Fanny Fitzpatrick is back again, with a whole new set of mythic problems. Fanny Fitzpatrick and the Sirens: MiddleGrade Fiction by Dana Hammer Book Tour with Guest Post & Giveaway

  

FANNY FITZPATRICK AND THE SIRENS

Dana Hammer

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

GENRE:  MiddleGrade Fiction

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

BLURB:

 

It’s the end of the school year. For most kids, it’s time to relax and get ready for summer. For Fanny, there’s work. She has a brand-new baby brother, and she’s been hired by Zeus to look after his “injured” son. And she still has her and her friends’ cheesemaking business! Fanny is overwhelmed.

 

But then she meets three sirens who want Fanny to join them on Feather Island for a summer of singing, instrument playing, and fun at the beach. The program is totally free and could start an amazing musical career-the thing that Fanny has always wanted the most.

 

Athena and Gemma are dead set against it. Athena says that the sirens are bad news; that their whole purpose in life is to lure men to their deaths with their beautiful singing. Gemma says that Feather Island is part of a network of unmappable islands, the type of place where criminals and sketchy organizations hoard their wealth and do their crimes.

 

Surely, the sirens don’t do that anymore, right? All that stuff was a long time ago. If the sirens want to keep their island paradise a secret, well, that’s not so weird, is it? Fanny has talked to them, and she just knows that they aren’t as evil as everyone says. They are perfectly nice ladies.

 

Right?

 

Follow Fanny Fitzpatrick as she navigates big sisterhood, friends who disapprove of her life choices, burning ambitions, and a bunch of sirens luring her away to their private island.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

EXCERPT

But I don’t have a chance to practice or not practice, because I remember that I have a Zoom date with Gemma and Athena. I head down to the computer and log in to the meeting.

 

Gemma and Athena are already in there, talking about something. They look serious and sour, but Gemma is wearing the most adorable newsboy hat with embroidered flowers on it, and I squeal when I see it.

 

“Gemma, that hat though!”

 

They stop talking and look at me, not smiling. I realize something weird is going on, and so I stop smiling.

 

“Fanny, we need to talk,” says Athena.

 

That’s not good.

 

“Um. Gemma? How’s England?” Gemma shakes her head at me.

 

I look back to Athena, who has crossed her arms, which makes her look like a strict disciplinarian who’s about to give me a terrible lecture. And I realize that’s exactly what’s about to happen.

 

“Herman told me everything,” Athena says.

 

“Um.”

 

“You let those things in your house! After I specifically told you how dangerous they are!”

 

“I didn’t let them in,” I say, which I realize is a wimpy thing to say, but I can’t think of anything better. “My dad did.”

 

“What did they want? Why were they there, at your house?”

 

“Well—”

 

“Do you have any idea how many people sirens have killed over the course of these millennia?”

 

“But that was a long time ago!” I say, sounding desperate and silly, even to my own ears.

 

“Fanny,” Gemma says, quietly, looking around to make sure no one is listening to her. “I’m not supposed to say this. But there are these islands. A few of them. And they have special deals with the UN, NATO, the African Union, and a few others that I’m not allowed to even say the names of. They have diplomatic immunity. They operate under their own laws, and they answer to no one. They’re unmappable, untraceable. I’ve been talking to Athena, and I think these islands are owned by the sirens.”

 

“You sound like conspiracy theorists,” I say, rolling my eyes. “How do you even know about these top-secret islands if they’re so top secret?”

 

“My parents,” Gemma says, like it’s obvious. I guess it should be obvious. I still have no idea what her parents do for a living, but they seem to jet around the planet a lot, with machete-bearing security guards, so I guess it must be important. Still.

 

“Well, Feather Island is a school. A school for musicians,” I say, trying to reassure them. “There’s a brochure and everything.”

 

I wish I had the brochure so I could show it to them, how lovely and harmless the place is, but my parents have put it somewhere and I don’t know where it is.

 

“How do you know about Feather Island?” Athena demands, looking even more furious.

