ReadWonder: February 2022

Monday, February 28, 2022

An Inside Look #206 (Author Interview)

An Inside Look with Shawn Peters

(Author of The Unforgettable Logan Foster)

Welcome to my favorite feature of my blog...

*Season #ONE (June of 2016 to March of 2017)

*Season #TWO (Summer of 2017)

*Season #THREE (School Year 2017/2018)

*Season #FOUR (Summer/fall of 2018)

*Season #FIVE (School Year 2018/2019)

*Season #SIX (Summer 2019)

*Season #SEVEN (Fall 2019)

*Season #EIGHT (Winter/Spring 2020)

*Season #NINE (Fall 2020)

*Season #TEN (Winter/Spring 2021)

*Season #ELEVEN (Fall 2021)

*I'm excited to present season #TWELVE with brand new interviews/authors.

*It has been such an honor to connect with authors and "chat" about their novel, characters, and thoughts about the story.

*This is the EIGHTH interview in which I'm calling Season #TWELVE.

*Thank you to Shawn Peters for being the Two Hundred-Sixth author I've had the pleasure of interviewing. I truly appreciate it.

The Unforgettable Logan Foster

by Shawn Peters

(January 18, 2022)

How did you come to know Logan?
Logan Foster is definitely someone I “know" from my own life experiences, first as child and then later as an adult. When I was in elementary and middle school, I was one of the shortest, skinniest kids in my class every year. (I was part of a group of boys known as the “Smurfs” because we were the last five guys in our grade to hit 5 feet tall, and it didn’t happen until high school) Also, growing up in Santa Monica, CA after moving from Massachusetts in 2nd grade, I was still a bit of an outsider with traces of an accent and clothes that didn’t always fit in. But I was very smart, and even had flashes of Logan’s signature photographic memory, so my brand was to be “the smart kid” who knew a lot of big words and spoke precisely. It’s fair to say much of Logan’s personality and perspective was born of my own experiences at that age. But then, as an adult, I had occasion to spend a fair amount of time with some young people on the Autism Spectrum— high functioning kids including my best friend’s son and several boys on town sports teams I coached— and the more I got to know them, the more I felt that they deserved more opportunities to see kids like themselves at the center of adventures and stories. Logan’s voice and habit of speaking exactly the words that come to mind are definitely inspired by my conversations with these kids, and their perspectives.

What do you think is his most admirable quality?
I love how Logan doesn’t make assumptions, and it’s a goal of my own to be more like him in that regard. He’s super perceptive of concrete details, but Logan doesn’t always pick up on what others are thinking or feeling. I think most people struggle with that at times if we’re being honest, and it leads to a lot of drama when a person says one thing, but we go round and round about what they actually meant. Logan stays curious and asks for clarity, rather than making a “guess” and acting on it. It may make people a little uncomfortable to be explicit about what they want or what’s on their mind, but Logan never does it to make people feel that way. Quite the opposite. He’s doing it because he wants to have real, clear communication and act on knowledge rather than assumptions. In the book, there’s a few times where it might elicit a laugh from a reader, but overall, I hope his desire to be clear and to understand what’s really being said is refreshing and even admirable.

Is there anything you wish he would have changed or done differently in his story?
That’s a funny question, because if I wanted Logan to do something different, I certainly had the power to make it so. I guess I wish Logan had found a friend like Elena earlier in his life. It certainly would’ve made him feel less alone, and more to the point, less compelled to make himself and others believe he didn’t mind being alone. But really, I think I’ve saved most of Logan’s biggest missteps for the sequel, which will be out January 3rd, 2023.. (Does that count as a deep tease?)

What do you think Logan can offer to other children that are experiencing similar situations to what he went through?
I doubt any kids out there are experiencing the shock and confusion Logan feels when he realizes that superheroes are real and their foster parents are superhuman. However, I do think there are lots of kids who feel like they are “different” instead of “special.” So if some of those kids— whether they’re foster kids struggling with finding a family that cares for them as they are or if they are tweens who never feel like they fit in because of they way they look or process the world— can read this story and see that everyone, especially kids, have the right to be the hero of their own stories, I would feel like Logan had done more than just entertain some readers.

