2021 Kansas Notable Book; Lisa Harkrader; Unknown

today anti pierre presents our cancers notable book series continues with crabs the misadventures of knob and swell i'm kate mcintyre every year the state library of kansas picks this fifteen best new books by kansas others or about kansas we saw her greater of time could not see is every pete wehner of the kansas notable book award she's won that distinction for air boat my life increase the adventures of being boy and crumbled the misadventures of knob and swell part one we say it is great to see you again at kay it's wonderful to see you again to a wheel man now been swell last year in your butt fumble remind us who is not been slow not us will years am he's a fairytale character he's actually becomes a fairy tale detective but he is the son of a dying farmer and so his whole family farms done which was actually an middle ages job back before there was no indoor plumbing and so in places like castles there would be a bar broke which was like a small closet with a whole

table like a latrine in it it would be an empty into a moat or a pit or on the ground and the dutch farmers or the gong farmers are sometimes called the nightmare because they had worked at night would come and scoop out all up into a car and take it out to fertilize the fields which is also kind of gross and burma so i'm now that was a real malaysia's job and the reason that i'm not going is the son of a dime for his jazzy you always want to make your main character i am pat have really bad circumstances at the beginning and i couldn't think of anything worse than being the son of the dome so that was kind of why he's a person but he's not just a dumb farmer's son he has become a detective he has he done he's very clever he's much more clever than anyone else's family ends up finding something in the down and returns it to the king in a castle the cap the king realizes he's pretty

clever and he sends him out to be prince charming as assistance it was prince charming goes about that the kingdom trying to solve mysteries noblin is actually sort of solving the mysteries behind the scenes for for prince charming so some of the characters from a crumbled make everything he appears in kraut there's prince charming they came to serve raw dreck but there's a new royal in the crowd prince charming little sister see is not like your usual princess and a fairytale come to know see is nazi nc is quite an adamant that she does not want to be there the shrinking princess who gets rescued by the pressures she can take her for self thank you and she does not need rescuing and so in the first scene and prince charming is supposed to be training and you know his courage and valerie and all the skills to be rescuing his little sister from the tower and see is not having any of it seemed as they will be there she says he began by from the terror by

herself and she'd really rather go play around hers with the dwarfs which renders as a kind of precursor to softball or or baseball and sow seeds mint and matt prefer to be doing that than to be sitting or a way for someone to rescue her have you read an excerpt from the crowd where that scene unfolds ok so this is the very beginning of the chapter one a message in a squirrel once upon a time i was prince charming as assistant i never meant to be an ever hope to be for time i tried very much not to be but now i was and was sorely glad of it you know their times father the king waved a finger toward me not been straightened and swallowed i might be the prince's assistant but i was not oil used to be in some of my ticking against him step closer to him we're on the castle balcony the son's first race caste assaf soft glow or the castles stone walls the grass sparkled with do in the courtyard there's a whack the castle butler a sharp sharp eye on a pier

footman who made their way through the crowds serving tea we had gathered to watch turning sprints training today's lesson gallantry also known as the risk you know the rescuing of damsels whether they need it or not it truly gets to be a charming side i was doing a little good up on the balcony became frowned does the pricing nervous appeared across the courtyard folk from the village of twins were clustered around to watch at the far end prince charming held the reins of his steadfast steed darnell as i watched the principal the helm from his head and held it against his breastplate not long ago he lost the home of the original plume in a bargain with the village peddler he reclaimed it with a feather or even taller and clear them last one no sunlight broke over the castle battlements casting a beam over the prince his plane glistened his face glows his armor gleamed in the blind blinding sheen noah cyrus said well please i could give the king didn't use without having to why he looks calm i said and muffled i said the prince flung an armored hand toward the onlookers startling porter

now call for that he knows what he's doing said i became side that's what i was afraid of let's leave the heart grader reading from croke to the misadventures of knob and swell part two weeks i don't want to get too much into the plight but can you give us a little taste of what's ahead for prince charming noblin and the princess angelica well and just as the first book was based on hansel and gretel this book is also based on a row fairytale iraq a fairytale and that it's based on from france so i am at one point in the early in the book princess and telecom her father has decided he's a widower so he decides that he has not been very good raising angela garner as anna she actually meets princess lessons and eight queen from a far off kingdom has volunteered to give her that the princess lessons she arrives at the castle with her horrible son

