From Freelancer to Bestselling Author: Writing Lessons from Newbery Medalist Jerry Craft

How can staying true to your story unlock your biggest creative breakthrough?

In this episode Ashley Cisneros Mejia chats with award-winning author and illustrator Jerry Craft, creator of New Kid—the first graphic novel to ever win the prestigious Newbery Medal. Jerry opens up about his inspiring journey from a reluctant reader to a New York Times bestselling author, sharing how his personal experiences of feeling like an outsider became the foundation for a story that resonates with readers of all ages and backgrounds.

Tune in to hear Jerry's candid insights on the power of perseverance, navigating countless rejections, and staying true to your creative vision even when the odds are stacked against you. Whether you're a freelance writer seeking to get published or a creative professional in search of inspiration, this episode offers invaluable wisdom on storytelling, tenacity, and building a successful career as a writer.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The challenges Jerry overcame before breaking through with a traditional publisher.
• How to transform personal experiences into universal stories that resonate with diverse audiences.
• The importance of perseverance and resilience in pursuing a creative career, even after facing repeated rejection.
• Why staying true to your vision and avoiding limiting labels can be key to long-term creative success.

ABOUT JERRY CRAFT

Jerry Craft is the New York Times bestselling author and illustrator of the graphic novels New Kid, Class Act, and School Trip. New Kid is the only book in history to win the John Newbery Medal for the most outstanding contribution to children’s literature (2020); the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers’ Literature (2019), and the Coretta Scott King Author Award for the most outstanding work by an African American writer (2020). Jerry was born in Harlem and grew up in the Washington Heights section of New York City and now travels the world telling kids and their families about the importance of reading. Buy the books at: https://jerrycraft.com/

Chapters

• 1:29 Introduction to Jerry Craft and his award-winning work
• 3:19 How Jerry Craft transitioned from working in advertising to becoming an author
• 4:19 How Jerry's personal story inspired New Kid and the character of Jordan Banks
• 6:35 The challenge of writing for middle-grade readers and balancing innocence with maturity
• 15:43 How Jerry Craft first got into self-publishing
• 18:37 How Jerry Craft first found out that he won the Newbery Medal
• 23:19 How life changes once you win a Newbery Medal
• 27:02 How Jerry Craft transitioned from self-publishing to becoming a traditionally-published author
• 32:32 A season of rejection and perseverance
• 34:07 Finding the right time, the right editor, and the right publisher
• 36:01 The process of creating a graphic novel
• 37:41 There really are no overnight successes
• 41:10 Glowing emails, hate mail, and book bans
• 53:53 Jerry Craft’s and Kwame Alexander’s forthcoming book, J vs. K
• 55:18 Jerry Craft's advice for aspiring freelance authors and creatives

Transcript

0:00

so I gave the, , story about the moth and the chrysalis, cause kids are going, let me help. And then they cut it open to make it easier, but it ends up that, uh, It's the struggle to break out that strengthens the wings and makes them strong enough where they can fly. If you open it for them, their wings don't get strong and they can't fly. So I had 30 years of pushing to get out of this chrysalis. Welcome to Talk Freelance To Me, the independent contractors, and solopreneurs. I'm your host, Ashley Cisneros Mejia. For more than 20 years, I've worked as a journalist and freelance writer. Today, as a mom of three kids, I'm passionate about helping other women leverage the freedom that freelance offers. On Talk Freelance To Me, we're all about the business of freelancing. If you want to learn how to monetize your talents, make money on your own terms, and design a flexible work life that actually works for you. This show is for you before we get started. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite social media platforms, review us on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. And don't forget to share this episode with a friend. Visit our website at talkfreelancetome. com for free resources. Join our email list to be the first to know about our latest offers... Today I have the pleasure of truly made history in the world of literature, the amazingly talented author and illustrator, Jerry Craft. Jerry is the New York Times bestselling author. and illustrator of the groundbreaking graphic novels, New Kid. Class Act. And School Trip. New Kid is the only book to win the Newbery Medal, the Perkis Prize, and the Coretta Scott King Author Award, all for the same book. The series centers around , Jordan Banks. He's a middle school student who loves nothing more than spending his time drawing cartoons about his life. But instead of sending him to art school, his parents send him to this prestigious private school that's known for academics. Jordan is actually one of the few kids of color in his entire grade. And as he makes his daily trips from his neighborhood in Washington Heights in New York to this upscale day school, he finds himself torn between two worlds, and he Struggles to fit in with either one. So since this publication, Universal Pictures has acquired rights to New Kid and has teamed up with LeBron James production company to make the book into a movie. In this podcast episode, Jerry and I explore his journey as a writer and illustrator, the impact of his award winning work, and what happens when your books get banned. So without further ado, let's jump into the episode. Thank you so much, Jerry Craft, for being on the Talk Freelance to Me show. How did you go from working in media and advertising to being an author? I always wanted to draw. I didn't want to write because I always hated to read. And I try to think back to why I didn't like to read. As a young African American boy growing up in New York and Washington Heights, I just never saw myself, , in print. TV, movies, it was always, , looking through a window at somebody else. It really wasn't