WOW Reads: MSRAP Reads Away by Megan Freeman

Join the Worlds of Words Center Middle School Reading Ambassadors (MSRAP) as we recap our experience around Alone (and Away) by Megan E. Freeman.

In this episode, we talk about... 

• The ways we are prepared, or not, for an “imminent threat” event.
• Books in verse and how poetry and prose differ.
• The importance of “what if” questions and how they can be suppressed.
• Megan’s openness, careful acknowledgment of others and her supernatural approach to story inspiration.
• Pascal Campion’s book cover illustrations and ways to interpret them.

Biggest takeaway: Keep Your Phone Charged!

Best suggestion: Publisher should name the 3rd companion book, “Afar” (Due: January 2027). Cheyenne came up with this idea on the spot, and we all agree.

Best intention: We would definitely read the 3rd companion book and the sequel. 

This podcast was recorded in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab (DIALL) in the U of A College of Education.

Producer/Host: Rebecca Ballenger, Worlds of Words Center Associate Director
Literature Discussant: Narges Zandi, U of A COE Graduate Assistant 
Audio Engineer: Alexis Mendoza, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Art Major
Coordinator: Vianey Torres, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A Nursing Major
Digital Collaborator: Melanie Reyes, Worlds of Words Student Employee and U of A First-year Student

Music is "A Day In The Life" by Grant Green

For more information on the Worlds of Words Middle School Reading Ambassadors (MSRAP), visit wowlit.org.

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We Can Promote Global Literature Together!

The Worlds of Words Reading Ambassador program is completely free for participants who receive a book for themselves and a book to share with their school librarian, ELA/English teacher, or other school entity. If you would like to support this program, please make a gift on-line through the University of Arizona Foundation.

Thank you for listening and keep reading!

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to WoW Reads, a podcast that centers middle school and teen voices on books written for them.

SPEAKER_03 0:06

Worlds of Words Center of Global Literacies and Literatures is committed to creating an international network of people who share the vision of bringing books and children together, thereby opening windows on the world.

SPEAKER_02 0:32

We respectfully acknowledge the University of Arizona is on the land and territories of indigenous peoples. Today, Arizona is home to 22 federally recognized tribes, with Tucson being home to the Otum and the Yaqui. Committed to diversity and inclusion, the university strives to build sustainable relationships with sovereign Native nations and indigenous communities through education offerings, partnerships, and community service.

SPEAKER_06 1:00

McGinnie Freeman attended an elementary school where poets came into the classrooms every week to teach poetry. And she was a writer ever since. She writes middle grade and young adult fiction as well as poetry for adults. An award-winning teacher, Megan has decades of experience teaching in the arts and humanities and is nationally recognized for represent for presentating workshops and speaking to the audiences across the country. When 12-year-old Maddie's scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends goes airy, she ends up walking up to a nightmare, waking up to a nightmare. She's utterly alone, left behind, and the Tonda has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

We are certainly not alone now. You may or may not be able to hear our whole group, just the other side of our quiet wall. My name is Rebecca. I'm the associate director for Worlds of Words. Um we met with Megan E. Freeman today and we talked about the book alone. If I were alone, I don't think that I would have tried to escape my sweet little town.

SPEAKER_02 2:03

If I were alone, I feel like I would try to escape. And because it's scary and I don't know how to react.

SPEAKER_05 2:21

If I were alone, I would probably drive away and find civilization.

SPEAKER_03 2:27

If I were alone, um, I would probably at the beginning I would try to drive away.

SPEAKER_05 2:34

If I were alone, I would drive away to look for civilization, and if I saw like any pets, I would try and like free them to see if they would have a chance at surviving.

SPEAKER_06 2:44

If I were alone, I'd definitely stay put and stare at a wall for a few hours.

SPEAKER_01 2:51

But again, we aren't alone. We had one of our most um well-attended author events of the year. We had guests from the children's literature course, which was cool, and guests from the public, and then we all showed out. So that was fantastic. Would somebody like to talk about uh what our author event was like today?

SPEAKER_03 3:12

I think um the author event went really well. I think ever so basically she came and we all asked our questions, and then it was really nice because the questions just kept coming and flowing, and there wasn't really a lot of awkward silence that sometimes no one has any more questions, and or we don't get to finish all the questions because the author takes too long, but the pace was really great, and everyone I think got to ask everything they wanted.

SPEAKER_02 3:43

I saw our author event went really well as well because our author really knew how to express herself in a way, and it just helped like all the questions flow, and she gave really like she gave really specific and like and they weren't like really open-ended questions. Oh not questions, answers that helped us get a feel for how she writes, but while also experiencing different things that like having different experiences with what she used to do and like what she would always like like be involved with.

