Have you ever wondered how a childhood filled with reading struggles could blossom into a career of crafting captivating stories for middle-grade readers? James Ponti, the creative force behind the City Spies series, takes us on an exhilarating journey from his days as a fledgling reader to becoming a literary hero for the younger generation. His tale is a testament to the life-changing magic that dedicated teachers can weave, showing us that with a bit of encouragement and a lot of perseverance, the bridge from difficulty to success is one that any aspiring mind can cross.
James Ponti also gives us a sneak peek at the brand-new City Spies: Mission Manhattan, which launches this week, and the environmentally-conscious Sherlock Society series. His stories do more than entertain; they instill a sense of adventure and problem-solving that can inspire both the youth and adults alike. And teachers and librarians, his website contains a lot of resources you can use for enrichment when teaching his books! So buckle up and prepare for a ride through the imaginative realms of one of today's most influential middle-grade authors, where the love for story is just as important as the message it carries to its readers.
This episode celebrates the heart of strong storytelling for reluctant readers. James shares his transition from the world of television screenwriting to penning novels that reflect a rich tapestry of backgrounds and experiences, embodying the diverse world that our readers are part of. He opens up about the meticulous research and personal site visits that go into each book, ensuring that the settings are as authentic as his dialogue. Whether it's the streets of Venice, the corridors of Washington DC, or the secret nooks and crannies of the NY Public Library, James's commitment to bringing these worlds to life is matched only by his dedication to writing characters that resonate with young hearts and minds.
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
Have you ever wondered how a childhood filled with reading struggles could blossom into a career of crafting captivating stories for middle-grade readers? James Ponti, the creative force behind the City Spies series, takes us on an exhilarating journey from his days as a fledgling reader to becoming a literary hero for the younger generation. His tale is a testament to the life-changing magic that dedicated teachers can weave, showing us that with a bit of encouragement and a lot of perseverance, the bridge from difficulty to success is one that any aspiring mind can cross.
James Ponti also gives us a sneak peek at the brand-new City Spies: Mission Manhattan, which launches this week, and the environmentally-conscious Sherlock Society series. His stories do more than entertain; they instill a sense of adventure and problem-solving that can inspire both the youth and adults alike. And teachers and librarians, his website contains a lot of resources you can use for enrichment when teaching his books! So buckle up and prepare for a ride through the imaginative realms of one of today's most influential middle-grade authors, where the love for story is just as important as the message it carries to its readers.
This episode celebrates the heart of strong storytelling for reluctant readers. James shares his transition from the world of television screenwriting to penning novels that reflect a rich tapestry of backgrounds and experiences, embodying the diverse world that our readers are part of. He opens up about the meticulous research and personal site visits that go into each book, ensuring that the settings are as authentic as his dialogue. Whether it's the streets of Venice, the corridors of Washington DC, or the secret nooks and crannies of the NY Public Library, James's commitment to bringing these worlds to life is matched only by his dedication to writing characters that resonate with young hearts and minds.
Read the full show notes, visit the website, and check out my on-demand virtual course. Continue the adventure at LinkedIn or Instagram.
*Disclosure: I am a Bookshop.org. affiliate.
Wonder Curiosity Connection. Where will your adventures take you? I'm Dr Diane, and thank you for joining me on today's episode of Adventures in Learning. So welcome to the Adventures in Learning podcast. I am so excited to invite Spymaster extraordinaire James Ponte to the program today. If you don't know, his incredible series City Spies has a new book, mission Manhattan, and it's due out this week. I have to tell you I'm not done with it yet, but it is keeping me from doing everything I'm supposed to be doing today as I'm getting ready for my trip, because I cannot put this book down. So, james, welcome to the show. I am so happy you're here.
Speaker 2:I am thrilled to be here and it's an honor. It's so much fun to talk books.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you for including me on your Mission Manhattan tour. It is so much fun to be a part of this. I want to start with a question I like to ask everybody. Tell us a little bit about your own adventures in learning. How did you get to where you are now? How did you go from screenwriting to being the incredible, popular author of these middle grade books?
Speaker 2:Well, I did it the wrong way. I did it at the back door, the side door, whatever. So I always wanted to be a writer. I grew up in Atlantic Beach, florida it's a small town outside of Jacksonville, florida public school kid and had just amazing teacher after amazing teacher growing up Teachers who encouraged me, teachers who had extra time with me, teachers who knew from an early age that I wanted to be a writer. I decided fully decided in fifth grade and I never wanted anything else. So many teachers along the way encouraged that.