until I became a dad myself, reading to my kids because I wanted them to love reading. That was when I started seeing myself because I started meeting authors. I started going to book festivals. Having a relationship with a bookstore, which I never had as a kid, having a relationship with a library, which I never had as a kid. That's amazing. How much of yourself did you put into Jordan and what has been the feedback from readers to Jordan's character? So Um, Notes Jordan is a 12 year old boy who grew up in Washington Heights. So the house where he lives is the house where I grew up. So that's my house. That's my neighborhood. And the basis of the story is my life where I wanted to go to art school. My mom and dad did not want me to go to art school because they thought that this whole art thing was a fad that I would grow out of. Oh, it's a cute hobby, but it's not a job. So instead of sending me to, , the art high schools that I had applied for music and art design, and I got in, they sent me to a school called Fieldston in Riverdale, so Jordan, every day I got on that M 100 bus and went from Washington Heights, which is all, Black and Latino to Riverdale, which is like exclusively white, , middle class and upper middle class and upper class. So it was like going from one planet to a completely different planet, especially as a kid, I wasn't used to that. And so that part is definitely me. I was always one of the youngest and the smallest kids in my class. So that part is there and me and my friends were just good kids. So there's nothing in New Kid or Class Act, a school trip where you'll not want your kids to read. They're not. Going behind their mom and dad's back. They're not smoking or drinking or cursing. It's a very, in my opinion, a PG , I really love doing the innocence of middle grade. I think that's my niche. I was curious about that too. Why you chose the middle grade and maybe you could talk more about that. Cause it feels like there is that bridge between still being childlike, but then also exploring identity. Belonging, you really do a masterful job of exploring things that are harder topics like microaggression, but it's done in such a way that's very natural. I could see these themes and just remember instances from outside. So here's the thing. One of the difficult things is if you're writing for kids, how do you make it nice and innocent, but not boring for kids? Because kids tend to read up. They want to read about older kids. You're not going to want to be. 14 reading about a 10 year old, but a 10 year old will read about a 14 year old. How do you make it cool enough so that kids want to read it, but then have it literary enough so that teachers embrace it? And then again, on the edge so that kids think it's cool, but then it's okay for you, if you read it to say it's okay for your daughter to read it, if you did that whole Venn diagram thing, there's that little piece here that I had to stay within. So I tried to do it cool enough where kids can want to relate, but then like some of the parameters I put on myself is. The language, so I don't use ain't, so I kept it where an English teacher can say, Oh, okay, I can do this with my class. And as a result, it's in some school curriculums. That's amazing. Yeah. Like I've been to schools where the kids are doing homework and book reports, which is, that's gives me goosebumps just talking about, I'm like, they are doing. What came from you. Right. Homework assignments on this, or a lot of schools make it summer reading, or they'll make it a summer book so that all of their incoming sixth graders read it. I've gone to schools where they bought 1400 books and they do a one book, one school read where even the custodians and the school bus drivers read it. Yeah. And then they'll bring me in. To do with assembly. That's interesting. Yeah. It sounds like you're from a strategic and a storytelling kind of angle. You're having to think about all these audiences, the teachers, the parents, the kids, a core centering the kids. Has there been a different response from the adults who read it? Such as like you mentioned, the custodian, the bus drivers. Versus the children, are they connecting with it differently? Yeah, because if you read it, depending on how you grew up, you might be like, Oh my God, that was my life. I was always the one black kid or the one Latina girl or the one Asian kid. So even though Jordan is African American, if you've ever been that one person, you get the story. If you've ever been the one girl and a boy in a class of boys or vice versa, or the tall kid or the really small kid, he's like that identifiable character. Even like as far as teachers, the very first page, it shows Jordan falling. And he says, this is how I feel every single day of my life. Like I'm falling without a parachute. I'm not really falling. That's called a metaphor. I learned about them in English. So now if a teacher wants to do a breakout session about metaphors, she's got it and the kids are in, Oh, what's a metaphor. Okay. Let's do some homework assignment. Let's read. Give us, what are some other examples of metaphors? You know what I mean? Because as a kid, I grew up in the schoolhouse rock era, right? Okay. Sesame Street, Electric Company, Magic Garden, Mr. Rogers, and all of those had teachable moments, Fat Albert. So it's hard for me to do entertainment that doesn't teach in some capacity. Because I realized that when I go to schools, I'm like the fun uncle. The teachers are mom and dad, and they could say, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. And I'll go and say, Hey, when you go on social media, you have to be really careful about what you put up there. Because it can haunt you forever. And then they'll go to the teacher and go, did you know that if you put stuff up once and they're like, yes, we've been telling you that since second grade. Yeah, but we don't listen to you. But uncle Jerry told. So I know that I have a self guided trajectory of what I want to do for kids and for adults, because if you read Jordan is very respectful of his parents. And a lot of times when you see parents in cartoons, they are idiots. They can't do anything. And the kids are the smart ones. And how many times have you seen dad go to fix a sink and next thing, there's a