Anne: Welcome to MG Book Village, Meredith! Your second book for young readers, The Minor Miracle, is just out from Penguin Random House’s WaterBrook imprint, and it’s a super fun read.
Meredith: Thanks Anne, I’m thrilled to be here and to share The Minor Miracle with people!
Anne: Would you please start us off with a brief summary of what it’s all about?
Meredith: It starts with a boy named Noah Minor falling sixteen stories as a baby and mysteriously surviving without a scratch. He spends his childhood obsessed with superheroes, wondering if he is one, but at age twelve he feels pretty ordinary. Then one day, a top-secret government organization called Gravitas tells him he has the power to manipulate gravity. He is a superhero! But Noah has trouble accessing his powers and controlling them. Soon he has to choose who to trust, Gravitas or their most wanted, his great uncle Saul. He’s the man who dropped Noah from the balcony as a baby, and he may hold the key to Noah understanding his powers.
Anne: It’s action-packed and filled with physical humor. SLAM! OOF! WHAM! SLAP! BAM! SWOOSH! BOOM! And those are only a few quotes from the book! The story reminds me of classic superhero comic books. Growing up, were you a big reader of comics and superhero stories?
Meredith: Actually no, I didn’t read many comic books growing up, at least not superhero comic books. (I loved those Sunday morning comics in full color!) But I was a BIG reader with an active imagination and I’m sad I missed out on them back then. I love how the pictures and text of comics play off each other, and it was so fun borrowing some of the great language. It’s over the top, expressive, dramatic . . . kind of like a twelve-year-old can be, ha! It was a great way to pack a lot of emotion in just a few words, and to show (not tell) that Noah is so impacted by his love for comics and superheroes that it influences how he thinks and reacts. Fun fact: I have a page in my discussion guide where kids can explore onomatopoeia (a fancy word for BOOM! and POW!).
Anne: Fun! You mentioned that Noah has to learn to control his powers, or simply-put, to control himself. Another theme is that superpowers aren’t always superhero-sized; we all have “powers” of sorts. Did you set out with these themes in mind, or did they emerge during the writing process?
Meredith: Great question! Which came first, the theme or the story? For me, what came first was neither . . . it was the premise. I loved the idea of a kid who thinks he’s ordinary finding out he’s not, and giving a seemingly ordinary object amazing powers. From that premise a story grew. An eye chart is used to test kids to find out if they can control gravity, a cheap rubber bracelet is actually a Gravitas bug, and a kid who thinks he’s nothing special finds out he can pull himself to the ceiling by manipulating gravitons. Meanwhile, the two themes you mentioned were things I thought about a lot. Our desire to be celebrated, what earns the world’s attention vs. what is really valuable, and what happens when we get what we hoped for. Those themes matter to me and permeate the story without me intentionally including them, so I’m glad you picked up on them.
Anne: Nice. A playground scene includes a “giant metal robot slide,” and on facebook I saw that you posted a childhood memory of such a slide. How much did you call upon childhood memories while writing Noah’s story?
Meredith: I drew on a lot of memories and experiences from my childhood and adulthood. I played the trumpet, just like Noah’s friend Rodney, so I knew band halls and practice rooms well. The robot slide was fun. And my youngest son was in karate, so writing about a space with mirrors on the walls and white dots on the black mat, where kids earn belts, felt familiar. I love a good setting, fleshed out with sensory details, so it really helped to have lived in these spaces, to know how a trumpet leaves a ring on your lips, and if you crouch in the head of the robot slide your voice echoes. Knowing these places personally helped me make them real for the reader.
Anne: At one point Noah muses about “all the things in life that make it sweet” including “trumpet farts.” Ha! The MG humor is pitch-perfect. How did you go about getting inside the head of your protagonist in order to write lines like that one?
Meredith: I take this as a huge compliment, thanks Anne! I think funny can be really hard to write, partly because I think the best humor feels spontaneous. If you have to work too hard, it loses its magic. To answer your question, I guess I’m still a middle schooler at heart! I find trumpet farts hilarious. I wrote the things that made me laugh, and hoped they’d make others laugh, too.
Anne: You definitely succeeded in making me laugh!
Now, your first book for young readers – Her Own Two Feet – was a nonfiction collaboration. When you switched to fiction for The Minor Miracle, how did your writing process change? Which did you find easier – or harder – to write?
Meredith: Both books are about incredible kids doing amazing, super things, but the writing process was very different. Maybe the biggest difference was that the boundaries are much bigger in fiction. There were some big changes I made during the editing process, things that required me to rethink the story in whole new ways which was hard. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted, but when you pull one thread (cut a scene, change a motivation) it has ripple effects that change the entire story. I got myself into lots of messes and had to go back to the drawing board, but looking on the bright side, it made me a stronger writer. I proved to myself I could do it. I could reimagine so much. It was a great workout for my imagination.
Anne: In the ending of The Minor Miracle – well, wait a minute. Let’s not give it away! Just tell us: do you have a sequel planned? What are you working on now?
Meredith: I’ve just finished copyedits for book two, which will come out in May, 2025! Book Two is called The Minor Rescue, and I had so much fun writing it. It was a really different experience. I wrote The Minor Miracle years ago, put it down and picked it back up many times, so it was pretty polished when my editor saw it. Parts of it had calcified, so I had a hard time reimagining certain scenes. I wrote The Minor Rescue in under four months, and I found that having the deadline, and a book one to play off of, made the writing and editing process much easier. I could let things go because they were still very fluid in my imagination.
Anne: Ooooh, I look forward to reading the sequel!
Let’s close with your social media links. Where can readers go to learn more about you and your books?
Meredith: You can find me on Instagram at MeredithDavisAuthor and on Facebook at Meredith Davis, Author. My website is MeredithLDavis.com where you’ll find lots of fun resources for The Minor Miracle and information about school visits.
Anne: Thank you so much, Meredith, for spending time with us today at MG Book Village, and for writing such a fun story. I’ve loved chatting with you!
Meredith: Thank you to MG Book Village and to you, Anne, for this interview. Who knew when we were roommates at VCFA earning our MFAs that we’d be here today? I am so grateful.
Anne: Oh, yes! Shout-out to VCFA, Vermont College of Fine Arts. A great MFA program. I’m so glad we were paired up there!
Meredith Davis is the author of The Minor Miracle and The Minor Rescue (Waterbrook, 2024/25) and co-author of Her Own Two Feet: A Rwandan Girl’s Brave Fight to Walk (Scholastic, 2019). She once worked at an independent children’s bookstore, started the Austin Chapter of SCBWI, and earned her Masters of Fine Arts in Writing for Children and Young Adults at VCFA. Her superpowers include reading, grandmothering, and finding ways to fit more books in her Austin, Texas home.
Anne (A.B.) Westrick (she/her) is the author of the older-MG novel Brotherhood. You can learn more about Anne at the MG Book Village “About” page and her website, ABWestrick.com.
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