A Worthy Reader: Learning to Fall with Sally Engelfried

Hey eager and worthy readers!

It's been a while. Today I am sharing an interview I did with debut author Sally Engelfried and her book Learning To Fall! Sally will be in conversation with Worthy Reader favorite Jennifer Bertman about her new book Sisterhood of Sleuths (out Tuesday 10/4/22)!

The conversation event will be Saturday 10/8 at 3 PM at Books Inc in Palo Alto!!

Here is the info on this website: https://www.booksinc.net/event/jennifer-chambliss-bertman-and-sally-engelfried-books-inc-palo-alto

Introduce yourself and your debut book Learning to Fall in your own words please.

Hi! My name is Sally Engelfried, and Learning to Fall is my debut middle grade novel. It’s about twelve-year-old Daphne, who is being sent to stay with her dad for the summer while her actor mother is away in Prague shooting a movie. Daphne hasn’t wanted anything to do with her dad ever since he broke a promise he made to her three years ago. He’s an alcoholic, which has made him unreliable in the past, but even though he’s in recovery now, Daphne is convinced it’s too late. Then her dad reminds her how much they’ve always both loved skateboarding, and skating together helps Daphne to begin to trust him again. When he ends up breaking that trust, she has to decide if she can accept her dad’s imperfections and forgive him.

What were the inspirations for the book, Both personal and professional?

The first inspiration for this book was pretty personal: I wanted to write about what it was like to grow up with an alcoholic father because my father was an alcoholic, an experience that definitely shaped me in many ways. On the other hand, I didn’t want to write specifically about my own childhood. As I was thinking about what kind of girl I wanted my main character to be, my husband happened to mention that one of his skateboarding buddies was coaching a twelve-year-old girl. I started thinking about what a powerful bond that could be between a father and daughter and how alcoholism could break that bond apart, and I wanted to explore that.

How did you create Daphne? What inspired you during her creation and your writing process with her? How did you create such a complex and relatable child?

For me, creating characters is always a matter of inhabiting them as best I can and figuring out how they’d react when put in certain situations. I knew right away that Daphne would be someone who preferred to throw herself into something physical like skating than to ask questions of her parents that she doesn’t quite know how to articulate. That’s something that was also true of me as a child—not the skating part, but I didn’t know how to talk about my feelings at all! I wanted to make Daphne a little more willing to learn along the way than I was, and her dad’s determination to rebuild their relationship helps push her into talking about it. She’s reluctant at first because that’s pretty hard stuff, but in the same way she can’t resist the challenge of mastering an ollie on her skateboard, she also can’t resist the challenge of figuring out how to forgive her dad.

author: Sally Englefried

Your detailed and honest explanations of alcoholism and acute observances of skateboarding are blended very well in your debut!! What made you choose these two subjects? How did you integrate them so well? How did you make the two probably unfamiliar topics so real and palpably, and movingly relatable?

Thank you! Because I’m not a skater myself, I did a lot of research by watching countless movies, documentaries, YouTube tutorials, and Instagram stories. Little things would catch me, like a twelve-year-old skater saying that the main reason she skated was that it made her feel free. Or a thirteen-year-old boy after a skate session saying how much he liked the sound of the wheels on the skate bowl. Those kinds of details made me think about how skating would integrate itself into the way a passionate skater views the world. My research also really brought home to me how much falling is a part of skating, and that is such a great metaphor for life, especially if you’re trying to repair a broken trust between two people. It’s pretty impossible to fix damaged relationships in one go—it takes a couple of tries and both parties have to be willing to make mistakes. That same philosophy is built into the AA guidelines to recovery—as Daphne’s dad tells her, you have to take things one day at a time, and if you mess up, you go back to square one and start again.

Learning to fall is such a great book for all ages. In a previous interview you spoke of your growing up and your current family living situations. Who did you write the book for? Are there multiple target audiences?

Thank you! It’s true, alcoholism cast a somewhat mysterious shadow over my childhood. I knew it was there, but I didn’t really understand it and I didn’t know how to talk about it. It wasn’t until I was older that I discovered how many people shared similar experiences to my own. My husband’s father was also an alcoholic—it might sound strange, but it was one of the first things we bonded over! One of my sisters married a recovering alcoholic and I liked the way he spoke about it so openly, especially when it came to making amends. I wanted Daphne’s dad to model that openness too and to be blunt with his daughter that he was doing his best but that there was no guarantee that he was “cured.” Recovery is an ongoing state. It doesn’t end.

