THE KIDS IN MRS. Z’S CLASS launches one week from today!
Just how does an 18-book multi-author series come together? It all started with an email and some Afro-fusion street food.
About two years ago, I found a note from my literary agent in my inbox with the subject line “Idea for Kate Messner.” She was sending along a proposal from Algonquin Young Readers editorial director Cheryl Klein, asking if I’d be interested in heading up a new multi-author chapter book series about all the kids in one elementary school class. The project was ambitious – 18 books over three years – and involved a ton of collaboration. Each author would create their own main character, who would then be a secondary character in all of the other books. Would I be interested in writing the first and last books in the series and helping to recruit a team of authors to write the rest?
When I shared the idea with my husband and daughter, they had immediate thoughts.
Ella: That sounds like SO much fun!
Tom: That sounds like SO much work!
(Spoiler: they were both right.)
So was I interested? I needed more information, and fortunately, I had plans to be in New York City in just a couple of weeks, so Cheryl and I scheduled lunch at Berber Street Food, an African café in the West Village. Over djolof rice and mint iced tea, we brainstormed how such a project might work. The more we talked, the more excited we got, and I knew this was a series I wanted to work on.
Our next step was to begin building a team of authors. This was a unique project – one that required a particular set of talents. We agreed that we needed authors who were amazing, funny, voice-driven writers, but that wasn’t enough. Because of the unprecedented level of collaboration, our writers also needed to be kind, flexible people and amazing team players who would respect their colleagues’ visions for their characters, even as they spun their own stories around them. And one more thing: they had to be good at meeting deadlines, which don’t have much flexibility in a series like this.
Fortunately, our kidlit community has an abundance of such wonderful people, so we had no trouble pulling together our wish list. We anticipated that it would take quite a while to get a team together, especially since we were approaching some of the busiest writers in the business. But we were wrong about that. Almost everyone we invited responded with an enthusiastic yes, and we had our team. I still have to pinch myself when I look at our incredible list of creators!
Our next step was brainstorming our characters and setting for the series. So what did that process look like? More on that tomorrow!
The first two books in the series, EMMA MCKENNA, FULL OUT and ROHAN MURTHY HAS A PLAN come out on April 30th – pre-order by 4/29 to get our exclusive sticker sheet!