finberg intel and passing bieber disappears and at small green hamel starts terrorizing anjelica and so emily siner for a brazilian in this book they have to figure out what happened to france and when they do figure out what happened to him getting back to his original form and try to get rid of him before the queen cards and talk off to her castle to live and so that's kind of the plot and there's an you know that and i like to i love fractured fairy tales and i like doing a mash ups of different things and so there's little bits and pieces of other fairy tales that they come into play too just as there was in the first books a week someone i've visited with you last year about crumbled the misadventures of baboons well part one we talked quite a bit about knob and swirls name and it is someone who was an analogy i'm always fascinated me with the names of characters how did that play into

cranked the misadventures of now been swell part two and maybe actually you can remind us about the origins of nominees named yeah i put a lot of time into finding care the right character name because of if they're not named the right thing by it and get the curator keith hear them like you see them they don't become alive in my head is until i fear what their name is they just i can't write about them and that's true for well and for naught then i put a lot of names like i i and they came up with the name dublin and that wasn't quite right and when i came up with not a moment that's perfect for someone to name the sort of so will i went he likes wind swill some kind of you know murky kind of names for his last nights waking up in a novice well that seemed perfect for me and he came alive and so i was able to write about him but also for characters like in this book the queen's name as almond trees and i spent a lot of time on her name also and i wanted something she's not a a shrinking violet sort of characters just kind of in your face seal barrels through the castle and she wants everything her way and

so i had to come up with a name that was like that and also that had sort of a fairytale sit down to it so in my head german names are very very scary tale of solar richard seemed like the kind of you know kind of german viking sort of woman that would come barreling through the castle and her son or that was actually something i had to come to work on because i want to be something that's sit with them or to frog and and so at some point that they call in from port on the jazz that's what happens then and she called infinity which obviously sounds like from the site and play with that a little bit just disperse sales but yeah i come up with and pistol whipped a scene like animal where that came from but it seem like the perfect butler name to me but i do a lot of time just thinking of names writing down names trying out my head before i figure out that and this is the character is a talk about the use of color in cramped

i'm well i did feel stations for the these books too and so i was really lucky my publisher said incentive for the interiors and illustrated sending just black and white to be black and white plus one color were the first book the color was read this one obviously since it's based on a firm friends it's the second color is green and so there's a lot of time kind of references to the color green in the book so obviously the frog and the lily pads and on the queen's colors and things like that so green it figures very prominently in this book as i mentioned croke is a sequel to crumble the first misadventure of novice well what is it having come in and how is that different than the first have a comment that most of the same characters they're female and thistle with the butler is nail and he plays kind of a prominent role because he's he's very much an imprint as angelica quarter when other people are probably not armed and i am so much to the characters in there the setting

and kind of bikers have the matchup of fairytales and detective story on new characters of command and of course the first book they're focused on not in his problems the second book is very much about angelica and her problems and so that the focus is a little bit different than just a different hue to tell a fairy tale kind of from a different perspective so in if you read you know if you read about the telling of the frog prince you kind of get the frogs perspective but in this one we have to be counted it's going to seem strange or what happened to the fraud from a different perspective so that was a little bit of informative and like a lot of your books this one is told from the perspective of a little girl yeah surprises me actually that so many of my books are from the perspective of all of the voices i've never been a boy but when i started writing books and make it and then just being about boys and i

don't know why to buy know that might be my son is now twenty seven and a lot of the books that i've written or when he was growing up so i'm thinking that may have influenced me a little bit that i i was reading as a boy and so the things i was seeing new things come from a boy perspective i'm driving with lisa hart greater of time to not see her good credit the misadventures of knob and swell part two is one of this year's kansas notable books so what kind of challenges says those are writing in a series posed to you as an author there's some good things about it because you're not starting fresh with brand new characters and settings on any sort of have the situation and you know there's a don't for her son who has recently been promoted to keep restraints assistant and as living in a castle so there's certain things built in but on the other hand there are certain drawbacks because you've already kind of told his store right so you have to come up with a story that's equally important and has an equal going on or that starts in and and down yes all the problem and is you know so that the characters different the end and

