Erzsi Deak

Q: What makes you laugh?

A: I laugh the most when I’m talking with friends and family—especially my brothers and sisters. (And yep, it’s plural. I have three brothers and two sisters.) My family doesn’t get together often because we’re spread around the world, but when we do, I laugh myself silly. No one can tell funny stories like my brothers.

Q: Do you see yourself as funny?

A: I see myself as a person who enjoys life and tries to look on the bright side. For example, a couple of days ago I went horseback riding with my kids. The horses were supposed to be gentle and good with kids, but about an hour onto the trail, Blue Eyes bit Linus, so Linus bucked and kicked Blue Eyes, (These are the names of the horses, not my daughters. My daughters do occasionally kick each other, although not while horseback riding.) And then the situation turned into an all out cat fight . . . well, if horses in a cat fight isn’t mixing metaphors.

As a mother, you don’t want to turn around and see your daughters—one of whom is too young to have a full quotient of common sense—hanging onto the backs of horses who are brawling. We were all scared to death for a few moments. (Especially the stable tour guide who probably sensed her tip was diminishing quickly. Despite that talk about the kids’ horses being gentle, the guide had clearly put my daughters on two of the Four Horsemen’s Steeds of Doom.) I, in my typically useful fashion, yelled out to my daughters: “Hang on!”

Neither of my daughters said, “Oh really, Mom? Because I was just thinking of sliding off the saddle so I could have a better view of the underside of stampeding horse hooves.” But I’m sure they were thinking it.

Luckily my daughters didn’t fall off their saddles during this mini apocalypse, and the guide was able to separate and calm down the horses. We took a couple of deep breaths and I said, “Well, think of the great facebook status updates you can write about this when we get home.”

Humor helps people deal with problems. That’s why it’s so important.

Q: Tragic?

A: Everybody has hard things that happen to them. My life is no different. My mother died from cancer when I was six years old and I had a lot of rough years in my childhood. But I also have an incredible amount of blessings in my life. I have a great husband, wonderful kids, friends who care about me and a job I like. Remembering how many good things I have helps me put my problems into perspective.

Q: Can you tell a joke off-paper (live)?

A: I know writers who could double as comedians. I’m not that way, but I do manage to tell a few jokes during my school visits. If you can make kids laugh, they pay attention much better.

Q: Do you have a favorite joke?

A: Anything that's not a knock-knock joke. When you have five kids, you end up hearing all of them, endlessly.

Q: Did you ever do stand-up? Do you (still) do stand-up? If so, where and for whom?

A: The only stand-up I do is for my school visits, and trust me, junior high kids are a rough crowd. I have a lot of respect for comedians and wish I knew more of their secrets.

Q: You appear to be delightfully self-deprecating; which comes through in Savannah's character and her awareness of it comes through in the growth of her character. Were you always able to laugh at yourself?

A: I wasn’t always good at laughing at myself when I was in high school. I was trying too hard to be perfect. I thought if I dressed in the right clothes, and had the right hairstyle and always said the right thing then everybody would like me. Including those cool popular guys. Really, now that I think about it, my attempts at perfection were all about those cool popular guys.

It’s ironic because those guys probably would have liked me better if I’d just made them laugh. But how was I to know? I’d grown up watching early Disney movies. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White never made Prince Charming laugh. Ditto for Barbie and Ken. You just know Barbie wasn’t cracking jokes while she drove around in her plastic Corvette. (Although I was just in a tackle shop that sold pink Barbie fishing reels, so apparently Barbie can gut a fish.)

Q: In your humblest of opinions, how distant are humor and pain? How are they treated in your books?

A: I wish there was some formula for humor writing. My publishers want comedy in my books. I’ve written 16 books (with 17& 18 coming out next year) and every time I start a new book, I worry that it won’t be funny and my fans will be disappointed.

I’ve heard that the definition between tragedy and comedy is: Tragedy is when something bad happens to you; comedy is when something bad happens to your neighbor. But just as many jokes are aimed at ourselves. While I’m sitting in our van writing this, my kids are watching the movie Two Weeks Notice. Here’s a bit of dialogue that made me laugh out loud:

After George has called his legal advisor, Lucy, out of a friend’s wedding to help him pick out what clothes he should wear, she tells him, “You are the most selfish person on the entire planet.”

