All my readers!
My Reading trail has reached another home away from home. A new favorite book for 2021! Chris Negron's 2nd book and newest book The Last Super Chef! Master Chef Junior mixes well with ingredients from other kids cooking shows shirt in some new human family Aesops fables and you've got a yummy and moving masterpiece, sure to leave readers with full hearts. This sophomore book is a perfect foodie middle grade focused on family, a recipe of heart lessons and a few no recipe plot twists based in an unscripted quirky cooking competition TV show. The books after taste is exquisite and the story is sure to fill the appetite of readers of all ages.
Please Read DONT SCROLL to the end to get some of the authors favorite, book inspired exclusive Recipes!
Please buy the book at this link https://www.booksinc.net/book/9780062943132
or buy a signed copy at Books Inc Palo Alto https://www.booksinc.net/PaloAlto
While supplies last!
Hannah Walcher and Books Inc and I had an awesome event with him and Debra Green recently and the link is below!
Full Video of Books Inc Event Summer Fun: Reading & Cooking & Writing Middle Grade with CHRIS NEGRON and DEBRA GREEN is here at this link https://youtu.be/RXguIVSuww4
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| Dated Books Inc Event Poster!! |
Don't miss my previous interview with Chris Negron about his debut Dan Unmasked featured on my blog at this link http://worthyreader.blogspot.com/2020/07/dan-unmasking-heros-in-our-midst-today.html
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| Chis Negon Author photo |
Recently I did a follow up interview with Chris Negron about his delicious new book Last Super Chef and more. Read this exclusive interview below as a follow up to the Books Inc exclusive event!
1. Please introduce yourself as a writer in your own words?
I’m Chris Negron and I write contemporary middle grade novels from Atlanta, GA. My work tends to be heartfelt and (mostly!) realistic about friendship or family or both. My first book, Dan Unmasked, came out in 2020 and my second, The Last Super Chef, was just released this month.
2. Describe your new book the Last Super Chef in your own words?
The Last Super Chef is a story about Curtis Pith, an eleven-year-old obsessed with cooking and becoming a chef. Curtis has a big secret: the most famous chef on the planet – the fabulous Super Chef himself, Lucas Taylor – is Curtis’s father. So when the Super Chef announces a final competition on his hugely popular show featuring only kid contestants, Curtis knows he must secure one of the slots – not just to win the big prize, but to find out some big truths as well. The competition proves to be a huge challenge to not only Curtis but alll the kid contestants, and they all learn a ton about themselves and the people around them, including each other.
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| Chris Negrons new book showing signed copies at Books Inc Palo Alto! |
3. Dan Unmasked is an amazing debut, Last Super Chef came out not far after Dan Unmasked, how did this happen with all the challenges in publishing?
There was always going to be second book in my contract, and it was scheduled from the beginning to publish the very next year, so I don’t think I had much choice! Seriously, the better answer is that I was able to start working on The Last Super Chef as far back as when Dan Unmasked was on submission with publishers, so I had a real head start by the time that first book sold. It’s also true that Curtis’s – and the Super Chef’s – story was really clear to me right from the beginning, so I suppose that helped me know where I was going and prevented too much rework, though there always seems to be a ton of revision no matter what I do. Probably because my editor has such a sharp eye!
4. Describe your writing process for the new book and how that process compares to the process for Dan Unmasked, your debut?
Second books are usually more difficult for authors – for must of us, it’s the first time we’re writing under those kinds of deadlines, plus we have bunches of new tasks we never had before related to the first book coming out. Things like working on marketing efforts, events, interviews, etc. All at the same time! That said, because I did have that head start, I didn’t find the second book as challenging as I’ve heard other authors talk about with theirs. Again I think it was probably partly due to how clear Curtis’s story was for me from the beginning.
