Linda M. Castellitto

Fiction

A memorable coming-of-age story

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

The Center of Everything is an engaging, intelligent first novel, written in forthright prose studded with moments of poetry. Moriarty's depiction of young Evelyn is intriguing and engaging; the author has created in her a winsome, acutely observant young girl.

When we first meet Evelyn, she is 10 years old and exasperated with her single mother Tina, a loving woman who cannot seem to keep a job and is dating a married man, to boot. It quickly becomes clear that Evelyn often acts as the adult in this relationship, and she grows into a studious, serious teenager who doesn't quite fit in with her classmates. Her struggles to find her place in school, in her family, in the world, are sympathetically and realistically depicted. Evelyn possesses wisdom of the beyond-her-years ilk, but she is still a child and encounters the disappointments and feelings of failure that accompany the universal Adolescent Experience.

There is, of course, a compelling subset of literature comprised of books that feature a prematurely adult child as the central character. The Center of Everything joins the ranks of those who get it right, because Moriarty is not afraid to make Evelyn fallible. For example, we feel for Evelyn as she naively continues to hope that her friend Travis will return her love, even when it is plain he has fallen for her pretty friend, Deena. And we cheer for Evelyn when, years later, she painfully yet resolutely puts Travis off and informs him that he has chosen the future with Deena he is now trying to avoid.

The moments when Moriarty's characters find comfort and beauty in their lives are marked by a lyricism that is woven throughout The Center of Everything. Evelyn's place at the center of everything is, at the outset, both geographical (she lives in the center of Kansas, in the center of the United States) and emotional she feels overwhelmed, seemingly the hub of the activities of her friends, family and schoolmates. As Evelyn matures, we realize along with her that sometimes, being central to others' lives can be an honor, a source of comfort and confidence we can carry with us as we venture beyond the center of our own small universes.

Linda Castellitto writes from Rhode Island.

 

The Center of Everything is an engaging, intelligent first novel, written in forthright prose studded with moments of poetry. Moriarty's depiction of young Evelyn is intriguing and engaging; the author has created in her a winsome, acutely observant young girl.

When we first meet Evelyn, she is…

Fiction

Robbins’ latest is another wild romp

Review by Linda M. Castellitto

I can safely say I'd given the sex life of badgers nary a thought until I read the first sentence of Tom Robbins' latest wacky whirlwind of a novel, Villa Incognito. Leave it to Robbins to begin his eighth book with a story about a mythical Japanese shape-shifting, sake-slurping animal with an incredibly strong sex drive, a scrotal sac large enough to serve as a parachute(!), and a penchant for music and mischief. Thankfully, a detailed description of the animal's nether regions segues into a funny, loop-de-loop story in which the Tanuki (is he a dog? a raccoon? a man?) has many adventures, seduces a winsome farm girl and leaves behind a legacy of lusty, fun-loving offspring.

The story then shifts from the ancient times of the Tanuki to the present day, wherein we learn a mysterious priest/drug-smuggler has been arrested. Said smuggler is actually one of three philosophical-discussion-loving MIAs who decided to remain in Vietnam after the war. The trio lives in Laos, a village populated by accomplished high-wire walkers, among many eccentric sorts. The beautiful Lisa, who grew up in Laos and has been romantically involved with two of the three men, returns to the village when she hears of the arrest, and we are treated to her interesting history she is a descendant of the first Tanuki and has of late been traveling with a circus (she trains tumbling tanukis). Other highlights in this frenetic novel include a dramatic ode to mayonnaise, amusing portraits of the priests' sisters, and the history behind Laos' population. Robbins' fans will not be disappointed by this latest book; it contains all his trademarks the friendly tone, the careering plot lines, the impressively strange characters sprung fresh and vivid from his brain. Those who aren't fond of Robbins would do well to read something else. If the author's other works confounded or irritated you, this one will, too.

Linda Castellitto writes and reads compulsively in Rhode Island, where there are no tanukis, as far as she can tell.

I can safely say I'd given the sex life of badgers nary a thought until I read the first sentence of Tom Robbins' latest wacky whirlwind of a novel, Villa Incognito. Leave it to Robbins to begin his eighth book with a story about…

Children's & YA

Cynthia Rylant

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

For nearly 30 years, Cynthia Rylant has been telling stories for children via more than 100 much-lauded books: novels, poetry, short stories, nonfiction and picture books, two of which she illustrated. Her beloved characters include Mr. Whistle the guinea pig and Tabby the cat, and perhaps her best-known creation, 12-year-old Summer from the Newbery Award-winning Missing May. The characters in Rylant’s new book, The Beautiful Stories of Life: Six Greek Myths, Retold, are of a different sort: Zeus, ruler of the universe; Hades, god of the underworld; and several other gods and goddesses. The author gives us her take on these age-old stories in simply but powerfully told tales of immortal men and women who are fallible nonetheless. She corresponded (alas, not by winged messenger, but plain old email) with BookPage from her home in Lake Oswego, Oregon, where she lives with her Corgi and two cats.

