Becoming Curious with Heidi EY Stemple

Heidi EY Stemple, author of The Poetry of Car Mechanics (Wordsong), joins Matthew to talk about becoming curious and making every bit of your writing intentional.

Listen along:

About the book: The Poetry of Car Mechanics by Heidi EY Stemple. Published by Wordsong.

“This beautifully crafted novel sings and soars.”

—Nikki Grimes, author of Ordinary Hazards

Dylan seeks solace through birdwatching and poetry in the woods behind his grandfather’s auto shop—but when he rescues an injured hawk, he must learn to confront the broken parts in himself in this powerful middle-grade novel-in-verse.

15-year-old Dylan has always felt like an outsider in his small town. Isolated when he was younger as the result of his unpredictable, now absent mother and feeling like a disappointment to his grandfather who has stepped in to raise him, Dylan finds relief in the woods behind his grandfather's auto shop. Amidst the cool quiet of the trees, Dylan thrives on bird watching and writing poetry. But one afternoon after spotting an injured hawk, Dylan finds himself pushing out of his comfort zone to track down help for the bird—and ends up rescuing a part of himself in the process.

In this luminous middle-grade novel-in-verse on navigating the lonely tumult of self-discovery amid complicated family history, Dylan relays his story with bracing emotional clarity.

More:

Visit Heidi EY Stemple online at heidieystemple.com

Other helpful links:

• Heidi EY Stemple at the Highlights Foundation

• Jane Yolen & Heidi EY Stemple Scholarship - Authors Jane Yolen and her daughter Heidi EY Stemple have established a scholarship to support in-person or online tuition to workshops and personal retreats at the Highlights Foundation. (Visitors coming to campus can even ask to stay in the Jane Yolen Cabin!)

Transcript:

NOTE: Transcript created by Descript. I've attempted to clean up any typos, grammatical errors, and formatting errors where possible.

Matthew: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Children's Book Podcast, where we celebrate the power of storytelling to reflect our world, expand our perspectives, and foster connections between readers of all ages, brought to you in partnership with the Highlights Foundation, positively impacting kids by amplifying the voices of storytellers who inform, educate, and inspire children to become their best selves.

I'm your host, Matthew Winner teacher, librarian, writer, and a fan of kids. A quick reminder before we begin, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, you can enjoy ad free and early access to episodes by subscribing to TCBP plus for just 99 cents USD per month. Just tap the banner anytime today on the podcast.

I'm joined by Heidi EY Stemple, celebrated author of more than 30 books for young readers. To talk about her luminous new [00:01:00] middle grade novel in verse, The Poetry of Car Mechanics. This beautifully crafted novel follows, 15-year-old Dylan, who's always felt like an outsider in his small town. He finds comfort, birdwatching, and writing poetry in the quiet woods behind his grandfather's auto shop.

But when he discovers an injured hawk, Dylan's world begins to shift. His act of rescue leads to unexpected connections and a journey toward healing the broken parts of himself. With grace and emotional clarity, Heidi explores themes of family identity and self-discovery in a way that sings on every page.

Heidi's middle grade debut is beautiful and moving. It's not a book that shares any worldviews as Heidi describes. But one rather that attempts to step into the life of a kid and his world and share his story with intention. Please welcome Heidi. Ey Stemple to the podcast.[00:02:00] 

Heidi: Hi, my name is Heidi Elisabeth Yolen Stemple, or Heidi EY Stemple. I am an author of. For children. I use she her pronouns. I live in Western Massachusetts and there's nothing I like more than sharing books with people. 

Matthew: That's good stuff. You got those librarian vibes. I think writers share librarian vibes and librarians shall write share writer vibes.

It's a, it's not a bad thing at all. 

Heidi: We're all book dealers. 

Matthew: Yeah. Yeah. I like it. You got this new novel in verse : The Poetry of Car Mechanics. I'd love if you don't mind, for you to share a book talk for folks that haven't encountered it yet. 

