Samantha 0:00
Today, I’m thrilled to welcome Isaac Blum, an acclaimed author celebrated for his thought provoking storytelling and relatable characters. Isaac’s debut novel, The Life and crimes of hoodie Rosen, is a remarkable exploration of identity, belonging, and the intersections of culture and community. This National Jewish Book Award winner and William C Morris YA debut Award finalist, quickly became a favorite among young adult readers and educators alike. Isaac’s second book, the judgment of yo yo gold, continues this tradition of crafting compelling, authentic stories. It’s a powerful exploration of morality, friendship, and the search for one’s place in the world, sure to inspire meaningful discussions in the classroom. In this episode, we’ll dive into Isaac’s journey as a writer, the inspiration behind his books, and how educators can use contemporary YA literature to connect with students in meaningful ways. Whether you’re looking for engaging YA literature or insights into crafting authentic stories you won’t want to miss this conversation.

Samantha 0:58
Welcome to Creating joyful readers, a podcast dedicated to empowering secondary educators with the tools, strategies, and inspiration to cultivate a lifelong love of reading in their students. I’m your host, Samantha. Tune in each week as we explore the transformative power of independent reading, delve into the latest research on literacy, dissect projects that will help your students showcase what they’ve learned in a unique way, and share curated recommendations of young adult novels that will captivate and engage your learners. Join in as we embark on a journey to create joyful lifelong readers one book at a time.

Samantha 1:36
All right, hello, Isaac, welcome to Creating Joyful Readers!

Isaac 1:39
Hello. It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Samantha 1:41
Thanks so much for being here. We have a connection, and I thought we would start off today by talking a little bit about our connection. I actually started my teaching career in Philadelphia, and you are a teacher in Philadelphia, so I thought it would be cool if you kind of told our listeners a little bit about how you became a teacher in Philadelphia?

Isaac 2:01
Well, how I became a teacher in Philadelphia is that I’m from Philadelphia.

Samantha 2:06
okay

Isaac 2:06
And I grew up here, and I still live, I live like around the corner from my parents house, because that’s sort of the homebody sort of sort of person. So I would be doing whatever it was that I was going to do, I was going to do it in Philadelphia. It’s never occurred to me to move somewhere else, and I don’t plan to. But I got into teaching. I was, I got a degree in English, and that’s not as directly applicable to like, you know, stepping into, you know, like a vocation as, say, an engineering degree. So and I went and got a I was always interested in writing, I went and got an MFA in Creative Writing, and as part of that degree, sort of in order to, like, I guess, to help pay for it, there was a thing where I could teach classes at the local community college. This was in Camden and Blackwood in New Jersey, just across the river from Philadelphia. I was doing it just because, like, I, you know, to help pay for the degree but I loved it, and so I’ve been teaching, more or less, for the most part, with a couple, you know, little strays here, here and there, teaching ever since, mostly at the middle and high school level, but occasionally also at colleges and universities.

Isaac 2:18
What neighborhood did you grow up in? I grew up in balikin Pennsylvania, which is just northwest of Philadelphia, very, very Jewish.

Samantha 3:23
And do you teach close to that neighborhood?

Isaac 3:26
I do not. I teach in Chester, Pennsylvania, south of the city, along the Delaware River. I teach at a school, it’s called YSC Academy. It is a school for elite boys soccer players.

Samantha 3:40
When I read that, I thought that was so interesting. I didn’t really even know that existed. That’s so cool.

Isaac 3:45
It doesn’t exist very many places. It’s kind of it’s not unique, but it’s there are few such places, especially in the United States, but the school has an affiliation with the Philadelphia Union, which is the Major League Soccer team in the area, which is based in Chester, which is why the school is also in Chester,

Samantha 4:04
that makes a lot of sense.

Isaac 4:06
it’s like the school for the kids who are training to try to be Philadelphia Union professional soccer players, although the majority of them will go to college instead.

Samantha 4:15
That is very cool. So I think that’s a great place to segue because you have all this experience with teens and sort of in these, you know, contemporary spaces. And we’re talking about the contemporary genre today. So on the podcast, for the past couple of months, I’ve been exploring each genre one at a time, and so I’m on contemporary so I’m pairing this interview with the contemporary genre, because you write contemporary books. So can you tell us a little bit about how that came to be? You have this teaching side, and then you also have the writing side. So how did the writing side come to be?