He says, “Now you’re just being silly. You haven’t met every person on the planet.”

It’s funny because he doesn’t deny being selfish, he just calls her out on her hyperbole.

Q: What is your most painful teen memory that makes you laugh now?

A: When I was a junior in high school, I took honors algebra. I did this not because I had any interest or skill when it came to algebra, but because I had a scheduling problem. The counselor looked at my grades and told me that although a teacher had to recommend an especially talented student to get them into honors algebra, since I was a straight A student, and already in honors English, he thought I would do fine in the class.

And thus I was in honors algebra. I was with the smart math kids. And I could handle this class just like I could handle everything else because I was smart. I sat down on the first day and it was like the teacher was speaking a completely different language. I tried to understand the gibberish that came out of his mouth but it didn’t work. I asked questions. The teacher answered my questions, but since he was still speaking gibberish, all that became clear was that I was in serious trouble.

I probably should have gone in for some tutoring, but my after school hours were jam packed with drama rehearsal, tennis, dating—you know, all of the really important things. So basically I sat in the back of the class with a deer in the headlights look on my face, wondering why I didn’t get what the rest of the students seemed to know intuitively. (I think they wondered about this too.)

I limped along with Bs and an occasional wandering A on my homework and tests. For a straight A student, it stung.

Okay, fast forward to those standardized test they give to the whole state every year. We took them, and afterwards the teacher decided to go over problem spots. There was this one question involving a circle and angles and very imposing intersecting lines.

The teacher told the class—using that amazed sort of voice that teachers sometimes use—that everyone in the class had got the problem wrong except for one student. And we were all going to be surprised at who that one student was.

Well absolutely no one was more surprised than me when the teacher called my name and told me to come to the board and explain how to do the problem for the rest of the class.

I couldn’t believe it. I, I had got the question right while the rest of my brainiac classmates, who effortlessly understood math gibberish, had got the question wrong!

It was validation of my intelligence. I could hold my own with the math whizzes!

I walked to the board and did the problem.

Unfortunately I did the problem all wrong.

I ended by adding two numbers together (at this point I’ve forgotten why). “So you have 8 and 5,” I told the class, “and when you add them together you get 12.”

Which, by the way, was the right answer to the problem. Unfortunately 8+5 does not equal 12. It equals 13, which was not the right answer. I had gotten the problem right because I had added wrong.

And more embarrassingly, I’d done it twice, and in front of the whole class.

There is really no way to live that down in a class full of math whizzes. I’m sure when they get together every year at their brainiac math conferences they still laugh about it.

Q: Does your own adolescence serve as good fodder for your books?

A: Oh yes. A lot of things that happened to me as a teen make their way into my books. The scene where Savannah loses her swimsuit top was inspired by one of my own wardrobe malfunctions. One day at the pool, the strap of my swimming suit broke. While I held onto it with one hand and tried to swim one handed to the ladder, a guy from my school swam up and struck up a conversation. I tried to act as casual and poised as a girl can act while holding her swimming suit together. (Remember, back then I was trying for an air of perfection.) I remember it was a bit awkward and I worried that they guy would think I was strange for trying to swim around one handed.

Q: You seem to divide your books (or your agent and publishers do it for you) between the 'reality based' and the fantasy based. Was this a conscious decision on your part? Or, how did this come about?

A: I started out writing reality based romantic comedies so my publishers were reluctant to let me write fantasies. Thankfully, Walker took a chance on MY FAIR GODMOTHER and they liked it enough to let me write more. The sequel, MY UNFAIR GODMOTHER, will come out in January or February of 2011 and I have a book about kids who fight dragons coming out in the fall of 2011

Q: MY FAIR GODMOTHER is laugh-out-loud-funny. Regarding CRAFT, your humor seems integral to your writing (no one-liners that steal the show), when you are writing do you think "This is good!" or "This will make'em laugh!" (and move the story forward)? Or?