Heidi: Sure. I have to tell you, Matthew, that as many books as I have published, and I just shared with you privately, that I just signed contracts for my 50 and [00:03:00] 51st book.

This is my debut novel. Yeah. So I've written mostly compilations if there were longer form or anthologies and collections and picture books, but I've never written a novel before. So this is my first one. It is a verse novel, which I liken to writing. 200 picture books and then revising 200 picture books.

And it is about a boy growing up in a household where his mother is absent and his grandfather, who is his custodial parent doesn't share any worldview with Dylan. And Dylan and his grandfather are car mechanics. But Dylan is also a poet and bird watcher, and one day when he walks out behind the shop, he spots an injured hawk.

And when he spots the injured hawk and starts to figure out how he can help fix the hawk, unlike a kind of like he fixes [00:04:00] cars, he starts a journey of self-discovery. Mining what has happened in his past and where he can go from here in the future.

Matthew: You, as said before, have written 50. So you've published 50 some books primarily picture books, nonfiction, but in that form, not in the form of a middle grade novel. Why write for middle grade? Is it one of those cases of that's what the story was, or was it something else? Because I don't know, you work with a lot of kids and your readers have grown up.

Maybe it's that. 

Heidi: I think with every story, and I talk about this a lot when I teach because I love to teach writing primarily at the Highlights Foundation, but also for S-C-B-W-I and other places as well. But I talk about following your stories lead, and this one, as I started writing it.

It [00:05:00] turns out that Dylan's about 15 years old. And I just, when he told me that, and that sounds a little more woo than I like it to. But honestly, if you're a writer, the character told me how old he was, and I just followed his lead. And I often say I'm bumping along after the character, just trying to catch up with him in this case, or her, or them.

As they're revealing their story. 

Matthew: So how did you meet this 15-year-old fictional character? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe you've met other teenagers that didn't make it into the books in the same way, but this was, Dylan was different.

Heidi: Yeah, it act the genesis of this book is actually funny. I was at Highlights, I was retreating, so I was writing whatever I wanted to.

With my friend Casey Robinson, whose book Small Things Mended, has just been honored with an honor book for the Massachusetts Book Awards. We're so proud. And I [00:06:00] got a text message from my friend Eileen Robinson, who at the time. Was was editing for her own company and she texted me and she said, someday you're gonna have to write a book for me.

I said, of course Eileen, of course we must work together. And she said, it's gonna have to be a boy book. And I said, Eileen, I don't write boy books ever. I am all girl power. And she sent me a little laughing thing and she said, oh, and it's gonna have to be a novel. And I said. There is absolutely no way I have a novel in me. And she just said, no, it's gonna happen. And so I sat down in cabin 16 at Highlights looking out at the woods behind the cabin, and I thought, all right I always wanted to try my hand at a verse novel. It sounds like something to stretch your writing muscles.

But I don't think I have this in me. And I thought, oh what would be the manliest title? Because I've been tasked with this boy book. Now to be [00:07:00] clear, the characters I write again, I let them speak to me what they are. But I've never sat down to write a boy book. But I thought, okay, what's the most ridiculous, manly title I can think of?

And The Poetry of Car Mechanics came to me and I started thinking about that and. I sat down to write that poem, just that poem, because I thought it would be absolutely, that poem ridiculous. And when I finished with that poem, I wrote 18 more poems because the character started telling me, knocking on the window of that cabin saying, you need to tell my story.

You need to write my story. Oh, cool. And if it's okay with you, I'll read you that first poem. 

Matthew: Please do. And 

Heidi: it's called The Poetry of Car Mechanics. And in my proving that it can't be done, I opened up the door for this story. There is a certain poetry in car mechanics, part art, part meter and math, part discovery.

Lifting the [00:08:00] hood reveals a world I know, not like the real world with its mixed messages and verbal landmines, missing pieces, and ones that don't quite fit. Like me, when I'm inside a car, an engine, everything makes sense. The motor sings. I can tune the sour notes, fix the broken parts, less doctor than partner.