Isaac 4:50
The right start. I started writing. I took a, like, an elective course in high school where we had, we did, like a creative writing portfolio, and I just really loved it. And I just kept writing after that. And I think, I mean, part of the reason I’m, I’m attracted to the, you know, the young adult contemporary genre, I think, Oh, I think the reason I the reason I write young adult in the first place, and that, which is, it’s kind of the same reason that I that I spend all my days with teen, most of my days with teenagers, which is that, like, although I have physically matured since then, I don’t have really sort of emotionally matured that much since I was or maybe not emotionally, just sort of mentally like I think I still have the same kind of goofy, sarcastic sense of humor that I had when I was 15 or 16, and I’ve never really lost that, although there are definitely many people in my life who wish that I had and so I think that just sort of makes it it’s works out that that I write for teens and I spend a lot of time with with teens, I think those those things are just sort of tied together like that. What maybe lack of internal development that happened sort of led to both writing for teens and spending my time with teens. But I started writing in that class in high school, and then I just kept doing it, even as I was working or whatever. I just kept trying to write and to publish books. And I think I’m attracted to the contemporary space, partly because I can’t suspend my disbelief enough for sci fi and fantasy. I’m like, well, those aren’t real. So like, why would I, you know, that’s that piece of it. But then I also think part of the reason I write is to help contextualize, like the world is confusing, and so writing helps contextualize my own thoughts about the world. And then I hope that I can do that in a way that’s interesting enough that it interests other people, or that it helps them in some way contextualize their worlds. So the writing helps as like a way for me to work through those things, and then I just kind of hope I have enough to say that that other people find it interesting too. So that’s, you know, why I end up in the contemporary spaces, because I want to try to contextualize the real world and culture and society

Samantha 7:00
How do you choose which topics to explore when you are digging into a new book, or even when you’re, I’m maybe in the, you know, current process of writing a book, how do you choose which contemporary topics you’re going to explore?

Isaac 7:12
When someone reads a book, it takes them, I don’t know, a day or two, if they’re I suppose sometimes students take a lot longer, but it takes, you know, however many hours, right? But if you, if you write the book, you have to spend literally years with it, sort of living in your head the whole time. So I think whatever topic it is has to be something that feels urgent or important to you in some way. It has to feel meaningful, and, you know, has to move you in some way, I think, or at least I just can only speak for myself. It has to move me in some way and feel important and urgent to me and my life if I’m going to spend, you know, two to three years working almost every single day on that thing and having to, you know, reading it hundreds of times and all of that. So most of the things that I’ve that I’ve written, are things that feel sort of urgent and real and personal, and in some way to me, it feels important for me to contextualize and process it through the writing. And then, of course, I hope that it’s also, you know, if it’s something real that’s happening around us, it also has something that other people would like to to do. And then I think the others, there was one more piece of it, which is there’s also a a marketing, sales side to writing, like, if you want to sell books, so like, sometimes also, there are things where you know that we talk specifically, like my after the life and cries of hoodie Rosen came out, and it was fairly successful, part of the decision of what to write next was not necessarily, wasn’t entirely about like, what I was most moved by, there was a sort of trying to find a Venn diagram between the things that felt important to me, and then I was moved by but also, you know, something that would be a logical follow up to the previous successful book, something that the same readers might gravitate toward.

Samantha 8:56
Yeah, I think you’ve done a great job of pulling issues that not only are interesting to teens, but are also interesting to adults, because I have a lot of friends who have read both books and who you know, who loved both of them. So, you know, I think you’re doing a great – I just wondered, do you have a process? Do you have a brainstorm? Do you, you know some? Do you work with a team that helps you come up with, maybe some you know, ideas that are like, Hey, this is, this would be something good to talk about.

Isaac 9:22
I think you have to talk about it within with two different contexts, because when before, before I published a book, there was no team, right? So it had to be something that was just my own, my own brainstorming. And I would love to say that I have some kind of like – you want to teach students to have a process. And I think, but so I would love to say I have a process because, but I don’t have any, like, patented method. I think it’s tricky, because books take it’s like, if you’re writing, say you’re writing five, say you’re teaching students write five paragraph essays over the course of a year, you can write, like, a whole bunch of them, and get into a routine of like, okay, first you do an outline. And then you pre or then you do a more free pre writing, and then you revise, like you can set a kind of a system in place, but because books take so long, and I feel like you’re almost a different person by the time you’ve you’ve finished writing one, that the same process might not necessarily work the next time. And you also end up with a very small sample size, so it’s hard to say what works and what doesn’t on a large scale. Like I’ve written seven novels, two of which have been published, but I don’t, I don’t think that, like that’s enough to it’s not a large enough sample for me to even know what fully works for me and what doesn’t. So like for the hoodie book, when I was unpublished, I didn’t have a team that was just sort of an idea that came to me from really just what was happening in the world around me.

