Welcome to the second week of WNDB’s Fall Book Club! Today we are so happy to welcome author Natalia Sylvester. Here’s Natalia discussing her YA novel Running (HMH, 2020), and the inspiration behind it.
As you begin exploring Running, please check out this educators guide produced by WNDB to help encourage discussion and engagement. Included are comprehension questions, follow-up activities, and a further reading list.
If you’d like to purchase Running, we are using Bookshop, which “[gives] away over 75% of [their] profit margin to stores, publications, authors and others who make up the thriving, inspirational culture around books!”
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Transcript:
[WNDB Fall Book Club Credits]
My name is Natalia Sylvester and this is my debut YA novel called Running. [Natalia holds up a copy of Running.] Running is about a 15-year-old Cuban-American girl in Miami whose father is running for president. Mari’s always stood behind her father and supported him but the campaign brings a lot of unwanted attention to her and her family and throughout the course of it she ends up realizing that her views and his don’t actually align. And so when she finds herself at the center of a protest movement against him she has to decide how she’ll use her voice. I was inspired to write Running during the months leading up to the 2016 election because I saw one of candidate’s speeches on TV and standing behind him was his teenage daughter and something about the look on her face got me thinking about what it’s like to support someone so fully in this very literal and figurative way of standing behind them. And then what if inside every part of you wants to speak out, but feels silenced? So this is really a story about Mari finding her voice, overcoming her fear of speaking up, and having to decide how she’ll use her power and privilege to fight for the things that she wants to change.
[WNDB Fall Book Club Credits]
Credits:
CREDITS:
Produced by JoAnn Yao
Edited by Anya Steiner
Graphics by Amber Hooke
RUNNING © Natalia Sylvester and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