I wish the world around me with its broken parts, with my broken parts was more like a car engine. So that was the poem, not I revised it, but not too much. And that was the entryway into this book. 

Matthew: Just an exploratory poem. Okay, you want me to try to write this thing? Let me write a poem and show you that I can't do it and show you that I can't, and.

In stepping into that space, you said you wrote more exploratory or follow up or related [00:09:00] poems beyond that? Just, it just kept expanding out. 

Heidi: I needed to know who this character was because I set it up, but I didn't know him yet. And I got curious and I think that when the author becomes curious, the hope is that a reader will read that first poem and be curious and want to move forward into the book.

And. There's lots of things about this. I thought there was an incident in at my own house where I heard the crows screaming and I knew immediately there was a predator because you get that prickly flesh when you hear, and Dylan even says it later in the poem, he says, because we are. Animals after all that we have tried to breed that fear and that caution out of us by religion and by, by science and all these different things in society.

But we still feel that. And in my real life, when I looked out, I looked up to see if there was a hawk or an eagle. And out of the grasses and out of the trees in my backyard came a bobcat. So I [00:10:00] knew instinctively that there was a predator, and I tried to write that bobcat into the story. And I realized I have no business telling a Bobcat story.

I am a birder. I love birds. I am known for my bird books. So instead I took that little nugget of reality and I put it back into the sky. So Dylan walks out and he hears the crows sounding their crow alarms, and he looks up and he sees a hawk.[00:11:00] 

Matthew: Your. Book is a lot of things, Heidi, and I wonder as I'm hearing you share if it's because of your exploratory approach that made the pacing what it is, which is wonderful that it's not sequential. Some novels work really sequentially and others don't, but really we, we put pieces together. Almost alongside Dylan.

I think you give Dylan the respect of knowing before we, the reader do, because Dylan is sharing it, thank you, through their voice with us. But to learn about, complexities everywhere, to learn about the complexities of pops, to learn about the complexities of what was really going on with mom and.[00:12:00] 

What other kids assumed of Dylan because of mom showing up and disappearing and needing to be cared for by her 15-year-old in some ways. I want to ask you big picture how for you. You found were you like, are you an outliner for this? Were you a what did that look like?

I love I once asked, I love asking novelists this, but I once asked, have you met Ka Holt before? Yes. Lovely human being. And she once told me that when at least early novels are coming together, house arrest and some of the other ones that she would write her poems onto. Index cards and then lay all of these poems out all over the floor and go, okay, this goes here.

This isn't gonna fit. This needs to be rewritten and shared pictures with me of that's what that looked like. Now I don't know anyone writing that way. Terrify. Huh? That sounds terrifying. It sounds terrifying. Terrifying. But I say that to say [00:13:00] there's a really beautiful. Narrative structure or rhythm that you have in this book that feels intentional.

So I guess I'm just asking what was your method or approach to, to be able to build the narrative the way that you did? 

Heidi: So I have to say that I am completely a pants or a fly by the seat of your pants writer. Cool. I, my mom calls it flying into the mist, which I think is much more poetic. Of course. So I like to sit down and write the beginning of a book.

And then I write the next part and the next part and the next part, I just move forward. Now that being said, sometimes I'll leave a hole. 'cause I don't know. Recently I was writing, I have three more novels coming out in the next couple years. Cool. And I was writing the second in that. Trilogy and I needed to learn.

This is funny. I needed to learn how to crash a backhoe, but I did not know that and I didn't wanna stop to research that. Yes, I know your face says it all. I needed to learn how to crash a backhoe 'cause the kids were gonna crash a backhoe. So I just left [00:14:00] learn how to crash a backhoe and then just kept going till the end.

So that's the type of writer that I am. I love to just write it through and the pacing in this novel. Is exactly how it came to me, and also much different from the way it came to me. So I did so much of this novel is told in flashback. Yeah. And it's, it flashes back to several different touch points in Dylan's life, the day his mother left for good.