Samantha 10:45
yeah,

Isaac 10:46
in that moment,

Samantha 10:47
yeah. It’s very timely,

Isaac 10:48
yes, which is both unlucky and and lucky in that exactly. It was lucky for me, but that it was relevant and unlucky for like me and the whole world, that

Samantha 10:56
for sure,

Isaac 10:57
that the topics in that book were relevant. It was kind of a

Samantha 10:59
Yeah, both. I’m going to segue to that a little bit, because you pull issues that are so timely and important and also very complex. So how do you balance – you want to remain authentic when you’re doing these story, when you’re telling these stories, but they’re also for young adults. So how do you balance authenticity with the storytelling when you’re addressing these sensitive or complex issues?

Isaac 11:22
I wish again, it’s like, I don’t know that there’s a clear strategy. I think I try to find that balance within, within the text myself, and then I make sure to run it by the people that I think can best help make sure I’m getting that balance, that balance right. And I’m also not positive that you’re gonna, you know that I, or anybody else is gonna get it exactly right each time, and there’s because, and I also think, like fiction is going to play with the truth, because I think that’s necessary for the for the structures of I’ll give a specific example in a second. But I think sometimes that’s necessary for the structure of a novel, and you still, but it’s like a way in which you still want it to feel like, true in essence, an authentic in essence, even if you stretch, you know realism. So like, for example, in the yo yo gold story, she sort of goes, she’s begins the story as a real rule follower, and then she goes into a kind of phase where she breaks a whole lot of roles and does a lot of transgressive things before the resolution of the book. And that all happens, although there is no precise timeline that happens over the course of, like a school semester, where, I think more realistically, if that character were in the real world, that type of journey would happen over the course of, say, a number of years. But I think because you want your book to feel urgent, because you want it to have a lot to say, but you also don’t want it to be 600 pages long, because then it’s really it’s inaccessible, because you want to be able to show as many you want to be able to open a sort of full world. And if you focus into the more you know, the more of a slightly more realistic timeline. You’re just only going to get a little glimpse where you really want something full. And so I think there it’s that that’s a balance you want to find, where it still feels authentic in its core, but you’re willing you, you for the sake of story, you need to play around a little bit with certain with certain details. And I don’t know that there’s, there’s not like a magic formula to finding the right balance. I think you do it as best you can, and then you run it by as many expert people who you think can help you make sure you’ve done it right.

Samantha 13:36
I think that’s a great answer. We talk a lot about diverse voices in YA, and I think your novels specifically show something that’s very fresh and very underrepresented in YA. I haven’t read anything like it. I’m sure it’s out there. I just personally haven’t, haven’t seen it or found it, especially at the level that hoodie Rosen came to be. Can you share a particular moment, or maybe story from your writing journey that highlighted the importance of that representation in contemporary YA? How did you like identify the need? How did that come to be? Or did you or did it just come to be?

Isaac 14:11
No, I mean, I did it. I did identify the need. I mean, it did feel there was definitely, you know, I had, I mean, there were times where I was teaching, say, Orthodox boys, for example, and I had some very voracious readers who, who would literally say, like, you know, it’s, I can’t. There aren’t books that that show my my world at all, because I didn’t. And I would point to type there they were wrong. Like, there were some, you know, I can point to titles that that, you know, that did. But there were, they were mostly old, like Chaim potox books, the chosen, and my name is Asher Lev, and in the beginning, are all, you know, books that show that experience, but it’s a different time and there, there really haven’t been that many, that many books that show that, show that, but it’s also one of the things, and I can, I can share a story here, which is that one of the things that I hadn’t so I thought. That that was an important representation, like for for them, and I didn’t necessarily for Jewish teens, I didn’t necessarily think too much about, at least not consciously about how, say, other teens would see themselves represented in a Jewish story like that struck me as like, okay, for, you know, I there’s the mirror and window concept, right? So I thought of it like, okay, so it’s a mirror for for these Jewish boys, for example, or just Jewish teens in general, and a window for non Jewish readers. So that’s how I saw it. But I didn’t recognize until I published the book that it also ended up serving as a window for other, for non Jewish teens. So I did receive, for example, I did a school visit where a teen came up to me and said, look, I mean, I’m not Jewish, but this story felt so much like, you know, spoke to me in the way that lots of other books don’t deal with faith in the same way and questioning it, or wondering, okay, like I believe something so this is meaningful to me, but I believe something very slightly different, and that that’s been really hard to reconcile with my family because they have certain set of expectations for how I’m supposed to be and how I’m supposed to live. And so anyway, this this team was saying to me like that, the story, he felt that his his sort of journey through his faith as a teen, was reflected in this story. He saw himself in in hoodies, journey through that which sort of was just a eye opening for me, because I really hadn’t expected that. I thought if someone came up to me, they’d say, this was really interesting. I learned something about this, you know, another culture that I didn’t know anything about, not that they would come up and say, I actually saw myself in this story, even though, you know, I don’t even know any Jewish people that still felt like the same kind of things I was still seeing the same kind of things I was dealing with.

