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| Dina Havranek (Jonathan Moonen Photography) |
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Dina Havranek hails from Houston, Tex., where she teaches science at Timberwood Middle School. A former TV news reporter and local actress, she loves being onstage and has been a speaker at the DFW Writers Conference, where she is a regular attendee. She lives with her husband, her daughter, an out-of-control Lego collection, and a pair of extremely ungrateful cats. Her debut, Giddy Barber Explodes in 11 (Peachtree, October 8, 2024), is a YA novel about a teen overburdened with responsibilities who tries to do the opposite of her normal actions to self-treat her depression.
The writing style--many sentences start with "Giddy" instead of the prose varying more--was a brilliant way of subtly reinforcing Giddy's treatment of herself as an experiment.
Yes, Giddy doesn't know who she is, so I wanted to emotionally distance Giddy from herself. A great way of doing this was by having her repeat her own name as if she were outside herself. It demonstrated someone who isn't in touch with who they really are. I liked using present tense because my experience with teens tells me they very much value the here and now. Everything around them is reacted to immediately and with great emotion.
A lot of Giddy's opposite therapy involves eating foods new to her, as well as unconventional combinations of foods, despite her belief that her stomach can handle only the blandest foods.
I wanted Giddy to eventually explore the idea that maybe her sensitive stomach is a side effect of stress. I made sure to have food upset her stomach the worst when she was tremendously stressed. But I also wanted to demonstrate her darker tendency toward self-harm. Giddy is hypercompetent, and hypercompetent people like to believe they can control every situation--so if they're unhappy, they're really to blame, right? Consequently, Giddy punishes herself with food that she knows, deep down, is going to hurt her. Self-harm is a cry for help and, on some level, Giddy knows she needs to get the attention of her family for that help.
There is imbalance in Giddy's relationships. How does her experiment, despite its hyperbolic nature, allow her to see the need for balance?
Balance is a tough concept for Giddy, so for Giddy to understand that need, you practically have to hit her over the head with it. The skateboard accident, the vomit-inducing food--they're signs of extremes that could have been avoided with moderation (you can slowly learn to skateboard, you can add some spice to food).
Superdoo, an action figure that Giddy cannot remember the reasons for liking, serves as her guide throughout her 11-day experiment. What was the idea behind him?
Hamlet was the inspiration for Superdoo! Hamlet is a character who is constantly being prompted to act. Superdoo is an action figure who pokes Giddy over and over again until she does something to change her life. This is also why I made sure Giddy studied Hamlet in her English class.
Giddy never goes to older brother, Jax (who "made it out") for guidance. Would the story be different without Jax's character?
Jax likely once had all the responsibilities Giddy does now; Giddy just wouldn't have noticed them. Younger siblings are great at noticing when their older siblings bother them, but poor at realizing all the things those older siblings have been tasked with doing around the house. Giddy noticed those responsibilities the second they fell on her.
Had Jax not been around, Giddy would have probably been burdened with running the family at the age of 10 or 11--the ages I currently teach in sixth-grade science. Every year I encounter middle schoolers who are overburdened with the same responsibilities Giddy has.
Is that how you constructed such convincing classroom moments?
I'm fortunate to be a long-time educator and to come from a family of educators. My own daughter also recently completed high school. So, it was fun to portray Giddy's classes in detail.
Why was it important that school be so front-and-center in Giddy's story?
Giddy's life is relentless, and I needed to demonstrate that by showing every second of it. That included her academic responsibilities. Also, each lesson in some way mirrors a lesson Giddy needs to learn. For example, in chemistry, the teacher urges a cautious pace "or you might get something you can't undo." Giddy ignores this advice and barrels straight ahead, suffering consequences for her haste. Hamlet and "The Yellow Wallpaper" in English class contain valuable character references for Giddy to compare herself and her friends with. In history, Giddy learns about a terrible war run by adults who, to her shock, don't know everything, and their incompetence costs millions of people their lives. This leads to her questioning the competency of her own parents. I also never gave Giddy's teachers names--they are all just teachers, icons in her life who could provide assistance if she would listen. Of course, Giddy does not listen. Giddy already knows everything, which is why she is bent on solving all this on her own!
That makes me think of the abundant parallels you drew between the media Giddy consumes (opera, Ulysses, The Guns of August) and the world around her.
Yes. Opera music, Ulysses, and The Guns of August were all new to me and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about them with Giddy. I had fun pairing opera with Giddy's moods because it was a way to pry her emotions to the surface. I only knew my dad hated Ulysses passionately and that I needed Giddy to read a challenging work of literature. So, I read Ulysses as I wrote, reaching all the same milestones in it around the same times Giddy did. Ulysses is a journey, albeit a confusing one, and the depressive cloud surrounding its main protagonist seemed an ideal parallel with Giddy. The Guns of August is a hilariously written look at how some world leaders can be so childish. Giddy needed to understand something vital: adults can be stupid. So, her inability to do everything her mom wants her to do and still be happy isn't really a Giddy fail--it's a mom fail. Failing to impress her history teacher is a teacher fail. For the record, other teachers hate teachers like that guy!
What do you hope readers, especially those who find themselves under pressure like Giddy, take away from reading the novel?
I hope they learn they are not alone. Hypercompetent kids and teens are leaned on and may feel like they are the only ones in their sphere capable of addressing big problems. This can lead to depression and a sense of isolation. They need to know others exist like them and that these problems may not be of their own making--the problems may even be entirely out of their control. --Samantha Zaboski