SPEAKER_01 4:26

How did you let's talk about the book. What did you think about the book?

SPEAKER_05 4:29

When I when I was reading the book, it w when I found out that uh Matt that Maddie got left alone, I w it was pretty shocking because I thought that um her phone would be like it wouldn't be close to dead. I I thought it was gonna be like at fifty percent or something. But it ended up to be like ten percent and then over the night it died and people were texting her and calling her to see where she was so that she didn't get left behind. Do you have a phone? No.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

Okay. Does anybody here have a phone? I do. Okay, so several hands went up. Um ha when you when at the end of the day, what kind of what is your battery power like? Like 30 degrees or 30 degrees.

SPEAKER_03 5:18

30 percent. Yeah, 27 or 30.

SPEAKER_06 5:22

Zero.

SPEAKER_05 5:24

Cause like I have a tablet and a watch, and my watch when it's at the end of the day, it's at 50%.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 5:30

And I do a lot of things on it. So you but I have it on battery saver, that's the thing.

SPEAKER_03 5:35

So I save the battery. I feel like on battery saving it always, it's a trick, and it actually makes it go out faster. So I never put it on battery saving.

SPEAKER_01 5:44

But do you think maybe to her point this book would make you think about maybe using battery saving?

SPEAKER_05 5:51

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:52

I've never really read books in verse, so this was kind of a first experience for me. And I think it was written really well and I really connected with the characters, and I was scared with her or happy with her wa with Maddie with for whatever was going on, like when she when there were the burglarers, I was I was scared, I was anxious for what she was going to do compared to when um she grew her first uh uh radish in the garden and she was able to eat it, and I I just felt like wow, uh I'm happy for her, and I could really experience what she was doing.

SPEAKER_02 6:28

I just felt like that Maddie gained a greater sense of confidence and leadership in herself while also not fully losing what who she was prior, but like gaining a certain diff a different perspective of how she lived because she had the hope that her parents were still alive and everything, but after she she realized that anything could have happened, she started taking matters into her own hands and realizing that she she was gonna be by herself for a long time with George and she was just gonna try sticking through it while also learning new things along the way.

SPEAKER_04 7:18

I think the book was honestly pretty good. I really like the um storytelling elements that were put in it to make it feel immersive and connecting in some way. However, there are some parts that I find a bit unbelievable. Like during the sleepover, she you know, I would have expected in a crisis where an entire state has to be evacuated, I would think there would be like a national security emergency broadcast system on the television, uh even if the television power is out? Well, at first when she woke up, the television worked perfectly fine, so I don't get why they didn't do that.

SPEAKER_01 8:04

So Megan addressed this to a certain extent. Does uh does anybody want to talk about how Megan Trouble was a was troubleshooting this question as she wrote?

SPEAKER_05 8:18

Well, I feel like if they were evacuated there wouldn't have been that much like news coverage on it because I feel like they would be more focused on evacuating everybody rather than having news about it and even like in state news about it. Uh well, if well I think that um Maddie's mom and dad, they were like look for her because they know that they're not at their house, they think they're at each other's house. But they could also like look at their friend like at their friend's house, at ask their friends, go to their grandparents' house to like see where they could where Maddie could be so she wouldn't get left behind. And Maddie could have called her mom or dad, but when she found out their their phones taken away, she was pretty disappointed.

SPEAKER_01 9:06

So one of the things Megan asked us was if any of us had been involved in an evacuation. And I think one person was, but for the most part none of us have been. So there's that that rush of things, and we know that that may start when Maddie's in her grandma's apartment and she hears the voices, and that was the voices of people leaving the apartments. But also, um, also I wonder for your generation, what is your go-to to get news if it's not going to be your phone? Your phone is at 10% or it's out of battery, we which we already troubleshot that. But Altair, would you immediately turn on the TV and look for the do you watch the news right now?

SPEAKER_04 9:52

I mean, I don't necessarily watch the news that often. I mean, sometimes when I want to know the news, I watch it. But if I wasn't able to access the television, I would probably use a radio. Do you have a radio? Do you know where to tune your radio? Well, I'm not sure how to use a radio, and I I would need to ask my dad on that, but I do have a hand-cranked radio.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

That's so cool. I'm on a hand-cranked radio. Um, so she did, as she wrote it, she did a lot of troubleshooting, and um I think she caught most of the places where um where I think the average person might know to get news or to look for information, but she wasn't expecting an emergency, you know, she wasn't expecting it, so maybe like the delay before she realized it was an emergency might have had something to do with it. But Megan told us about presenting this uh to uh a farm, a group of um kids who grew up in a in farmland, and what was their immediate question?

