Amherst Reads Transcript

Gillian Flaccus: Okay so, Marti Dumas, class of 1998, has been the very successful author of a series of children’s books called Jaden Toussaint, the Greatest, the really wonderful stories of a little boy who is super smart and is always trying to impress everybody and advance himself in his family and in his class, and is coming up with great solutions to all kinds of problems he encounters and all kinds of challenges and obstacles that are in his path. And Marti, I just wanted to talk to you about the books and how you started to write them and how you came up for the ideas for them, and whether or not they’re based on anything in your own life? Which is probably a strong possibility.

Marti Dumas: Definitely a strong possibility. [Laughs]

GF: [Laughs] So when we were in college together at Amherst, you were definitely an English major and you were really interested in reading and writing. But how did you get to the point where you decided you wanted to try your hand at writing children’s books?

MD: Okay, this is a terrible story that probably someone’s gonna want to cut out later. But the truth of the matter is, I got one of the alumni magazines in the mail, at the time I was the director of education at United Way in Louisiana. It was a great position, and it had a lot of impact in a non-direct services kind of way, on children in the state. But I was reading the alumni magazine, and like seeing all these people who were really seeming to be making a mark and being really fulfilled in the things that they were doing, and some of them had to do with making a tremendous amount of money which is… great, because money’s not a bad thing, but the thing that really struck me about that was… if I died tomorrow, is director of education the thing I would want to have on my tombstone? Is that the thing I want people to remember me for, and the kind of mark I want to leave on the world? And it isn’t. But then it made me think about what is, and I realized that if I left behind impactful stories that help to elevate children who might not otherwise be elevated, that I would really feel I had done something and left something important. So these stories, when you read them they don’t sound like that heavy, but that is in fact the reason why I started to pursue – actively pursue – writing.

GF: Well, they all have an important message, definitely. You know, I have two small children and they’re right in the wheelhouse for these stories, they absolutely love them. And I’m wondering how hard it was for you to come up with that first plotline, or come up with that first story. Can you talk a little about how it came together? And did you quit your job?

MD: [Laughs] I did. I did quit my job. Danger! Danger! Do not do this. Do not follow in my footsteps. Because I actually left that position before I had a publishing contract, so that’s… don’t do that, people. In the future, that’s not the order you do that in. But, the stories are very, very much inspired by my own children, mainly inspired by my son, but both of my children are mixed in there. Mostly thinking about… I spent thirteen years as a classroom teacher, and so I’ve read books aloud to literally hundreds and hundreds of children over that time, and seen their reactions. And also, even more than reading aloud to them, I’ve gotten to get to know what turns hundreds and hundreds of children on to reading, helping kids find their niche when they’re looking for stories. And in that time, there was not a set of stories that really kind of… elevated the sciences, in a way that wasn’t really forward? And that also really elevated kind of logical thinking as a thing that happens normally and is a lot of fun. This is my children to a T, my very very very science-loving children, but who are also really silly and fun. So there are lots of silly books that are out there, but not a ton of them… I’m thinking like immediately of like, the Franny K. Stein books, which are really great where there’s a little girl who’s a mad scientist in them. And those are hilarious, and really good. But besides that… and they’re not hugely popular. I mean, they’re moderately popular, but they’re not widely known. Besides that, there really wasn’t really much out there. So I felt this was a thing my own children were missing from their library shelves, so then that’s what I was aiming for. Was something that was science but so much fun. So… I don’t know. Hopefully it approximates that.

GF: That’s great. And the first book in the series is Jaden Toussaint and the Quest for More Screen Time--

MD: Yeah, definitely.

GF: -- and I love that, because he takes his super smart brain and all of his ninja dancing skills and all that stuff and applies it to getting more screen time, and he gets a petition together, he gets all the kids in his class to sign a petition asking for more screen time and she’s really impressed, and says okay, we can have more screen time on the homework sheet. And I think that’s something that would really resonate with kids, because everybody wants more screen time but like you said, it’s taking kind of these methodical problem-solving methods to solve a problem that seems kind of silly on its face. Is that a thing that actually happened in your house? Did your younger son want more screen time?

