Kate Pritchard

by Kate Pritchard

Meg Rosoff has never shied away from complex or controversial topics, as readers discovered in her first novel, the Printz Award-winning How I Live Now. Yet perhaps she has never displayed such a compelling combination of irreverence, intelligence and humor as in her latest novel, There Is No Dog. In this book, God is a teenage boy named Bob who generally prefers sleeping to looking after the world he created. But few things are more likely to rouse Bob from his slumber than a pretty girl, and when a young woman named Lucy sends up a plea to God, “I should like to fall in love,” her prayers are answered in a way she never expected—with globally catastrophic results.

Rosoff spoke candidly with us about her own beliefs, the backlash she has experienced and the difficulty of taking on the job of God.

Books re-imagining gods (such as the Greek gods in the Percy Jackson books) have become popular with teens and young readers, but not many have dared to re-interpret the Judeo-Christian God. What was it that drew you to this particular idea?

I didn’t think I was being particularly daring! I’ve been trying to make sense of the Judeo-Christian God since I was about seven years old and realized I was an atheist. Many of the examples of God’s wonderful creation have struck me as flawed, pretty much throughout my life, so I guess you could say that this is a book I’ve been thinking about for something like half a century!

There Is No Dog is a very irreverent take on a topic that many people take very seriously. Have you gotten much backlash about the book?

The book has been banned in a number of schools (particularly Church of England schools) in the UK, and I was uninvited from a couple of book festival appearances in the UK, and uninvited from another big international festival in Dubai. There’s a lot of talk online about how it’s blasphemous and shouldn’t be shown to children, but in actual fact, I think it’s a rather gentle, faith-affirming book. I always say that the Judeo-Christian tradition isn’t about to fall apart on the basis of a bit of satire. It’s been around for a very long time, and is no doubt used to it. And in any case, because There Is No Dog is a comedy, I’ve been able to deal with a lot of difficult subjects in a fairly lighthearted manner. But I suppose imagining God as a sex-mad teenager whose mother won the job for him in a poker game is bound to be a little controversial.

I loved the idea that the job of God has actually been split between two people: Bob, a teenage boy who spends most of his time sleeping and fantasizing about sex, and Mr. B, a middle-manager type who does all the actual work of answering people’s prayers and cleaning up Bob’s messes. How different would the world be if the job had gone to Mr. B alone?

Ah, well, maybe we’ll find out someday. . . . But of course the job is more or less impossible no matter who’s doing it, so I’m not sure how much better Mr. B would do. Though at least he would try. And care. And I suppose if he had been the one responsible for creation, we might all have ended up with far fewer flaws, so that would be a very good thing.

Bob is essentially a spoiled brat: selfish, thoughtless and rather difficult to like. What was it like to write a character like that? Did you find yourself growing irritated with him, or perhaps feeling sympathy for his struggles?

Bob is difficult to like, but I hope not impossible. I’ve noticed that my teenage readers and parents of teenagers have the most sympathy for him. He isn’t entirely bad—he has brilliant inspirations, feels things very strongly, is passionate, and actually very lonely as well . . . it’s just that he can’t see much further than his own desires and passions. If he weren’t a god, and therefore stuck in his 19-year-old self, he would probably grow out of his solipsism.

Animals play a large role in the book, from Lucy’s job at the zoo to Bob’s pet Eck to Mr. B’s beloved whales. Are you an animal lover yourself?

I’m a huge animal lover and have been all my life. I have two whippet cross dogs (known as lurchers in the UK) which you can see running on my website, and I share a horse and ride as often as I can. But I’ve always identified quite strongly with animals—sometimes I think I can get inside the heads of animals, or am part dog or horse myself. Animals keep showing up in all my books, no matter how hard I work to keep them out. They just jump over the fences and sneak underneath the walls!

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Read our review of There Is No Dog.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

Rachel Hartman

Interview by Kate Pritchard

by Kate Pritchard

Rachel Hartman’s debut YA novel, Seraphina, is a richly imagined fantasy, set in a world where dragons can take human form. A New York Times bestseller that has won accolades from such masters of the fantasy genre as Tamora Pierce, Naomi Novik and Christopher Paolini, Seraphina won the 2013 William C. Morris Award, given every year by the American Library Association to an outstanding debut novel for teens. We asked Hartman a few questions about her wonderful book and its well-deserved honor.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you had won the Morris Award?
The Morris Committee called me a day in advance to let me know I had won. My first thought was that I hadn’t heard them correctly. My second thought (which I actually uttered out loud, making everyone laugh) was, “Oh, good, now I won’t be up all night worrying whether I won!” Of course, then it turned out I couldn’t sleep because I was excited.

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about your award?
My editor. We worked so long and hard on this book, he deserved to know. He has a new baby, though, and so it took him a long time to see the email. I emailed my agent too, and told him to poke my editor with a stick and make him read his email. My agent, who is a bit more action-oriented and logical than I am, just called him on the phone.

Do you have a favorite past Morris winner?
Elizabeth Bunce and Blythe Woolston have both kind of taken me under their (virtual) wings online, which I’ve really appreciated. They’re super nice, and I hope we can all hang out someday!