Speaker 2:My problem was I was not a good reader. I struggled as a reader and it's because I was just slow at it. Other people were fast and that frustrated me that they were so much faster than me. It frustrated me in class that we would read something and I would only be halfway through and they'd be done and we'd be talking about it. So I would already heard the end. So I never bothered to go and finish it. So it was an odd thing.
Speaker 2:I wanted to be a writer because I love storytelling and I love writing, but I didn't think I would write books. I didn't know what I would write. I really got excited about writing in fifth grade when we did a poetry lesson. Finally there was something that I could finish and I could read. I had a great teacher. Mr Crawford was my fifth grade teacher and he really encouraged me.
Speaker 2:Then, middle school, I had the same English teacher for all three years. His name was Mr Tyree, a DL Tyree. I call that now, I guess, as an adult, but at the time it was Mr Tyree. He loved movies and we did movies in class Every year. I wrote the movie and I loved that.
Speaker 2:One day I went up to him and I said Mr Tyree, I think this is the thing for me. I think I'm going to be write scripts for either movies or plays or TV shows. I threw plays in there. I don't know why. He said, well, write a play and we'll produce it. You have to ask permission for that or anything. So I wrote a play and we produced it. It was awful, but kids came and they laughed and they had a good time. So my learning journey was a journey of great teachers. Then, ultimately, in high school, I had an amazing American literature teacher named Judy White. Unfortunately, she has passed away. She never got to see that. Actually, I did do this stuff that we talked about. But I love Mrs White so much that she helped me so much that in every book I write the name of the teacher is always Mrs White. So she's been in tons of books now and she's still inspiring, hopefully, people to read and write, just like she did for me.
Speaker 1:Well, it's funny because I actually had heard of Judy White, not through your books, but because one of my dear friends who introduced my husband and me, is Jay Coles, who you went to school with.
Speaker 2:Yes, amazing. So yes, it's a small world, so we're veering off the interest path of most people. But, yes, so Jay and I both had Jay's, a good friend of mine in high school and she was just great and she pushed us. It was so amazing about this and my wife is a teacher and I remind her of this all the time which is growing up. A lot of times kids, their favorite teacher is the fun young legend get away with the teacher. But when you're 25, 30, 35, the favorite teacher is the one who was pushing you and hard on you. And the advantage for me was that even at the time I knew she was my favorite teacher. She was so much harder. I got the worst grades I got in her class and I still was thrilled because I got an A one nine weeks and that was like an A. And Judy White's class was the greatest achievement of my life up until I made the New York Times best summer list. They're side by side for me and so, yeah, so I went on and I became a.
Speaker 2:I majored in screenwriting in college and I became a television writer and I started in KidsTV and about working in KidsTV we had a tie-in book and, as an adult, I just accepted. You know you're a slow reader, but you like to read, and so I was reading, and I was reading books. Not, my wife reads nonstop and incredibly fast. So it's still frustrating. And so I did a Kids tie-in book to one of the shows and I fell in love with the idea of writing books, and so it has been ever since on the arc back to being a kid's book writer, and now that's all I do and I love it 1000%. It's amazing.
Speaker 1:Well, and you have that rare gift of really being able to write in the voice of that middle grade child. When I read you, it feels authentic. It feels like you have really put a lot of thought into the culture of each of your characters, and I love the fact that your books are diverse in terms of the characters who embody them as well. How do you do that? What's the preparation?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I was fortunate in I grew up in the town. I grew up in the beach town and it was a very diverse town and we had, you know, cause and diverse not just with race, but diverse. But we had country clubs there, so there was people with wealth and we had, like, people who worked in the board block, you know, and we had, you know, the Navy base there and we had a lot of people of all different races, that. And so I grew up in a pretty nice mix of students and it's just always how I've seen stories. You know, the story you know you start with. These are stories in a way, based on your youth or your interaction with people when you were a kid. And so diversity, but not forced diversity, is always the thing that I want. And I say not forced cause. Anyone could do like a Benetton ad and like, well, let's add this and let's add this and let's have someone of this and who thinks that. But for me, the key has to be coming up with a plot that naturally integrates people who are different. So it starts at that point, and so with city spies. City spies is a story about, you know, this guy who was searching the world. He's a spy, his wife was a spy and there was something happened and we don't know what. But she left with the kids and he's searching for his kids and in the search for his kids he finds other kids that he can't turn his back on. So they're from all over, naturally in the plot. So of course there's going to be a diversity as far as their voice.