Samantha 16:51
I loved how in the second book, and you’re going to have to excuse me, because her name is going to escape me here, I’m I’m terrible at book details. I just remember vibes, anything I read, just the vibes So, but you did a great job of showing different Jewish experiences within the novel. And so as I’m reading, I kept thinking, Okay, I definitely know someone like this. I may not know someone like this, but again, interesting story I’m learning kind of a thing. Have you had people who have come up to you and, you know, said they’ve identified with certain characters, or they’ve been able to, you know, see themselves within the pages.

Isaac 17:28
Yes, for sure, I’ve had that for you know, people who saw say they saw themselves in hoodie as a character, and subsequently in the yo yo book as well. Although it hasn’t been out as long, so I haven’t, I haven’t spoken to as many, you know, teens who’ve read the book. I’ve spoken to lots of teens who’ve read hoodie, and lots of them have seen themselves in certain characters in that book, in sippy his older sister, for example. You know, I’ve talked to sort of girls who are teenage girls who are like, Yeah, that sounds you know, that’s like me with my with my little brothers and whatnot. And the same for hoodie, whether it’s just the sarcastic voice that he has or in his actual, you know, his journey. And I got a you know message from a former student who read the book and was like, oh, like, I’m going, I’m actually going through a lot of this stuff, like, right now, which was interesting. And on the one hand, fun, nice to hear, and on the other hand, I was, I was a little bit like, well, I, you know, I hope it doesn’t work out. I hope works out for you a little bit better than it does for –

Samantha 18:23
Yeah for sure. It’s funny, since we’re kind of on the topic of character development, sometimes when I hear a man writing a woman, I get really nervous, because I’m like, oh goodness, what’s this going to sound like? Sometimes it doesn’t come off right. But with Yo yo, her voice was so good and so authentic. How did that process? What did that look like for you? Kind of developing her voice and trying to figure out what details to include to make her feel authentic. So, and did you have any reservations about that?

Isaac 18:52
Well, okay, so I did. I did have reservations for the exact same reason that, you know, sort of anticipating in readers those same thoughts of like, Oh, I’m a little nervous about this, with this dude writing this, this girl character. I think it was so my editor asked me, after the after hoodie came out, like, do you think you could do a girl voice? And I was like, what does that actually mean? And she was like, well, they have to, you know, hoodie is not aware of, like, anything that’s going on around him. And girls aren’t that way. They have to have, like, a very basic awareness of the world in order to feel authentic, like they actually, you know, have some sense, some sense of reading social cues and understanding what’s going on in other people’s heads. And that was just that was fun and interesting to think about. That made me laugh. But basically, if she comes off as authentic and the voice feels right, I don’t think I can take a whole lot of credit for it. I leaned so much more in that second book. And this goes back to the question we were asking you. We were talking about in terms of writing process. Like the hoodie book was very much. I did that myself. The second book was much more collaborative, and I really needed a lot of help making sure that I got that down. So I leaned a lot on my editor and my agent, both of whom are women who, you know, also grew up, I think, with experiences that were fairly similar to yo yo. So there was, there were tons of emails and meetings of me, you know, with a whole list of questions about, like, you know, what would this person say next? What should yo yo be thinking in this moment, like, what was this experience like for you? And can I steal it from you and put it on the page? You know, lots of those conversations, because I had that that, you know, that worry. I wanted to make sure I did at least the best that I could.

Samantha 20:30
I wish I could be a fly on the wall for some of those conversations, because I’m sure they were hilarious as well as informative. So both hoodie and Yo yo, for listeners who haven’t read these books yet, they both highlight really complex social issues, and they’re, you know, social media plays a huge role in yo yo story. So what role do you believe social media plays in shaping contemporary themes in YA lit? Because that’s a huge that’s a huge portion of, you know, teens lives, right? I mean, everybody’s lives, but especially for teens in a different way, right now. So how did this topic, you know? How did you – What role does social media play in shaping the readers, you know? And then, how did the topic come to be such a big part of this story?