The day in, well in several different days. Within there, and they come in different ways. Sometimes it's him grappling at the moment with a thought, and sometimes it's just explaining what happened before. And that really was part of the initial manuscript. Now that said. A lot of what I did was shuffling things like lifting a section and putting it earlier so that it made more sense once I knew more about the story.

Once you knew 

Matthew: you had these pieces [00:15:00] more, 

Heidi: sorry, this piece should Go ahead. Got it. And there was a lot of stuff that I tell you, my editor, Rebecca Davis, who was at Astra Wordsong. There is not a single word, a single comma, a single line break in this book that she did not touch. Mostly to say, can you do a little more here?

Or is this the right word? And sometimes I would say, yes it is, because in birding that's how we talk about it. We don't use the OR and we just say it. And so she really, by her editorial style. Made me think deeply about absolutely everything I put in this book and I talk when I'm teaching about intentionality and I feel like every single bit of this book was intentional and especially because we're talking about mental health and.

I don't think there's anybody listening to your podcast, [00:16:00] anyone in this world who is not touched by mental health. And I unfortunately, and my family am as well. And so I needed Dylan to be able to speak about his family member who suffers from the bi from bipolar disorder in any way, Dylan. Needed to, even if it was not how I knew Dylan felt about it, and it was not how I would speak about it.

So until I could defend every word and say, I really believe this is how he would think about it, I did not even submit it. So there was a lot of thought that went into this, but, and part of it was pulling it apart sometimes in the middle of a poem and making it into two poems and then. Placing another layer of storytelling in between it.

So there was a little bit of that, but the basic storytelling of how it evolved, how the story evolves, how you [00:17:00] meet Dylan and Pops as you go along, and then you flashback to understanding some of that that was really baked in right. In that first time I told the story the first time I wrote all the way through that said, process wise, the index cards that scares the pants off of me.

I can't imagine trying that. However, I do have one super helpful note when I wrote it, I started right at the beginning numbering my poems. Oh, so at those moments when I decided I needed to pull it apart and move a section of poems, those numbers remained so I knew where they came from and could put them back if I decided it was wrong.

And one of the things that I did during the process was I would, when I felt it was there. It belonged there, and I knew it did. At the end of a writing day, I would renumber all the poems again. So [00:18:00] first of all, I knew how much I added or subtracted because the poem number of poems would be different, but also it gave me that accomplishment at the end of the day when I knew it sounded right to me for that revision, I would renumber it.

And that was the the it. It's almost like shuffling a deck of cards and then knowing that they're in the right order. 

Matthew: Yeah. Sometimes 

Heidi: talk about a chiropractic, right? When you suddenly are in alignment after cracking, it immediately. 

Matthew: I'm just gonna call out the parallels of what Dylan goes through in this book.

And knowing things. Yeah. Yeah, I think about how you have this character, Larry, in the book who works at the mechanic shop and. Maybe sequentially in our read of the story, the first person who Dylan is mourning the loss of, so to speak. And Larry leaves before we get the why from among other [00:19:00] things, pops, putting up this sign in the shot that says American cars, American Jobs, American drivers, all others go home.

And it just struck me as just a storyteller's skill to be able to make sure that we didn't start off the book with that line, but that we got to ask why wait, why are these people moving around? Why, if this person was important to you, are we removing them from the story? You don't, you end up connecting with Larry.

Understanding that Dylan is maybe mourning that Larry is not in his life anymore. And then getting this message and having to reconcile with what Dylan is reconciling with. So I like hearing it's just to say, coming back to what you were just sharing, Heidi, that you found the clarity of writing in sequence and then going this was 47.

It's [00:20:00] gonna work as three because I've found a resonance in that sequence. That's an interesting practice to, to be able to trust yourself writing it in sequence and then trust yourself reordering the sequence. 