SPEAKER_05 10:58

They wanted to know if there was gonna be another book. Oh isn't it like why they didn't hook up a generator?

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Why they why they just why she just didn't hook up a generator. So, yeah, I think we had to have to suspend our disbelief around some places, and it might matter, you know, what part of the country that you're in and to what your emergency response would be. I want to go back a little bit. Um, when Alice said she'd never read a novel in verse, um, a few of you nodded your head. Um, Megan uh talked about that a little bit in the book, the paperback anyway, the version that we have had a little passage that was written in prose versus a little passage that was written in verse. And she she read that aloud to us. Will somebody talk about that moment?

SPEAKER_02 11:50

Well, when Megan was talking about uh like all of that, she said that she was telling us how there's a difference between prose and poetry. She was telling us how prose describes while poetry evokes. And what that means is that like prose is like the facts and everything and what you need to know in a nutshell while evoke like while poetry is like it it explains more without t really telling you what you're supposed to like be searching for. And it's it's it tells you with like clues of what you think it should be, but it doesn't really like it it leads you to an ending, but it doesn't really give you that ending in specifics.

SPEAKER_01 12:39

Yeah, that's a great explanation, Christian. And I think that that use of poetry combined with you know what you were talking about, Altaires, this sort of like not knowing anything, um that led to the mystery that you guys, the sort of atmospheric mystery that you asked about during our session. Did you have something you wanted to add?

SPEAKER_06 13:02

Uh yeah, I thought that like in the poetry version it like did like draw more attention and like you get to like see, you know, when she was talking in the prose version, it was like they could do that, they could do this, but like once it's coming from like a first person point of view, it makes it more mysterious and like it is like their thoughts and everything. So what were your impressions of Megan?

SPEAKER_05 13:30

I thought she was like really interesting and really cool, and she had a bunch of like good connections with the book, and she when she answered questions, he really answered them thoughtfully and she put in like a lot of effort.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

I mean when it came when I first like when she started talking and answering questions, I could tell that she knew what she was talking about and like she knew how to express herself, meaning that like and that's what a lot of poets do, so you could tell that like okay, I'm not trying to be stereotypical, but you could tell that in some way she uses like poetry to her advantage, and you could tell that um like she was very just like yeah, strong belief in her answers that and she was alwa and even if her answers weren't um right or wrong, she was always open, she was open to any possibilities, and she was always acknowledging other people's possibil's opinions, and she was just showing that she understood what others were saying, but also took into consideration of what she thought.

SPEAKER_03 14:39

Wait, to piggyback off of what you said for um opening possibilities, I thought it was super cool that she was pushing um talking about what-if questions and how important those are. And I thought that was so cool compared to how at school um instead they tell you, like, stop with the what if questions, and you guys have too many what-ifs, and how it's like it's a completely different like universe here in writing, and they're like, Yes, we want all the what-ifs, and that's what makes a story better. And I just thought that was really interesting.

SPEAKER_06 15:10

One thing that I found interesting that she was talking about was her talking about like how she got the idea for a load, and she was talking about how like an I like a book for idea would like come to you. I thought that was like something that a lot of writers don't talk about. A lot of writers are like, oh, it came from like personal experience, but she was like, it just came to me, like the universe gave it to me, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

I loved that too. She talked about muses. What did she say specifically?

SPEAKER_02 15:35

She said it was like supernatural. Yeah, like it like it just like pokes you and it influences you to like write about a certain topic, and you don't ha and she even said that you lose the idea if you give up on it, and you don't and that idea goes to somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

Yeah, she said she was in competition with her creative impulse.

SPEAKER_05 15:58

Yeah, that's what I was about to say. And to like agree with Alice that she said that it uh like p most teachers don't want the what-ifs. So like the what-ifs can give you so many possibilities for something to happen or something else to happen, because it can open a new world to like where everything can happen.

SPEAKER_01 16:21

Okay, honestly, I think that that relates to the way I answered when we started this, is because if we are in this world where everybody there are no screens, that's when you get the time to let your brain wander like that and consider things like that. So that informed my answer when we went around and introduced ourselves, just exactly what you were saying.