What’s the best part of writing books for a younger audience?
How keenly I’m reminded of what it was like to fall in love with books at that age. It’s a wonderful age, where everything feels possible and a book can still change your life. That was the time of life when I read with the most wholehearted abandon, and so that’s the age I prefer to write for.

What kind of reaction have you gotten from your readers about this book?
I’ve gotten appreciation (and criticism!) from all kinds of unanticipated angles. Readers really give you a new view of your own book. My favourite reactions, though, are when the book strikes readers deeply, when they have that hair-raising, slightly spooky feeling that I have reached into their hearts and minds, somehow, and have written this book just for them. I love it when a book affects me that way, and the realization that my book can do that for others is really moving.

Had you read or listened to past Morris acceptance speeches? Were you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
I read all of them, yes, trying to figure out what angle to take, and I was very nervous indeed. I wrote a speech, but it felt very wooden to me, so when I got up to the podium I just spoke, some of it planned, much of it impromptu.

What’s next for you?
I’m hard at work on the sequel to Seraphina. It’s a beast of a book, and has been very challenging to write. But then, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Children's & YA, YA, YA Fiction

Children's & YA YA Fiction YA

Nick Lake

Interview by Kate Pritchard

by Kate Pritchard

Nick Lake’s novel In Darkness, about a boy who survives the earthquake that devastated Haiti in 2010, is a harrowing but beautifully written book, the kind of story that can open up a whole new world to its readers. Our reviewer called it “incredible,” and the 2013 Printz Award Committee agreed, giving In Darkness its highest honor. Lake, a children’s book editor at Harper UK (when he’s not writing his own books for children and teens), answered a few questions for us about what it’s like to win the Printz.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you had won the Printz Award?
The first thing that went through my head was that it must be a mistake. This was also the second thing, and the third. I actually asked the committee if they wouldn’t rather give it to someone else. Evidently not an orthodox response because they laughed nervously over 5,000 miles of phone line. But really, there have been so many amazing books this year—Code Name Verity and The Fault in Our Stars, to name just two—that my predominant feeling was disbelief. Then gratitude, obviously, and elation. Followed swiftly by trepidation. That sense of: What if someone finds out I paid my dog to write it? (I don’t have a dog.) But I think my mind has a tendency to look for the catch. Is that weird? Maybe it’s weird.

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about your award?
My wife, Hannah—she is my inspiration, muse, and first and toughest editor. It’s a cliché, but I wouldn’t be writing at all without her. Then I tried to show my two-year-old daughter the webcast, and she turned it off and found Where’s Spot on YouTube instead.

Do you have a favorite past Printz winner?
I think it’s a tie between How I Live Now and Looking for Alaska. They’re both such utterly beautiful books, and beyond that, I feel that they changed the landscape of YA fiction; they rewrote the rules as to what it was possible to do in a novel for teenagers, much as Holes and Coraline did for middle grade. John Green and Meg Rosoff just tower over this genre, for me.

What’s the best part of writing books for a younger audience?
Oh, that’s a hard one. I don’t really know. I’m not one of those writers who particularly enjoys writing. When I’m actually working on a book it’s more like a compulsion, a desperate urge to get to the end and get it out of my head. And when I’m revising, it feels like torture—like rewriting homework. But when I’m not writing I feel unanchored somehow, and I’m constantly thinking of things and making notes that eventually build into a story that then has to be compulsively written down and it all starts again. So it’s just an endless cycle of frustration in some ways. I’m not in any sense comparing myself to George Saunders but I recently read an interview where he expressed a similar thing (more eloquently than me, of course), so at least I know it’s not just me.
But . . . I guess it’s the feedback—young people are so immediate and unguarded in what they say. If they don’t like something, they say so. Like, they email me to say that the ending of a book is totally wrong. And vice versa. I had an email from an ex-gang member in LA who had read Blood Ninja, and said it was the first book he had ever read, and it had inspired him to get into reading. I remember vividly thinking that I could give up at that point and feel satisfied.

Have you read or listened to past Printz acceptance speeches? Are you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
Listened? They RECORD it? Oh god.
Worried. Very, very worried. Public speaking about my own work is my nemesis. Put me up there in my editor role and ask me to speak about one of the authors I publish, and I’m fine. But this? I am anxious about it already. Luckily I live a long way from Chicago, so a lot of my attention will be focused on how to get a toddler through a 12-hour flight. . . .

What’s next for you?
The next book is called Hostage Three. It’s published in the U.K. already and coming out in the U.S. this fall. It’s told by a very rich, very privileged girl called Amy, who is acting out at home but has gone through some bad stuff in her life, and is deeply scarred on the inside. Then her father makes the sudden decision to buy a luxury yacht and take Amy and her stepmother on a round-the-world trip, much against Amy’s will. But they don’t get far before the yacht is captured by Somali pirates. It’s kind of a thriller mixed with a fairy tale, and a love story of sorts too—because Amy gets close to one of her captors. Maybe too close. No, scratch that: definitely too close. And then everything unravels. . . .