Speaker 2:The advantage of having spent a sizable part of my career in education writing screenplays and scripts is that it's mostly about dialogue. You're constantly writing dialogue and you're having actors perform it and you hear when it's not true and it plays when it's not true. So I think that was an advantage. There are a number of people who I really admire in the middle grade writing young adult writing space, who started actually as script writers. You know off the top of my head, stu Gibbs. Gordon Corman was a novelist in middle school. He already got a public but he majored in film. But in my youth, suzanne Collins, who was a dear friend of mine and who we worked together at Nickelodeon and Disney Channel. You know all tons of people and I think it's because we write dialogue so much and we wrote kids dialogue so much that it's a natural progression for us to write it in books.
Speaker 1:Well, and it definitely comes across as authentic and true and it's a delight to read.
Speaker 2:Oh well, I appreciate that. That's very nice to hear you say.
Speaker 1:And I noticed with city spies. As I told you, I'm still working my way through it, but I've gone through Venice and I found myself thinking did you get to go to Venice to do the research?
Speaker 2:No, I books. So this is the fifth book in the series. Books three and four were written during COVID, so research for those books was harder and it was remote. All the other books, I try to go to all the places, everything in city spies, five I walked, I literally walked where they walked, so like I mapped out where they were going because I had done the first draft. And I went to Venice and I went to all the places they went and the church they go into and hide in and this and that, and then I went back and I changed it to make it go.
Speaker 2:My wife loves when I set stories in places like Venice and Rome and Paris, because then she gets to go and we get to the places. You know people will say, oh, you should do it like in the jungles. I'll say no, no, no, no. Why don't we do Barcelona next? Why don't we go? You know, why don't you do that? So no, I went to Venice, I went to all the places. From that it goes.
Speaker 2:The other big stops are at Washington DC and New York City. In Washington I visited all the locations, one that I just think is fascinating, which is the Iranian embassy in Washington DC, which is fascinating because it's been abandoned since 1981. Oh wow, it's technically the way that the Vienna Convention is written. It's owned by Iran, but no one from Iran can go there, so no one can do anything with the property. And so it's this abandoned building. And so I met up with a friend, hennikon, who's a writer who lives in the DC area. We were driving around and so I went there on my own because I didn't want to get. I thought I might get arrested, I don't know. And I walked up and I walked all around the abandoned embassy taking pictures, wondering well, I don't know who's watching me, and if they're in Iran, I probably can get away before they can get someone here to say get off our property. But I try to research everything. In New York. A lot of the finale takes place at the New York Public Library, and for that-.
Speaker 1:My favorite place.
Speaker 2:Oh, it's amazing. And so I got a behind the scenes tour with my editor and my wife because those are the two people who read the manuscripts as I'm working on it and we got. You know, we try to research. I try to research for a number of reasons. Partly it's because I want to be accurate, partly it's because I want to use real places, because books, the books that did hit for me as a kid that was one of the things, like my all time favorite book is from the mixed up files, and this is basically Frank Weiler.
Speaker 2:Frank Weiler, which is set in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the fact that it was a real place, like I could go to New York and I could see this thing that they're talking about. So I want that, but also what I want is, by researching in person and really seeing the places, you get a sensory what does it smell like, what does it taste like, what does it feel like? But also you get a sense of new things you would never have known. That inspire ideas or come, and a little detail makes it, I think, jump off the page. You know an example that I like to give and I don't know that it does per se in this book make it exact. But that fascinated me was that at the New York Public Library the stacks that are not visible to the public, which is seven stories of bookcases, are empty. There are no books there anymore. The books are now kept underground in a special, climate controlled environment.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:The bookcases can't be moved because the bookcases are what hold the building up. And it's like because when they built it they never. They thought we'll do both things as much. We'll build bookcases and we'll build the support beams, and that way it'll save us the trouble Interesting. So, even though they cleared them off of all the books, they can't get rid of the bookcases or put anything else in that spot, because the building would collapse. And I thought I would never have made that up.