 

Whoops. I guess I’ve gotta tell them now.

 

“That’s what the sirens wanted. To tell me about their music camp.”

 

“NO!” Athena shouts, banging her fist on the table in front of her. Splinters of wood fly everywhere and I’m kind of scared now. This is intense, even for Athena. “You can NOT go to this island. I don’t care what they told you. It’s bad news.”

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 Middle-Grade Books I Read in Fifth Grade

Dana Hammer

When writing a middle grade series, it’s inevitable that you start thinking about what you read when you were that age. You think about what you liked and didn’t like, what teachers recommended for you, what your parents thought you should be reading, and what was actually available. When writing the Fanny Fitzpatrick series, I thought back to fifth grade, and what I read, and most of it was horrifyingly inappropriate, which was unhelpful and only made my task harder. But there were a few books I remember reading that were not too violent or sexual or macabre. Here are a few, and my thoughts on them.

1) The Babysitters’ Club

I wasn’t a huge fan of these, but they were ubiquitous if you were a tween girl in the 1990s. Every book fair and every school library contained them in mind-boggling quantities, because there are like, hundreds of them, and seemingly no one ever got tired of them.

The books weren’t bad though. I liked the entrepreneurial spirit of the babysitters, and the efficiency with which they ran their small business. I attempted to recreate it, by starting a dog walking business, but that dream was derailed when the neighbor kids stole my idea and papered the neighborhood with their cutesy homemade fliers, before I got the chance to make my own cutesy homemade fliers. I blame The Babysitters’ Club for my disappointment and lack of success as a dog-walker.

2) Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry

This is one we had to read in school. I remember getting in an argument with my teacher, because she said “highstrung” meant “uppity”, and I told her it meant “anxious”. I remember finding the book compulsively readable and very well written, but SUPER depressing. A child gets lynched in it. Heavy stuff for fifth grade. Definitely not a “feel good” book. 

3) Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark

This was a great book! Short stories that were ghoulish and spooky in all the right ways. But they weren’t so scary that I got weird looks for reading them. It was maybe the first time my taste for horror was socially accepted. 10/10, would recommend for any spooky girl.

4) The Giver

I will say, with no apology, that this children’s book is still one of my all-time favorite novels. It was my second exposure to dystopian fiction, (the first was The Stand, by Stephen King. Not appropriate.) and the one that got me thinking about different types of government, and what liberties we might sacrifice for security.  The concept of children being assigned to specific jobs/trainings fascinated me and repelled me in equal measure. I reread it as an adult, and it still holds up. 

5) Iggie’s House

This book by Judy Blume was about a community’s reaction to a black family moving into the neighborhood. While it wasn’t exactly a timely read, or a relatable story, I loved it and read it many times, as it was one of the only English language books at my grandma’s house, where I often stayed on Friday nights. I liked how the kids were able to see past the adults’ racism and bigotry. It made me feel good about being a kid. 

These are a few books that I remember reading in fifth grade. I think some of them would definitely still be loved by children today, and I hope a new generation finds joy in them. I also hope that they find joy in my book, Fanny Fitzpatrick and the Sirens.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

 

Dana Hammer is a novelist, screenwriter and playwright. She has won over forty awards and honors for her writing, few of which generated income, all of which were deeply appreciated. She is not a cannibal, but she is the author of A Cannibals Guide to Fasting. Dana is also the author of middle grade fantasy My Best Friend Athena which was inspired by a desire to write something her 9 year old daughter could read. 

 

Website: https://www.danahammer.com/

 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/danahammerwriterofthings

 

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Fanny-Fitzpatrick-Sirens-Dana-Hammer/dp/1962308243/ref=sr_1_1

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

GIVEAWAY 

 Dana Hammer will be awarding a $10 Amazon/BN gift certificate to a randomly drawn winner.

  

#middlegradefiction #mythicalfiction #booktour #guestpost #giveaway #danahammer #goddessfishpromotions