geyser coming out. And then the, the whole, or dad wants to do something with, Oh, let me just change the socket. And then the whole neighborhood blacks out. I have sometimes where the kids are right. Sometimes mom is right. Sometimes dad's right. Sometimes grandpa's right. So they all have their kind of time to shine. I feel like I've read about that. There was this time in pop culture where the father was the butt of the joke. Oh, always. Yes. And I've never, I didn't make that connection until we were speaking. And that was one of the things that I took away, is the relationship with Jordan and his father. Jordan and, and grandpa, even Mr. Pierre. Right. That wisdom that he's imparting upon Jordan, Jordan's receiving it, but it's all from a place of love that even the mom, you can tell that she wants Jordan to go to RAD for the opportunities. Right. It's not that she doesn't believe in her sons. Right, but like my parents, they had only heard the term starving artists. So they thought I'd be living in their basement until I was 60. Even in TV commercials, like there's one commercial and I forget what it is. It lets us say like Cheetos, Doritos. And the kids have the dad doing push ups and stuff to get a Dorito. And I'm like, are you kidding me? Yeah. And it's adults writing them. So why are adults making adults seem so stupid? And then they get home and their kids treat them with no respect. It's so interesting. Yeah. So interesting. One of the things that I noticed right away on the cover, you have the new Newberry medal. Yeah. And let's talk a minute about what a big deal, the awards that your books have received. What's that process? Do you get nominated or? No, so for the Newberry, it's like You don't know it until you win it. I knew that I had done really well in mock Newberry's. And mock Newberry's are for kids, right? So a lot of schools to get their kids into these books, they will do their own voting. So I would see on social media, Hey, at Southern Penn elementary. Our mock Newberry's and new kid won the Newberry. And I was like, Oh, cool. And so I always knew that kids would like it. I, as okay, a book about an African American boy written by an African American man. Done as a graphic novel, to me, there's a disproportionate amount of books that have an African American protagonist that deal with misery and trauma. Yeah. And some people don't get it, but I always say as a woman, if the only books that you had as a girl were Handmaid's Tale, but no, but really think about that. Right. Oh, yeah. Great protagonist, but the misery and the trauma, right? So when you grow up and you're reading Tom Sawyer and slavery, civil rights struggle, and how many African American movies is, oh, This is so and so he's been in jail for 40 years and it's always for a crime he didn't commit and and then It's Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx or someone as a lawyer and now his job is to get him out Yeah, so now at the end he gets him out. Hey, I'm free Now what is that a happy story you saw two hours of misery and now the last 15 minutes he's out in this What's he gonna do? Those are to me miserable stories, but we were the happy one and so then I'm like Is it that they don't want happy stories? I had tried to get published from 94 to 97. And I got so many rejection letters that in 1997, I went to the library. I got a book on how to self publish. And in 1997, I self published my very first book, which is Mama's Boys as American Sweet Potato Pies, a book of my comic strips. Because I wasn't going to do the misery book. And then I published another one. And then I published a third mama's boys book. And then all the authors started coming to me and saying, Hey, we can't get published either. Can you help us publish our book? So I started my own publishing company. And for the next 20 years, like that whole shelf of books there. It's amazing. Are all books that I worked with other authors to publish. That's great. So they'd send me their manuscript, and if I liked it, I would draw it, I'd do the layout, the coloring, and get the ISBN number and the barcode, and I would upload it to Ingram Spark or CreateSpace. And then give them the login and then they could just order books the rest of their lives and sell them. I had given up on ever being traditionally published and I really didn't know what a Newberry was. And I remember when my kids were maybe eight. I found a book called Bud, Not Buddy, and it had these two little stickers on them. And I read it. And that was the first time I had seen it. It's by Christopher Paul Curtis. And we loved the book. And as a 40 year old, I'm like, this is as close as I've ever seen myself in a book. It's this kid. And it had the two little stickers on it. And I remember going back to the library, like, Hey, you got any more of these books with the little stickers on? Cause you're onto something. Yeah. They're pretty good. And so one was. The Newbery and the other was the Credit Scott King book award. And Bud and That Buddy at the time was the only book ever to win the Newbery and the Credit Scott King. And then 10 years later, I became the second. That is awesome. That is, didn't even know what they were. And then. As a reader to my kids, if I had come back to the future, 10 years, you're going to be the second book. So there'll be kids looking at that. When you think about what writers do, what you do as an illustrator, as an artist, where you're literally doing magic and taking these abstract things in your mind and communicating them through words and paper. And you're being vulnerable and putting that out into the world and for these entities that are so respected these award programs to say, yes, you're it. Right. That is that's profound. Oh, yeah. So how did you find it was so I always heard that. You get a call anywhere from 3 a. m. to 6 a. m. Oh my goodness. Why? Because I think the, the judges and the Newbery committee in my mind is like deliberating all night of who is going to be the recipient and they let you know some really early time in the morning. So I normally shut off my phone and then I was like, okay, we're going to Obviously I'm going to leave it on tonight just in case. And I woke up at 5 30, just like staring at the ceiling. And then after about maybe 6 15, I'm like, it was