Speaker 1: Hello, and good morning, Hope. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm doing well. How are you?
Speaker 1: Absolutely fantastic and excited to share a conversation with you
because this is the kind of book that I just
envisioned students walking into their library and saying, this book
is about me. This is something that's speaking to me.
And I mean, I just I just love the connection
that you have put inside these pages.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much. I hear your wife's a teacher.
Speaker 1: She is a teacher, she is and so that and
I'm also an instructor. And the thing is is that
I believe in in, you know, exercising the imagination so
that it can grow forward.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree, Yeah.
Speaker 1: To put this book together. It starts with an idea
where was that seed planted? At?
Speaker 2: Well, my agent that I had been talking for years
about making a book about it. Just calculia, which I have.
I'm just very very bout of mass. It's I have
just calculia, which is a learning disorder that makes it
hard to understand and process numbers and maths. So most
people have heard of dyslexia, and this calculia is kind
of like numbers dyslexia.
Speaker 1: But you know, What's really interesting about this though, because
I know a lot of people that have problems with numbers,
and I'll bet you they don't know about this.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I didn't even know about it until I
was probably thirty. I knew in really since like first grade,
that I had a hard time with maths, and I
would sit there and be like, why is this so
much easier for my classmates and for me? But it
wasn't until high school that I really started to struggle
and was pulled out of my regular math class and
put into a smaller class with kids who were also struggling.
And that's something that happens to my protagonist Bury in
the book.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that you also put
inside this book is is varies inner monologue? I mean,
because I mean it is so important because so many
people think that, oh, I'm always talking to myself. Oh
I must be down on myself, blah blah. And it's like, wow,
I love the fact that you give us kind of
permission to say, yeah, you can have that inner voice,
go ahead and share it and learn from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I always like to do a little bit of that,
because if comics are not like pros a lot of
the time in prose, you're kind of in somebody's head
to the whole book. But because comics and graphic novels
are visual, sometimes you're seeing them from the outside like
you would with a with a film, and I like
to put that internal monologue in there so we can
see what's happening in her brain.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so what came first, the story or the graphics?
Speaker 2: The story comes first. I like to start with the
scripts because writing is so much quicker for me than
drawing is. The drawing part is the real marathon of
making a graphic novel, so I really want to know
exactly where I'm going. I start with just like a log,
so a couple of senses about what my story is about.
And I work on that with my agent and my editor,
and then I expand it into an outline, which can
be like one to twenty pages or so, and we
work on that, we edit that some more. Then I
write the script, and I write full script, so I
write down a description of every panel in the book
and what we're going to see, and I also write
the dialogue what everybody's saying, and sound effects. I always
put those in here. Yeah, they're critical A very important
part of comics.
Speaker 1: So true. It's so true because that's exactly where my
mind goes when I'm sitting there looking at just one frame.
I can I can hear it, I can feel it,
I can see it, I can smell it. And that's
exactly what you've done inside this book.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much. So.
Speaker 1: Now the thing is is that, I mean, your discipline
as a writer has got to be like spot on
because you're not throwing a bunch of words in paragraph status.
Each one of those frames has got to have the
fust amount of words. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I try and do the show not tell method as
much as I can. So if if I can convey
the information with a picture, you know, a picture speaks
a thousand words, I want to do that. And then
if I can't convey information with the image alone, then
I put some words in.
Speaker 1: Yeah. You cover student activism very well in this because
students need to have a voice. They don't need to
be back in a corner just sitting there saying I'm
just going to let life half happen. You only live once.
It's like no, no, no, no, activate yourself, get involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very is the president of her eighth grade class
for third year as class president, and she really wants
to be a politician, to be in politics when she
grows up, and she she has a local politician that
she really is her hero. She really idolizes this person,
so he cares the about making her school and her
community better. And that's something that I really feel too,
that that change happens, it starts at the local level.
That's a place where you can really make a difference,
is where you live or your school.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I think so many people are going to
sit there and say, she's writing about me because I
feel like I know these people, or it's about something
I've done in my life.