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| Find Signed copies of both of Chirs Negron's books at Books Inc Palo Alto |
5. What inspired the characters? What inspired the plot? Why did you write this book in first person?
I keep saying Curtis’s story was really clear for me, but actually the first character I developed for this book was Lucas Taylor, the famous Super Chef. Lucas is connected to me in a personal way – I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease not long before I started writing this book, and though we don’t find out that’s what’s going on with the Super Chef until pretty late in the story, it does turn out that he also has Parkinson’s. Of course that’s no coincidence, and I don’t treat it as a spoiler, either. First off, there are plenty of other secrets in The Last Super Chef, but also I always intended to use this book to expose folks to those early years of Parkinson’s – the confusion and the changes and doubts those of us experiencing it go through – so I do want it to be well-known that this book covers that subject, even if it means readers might see a thing or two coming.
As far as characters, Curtis came next, and the important thing about him is how he contrasts and at the same time mirrors the Super Chef’s changing viewpoint on his own future. So I had to have the Super Chef before I could find Curtis, but once I knew what was going on with Lucas Taylor, what was going on in the head of Curtis became clear fairly quickly. I mean, sort of…early drafts didn’t express it as well as I intended, and my editor really helped me zero in on Curtis’s goals and motivations.
As far as first person, I think that’s just my POV of choice in most of my work…for now, anyway. I’ve written both Dan Unmasked and The Last Super Chef that way because it’s the closest to the character I can get, and that’s how I want readers to feel when they read these books – as close to these characters as they can get. So hopefully I’ve used my POV choice for its purpose, and achieved that goal.
6. Why did you choose food, competition and family matters as the focuses of this book?
I’m a big sports fan, and maybe that’s why I like cooking competition shows so much – they’re almost like another kind of sport. But I’m also aware that it’s more than that, too. I love seeing people excel at an art – whether it be painting or writing or cooking– that forces them to be creative and express their unique voice and individuality. When I wrote Dan Unmasked, I committed myself to writing about things I love or that are important to me, because I feel that expressing those things via story is one of the best ways to be authentic and display my own unique voice. And being authentic is so important in any writing, but particularly with kids, because I think they sense a fake even fastser than adults do. So Dan loves comics and baseball, and Curtis loves cooking, but what I’m expressing there is a little more indirect, because honestly I don’t cook all that much. Yet I love watching these shows and seeing the competitors challenge each other and themselves to be the best they can be, and I think I wanted to see if I could deliver that feel I tend to experience on the page to others.
As far as family goes, I think most middle grade books are in some way about the kids trying to find their place in the world, whether that’s amongst their friends or in school, or within whatever family unit they are a part of. In Dan’s case, it was mostly friendship. In Curtis’s, it’s much more the family angle. I don’t remember where I first heard this quote, but it’s always stuck with me: “When thinking about YA and MG, think about your character approaching a lighthouse. In MG, the character’s family is the light in the sky, and the character is moving toward it. In YA, the character’s family is the rocks at the base, and the character is crashing against them.” That may not be accurate in the case of every story in these genres – YMMV, as they say – but that quote has always stuck with me, and I think, at minimum subconsciously, I keep in the back of mind when I work on these projects.
7. You have said various times that the Super Chef, Lucas Taylor, the leader of the book titles game show is a mix of Wily Wonka and Gordon Ramsey, how did you make and manage this mix so well?
First off, I re-read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory pretty early in the process, so that I wouldn’t just be relying on my childhood memories of Roald Dahl’s classic, or the movies, either. So I definitely had that story in my head when I was working, especially the early chapters, which are unabashedly a take on the early “golden ticket” motif. But at the same time I didn’t want to reproduce too much – I was definitely writing my own story, not retelling Dahl’s. So I mostly tried to give little hints that might be evocative of the reader experience with that classic story. The result is hopefully clear but subtle at the same time – the astute reader might notice little Easter eggs related to Willy Wonka’s character, like the glass elevator the Super Chef rides in his intro, the way the certificate each kid is handed as they earn their way into the competition is tinged in gold (nudge, nudge, wink, wink…golden ticket). Perhaps more obscurely, even the black-shirted assistants who appear out of nowhere to clear away things during the challenges might be sorta kinda similar to the orange oompa loompas? Is that one only in my head?