Isaac 21:18
I’ll answer the the second part is really easy to answer, so I’ll start there, which is that I initially conceived the book as, like a Jewish Gossip Girl. It ends up being very different. Not that that’s the initial that was the initial concept. Like in the Gossip Girl books, there’s a bunch of girls at like, a very fancy prep school in Manhattan, and there’s a anonymous blog that blogs about the the lives of the of the students at that school. So originally, that was my thought for the yo yo book is like, Okay, well, this will be, like, just a super Jewish version of Gossip Girl. And it didn’t really end up being that way, but that was the initial,

Samantha 21:57
I can definitely see the spirit.

Isaac 22:00
Yeah, the spirit was there, even though it didn’t really turn out that way, because that’s often how you know the you start, you don’t really know what you’re going to have until you, until you actually do the writing.

Samantha 22:09
Yeah,

Isaac 22:10
that’s how that ended up in there. And then sort of the why question, the first part of the question is, I think there’s A you want it in there, or it’s, it’s useful because, or it’s, can be a good part of the story. I don’t know the best way to put it, because it is, as you put it, a huge part of teens lives like I think ignoring its existence does a disservice to a young adult novel, because teens do spend such a huge portion of their lives on social media. And I think more so than than at least when I was a kid, like there’s less of a divide between, you know, in real life relationships and social media relationships. Now, they’re all so inextricably tied together that I think it’s really hard to portray an authentic current story without having it in there in some in some way. And then I think that the challenge of it, and I think this is the challenge with lots of not just young adult books, but any contemporary book that deals, tries to deal with current issues, is that you want your book to still be readable and relevant by the time it comes out. And social media and the world changes quickly that if you start writing a book in 2022 and it doesn’t come out until 2024 you don’t know whether the social media system will be the same. You want it to feel relevant, but like, what if Tiktok doesn’t exist in in two years? Or there’s a new name for the platform, but you use the old one, where, like, the whole the way that people relate it, it changes. So there’s this tricky balance of wanting it to feel wanting to get it in the story, so it feels relevant, and so that kids can, you know, work through some of their social media stuff on the page. But then you also want to make sure that it doesn’t essentially become, like, outdated by the time the book even first comes out.

Samantha 23:54
You quickly become historical fiction, even though you did not mean to.

Isaac 23:58
Yeah, and I think that’s a bad place to be – unintentional historical fiction. It’s like not a great spot.

Samantha 24:02
We’re talking about challenges. So that sounds like some of the challenges you had while writing yo yo. What about hoodie? His themes are particularly complex and very heavy. So what can you discuss some of the challenges around writing that?

Isaac 24:17
One thing that made it a little bit easier was to take the the major events of the book, from the news, essentially, from things that were just happening at that time. And I think if you portray the stuff that sort of as it was, you’re going to be in a good place in terms of just in terms of, like, getting the story right as best you can, just because you’ve you’ve got, like, the the actual events you can lean on, if you, if you’re wondering, like, Well, was it like this? You know, you can read about it and say, Oh, yep, it is. Here’s, here’s the data here. I can cite sources. I think that the hard part is just balancing things like, say, hoodie’s humor with the serious, the serious themes in the book. Or providing, for example, people who don’t know so much about these the history of anti semitism, providing enough context that they understand sort of like where that bias comes from, but without it turning into, kind of like a historical document or a treatise or something where it feels pedantic, like a lesson as opposed to a story about somebody. And I, I think in the same way that I would tell my students when they have, like, a block and I don’t know what’s right, I don’t know how to get this right. I’m like, don’t worry about it the first time. Just write it and come back, you know, take some time off and read it with fresh eyes and get a sense if you have that balance right. It was the same, the same kind of thing. Like, you know, I would just get it on the page and come back later and see if it feels like I’ve got that balance right. And then, and then, of course, lean on other people too. There’s a scene at the at the end, I don’t want to spoil the book there’s but there’s a fairly disturbing scene, I think, at the end, near the end of hoodie book, and there’s a joke in the middle of it that I had a lot of debate about whether to keep in or not. I was like, is this is too serious a moment for humor, or is part of the point of the book, that even when the worst things are happening to you, that you lose nothing by losing your sense of humor. And that, in fact, that’s can be as a legitimate way to process trauma or grief as anything else, and that so you just maybe I’m rambling in this answer the question, but it’s like just, if you’re dealing with something like that, you just try to, I think, trust the same writing processes that would get you, hopefully, to a good novel either way, which is, get on the page, revise, try to get yourself some fresh eyes, and try to run it by people you trust who can help you know, minimize your worst tendencies and help you highlight the things you do well.

