Writing for the People We Hope to Become

Elisa Stone Leahy's new middle-grade novel, Mallory in Full Color, tackles the in-between moments of adolescence, when who we are and who we want to become collide.

- MICHAEL WOODSON

In sixth grade, I intentionally missed basketball sign-ups.

I'd long decided it wasn't for me, but fear of disappointing my sports-obsessed father prevented me from telling him the truth: I just didn't love sports the way he did. So instead, I memorized the deadline, left the reminder flier crumbled at the bottom of my backpack, and waited for the day to pass.

The night after the deadline, thinking victory was already mine, I pulled the flier out of my bag and performed what I thought to be an Oscar-worthy performance of dismay that I had missed the chance to be on a team. Much to my horror, my father believed me, and with a quick call to the coach the next morning, he signed me up anyway, seemingly saving the day.

Therein lies the irony of people pleasing observing the needs of others to make them happy only leaves you disappointed and risks disappointing everyone when the truth comes out. Elisa Stone Leahy's new middle-grade novel, Mallory in Full Color, takes this concept of people-pleasing as a forewarning through the eyes of Mallory Marsh,a seventh grader who spends her time molding to the needs of others to keep the peace. I spoke with Leahy about writing young characters navigating their changing identities, creating fully formed side characters, the importance of graphic novels, and more. Here's what she had to say.

ON WHAT INSPIRED MALLORY IN FULL COLOR

The spark of this idea came to me during the 2021 Ohio Library Council Convention. There were several library folks speaking, and in particular, Nick Tepe, who I worked with ages ago at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, and he's a friend of mine. He was speaking about an event that happened at his library system where the solution ended up being [that] they had to cancel the story time, but then they moved it to a nearby comic book shop. And as soon as he said that something just clicked in my brain. I thought, That's a story.