The Official #TeamPITA 2018 Wish List, Part 1!

Welcome, wonderful writers! We are so glad you’re here! We’ll get to our wishlist in a moment, but first, a little about us, your potential mentors.

Remy Lai writes and draws stories for kids. She lives in Brisbane, Australia, where she can often be found exploring the woods with her two dogs. Her middle grade novel (a prose/graphic novel hybrid) PIE IN THE SKY is forthcoming from Henry Holt/Macmillan in Spring 2019. You can find it on Goodreads here. She is represented by Jim McCarthy of Dystel, Goderich, & Bourret.

Rajani LaRocca writes middle grade and picture books. She practices medicine and lives in the Boston area with her family and impossibly cute dog. Her middle grade debut, MIDSUMMER’S MAYHEM, a foodie Indian-American story inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the hours she’s spent watching TV baking competitions, will be published by Yellow Jacket/Bonnier USA in summer 2019. You can find it on Goodreads here. She is represented by Brent Taylor of TriadaUS.

We are both Pitch Wars 2017 mentees who benefitted immensely from our mentors and the Pitch Wars community this past year, and we are SO EXCITED to be paying it forward now as first-time mentors! Last year, we learned a ton, revised our butts off, laughed and cried and commiserated and celebrated together even though we’re literally on opposite sides of the world. Our mentee will get our best advice, our stalwart support, emails, and twitter posts and gifs for good measure. We will help you and root for you during the revision process, through the agent round, and beyond. We hope to forge a lifelong relationship with our mentee, just like the ones that our wonderful mentors share with us.

We are #TeamPITA—the concept, not the bread.

via GIPHY

We will be Pains In The A** in the best possible way: mentors who give you our best, maybe even painful, suggestions for edits, but who will never tell you what to do. Because your book is your book! Mentors who will listen patiently to your complaints during the revision process, but who will tell you that we know you can do it, so get to it. Mentors who will guide you and hold your hand during the agent showcase, querying, and beyond.

So…what are we looking for?

Middle Grade with humor and heart. We find that the best middle grade has both. Make us laugh and cry, like STAR-CROSSED by Barbara Dee and ALAN COLE IS NOT A COWARD by Eric Bell. Give us smart kids, like in THE WESTING GAME by Ellen Raskin. Give us emotionally rich stories, like THE WAR THAT SAVED MY LIFE by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley and WHERE THE WATERMELONS GROW by Cindy Baldwin.

We are happy to see contemporary, adventure, historical, time travel, sci-fi, and fantasy, although we’re not the best fit for high fantasy. And if your contemporary has a touch of magic, all the better! Think WHEN YOU REACH ME by Rebecca Stead, and FLORA AND ULYSSES by Kate DiCamillo.

We are not opposed to animal protagonists, but make sure they are unique and interesting, like THE ONE AND ONLY IVAN by Katherine Applegate.

We are happy to consider verse novels (like INSIDE OUT AND BACK AGAIN by Thanha Lai), epistolary stories (like THE NIGHT DIARY by Veera Hiranandani), graphic novels (like ROLLER GIRL by Victoria Jamieson), and unusual formats. Surprise us!

We welcome and celebrate diversity, both in authors and the characters they create.

We have more to say about our wishlist! To find out what, please visit Remy’s blog here.

To visit the main Pitch Wars blog hop page, click here.

Or to check out more MG mentors, see below.

2018 Middle Grade Mentors