A Record of Rejections
“In a way, we’re made up of the stories we grew up on as children.”
The stories we read growing up stay with us as we grow up.
They inspire, become a part of our living narrative, and guide our paths through adversity. I remember being heartbroken reading about Hermione Granger’s experiences at being “muggle-born,” and being called a “Mudblood” by a peer at Hogwarts in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.
Being a young girl of diverse, mixed heritage, the way she chose bravery and stuck to her convictions in spite of the darker parts of humanity is something I’m sure informed my response to similar experiences. Stories and characters like this show us we’re not alone.
The cast of characters that filled my youth and YA booklist tended to be eclectic. One character was Jerry Spinelli’s Star Girl.
The cover is a neon green, with a simple stick drawing of a girl in a dress with a star hovering above her head in blue.
Star Girl gave herself this moniker and throughout the novel goes from being a homeschooler to attending high school. Spinelli’s tale shows how this adventure eventually goes awry, as Star Girl’s well-intentioned but different outlook on life clashes with that of her peers. They don’t understand her simpler dress, inattention to trends, and positive habits such as marching — ukulele in hand — to serenade people on their birthdays in the cafeteria at lunch.
Having read Spinelli’s Star Girl at sixteen, ten years later I was surprised when I got to chat with the author.
At this time, I had started up an email folder entitled “A Record of Rejections,” which is where this email technically ended up.
But it was a correspondence I learned so much from, that I hardly consider it a rejection to think of it. I was querying different writers to see if they would be willing to write a blurb for my self-published book I had recently published. As Spinelli was one of the long-shots on my list, I hadn’t been expecting a response, but the response I received was so genuine and kindly.
Mr. Spinelli wrote back in 2018, “You remind me of me” which I took as the highest compliment.
He said I was doing all of the things that he would do in my position but declined to do the blurb because:
- he was quite busy for a seventy-seven-year-old
2. he had made it a personal policy to avoid blurbs and
3) “31 grandkids (soon to be 35)” at the time.
This response taught me so much about the writing world.
As writers, we may be at different places in our lives or with our craft, but some things we share. Mr. Spinelli was so personable, speaking of his grandkids and referring to his wife Eileen. Speaking with this beloved author from my childhood, the layers between the name you see countless times on the cover of a well-read favorite book is another person out in the world, living a life, with a family, writing stories that they hope mean something to those who read their words.
| Read more about Mr. Spinelli here.
While this email would end up in “A Record of Rejections” folder of my email, it really was a dream coming true to be able to speak with a hero of mine, and that he considered reading my work, and took the time out of his day to respond.
In a way, we’re made up of the stories we grew up on as children.
