SLJ Talks Community Service with Justina Chen Headley
This article originally appeared in SLJ’s Extra Helping. Sign up now!
Joan Oleck -- School Library Journal, 5/28/2008 2:10:00 PM
Most librarians know Justina Chen Headley as the author of the young adult books Girl Overboard (2008) and Nothing but the Truth (and a Few White Lies (2006, both Little, Brown) and the picture book The Patch (Charlesbridge, 2006). But what readers may not know is that Headley ties a community service project to each of her books—and that her purpose is to get kids reading. SLJ spoke with the author about her inspiration and why she does it.
Is it true that your own skiing wipeout inspired the idea behind Girl Overboard?
It was a beautiful, gorgeous "powder" day [four years ago]: clear blue sky, fresh snow on the ground, and my son wanted to go down a run that was a little bit challenging for me. So I'm following him and hit this powder pillow—[and had a] total wipeout. And I couldn't stand up, couldn't bear any weight on my left leg. As I was 
being tobagganed headfirst down the mountain—I thought to myself, "Okay here's the start of a good story."
For people who haven't read Girl Overboard, describe Syrah Cheng and her story.
I wanted to investigate the dark side to "having it all." Our society so glamorizes über-wealth, and I wanted to show there is a dark side to that kind of lifestyle. Snowboarding was the perfect foil: I wanted to give her one safe space on earth where she really feels free, and to take it away from her [due to a knee injury]. So Syrah needs to find her place off the mountain, within her [famous] last name, where she can claim herself.
Syrah's school requires 30 hours of community service to graduate. So you're writing about community service and living it!
With Girl Overboard, one of the subplots is that Syrah finds true meaning in her life helping others. And I thought, "How wonderful would it be to create a grant where I could actually fund teenagers' service projects?" I approached Burton Snowboards and this amazing nonprofit organization called Youth Venture. Together, we're giving away $12,000 in challenge grant monies to fund community service work [12 projects, $1,000 each]. We've extended the deadline to June 1. With Nothing but the Truth, I gave away a $5,000 college scholarship through an essay contest. We got hundreds and hundreds of essays. With Patch I took my advance and donated it to InfantSEE; the group guarantees that every baby under one year in the U.S. will get a free eye exam.
What’s your overall philosophy about community services and getting kids involved?
What I love with the community services projects tied in with my novels is encouraging teens to use their words—whether [that means] a college essay contest, writing a grant application, or the project about "beauty" [for her fourth book]. I'm making my teen readership use their words to make change!
My philosophy is about getting teens to read, reflect, reach out. That's one of the reasons I cofounded the teen literacy project, Readergirlz. My philosophy is to get kids to think more deeply about different issues. With every book that gets published, you get 15 minutes of fame. Why not share that 15 minutes with a nonprofit organization that could really benefit?
