Sometimes a conflict can carry you only so far into a story before thinning out and stopping shy of novel-length material. Say you're writing about an Asian kid moving to a new school district. Let’s call him San Lee—author Jordan Sonnenblick did. San is your average American 8th grader with no special skills who is desperate to fit in, especially with this off-beat girl he’s met, Woody, who happens to be a really good guitar player. When his social studies teacher introduces a unit on Buddhism—the same unit San took at his last school—San finds a way to shine. Woody takes San’s interpersonal reticence, his spare wardrobe, and his knowledge of Buddhism to mean that he is some sort of Zen master. She digs this identity and San wins her attention. Problem solved! Except that novel has shrunk to nothing more than a fun little anecdote. Sonnenblick found a way to extend this conflict in his young adult novel, Zen and the Art of Faking It (Scholastic), and we can emulate his p...

Notes from the Midnight Driver By Jordan Sonnenblick Scholastic; $6.99 It is a privilege to witness the birth of the career of a really good writer. So when the Blood-Red Pencil editors started tossing around the idea of sharing gift ideas, Jordan Sonnenblick sprang to mind. I met Jordan in 2003 when he was a middle school teacher and writing his first book, DRUMS, GIRLS & DANGEROUS PIE, on the side. Jordan says he was as surprised as anybody when the book took off: it received several starred reviews and was named to the American Library Association’s Teens’ Top Ten List. Since then, the book has sold over 300,000 copies and been translated into eleven foreign languages. Jordan’s second novel, NOTES FROM THE MIDNIGHT DRIVER, was published in 2006, and was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. The Italian translation of NOTES won the prestigious Premio Cento prize and his third book, ZEN AND THE ART OF FAKING IT, was a BookSense Pick and a Family Circle Book of the Month. H...