MD: Well, my younger son literally always wants more screen time, this is a constant negotiation for us. We’ve gotten to the point where we acknowledge a world only filled with screen time is probably not the best for him. But it’s definitely an ongoing thing. The event in the story did not actually happen, but it definitely takes the way… like, his logic, and what is actually important to children. That was, and is, so hugely important to my son and the way that he tries to figure out okay, how can we actually make this work for everyone. That’s kind of how he’s thinking kind of at all times. How can we make this situation work for everyone? I don’t want to take that from him, that’s like great life skills, that’s a great future business skill for him to have, right? But at the same time, like, we really need to make it work for everyone, so then… his being able to boost his brain power as much as he is able to have screen time, occasionally, is… one of those things have to be happening there. The thing that is always really impressive to me, is people will say children are natural scientists, but often the way that they’re presented in media is… not as natural scientists? Where they are going through steps of the scientific method, but those kind of questions are portrayed as pesky and annoying, right? And really, that’s the kind of skill we want them to have, we just want to make sure they’re also able to draw logical conclusions from them which is where we can help with support. So in the book, he’s really going through what adults would see as pesky pesky pesky! But I try to frame it so that it’s obvious it’s really a part of the scientific method. And that’s a lot of the feedback teachers and early readers gave us: it really is, it’s the scientific method from front to back and I hadn’t really thought about how much the kindergartners really are already doing that. We can be harnessing what they’re already doing rather than thinking that we are teaching them something new, so.

GF: And I’ve noticed that he always… he and his friends are always kind of, in the end, rewarded for using that scientific process or that very logical problem-solving process. Like the one with the caterpillars where they try to make sure there are no caterpillars on the playground, and y’know, all these things. They’re rewarded for using their brains, they’re rewarded for, you know, being smart about things. Which is a great message. I’ll ask you: one of the things my daughters – I have twin daughters, and they’re almost six – one of the things they love about a book is the beginning section, which is the same in every book, where you introduce the characters in the family, you talk about all the friends and what they’re good at, you talk about what Jaden is good at, and they love the parts where you say “pause”, and he’s going to say something and it’s not really true, and it says “pause” and he has to admit what’s really true and then press play again. They love that. Why did you incorporate that? Was there some kind of focus group, or did you notice that when you were reading to kids? How did that occur to you?

MD: So that comes from my having spent so much time reading aloud to children. So that is in fact how we would have done read-alouds in the classroom, when there’s a moment where the character… what is really dramatic irony, right, where we the reader know something the character doesn’t know. For kids, when you’re doing read-alouds, you might pause and just have them stop and think about that. That’s an off-shoot of that, but kids really, really, really did respond to it in our first wave readers – those are alpha reader groups – they really responded to that. Which I was surprised at, I thought it would be something that only my kids or kids that I like, was a person that was doing the reading, would hold onto? Because I thought it was based more on my personality than any actual fact, but it really did get a strong responses, and it made it in, it stayed in.

GF: That’s great, okay. Well, I wanna ask you, what is your favorite story of all the books?

MD: My favorite of them is definitely Muffin Wars. So in Muffin Wars, which is the third book in the series – all the books in the series are actually stand-alone books, you don’t have to have read the ones that came before it, and they don’t go in any particular order – but in the third book, which is Muffin Wars, Jason Touissant meets his cousin who is just as bright, just as clever, and good on her feet, and excellent at getting adults to think she’s amazing as he is, and he realizes that for the first time, that maybe there’s someone who really can one-up him. So then he’s feeling things that he hasn’t felt before. He’s feeling jealousy, he’s feeling left out. And it really is… I mean, the story is for little kids, so I’m saying this and it sounds really, really hard, but he really has to grapple with some strong feelings in the story. I loved it, I thought it was a lot of fun to see him go through that but also see him come out on top, understanding that on top doesn’t always mean someone else is on the bottom. Which I think is… important. And also true, most of the time. If you’re thinking about it that way from the beginning.