SPEAKER_02 16:45

She took she took into consideration of how everything like there's a lot of rights and left, like uh there's a lot of directions something can go in. Like how some of her scenes, she was talking about, oh, she could have rewritten it for something else, or oh, it could have gone a different way. And there was so many alts alternatives that sh even she took a long time to really think about this book because and it took her 11 years to actually fully publish the book, meaning like she really took a lot of thought into it while also like considering the fact that this could be somebody like it could be somebody's life and it could really explain like other people while also contradicting with other people as well. So it it just like goes to the fact that one situation can lead to so many other things.

SPEAKER_01 17:43

Let's switch focus for a second and talk about the book covers that we saw for Alone and Away. Um, it is the artwork she said of Pascal Campion. I don't speak French. No, obviously he's French Canadian. So, first of all, will somebody describe the cover of Alone and then somebody describe the cover of Away?

SPEAKER_06 18:11

Um, the book cover for Alone, I think it really gives off like a victory in a way with like the way the light is shining on Maddie and the dog with the forest. Even though she's like not it there isn't really a scene in the book that looks like that, but like it's still when you when you when you read the book, like you understand like that does kind of give off summary of what it would look like.

SPEAKER_05 18:40

And with a way, there's four characters and the person on the book you can't really tell who it is, so for that you can like figure it out by yourself, like the more you go through the story, because the person is standing on the truck on a car of a the hood of a car with traffic because they're also in an evacuation and they're trying to go somewhere that's safe. And the person's just looking at the sun and the mountains, like trying to figure out what to do.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

And the coolest part is that when we asked her about the cover of away, um Megan said that she also didn't know who it was and that it was up open to interpretation. It could even be Spider-Man if you wanted.

SPEAKER_01 19:33

So our final question was about what can we expect from her next. So what can we expect from her next?

SPEAKER_05 19:41

She's gonna make the third book in this series about um one of the girls who's going to be at the sleepover with Maddie and a couple other boys.

SPEAKER_02 19:51

She also said that she might make a sequel linking all three books that sh and the third book's still in like the stages of like pub publishing. They're all gonna like correlate to the sequel, and it's but she like she still has like a lot of ideas for what she should do and everything, so so alone in a way are not sequels, they are companion books, they take place in the same timeline.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

The third book also is a companion book, takes place in the same timeline, and then there's a fourth that is going to combine all three as a sequel. Wow, that's gonna be would you read it? Yeah, yeah, definitely, definitely, for sure. Definitely, yeah, for sure. Okay, so our middle school reading ambassador Cheyenne said that the third book, companion book, should be called A FAR. So good. If they don't take it, if they don't use that book, doesn't come out until January 2027, so we'll all have to read that book. But my hope is that it is a far because and Cheyenne came up with that on the full side.

SPEAKER_00 21:00

Yeah, so cool.

SPEAKER_05 21:02

Like it didn't take any minute, any second. It just popped. As soon as she finished, it just happened.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

The supernatural.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

That's right. Maybe she was grabbed by the muse. Any final reflections?

SPEAKER_06 21:16

Um I think alone and away are really good, especially alone, because it really makes you think like the whole journey, like, is this what I would do? And it makes you think like, how would you survive? And I think it also like upgrades your level of understanding what it is like to be alone and survive.

SPEAKER_01 21:33

Are any of you familiar with the boxcar children?

SPEAKER_05 21:36

I think I've I think I might have read that in like third grade.

SPEAKER_01 21:40

So that was a that was a series that came out. I mean, it was a little it was it predates me just a little bit, but I remember thinking that I could totally do that. I could totally go live on my own in a boxcar and that I would spend my pennies on gumballs. I thought I could live on gumballs, I was younger than you guys. Um and so I I wonder, do you feel that you would be as successful as Maddie in this scenario?

SPEAKER_02 22:08

No.

SPEAKER_05 22:09

Yeah, no, probably not. I feel I would be successful in this scenario. I could have had some of the similarities with her, but I feel like I would have done stuff differently. Like I probably would have gone to find other people and not just like stay put. She had a lot of patience four years.

SPEAKER_01 22:27

Oh yeah. I'm I'm so glad that George the Rottweiler was with her that whole time, too. Thank you to Megan Freeman for coming to talk with us. We obviously enjoyed it, and we are considering we would love to have you come back in January to talk to us about a far. Thank you to Kathy Short, the director of Worlds of Wars. Thanks to all of our donors who have given us such a great year so far. Thank you to Narguest, who is our lit discussant, VMA, who keeps us together administratively. Alexis, who is right here recording with all of this cacophony that's going on in just the other room. She's got her work cut out for her. Melanie, who also helps us with socials. We are recording in the Digital Innovation and Learning Lab in the University of Arizona College of Education.