Don’t Look Away! A guest post by author Jessica Vitalis

When someone says “childhood,” what do you think about? Lazy days running around the neighborhood with friends? Watermelon juice dripping down your chin? The smell of your grandmother’s cookies, perhaps?

For all too many children, this idyllic version of childhood is elusive. In fact, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention states that 1 in 7 children have experienced abuse. And according to the National Women’s Law Center, more than 11.1 million children live in poverty.

You might be tempted to stop reading at this point. I get it––the statistics are depressing. But before you look away, consider this: the children living in these situations can’t look away. They are suffering day in and day out, often with little or no support.

Why am I sharing this with you? Because I was one of these children. I know what it feels like to be hungry, and scared, and hopeless. That’s why I wrote Coyote Queen, my middle grade novel that releases next week with Greenwillow / HarperCollins.  In this story, Fud is determined to escape her mother’s abusive boyfriend. She enters a local beauty pageant, desperate for the prize money she and her mom need to leave. But an eerie connection with a local pack of coyotes causes strange changes to Fud’s body. Her sense of smell improves, she goes color blind, and eventually, she has to figure out how to win the pageant with a tail.  

Now, I’ve never participated in a beauty pageant, and I’ve certainly never turned into a coyote. But some of Fud’s experiences––and all of her heartache––are reflections of my own childhood. A childhood spent desperate for someone to see me but also desperate to hide what I saw as my shameful circumstances. I turned to books, and while they provided a welcome escape, they didn’t alleviate my sense of isolation. And they didn’t provide me any real hope that my circumstances would or could change. That’s where Coyote Queen comes in. Not that Fud necessarily gets a happily ever after—the last thing I want to do is give young readers false hope. But by weaving a touch of magic into the pages, I was able to add a bit of levity to the story. More importantly, I was able to help Fud find exactly what she needs––and I was thrilled to discover that it’s something available to all of us.

I’m not going to spoil the story by telling you what that elusive something is, but I hope you’ll read it for yourself and find out. More importantly, I hope you’ll share Coyote Queen with the young readers in your life who may be swimming through the dark searching for a bit of light. And I hope you share this story with the kids who don’t necessarily “need” it––the kids who have never known fear or hunger. Because whether they know it or not, there is probably someone in their life who is trying to hide their hurt and shame. And the sooner we all start seeing these children, the sooner we can start making a difference.

Meet Author Jessica Vitalis

JESSICA VITALIS, a Columbia MBA-wielding writer, authored The Wolf’s Curse and The Rabbit’s Gift (which received starred reviews from the School Library Journal and CCBC and was named a Canadian Children’s Book Center Best Books for Kids and Teens 2023). Her next book, Coyote Queen, arrives on 10/10/23 (and has already received a Kirkus starred review), and a novel in verse comes out in 2024. Her work has been translated into three languages, and she was named a 2021 Canada Council of the Arts Grant Recipient and featured on CBCs Here and Now and CTVs Your Morning. An American expat, Jessica now lives in Ontario with her husband and two daughters but speaks at conferences, festivals, and schools all over North America. 

Socials:

Filed under: new books