like I would have done stuff differently. I probably would have gone to find other people and not just like stay put. 

She had a lot of patience, four years. 

Oh yeah.

I'm so glad that George the Rottweiler was with her that whole time, too. 

Thank you to Megan Freeman for coming to talk with us, we obviously enjoyed it. We would love to have you come back in January to talk to us about "Afar".

Thank you to Kathy Short, the director of Worlds of Words. Thanks to all of our donors, who have given us such a great year so far. Thank you to Narges, who is our lit discussant. Vianey, who keeps us together administratively. Alexis, who is right here recording with all of this cacophony that's going on in just the other room. She's got her work cut out for her. Melanie, who also helps us with socials. We are recording in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab in the University of Arizona College of Education.