Laekan Zea Kemp<\/a>, who lives in Austin, is the author of several books. While her books range from early readers to young adults, Kemp said \u201cChismosas\u201d was something of an experiment.<\/p>\nKemp is a teacher, and she said she noticed a gap between the middle grade and young adult genres.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s sort of a chasm in terms of books available for kids in like seventh and eighth grade,\u201d she said. \u201cThose are the students that I teach \u2014 I teach freshmen and sophomores. So I really wanted to write a book, especially for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also said the book is something of a call-back to her own childhood. The dedication reads \u201cTo me, circa 2003.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018The Chismosas Only Book Club\u2019 is my ode to the very popular young adult series from the early aughts called \u2018The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cThose were some of my favorite books from the time I was in middle school and high school, and so that was the initial inspiration, was just wanting to capture that feeling of YA books from the early aughts.\u201d<\/p>\n
The bookstore itself feels almost like a character in the book. Kemp says that\u2019s because to her, this was a celebration of \u201cthe entire book ecosystem.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to live across the street from my elementary school, and I could see when the teachers would start arriving in the summer to get ready for the upcoming school year. As soon as I saw my librarian\u2019s car in the parking lot, I would start walking across the streets every day to help her set up the library. I\u2019ve always spent a lot of time in libraries,\u201d Kemp said. \u201cI really wanted to pay homage to that as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kemp emphasized that regardless of age, a healthy relationship with books can enrich our ability to understand ourselves and our relationships.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of people, even adults, struggle with communication and the vulnerability required to be able to speak only with someone. So, for the characters in this story, when they don\u2019t know how to express what they\u2019re feeling or when they really don\u2019t understand what they are feeling, the books that they are reading are the key to unlocking that understanding and that ability to be honest with their friends,\u201d said Kemp.<\/p>\n
This book has just as much to do with the present as it does the past. In addition to the more traditional \u201ccoming-of-age\u201d story beats, the book explores themes around ancestry and family.<\/p>\n
\u201cIdentity formation is happening at a really rapid speed when you\u2019re in middle and high school, and the first pieces of that identity formation are \u2018who are we within our family structure?\u2019 That includes the people who came before us and how those family histories and family stories shape the overall family unit,\u201d Kemp said.<\/p>\n
Woven throughout the book are snippets of cartoons and screenshots from the friends\u2019 quirky text messages. Kemp says she wanted to use humor to make her book more approachable to hesitant readers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was really important for me to write a funny book,\u201d she said. \u201cI was thinking about reluctant readers and how to hook those kids who maybe love graphic novels, but haven\u2019t found a right fit prose novel yet.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book ends with a full list of the books the girls read throughout the story.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of my favorite elements of the book is that the books they read in their book club are real books that you can find in your local library or local independent bookstore. I\u2019m hoping that it inspires kids to just keep reading more.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Chismosas Only Book Club\u201d was published in May of this year by G.P. Puntam\u2019s Sons Books for Young Readers. Readers can learn more about the book and its author at www.laekanzeakemp.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cA humble monument to the kind of magic only books can summon.\u201d That\u2019s the description of the fictional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[132,134,133],"class_list":["post-359366","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-austin","tag-austin","tag-austin-headlines","tag-austin-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=359366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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