How did you research Logan and the circumstances he found himself in?
Most of my research was tied to Logan’s neurodivergence and wanting to get it right, while acknowledging there is no way to portray the breadth of “neurodiversity” in on character; it’s too diverse to cover in one person, so I didn’t try. While I had a fair amount of first hand experience with kids who speak and process the world in way similar to Logan, I needed to educate myself on some terms and behaviors associated with kids on the autism spectrum. At the time that I started writing the book, the term “Asperger’s Syndrome” was still used to describe a lot of children who present like Logan does. Since then, that diagnosis has been eliminated in favor of “Autism Spectrum Disorder” which encompasses a much wider range of people and traits. So keeping up with the proper terminology was important. Also, I sought out information on traits like Alexithymia, which is difficulty in describing or naming emotions. This was key to building Logan’s self-awareness, and empathy from the reader. I did not want Logan to be buried in the trope of robotic, emotionless savants, which I know causes harm within the neurodivergent community. So by writing from his POV, I felt I could let the reader know that he was having emotions, but grasping how to identify them, let alone express them, was not something he wasn’t adept at. This may appear as indifference to people in Logan’s life who don’t care enough to look beyond their own perspectives, but when he starts finding people who are willing to meet him where he is, things start to change for him.Do you and Logan share any similarities?

As I mentioned earlier, I definitely modeled Logan’s size and feelings of being a bit of an outsider on my own experiences. I should also admit that I gave Logan the superpower of a truly photographic memory because as a kid, I had flashes of that too. When I’d take a test or raise my hand in class, sometimes I not only knew the answer, I could picture where the answer was on the page from the textbook. It was a nifty skill, though nowhere as close to Logan’s level of prowess in that regard. Logan and I also share parental names, because I named his foster parents, Gil and Margie, after my own folks. I’ll be honest, I did it for the brownie points from my parents… and it worked. I also think Logan and I share a desire to be clear and remove ambiguity in our communications. I don’t know if I was as good at doing it as Logan is when I started writing this book, but now, I think I’ve gotten better at it by channeling my inner Logan at times. Oh, and the last thing is that Logan hyper-fixates on his love of cat videos… and that’s totally me. My family hears me cackling from another room and they just know that I’ve discovered a new cat video on TikTok or Twitter.

What was the hardest scene to write about him?

I don’t want to spoil too much, but I also want to give an honest answer. Throughout the book, Logan is very clear about what is a fact and what is opinion. It’s a touchstone for him, and not just because of his neurodivergent point of view. He’s an orphan who has six failed foster placements under his belt, and he’s hitched a lot of his future happiness to the idea that he has a sibling out the world who will be glad to meet him. But he doesn’t have much trust in anyone else, and instead trusts facts, using them as leverage in social situations to be heard and respected. But there’s a point in the book where he admits, in a moment of trying to change a villain’s mind, that they do not need to erase his recent memories because no one will ever believe him if he tries to reveal the truth. I remember that it was a moment I hadn’t outlined specifically, and it just came from writing Logan truthfully. When I wrote, “It doesn’t matter what I know or what I tell people. No one will care. No one ever cares,” I pretty much stood up and took a break from the keyboard, even though there was only about another page left in the chapter. I felt so awful for this little guy I’d created, and like such a heel for putting him through it all.

Who do you think was his biggest supporter and why?
Elena Arguello, his fifteen-year-old next door neighbor is Logan’s ride-or-die from the moment they meet, and not surprisingly, the other character besides Logan that young readers are gravitating to most. She’s so strong, both physically and in her loyalty, and she accepts Logan exactly as he is right away. Elena has her own issues with feeling different, and she recognizes that sameness in Logan. Plus, Logan makes her laugh, but she never laughs at him. She laughs with him, and Logan needs that so much. I do believe that no one makes it through childhood unless they have at least one “best friend” level friend. It can help to have more, but you gotta have one, and Logan finally has his.

Why do you think some young people who don’t fit the “norm” of what children should be or act like, are not accepted as easily as those who do fit the norm?
I think it’s a failure of empathy. It’s much easier to spot the ways in which we are different than to focus on all the ways we are the same. If a kid talks or dresses or processes information differently than the majority, it stands out and it’s up to the people around them to decide what to do with that information. As a parent, a teacher, a coach or a classmate, you can try to make them change and “fit in” ( which may feel comforting and easy, because it reaffirms the rightness of how the majority does things) or you can do the more challenging work of being curious as to why the person does things differently. That curiosity usually leads to empathy. The young person isn’t trying to be difficult or obnoxious. They’re trying to function in an environment that isn’t built for the way they process information or understand interactions. But chances are those kids want all the same things everyone their age does; to be loved and feel secure and encouraged to grow. So the empathetic path is to take the time to ask what they need to get there, and to also recognize there may be traits they have that are strengths, if people could stop stigmatizing them.

What do you think Logan is doing as the present time?
Again, I don’t know that I can answer this without spoiling my own book’s ending. I’ll just say I think he’s learning, every day, which is not new for kid who absorbs information like Logan does. But now, he’s learning about facts AND feelings, because there is a whole lot more out there for him, from superpowers to Sunday dinners, than he ever expected.

Book Pages

Fourth Grade Journey

Monday, February 28, 2022

An Inside Look #206 (Author Interview)

It's Monday! What Are You Reading? (2/28/21)