The INSPIRATION behind The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman & GIVEAWAY!

Please welcome my guest author, Gennifer Choldenko. Her latest book is The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman.

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman has garnered 4 starred reviews thus far and is a Junior Library Guild selection. It is an Indie Next pick for July and August 2024 and the Amazon pick for the best children’s book so far this year.  

Hank Hooperman hates making mistakes. But right now, every decision feels wrong.

His mom left him in charge of his three-year-old sister and hasn’t come home. They are out of food and money, and Hank knows he needs to make a move. So, he and Boo take a bus to find the stranger listed as an emergency contact on Hanks’s field trip form. Will ringing Lou Ann Adler’s doorbell be a smart decision or his worst mistake yet?

Hank is a good kid who tries really hard. But what happens when things go south, and you can’t figure it all out? When you love your mother very much, but she has problems you can’t solve? What happens when you make a mistake so huge, it disappoints everyone you love?

The themes are in my DNA.

I generally don’t have any idea what the theme of my novels is until the story itself lets me know. After many drafts of The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman and a few letters from my lovely editor Nancy Siscoe, it became clear that one of the themes of the book was second chances. I resisted this at first, simply because some of the characters get second chances they make the most of, while others are gifted second chances they ignore. But after I thought about it for a while, I began to see that the fragility of second chances only makes the concept more real. The idea of being given a second chance you blow is excruciating to me, but it happens all the time.

As Hank Hooperman, the main character of The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, developed on the page he did not think about second chances because in his life thus far there had not been any. This was one of the reasons why he was obsessed with mistakes. He had lists of mistakes. He had categories for them. He dreamt of having mistaken for that would light up red if you’re about to mess up. And he worried about the consequences of each decision he made because he knew there would not be a second chance for him.

The thing that made Hank’s situation especially difficult was for much of the book he had to make tough choices for himself and for his little sister Boo without help from anyone.

Many books pose problems for young protagonists that have easy answers. It is crystal clear what the “right” thing to do is and the “wrong” thing. You as the reader are just waiting around for the protagonist to figure out what you already know. But my experience as a kid was not like that. My life was messy and complicated and the “right” thing to do was often not obvious. Even in retrospect, I wonder about some of the decisions I was faced with as a kid. So, I write for the kids out there who are like me. That brings me to the second theme of The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman . . .  resilience.

Resilience didn’t come to me while writing the book. It wasn’t suggested in an editorial letter. It didn’t jump out at me on the tenth revision. In fact, I didn’t know resilience was in the novel until after it was published, and I saw a YouTube review by Colby Sharp that talked about how resilient Hank Hooperman is. As soon as Colby said that I knew he was right.

The best themes aren’t intentional. They slip onto the page because they are in the DNA of the author. I think one of the reasons people are responding to The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman is because life knocks Hank down again and again and every time he gets back up.

The Japanese proverb “Fall down 7 times, get up 8” is a favorite of mine because it is the story of my life.

I’m not alone. Nearly everyone has times when they are knocked down again and again. People respond to Hank’s struggle because it resonates with them even if what they are facing is very different.

At least I hope that’s the case. Another thing I found out from reading the reviews of The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman is the name Hooperman contains the word: hope. And hope is what I wish you will be left with when you finish this book.