Publisher’s Description

Anika Veerkar, Benicio “Benny” Flores, and Libby Abrams are neighborhood friends–and known to be relentlessly curious. They’re always asking questions, and their interest in sharing the answers has led them to start an online newsletter. Encouraged by their parents, they venture out into the community to investigate the most engaging mysteries.

Rebecca’s thoughts on HOW DID WE GET HERE?

How Did We Get Here? Exploring the Ancestry of Eastside Residents was the first of the Eastside Extra books I read (they can be read in any order). When one of the 3 curious friends puts up a new door decoration, they realize they are all from immigrant families. Their new project: digging into what brought each of their families to the U.S. and why immigration is a hotly debated issue in the country right now.

Find out what they learn in their research and how they help bring their community together in this new middle grade book. The Eastside Extra series will especially appeal to kids who are interested in starting a newsletter or organizing projects to make their community a better place. This is a series of high-low books. High-low books have high action and low word count. At less than 100 pages with spot art throughout, these books are perfect for reluctant readers!

Rebecca’s thoughts on STILL SERVING

I also read Still Serving: The Inside Scoop on One Veteran’s Life. Anika, Benny, and Libby are back at it. They’re at the grocery store picking up some vegetables for Anika’s mother—and a few snacks—when they notice that one of the cashiers is a man older than Benny’s abuela, who is already retired. Why is he working at their local grocer? This question leads them to more questions, sending the 3 friends on a quest for answers that will become the lead story in their next online newsletter, one about the veterans living in their community.

One further note on these books, Anita Storey is a pseudonym, and the text for these 2 books was written by Winged Pen’s very own Halli Gomez. Congratulations on their publication, Halli!

Author interview with Halli Gomez

RA: How did you get involved in writing The Eastside Extra series?

HG: I’d written a book in the What Happened? series for Jolly Fish Press. When they decided to launch The Eastside Extra series, they asked me to pitch a book based on their concept. It was really nice to be asked considering how hard it generally is to get opportunities to write kidlit books!

RA: What did you like about writing this series?

HG: Kids 11-12 are a great age to write for. They’re curious and always asking questions. I also liked doing the research and writing about a neighborhood community.

RA: What did your process for writing this series look like?

HG: This was a work-for-hire series. That means that Jolly Fish came up with the concept. They asked me for a synopsis of my idea for one book in the series, but they said they planned to publish 2 books. I actually came up with 2 ideas and sent them both, and they liked them both! At the same time, another author sent them an idea they liked so they decided to expand the series from 2 books to 4. That was a big surprise!

Maya Chhabra was the other author, and since all 4 books would have the same set of main characters, we had to work together to create them. We brought a lot of ourselves into the characters. I’m Jewish and my husband is from Cuba. Maya is from India, so we created three characters, one from each of these backgrounds. Maya was fabulous to work with and brainstorming with her made the creative process fun.

Once we had the characters laid out, the stories were our own. I dove into research on veterans and on immigration for these stories, which was fun.

RA: What did you most like about writing these stories?

HG: The characters, definitely. They all had very different but fun personalities. Also, they worked well together as they investigated stories for their newsletters because they all had different strengths. They each made different contributions to the newsletter (pictures vs. ideas. vs. research) and to the issues the friends were dealing with in their lives.

RA: What was the most challenging thing about The Eastside Extra series?

HG: The research. Making sure I had my facts straight and both sides of the issues represented. Not everyone feels the same way on controversial issues, so I dug to find facts and figures to illustrate the positions of both sides, even though I had my own opinions on the topics.

RA: Who is the ideal reader for these books?

HG: Fifth to seventh graders, kids who are 10-12 years old. Maybe an ambitious 4th grader. The stories are short, less than 100 pages, and they’re not too difficult to read. They also have great illustrations by Natalie Ortega which will pull kids into the stories.

RA: What will you bring from writing The Eastside Extra series into your own future stories?

HG: I’ll dive deeper into research on topics I don’t know anything about. Having to do research for these books pushed me out of my comfort zone, which was great. I’ll be less afraid of tackling a subject I don’t know a lot about in the future!

RA: Thanks for stopping by the Winged Pen, Halli, and for the insight on this series!

The books in The Eastside Extra series are highly recommended!

The Eastside Extra series was published on September 1, 2022. You can add it to your “want to read” list on Goodreads, or order on Indiebound, Barnes & Noble, or Amazon.

If The Eastside Extra series sounds good, here are a couple more recent recommendations to check out:

Best Friends, Bikinis, and other Summer Catastrophes by Kristi Wientge
The Way I Say It by Nancy Tandon
To Tell You the Truth by Beth Vrabel
Cole Champion Is Not Super by Rebecca J. Allen