Heidi: Yeah. Yeah. And Larry really represents the first person, at least that you read in the book, who really sees Dylan fully, really sees Dylan and has a, has a.

As a calming nature to him. And you can really sense. I hope, that's what I've tried to put, that he stuck around as long as he possibly could because he meant this kid meant something to him Dylan being the kid, and that it wasn't Larry's responsibility, but he was really quite nurturing.

And then you find, as you go through the book, there are other people who. Who saw Dylan but didn't take over those roles. The librarian being one of them you find out [00:21:00] and the kids that he was friends with, but then they were removed because of his mom's mental illness and have sad that made him and how also proud he tried to remain.

Not wanting pity. And I hope that the complexity of Dylan's character comes through. And also he's a little bit, just a little bit of an unreliable narrator as, 

Matthew: we all are, 

Heidi: as we all are because it is, this is told in first person, so we are hearing only what Dylan sees, and I think that in the flashback.

Even though they're told in first person as well, you get to see the complexities of the relationships that he has. And I was really dealing with that as the entire country was dealing with that. When I started writing it during the first presidency of he who shall not be named and.

Everybody was grappling with what do we do with these family members who [00:22:00] don't share our worldview? And maybe we didn't understand that they didn't share our worldview until now. Yeah. That I think shows through, even though we removed him from the book because he was present in the first drafts of it.

And we really were hoping that the kids reading it wouldn't have any idea what that meant. So we removed it and then it came out in April. So there's that. I hate being accidentally topical. It's not my intention ever to speak directly on the nose to anything but. 

Matthew: But it is good to speak to the moment because that grounds it for the readers.

Heidi: Yeah. It's true. 

Matthew: Their moment might be now and their moment might be discovering this book in five years, and it's still being relevant because of how we place ourself onto the book.

Heidi: And that's the hope. You wanna talk, you wanna speak specifically and yet universally. 

Matthew: Yeah. Heidi, how long have you been involved with Highlights, we must have. You and [00:23:00] I must have talked about it before, right? 

Heidi: We've been at Highlights. We've been there together, but 

Matthew: Have you been there? What do they celebrate their. Anniversary of you 20, not 25th. I don't remember. So 

Heidi: I began going there, not 25 years ago, but I have known the Brown family for as long as I can remember, because back maybe in the early eighties, Kent Brown wanted to start a publishing company to be associated with the Highlights Foundation and Highlights magazine.

And they've always had a, a. A division that's educational publishing. 

Matthew: Yes. 

Heidi: But Kent, who is George Brown, who now runs the joint, as I say his father called his buddy Jane Yolan, who is happens to be my mom and said, I want to start a publishing company. Which is what became Boyd Mills. Yeah. And he said, but I don't really know much about Children's books in the traditional publishing market. And my mom said I do. [00:24:00] And so they met and they talked and they published many books together. Maybe the first books are hers. I'm not a hundred percent certain of the timeline, but, so I have been involved with the Highlights Foundation and Boyd Mills Press, which became Astra, which coincidentally is the publisher of The Poetry of Car Mechanics for.

As long as I can remember. And I must have been a young teen at the time, and George must have been in elementary school because I am considerably older than him, which I like to point out. But and though I don't know that we'd ever met, we certainly knew of each other, which is fun. And then I started going there and I.

I decided I wanted to teach. So I begged a lot. I said, you should hire me. You should hire me. And then they said you can come as a special guest. And so I came as a special guest and I gave extra lectures and I did extra stuff. And they said, oh, we like her. You just gotta, you gotta show 'em how great.

Yeah. And that goes in every, [00:25:00] everything possible. That's 

Matthew: a life, that's a life recommendation. Yeah, 

Heidi: exactly. I always say it costs nothing to be awesome. 

Matthew: I love that you and your mom are, I love that so many people, but also you and your mom are helping to fund scholarships to keep more and more people being able to access the special place, the special resources Highlights.