Gordon Ramsey was perhaps a little easier, because of how closely I was writing to competitive cooking shows, and he’s involved in so many of them – Master Chef, Hell’s Kitchen, and so on. But really the chef side of Lucas Taylor is an amalgam of the characteristics of a lot of famous chefs – as well as many not so famous people, including a little sprinkle of myself. I’m glad, however, to hear he rings true as the quintessential famous chef so many of us are familiar with from TV.
8. Super Chef Lucas Taylor goes from celebrity to vulnerable older man in such a moving way, what is the impact of that shift on our first person narrator Curtis Pith?
Wow, thanks for that comment. Of course that’s a big part of what I was hoping to do, but you never known if you’re accomplishing what you set out to convey or not. But yeah, for Curtis, and a lot of the characters in the book – adult and kid characters alike – the word I like to toss around and I’ve seen in some reviews is perspective. I think if there’s one thing this story can convey or make readers think about, I would hope it would be perspective. That would make me happy. And I know perspective can be a pretty broad topic – it can be perspective about the future, or about other people, or about your family, or yourself even. Whichever of these the story might make you think about – or all of them – the conversation about perspective is one I hope The Last Super Chef starts. The impact of what he learns about the Super Chef in Curtis can best be summed up as “perspective” I think as well
9. I consider Last Super Chef to be a wild mix of updated Aesop's fables mixed into the chaos of your own flavor of Master junior chef! Sometimes the lessons are spelled out in the form of themes from cooking competitions other times through out the book there are more teachable moments which are much more subtle. How do you put in so many teachable moments and conversation starters into your books especially the Last Super Chef?
Again that’s so appreciated, but I tend to avoid words like “lessons” when talking about writing for kids. I think one of the worst things a kid-lit writer can be is overly didactic in our work. In my opinion, anyway, what we really want to be doing is asking questions and starting conversations, not providing answers or lessons. Half the time I don't know enough about what I’m writing about to give out answers about it anyway! There’s a quote by Joan Didion that I imagine most writers know but is pretty applicable here: “I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.” I think about that quote sometimes when I’m writing, and I hope what I’m conveying to young readers is something like, “This is something I think and wonder about a lot. What about you?” Or maybe also, “This is what Curtis went through and how he handled it – maybe sometimes well and sometimes not so well – have you guys ever experienced this or thought about what would you do if you did experience it? Does seeing the mistakes Curtis made or the victories he won help you with that?”
Here is an elusive recipe for a yummy treat Chosen and shared by Chris Negron inspired by a specific part of Last Super Chef!
10. What are the most spoiler free important takeaways from the new book?
Perspective, perspective, perspective! I know, I know, I talked about this one earlier. Probably the other thing (which is still perspective related) is expectations of the future, being flexible and understanding that life is a wave we ride, and we’re not always going to be able to predict its flow. So keeping your knees bent and going where that surf takes you – while still having dreams and striving and fighting for them, dreams are so important – can be the happiest way to stay up on the board the whole ride.
Visit Chris Negrons website!
11. What are you working on next? Any parting words?
I’m working on another middle grade novel but it’s very early in the process. It’s about a character who’s very protective of and
involved with his city neighborhood, and I don’t think I want to say much more about it, for fear of jinxing it or pitching it poorly! But I’m really excited about it and hope I can bring it to readers in the near future (which, in the publishing world…might be a year or two, but stay tuned)!
I’m just so thankful to you, Drew, for all your support, and likewise to Books Inc. and all the other Indie bookstores and booksellers for everything you do to put our stories into the hands of young readers who might need them or who they might touch.
Gratitude, thanks and appreciation and links are below! Thanks for reading! Keep on your reading adventures!
Thank you to! Books Inc, Chris Negron, Debra Green. Harper Kids Publishing and Holiday House Publishing!