Samantha 26:40
I think you’re hitting on a really important point here. As we talk about contemporary and we kind of talk about the educational landscape right now, would you have any words of wisdom or advice for teachers who want to teach books that are super complex and have really heavy themes, but maybe you’re receiving some pushback about, you know, bringing these conversations into schools with teens? I know that’s a heavy question.

Isaac 27:02
That’s such a hard question. It’s like, I feel, I, you know, there’s so much, there’s so much, like, an imposter syndrome in all of this. Like, I, you know, I feel like, you know, asking questions about, ask questions about writing, like, writing process. I’m like, I really should have a right, I should have a good answer that it’s like, no, like, I don’t know, maybe if I’ve written 20 books, I’ll have something, I’ll have, like, a routine down that I can, you know, say, like, oh, this. The patented routine works great. Here it is. And I think the same thing is true with teachers like I I feel like they’re teachers who are probably way better and have been doing this for way longer, and have a much better idea of of how to bring difficult text into the classroom, of how to deal with the, you know, pushback that people are getting right now with book bans and all and and just, you know, the way in which people are outside or kind of inserting themselves into the classroom. I think it’s, it’s tough. And I don’t, I don’t. I wish, I wish I knew the best way to navigate that, and I and I, and I don’t.

Samantha 27:58
I don’t either. I just thought it was an interesting, yeah, you have a really great perspective as somebody who’s both writing the novels and also, you know, navigating the relationships and the text in the classroom. So, you know, if you come up with any, you come up with any good tidbits, you know, let me know. I’ll pass it on.

Isaac 28:15
I think the best thing I have is like that. I think kids are more open and curious than they get credit for. And then it’s usually the adults that you have to, you know, to contend with in a more in a more difficult way. And so if you can, if you can find a way to to portray to the adults how sort of open and thoughtful the kids usually are about these things. I think that is a, at least an in that’s been my strategy as best. I don’t know that it always works, but it’s sort of like these, these kids can handle it. They’re not going to be I’m not doing this because, you know, I have some agenda that I want to push on doing this because I think it’s, it’s interesting, and they’ll get a lot out of it and and they’re going to engage with this in a way that is mature.

Samantha 29:02
On that note, when you were talking about people who are also writing contemporary topics that may be complex. Do you have any advice for them about how to tackle young adult fiction?

Isaac 29:12
It’s tricky. How to tackle young adult fiction dealing with – I guess I would say the thing to focus on, in my mind, is trying to find the balance between teaching something and telling a story, because if you are just teaching something, then you’re not writing an effective fiction narrative like people – books should tell a story.

Samantha 29:36
And they’ll be bored, right? The kids won’t even want to read it.

Isaac 29:39
Exactly. You need to. You need to. You need to you want to engage your readers in a story that they feel invested in, right? Otherwise, they’ll, they’ll tune it out. So you don’t want your book to be pedantic. You also, if you’re trying to highlight contemporary issues, you don’t necessarily just want to tell a story and leave those things just in the background, because then students won’t really be asked to engage with those larger social issues. So I think it’s like, I think when you’re writing, there are a limited number of things, at least, I can only speak for myself, I suppose, but there are a limited number of things that I can keep, like, consciously focusing on while I’m writing, balances that I want to keep those maybe like, I can keep, like, two or three of them in my head at a time. And I think an important one, if you’re writing, you know, say young adult contemporary fiction, is that balance between telling a compelling story that teens will be invested in and care about and want to keep reading, and that balance between trying to show them something about the world that they might not otherwise know and finding ways to hopefully. I mean, I talk about this with students all the time, is, which is like have your writing do as much work as possible, which is the idea that, like you know, any scene, any paragraph, should do as many things it can do at a time as efficiently as possible without getting overly confusing. So I suppose my advice is to try to keep that balance in mind and try to find ways for your work to do both of those things at once, to move the story along and engage readers and keep them, you know, in the story, while also showing those windows into whatever it is that you’re trying to to show.

Samantha 29:39
I think that’s really great advice. How do you see the landscape of contemporary YA lit kind of evolving in the next few years, especially in terms of addressing current societal issues? And also, I think this question probably includes, do you think you know YA authors might try to step back a little bit as we kind of navigate this landscape and education where people are kind of maybe a little more concerned about what’s in these books.