Where did you grow up? Were you an avid reader?
I grew up in a coal-mining family in southern West Virginia, and actually read few books, as there was neither local library nor money. I did read tons of comic books and Nancy Drew mysteries, which I could get at the five-and-dime store.

How does the child you were inform the author you are today?
I didn’t see real children’s books–picture books, Charlotte’s Web, etc.–until I was 23 years old and happened to see a display in a shop in Huntington, West Virginia. I picked up a book, Ox-Cart Man [the Caldecott winner by Donald Hall], fell in love with it, bought it, and that was beginning: I knew I must write like that. I had never met a writer, but I started anyway. I found publishers’ addresses and I mailed off stories. When I was 24, my first story was accepted: When I Was Young in the Mountains. I have been writing ever since.

Did you have another job before you became a full-time writer?
When I was 27, I went to library school because I needed the foundation of a job, though my intent was to be a writer. I figured being in a library would be a good compromise. I earned an M.L.S. at Kent State, but worked in a library for only a year. I managed to earn a living (a modest living!) writing and doing school visits, which allowed me to be an at-home mother to my son, whom I raised alone.

Looking back on your career as a writer, do you see changes in yourself and your life reflected in your work?
Over the years, I’ve needed to try new things–new genres, illustrating–anything I could do to keep the work fresh and exciting. I could not bear to be a writer of only one kind of book, over and over, even if it made me rich. So, I bounce around!

How did you become interested in Greek myths? What sort of research did you do for The Beautiful Stories of Life?
I didn’t know anything at all of mythology. I found out about the myths when I read a book about archetypes, meaning that people have personalities that "fit" those of the gods and goddesses. (We all know someone who is a Zeus, for example.) From there, I decided to read the original myths and bought a few books, such as Bulfinch’s Mythology and other basic texts. Edith Hamilton’s Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes was great, too.

Why do you think the Greek myths have such enduring appeal? What do you hope readers will take away from your book?  
I could see–as many mythologists have noted–that buried in these strange tales were deeply human stories we all live in some way. We all feel false pride, we all trust the wrong person, we all become obsessive, we all fight for love, we all try to control fate. I wanted to tell the myths my way, from the heart, to illuminate our shared frailties and beauties. Without, of course, getting on too high of a horse . . . there’s something about myths that intimidates most people.

The illustrations are lovely! Do you choose the artists you work with?
Some are chosen by the editor, with my approval, and sometimes I ask for someone specifically. I had no one in mind for The Beautiful Stories of Life, but one night, I was watching a local Oregon TV show and they did a segment on an artist named Carson Ellis. I saw her paintings and I knew she was the one. Luckily, Carson said yes! I’ve never met her even though she lives 20 minutes away. Eventually I will.

What are you reading now?
Just the newspaper, the New York Times. Sometimes I am just tired of books, so I take a break and read the paper and watch a lot of TV!
 

For nearly 30 years, Cynthia Rylant has been telling stories for children via more than 100 much-lauded books: novels, poetry, short stories, nonfiction and picture books, two of which she illustrated. Her beloved characters include Mr. Whistle the guinea pig and Tabby the cat, and…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Ingrid Law

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

You don’t need a big travel budget to have adventures—just ask Ingrid Law. The author has taken many a day trip from her home in Boulder, Colorado, to nearby small towns, excursions that inspired the settings for her Newbery Honor book, Savvy, and the new companion novel, Scumble.

“When I was writing Savvy, I’d [already] cut back my hours working for the government so I could spend time with my daughter,” Law recalls. “I had chosen a certain level of poverty, so we didn’t travel much, and certainly not on planes!”

But road trips suit this author’s tastes just fine. “There’s really so much around us, and I’m not a terribly demanding person when it comes to seeing the sights,” she says. “We went to Kansas and Nebraska, saw the largest porch swing, added twine to the largest ball of twine. . . . I have great memories of these trips, and the people I met.”

In Scumble, the Kale family travels to Uncle Autry’s Flying Cattleheart ranch in Wyoming—just nine days after Ledger’s 13th birthday (and nine years after his cousin Mibs’ adventures in Savvy). It’s an auspicious time for any young person, but a particularly challenging one in this family: The new teens learn what their savvy, or special power, will be, and things tend to get a little wild before they get their new abilities under control.

Ledger’s new power seems to be a destructive one, and he inadvertently turns the sheriff’s truck into a pile of rubble (oops!). Once at the ranch, the hijinks continue, thanks to twin cousins who can levitate objects, among other fantastical goings-on.

Young readers will eagerly turn the pages of Law’s magical novel to find out what will happen next—just as 13-year-old Sarah Jane Cabot is eager to share the story via her newspaper, The Sundance Scuttlebutt. Ledger’s struggles to keep his family secret, figure out why he finds Sarah Jane both annoying and irresistible, and scumble (or manage) his savvy into something positive keep him more than a little frustrated.

The challenge of fielding life’s curveballs is one every reader can relate to, but in Law’s hands, it becomes the stuff of tall tales. This mix of quotidian and outrageous has always intrigued her. “I knew early on, before Savvy, that I wanted to write about magical kids without using the word magic. Not necessarily to create a new kind of magic, but to create something that reflected a sense of Americana,” she recalls.

