Author Jordan Sonnenblick Visits Rotolo Middle School
Jordan Sonnenblick could not follow sequential directions or sit still when he was a kid. Interestingly, these two qualities seem to have contributed to his adult success as a drummer, teacher, and now multi-book author.
Mr. Sonnenblick, who lives in Pennsylvania with his wife and two kids, recently paid a visit to Rotolo Middle School to talk to sixth-graders about his path to writing young adult books and the two steps to being a happy adult. More on that in a minute, but the two steps don’t involve following sequential directions or sitting still.
Right off the bat at RMS, Mr. Sonnenblick shared that he had a lot of cards stacked against him in his early years. He had difficulties paying attention in school “before ADD and ADHD were invented,” he said. He got in trouble a lot, was called a “bad kid” by a few of his teachers in parent-teacher conferences, was one of the smallest kids in class, suffered from asthma, wore giant glasses, and had big gray braces that made him look like a “walking battleship.” On top of that, his parents got a divorce when he was in high school.
Ouch.
To help him with his attention deficit, Mr. Sonnenblick’s mom got him a drum set and he took to it like a moth to a flame.
“When I played the drums, that’s when everything made sense. That’s the only time things made sense. I was focused. I wasn’t screwing up,” he said. “When my parents were getting a divorce, my drums got me through.”
Inspired by his grandfather, Mr. Sonnenblick persevered. He wanted to follow in his footsteps and become a teacher and a writer.
“My grandpa taught high school biology. He also wrote several textbooks. I wanted to be him in every way. His name was embossed and pushed into the spines of books. I wanted to have my name on books, too.”
This is where Mr. Sonnenblick picked up his first step of being a happy adult. “Find something you’re good at and love to do, and then practice your butt off,” he said. “It takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become an expert at something. You owe it to the gift you’ve been given to make it happen.”
Mr. Sonnenblick was constantly writing and drumming, writing and drumming to get better at both crafts. He jotted down stories, songs, plays, whatever, and played in bands. Along the way, he became an eighth-grade English teacher in New Jersey for eight years, and that’s where he met someone who would change the course of his life.
A student in his class named Emily laughed at everything. It was to the point where she would interrupt Mr. Sonnenblick’s instruction and he had to strategically sit quieter students next to her to try to keep her laughing at bay. That trick didn’t work, and this went on for months.
While getting a chocolate bar in his school office, he noticed a sign on the box to pay for the bar that said all proceeds were going to a student with the same last name as Emily. Mr. Sonnenblick was surprised to find out that Emily’s little brother was undergoing cancer treatments.
He talked to Emily’s mom at a parent-teacher conference and brought up her son’s health. He made a comment that Emily seemed to be handling it well. She was certainly laughing a lot, right? Emily’s mom corrected him and said she wasn’t handling it well, “she was hiding it well.”
Mr. Sonnenblick asked Emily’s mom if he could find a book for Emily to help her cope with the family’s situation and Emily’s mom gripped his hand firmly and said, “yes, please.”
So, he set out to find a book about a teen dealing with a sibling diagnosed with cancer and couldn’t. That’s when it hit him that he’d have to write it.
“There’s a kid who needs a book and you said you would write a book. It’s time,” he said.
So, he spent the next 12 weeks writing and not sleeping. The finished product,” Drums, Girls & Dangerous Pie,” turned out to be the start of his professional writing career, and, most importantly, something that did help Emily and her family.
That’s when Mr. Sonnenblick brought up his second step to being a happy adult.
“Find a way to use that skill of yours to serve someone else’s needs,” he said to RMS students. “Take the thing you are good at and improve someone else’s life. If you do that, you will be a happy adult.”
Wise words.
For more information about Mr. Sonnenblick and his collection of books geared toward young adult readers, visit www.jordansonnenblick.com.