I have partnered with them for the very reason I've probably been working with them. Yeah. How long have you and I known each other? Maybe 10 years. 

Heidi: Yeah. Must be. 

Matthew: It's been about that long, but I would say 12. Okay. So I've been working with them. Because I've admired their work and they continue to show up in a way that respects and centers, marginalized voices and wants everyone to come in.

They don't, in that way, gatekeeper, although they could, it costs something to run a facility like they do, and yet they keep seeking ways from this community in so many ways. Maybe we all help run Highlights and it's great to know that [00:26:00] you and Jane and others are helping to sponsor these scholarships.

Do you just feel like you're on, do you also, feel like you're on a journey with Highlights of just what more can we do to keep helping bring more people

Heidi: every time? Absolutely. I, at some point decided it's not. It's not enough to say you support other writers if you don't put your money where your mouth is.

And I don't mean you have to put your money there. If you don't have money, you, I have a 

Matthew: platform. I, that's how I do it. I know what you mean. 

Heidi: And so when we were running. Our boot camps, we did some there and we decided how much we needed to make it feasible for us, and we decided with Highlights that we wouldn't split the overage, whatever it was after that, we would start this scholarship.

So we seeded the scholarship with that money that first year, and we have been as a family making sure we're donating we're trying to the Heidi EY Stemple and Jane Yolen. I think it's the Jane and Heidi EY Stemple scholarship. [00:27:00] Wait, whichever. We have been fundraising on my mom's birthday every year, and we have been putting in money every year because we're trying to endow it so it will remain forever.

But that, and not only that, we like to do things that, that, are maybe not money based. I also started the Kid Lit Pride Scholarship because again, as an ally I thought. I needed to do something that was concrete. Yeah. I asked friends to donate and we made sure that all queer content creators had a chance to dip into that scholarship.

I just think it's important to do if you don't have money to do it, but you're an established person and you have some in inside information. You can just quietly mentor somebody else. My mom taught me, she keeps telling me, oh, you're so good at this. I said, oh my goodness. You know where I learned it? I learned it from you.

If I wasn't doing this, you would reach out in and just slap me because you'd say you have to pay it forward. [00:28:00] She says, I never could pay back the people who helped me when I was young, but I can pay it forward. And she's done that her entire. Oh my goodness. 60 something year career. So with my much smaller 31-year-old career, can you imagine that's the smaller career in my family.

I have decided that's Highlights is really where I'm going to put. My the, what I can do I make it a practice that anytime I've asked, I, I'm have to ask to speak on stolen native lands, which is of course, anytime all land you're asked to speak, that I send a donation to the Native Creatives fund.

They're at Highlights because I know these funds are going directly. To creative people. Yeah. From marginalized communities who are wanting to find education or peace and just be able to write more. And we need those stories. And the reason why I'm so enamored with Highlights Foundation is not [00:29:00] just because it's a great place for me, but because they have also repeatedly put their money where their mouth is.

Matthew: Had you thinking of all of these stories being able to be brought forward in these storytellers? Absolutely. With our last minute, can I please have the honor of asking you that I will see a library full of children tomorrow morning. Is there a message I can bring to them from you? 

Heidi: There is. So whenever I'm asked this question, 'cause I've been on your podcast a couple times, I find myself in a different world with different readers listening to it.

So I actually really thought about this time. And within the world we're in right now. The message I wanna bring is that you are not alone. I know that sometimes it feels like it. This is related to Dylan in The Poetry of Car Mechanics as well. But I know for a fact with 59 years on this planet of experience, that I can assure you that you are absolutely not alone.

There are people out there who exist, people you will meet, who share your hopes and [00:30:00] fears and quirks If you're an artist. A family full of athletes, I promise. You're gonna meet your art friends. You will find your nerd posse, your shy group, your swarm of bug enthusiasts, your queer BFFs or your Picky Eaters club.

You will find them or they will find you because we always find each other. And if you don't know them yet, you can find them. Find all of us in the pages of books.