GF: Yeah, that is my kids’ favorite of all of them, and like I said they’re twins so they really… are dealing with that a lot with each other, too, trying to see who’s best, who can get more attention from mom and dad, who can, you know, make the biggest impression and they have a great relationship, but there’s a lot of competitiveness there and… I could just see, I don’t know, when you read to children you can sometimes just tell by the expression on their face that the wheels are turning. [Laughs] And when we read that one, I could see that, especially in one of my daughters who’s really the more competitive one, she was just really quiet and really paying attention, and I think it’s a really good message. They love that one and they wanna hear it again and again, so… good one. I wanna actually turn the conversation to something serious, one thing that I’ve noticed with my… y’know, now that my kids are getting to that age where they’re reading a lot on their own and stuff, we’ve been reading the kind of classics I remember from my childhood, and I have been surprised rereading them as an adult to see the lack of diversity in the stories, and sometimes the blatant stereotypes in the stories, and things that even twenty-five or thirty years ago nobody even batted an eye. And one of the things I love about your books is that they really do expand the diversity in the genre, and portray a young African American boy growing up as very smart, and very capable, and just a normal kid. And… was that something you wanted to do, was that also something you were thinking about? I think we talked about this a little online, also…

MD: There was a lot in there, Gilly, and I think I’m gonna hit all of it but if I forget parts of it then just hit me back again.

GF: [Laughs]

MD: But that was… definitely that was at the forefront, right? Being able to have stories that were truly reflective of my children’s own life experiences. My children are like… pretty middle-class, right? My children go to a pretty racially diverse school. It’s not terribly socio-economically diverse, but it is very diverse and actually has kids that are from the city that are in their classes. So it was really important to me that their life experience was being reflected. There are lots of amazing stories, modern stories and not-so-modern stories, I’m thinking about Mildred Taylor books, like Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, and there’s lots of… lots of stories that probably fairly accurately depict the experience of lots of African American kids, but a lot of times they really have to do with struggle. And… I really am a person who thinks, and it’s just probably because I’m a person who’s been so bookish my whole life, but I’m a person who feels like stories shape us, and stories shape our first impressions of people. And if you mostly read stories where all the people of color are having some kind of struggle or problem that has to do with their race, then that helps to shape your understanding of a group, and it’s not that that’s wrong, but it’s not the only thing. And having that be predominantly the thing that was easy to find… it was definitely important to me that my stories were not doing that. Because that’s already being served, I think. And one of the… like a little anecdote that floats through my head all the time, is that again I’ve read to lots and lots of children, and… one of the things you do with younger children before you read a story is to do like, where you’re gonna judge the book by its cover, right? So you show them the cover of the book, and you ask them what they think the story is gonna be about. And 70% of the time, when I was holding up books to children that had brown skinned characters on the cover of them, the kids would guess that it was about slavery. Which…

GF: Really?!

MD: Which, like, unfortunately maybe 70% of the time, that was also true. So it was really… hard, because obviously that’s an important part of history, we don’t want to forget those things, but at the same time… that’s not the modern experience of the kids around me, and I don’t want that to be the only thing that’s shaping who they are as they go forward. So, yes, that was a long way of saying yes. That was definitely at the forefront as I was shaping these stories, and also having them like… super accurately portray their lives, so the group of friends in that book, in the series of books, is diverse, but it’s actually incidentally diverse because they’re based on…all of the character drawing, the models we used kids from my son’s kindergarten class.

GF: What?!

MD: Yeah, right? That was great. So we had, like, we asked, and some parents said yes, and let us photograph their children and send them off to the illustrator to use them for inspiration. So those are all based on real children, all the children in the book are based on real children that were actually in his class. So it’s not an invented kind of diversity, it’s reflective of the real diversity that was in my son’s experience. But it is, in fact, intentional, to have it be purposefully reflective of his experience rather than just relying on just the illustrators bringing experience into play, where… you wouldn’t know what you were going to get, because everyone has had their own life experience that they bring to the table. So, yeah. [Inaudible]

