GUEST POST: Chris Baron on SPARK

I'm so pleased to welcome Chris Baron to the blog today with his guest post on his forthcoming novel in verse, Spark. This powerful novel shows how personal experience plus extensive research can combine to tell a truly compelling and timely story.

Research, Poetry, and Discovering the Lore in Spark

by Chris Baron

I’ve never researched for a book, more than I have researched for Spark. I’ll be honest. I love to research, and like most writers, I find joy and inspiration in the process. But during a recent school visit, when I told the young readers about how much I researched, they groaned. Actually groaned. “Research?” “for poetry?” “Isn’t that boring?” I told them that yes, sometimes it can be boring, but it also gives us a chance to learn even more about what we care about! They didn’t buy it. But that’s when one brave soul raised their hand and said. “I like to learn more about the Star Wars universe.” And it was on. We talked about how they know everything about Pokémon, and Star Wars, and books they love, stories they read over and over. They know the “lore” of the world and the characters. “That’s what research is in stories.” I told them. “It’s the lore of the world you are creating for your story.”

“Even in poetry?” they questioned. 

“Yes. Especially for poetry. In fact, poetry is the only way I can write about a friendship so deep, and an experience so challenging.” 

At its very heart, Spark, my new, middle grade novel in verse, is about the friendship between Finn, who just wants to do well in school even though his family has had employment struggles, and Rabbit, his feisty best friend, who, if she could, might just live in the national park near their home in the California Sierras. Together, they love watching their trail cameras and learning about the animals in the forest.. They even want to use their trail cameras for their eighth grade project.

But the climate is changing. The seasons are all mixed up. It’s dry, and the fire danger casts a shadow over their green lives. Like so many places around the state, and around the country, communities are suffering. When the wildfires come to their town, the kids must suddenly evacuate and their worlds are turned upside down. They must escape. Live evacuated, and eventually return, but to what? 

What can kids do against such a threat?

So what’s the “lore” of Spark? It is, of course, our world. And with such real threats we face, like wildfires, climate change, over-development, and a host of other things, I wanted to create an authentic world and in some small way hopefully represent the unreal impact of wildfires.

My own experience with the devastating wildfires in San Diego, plays an enormous role in my understanding of the story.

The Cedar Fire outside my house (Photo credit: kpbs)

I remember orange skies, watering down roofs, getting animals to safety. I even wrote poems trying to cope.

But my own experience was only the start. I decided to travel across the state to meet people, visit locations, and discover as many voices as I possibly could.

Remains of a house in Rancho Cuyamaca State park 

The research allowed me to infuse the book with authentic language from firefighters like Matt Ryan, and Torii Cooper, Park Ranger/Photographer with the National Park Service. Provide authentic animal encounters guided by renowned researchers like Roland Smith, and current, historical and cultural significance of fire by working with Frank Lake, Tribal Liaison and ecologist for the US Forest Service. Their voices and experiences come alive as characters, settings, and messages of hope and understanding. In the author’s note in the book, I have extensive information and credits to all of those people and organizations who helped in the creation of the book, and I am forever grateful to them. They are the voices of the “lore” in the story.

But how does research work in verse?

Every poem is a chance to dive deeper into the minds and hearts of the characters and what they are experiencing. Poetry is a form of expression that speaks for the heart and allows the reader (or hearer) to explore the internal landscape of a character.. We, especially young people, often have so much to express about what they have seen and experienced, but need time and language to process. Poetry is so often the language of the quiet and extraordinary soul.

Research provides some of the richest opportunities to inspire poems. t’s well known that CS Lewis' famous work The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe, was initially inspired by an image of a faun carrying packages in the snow. Sometimes a single image can inspire an entire book! Researching galleries of images and exploring the many fires, Paradise, Camp, Cedar, Witch Creek, was extremely difficult. It was so hard to see them up close, devastating. But it’s real. Those scenes find their way into the book. Here’s one where Finn and his mom first see a photo of their own town.

Photos

The Hollows is unrecognizable—

life

interrupted.

Skeletons of cars,

a basketball hoop

with a melted backboard,

cracked plant pots,

bent street lights,

barbecue grills torn apart,

a hollowed trampoline,

and everywhere houses should be,

nothing

but ashes

and silence.

But there are also images of hope and healing. Firefighters rescuing animals, notes left on door frames, and windows of houses they saved, and couldn’t save.

Sorry for tracking dirt on the

upstairs carpet needed to close

windows to keep fire out!

RHHotshots

Through research with ecologists and indigenous tribal liaisons, I also found so many startling and amazing facts about wildfires, their importance to the regions, historically and culturally, and how important it is that we learn the greater “lore” of wildfire. This created an abundance of inspirations. I wrote so many poems that never made it into the book in their first-draft form. Here’s an example, a poem, “Alive,” that eventually exists as just a few lines in the book, but is taken directly from a process used by first rangers.

Alive

It’s alive! I shout!

Uncle Charlie looks back,

lowers his glasses,

reaches into a pouch

pulls out a wiry flag

and places it at the base

of the living tree.


Good, he says. That’s excellent.

holding it up to the light

This tree needed

the fire to germinate.


The other kids

come to see

the living tree.


He looks toward the sun,

points a finger at the sky

and back to the forest floor.

Most teachers teach

with as many words as possible.

but Uncle Charlie is a great camp counselor

He wants us to figure things

out for ourselves.


Jonas, he says,

lift up that pinecone.

He lifts it up from the sooty ground

Now shake it


When he does,

flittery seeds

on tiny wings

fall out from

between the cracks.


These are serotinous cones

they need the fire to be free.


All of us stare

at the pinecone

while seeds

fall into the ashes.

Finally, when Finn and Rabbit discover something incredible and mysterious in the forest, their hope of preserving that last remnant of the living forest, Forest Heart. is sparked even as developers have other ideas. This is when they decide to use their love and experience with trail cameras to become unlikely activists.

Here are some of the remarkable trail cameras channels that I researched and consulted to help create their experience.

Links for Trail Camera Channels:
Swan Valley Connections: https://www.youtube.com/@SwanValleyConnectionsCondon

The very famous Pennsylvania Trail Camera
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyrbqiCokdw

I’ll conclude with this. Research and poetry are perfect companions. Poetry is often the exploration of a single thought, idea or image. Something moved us or affected us so much, that there are no “normal” words that can express the transcendent nature of it. In writing Spark, I knew I couldn't capture the wide range and depth of living with wildfires, but in verse, there are portraits, moments, voices, relationships, healing, and, dear reader, hope, that we can all share together. Here’s one last poem from Spark.

Hope

Hope is the simplest thing—

a warm bed to sleep in,

a loving voice,

saying goodnight.

Hope is sunlight

through the morning window.

Hope is omelets

and French toast for breakfast.

Hope is pine cone scales

opening wide,

the seeds flying off

into the wind.

Hope is oak saplings

coming to life

somewhere out there

in the ashy earth.

Hope is walking

in the forest with Rabbit

imagining any second

we will discover

something new.

Hope is believing

that the ones you love

love you back,

even when you can’t see them.

Hope is having

enough faith

for someone else,

even when you might

not have enough on your own.

Spark is out July 15th. You can preorder signed editions from here.

Head on over to A(nother) Year of Reading where our fearless leader Mary Lee Hahn is hosting our Poetry Friday gathering this week.