they are at that at the beginning and so that i think actually shifting it so that it's more angelicas problem can help solve that problem and because we don't have to take a nominee through his up his story arc or critiquing he tears up a little bit differently and that word basically taking anjelica and some of the other characters do their story arcs and so that's kind of the challenges once you've taken it as character through their story arc what the what is their left so he can have to find a new new perspective for the us in the next book in the series as a mountain frogs play a fairly prominent role what did you learn about frogs in writing a lot about frogs and i think this isn't that this is what i really love about the series is i'm able to put an author's note at the end because you think well it's fairytales it's detective stories it's only that that there's actual some research behind a lot of this and so in this book i was able to put others met him about frogs and some of the things that happen in their in the story that actually could

influence the plot so it turns out that frogs drink through their skin which is why they need to be moist and i'm also that they found their eyeballs can help them swallow so when they have something in their mouth their eyeballs kind of like squishing day on and pushed the fluid down into their throat and stomach and so there's an interesting things about frogs that i'm hoping that readers will enjoy doing and also like i said three things about frogs obviously if you're trying to help a frog you have to know about a frog sort of influenced the plot for me to do the research about frogs and presumably for her creator of time actually her book cranked is one of this year's kansas notable books gleeson what's next for an auburn next is um clocked which comes out i believe it's august very first time and it's this color is blue and it's actually a retelling of cinderella and it has that elements of other fairy tale

that to which i don't really say exactly which ones might give away some of the plot that time and this one was kind of interesting because you sort of see cinderella from cinderella story of the usually and now we're having to see it from their strength for a few and she's not sick she comes to the ball he's trying to win a tournament and he's not having very good luck his father gives him a good luck charm wit with a handkerchief that his mother had made for when his his father was actually in a target and so yours is a really good luck and she comes to the ball they you know talk and everything's and she leaves he realizes he can find his lucky pinky and so he goes looking for her only has to look for clues this shield anyone thinks he's trying to find the woman that he wants to marry and he's actually strike is hanging back and they can have a lock in and win the tournament and so that's a less the next adventure and that's coming out at the end of august we think just occurred to me so the first misadventure of knob and swell

was crumbled in this one was crowds the third adventure will be clocked was your intention to have them all begin with the letter c was yeah and i had other ideas to a lot of it was like the ugly duckling and i thought well that could be called quack to so that's not quite the letter c bad guy was my intention to to do that i thought that that could be a nice player awards honor and a way to try to keep keep all the books straight and if our listeners want to dig a little deeper into the world of your books he tells by a website i'm sure and actually it just updated it a little bit with the new book that's coming out and its families are greater dot com and it tells about all the different accent i've written i've ever a lot of them a middle grade novel served an employee the love that that i that i read it every a lot of other books ever in a lot of nonfiction and he and i've written some books for younger kids for picture books early readers months in

chapter books and an ever for an educational publisher think there are good stories but they they teach a lot of things like social studies concepts of math concepts and and i'm i'm just i just wrote a book called i don't try to think that albert's twelve but adventure and it's a massive massive mammoth series now smash so it's all about these mice and they have more math concepts that they they work through their story so i've written a lot of different books and those are all my words if i'm having with lethal heart greater of time to not see her book cropped the misadventures of knob and swell part two is one of this year's kansas notable books you talked about the fact that knob and his family are dung farmers and at his goal in the first but crumbled was to get out of the world of dung farming which he's done this story arc will sometime take him back to his family i would hope so