A: For MY FAIR GODMOTHER I knew I needed two wishes that didn’t work out so I thought about how I could make Savannah’s princess wishes funny. The Snow White scene is one of the most hilarious scenes I’ve ever written. I laughed when I wrote it, and that doesn’t usually happen. But I don’t really have a set way to make things funny. I just try to mine whatever situation my character is in for humor. Sometimes things turn out really funny and sometimes they just turn out a little amusing.

Q: Have you had requests to see Savannah in print again? Tempted, or are you finished with her? Does she show up in MY UNFAIR GODMOTHER?

A: I get requests for sequels on MY FAIR GODMOTHER. It’s a compliment because it means readers like the story so much they don’t want it to end. I’ve thought about a sequel to Savannah’s story, but I’m not sure I’ll ever write it because the storyline I came up with is much more of a romance-adventure. I think readers would want something with the same tone as the first one.

Savannah doesn’t show up in MY UNFAIR GODMOTHER, (although Clover does mention her in a roundabout way.) MY UNFAIR GODMOTHER is Chrysanthemum Everstar’s next assignment. As you can imagine, things don’t go all that well for the girl who gets three wishes.

Q: Which leads me to ask, what does MY UNFAIR GODMOTHER hold in store?

A: Well, I don’t want to give away too much, but I will say Robin Hood and Rumpelstiltskin make appearances and there is another ill-fated trip to the Middle Ages. It’s a little bit darker than MY FAIR GODMOTHER because Rumpelstiltskin is a darker story. You can’t have a creepy spoon-riding, man who wants to buy babies in your story and not have it be a little dark.

Q: With the wealth of fairy tales out there and Chrissy (Chrysanthemum) Everstar's ineptitude, will there be a MY FAIR GODMOTHER 3?

A: I love skewering fairy tales, so there might be a third book in the series. I mean, I have to get Chrissy into Fairy Godmother University at some point. The poor girl has been trying for an admittance letter for so long. If I do write a MY FAIR GODMOTHER 3, I plan to make Chrissy more of an integral part of the story and not just a character who pops in every once in awhile to see how things are going.

Q: As a teen, which book made you laugh so hard, you, uh, lost control?

A: Growing up, I loved Ellen Conford’s books because they always made me laugh. It was a delight to read her novels. Another great humor author is Patrick McManus. My husband and I still quote some of his lines to each other.

Q: Any favorite authors or people who make you laugh?

A: I love the comedians Brian Reagan and Don McMillan. Both are funny and clean, which means my kids can listen to them too. My sons can both do great impersonations of Brian Reagan and they always make me laugh.

Q: Anything funny or even not funny that I didn't touch on that you think is important or just want to add?

A: I wish the literary community appreciated humor writing more. There is a sense among reviewers and book award committee members that if a book is funny, it isn’t meaningful. This attitude discourages writers from putting humor in their books, and that’s a shame. We have enough darkness and angst in the world. We need more laughter.

Janette's next Godmother book, 'MY UNFAIR GODMOTHER' comes out Winter 2011.

I recently encouraged the French children's publishing house, Editions de La Martiniere Jeunesse, to buy and publish the French version of Lauren Myracle's censor-challenging book, ttyl (talk to you later). ttyl joins an elite group of titles as one of the top 10 most banned books in the US.

And Myracle was in the news again with her new “multi-format” title, Luv Ya Bunches (that La Martiniere will also publish in March, translated by Sabine Boulogne) when Scholastic bookclubs banned and then reversed its decision to ban Luv Ya Bunches at its book fairs.

Outside of its “bad girl” publishing history, ttyl is one of the first YA books to tackle a narrative written entirely in instant-messenger-speak. The irony that I would actually cotton to such an idea is not lost on me, someone who laboriously writes her own phone text messeges in "long hand" (I refuse to use "4" for "for," for example). But Myracle has accomplished more than getting on the Top 10 Banned Books list with ttyl (the 500,000+ copies sold in the US alone are witness to something working).

Below, I explore how her book fits into today's New Literature & New Technology (granted, by the time you read this, there’s the chance that “New” will be “Has-been,”).