Speaker 2: I mean, I certainly hope. So I think when you're writing,
it can feel like you're you're writing something very specific
about your own life. But if you're the more specific
you are, the more people can relate to it. Yeah,
it's kind of like a paradox. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm such a big supporter of graphic novels, and the
reason being is because my grandson was struggling with reading,
but once he found the graphic novels, I mean, all
of a sudden, this kid, you know, just sprouted out
and became just like, Oh, this is the kind of
stuff I want to read. And now he draws himself.
Speaker 2: Oh that's so wonderful. That makes me so happy to hear.
And honestly, this is a big part of why I
have been writing the grade and kids graphic novels for
such a long time. I did the adaptation of A
Wrinkle on Time, the graphic novel adaptation, and when that
book came out, I just heard from so many parents
and teachers and aunts and uncles who were like, Oh,
this is the first book my kid or my student
read on their own. They've been so intimidated by reading
and this got through to them. And I was like,
so interesting, because my graphic novel of A Wrinkle and
Time has almost all of it has the majority of
the text that in the novel in the graphic novel
because it's mostly dialogue. So the images that they're seeing
makes it less intimidating for a lot of kids who
lead a graphic novel versus pros.
Speaker 1: So what inside your imagination invited Varie to pick up
that clarinet?
Speaker 2: I was just trying to come up with more things
for her to be really good at.
Speaker 1: I can't either, but that's like one of those tough
ones there. It's like, whoa, Yeah, we're gonna put her
in debate. We're gonna we're gonna she's gonna be the
club whiz. I mean, she's gonna be a push up
champion and she's gonna play the clarinet.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean she's she's got this idea that
she has to be super super good at everything so
nobody will notice that she's really bad at mass. She's
kind of like hiding it under this this layer of perfection.
Speaker 1: So so I was gonna ask you if she was
a perfectionist, because perfectionism usually is hiding something. It's like
an artist that puts red on a painting.
Speaker 2: Yes, she's like a textbook perfectionist. I'm kind of a
perfectionist too. And I mean, of course, being a perfectionist
doesn't mean you are really good and perfect at everything.
It's more like you don't want to be seen as
not being good at things. So we have that in common.
And I really grew up with this idea that asking
for help was like admitting I just wasn't smart enough
to figure something out on my own, which is like
so toxic, and I think probably pretty relatable for a
lot of kids. So when I'm talking to kids about
this book, I always want to impress on them that
they don't need to be ashamed of asking for help,
and ask me for help is really braids, and it's
also the beginning of your life getting to be a
bit easier tackling this head on.
Speaker 1: One of the big stars in this book is the
fact that you've got all three of these characters working together.
It's not sitting on a smartphone. It's not playing a
VR game where they're talking over a microphone without seeing
each other. I mean, you've got people that are physically
together on these pages.
Speaker 2: Yes, And I always prefer to write that way. It's
always like a balancing act writing about the present day,
because smartphones and technology are such a big part of
our world and you can't avoid them completely. But it's
just no fun to draw a bunch of characters who
are sitting around texting each other all the time. I
want them to be together.
Speaker 1: And how about that book cover. When you first look
at it, you're seeing the three girls, but then all
of a sudden, I see that d on that paper.
Speaker 2: That's right, Yeah, on the cover, you see Barry in
the middle, and then on the left behind her is Bree,
who is her vice president, and then on the right
is Lucille, who starts out as kind of a front
of me character, and then the two of them bond
over there, shared struggle with math and become friends, and
all three of them have this not a club exactly,
but they call themselves the Left.
Speaker 1: Then where can people go to find out more about
you as well as getting their hands on this book?
Speaker 2: You can find me on Instagram at Dispair Larson. Somebody
else has my name, so I am Dispara Larson, not
Hope Larsen. And you can find my book at your
favorite local bookstore or comic bookstore.
Speaker 1: Well, Hope, you got to come back to this show
anytime in the future. The doors always going to be
open for you.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much. This is such a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Will you be brilliant today?
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, you too.
Speaker 1: Thank you.