Family & Relationships, Nonfiction, Parenting

Nonfiction Parenting Family & Relationships

Andrew Solomon

Interview by Kate Pritchard

by Kate Pritchard

Andrew Solomon takes the subjects of his books very seriously, exploring them at great length, often for years at a time. His latest book, Far from the Tree (now out in paperback), which examines the families of children who are profoundly different from their parents, was more than a decade in the making. Solomon interviewed hundreds of families, as well as doctors, researchers, activists and anyone else who could offer him insight. He writes about schizophrenic children, children with Down syndrome, children born with multiple severe disabilities and even child prodigies, but at heart the book is about what it means for a parent to love a child who is different—as all children are, in one way or another—and to love the difference in that child.

Solomon answered a few questions for BookPage about the families he spoke with, the writing process and how his research has influenced his relationship with his own children.

This book is such a massive undertaking, with a wide breadth of experiences covered and hundreds of families interviewed. At what point did you realize just how huge the book was going to be? Were you ever tempted to pare it down?

If I’d known how huge it was going to be, I probably wouldn’t have started with it—it was a sprawling undertaking and utterly overwhelming. But as I kept working, I felt more and more strongly that I needed to write about the breadth and nuance of the questions I was tackling. I felt I couldn’t make the broad generalizations without having the foot soldiers of narrative. Having said that, I did pare the book down a great deal; the first draft was twice the length of the final version.

The families you spoke with included deaf children, transgender children, children of rape, children with autism, child prodigies and more, all of whom come with unique sets of challenges and particular joys. How often did you find yourself comparing one set of children with another, and in what ways?

The book is not about the individual syndromes, though it covers them in considerable detail. The book is about the similarities between these various experiences. I have posited that the negotiation of the difference one sees in one’s children is at the center of parenthood. I have yet to meet a parent who has not sometimes looked at his or her child and said, “Where did you come from?” So these more extreme stories of difference illuminate all parenting. And I think what I found is that our differences unite us—that the experience of negotiating difference is common to most of humanity. So I compared the experience of families all the time. And I felt that even for these very diffuse experiences, there was a uniting central set of experiences.

I have yet to meet a parent who has not sometimes looked at his or her child and said, “Where did you come from?” So these more extreme stories of difference illuminate all parenting.

Did you think before beginning your research that one type of child—one set of challenges—would be preferable to another, and did that perception change as you were writing the book?

I thought when I began that none of these were desirable characteristics, and I ended up thinking it was possible to find meaning in any of them. In some cases, my shift felt especially radical: I had thought of autism as a tragedy, and ended up thinking that it is often simply a part of human variation; I had thought of being transgender as a little grotesque, and now I have many transgender friends. I hadn’t really been exposed to the lives that went with these ways of being, and so the surprises were more radical than those I encountered among, for example, deaf people. Having said all that, I felt that schizophrenia offers more pain and fewer rewards than many other conditions. There are people who have schizophrenia and are nonetheless able to live incredibly productive, good lives—but I never met anyone who loved his schizophrenia and didn’t want to imagine a life without it. And I think crime is an identity against which we must always strive because its inherent nature is to damage the social fabric. In essence, however, I found that people value the experiences they have had over those they have not had. So, preferable? Many people preferred the challenge they had, because most people love their own children with all the challenges those children occasion.

You get into such personal territory in your interviews with these families. Were there ever questions you felt you couldn’t ask, or topics you felt you couldn’t discuss?

I’m a fairly bold interviewer, so there’s not much I felt I couldn’t ask. But there were questions that were hard. I asked some people whether they would have chosen an abortion if they had known ahead of time what characteristic their child would manifest. I asked some parents who seemed to love their child whether they also accepted that child for who he or she was. I asked a few parents whether they regretted becoming parents. And I asked some people who treated their condition as an identity whether they didn’t also see it as an illness.

You became a parent yourself during the course of writing this book. How do you think writing the book has influenced your own parenting style or your relationship with your children?

I hope that the book has made me more accepting, more willing to see my children for who they are. I know it has made me question the dynamic between what I can and should change in my children (teach them values, manners, skills) and what I should accept (see their identities and celebrate them). The work on the book made me more confident that I could love any child I had, and I love the ones I’ve got. I think I love them more wisely for having heard so many compelling stories from so many other families.

What were you most surprised by in writing this book?

I was surprised at how social progress and medical progress are often on a collision course. Social progress demonstrates that stigmatized characteristics can be worthy of celebration; medical progress eliminates those same qualities. They’re in a kind of strange race with each other. I believe in both the social and the medical progress, but I wish they were more awake to each other.

You’ve said that your next book will be about maternal love. Can you talk a little more about your concept for the book and what drew you to that topic?

It’s about how we are redefining motherhood and fatherhood in an era when women work and men are involved in childcare, and how that conversation relates to the advent of single mothers by choice, gay families, international adoption, older parents and so on.

We talked to the author about the families he spoke with, the writing process and how his research on parenting has influenced his relationship with his own children.