GF: No, no, that’s really interesting. So I was going to ask you, with the illustrations, how much input did you have into what the characters look like and the drawings and things like that? Because, you know… Jaden Trouissant’s got a huge afro, and that’s one of the things my kids ask is “why’s his hair so big?!”. [Laughs] And we had a conversation about that, which I thought was great, so…

MD: [Laughs] Absolutely. So, the publishing company is a really small one, which is one of the advantages of being with a really small… a micro-publisher, is that I did get a chance to have a lot of input on the illustrations, which is not always the case. It is in fact not usually the case. Usually, you don’t… I mean, maybe you would be able to give some feedback, but you wouldn’t usually have as much input as I’ve been able to have, so… the illustrator did ask me if I had models in mind for the characters, and… I was like, I do have a model, I would love to use my son as a model for the main character, but I’m sure that I could get parents to send you more models if you give me a chance. [Laughs] So she was really excited about that. So we had the opportunity to do that. She is really great, and she likes collaborating with me, so then we do talk a lot about how the illustrations will go. But always, she surprises me, and they’re even funnier than I thought they would be in the beginning. [Laughs] Like I’m always like, oh my god, you’re so amazing, when I actually see the finished product. It’s a fun process. But no, I do end up getting a lot of input, but it’s not a usual thing.

GF: That’s great. So where do you go from here? Are you gonna keep writing Jaden books? Or, you know, I was trying to suggest that you do some books about a little girl like Jaden.

MD: [Laughs] So, there have been… I actually received a petition from a kindergarten class for--

GF: [Laughs]

MD: an [inaudible] series.

GF: Ooh.

MD: It’s the best thing possible that ever happened, it was like rolled in a little scroll and… it’s really cute. So that was great. I don’t know. I was contacted to do five of the Jaden Trouissant books, and all five of those books are done now. We may do another contract to add more to the series, but… that’s not a certain thing at this point. Right now, I’m writing books for older middle grade readers. So then, I’ve got a bunch of fantasy books, two of which are sold but not announced yet so I have to hold back on the titles and stuff for those but… they actually all have… both of those have a female protagonist, but they’re fantasy. And so they’ll be a little different than Jaden Touissant, but for me science is always a thing that is lurking in the background, so even in my fantasy writing, there’s a ton of… there’s a ton of science basis in it. So you’re not gonna be able to get away from that if I’m the person who’s behind the machine.

GF: Right, right. No, that’s great. So, do we have any idea when those will be out, or…?

MD: Right, so, 2019. Both of those are out in 2019. And there’s maybe something that comes a little bit sooner than that? Maybe smaller stories? But the ones I’m talking about are for 2019.

GF: Okay. I’m trying to think, is there anything else that I haven’t asked you that’s relevant… or that you want to say? I’m sure there’s tons more stuff I have to ask, but I know we have limited time. Is there anything else you want to add?

MD: No, I feel like there was maybe something we didn’t… I feel like there was a part of your bigger question before that we didn’t--

GF: Oh.

MD: Touch on…

GF: Oh, well, I ask about… first of all, the question wasn’t really a question, it was more of a statement about some of the older books, the books I remember from my childhood--

MD: Oh, right!

GF: And looking at them—yeah. I was just, I was reading Little House on the Prairie to my daughters, and I remembered that series being like my favorite series and I loved it. And I was just aghast as I was reading that book to my daughter… [laughs] And it was my fault for not reading ahead, and not seeing what was coming, but I would turn the page and see all these horrible statements and stereotypes about Native Americans. [Laughs] I’m like, what do I do now?! I’m already into this chapter!

MD: [Laughs] Pausing and chatting about it.

GF: I guess, in a way, it was good, because it forced a conversation about… you know… about what happened to Native Americans in our country, and you know. But it… it’s hard. And I don’t know how to… kind of settle that tension of having these be some of the classics that a lot of people of our generation read and loved and seeing that in there. So I don’t know if that’s really relevant to your book, but--

MD: No, no, it’s totally relevant. It’s totally relevant. Let’s talk about this. So, first of all, there’s the first layer of… I read those books too. I loved those books. I still love those books, they’re great. They’re really great. But I… you don’t remember the slightly offensive--

GF: No!

