Interview: Luke Reynolds on SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL

A cou­ple of weeks ago I reviewed SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL by Luke Reynolds. As you may recall, I LOVED it! Today, Luke was nice enough to let me inter­view him so I could get a few of my ques­tions answered (and let you get to know him a bit bet­ter, as well!). If you haven’t read my review yet, please go take a quick peek now so you’ll know a bit about what we’re talk­ing about in the inter­view below.

LAT: Wel­come, Luke! Thanks for agree­ing to answer my questions!
LR: LAURIE!!!
LR: You are so kind and thought­ful and what a won­der­ful sur­prise! I real­ly appre­ci­ate it! Indeed, I would be hon­ored and thrilled to have an inter­view on your blog. THANK YOU!!!!! And thank you so much for shar­ing the book: you rock!!!
(Ed. note: See what kind of guy he is? I ask him to do work so I have con­tent to put on my blog, dur­ing the month of Sep­tem­ber when he’s busy set­tling in with a new class of stu­dents as well as run­ning the par­ent­ing gaunt­let him­self, and he thanks me for it, in the sweet­est way pos­si­ble. Plus, he loves excla­ma­tion points as much as I do!!! OK, back to the interview…)
LAT: You say you did­n’t know this stuff in mid­dle school, so… just how old were you when you final­ly fig­ured it all out? (As I said in my review, I did­n’t get it until I was in my 30s. This book could’ve saved me an awful lot of time and trouble!)
LR: I think it was yes­ter­day that I fig­ured it all out! 🙂 Truth­ful­ly, I haven’t fig­ured out all that much, but what I want­ed to do in the book is to remind myself and my stu­dents about what real­ly mat­ters in life. One of the things I say to my 7th grade stu­dents almost every day is that I AM STILL GROWING AND LEARNING, and I always promise them that any­thing I chal­lenge them to do, I try to do too. So, much of the book is from what my own 7th grade stu­dents have shown and taught me in their own vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and joy and pain and hope and humor.
LAT: I love that! I AM STILL GROWING AND LEARNING should be tat­tooed onto all of our fore­heads, I think. Maybe we’d final­ly achieve world peace, or at least get a lit­tle clos­er than where we are now.
LAT: Through my school vis­its, I am lucky enough to meet with kids from preschool to high school. I love them all, but mid­dle school­ers are my favorite kids to work with. Yes, there is so much vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty and joy and pain and hope and humor all jum­bled togeth­er in them, and they’re try­ing so hard to make sense of it all. I’ve heard teach­ers say mid­dle school­ers are the hard­est to teach, but I sus­pect they may be the most reward­ing, too.

LAT: After read­ing SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL, I want to make your book required read­ing for every kid every­where who is about to start mid­dle school (so they don’t make all the dumb mis­takes I did). Then I felt bad, because I have con­flict­ing feel­ings about required read­ing at any age. I imag­ine that you prob­a­bly have sim­i­lar­ly mixed feel­ings. As an author, it prob­a­bly sounds pret­ty good to you! But… as a lan­guage arts teacher, how do you feel about required read­ing of that type?
LR: You are so kind! I am a big believ­er in let­ting kids choose which books they want to read. Even for SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL, I would try to do what I do with oth­er books and students–I’d show them the book and let them read the first few pages, and if it does­n’t res­onate with them, I’d want them to find some­thing else. Any­time we force stu­dents to read only cer­tain kinds of books, I think we turn them off to read­ing in gen­er­al. Not to say that we should­n’t chal­lenge our stu­dents to read a vari­ety of books–but we should always encour­age kids to find books that are absolute­ly IRRESISTIBLE to them–books they love so much they’d want to smoth­er them with ketchup and eat them if they could. I tried my best to make SURVIVING a smoth­ered-in-ketchup kind of book, but if a kid does­n’t think so, I would say to not read it and find some­thing else! 🙂
LAT: OK, then I hope every kid who is about to start mid­dle school any­where wants to smoth­er SURVIVING MIDDLE SCHOOL with ketchup and eat it! 
LAT: Speak­ing of eat­ing… I have a gluten sen­si­tiv­i­ty, so I can’t eat gar­lic bread any­more. I sore­ly miss its but­tery good­ness, which, frankly, made your book a lit­tle hard to swal­low at times (I had to give all of mine to the space gnomes!). What can you rec­om­mend as a gluten-free alter­na­tive to gar­lic bread that I can avoid giv­ing to the space gnomes?
LR: Great ques­tion! Our fam­i­ly is attempt­ing to go most­ly gluten-free, and while at first I was ter­ri­fied of miss­ing out my food­ish soul-mate, I found out about some tru­ly sub­lime gluten-free breads. Rudi’s is a com­pa­ny that makes AMAZING gluten-free gar­lic bread. So even the space gnomes can’t steal the gar­lic bread from those of us who need to or want to live gluten-free! (Here’s the link to Rudi’s Prod­ucts: http://www.rudisbakery.com/)
LAT: Awe­some! Thanks for the recommendation!!
LAT: Final­ly, if you had to con­dense your whole book into one short para­graph, what would you want mid­dle school­ers to know most of all?
LR: One thing: YOU MATTER. Your pres­ence here on this earth and in your school and in your fam­i­ly MATTERS. You belong, even when you feel like you don’t. You have a beau­ti­ful pur­pose, even when you feel like you don’t. Just because you might feel weird or strange or like some­body is con­stant­ly stick­ing pret­zel sticks up your metaphor­i­cal nose, IT WILL GET BETTER. I promise.
LAT: Beau­ti­ful, Luke. I hope they hear your message.
LAT: Thank you again for stop­ping by and shar­ing your thoughts with us today and for doing what you can to make the world a bet­ter place, one mid­dle school­er at a time.
LR: Thanks so much Lau­rie, and huge hugs and much peace your way!
What a great guy, huh? For more great writ­ing from Luke Reynolds, be sure to check out his oth­er books, as well as his blog.