nice to, to at least think about that. And then, so I closed my eyes and then my phone rang and, is this Jerry Craft? Yes. And I'm like, boy, if this is a credit card, I'm going to be so mad. And I was like, congratulations, you have just won the John Newbery medal, the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children. And for once my life was speechless and I was like, wow. And they're screaming and crying. Again, I didn't know how big a deal it was. I didn't realize it was like an Oscar for children's book writing. And I was like, Oh, okay. Yeah, that's cool. Thank you. And they're like, yeah. I think they wanted screaming and crying, but, oh, wow, that's cool. Thank you. Then they're like, oh, but don't tell anyone until we make the announcement. They have a live streaming thing that starts at 9 AM or something like that. So now the biggest thing ever, I can't tell anyone. Okay. And then it was 6 27 in the morning. And then at. 642, the phone rings again. Okay. This is weird. I hope they're not like, Oh, sorry. We thought we were calling, we thought we were calling Jerry Pinkney. Cause there had been a lot of that at that time. People mixed up at the Oscars and all that stuff. Yes. There was a big scandal. And then is this Jerry Carefla? Yeah. Congratulations. You've won the Corella Scott King author award. And I was like, wow, like, Same morning, because they, when they have the ALA, the American Library Associations, they have the winter meeting where they announce the winners. And then in June. They have the convention where they actually hand out the awards and you make these speeches and it's a big dinner and all that stuff, which I didn't do because of COVID they canceled them. So I had, I did all that from my office. I'll give him this big speech where this should have been like 300 people with dinner and all that. I was like, okay, it is what it is. So then I go on to the live streaming and they do all the awards and I'm like recording that my hand is shaking because I know it's coming. But. It's like maybe a two hour ceremony. And then of course the Newbery is like the last one. And then once they announced it, then my phone like started ringing off the hook. And then Kwame Alexander, who had won in 2015, called me to congratulate me and Meg Medina and Derek Barnes. And it's been life altering. It's been like just a whole nother level, like ever since. So, do you mean more opportunities, more introduction, more money, like, what does that mean if you compare the day before? More everything. So this is the actual Coretta Scott King book award. And then prior to that, I had won, this is the Kirkus prize. So New Kid is the only book that has won all three of these. Wow. Yeah. Only book ever, not only black book, just the only book ever to win the Kirkus prize, the Newberry medal and the Coretta Scott King author award. Congratulations. So to instantly go from obscure to like. The only author ever. So like when you think of Charlotte's web and Wiz of Oz and like these classic books. So it's funny. One of the first things is that schools were calling, Hey, congratulations. I'm like, Oh, thank you. Are you still coming to our school? Cause I had all these, these, I had all these schools booked this. Are you still coming? Oh yeah, no, absolutely. I'm still coming. Are you still charging us the same? No, now you get the new berry. You get that new berry right now, you're going to have to triple that. And I had trips to Beijing, to Hawaii, all these places, and then COVID shut the world down for two years. So all that was canceled. Wow. Yep. But. Amount of sales, because basically every library buys it, it probably will never go out of print. So if you go to even like the Barnes and Nobles here, like sometimes it's in the award section. Sometimes it's in just like young readers like, Hey, can you put that in the award section? And on my wall, I have the Newbery medal poster and the credit Scott King. So all those, all the ones I had won up to mine, but I just, this is from the Sharjah book festival. So that's in the UAE. So we went from Sharjah to Dubai, to Abu Dhabi. So this is work. That's a work trip. Another day in the office. I went to Hawaii for 10 days, did about four schools and they have a, almost like a Jeopardy quiz bowl cricket. And then I've been to Kenya with Kwame Alexander visiting schools. And of course, any book fair that ever turned me down before us. Remember us? Oh, I remember. You can be on the D list. Remember we told you beat it and don't ever call us again. Sorry. That's incredible. Yeah. What a story to go from when you were mentioning how hard it was trying to get this traditional deal and then. The market wasn't ready or the publishing industry wasn't ready. Oh, yeah. Some of the rejection letters were insulting. It's one thing to get a form letter. I, I understand that. But when someone takes the time to type a note that says, dear Jerry Craft. The idea of this book should sell, but somehow it doesn't. And the idea that this book or any of your books will ever get published seems to be even more of a damn reality. I'm like, wow, that's mean. Do you feel better about yourself? Yeah. So I actually have one of those in my presentation that I, I blocked out the name, but that's the sweetest revenge, right? Success in Dubai. Yeah, Dubai. Yeah. Okay. That is incredible. So I know you're published by Harper Collins. Do they develop a marketing strategy for you and tell you where to be or what are some of the tactics that you use now to get your books in the hands of readers? Okay, so I'll go back to the beginning. I had been self publishing for 20 years and that was a lot of work because not only did I always have to be drawing and working on the next book, but I had to be. Selling these books also, so I would go from the Harlem book festival, to the Hudson book festival, to the Chappaqua book festival, and I'm always there selling African American children's book festival in Philadelphia, and then I'm working on the next book because I need your deposit. To start working and then I'm out selling. So I was like, I can't do this. So I had a friend of mine who worked for Lit World and I was like, Hey, can you introduce me to anybody, just anybody where I can. And she gave me the names of three editors. One