MD: --more than slightly offensive commentary, and I didn’t before I reread those books when my daughter was about your daughters’ age. I didn’t remember it either. But that is a thing that… so a lot of times, we forget how much we are being… it becomes just normal, right? And we forget how we are being shaped quietly by those things. So I think that it would be important to still read those stories, but also to be pointing that out as you go. That this is what’s going on subliminally in a lot of people’s minds, because it was over and over, just little bits at a time, fed to us over time. Like when you’re thinking about racial bias, right? That’s not a thing where somebody comes up to you and says… or maybe it is, sometimes it is, right? Where the person’s like “we hate black people” or “we hate Native Americans”, and so they hate you too, right? But it’s really… it’s never so blatant. It’s usually so much more subtle. And it’s embedded in stories like that. Does that like, take away the value of those stories? Absolutely not, but it does require us to look at them critically as we are continuing to pull them off the shelves and think about where do we want to be moving, both individually as people, in larger family units, and as a society at large. And I have like, very similar experiences, reading like… we… when my daughter was five, we read… I tried to introduce her to the Amelia Debelia series?

GF: Oh, yeah.

MD: Which I LOVED as a child. Absolutely loved this series as a child. And she was a really strong, independent reader, and I was like oh my god, you’re gonna love these books, they’re hilarious. You like hilarious things, these books are hilarious. She was not that into it, but I ended up reading one to her. She’s sitting on my lap, I’m reading one to her, she’s not laughing. It was the one about Thanksgiving with the turkey, where Amelia Badelia makes friends with the turkey. So I’m reading it to her, she’s not laughing, we get to the end of the book, and she says: so, she has trouble understanding things, and people yell at her.

GF: Oh my gosh.

MD: And she’s like, “this is funny?”.

GF: Wow. Yeah, yeah you’re right.

MD: Like, you’re correct. Your assessment of this situation is absolutely correct.

GF: Yeah.

MD: I have been enculturated into it, and you have not. And so it was so much more blatant for you, whereas for me, I was still finding it funny. Like, I was like ha ha ha, this is adorable! So things like that… I feel like, subtle things, are the things that we want to… I feel like it’s important for us to add new stories into the lexicon. Like we don’t need to get rid of the old stories, but we need to add new stories in that do the things we want them to do. And so then… even though my job is, like it’s fun! I like children’s books! I feel like really it’s an important job, because it’s helping to shape – literally – people’s minds when they are very young, and that sounds super cliché, but it also probably is also really true. Which unfortunately also is the case for [inaudible].

GF: Well, I don’t know about you, but I recently went home to my parents’ and my mom pulled out this huge box of my children’s books, and it’s that visceral reaction you get when… just seeing the cover of the book that I had forgotten about for so many years and just took me back. I mean, the earliest reading that children do, and the books they love, has such a huge impact on them. So… I think you’re right about that. And I also think that… you know, how do you feel thinking about the fact that twenty, thirty years from now, some grown up could pull out one of your books to their kid and say “oh, I remember this from my childhood”? That’s pretty neat.

MD: That is pretty neat, and here’s what I would hope for that time. They would ilke pull out my book, and they would say… this was really amazing and progressive in its time, but now… now we know insert thing that I have gotten totally wrong. [Laughs]

GF: [Laughs] Never!

MD: That we no longer think of this like this. You know? I hope that we’re not, in twenty years, still looking at these as really forward-thinking literature. [Laughs]

GF: [Laughs] I don’t know, they’re pretty good books! Well, this has been really interesting, thank you so much for talking to me and I look forward to your next book. And you said it’s for middle grade, as my girls get older they can move right along with you.

MD: Hopefully! Thank you, it’s so good to talk to you, I haven’t gotten to talk to you in such a long time, it was really nice.

GF: Well, if we ever come to New Orleans, we’ll give you a call. If you ever come to Portland, give us a call.

MD: [Laughs] We definitely will.

GF: Alright. Take care, Marti.