Hey Bookclubbers -- If you want more Renegades and Marissa Meyer, check out the links at the bottom of this post. It's all the cool stuff about the author and the book that I meant to show you at the meeting.
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Junior High book club had a fantastic start to the year yesterday afternoon. Nineteen (yep, 19!!) 7th & 8th graders were bubbling with questions and opinions and reflections about Renegades, an action-packed superhero & villain re-work by favorite author Marissa Meyer. Seriously, we were still talking well after the target finish time of 4:15 pm, and we could have kept going. This is going to be another fun book club year.
This is the 4th year that I've led the jh book club on my own after founder/teacher Greg Chagnon left Paideia. It was teeny the first year (6 members, only 4 of whom would be at any one meeting), but ohmigosh! it's just about doubled in size each year.
We had a lot of questions that may or may not be answered in the next two entries in the trilogy, Archenemies, and Supernova (out in November), plus some that just won't, like the "what if the author had taken the story in another direction" musings, or wishing she'd told more of the backstory of this or that character. My answer -- fan fiction! It's a fabulous outlet for aspiring writers (creating a new story line within the structure of an established world and characters), and a way for enthusiastic readers to live a little bit longer within the universe they've come to love.
October's book is The Name of the Star, a mystery/paranormal/ghost/horror novel by Maureen Johnson, another YA favorite. Since we'll be meeting shortly before Halloween, I thought it was thematically appropriate. I can't wait to see what the book club thinks!
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So here are the drawings, interviews and videos that I rounded up for the meeting and didn't have time for.
One thing we didn't talk about is what the characters "should" look like. The world of Renegades is truly diverse in terms of race, personality and superpowers, but the author only gives clues to their appearances instead of full descriptions. It's really interesting, then, to see how different readers interpret their favorite heroes and villains.
This drawing shows the main Renegades in their uniforms. It's from a Tumblr, which (as usual) has some pretty sketchy ads, so I'm not going to link back to the artists page. Forgive me.
The next two are from artist C.C.'s Instagram (@casartco). Click on the pics to see them on Instagram.
Adrian's Patrol Team (Renegades)
Nightmare's villain family (Anarchists)
And these from Marissa Meyer's author Instagram
(they made it into a poster) --
Explore more Renegades fan art on Instagram here.
More:
Are you an aspiring author? In this this interview, Marissa Meyer explains how she envisions and writes such exciting action scenes.
There's a Marissa Meyer wiki with a whole section just for the Renegades universe. More fan art here!
On YouTube I found this short video of the author talking about the members on Adrian's team.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pybF6UUh-w8
And, because, music, the author has created a complete playlist of songs to go with the novel. I don't know if anybody put it on Spotify, YouTube or Pandora, but you can for sure check it out.
