How to Write A Book That’s Both Timely and Timeless, a guest post by Barbara Dee

How long does it take to write a book?

It’s a question I know to expect whenever I meet with readers. Kids always seem surprised when I tell them that I wrote a few books (for example, Maybe He Just Likes You and Star-Crossed) very quickly, in about three months, but that most books take me a year—or longer, if I need to do research.

And that’s just to produce a first draft. Once I turn that in, it’s common for six months (or even longer) to pass as I receive my editor’s notes, and do a round or two of revision. When the book is officially “accepted” by my publisher, it goes to the copyeditor, and then back to me for additional edits. After that, I get one last chance to tweak; ironically, this is called “the first pass.”

Soo…if all goes smoothly, and all deadlines are met, most books take about eighteen months to two years from the time I open a new document on my laptop to the time they hit the shelves. What all this means is that it’s a challenge to produce a book that’s “timely.” Because how can you anticipate that a topic that was headline news when you began writing will still be hot all those months later, when your book finally publishes?

Because I write contemporary realistic fiction for middle schoolers, this is a question I worry about a lot. My goal always is to write stories that are authentic and meaningful, to get kids thinking about their world, and talking to each other. It’s why I wrote about climate anxiety in Haven Jacobs Saves the Planet, and mental health in My Life in the Fish Tank, and opioid addiction in Violets Are Blue, and sexual harassment in Maybe He Just Likes You.

And it’s why I wrote Tear This Down (Aladdin/S&S, February 25, 2025). My fifteenth middle grade novel was inspired by recent events in our country, including the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs, and various efforts to suppress voting. These are topics that affect kids’ lives in real and profound ways—now and in the future.

But because I knew that I had to factor in something like two years until pub date, I couldn’t assume that any particular event or decision would remain current and relatable. So my challenge was to frame a story about women’s rights and voting rights in a way that was both timely and timeless. I decided that the best way to do this was to pull out from a tight closeup on strictly current events, and to examine a bit of American history.

Tear This Down is about a seventh grader named Freya who discovers that her town’s most famous historical figure—a nineteenth century editor and political thinker named Benjamin Wellstone—didn’t believe women should be allowed to vote. According to Wellstone, “Women are best suited for the hearth and the nursery, and ill-suited for the ballot-box. To put it plainly, women are too emotional to vote.”

As a budding feminist who challenges her teachers about things like the boy-centric books they always discuss in ELA, Freya is outraged to learn that the man her town venerates didn’t believe she should have a voice. Or even an education.

And the more she learns about the woman’s suffrage movement in this country—especially about one particular woman activist named Octavia Padgett—the more Freya is convinced that her town is honoring the wrong person. So together with her friends Callie and Jax, Freya launches a plan to erase Wellstone’s name from her town—a plan that includes convincing the town to tear down Wellstone’s statue, replacing it with a statue of Octavia Padgett.

Tear This Down is a book that I hope will spark lively discussions about topics that are front-and-center in today’s news: women’s rights, voting rights, and social justice. But it’s also about the way we engage with history: What can we learn about where we are today by studying social justice movements from a century ago?  What do we do when we find out that historical figures fail our modern tests? How do we add new figures and new perspectives to the stories we tell ourselves about who we are as a nation?

These are questions I hope readers will be thinking about and discussing well after pub day– no matter what’s in the headlines when Tear This Down publishes. 

Meet the author

Barbara Dee is the award-winning author of fourteen middle grade novels, all published by Simon & Schuster. Her books have earned several starred reviews and have been named to many best-of lists, including The Washington Post’s Best Children’s Books, ALA Notable Children’s Books, ALA Rise: A Feminist Book Project List, School Library Journal’s Best Middle Grade Books, and the ALA Rainbow List Top Ten. Her books appear on numerous state awards lists as well.

Barbara graduated magna cum laude from Yale with honors in English. She has a MA degree from Middlebury College’s Bread Loaf School of English and a JD degree from the University of Chicago Law School, where she was an associate editor of the law review. She has taught high school English and has practiced law. Barbara is one of the founders and a former board member of the Chappaqua Children’s Book Festival, now the largest children’s book festival in the country.

Website: https://barbaradeebooks.com/

Instagram: @barbaradeebooks

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About Tear This Down

From Barbara Dee, the critically acclaimed author of Maybe He Just Likes You, comes a middle grade novel about a girl who makes the choice to speak out against a problematic historical hometown figure no matter the cost—perfect for readers of Dress Coded.

For as long as Freya can remember, she has loved living in her cozy hometown of Wellstone. Not only is the town itself named for local and historical hero Benjamin Wellstone but everything in it: schools, beaches, and stores. There’s even a giant statue of him to remind everyone of the good things he did.

But while doing research for a big school project, Freya discovers that Benjamin isn’t the big hero everyone has been taught to believe. He had some redeeming qualities, but he also held incredibly problematic views towards women, believing they shouldn’t have the right to vote—or even to exist outside of the home. Disappointed by her revelation, Freya wonders if she could figure out a way to not only show what the hometown hero was really like but replace his statue with one of an unsung hero: local suffragette Octavia Padgett.

Though Freya knows not everyone will agree with her, she is shocked when her efforts cause even bigger issues than she could have imagined. Even her own parents seem uneasy with Freya’s cause. With the help of her beloved Nan, friends new and old, and the coolest librarian she’s ever met, can Freya stand firm and tear down outdated views?

ISBN-13: 9781665917674
Publisher: Aladdin
Publication date: 02/25/2025
Age Range: 9 – 13 Years

Filed under: Guest Post