Author Spotlight May 2021

 Author spotlight 2021

Book Review 

"Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza" by Kitty Felde is a well written book with a fun story and lovable characters. The voice was the most realistic girl's voice I have read. The combination of  of mystery, and comedy made this book amazing. It not only a wonderful emotional story, but it also was a great view of both Washington DC life and the different role family plays in someone's political career. It did have a few minor hiccups with editing and page changes, but the book defiantly is a wonderful read for anybody and deserves a rare five star rating from me.              

Kitty Felde

 

Kitty Felde’s debut novel Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza (Chesapeake Press, 2020) is the story of the ten-year-old daughter of a congressman from California who solves mysteries on Capitol Hill. The book got a rave from Kirkus Reviews (“A lively mystery with a touch of spookiness, an intriguing setting, an appealing family dynamic, and an enterprising Latina heroine.”) It also received bipartisan praise from four members of Congress. It’s the first book in The Fina Mendoza Mysteries mystery series. Book 2, State of the Union, comes out in August 2021.

 

Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza was adapted to an 8-part dramatic podcast The Fina Mendoza Mysteries available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, etc.

 

The books and podcast are designed to introduce civics to elementary students. There is civics curriculum available at her website kittyfelde.com.

 

Kitty is also host and executive producer of the Book Club for Kids podcast – named one of the top podcasts for kids in the world by The Times of London. The show is winner of the DC Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Humanities and the California Library Association Technology Award.

 

Kitty is a veteran public radio journalist, winning more than a dozen Golden Mike Awards for her work covering baseball, politics, high profile trials, riots, earthquakes, and immigration. She was named “Journalist of the Year” three times in three years by the LA Press Club and Society of Professional Journalists. She hosted Southern California Public Radio KPCC’s afternoon talk show “Talk of the City” for nearly a decade and covered Capitol Hill for more than half a dozen years.

 

Kitty is also an award-winning playwright whose work has been produced worldwide. Her play about Theodore Roosevelt’s son “Quentin” currently plays as a tour of the White House neighborhood. She co-founded LA’s Theatre of NOTE and led the playwriting program at the HOLA Youth Theatre in Los Angeles.

 

She fell in love with books for young readers when she was a young reader herself, working at her local public library.

 Questions

 

1. Tell us about your childhood and please share a few of your best memories doing that time?

I grew up in a big family - six younger brothers and me - right down the street from the library. I spent many, many summer days there. 

 

Four of my brothers are adopted, so we were a bit of a multicultural crowd. Our ancestors came from Ireland, Germany, Mexico, Columbia, Armenia, The Philippines, Australia, and the Sioux and Navajo nations. Our parents were socially active Catholics, so we grew up never eating grapes (instead handing out fliers at grocery stores urging shoppers to also boycott grapes and lettuce to support farmworkers trying to unionize) and we refused to join the white flight that turned Compton from white to Black in almost a year.

 

As a kid, I remember organizing backyard carnivals to raise money to fight Muscular Dystrophy. We filled eggshells with confetti to sell, set up games of chance, and had a blast. And we raised the money.

 

 

2. What inspired you to become a children book author?

I spent a lot of time in that county library down the street, moving from picture books to fairy tales, to middle grade novels. And I always seemed to be writing something, keeping journals, writing fan fiction, plays, and lots and lots of letters. I had a terrific English teacher for all four years of high school - Sister Judith Royer - who really helped me improve my writing and gave me confidence about it. I was a theatre major in college and started writing plays.

But I always wanted to write books for kids. I just didn't have the confidence to write prose. I joined SCBWI years ago, but still didn't feel "qualified" to write a middle grade novel. 

 

Until I covered Capitol Hill. 

 

I kept running into 8th grade tour groups all over Capitol Hill. Growing up in California, we never got those trips, never got the chance to fall in love with Washington and governance. I wanted kids in the west to have that "virtual" school trip to DC. So I wrote Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza.

 

3. Tell us about your experience of being a Journalist? What did you like about that job? What did you not like about that job?

I fell into journalism accidentally. The radio station that carried the Dodgers had a sportstalk show with next to zero female listeners. So, some wise guy at the station thought it would be a great idea to find a female sportstalk person. They had a big contest - more than 2,000 women AND men applied. I was one of the ten finalists. I didn't win, but I came close enough that I decided to take a sportscasting class. I thought I'd become the next Vin Scully, the first female play-by-play announcer. The only problem: I have lousy depth perception and every fly ball looked like a homerun.

