Six yellow sticky notes are stuck to the concrete surrounding a pool. Each note has a single word, writing THE SAVAGES HAVE ENTERED THE POOL. The slide also says “An Agent’s Guide, Middle Grade Contemporary, 44K words, by Megan Hirsch.”
The slide says “Pitch.” It shows a yellow sticky note stuck to the concrete surrounding a pool. There is water splashed near the note. The text reads: “Clara Brody is a lonely twelve-year-old until she meets a girl vacuuming her sidewalk.
For a rich kid, Clara has a whole lot of nothing. She’s invisible to her narcissistic mom, terrified of saying the wrong thing, and overtly bullied by her best friend, Macy. But Clara’s too busy scrambling to find a ride from her grandmother’s house to Macy’s big annual pool party to notice how awful things are. If Clara hopes to have any friends in eighth grade, she needs to be at this party. Or else.
But Clara just can’t get a break. Nobody will give her a ride, especially her icy-cold grandmother who communicates through sticky notes; her mom has run off to Fiji and left her with no credit card and no way to contact her; plus, Macy doesn’t even want her at the pool party. When Clara meets the nut jobs who live next door to her grandmother, along with her gardener’s son, Clara can’t see beyond the end of her nose. But if Clara doesn’t start thinking for herself and open her eyes to the escalating abuse from her so-called friends, then eighth grade at her fancy-pants private school is going to be one desolate year.”
The slide reads “Comps.” A striped beach towel has the book BUSTED by Gemeinhart and the THREE RANCHEROS series by DiCamillo placed on it. “Laugh-out-loud” dialogue similar to BUSTED, “authentic MG internal conflicts” similar to DiCamillo’s series, and “small details make characters feel human” similar to both comps.
Text is overlaid over swimming pool water. It is titled “Chapter 1 Snippet.”
It reads: “The spinner rack where the shoelaces dangled squeaked as Clara turned it. She kept her head down but lifted her eyes to see if anyone was watching her.
Binder’s Drugstore was small but had a little bit of everything. Old people said that when you mentioned Binder’s to them—that it had a little bit of everything. Clara didn’t know about that, but she knew they had the shoelaces she wanted.
The rack was shoved into the back corner of the store, crowded on either side by junk nobody wanted to buy. Her elbow bumped against a box holding fuzzy rabbit socks and plastic eggs, marked down on clearance. Clara nudged the box to give herself more room.
She forced the wobbly metal rack to turn. She was searching for the sparkly blue laces Macy had worn to school on Friday. Even though there was only one week left of seventh grade, Macy was still wearing new things to school.
The metal squeaked as she turned the rack. She spied the ones she was looking for and slid the package off the hook.
Clara glanced around again. She ran her thumb up and down the small, glossy plastic package in her hand. It fit snugly in her palm. She went back to slowly spinning the rack, pretending to look at all the different laces, but all she could think about were the blue ones tucked in her hand.
The door made its bing-bong sound as Clara left the store. In her pocket were the blue shoelaces.
An #agentguide to THE SAVAGES HAVE ENTERED THE POOL
Contemporary Realistic #MG | 44K Words | querying agents
📍Smart Humor
📍Authentic MG Internal Conflict
📍Social Media FOMO Garbage
📍Finding Your People
#amquerying #agentsguide #middlegrade #booksky #mglit #kidlit