Isaac 31:42
I don’t think people will step back in the sense that I think, I think writers will keep trying to address all of these issues. I really do. I don’t, I don’t have concerns about that, nor do I, at least have, like, immediate concerns about publishers doing that. I think for the most part, they want to. It’s complicated, and there’s, there are, you know, places that I can complain and quibble, but I think in general, publishers are children’s publishers are fairly committed to, you know, producing authentic, contemporary stories. And I think people will continue to write them. I My concern is less about it’s hard to write a story until you know how the history ends. And I think when you’re when it feels like everything is content, when everything’s happening at once, and you’re in the middle of the crisis, it’s really hard to know how to write a book about it. But then when you finally do, you don’t know if people will want to look back at I can give you, I’ll give an example, like the pandemic, for example, was extremely traumatic for lots of people. I think it was hard to write a pandemic book during while it was happening, because we didn’t, we didn’t know where it was going, and it’s often without that context of the ending, it’s very hard to go back and write a story about it. But then, when the pandemic was over, I don’t know that they’re that many people who want to relive it. We don’t know if it’s going to happen again. So then it’s like you’re taking a huge risk of writing the book, because you don’t know if there’ll be interest in it or whether it will feel relevant moving forward. I think that’s an issue, a problem with a lot of the current contemporary, contemporary issues. I can give an example, which is that, like the yo yo book was in copy edits when October 7th happened, right? And there’s a kind of new there are all sorts of social issues surrounding October 7th and the war in Gaza, and it’s but all of that stuff, and it’s very complex, lots of people want to process it, but I think until we have more more hindsight, I think it’s really hard to write a book about it. It feels new in the way that like the type, for example, there’s a kind of new type of anti semitism that I see after that, which is different from the anti semitism that’s in hoodie the hoodie book, The anti semitism that we see is like 2000 years old. It’s been happening continually. So I feel like we have enough background and context, and we also know that it will continue to be relevant. There’s this new kind after October 7th, and I don’t know if it will stick around. I don’t really fully understand what it is or where it’s going. And I think until I have that, I couldn’t write a book about it, and I don’t know who could exactly. So I think that’s the major challenge, is with all this stuff happening at once, I don’t know, like, when we’ll have enough context to write the book about it, if that makes sense, when we’ll have enough that it feels like hindsight but still feels relevant. There’s like a sweet spot, and I don’t know that we’ll find it.

Samantha 34:19
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense, and actually segues really beautifully into my next and last question, until we do our lightning round, because you have to be put through the lightning round. Can you tell us? Are you working on anything now? Is there anything you can tell us?

Isaac 34:30
Yeah, I’m working on a book that is scheduled, knock on wood, to come out in the fall of 2026 that is about Jewish teens dealing with grief, little bit different, probably less religious, Jewish teens for just because that’s sort of how this story has worked out, sort of, I think, teens who are disconnected from their Judaism, but in Jewishness, but they in having lost somebody and needing a way to process that end up kind of re engaging with their with their faith and culture and what that means to them. That’s the plan. But if you took it after a couple years ago, like what the yo yo book was, I would have been like a Jewish Gossip Girl, and I don’t really think that’s what it ended up being. So that’s, that’s the the plan is.

Samantha 35:18
This is the spirit. I love that cannot wait to read it. Okay, so we have a lightning round for you, and our first question of the lightning round is, which book made you a joyful reader?

Isaac 35:29
I understand it’s like this is joyful reading podcast. I don’t know that I would call myself a joyful reader. I will say that holes is the book by Louis sacker. Is the book that made me a joyful reader,

Samantha 35:41
nice. I

Isaac 35:41
think it’s just the perfect book. It’s the book that made me the anything blank reader, like Mad Lib, like, just fill it in. That book has is absolutely word perfect.

Samantha 35:49
We can call it a lover of words and that that can be okay, too.

Isaac 35:54
perfect. There you go.

Samantha 35:55
Some writers aren’t necessarily, as you know, joyful with reading as they are with writing. But I think that when you love words, you know reading is breathing in, writing is breathing out, kind of

Isaac 36:06
Yeah,

Samantha 36:07
what is the last five star book you’ve read?

Isaac 36:11
This is because I’m writing a book about grief. I recently. This is not a super recent book, but I just read Nina lacours, we are okay, book about a girl dealing with grief on a kind of isolated college campus. And I think one of the things I thought was great and a really great portrait of grief, one of the things I was most impressed about from like a writing standpoint, is that it’s a very, very compelling story in which basically nothing happens. And I think that’s like in a such an incredible feat to pull off a story that’s, like, gripping and engaging and moving in which, if you asked me, like, what were the major events of the story, I would be like, well, one time, like, they made a meal in a communal kitchen, you know? And like, that’s not on in our minds until you read the book, a very exciting scene.

Samantha 36:58
yeah. I think we call those character driven,

Isaac 37:01
yeah, yeah. Or just really, or just really artfully, you know, masterfully crafted books. I don’t know,

Samantha 37:07
are you? Are you a Jeff Zentner fan? I am, yeah, a lot of his books do grief really well. I would call those the master class. And ya, grief writing.