 

But I liked talking to people. And they liked talking to me. So I started interviewing sports stars, which led to freelance work at a local public radio station. One day, a big fire broke out in an area near where I lived. I covered the fire and discovered that I really loved breaking news - fires, earthquakes, protests, you name it. I covered a lot of high-profile trials, including OJ Simpson, which led me to The Netherlands where I covered the REAL trials of the century: the international tribunals for war crimes committed in Yugoslavia and Rwanda. When I came back to the states, I was offered a talk show, which I did for a decade, and then opened the station's Washington bureau, covering Congress and the Supreme Court.

 

I loved the adrenaline rush of disasters, political conventions, hosting political debates, etc. And I truly loved covering Capitol Hill, in the most beautiful building in America.

 

The one experience I truly hated was covering the Metrolink train crash. I was sent to a high school where the relatives were waiting for news about their loved ones who were on that train. It was so different from fires where - even if someone just watched their house go up in flames - they WANTED to talk to someone. At that high school campus, those families didn't know what to feel and certainly didn't want to talk to a reporter. And yet I had to go live at the top of every hour. It was an awful evening. 

 

4. What inspired you to write your middle grade book “Welcome to Washington, Fina Mendoza”

I had the privilege of meeting a great many lawmakers while covering Congress. I also met their kids and even the dogs they brought to the office every day. Even if their political views were different from mine, I saw them as human beings who (mostly) came to Washington to try to accomplish something good for their constituents back home. I was inspired by watching democracy in action. And I wanted to inspire the next generation of public servants, to rescue them from the cynicism that seems to pervade America today.

 

I had mentored a young woman a few years ago (she now teaches first grade and is working on her PhD.) I never knew her when she was ten, but I imagined her at that age. She lent me her name for Fina.

 

 

5. Tell us a bit about your podcast?

 

I produce two podcasts: Book Club for Kids and The Fina Mendoza Mysteries. 

 

On Book Club for Kids, a trio of 5th-8th graders discuss a middle grade novel, interview the author, and hear a reading from the book by a celebrity. And everybody on the show tells us their favorite book and why they love it. I started the show in 2015 and we now have more than 100 episodes available for free at bookclubforkids.org. We've won the DC Mayor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, as well as the California Library Association’s Technology Award. The Times of London named the program one of the 10 best kidcasts in the world. 

 

The Fina Mendoza Mysteries was adapted from Welcome to Washington Fina Mendoza - an 8-part episodic drama that takes your ears inside the U.S. Capitol. We've done bonus episodes as well, covering everything from the January 6th insurrection to the pandemic to the election, all with curriculum for teachers.

 

6. What kind of books do you like to read, and which book was the biggest inspiration for you?

 

I'm currently on a mystery kick, devouring Dorothy L. Sayers, Barbara Neely, Ngaio Marsh, Jan Burke, Kerry Greenwood...I could go on and on. But it was Madeleine L'Engle who inspired me. Not just A Wrinkle in Time, but her Austin family series as well. When I think about it, those strong family stories of L'Engle's are similar to what I write in my Fina series. 

7. Are you working on any new projects, please talk about them?

State of the Union, my second book in The Fina Mendoza Mysteries series, comes out in August. It's about a mysterious bird that poops on the head of the president during the State of the Union address. I'm working on Fina 3 and a new mystery series set in the White House. 

 

8. If you can change anything in your life, what would it be?

I wish that I'd had one year of college on the east coast or Europe. I grew up in southern California and went to college there. As a reporter, I had the opportunity to live for months in another country. It would have been great to experience that at a younger age.

9. What kind of advice can you share with new writers and the children book writing community?

Be persistent. Believe in yourself. And look past the "big 4" publishers in New York. There may be a smaller publisher who is better for you and for your book - perhaps a regional publisher who "gets" you and your audience. 

 

 

10. Do you have any last thoughts, or do you want to talk about something I missed.

Through my school visits for Fina, I realize how important it is to teach civics in elementary school. And I'm not talking about class president elections which are just popularity contests. Kids have energy and ideas and all they want is a way to use them to help change the world. Civics can help them focus their efforts. We need those ideas and efforts. We need to expand civics education to younger kids.