was from Scholastic, one was from like Lee and Lowe. I forget where the third person is. So I sent these query letters and it was all like, Oh, thanks, but no thanks. I was like, okay. And then maybe three months later, I got an email from Scholastic and they said, Hey, we'd love to meet you. Why don't you come in and meet with us? I'm like, Oh, okay, sure. So I took that whole stack of books, right? And I get there, I think it's going to be me and the one on one, and there's six people in the conference room. And I'm like, Oh, Hey. And they're like, okay, you're on. And I'm like, I get up, I talk about every book. I talk about not wanting to do the trauma books. I thought I'm singing and dancing and juggling and, and then it ends. And they're all like, yeah. Okay. And then they said, so do you have an idea for any graphic novels? New Kid was always up here. I couldn't afford to self publish it. I have a book this size that had self published, but it's mainly text. Okay. A black and white version, 200 pages, would cost me about 350 per unit from the printer. So if I bought it for 350 and I sold it for 12, I'm making a couple of dollars on it, but now if you want to sell it through a distributor or a store, they immediately want a 50 percent discount. So if I'm selling it for 12. They want it for six, I'm paying almost 4 to just have it printed. So I'm making like 2 per book. If I was to self publish a 250 page book in color, it might cost me 8 per unit, right? I would have to have charged 24. Retail, no, one's going to spend 24 for someone that they don't know who I am. So I never self published it. I would have, if I could afford it to, in retrospect, it was good that I couldn't afford it. Now, the difference is HarperCollins, they may send this overseas and they may order a hundred thousand. So instead of the 8, they may be paying 50 cents or a dollar, like who knows. But I couldn't get that right. Right. So they said. Do you have an idea for a graphic novel? I said, yeah, I have one loosely based on my life of being one of the few kids of color in a private school. And they all were like, go on. And I was like, oh, and I told them about it and they were like, Oh, this gentleman here is the head of the graphics division. Why don't you guys go into his office? And I was like, oh, okay. And then, so we go there and he says, he pulls this out and he says, have you ever read this book? Wow. And it's Smile by Raina Telgemeier. And I said, no, he says, did you take it home? And read it and I says, okay, and I took it home, I said, 250 page middle grade graphic novel, and the bell went off and then the sunlight showed through the window and the agent started and it was like, Oh, that's what I'm, that's what I'm here for. Wow. And then. I did some samples and they loved it. And then I thought I had a handshake deal with them. And so I used that handshake deal to get an agent, right? Literally the same agent, because I'm like, Hey, I just left Scholastic. I know that they have one of your clients and would you represent me? And I sent it to her and she liked it. So she signed me and then I'm working on it and then I think they take it to the acquisitions meeting and they reject it and I was like, Oh, my goodness, after all that, so then I work it up again and then someone else from Scholastic takes it over to work it. Acquisitions meeting and they rejected it. Oh my goodness. And then my agent found another publisher and that publisher bought it and they gave me an advance and it was supposed to be their lead book for their imprint for 2017. Maybe six months before it's due, they fire my editor and disband that entire imprint. So it's back to square one. So then I rework it some more. I take it back to Scholastic. Oh yeah. We love it. Goes up there. They reject it again. So then. My agent says, okay, are we free to send it wherever we want? And they said, we need our advance back, which supposedly never happened. So now I have to give them their money back. I'm like, that money is spent. I have the family. I had been living off of that money for six months. So I literally cashed in the 401k to pay them back. Yeah. And then once I got the rights back, my agent put it up for auction and then there were six publishers who were interested. So this is where the marketing. comes in. Two of them. I like the publishers. I like the people. But when they did the marketing plan, they were treating it almost exclusively as a black book. So to me, that meant that they were going to limit where I went. They were going to have me at place that were almost exclusively black. And I'm like, this isn't a black story, even though the protagonist, like, that's like saying that alien is a A woman's story, right? Oh, no, that's just for girls. No, it's not. Shoot. I want to be bad. Like Sigourney Weaver. You know what I mean? Yes. Like it, that's not, it's not a girl's movie. So this was, isn't a black book. And if you don't understand that. Then you're not the right publisher for me. So then HarperCollins were going to send me all over. And then I remember talking to Andrew Eliopoulos, who would be my editor. And I had met him at another function called Quelly. He tells me a story that he's reading it and he's calling his boss, Rosemary Brosnan. Oh my God, what chapter are you on? And he was enjoying it so much. So I'm like, this is my editor. He gets my jokes. He gets the sense of humor. He sees the big picture. And then for his boss to see it too, I was like, this is my home. And my agent always said that if you're lucky, it's the right time, the right editor and the right publisher. If you can line those up. You're set and that happened to me and then I signed with them in 2017 and it took about a year and a half to do because that's a lot of work if you look and it's five or six panels per page for 250 pages. Yeah. That's thousands of drawing. And then I do the drawing, the layout, the word balloons. I type in, this is actually my handwriting that I turned into a font. That's amazing. Yeah. And I did some of the coloring. Graphic novels take so long because if I'm writing a prose book and I say, Jordan went into his classroom, he opened up the door and sat down. But in a graphic novel, sat down next to who? What position is he in? What position are the kids next