Speaker 1:No, oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And if you go there which is really fun and look at them, you see they're actually cut into the ground because really their seven stories of steel turned into bookcases and so the floor goes right up to them, but there's like this little ray of light comes through the scene and so, oh, I could pass a note down there or I could sneak around down there. So going is, first of all, incredibly fun and second of all, it really, I think, elevates the manuscript At least I hope it does. If I do my job right, it does.
Speaker 1:So where is your very favorite place that you have gotten to research for one of your books?
Speaker 2:Well, venice was fantastic, so that was a great overall city. To go to the New York Public Library was fantastic. For me, probably the best moment was when I was writing a series called Frame and the Frame series. The third episode actually it was, yeah, it was trapped took place partly at the Library of Congress Again a library. I love libraries, yes.
Speaker 2:So I went to the Library of Congress with my wife because, again, we traveled together whenever we can and so we're there, and I wanted to go into a room and take pictures so that I could accurately describe this room in the manuscript. And they said, well, we have a thing set up for you. I'm like, ok, my wife is an American history teacher. They take us into the room and they start taking out treasures of the Library of Congress, just for the two of us. They showed us here's part of the Gutenberg Bible. Here is literally the first book printed in America.
Speaker 2:Then it got to a copy of the Federalist papers that had notations from Thomas Jefferson that had been a gift from Alexander Hamilton to Eliza Hamilton, who didn't give it to Thomas Jefferson. And they've all written in this. And my wife is touching these things and holding these things. And then the last thing, because I knew it was in the library and I saw the box and I got excited now that my wife is going to freak out in a moment the contents of Abraham Lincoln's pockets the day he was killed at Ford's Theater.
Speaker 1:Oh, my goodness.
Speaker 2:And they just opened this thing and it's like that's his handkerchief. It's right here. And to take your wife, who's an American history teacher, on this journey, that day is hard. It was the day before Thanksgiving. It's like that day was hard to talk, so that was a great research day. So Venice came pretty close to topping that as well.
Speaker 1:And do you have places you haven't been yet, that you're dreaming of setting story in?
Speaker 2:Yeah, always, always looking for new places. The place that I would love to go and I cannot go is MI6 headquarters in London. I just don't think they let you in there. I'm going to London, probably in the next year, so I may send a letter and see what happens. I was close to getting to the FBI when I was working on Frame because the FBI was part of it, and then that fell through. I have a really good friend named Stu Gibbs who writes spy school and Stu has finally now gotten someone to CIA. He's going to pass them off to me so I might get into the CIA.
Speaker 2:Their secret museum. It's not a secret museum, it's a museum on their property that's hard to get to. So some of those places are fun because they're really hard to get to. And I don't just research the places, I research spy craft and the history of spies and things, and that is fascinating to me. One of my secret advisors is the former deputy director of the CIA, which is pretty cool. He helps me out with research because his wife is a school librarian, so she put us together. So, yeah, I have plenty of places I want to go. That's a great thing about the city spies is they go anywhere around the world. I have a feeling Tokyo might be in that. That's a totally new adventure for me. I've never been closer than California, so it'll be very cool, you might get all seven continents before you're done.
Speaker 2:I, you know I long flights, though, do get to me. That's why I haven't made it to Tokyo yet. So I would love to go to Australia, but I think I would have to be rendered unconscious and then like ship there and then woken up. So maybe, maybe all seven. My son's getting closer than I am. He's more of a world traveler than I am.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm heading to Australia next week, so I'll let you know how that flight goes.
Speaker 2:I'm a fantastic child and do research for me. Where are you going? What city are?
Speaker 1:you going to? We're starting in Auckland in New Zealand, and then we'll be in Sydney and Melbourne, in Cairns.
Speaker 2:Wow, what a great trip.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I'm doing some research for some stuff that I'm doing. I'm so excited to get to Snorkel on the Great Barrier Reef, and that actually connects to something I noticed in this book you really talked and embraced the environmental themes that are topmost for kids today. Where did that come from?
Speaker 2:You know it's funny, it's also the key. I have a new series coming out this year called the Sherlock Society. It comes out in September and it is also a strong environmental themes. Part of it is, like I said earlier I grew up at the beach and when you grow up at the ocean, along the ocean, there's a lot more of your education. We had a lot of education about the ocean. This is back a while. We had to learn how to identify all the shells and all the different fish and learn about sharks and about dolphins and about all this stuff. So it was always the thing that I was really interested in.
