The Writing of The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, a guest post by author Gennifer Choldenko

Every book I write comes onto the page in a different way. Sometimes the character comes first.  She’ll pop into my mind and demand airtime. Other times the setting or a historical event or something I love like elephants and the circus in the twenties and thirties will be the story starter.  Al Capone Does My Shirts began with an article in the newspaper about kids who lived on Alcatraz because their fathers were guards in the prison up top.

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman started with my lifelong fascination with foster parents. This interest began when I was a kid, and my sister was in a foster care like situation. The new foster parents would start with hearty handshakes and big smiles, but their optimism faded fast.  It was a tough job, and the burn out came quickly. We had a revolving door of foster mothers and foster fathers for my sister.

Once I decided to write about foster care, I did what I always do: I read every nonfiction book and article I could get my hands on about the topic. And I interviewed as many people as I could find.

Many writers research and then write.  I like to mix it up.  I research and write and write and research.  After four months I had eight chapters written about a girl in foster care.  My editor bought it and I was on a roll.  Then I happened upon a manual for foster parents which had a chapter on “parentification.”  Parentification is when kids step in and act as parents to their younger siblings because their parents aren’t available.  The example paragraph was about a boy who loved soccer but would not go out to play because he could not leave his baby sister’s side.  Something about that boy reminded me vividly and viscerally of my big brother, Grey.  Grey was an unusually caring and creative kid.  He loved making stuff fun for my sisters and me and he watched out for us.    

That afternoon, I dumped the eight chapters I’d written and sold and began The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman.  The novel is fiction but because I used the relationship, I had with my big brother to create the bond between Hank and his little sister Boo, the story feels true. 

From the start, the writing of The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman felt deeply personal. It wasn’t my story but my parents both had drinking problems.  My beloved father died of alcoholism when I was a teenager.  Even the scenes where normal things happened felt so poignant because the topics were so close to home.  During the writing of the Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman I kept telling my husband and my daughter, Kai “I can hardly breathe writing this.”  And one or the other would respond: “You’re the author.  You know that right?  Just change it.”

But here’s the thing: I don’t have that much control.  When you’re in the process of giving birth to a child, you can’t change who that baby is.  Her sex, her weight, whether she’s bald or has a full head of hair, whether she cries, or kicks her legs . . . none of that is under your control.  Your baby is inside of you and then she comes out and you meet her.      

As a writer, it’s hard to know how much of the feeling I’m experiencing when I’m writing makes it on to the page. Only you can be the judge of that.  I’m looking forward to hearing what you think of The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman.  And what my big brother thinks.  Boy am I curious about that . . .

Meet the Author

Gennifer Choldenko is the author of Al Capone Does My Shirts which won the Newbery Honor and 20 other awards. It is currently in its 44^th printing.  Her series Tales from Alcatraz has sold more than 2 ½ million copies.  Dogtown, cowritten with the Newbery award winning one and only Katherine Applegate is a New York Times bestseller and an Indie bestseller. Gennifer’s newest novel: The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, a gripping novel based on childhood memories of her big brother, has four starred reviews, is a Junior Library Guild selection, an Indie next book, and an Amazon best children’s book of the year so far.

Twitter (X): @Choldenko

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Filed under: Middle Grade, Middle Grade Fiction, Mind the Middle, Mind the Middle Project