Devorah Cohen, The Circle: inference, execution, and the disparity of format
A trickle of releases from Circle Publishing has solidified into a stream. Recent titles such as Strange New World, Blending Secrets, Under Cover, and Super Agent Gizmo are slim and bold, bringing color and fun to children’s literature. For those familiar with The Circle Magazine, this is no surprise. Since its inception six years ago, The Circle has been spawning a dizzying array of new projects and raising the bar in quality kids’ entertainment.
Devorah Cohen, managing editor at The Circle, is behind it all, bringing ideas, talent, and process together.
Tell me about your background, and how you got here.
I taught upper elementary and high school English and writing for many years before I started writing for publications. I was at Hamodia writing and helping with the production of their Inyan magazine for a couple of years before The Circle approached me. I told them, “No, I don't know anything about kids, I don't write for kids.” They said, “Well, you have kids, so then you know kids.” It took me some time to get into that. But it's been about three and a half years and I’m really enjoying it over here.
What’s the balance in your job between production versus in-the-weeds editing?
I don’t do actual copy editing, I'm more at the beginning of the process, planning content and overseeing the general production. If we decide to plan a new column, I will come up with the idea, hash it out with a couple of people in the office and then reach out to writers and review some samples. We'll go back and forth and tweak it until we feel it’s ready to go. Then it comes into our system and a copy editor goes over it to check for all the usual spelling, grammar, and language errors. It then goes for layout, and then another proofreader goes over it.
Editing is a backstage role, in which you’re putting your heart and soul into someone else’s work. Shoshana Friedman, editor of Mishpacha Magazine, recently said about this: “It’s very humbling to dedicate your creativity, contact list, and analytical skills to someone else’s work.” What is your perspective?
It's interesting because sometimes I feel the opposite. When I went into the publishing world, people asked me, “So, are you writing?” And I would say I'm way too busy writing to write. But I feel like, maybe just because it's a kids’ magazine, I get too much credit. Kids say, “You’re the editor for The Circle? Whoa, I love The Circle!” They assume if I’m the editor, I probably draw all the pictures and come up with all the stories. So in a way, I feel like I get more visibility and credit than I deserve just as a person who's moving things along and getting them going. I couldn't put together most of this on my own, and I could never have come up with all these ideas on my own.
I wonder if kids see The Circle as one big picture, whereas adults will see an author or a style and differentiate between different pieces of a magazine.
Very much so.
Writing takes talent, creativity, and grit. Does experience play any role? What is the difference between editing for a newbie writer versus one of your experienced and central writers?
Yes and no. I would say that, like anything else in life, the more you do it, the more you're going to refine your ability and process. On the other hand, sometimes there's just innate talent that can be developed, but can't be taught if it's not there. Someone came to us recently with a manuscript for a serial. When I started reading it, I was like, “Who is this person?” I couldn't figure out why we didn't know her name because she is such a good writer. It turned out she's really young, like a year out of seminary, and supremely talented. There are people who could write for 40 years and not come up with this.
What is the most overdone topic or theme in kids' literature?
We try not to print something we've done before. But a lot of it is just how it will be done. When something is authentic, it works well. When it's not, it doesn't, even if it's a fresh topic. So a lot of it is not about the topic, it's about the execution.
We just started this serial on bullying, and some people would think, “Oh, bullying, everyone talks about bullying.” But it's so subtle and well done, there's nothing trite about it. It tugs at your heartstrings because it’s written emotionally and creates empathy for the character. So it's hard to say that there's really something overdone.
What challenges does producing content for kids, specifically, present?
People have this idea that we should approach kids’ literature from the angle of what we think kids should read. People will say, “I have an idea for a column, I think it's really important for kids.” And that may be true, and sometimes we’ll tell them that it might be a good curriculum, maybe you want to bring that to a school.
There are a lot of things that kids should read or should know, but that's not necessarily what they're going to choose to do in their free time. They attend school all day long, doing things they don't have a choice about. Over here, we’re giving them what they want, what’s fun. It's like you’ve got to eat your meals and then you get to have your fun snack. We're the fun snack.
The Circle has done some incredible genre novels recently, especially Rochel Burstyn’s Out of Mind and A Strange New World. I’ve seen hesitant readers be more open to picking up something non-traditional, they’re more likely to go for that. How do you think kids receive these books? Is there something you’d consider too “different” to publish?
When people pitch ideas, we do ask, is that too off? Are kids going to buy into this, and is there any reason not to give it to them? Like is it hashkafically problematic, inappropriate, or frightening? And if not, it's really just about whether kids will like it.
We’ve branched out into what you might call paranormal. Rochel Burstyn, who’s such a creative writer, comes up with these great ideas that kids totally buy into. We just finished her serial Bundle of Joy, a hybrid serial and comic. It was from the perspective of a baby who can communicate with his brother. Kids just loved it, they really took to the idea that this baby had real thoughts. So I think that branching out into these very imaginative genres that are not so typical has been a lot of fun for readers.
What's the ideation process going into these fresh and interestingly themed serials?
We usually have a general idea of what category we need to fill when looking for a new serial. Let’s say a girls’ serial or a boys’ serial, something for teens, something that's light and fun. Right now, we have a heavy teen girl serial, so we’d want something light and boy-oriented. We know which of our writers specialize in which areas, so we’ll go to a writer who’s good at that and tell them what we're looking for.
Sometimes we are more specific. We have a writer now who’s developing something for us. We told her the name of a secular author, and said, “There's nothing like that in the frum world, what could we do to fill that void?” We brainstormed together and came up with an idea. So our process really depends on the story.
A weekly magazine needs weekly ideas. How do you keep things fresh? How do you know when it’s time to pull the plug on a feature or serial?
