BookView Review

Welcome to BookView Interview, a conversation series where BookView talks to authors.

Recently, we talked to Rebecca Block and Grace Edwards about their writing and recently released book, Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t?: Unlocking Teen Motivation in School and Life,  an evocative guide that delves into the heart of student engagement and empowerment in education. (Read the review here)

Did you begin your field research and interviews with students with the intent to publish your findings in this book, or was the book born organically after you had already started that work?

Becca had talked with students for years before she started the process of formally interviewing and recording them, but the formal interviews were started with the idea of gathering them for a book of some kind. Who that book was for (young people themselves vs. adults who care about them) and how it was written evolved as the project went along, however, including having Grace go from interviewee to co-author. That last one was probably the most exciting and meaningful evolution of the project from first idea to final product, and it made for such a cool learning experience for both of us.

What’s one thing you wish you had known before starting the research and writing process for this book?

We both wish we had realized just how long it would take. Working or being a student full-time (and parenting, in Becca’s case) doesn’t leave much room for research and writing, so the whole process took more years than expected. Then again, maybe it was better not to know that up front because it may have made the project too daunting for us. Also, both of us were more familiar with writing about research for academic audiences and settings (like term papers and academic journals) and it took some real focused effort and revision to take the academic tone out of our first draft. If we’d known how much work that would be from the get go, we might have been able to write more informally up front.

Is there anything you want people to know before they pick up this book?

This is not your typical “experts tell you what to think and do” kind of book. There’s plenty of those out there, many of which are excellent, but what we noticed was that young people’s experiences were usually heavily filtered by the expert author(s) in those books, digested into anecdotes that reinforced the points they wanted to make, with a lot of the complexity removed. Process and nuance matter; we’re big believers that a solution made for someone rather than with them is likely to fail. So young people’s voices, opinions, and experiences take the starring role in this book, and research in psychology and education deliberately serve as a strong supporting cast, rather than taking center stage.

What was it like to co-author Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? ? What did you love about that process, and what challenges did you have to navigate together?

In some ways, the co-author collaboration resembled many of the positive relationships shared by interviewees in the book, in the sense that one author was a young person (Gen Z), and the other author was a working parent (Gen X). As a result, it was fun to learn from each other and learn that we had a lot of shared values and perspectives that made the communication and writing process of the book easier, smooth, and enjoyable. On the other hand, with the generational difference, there were some communication differences. We had to learn how to communicate appropriate labor distribution, given that we were both working on the book as a side project. In the end, the product of our labor was a book that we both feel proud of and can say that we produced something that we hope parents and young people can share.

What has been the most rewarding part of publishing Can You Help Me Give a Sh*t? ?

One of the most rewarding parts of producing this book was being able to talk to more young people, and being able to relate to so many of them, despite some of our different geographic areas, racial backgrounds, educational backgrounds, etc. Also, as we began to share about the book, it was really exciting to see how interested people have been in the topic. And it’s been fun to see how much people like the title–which is a quote from a student who was looking for a favorite teacher to help high school become more meaningful to her.

What’s next for the two of you as writers?

A few people have asked us if this is the start of the series, and whether we might focus on middle school students next, or shift to the teacher and parent perspective. We both were writers before we met each other, so it’s likely there will be more written projects down the line, and any of those are certainly possibilities! However, right now we’re still trying to catch our breath from the work of putting this book together; Grace is focused on helping to get the word out on social media and Becca into producing a complementary podcast to the book that directly tackles individual questions about helping young people thrive in and outside school. No matter what we do post-publication, we’re always focusing on building solutions with communities in our individual careers and work, and will continue doing so regardless of how soon either of us, or both of us together, work on a book again.

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