Speaker 2:And now, living in Florida, it's a place where environmental stuff is always a issue because it's such a unique environment in places like the Everglades, but construction in Florida is always so much in this hard balance. So from my life, it was something I was always interested in. But I really think that it's something that young people are interested in and something that they can relate to and feel passionate about, much more than any other what you might think of as a political issue. Kids aren't going to get interested in gerrymandering or they're not going to get interested in taxation. It's an intellectually distant concept, but the environment is something not only that they know, but if you look around the world, it is something where young people are often in the forefront of environmental activism and that, I think, is the thing that fascinated me the most. So for this book, city Spies, Mission Manhattan the storyline involves an environmental activist from Brazil who's a rainforest activist who they have to protect. The idea of the City Spies is these kids who are spies for MI6. What they do is they go places where adults would stand out, and so being kind of a protector for this teenage environmentalist made more sense, especially because one of our kids is from Brazil and so he speaks the language and they're the same age and culturally they connect, and so that was part of it. But in researching for that I think Grenfman-Burgen is so well known but if you look you will see there are a dozen or more teen activists who are hugely involved and influential in what's going on, and it was that research that really solidified for me that this is the kind of character that I want to do. I want to talk about this because, also, what's great about it is in talking about an environment that's a place where young people can also make an impact, even in their home, even in what they choose to do.
Speaker 2:My son works in the business of zoos and aquariums. He's an educator Wow, as a kid he would get us on stuff we need to stop using this, we need to do that and these things that he impacted our family, which times 10 times, 1,000 times, it makes a difference, absolutely so for me. I just thought it was a thing that kids really can embrace, can understand and get into. It was also really fun to research. I ended up having a I think he was on a satellite phone in the middle of Amazon a National Geographic scientist who was a friend of a friend, and I said these are the things I want to know about the realistic part of what you deal with and the hard parts and the good parts and the victories. And on top of that, him being in Brazil and from Brazil, he talks to us specifically about the movements in Brazil. So it was it's fun to write about and I think kids really engage with topic.
Speaker 1:Well, and I loved the fact that you were making that central to the book, because I found it compelling and I think there are lots of grownups who like to read middle grade novels as well, and maybe you'll reach some of the grownups too.
Speaker 2:My mail seems to indicate that you're not alone in thinking that they the number it always starts with. I know I'm not your intended audience, but I read these books too and everyone is the intended audience. It's just that it's appropriate for kids, which not everything is, you know. Education, wise word, right. But but even that the books are pretty complex. I don't. I don't do watered down spy novels for kids and I'm amazed at how well kids follow the plots and and the all the espionage components of the books. They totally get into. So it's fun.
Speaker 1:Are you tired of same old, same old professional development experiences? Check out what recent workshop participants have to say about doing a workshop with Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning Great hands-on session that included real ideas to incorporate in the classroom. Wonderful, lots of great ideas and fun science experiments. It was great to be able to see how to make connections between the stories and science. If you are looking to raise your game and have a professional development experience that will leave your educators feeling rejuvenated and ready to directly apply ideas into their classrooms, reach out to Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning. We offer half-and-full-day workshops that examine ways to build connections between multicultural picture books and STEM STEAM experiences for gains across the curriculum. All programs can be tailored to your specific needs, so find out what audiences across the country have been experiencing. Check out Dr Diane's Adventures in Learning at wwwdrdianadventurescom. We hope to be in your school soon. So which of the city kids are you most like?
Speaker 2:Okay. So this is a tricky thing. Kids often ask me about this, so I can't have a favorite. If I had a favorite, I think it would unbalance. You have five kids and actually in this story we get to six, so we have six kids who are part of this team and what I found in reading in readers all over the country is that all of those kids have the equal number of readers who they're their favorites person. You know, I thought maybe okay, the American will be the most favorite, because American kids no, I go to room and I ask is one fifth, one, fifth, one, fifth hands go up? If I had a favorite kid, I would favor the plots to them and that would disrupt the balance, but also I would be doing a disservice. So what?
