I became a writer by accident, and I owe my writing career to my students. Before I fell into writing, I spent seventeen years as an elementary school teacher and reading specialist. When I wasn’t teaching in the classroom, I led book clubs for middle school and high school students. I cowrote my first novel with my best friend Margret Stohl (Margie) on a dare from seven teens in my fantasy book club, who were also former students. Margie and I weren’t trying to write a book. In our minds, we were just writing a story in a Word document. We wrote the story like serialized fiction. Every night we wrote new chapters, and in the morning, we sent them to our teen readers. By early afternoon, the teens sent us feedback. In a lot of ways, their interests and questions shaped the story that would become our debut novel, Beautiful Creatures. After twelve weeks, the “story” was done, and a published author friend sent it to his literary agent in New York without telling us. When Beautiful Creatures hit shelves a year and a half later, I was still teaching full time. I never expected the book to debut on the New York Times list and take off the way it did. The publisher wanted more books, and the rights had sold in fifty-one countries and forty-eight languages, which required lots of tours and travel, so I had to choose between my teaching career and writing.
It broke my heart to leave my students. By that time, I was a reading specialist, and I worked with a lot of neurodivergent children, struggling readers, and or kids who just didn’t like reading. I considered it my job to not only help them develop stronger reading skills but also a lifelong love of reading. As I continued to cowrite novels in the Beautiful Creatures series and I started to write my solo novels, I thought about those students and how I could use my novels to help children like them fall in love with books. But I still felt incredibly guilty about leaving the classroom.
When I started writing graphic novels, it felt like an opportunity to really reach struggling readers and kids who just didn’t like to read. It was the perfect medium because I could utilize the sequential art to suck in readers and create context to support struggling readers. The art also allowed me to create incredibly diverse casts of characters so every child/teen could feel seen. In the Teen Titans graphic novel series for DC, artist Gabriel Picolo and I reimagined the popular DC characters as regular teens (no superhero costumes) grappling with real problems like losing a parent, body image issues, sibling rivalry, and invisible disabilities. It felt like we were making a real difference for our readers. It was also the first time my daughter wanted to read one of my books.
My daughter Stella is dyslexic, and like many dyslexic kids, she didn’t like reading. It was too labor intensive to be an escape or a pleasurable activity for her. But graphic novels made reading easier and gave her a chance to interact with the characters and story the way neurotypical readers do. Around the same time, we decided to move her to a school for dyslexic and neurodivergent students. Within a year, Stella went from a child who didn’t feel smart to a confident middle school student who understood that her learning difference was just that—a difference, not a deficit. She blossomed socially as well. Spending every day around other students who understood what she was going through made a huge difference. But I couldn’t help but worry about all the dyslexic children who didn’t go to a school like hers. How would they overcome their feelings of inadequacy? How would their neurotypical friends and classmates learn about dyslexia and neurodivergence? If kids didn’t learn about neurodivergence and understand the way it affected people, they couldn’t develop empathy.
Books always have the answer for me, so I went in search of children’s books about dyslexia. I already had a number of nonfiction and picture books on the subject that I’d read with my daughter, but there had to be fiction options for middle grade and teen readers. A graphic novel would be perfect! But I couldn’t find one. There were graphic novels about anxiety, depression, dysmorphia, autism, ADHD, and other important types of neurodivergence and mental health issues. I realized that I was uniquely qualified to tackle the problem. I could utilize my knowledge and experience as an educator and neurodivergent individual to write a graphic novel about dyslexia. Suddenly, my decision to leave teaching didn’t make me feel guilty. It felt like part of the journey I was supposed to take to get me to this place—a place where I could make a huge difference in the way a significant number of children felt about themselves and their peers.
Mixed-Up was the hardest book I’ve ever written. I felt a huge sense of responsibility to get it exactly right. I found Brittney Williams’ art online and the moment I saw it, I knew she was the right illustrator for the book. Her work managed to capture characters’ emotions in such a powerful and honest way. I had no idea that Brittney was also neurodivergent. As I crafted the story, I wove together aspects of my daughter Stella’s journey (with her permission) and my own experiences as a teacher and neurodivergent person to create Stella Martinez, a fifth-grade student and gifted artist, who starts struggling in school. Initially, Stella doesn’t know she’s dyslexic, and the story explores the way dyslexia affects her academically, emotionally, and socially. Eventually, her teacher Miss Marin (my maiden name) recognizes the signs, and Stella is assessed and diagnosed with dyslexia. The second half of the book shows how Stella’s teachers and family help her understand her diagnosis and develop the tools and strategies she needs to succeed. Stella is an artist, and over the course of the book, she’s creating her own graphic novel, which mirrors her journey. Brittney varied her art style whenever she drew the pages of Stella’s graphic novel so they would like the authentic work of child. The result is more powerful than I could have imagined and became a key aspect of the book.
Mixed-Up is a celebration of friendship, fandom, neurodivergence, self-acceptance, teachers, librarians, and the graphic novel medium. It’s also my literary love letter to every child who feels different or “less than.” It’s the teacher in me trying to reach through the pages and assure them that they are brilliant and special regardless of the way their brain works.
KAMI GARCIA is a #1 New York Times, USA Today, and international bestselling author and comic book writer. As an award-winning young adult author, she has published seventeen novels and graphic novels, in fifty-one countries and thirty-eight languages, and her books have sold more than ten million copies worldwide. Kami’s best-known works include the Beautiful Creatures series and the Teen Titans graphic novel series for DC. She is also a cofounder of the Kid Lit book festival YALLFest. Kami has an MA in education and she was a teacher and reading specialist for seventeen years before cowriting her first novel on a dare from seven of her students. Learn more about Kami and her books at www.kamigarcia.com.