This
Q & A is from a questionnaire my publisher, Wisdom Publications, asked
me to fill out. -LaVora MLP:
This:
What 5th grader bodyguards her limping best friend, runs a
loser’s race for president, gets un-listened to by her parents, called “wimp” by
her imaginary, evil twin, stalked by a teen ogre girl, and told she’s
hell-bound because she’s Buddhist? Taneesha Bey-Ross, that’s who. And the
whole mess just makes her go, “Dang!” WP:
What do
you know about the problems Taneesha experiences in Taneesha
Never
Disparaging? MLP: Taneesha deals with a few different problems in this book. That's one of her problems--too many problems! One big challenge Taneesha faces is being bullied. Unfortunately, too many children deal with bullying at one time or another—at school, home, or somewhere else. I was no exception. The
first time I was bullied in school I was in 3rd grade. My best friend had a
slight physical disability, maybe cerebral palsy. She and I were walking out of
the schoolyard, going to her house, when I overhead an older girl teasing one of
our classmates, talking about the way she looked. I said something to my
friend like, “She shouldn’t be doing that,” not knowing that the older
girl heard me. From
then on, I became her target. It got so bad that my big brother came to pick me
up from school to protect me. But he couldn’t be with me all the time. To
top it all off, when new neighbors moved into the house next to mine the
neighbors turned out to be none other than that girl and her family! I
couldn’t have made up such a nightmare. The
second time I was really bullied was in junior high school. I’ve saved that
story for my second book in my series about preteens and teens from MLP:
Taneesha Never Disparaging is for everybody who has an invisible
evil twin telling them what’s too impossible, too improbable, too impractical,
too dumb, too scary, too outrageous, too expensive, too late, too crazy, too
wild, too weird, too idealistic, too hard, too silly, too much, too different,
too risky, too uncomfortable, and too never-been-done-before. Taneesha reminds
us that when that voice inside says, “You Can’t Do That!” all we have to do is holler right back, “YES I WILL!”
And mean it. (A big
"Thanks!" to American
Buddhist leader Linda Johnson for her “Evil Twin” advice and “Yes I
will!” comeback.) WP:
What makes
Taneesha Never
Disparaging
unique? WP:
Have you ever written about the Taneesha character before? WP: Do you plan to write about Taneesha again? MLP: I'm developing a series of books that take place in Taneesha's fictional city--North Cleveland, Ohio. As I said, the second book in the series, Hidden Jewel, is about the older girl that bullies Taneesha. In Hidden Jewel, which is a teen story, readers will learn the deeper reasons why the bullying girl behaves the way she does. Taneesha appears in Hidden Jewel. She'll also be the main character in a new story--one that's still sprouting in my brain. ~~~ |