Speaker 2:What I did actually is I thought hard about the problems I had in middle school, which were plenty is any middle school or guys and I gave. I took my five biggest issues and I gave each of them to one of the characters, so each of them has, at their heart, a core. Like this was a struggle for me growing up. How worrying about letting people down connections with family members who I never met or get to see all these things that I would plug them into that. So all of the kids are part of me.
Speaker 2:All of the kids are way cooler and way more skillful than I am as an adult, much less than I was as a 12 to 14 year old, 15 year old. But so I try not to have a favorite. The character who I most identify with is mother, who is the father figure, actually becomes the father because he adopts all the kids, and that is he. Because I'm a father and that's first and foremost what I am, and so he's the one I feel for, because he's trying to do this thing, which is he's trying to be a good spy and save the world and save the United Kingdom, but he also wants to be a good parent, and sometimes those are in direct conflict with each other.
Speaker 1:That makes total sense. Now, with all the cool gadgets that you've written about, is there one that, if you could have it in everyday life, you would want?
Speaker 2:Ooh, ooh. Well, I want to say this first of all, there are gadgets throughout. I always love that in James Bond movies, but I do them less than I think people would expect, and that's partly is the message that I want to get across is that, just like superhero movies are great, but superhero movies are all built on the idea that well, if you have this one superpower, then you can do things. I wanted the kids in my books to have the power being teamwork, intelligence, empathy, caring, so I want the solutions to be that.
Speaker 2:I also worry that high tech stuff can really seem dated really quickly. So in a lot of places, what I found if I do a lot of research about early spydom, or at least the early stages of MI6 and CIA, is analog, is a lot more fun. So it's much more fun to write a code than it is just to have a computer that translates something for you, and so I try towards that. If they have really good tracker communicators and I would like that I would like to be able to at any time know where my son is or my wife is, without having to call and seem like a nosy parent. You know the worry parent me. I would like to be able to track people easily and I know phones can do that, but I don't secretly track them by their phone, but the communication device. They sometimes use a communication device where they talk to each other without being over, and that would be cool to have, for sure.
Speaker 1:Well, and I love games like Hawks and Sparrows and the different ways that you have. The kids really have to connect and work together and it is low tech like they're getting down to the nitty gritty of creative problem solving and having to think 10 steps ahead, and I think that that's really cool.
Speaker 2:One of the reasons I like to write about spies and this is a key component of the books to me is I feel like being a spy is the closest job there is to being a 12 year old, and by that I mean when you're 12. You are trying to gather intelligence. You are often trying to blend in into place. Where you don't blend in, you are looking for these signals and signs that people use for coolness or hipness or whatever. Where you don't, and sometimes you even take on different identities and try them out. Spying and kid like stuff are very similar. How you get you know. You know. There's a line in one of the books it's like being a spy is like being James Bond movie, it's like being in a middle school cafeteria, and that's really what it is. You're trying to navigate all this stuff. So Hawks and Sparrows is a game I came up with for the new train how to follow someone, how to work in a team and it's just much more fun to me to have that, because I know just from talking to kids that some kids will play Hawks and Sparrows. Now I know that they'll, they'll try it out and I love that.
Speaker 2:That is like the ultimate compliment to me as a writer is when I meet kids who say, oh, I did this thing. That the biggest example of that in my writing is In the books frame, which is kind of like a show off homes and Dr Watson, pair of friends in Washington. But I always thought Sherlock Holmes cheated as a writer because it's like, well, he knows too much. Like oh, there's that tobacco and that tobacco only comes from Afghanistan. So it's like no one knows that and I know that's the plot, but I don't want kids to feel distant.
Speaker 2:So I came up with the thing called toast, which is the theory of all small things, and the way they solve mysteries is by using toast. They use the theory of all small things, which is that if you add up all the little details, that leads you to the truth, where big things are often used to lie. And it's the thing I just came up with. And every kid I've ever met who read that book and thankfully there have been a lot, so that's good. They used to, they tried out, they used toast. Even the kids in my neighborhood is so funny. I moved into this house about four years ago and there's these three girls down the street who are amazing young readers and they read everything I write before anyone in the real world gets to read what I write and they not knowing it was me, but they had red frame and they had used toast to try to figure out who just moved into the house.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:And it's that thing that I invented. To try to figure out who I was was like wow, okay, that's pretty fun.