With that in mind, one of my hopes for readers of my book is that it might open the door to conversations for kids who are curious about alcoholism or addiction in their families—or any difficult topic, for that matter.

Another driving force behind writing Learning to Fall was wanting to show a girl doing something she really loves to do and to emphasize that the process of skating, just like writing or anything anyone wants to get better at, is as important as attaining the goal. It’s really common to think you have to get an ollie, or you have to publish a book. And then once you do that, you’re on to the next goal—a kickflip! Another book! It can be a bit tortuous, and I think it’s important for us all to remind ourselves that we like the doing of the thing, not just the attainment.

Daphne and her parents have some of the most complex relationships I’ve seen in a middle grade book. Due to factors both chaotically beyond their control and things surprisingly manageable within their control. The details seem authentic and tend to be illuminating to the lessons in Daphne's story. What are some of your favorite falling and getting back up moments in the book and why?

Thank you again! Being an imperfect parent myself (aren’t we all?!) made me want to portray all the parents in Learning to Fall as people who want the best for their kids but maybe don’t always do the right thing. One of my favorite falling-and-getting-back-up scenes in the book takes place when Daphne is just starting to trust her dad a little. Then he has a burst of anger because he finds out he didn’t get yet another job he applied for. He throws his laptop on the floor and isn’t acting like himself, and Daphne gets really scared and calls her grandma. I won’t describe the whole scene, but I liked the aftermath of that, where her dad apologizes to her and tries to explain what was going on. It’s really the first time Daphne deals directly with his alcoholism without her mom as a buffer, and it’s an important moment in their relationship.

Another falling moment is when Daphne, in a moment of anger at her dad, blurts out something that hurts Arlo, her new friend who has been nothing but kind to her. That scene was hard to write because I love their friendship so much, but I thought it was important for Daphne to mess up too, to remind her that everyone makes mistakes.

Silver Bowl Skate Park, an inspiration for Learning to Fall

How long did you work on this book? What kept you determined?

I worked on this book about two years, although I was working full-time while I was writing, so it was mostly weekend writing. Learning to Fall is not the first book I’ve written, but it was the first book where I kind of thought I knew what I was doing, and that helped my determination. I had an idea of where it was going and I knew some specific scenes I wanted to write, so that made it really satisfying to see it through.

I love the metaphor of falling and getting back up. Were there any notable falls and mistakes in your writing process?

Definitely! This book went through several revisions, including me writing an extra thirty or so pages at the end that I ultimately realized needed to be cut! The more significant writing falls happened before Learning to Fall, though. My agent and I had already gone through the submission process with two other manuscripts that didn’t sell. I was getting pretty discouraged, yet I was determined to keep trying. I really took that metaphor of falling and getting back up to heart as I dove into writing this book!

In a previous interview you talk about skateboarding vocabulary and your book being edited by your editor as well as real skaters. What was that part of the editing process like?

I interviewed some skater friends before I started the book and while I was working on it. They pointed me toward some movies to watch and helped me understand the culture. I had one of them read my manuscript before I even submitted it to catch any errors I made when I described skating. As a librarian, I really enjoy doing research and I didn’t want to make any mistakes with the terminology or descriptions. When my editor read it, she was more interested in clarity for the readers who might not know anything about skating, so I made more changes. The copy editor had still more questions about skating terms, so I checked with my skating expert one more time to make sure our changes were correct.

Learning to Fall cover

If Daphne was here with us now what would she say to readers of all ages?

She’d probably feel a little self-conscious about talking to so many people at once, so maybe she’d make a joke about grown-ups saying the corniest things, but it’s true what her dad always says—everything’s like skating. If you find something you love to do, you should pursue it and don’t worry about making mistakes along the way. Embrace the mistakes as a part of the process and keep trying!

What’s next for you professionally? Anything you can tell us for your next work as an author? Thank you!!

I’m working on another middle grade contemporary novel that’s about a girl in a big family, a subject that’s close to my heart because I have three brothers and three sisters. I’m not sure what’s going to happen with it yet, but I am sure I will keep writing, because I’m like Daphne in that way: I don’t give up easily!