Carolyn Mackler is the author of many novels for young people, including The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things (a Printz Honor book), Not If I Can Help It, and The Future of Us. Here she reflects on her new middle grade novel, Right Back at You, which is partially inspired by her own experience being bullied in seventh grade. She has launched the Right Back at You Project, a pen-pal program that connects children from diverse geographic regions and encourages them to seek commonality despite differences.
In late April, in a public school in Tennessee, 66 fifth graders received handwritten letters from fifth and sixth grade students who live on a small island off the coast of Washington State. A week later, the kids in Nashville wrote letters back to their new pen pals. These young people were matched based on mutual interests, such as the Percy Jackson books, Minecraft, volleyball, makeup tutorials and—wonderfully—frogs. The following factors did not go into matching the pre-teens: race, gender, religion, or who their parents voted for in the last presidential election. The biggest commonality linking these students, other than that they are contemporary children, is that they’ve all read my recent novel, Right Back at You, a story told in letters between two seventh graders who are separated by 300 miles and 36 years. Both of my fictional characters are victims of bullying. In my novel, as in life, there are no easy answers. What saves my characters, just like what saves the lives of real young people, is making a connection with another kid.
This is why I started The Right Back at You Project. While I can’t facilitate time travel, I’m working with schools in different geographic regions to connect their students and foster a meaningful conversation about bullying. My goal with this project is to build empathy and connection between these children, to encourage them to come together to discuss ways to prevent bullying, and to help them discover commonality despite perceived differences. I selected two pilot schools, in Nashville and on an island in the Puget Sound, because the educators at both places expressed an interest in helping their students combat social isolation and understand that there is a world bigger than their own community.
To develop the pen-pal component, I consulted Robin Agar, a Delaware-based library clerk who co-runs—along with Tess Mehonoshen of New Zealand—a robust letter-writing program between people in the state of Delaware and Wellington, N.Z. As Agar told me, “The 11 to 13-year-olds are my most enthusiastic group. Some girls send letters with glitter all over the envelopes. The boys get excited about it too. Kids can’t wait to get their letters. They can’t wait to write their letters.”
I think about this conversation every time I read the gloomy news about young people—their battles with mental health, their “brain rot,” their obsession with their phones, their social media addiction. There is no denying that the world feels fraught right now and that young people are struggling. But let’s also remember that pre-teens still have the potential to slather envelopes with glitter and wait with bated breath for a letter in the mail. With this in mind, I am hopeful that we can encourage this next generation to form connections, to reach across differences, and to muddle through the hard stuff together. It doesn’t have to be pen pals or a joint novel, but I want to encourage adults—as many of us as possible—not just to tell kids to put down their screens but to devise projects or programs or even casual gatherings to fill that void. Instead of yet more handwringing about the state of our youth, let’s all do our part to help the kids be alright.
A few days after the first round of letters arrived, I met with the students in Tennessee and Washington State. A girl from Nashville shared a story about how her community responded when someone spray-painted swastikas on people’s homes. A boy from the San Juan Islands talked about the importance of befriending people who are kind. As the children studied the faces of the kids on the other side of the country, they said they were excited to have someone they could write things to that they may not tell people they see every day. The kids in Nashville were intrigued that the kids in the Puget Sound get around by boat. The kids on the island thought it was cool that the kids in Tennessee had more options for sports and activities. No word from the two children, separated by 2,484 miles, who like frogs. Maybe they’ll save that for the letters.
For more information on The Right Back at You project or if you think your school or library could be a good fit, click here.