With her Internet Girl series (ttyl is the first of three titles), Lauren Myracle proves that no matter the format, a good story will capture the readers’ attention. ttyl could have been written in a traditional paragraph-by-paragraph narrative rather than in chat, but by writing the entire novel in instant messaging, Myracle spoke to teens in their own “secret” language. Adults who pre-date the Internet may question the value of this, but then, most of these adults don’t hear the high-pitched tone that signals that an SMS has arrived and are missing the message altogether.

ttyl documents a short time in the lives of three longtime best friends, from love to homework to wardrobe woes, and the entire novel is told in three voices through chats on-line. Lest anyone criticize this as non-literature, think again: Myracle serves up three thought-provoking and page-turning narratives dealing with real-life issues woven into one satisfying tale where each character is fully realized and believable.

That she accomplishes this in instant messaging format just points to how innovations in computer technology in the last 20 years have changed the way we live, work, shop and communicate. Because of these advances in technology, education and language have been forced to change as well. Authors like Myracle and others who choose to work with the new technology and thus “new literature” are discovering that you can still tell a good story – even in a “new language.” Call it a gimmick if you want, but the kids are listening. And reading.

So are educators. Today, students can upload assignments to a class website, email questions to their teachers, and work on assignments with distant peers using instant messaging, online discussion forums, social networks and wikis. While texting is popular, if not mandatory in the adolescent community, educators and parents often view texting as a distraction. Are there any educational benefits to all the texting going on? How can teachers manage, while at the same time exploiting, the multi-tasking that kids do to enhance learning? Why is a text message sent out to 30 students better than a handout in class? And won’t kids go into media-overload with information shooting at them from all arenas?

Educators who embrace the technology are looking at ways to harness student interest in texting for educational purposes. Some teachers use texting to launch discussions on formal vs. informal language, comparing the language and syntax of text messaging with that of formal, written language. Others have students use texting to create short summaries of more formal pieces of literature, such as Shakespeare.[1] Overall, studies have shown that students who initially show disinterest in a learning module, participate enthusiastically when projects incorporate cell phones. And in a recent study it was found that for students who are reluctant to put pen to paper, cell phones appear to be opening the door to literacy because they are being used for discussion and to write stories.[2] These examples highlight how new media can interface with literature and education. Unlike a handout, a text message signals a conversation and keeps students dialoguing with other students and the teacher.

Like technology and education, language is ever-changing. As language changes, so does its uses in communication and in the creation of literature. No longer is literature defined by the covers of a book. Today, new technology has sparked new literature in the form of the new technology: text messaging and social networking sites.

In response to the new technology, forward-thinking authors have accepted the challenge to create novels and short stories with new symbols and limited character lengths, in short, in a new language. Some might think this reflects western society’s constantly shortening attention span, but innovative authors like Myracle bring this new literature of texting and chat to paper in the form of innovative full-length novels with beginnings, middles and ends.

Technology-savvy teachers use instant messaging and social networking sites to engage students and encourage student participation in discussions, whereas those educators who fight this wave show the same kind of snobbism that comics faced years ago. In the fight to save literacy (and thus, literature), educators today who use comics and the new media to encourage reading and writing are on the forefront of a generational shift as to how literature is taught, absorbed and shared. Professional writers who use new media like Twitter to tell their stories note that it has sharpened their writing styles, made it more concise. Add in the chance for students to feel closer to these writers (or even to collaborate with them) and you have a winning opportunity in new media to get teens writing and interested in literature, whether that be in text or formal written language.

Since students are generally even more technological-friendly than their older educators, they are comfortable with new media and with multi-tasking. Thus, educators are gradually coming to realize that the best way to tackle the “enemy” is to incorporate it into their lesson plans: Using texting in dispersal of homework, encouraging class discussion and even original writing in the form of text messages.

In a world where novels are written on cell phones and Twitter, ttyl rings the bell of change, getting teens reading and inspiring young writers to create their own new literature. Or maybe that was a cell phone ringing the arrival of a new chapter?

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[1] Bernard S. (2008). Zero-Thumb Game: How to Tame Texting. May 28, 2008. Retrieved September 15, 2008: http:/​/​www.edutopia.org/​text-messaging-teaching-tool and http:/​/​www.netc.org/​focus/​strategies/​summ.php

[2] Anderson J. New Study Recasts Cell Phones as Effective Teaching Tool. August 22, 2005. http:/​/​www.ergoweb.com/​news/​detail.cfm?id=1180