to him in? What's his teacher look like? So even incidental characters in a prose novel, you're not going to describe every kid in the class. But I have to come up. Yeah. So I make sure I get boys, girls, different nationalities, colors, posture. So that first book, each one subsequently gets easier because you know what things look like and who they are. But in the beginning, You have to literally come up with everything. The more that you come up with ahead of time, the easier it gets to write. Because after a while, I know the characters so well that it's almost like taking dictation. The stories come to me and it's just. Let me just get them out on paper. I'm so glad that you told me the backstory because you see these beautiful awards that you've earned. It seems it's all been roses and peaches and cream and it hasn't. Oh, it's been horrible. So did you ever want to give up? I never wanted to stop doing books, but I was getting to a point where I couldn't do it full time. So I was. Looking for a job at different schools to maybe be an art teacher so that I would have the summers off and I got rejected for those. I'm like, I can paint, I can draw, I can do Photoshop. I love kids, kids love me. I can coach the basketball team after school. I can, I had no idea. And I started subbing and then working for different organizations that would send me an afterschool program. But even then I didn't know what was going on. So I'm like, okay, I think I'm going to have to do this. Enforced. And a lot of the stuff that I've done, I was forced to do, forced to self publish, forced not to do those same books everyone else did, forced to write because I love to draw. What was I going to draw? So I had to write my own stories to draw my own comics. If I had a partner who would have been like, Oh, all right. And you draw. I would have always been reliant on someone to write my stories., so I gave the, , story about the moth and the chrysalis, right? Cause kids are going, let me help. And then they cut it open to make it easier, but it ends up that, uh, It's the struggle to break out that strengthens the wings and makes them strong enough where they can fly. If you open it for them, their wings don't get strong and they can't fly. So I had 30 years of pushing to get out of this chrysalis and then finally published. I started January, 2017. I handed it in February, 2018. Now I have to wait a whole year for it to even be published. It didn't come out until February 5th, 2019. I had to wait. And then I won the Kirkus in October of 2019 and the Newbery credit Scott King in January of 2020. And it was, Oh, who's the new kid. Oh, he just came out of nowhere. Oh, yeah. And now it's in maybe 15 different languages. So when I went to Dubai, it's actually in Arabic. There's Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Albanian, Romanian. That's incredible. So when you go to these other countries, what is their response? Because I feel like. There is this exploration of otherness, of when we talk about these microaggressions that Jordan experiences, that Drew experiences, Andy, and that Andy finally gets put in his place, which I like, but Was it Ramon? Uh huh. Yes. In the final book. People from other countries, do they still take away some of those lessons? Because that's a very American, I feel like, experience. Or maybe not. So, I, I got. An email from a teacher saying that her class vowed to be better human beings. Oh my gosh. Because they saw how their words affect other people and their actions affect other people that they were like, we are going to be better human beings because now we know how much we can mess somebody up in New Zealand. There was a class and they wrote me and there was. A kid from one of the indigenous people, like the Maori, right. And in the beginning of new kid, where Liam's dad comes to pick him up first day of school and he drives off in like this Mercedes. Like a really expensive car and the neighbor sees him going off in this expensive car and she's like panicking and the dad goes he's not being arrested Michelle and The teacher from New Zealand was like none of the kids got it. They're like what is And the one indigenous girl was like, that's because whenever someone like us drives away in a flash car, it's usually going to be bad. Like it's police or something. And they were like, what, what do you mean? And then she gave, and they said, she just, every, all ears and eyes were on her. And she just, and it brought them close together. I go into schools and Alexandra with her sock puppet, she's Yes. Gotcha. So this could be the ad for the thing. I'll go to schools now and kids would be like, Oh my God, Mr. Krav, Angela over there. She is Alexander, but they love her. And because they love Alexander. So they love her where without these characters, they might've been like, that's the weird puppet girl. Even in one class, they were like, Oh, see Robert. Yeah. He's Andy and the bars. Yeah. Well, you can change Andy. Now, the American part that is only in America is, Hey, let's email Mr. Kraft and say that we're going to burn his books. They burn? I know they banned it, which I wanted to ask you. Oh, I got a horrible email just yesterday. They come in all the time. Oh yeah. Let's email him and say all these horrible things and then. You go to reply and then it bounces back because they're like, just burn their account. It's not people that want to have a conversation. Hey, let's get 400 signatures to cancel his school visit. So that's the American part of it. You know? So in New Zealand, they're going to be better people because they see the impact. The US thing is, and not all of course, but I get emails. My favorite was. You must suffer from some kind of mental illness thinking that you need to indoctrinate an entire generation. Of kids, I'm like for empathy and kindness. Okay. Guilty. Take me away. Okay. Empathy and kindness. Hey man, what are you in for? Trying to teach kids to be kind. So I knew that it was banned. I knew that it was abandoned and a couple school districts. What did you do when you heard that your book was banned for the first time? It's so funny that kids can read it in Romania, but not in Texas or not in parts of Florida. I got a DM telling me that there was a woman in Katy, Texas that had gotten 400 