because one to the real problems in his life that hasn't been solved is that he's been raised by his father and his older brothers were kind of stereotypical don't force i think if you knew that you know the kind of you know not terribly ian page and egg and kind of you know country is a little bit you know living outside of the social media world and so he doesn't know where his mother as and it's a recurring theme because anjelica and prince charming they don't they've never known their mother and so my thought is at some point he's going to have to dig into that like what happened to his mother so i mean it's kind of wonderful think it's a plan at the beginning of time it goes through the series and then at some point you have to address us about that my goal is to figure out what his what happened to his mother so that point he'll have to go back to his family and figured out do you have a sense at this point or org starting out a book

that there will be this many in the series i has to the publisher and because they will tell you this is how many we're going to get your content for and so on if they want more than they will ask you in this world that we live in now that even without a publisher i could continue the series if i chose to obviously by self publishing it so but when i started out i had ideas for probably six books just because like i don't know i don't know how long and the publishers don't want my books so i mean i would make sure i was prepared and so i do have some ideas in store for four other books here there's a lot of fairytales out there there are fairytales and i've been reading a lot of them in and studying them so yes the wife what about the world of fairytales they do you think makes for such a great setting for a while a book well and just for fairy tales i mean they're so many

i mean the settings and just the magical quality of them on it because it gives a rule tongue to a story i think and so many different things happen because there's so many like trump's things that we're so familiar with that it's fine to turn them on their heads and see them from a different perspective i delved into these people's characters because when you've read a fairy tale you don't the rustling most of the rhythms that you don't really get into these people's lives you don't understand the motivation to its resurfacing and so when you compared to dig into them and make these people human than that so it's kind of fun for me as an author i hope for a reader to to see that oh this human being is having this this problem with finding issue or whatever or so yeah i think it's fine to the reader to go back and revisit those fairy tales i think especially maybe as an adult reader to orion unfamiliar with his story where can you have fun with it yeah i got to do that with all my books but the i think especially obviously they're written for you know

middle grade readers and that's who i want to have the most fun with them but i also try to put things in that adults without id get that answer that it's not be something that they would like a third grader or fourth grader we picked up on but if it a teacher a parent or someone is reading your reading aloud to that the child then they'll get that either stand outside tripoli but a fun and for adults to ask you to take up your author hat for a moment and put on your reader hat what books did you read as a kid that made you want to be another old boss i wouldn't be in office as i was a third grade and i think it has to do with nancy drew which kind of makes sense and why i've written a series of enormous trees with my fairytale characters and my mom love nancy drew and she was growing up he and to me it has been around since nineteen thirty five the memoir love them when i was in third grade for christmas she gave me to nancy drew

books hand i love them i read them emilia thing by the day after christmas they were finished and i had a light rain get more and i do i'd read every one in the series and demeaning as he was like oh my gosh if i'm in seat can do it i can do it too because she could do anything such is kind of my role model and i know people kind of look down on you know serious fiction that you know but that's nancy drew was a great role model i think for someone grape in the fifties or the sixties seventies she was my role model i want to be nancy drew can do anything and i thought well i'd do anything to you because i had read nancy cell and i've had a great love of history since then and that's kind of when i decided you know what one day i'm going to grow up and i'm going to be a writer and then i think because i did love those books so much that it never occurred to me to write anything that middle grade fiction that was what i was always going to do because that's what i love and what are you reading right now what am i reading oh i'm actually reading another man industry and eventually was

nominated for an nfl ward for young readers and it's come from the desk of the way washington and i've just heard that but it's about a girl in washington dc dc and she's being raised by her her monitor step dad and i should never really known her dad because he was put in prison and she starts getting letters from him and she wants to her mom's never talked about him and says she wants to find out more about her her doubts i'm not sure this is going but so far i'm really enjoying it it just occurred to me that as a y a off their you're also a y e reader well i mean the book's gentle so i'm not as i listened to audiobooks in my car sometimes and so i'm listening to recent on i love her she's an adult author who writes mysteries some listening to her one of her books that i read a lot of middle grade fiction picture books here i'd been visiting with levi harkrader of time to match the season one of kansas notable book for her latest cropped the misadventures of now been swell part two we fed has been great to visit with you thank you for coming in today think he's wonderful and j

mcintyre well have more tape here present coming up right after this