Isaac 37:19
Okay, I’ll have to read a couple more. I think, I think I just read the Serpent King. I think that’s the only one I’ve read.

Samantha 37:24
Well, you need to find in the wild light and and go for it, because it is, I mean, it’s a master class. It’s, it’s perfection,

Isaac 37:31
wonderful. Glad to hear it.

Samantha 37:32
And the last one, are you an audio book, e reader, or physical book reader?

Isaac 37:37
Physical book. That’s as much as I can.

Samantha 37:40
that’s funny how a lot of people are the same exact answer. I’m surprised.

Isaac 37:45
I’ve really tried to love audio books, and I can’t do it. I just keep hearing There’s something about having hearing the book in someone else’s voice that I just I don’t know it doesn’t. It just doesn’t work for me in the same in the same way.

Samantha 37:58
Can you hear your own voice in your head when you read.

Isaac 38:01
Maybe. There’s just something different about it where I just keep hearing it. I don’t know. I just, it doesn’t, it doesn’t work for me. I want it to work for me because, like, I have a long commute, and I love books, and I would love to just be able to keep reading at all times, and I just, it’s like, I It’s one of the I just keep trying to let you know there’s probably, it’s like, if there’s a vegetable you don’t like, that. You You know, it’s like, kind of really nice if I like this. So, like, let me keep trying to acquire this taste, because you can acquire tastes. And I keep trying. I’ve been trying for like, a decade, like, audiobooks, and I can’t quite get there.

Samantha 38:30
Well, I have two tips for you. Number one, most people say that if they don’t like audio books, non fiction is their jam. Like, they can listen to anything non fiction audio book.

Isaac 38:38
Oh, that’s smart, because it feels more like a sort of a lecture than a

Samantha 38:41
yeah or a podcast. It’s kind of a gateway, if you will. And the second thing I was going to say was that’s interesting, because your books are some of the best audio books I’ve ever listened to. I mean, the narrators were fantastic. Whoever narrated, yo, yo.

Isaac 38:55
Emily Lawrence. Emily Lawrence, she did a great job.

Samantha 38:58
Oh my goodness, the way that she was able to infuse the snark into her voice, but like, make it like part of her personality throughout the entire thing. Oh, it was so good.

Isaac 39:09
Yeah, she did a phenomenal job, as did Josh Bloomberg on the hoodie book. But even both of those, I haven’t, I’ve listened to them enough to be like, oh, this person did a great job. This is so cool. But not I have not listened like, I haven’t listened to them all the way through.

Samantha 39:21
Well, I can tell you they’re fantastic. I listen to a lot of audio. I love, love, love, love audio. So I can tell you, just from my own personal experience, that they are fantastic. So if you’re out there listening, you should pick up the audio books. Can you tell our listeners where they can follow you, find you, etc, etc?

Isaac 39:39
I am on Instagram at Isaac Blum underscore. I am on Twitter, x or whatever. At least for the time being, I have the same handle, although I don’t post on there very often. And I am also at Isaac Blum author.com so you go to Isaac Blum author.com you can find you know links to the books and information about them, and there’s an educators guide for the life and crimes of Hoodie Rosen that you can find on my website, as well as stuff about author visits and and whatnot.

Samantha 40:11
Well, thank you so much for being here. I will put all of those links in the show notes if you want to go grab them. Thank you so much for your time and your expertise, and that’s it. Thanks for being here.

Isaac 40:22
Thanks so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Samantha 40:25
And that’s a wrap on today’s episode of Creating joyful readers. A huge thank you to Isaac Blum for joining us and sharing his insights on contemporary young adult literature. From exploring the inspiration behind his work to discussing the balance between authenticity and storytelling, Isaac gave us so much to think about when it comes to engaging young readers with real, relevant and powerful stories. If you haven’t already, be sure to check out his books, The Life and crimes of hoodie Rosen and the judgment of yo yo gold. They’re perfect for sparking meaningful discussions in your classroom or just enjoying yourself. You can find links to both of these books, as well as where you can follow Isaac in the show notes. Thank you for listening and happy reading.

Samantha 41:02
Thanks for tuning in to creating joyful readers. I hope you found inspiration and practical strategies to ignite a passion for reading in your students. Remember every book we introduce and every reading experience we foster can transform lives and help students become lifelong readers. Follow me on social media at Samantha in secondary for more tips, book recommendations ,and to connect with a community of educators dedicated to making reading a joyful journey. Until next time, happy reading.