signatures to cancel my school visit. I was supposed to do a zoom to the whole school district and to take my books out their library. Which they did and they canceled school visit, but then the school board was like, Hey, let's actually read this book. Don't figure. Who would have thought? And they read it and they're like, it's a great book. There's nothing wrong with it. So they put it back on the shelves and then they were like, Mr. Sorry. Will you come and do the zoom? And I had friends are like, tell him now. I'm like, no, cause. It's the kids at it and so they gave them the ability to opt out and I think maybe five families opted out and I don't talk about race in my school visits are talking about a kid who hated to read and how that kid ends up becoming the only author ever to win these three awards. That's a Disney story. Yeah. You know what I mean? Oh, incidentally, so Spring Hill, which is the., production company owned by Maverick Carter and LeBron James bought the rights to do a new kid live action movie with. Wow. Yeah. Universal Studios. So with all that, what happened to me wasn't racist, but me telling what happened is racist and teaching critical race theory and Marxism and whatever else they say it is. That's pretty bad when your childhood experiences. Right. Make someone want to ban you. So, right. So I'm like, don't you want to ban the behavior that made me want to tell the story? So now you have kids when they find out they're like, so if I identify with Jordan and you ban his story, then aren't you banning me? Yeah. I'm glad ultimately that the administration read the book and invited you, at least for the children there. Oh, I did one of the best book signings ever there. Maybe 250 people came and bought books and they were crying and hugging me. We're so sorry. This is not what Katy, Texas is like. And Texas is both the most supportive and least supportive. They have the North Texas Teen Book Festival. They've had ALAs there. They have the Texas Book Festival. They, it's where they give the Kirkus Prize. They've got great schools there, great libraries, great teachers, but they also have some people that are, we don't want our kids reading a book. And it's the few, it's the few that, you mentioned there were five families out of all of those hundreds of people that you saw there who actually opted out. But 400 people got the book. Sign that petition also, if you don't do the research at the very base level, there are some people that don't want their kids reading graphic novels because they think that it's useless. Some that think that a graphic novel means that it's a novel filled with graphic content. Oh, Lord. So you're dealing with a lot of misinformation. Yes. And people that just want to be up in arms and be angry on Goodreads. There's a teacher that wrote, I don't think that my largely poor, largely African American kids are going to relate to this book about kids going to Paris for a week. So I'm not even going to share it with them. And I'm like, but your white kids can relate to a kid who flies on their goes to wizard school and fights. Trolls and dragons and dwarfs, but a black kid can't aspire to go into Paris for a week. Like, which of these is actually more realistic? Which of these can actually happen? And what's so bad about aspiring for new experiences? Right. We want more of that. I loved that book. I loved all of them, especially in School Trip, where the children are in Paris and they meet another older couple. They were from Mississippi and the older couple hears them speaking and the children are from New York. And says, Oh, you're American and that connection that is me. And then I don't know if it was Jordan who was thinking is or reflecting on it, but why does it take us going to another country for now we're American. Now we can have the shared experience that we are from the same place. And sometimes, like when you go to another country, like all the Americans have stopped cars to come out to hug us, but I'm like, if we were on an airplane or if we were somewhere else, you're ready to fight, ban my book, but you go somewhere else and it's USA. And so there's just a lot of like little things that I put in there to make you go, Oh yeah, why is it that when you go abroad and you see another American, you feel like they're your family, your kin, your cousins. And then you come here and you hate those same people. It's, it's so backwards. I love that you put that in there for people to think, for adults who are reading this, for the kids. I also loved the exploration where Liam and Jordan become friends and they go to Liam's house and Liam's rich or he seems like he's from an affluent family and he's guarded. But all he wants is that friendship. I think he gives him a present. And I think Jordan's Oh, I'm sorry. I don't have a present for you. And he says, no, just you being my real friend is a present. Right. When these petitions and these loud voices are saying, this book is about X, Y, Z. It's not. I love how you explore what it means not to judge each other. Right. You never know what someone's dealing with, that we can be friends even if we are seemingly worlds apart. I got it. Another angry email is probably 40, 000 words. How come Liam, who's the white kid, doesn't have a good relationship with his dad, but the black kid does? I wanted to show that you can have money, but that doesn't, the one thing that he wishes he could have. And I'm like, and you're talking about fathers? Do you know how many books with black characters don't even have fathers? And then of course the response. Two wrongs don't make a right. I'm like, yeah, but you're always the one that thinks you're right. So no one who's ever tried to ban me or anything has ever said, Hey, let's have an open dialogue. There's an NPR piece. And so again, here's the thing being the only person to win those three awards. I was in industry papers, school library, journal, Publishers Weekly. Some woman in Texas bans me. Now, I'm on with Joy Reid, with Art Spiegelman, who did Mouse. Wow. Some mouse about the atrocities of the Holocaust. New kid about a black kid going to private school. Okay. But NPR is calling, the BBC is calling, Don Lemon's calling. I'm like, where were you to celebrate me? Yeah. Now it's newsworthy. Conflict. Yeah. When