GBBP 141: Lisa Yee

The Great Big Beautiful Podcast, Episode 141: Lisa Yee

You can listen on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and YouTube; you can follow the RSS feed; or you can listen right here!

We’re taking a trip to Super Hero High. You can thank us later.

The DC Super Hero Girls burst out of the gate a couple years ago and have been taking over a variety of media ever since. There’s the webseries. There are the graphic novels written by Shea Fontana. (Check out our chat with her here.) There are the toys and LEGO sets. And there are the middle grade books by Lisa Yee.

The newest book in the series focuses on Katana (previous books featured Wonder Woman, Supergirl, and Batgirl), but each expands the universe a bit more and includes all of the characters. If you’ve got a young reader who’s either a diehard fanatic of the DC Super Hero Girl or is just dipping his or her toes into the superhero genre, you really can’t go wrong here. Yee presents these characters as realistic, relatable people on the cusp of discovering their “fates.”

(Protip: The audiobook versions are also really well done. Friend of the show Ashley Eckstein narrates the Wonder Woman book, and Stephanie Sheh does a great job with Katana at Super Hero High.

On this episode, we talk about the lengths Yee goes to in the name of research (she traveled to Japan for the Katana book), reimagining such popular characters in a brand-new universe, her long and winding road as a writer, getting picked out of the slush pile by Harry Potter’s editor, the importance of writing every day, and Winnie the Pooh. Yee happens to own the second-largest Pooh collection in the world.

Connect:

• Lisa Yee is on Twitter here.
• The show is on Twitter here and Facebook here.
• Jamie is on Twitter and Instagram as @theroarbots.
• Justin is on Twitter and Instagram as @140JustinC.
• Shiri Sondheimer is on Twitter here.