KidVenture Vol. 3
Middle Grade Fiction
Date Published: 03-30-2023
Chance, Addie and Sophie launch a new venture when they get lost in the country and stumble on the idea of starting a corn maze business. They quickly discover that while it’s easy to rush into a maze, finding your way out is hard. They will need to convince an investor to fund the venture, persuade a reluctant farmer to let them build their maze on his corn field, and figure out a way to work with his headstrong nephew. Along the way they will realize just how little they know about planting corn, designing mazes and writing business plans. Through many twists and turns —and dead ends— they will learn how to keep a partnership together and what the true job of a leader is. There’s only one thing harder than finding your way out of a maze: creating a maze people want to get lost in.
INTERVIEW
Can you share a little bit about your current work?
Sure! I’m currently promoting the third release in the KidVenture
series, Through
The Maize. KidVenture books are interactive
business adventure stories for middle grade readers. In every KidVenture book,
a group of young entrepreneurs start a business and have to overcome a series
of challenges to make their business profitable.
In Through
The Maize, there are a group of three siblings who decide to start a
corn maze business. Chance, Addie and Sophie remember going to a corn maze when
they were younger and lament that it has no closed, so they are inspired to
stat one of their own. They go visit a farm just outside of town and present
the farmer with a proposal to build a corn maze on one of his fields and
fields. The farmer is skeptical and asks for an upfront payment to use his
land. This threatens to sink the kids’ new venture before it ever gets going,
but after some debate they decide to put together a business plan and find an
investor. That’s when the action really starts.
After some negotiation, the farmer agrees to partner with the
kids but they must work with his nephew, Cody who is older and has a lot of
experience working on a farm. Right away Cody and Chance butt heads, as Cody
seems to disagree with everything Chance proposes. Even worse, Cody demands his
own share of the profits, separate from what was promised to the farmer. As the
kids proceed with their plan, begin planting corn and drawing the maze map, the
situation between Chance and Cody only gets worse. Finally tempers explode and
the whole venture is in jeopardy. Not only is the business falling apart, there
is an investor who will lose his money if Chance and Cody can’t figure out a
way to work together.
Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?
Yes. One of my goals with KidVenture books is for kids to feel
empowered to take on the world and tackle complex problems. I don’t just mean
business problems like figuring out what the price of a product or service
should be, or how to market a company. That’s certainly part of it. But more
broadly, I want kids to learn how to handle difficult people problems. Business
comes down to working with people and to be good at business you have to be
good at working with people, whether It’s motivating people on your side to
work towards a common goal or negotiating with people on the other side to
reach an agreement both can benefit from.
My hope is that young readers will see how Chance handles the
relationship with Cody and learn from it. At first, Chance does a terrible job.
He’s jealous of the attention Cody gets and he begins to interpret everything
Cody says and does as an attack, as a challenge to his authority, even when it
isn’t. Things finally start to change when he begins to understand what his
role as a leader should be, and that includes making the people who work for
him (like Cody) feel like heroes in their own story. That requires humility and
letting other people take credit for what they’re accomplishing. Chance has to
decide what’s more important: feeling properly recognized, or getting the job
done and having a successful business?
Once Chance begins to reframe his relationship with Cody in this
way, he also starts to become more aware of how he has been filtering all of
Cody’s actions through his own sense of wounded pride and interpreting them in
the worst possible way. Chance realizes he has the power to change how he
construes what Cody says and does, and this gives him the freedom to focus on
what’s important to him (namely finishing the maze) and not be constantly
reacting to Cody. This is an enormously empowering realization, one that I hope
young readers can learn from.
What is your favorite part of the writing process?
Its’ the way characters come to life. When you’re deep in the
story and your own characters surprise you and act in unexpected ways. By the
time I got the end of the book and there’s a final scene between Chance and
Cody, I thought to myself: I love these guys. I’m going to miss them.
About the Author
KidVenture stories are business adventures where kids figure out how to market their company, understand risk, and negotiate. Each chapter ends with a challenge, including business decisions, ethical dilemmas and interpersonal conflict for young readers to wrestle with. As the story progresses, the characters track revenue, costs, profit margin, and other key metrics which are explained in simple, fun ways that tie into the story.
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2 Comments
Beautiful artwork
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a great novel. Thanks for hosting and sharing.
ReplyDelete