When we do a serial, we're not making it up as we go along. Once an author gives us an idea, we first get an entire plot summary so that we know where the story will go. We then ask them for a chapter breakdown so we can make sure that something's happening in each chapter. As the writer sends the chapters in, we'll tweak. If it’s starting to schlep up a little bit, we might say, “I think we need to move up the action, can you bring things forward?” Or, “Not enough happened in this chapter, can we add another aspect?”
What makes a serial story a good candidate to become a book?
In earlier years, The Circle was less involved in book publishing. There was a smaller team, so there wasn't as much manpower. We just started the book club this summer, so we're now putting out a minimum of 12 books a year. So now that we have a dedicated publishing team constantly working on books, we're looking back and realizing there were plenty of things that could have been printed before, it just wasn't a priority. We have had times when we ran something in The Circle and then realized that the concept was good, but the execution wasn't compelling enough for readers. Or if we feel something was either slower-paced or wasn’t as popular with readers, then we won't put it into a book.
The published books have all been thinner, which I think is very approachable for a kid who isn’t the biggest bookworm. Is this by design?
We don't let things run for very long; our serials are probably shorter than most magazines. Our readership is very varied, we have 7 and 8-year-olds and 18-year-olds. We want to make sure that things are accessible to our younger readers. We also always have new subscribers joining. If you join a magazine and a serial is up to chapter 6 and will go for another 30 chapters, you're always lost. We try to run two serials a year in any given slot, so there’s a new story every six months and a new reader never feels out of the loop for too long. We also try to stagger them so they're not all starting at the same time.
The Circle just launched audio, with audiobooks and The Loop. What do you think is the difference in kids “digesting” storytelling through audio as opposed to traditional reading? How about comics?
They’re three different worlds. Working on comics was a huge adjustment for me when I came to The Circle. We have some writers who are comics writers and some writers who are not comics writers. It's a real delineation because you have to think in a different way. When you write a comic, it’s all dialogue, you can't have much narration or think in terms of character development. You can have a picture of a scene and put the characters in a position, but you can't have them doing action. The reader's mind has to make the jump of how they got from here to there. So writing a comic is thinking very visually. It's more like writing a script for a play than writing a story.
I’m not really involved in The Loop, but when I talk to the director, it’s amazing what she thinks of. With audio, when they talk about how they're having somebody in a certain place, they need sound effects to let you know where that person is. If that person is near an ocean, you need to know they're near an ocean. So you have your sound effects for that, and you don't want too much narration because that makes it boring.
Writing a story in prose is a whole different skill set because you can put in whatever description you want, you can put in whatever thoughts you want, but you need to do that well so that kids will enjoy reading it and not feel like they're being talked to, but that they’re being shown something. They're very different approaches.
What is your perspective on the traditional format versus comics? Do comics have benefits over the traditional?
I once spoke to a speech therapist who told me, “I know people are so against comics, but I think they're great.” She works with kids who need to improve their language and expression. She feels that when they read comics, there's a lot of inference, which is true. That's why it's so hard for me to read a comic. I'm used to reading literature where they tell you what's happening and what's going on. You read the dialogue, and you read the description. Here, suddenly the guy said this, and now these guys are doing that. And you have to figure out what happens from one box to the next. So there is a skill involved there.
For a kid who's not a reader, if he's reading comics, he's still reading language. So don't dismiss it completely. It’s a good way to get a reluctant reader to read something. It definitely is a more visual path than regular reading, which kind of makes sense for the way our world is going now, everything is much more visual than it has been. I don't know if you want children reading comics exclusively because it gives a more limited exposure to language, but I don't think it's such a terrible thing.
Are there any projects The Circle is working on that you could give a sneak peek at?
We recently brought some new people on board, which is very exciting. Our writers are usually freelancers, and they’re all subject to their lives. So we felt like it would be helpful for us to have a writer on staff dedicating herself to our projects so that we can depend on the fact that certain things are going to come in regularly. We chose someone really creative, so now we have her helping us with brainstorming, which is great.
We're always working on new ideas. Our publisher, Mr. Ari Berkowitz, is a very broad thinker, always willing to try something new. We've just expanded to Israel, and are now moving into Australia. The Loop is a huge endeavor, bigger and more creative than anything you can imagine. We’re also starting some new comics that are completely different than anything out there–a whole interactive concept that took a lot of development.
By the time this is out, our Legendary Leaders series will be up and running too. It will include a gedolim column in the magazine, collectible gedolim cards, and a magnificent weekly newsletter that readers and schools can have emailed to them. It’s a beautiful thing to share at the Shabbos table with kids of all ages.
What books have you recently enjoyed?
The last novel I read was Wildlands, by M. Kenan. I was blown away by it. I couldn't remember the last time I read a book that I couldn't put down. The plot was so tight and she got every loose end. It was so different, not your regular old novel.
I have something against translated books, I can't read them. Usually, when I go to the library I open the front cover and check if it’s translated; if it is, I put it back. There was no hint here that the writer was not American, which is so amazing. I just couldn't believe how she took a very atypical setting, an unusual era in America, not one that she would've been familiar with, got all those details and an out-of-the-box plot, and put it all together.
What non-Circle kids’ books or authors have impressed you recently?
I’m in awe of Dina Neuman. I actually just met her this summer and felt like a little kid, looking at her shyly, wanting to say hi. Yael Mermelstein is another favorite, she doesn't get stale. Both of them have something fun about their writing which keeps it fresh, and whatever they write is worth reading. That doesn't come from training, it comes from having a creative mind. Some people are born with it and it's just amazing to see, you never know what they’ll come up with next.