Under the Cover: The Genius Hour Project by Leanne Shirtliffe

The second Saturday of August is National Garage Sale Day. In the suburbs of Canada, however, every summer Saturday could be National Garage Sale Day—a day to buy what might have once been “dead people’s stuff,” to quote Frazzy, the protagonist of The Genius Hour Project.

Frazzy is obsessed with adding to her vinyl collection, so she endures garage sale outings with her dad, helping him load and unload stuff he can flip at his flea market booth—things like a brain-shaped Jell-O mould and a case of Christmas snow globes that mistakenly say “Merry Christmas! Love Satan.”

I didn’t set out to write a garage-sale story; I set out to write a story with a funny female protagonist in a fairly functional family where one parent struggles with depression. Too often, the singular story around mental health is that life is sadness or pity for every family member all the time, even through a lengthy recovery. What I know from personal experience is this: there is nothing laughable about someone who is unable to leave their bedroom for weeks. But personal experience has also taught me that deep family love can remain and even grow during mental health struggles, and that—with recovery—humour and love can once again infuse a household.

So, given that I didn’t set out to include garage sales in The Genius Hour Project, why did I?

Writers are told to write what they know. My husband has quite literally filled our garage with second-hand stuff he hopes to flip for a profit, items like a functional hospital gurney and punk-rock mannequins. In addition to finding curios, garage sale-ing offers sincere conversations with a wide swath of fascinating people you’d never run into otherwise.

Recently, I overheard a guy say to his friend, “Dude! That was a social minefield in there.” Although he was describing a flea market, he could’ve been describing the school Frazzy attends. Like flea markets and garage sales, middle school is chaotic and ever-changing. There is constant bargaining. Stuff overflows. So much is broken, and yet so much is fixable.

And thankfully, as Frazzy learns in The Genius Hour Project, there can be a lot of laughter.

About The Genius Hour Project

Eleven-year-old Frazzy is mostly coping with being bullied and not always fitting in at school, until every aspect of her life goes haywire.

Frazzy likes to chat her way through classes, distracting her best friend Mel, while inwardly speculating about whether Ebrahim, the boy she has a crush on, really does like her—all without attracting any more attention from the bully Jake who humiliates her whenever possible. Then the teacher springs a yearlong assignment on her class called The Genius Hour Project, while at the same time Frazzy discovers that Mel’s parents might be divorcing and Mel might be going to a different school. And just when she needs him most, Frazzy’s stay-at-home-dad disappears into a major depression.

The idea behind the Genius Hour Project is for kids to “let their inner genius shine,” but the thing is, Frazzy doesn’t want her schoolmates to know that what she really cares about is vintage music and finding deals on old records at garage sales with her dad—too totally uncool. So she chooses a really dull, normal Genius Hour Project, something that she thinks will please her teacher: women politicians. She’ll start close to home, with her mom, the long-suffering mayor of Riverview.

The problem is that nobody, not her teacher or the principal or her friends, gets behind Frazzy’s project. So, if trying to be more normal is not the solution, what is? Over the months that follow, though she is worried about her dad, and even more distracted than usual at school, Frazzy slowly finds a way to be her best and brightest self.

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Leanne Shirtliffe is a writer and teacher who has lived in Canada, Thailand, and Bahrain. The author of five picture books for children and two nonfiction books for adults, The Genius Hour Project is her debut middle-grade novel. When she is not writing, she can be found teaching teenagers, going to garage sales, and listening to an eclectic collection of music. Leanne now lives with her family in Calgary, Alberta.

Photo of Leanne Shirtliffe by Phil Crozier

Find a copy of The Genius Hour Project here on All Lit Up, or from your local indie bookseller.