Book Chat: Jennie, Anjanette, & Lee Discuss WHAT HAPPENED TO RACHEL RILEY
This month to celebrate Middle Grade March, we chose a middle grade book to read and discuss. As usual, this is a book that we did NOT represent. It’s important to read widely to know what’s current in the market. Most importantly, we’re supporting our colleagues in the industry so that everyone involved in publishing the book can feel content that the books they publish are reaching readers. Congrats to author Claire Swinarski, agent Alex Slater, editor Alyssa Miele, and everyone on the Quill Tree team!
How did we choose this book?
JENNIE: It’s always interesting to know what factors influenced a reader to choose a book to read next. There are so many choices! How does anyone focus on just one title? For an author, this is a very important question because it’s this process that leads to selling copies which, of course, is crucial for an author’s career.
We’d already decided on middle grade fiction for a category, and Anjanette suggested 6 middle grade fiction books that were all published within the last 2 years to get us thinking. Jennie wanted a book that would perhaps be familiar to some readers in this category, but also that might benefit from extra visibility. Seeing that this title was nominated for an Edgar Allen Poe Award (conferred by the Mystery Writers of America) added confidence that we’d probably enjoy the book. We all liked the question embedded in the title and wanted to read more to find out.
What aspects of this book make it middle grade?
JENNIE: Middle grade readers are at various stages of puberty which makes their bodies awkward and their moods unpredictable. But, despite this propulsive boost towards adulthood, they’re still kids. They want some independence, and it’s critical to let protagonists in these stories have the freedom to explore, have adventures, and to face conflicts on their own. It’s a time when they’re ready to be exposed to tough lessons in life and difficult periods in history. While the world was clearly defined by black and white morality for them in their earlier years, now they’re ready for stories to introduce shades of gray with characters choosing more nuanced responses and actions. Still, middle grade stories have a mostly wholesome quality. Animals and friends abound in these stories. School libraries provide these readers with easy access to books, and school librarians will avoid books with swearing for this age group. Middle grade readers are still very connected to their families; after a resolving a challenge in a story, they feel reassured when a protagonist receives the warmth of a hug from parents.
In WHAT HAPPENED TO RACHEL RILEY? Anna reconnects with her grandmother frequently, but not necessarily to convey the difficulty she’s having with her investigation. Anna is mature enough to know that something happened to Rachel Riley, but she also has an interest in penguins which shows a more childlike aspect of her.
What is the age-appropriate conflict?
JENNIE: In any story for kids, it’s important that the characters face problems and conflicts which are relevant to them and which they can fix. Kids are surrounded by all sorts of problems in real life, and it’s a common mistake to have a child protagonist in a story facing an adult problem rather than a kid problem. Kids can’t fix adult problems which make these stories frustrating for readers. A good example is a story about a kid with a parent suffering from mental health issues. When a story for young readers features a parent who is mentally ill, the parent’s actions, or in many cases neglect, will affect a child character immensely, but the child character can’t change the adult. Any influence a child has only supports the adult in a journey to good health. A parent’s mental health can be a subplot, a situation going on around a child character, but the child needs to have a challenge that he or she will be able to confront and change.
WHAT HAPPENED TO RACHEL RILEY? incorporates a serious problem, sexual harassment, but it does it in an age-appropriate way. The actions are between students, not between students and adults. And, it’s confusing to all the students if it’s a harmless game or if it’s something serious. None of them know what to do, and nobody wants to talk about it. Anna’s effort to be an investigative journalist creating a podcast gets her involved with the students as they are the ones who know the real answer to her question about Rachel Riley. In the resolution the adults in the community support the students by facilitating a forum for the girls to share how they feel and to demand that the school enforce its policy against harassment. In this way the students are the ones sparking change in their school.
How does it keep things current?
LEE: The social issue central to the narrative (sexual harassment) is presented with a hyper-modern, post-#MeToo mindset that roots the novel in the current moment. Even without any world-building clues, the time period the story takes place in is clear from the way various characters react to the conflicts that arise as a result of the sexual harassment committed by the male students. This is particularly obvious in the reactions of the school principal, whose characterization makes her a deft satirization of institutional “woke-ness,” which is to say, she frequently speaks on progressive principles (ex. “Peace begins with us”) but when push comes to shove, she is more focused on maintaining the status quo than pursuing social justice. This nuanced portrayal feels like an incredible crystallization of our present moment, and keeps WHAT HAPPENED TO RACHEL RILEY? firmly rooted in today even before the world-building is factored in.
Of course, the world-building also does great work to make the story feel current. Specific references to modern pop culture touchstones, such as the YA series Red Queen, TikTok, the Harry Potter series and more, colors in the world of the story in a way that will allow current tweens and young teens to see their world reflected on the page. The format of the novel, which includes numerous chapters made up entirely of text exchanges, email chains, and podcast recordings, structures the story so that it could only be happening now, and is easily accessible to readers whose social lives span countless platforms.
What are the characters like?
LEE: While the structure and world-building of the novel is hyper-modern, the characterization of the cast often takes a more subtle, but no less effective, approach. WHAT HAPPENED TO RACHEL RILEY? uses a number of common middle grade character tropes and builds upon them to fit its modern storytelling. Our main character, Anna Hunt, will be immediately familiar to parents of young readers as an archetypal Harriet the Spy protagonist, whose investigation of the novel’s titular question feels both familiar in its scope and entirely modern in its ideas. Meanwhile, we have the classic outcast character in Rachel Riley, and a cast of “cool kids” who round out Anna and Rachel’s classmates at school.
One interesting thing to note is that while, in older middle grade media, the “cool” boys and girls are cut from the same cloth, Swinarski’s novel depicts a divide between genders. While at first both boys and girls are entertained by the butt-slapping game (save Rachel, whose fall from grace is a direct result of that opposition), the girls begin to question what, exactly, was so funny about being sexually harassed by their male classmates and find themselves breaking rank as Anna’s investigation continues to probe their feelings on the situation. This also adds to the modern feel of the novel, as research has shown the gap between young men and women’s socio-political views has been growing steadily over the last few decades in a way it never has before.
How is the pacing?
ANJANETTE: It’s especially important for young readers that stories hold their attention against an abundance of internal and external distractions. If a story lags in the middle or lacks enough forward momentum, it will lose most children’s interest. WHAT HAPPPENED TO RACHEL RILEY uses several interesting tactics to maintain steady pacing and a high level of intrigue. Epistolary elements like emails, texts, and things like party invitations and newspaper articles break up large chunks of narrative text and provide a moment “inside the mind” of peripheral characters. These pages have lots of white space and are easy to skim. Turning pages quickly can be super motivating!
There is also a throughline of chapters formatted as podcast interviews. We come to understand that these sections are going to have some big reveals that move us closer to our goal of finding out the truth about Rachel Riley, and they help the reader stay grounded in the present despite the jumping around in time that happens with the epistolary bits. I imagine there was some rearranging of these sections during edits, and the result feels very carefully planned and satisfying!