it was all the controversy, it was the New King Class Act, they're like, What are you going to do now that they're a brand new book? I'm like, guess I'll do a third book. That's what I did school trip. And now I'm finishing up a book that I'm doing with Kwame Alexander, who won a Newbery in 2010. So this is J versus K and it is a fifth grade artist. And a fifth grade writer and their rivals, and they're going for to win the contest, which is the annual storytelling contest that the school has every year. Oh, that sounds fun. Yeah. So they don't like each other. Right. And so that will be out May 6th of 2025. That's amazing. And it's called J vs. K from the school. Little brown books for young readers. That's gonna be great. So, you have experienced so much. I love when you talk about the analysis of the crystal list. And the struggle is what gives you the strength. A lot of the folks in our audience do freelance writing. So they're writing for companies. They're doing copywriting. But they want to write a book. Maybe they have those books stored in their brain. This is something they aspire to. What are some things that you wish you knew when you started this journey to become a traditionally published author? A guy who I know that for years was like, Hey, I want to take you out to lunch and talk about writing. Okay. Never happened. I want to talk about writing because I want to be right. I want to do what you do. Okay. And then one day it's like, Hey, how much time do you put into it? For example, what did you work the other day? I said, I work from about 10 to 3, or a new kid finishing up, he's, Wow, 10 to 11 to 12 to 1 to 2 to 5 hours. That's a lot. I said, no, 10 to 11 to 12 to 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 to 7 to 8. Tonight, 10, 11, 12, midnight, 1, 2, 3. Yeah. The biggest thing is you have to finish it. There are people that have been working on this book since they were 18 and they're 47. I won't say you're not a writer, but you got to finish it. And if you're not that person that's obsessed with doing it and working it and reworking it. And adding this and how do I make it better? Then it might not be for you. Then it's a hobby. Right. But with my books, I would still be doing them. Even if I was still self publishing, I would have 20 mama's boys books by now. You have to finish them. And I know it's tough not to jump on the bandwagon, but when people are like, Oh, will you read my book? Or what is it about? Oh, it's a dystopian. Nope. That'd be right there. It's dystopian where the girl's a werewolf and she marries a vampire. What's unique about what you do? What can you bring? What book would have spoken to you? I always say, I write the books I wish I had when I was a kid. So it's not that you can't write a book about going into space, but what about the characters make them relatable? Why is this character going to space? I read all my reviews, good or bad, even though they say don't go on Goodreads, don't do it. Now, the ones that give one star, they're just angry. You don't get any benefit from there because you'll go on Amazon, new kid, one star, and then you read like, Yeah, my delivery guy threw it in the puddle. What's that got to do with me? Give your delivery guy one star, but if it's three stars, then that may say there was problems with it. And I want to hear what their problem is. One of the things that I always talk about is. You have every right as a parent to what your kid reads, right? You shouldn't be able to tell me what my kid read. So if my kids are vegetarian and that's what we are, that doesn't give me the right to go and slap a hamburger out of your daughter's hand. You know what I mean? So finish your book. There are writing groups where people hold each other accountable, which are nice. There were. Some places like SCBWI, which is Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators, where sometimes they'll have functions and they'll introduce people to agents and there'll be contests and they'll bring authors in for Q and A and things like that. But yeah, what makes your book unique? Who's your audience? Like sometimes, Oh, I want to write a book about Leon Spine. He's the one that. Invented the spine of a book. I'm like, would you read that? No, but no one else has written about it. Probably for good reason before him books didn't have spies. Okay. And then again, it doesn't always have to be about the suffering. It doesn't all have to be historical fiction. You know how schools sometimes have dress up like your favorite character in the book thing. I got a picture with a white girl with red hair and freckles dressed up like Drew, that is life changing. The fact that he sees this character, Oh, I want to dress up like him. This is who I am. Like I identify with him. It's beautiful. Yeah. That's my opinion. Oh, and be careful of contracts because there's some horrible contracts where they will own you for the rest of your life and you get nothing. So get a lawyer to look because there are publishers, Oh, I'll sign you to a 10 book deal for 5, 000. Um, And depending on your finances, wow, 5, 000, but that means it's basically 500 per book and you will be working the rest of your life. That's very wise counsel. Yes. I love that you have. held your ground when it comes to your vision, how you wanted your work to be marketed, how the stories that you wanted to tell. It's so refreshing to see. So thank you for your time today. Thank you for this inspiration. Make sure to get your copies. You can get new kid. There's class. The latest one is school trip and definitely follow Jerry on social media and check out his website too. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. And with that, we've come to the end of another episode. Please make sure you hit subscribe and give me a 5 star review on Apple. Check out the show notes and grab my free Niches Get Riches freelance writing worksheet to brainstorm the best niches for your writing business. Until next time, this is Ashley Cisneros Mejia. Don't forget, we all get this Don't constrain yourself to a box that you were never meant to fit in. It is your right to profit from your own creative gifts. Our music was composed by Donna Raphael of World Instrumentals. Talk Freelance to Me is a product of Fenix Creative Studio.