So I invited my former high school teachers, Mark Lynch, Robin Bahrr Casey, and Richard Shilale-they were all on board! This led to casting the characters who represent my family members. And then it hit me, why don’t we just invite along the actual people. Paul was looking for a place for the other readers as some of the teachers, but I couldn’t imagine how the real people would react to the interpretations. Since then, I have had many conversations with educators who have expressed enthusiasm that this adaptation would offer equal access to the students they serve. He had no entry into the story otherwise. But what convinced me that it would be important work was meeting a reader who is blind at one of the live reads. Without question, I was so excited for the challenge to adapt Hey, Kiddo for audio. That convinced him that an audiobook adaptation of graphic literature was possible. Paul was also impressed with what HarperAudio had been able to do with the audiobook adaptation of Nimona by Noelle Stevenson. Scholastic Audiobooks had also produced audio adaptations of Brian Selznick’s books, which have several visual segments. Paul produced audiobooks of two YA titles by Cherie Priest, which were primarily text narratives with graphic sequences interspersed between chapters. He had a lightbulb moment of how we could approach this graphic memoir as an audiobook. Paul Gagne of Scholastic Audiobooks was in that audience.
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