Speaker 2:What an incredible moment it's stuff and go with it and it's really important, I found, for kids, if you name it, If I had just done the theory of all small things, they would have read it and it'd been okay. But by calling it toast, something that you can do or talk about, or by instead of saying, all right, you guys are going to try to, you guys are going to try to evade these people, it would have been fine. But it's like we're going to play Hawks and Sparrows. Hawks hunt Sparrows, Sparrows try to elude Hawks. Well now it's like well, now we have a name and now we have a thing. That's partly. I think I used to. I worked for a while in Nickelodeon and all the games that like we would like.
Speaker 2:Half the fun of coming up with games and things for Nickelodeon was naming them and it's like once they're named and kids can get into it. So I hope that's the case. In writing.
Speaker 1:So what are your hopes for 2024 in terms of your writing? What are you working on now?
Speaker 2:Well, it's an interesting year, so the writer's public life is always a year behind their working life. So the books that come out this year were the things I did last year. So last year I wrote two books to come out this year. So it was really difficult last year and it's difficult this year because I'm doing it again. But it's exciting to me that two books will come out.
Speaker 2:So in February I have City Spies, mission Manhattan coming out. It's the fifth book in the City Science series. A lot of people wonder if it's the last book, because there are five characters and each character has been the lead in one of the books. It's not. There's gonna be at least eight. So that's the first thing to you know. People that like City Spies, don't worry, it'll be around for a while. But the new series, the Sherlock Society, is a mystery series set in Florida. It's got an environmental component to it and that's the first new thing I've done in four years. You know where. It's all new set of characters and so I'm anxious and a little nervous, and all the things that go with it, of that book coming out this fall.
Speaker 1:That's exciting and I can't wait to read that one.
Speaker 2:And this year, writing wise, I am writing Cities by Six and Sherlock Society too, so going back, and then you stop every now and then for a tour of the new book or for research or something like that. So in the research, the research for Sherlock Society is so much fun. It's all over Miami so it's easy for me to drive through that part's good. But it starts off with a rescue in Keep Us Gained by the Marine Patrol, and so I just called the Marine Patrol to ask if I could just come look at their office, and they took me and another writer friend, christina Diaz Gonzalez. They took us out on the new SWAT boat and raced around the bay.
Speaker 2:Oh wow, I mean, it was like this is what we do. We want you to get it right, because what's great about that, what's wonderful about writing kids books, is when I reach out to somebody about I'm writing a kids book and I want to make sure that I accurately portray the thing that you do. They want kids to know, they want kids to understand. So for Sivvy the Dead, I called the foremost leading Egyptologist in the country and within 30 minutes you wrote back saying, hey, let's get together, let's talk about this. No one says no, which is great, and it's really fun to me because I get to kind of live out the adventures the kids do without risking my life or without having someone like wanting to hurt me or anything, so it's a lot more fun on the writer side.
Speaker 1:Well, and I think that as writers, to be a writer, to be a teacher, you really are coming from that place of innate curiosity. It's that wonder and discovery that we want the kids to have, and if we can't model that, we're not doing our jobs.
Speaker 2:I used to produce a travel. A couple of times I produced travel shows, once for the history channel, once for the golf channel, of all places, and we've traveled all over the country to Europe and with the show I would tell the crew this is how we're going to make this. We are going, I'm going to arrange the schedule so that we do the things, we don't just show the things, that we do them. And I want us to have fun on these trips. We have to work hard, we've got to do our job right, but if we have fun making this, that fun will come out in the show and it will make people want to go to the places.
Speaker 2:And I really felt like that was true and I feel it's true in the books. I want to have fun because spy books are fun, mystery books are fun, and I want to have fun in the making of them, not just because it's enjoyable, but because I want that to come through on the page. I don't want it to be an intellectual experience only. I want kids to think, but I want kids to realize that, oh, that's not exclusive from enjoying each other and being a good friend and solving the problems, because if we can solve little problems, then we can solve big problems.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Well. Thank you so much, James Ponty, for sharing your time with us today. And, folks, you have to go check out City Spies. It is such a great series and I want you guys to go get this book. I want you to check it out and let us know what you think. James, thank you for joining me on the show. It was so much fun to talk to you today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, you have a great day, and everyone. I do hope that you like City Spies, but if you don't, don't worry, there are plenty of books out there. Just don't be like young me Find the books that speak to you and just get lost in the adventure.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. We look forward to you joining us on our next adventure.