To create a uniquely American sense of magic, she explains, “I use a lot of small towns, and fall back on the tradition of tall tales, stories that are larger than life, with a conquering-the-wilderness idea. It’s an emotional element of becoming a teenager, needing to tame the external and internal.”

Thanks to a summer stay at his uncle’s ranch, and assists from his quirky extended family, Ledger realizes there’s another side to making things fall apart: He has a gift for putting them together—and a knack for creating new and beautiful things, too.

It’s no coincidence that Ledger’s artistic awakenings emerge as he learns to scumble his savvy. Law, who’s long been interested in linguistics, says, “I stumbled across the word scumble in a writing book. I loved the way it sounded, and one of the definitions seemed appropriate for the idea of controlling this element that’s taking over.” In this definition, scumbling is a painting technique that tones down a bright color so that the hues are more evenly balanced.

The art-infused nature of Ledger’s journey can be traced back to Law’s own creative background. “I come from a family that always appreciated and was involved in the arts,” she says. “So I grew up drawing and painting, and learned about fiber arts and quilt arts.”

Law says she found her writerly voice when, after a decade of ill-fated manuscripts, she decided to ignore her doubts and go where her characters took her: “I decided I would pull out all the stops, not judge what I wrote, and push my voice to the limit.”

It worked—she wrote Savvy in just over four months, an agent offered representation, three weeks later she had a book deal, and soon after, film rights sold. “My life was turned upside down,” she recalls.

When Savvy received a Newbery Honor, Law says, it was “a wonderful, amazing thing, but also really frightening for the next book!” Although writing and revising Scumble was a much longer process, the author’s voice remains steady and true.

Or, in the loopy language of her fun and funny books: It’s clear that Ingrid Law has scumbled her savvy.
 

You don’t need a big travel budget to have adventures—just ask Ingrid Law. The author has taken many a day trip from her home in Boulder, Colorado, to nearby small towns, excursions that inspired the settings for her Newbery Honor book, Savvy, and the…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Richard Peck

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

When I was about 12, Richard Peck scared the daylights out of me. His novel Are You In the House Alone?, the haunting story of a high-school girl who is raped by a boy she knows, a boy no one can believe would commit such a crime because he comes from a socially prominent family, gave me chills. “Good!” the author said during a recent interview. “It was supposed to!” Are You in the House Alone? is just one of the many books Peck has written about the hard lessons we learn while growing up. The winner of numerous awards, including the National Humanities Medal, Peck has produced more than 30 novels for young adults, as well as works of adult fiction, an autobiography and poetry. His new book, The River Between Us, is a fascinating examination of the way a family in a small Illinois town is affected by the dawning of the Civil War and by two mysterious women who arrive on a steamboat from New Orleans.

Peck says that reading about the mixed-race women of the time, known then as “quadroons,” inspired him to write the book. “[I learned that] quadroon women fled [their homes in the South] because if the South lost the war, they would lose all their status,” he says. “Those who were pale enough went north and vanished, those who looked Spanish went to California, and those who didn’t went to Mexico. I wondered what happened to them and I hugged myself with glee, thinking of all those northern families who said, 'My grandmother came from New Orleans’ without knowing why.” After doing two years of research for the novel, he set the story in a small town in his home state of Illinois. “That's a way real life can assist you,” he explains. “It gives you sets.” 

Peck taught school for 20 years before quitting to become an author. He’s determined to show young readers that, in order to find themselves, they must first separate themselves from their peers. “You can’t grow up in a group,” he says. “I grew up in a time in the 1950s where you could be a part-time conformist and get away with it. I was a frat boy and committed to it, yet I could get on the QE2 and study in England for a year. I’m not sure the peer group would allow that kind of mobility now.” Peck says he can’t even imagine writing without having been a teacher first. The denizens of junior high “kicked the living autobiography out of me they don’t want to hear it,” he explains. This drove him to figure out what young readers would accept and to write it for them.

“My goal with my next book is to write something that will cause the teacher to just break down and weep with laughter,” he says. “Comedy is a higher calling than realism or tragedy. It’s uphill work because kids don't always get it the young are not used to laughing unless it is at one another.” Peck asserts that writing for young adults is in fact more difficult than writing adult fiction, pointing out that “YA books are better crafted, because they can’t use pornography to hide weak writing. It’s harder to do. Plus, if you can’t say it in 200 pages, you probably shouldn’t say it at all.” Right now, Peck is nearly to the midpoint of his next book, The Teacher’s Funeral. Memories of visiting his grandparents on their farm, combined with his father’s memories of his own childhood, are informing his present work. “[The farm] was a whole different world of outdoor privies and wells, of horses and buggies and coal-oil lamps. I was lost in the romance and didn't notice how hard farm life was.” Now, he says, thoughts of these times are “fueling the end of my career. I’m going back to grandma’s house for the summer.”

 

Linda Castellitto is the creative director of BookSense.

Former teacher Richard Peck educates and entertains with The River Between Us.

YA FictionYA

John Son

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

A reluctant convert to the young adult genre, John Son resisted writing Finding My Hat, his debut novel, for almost 18 months. Son says his friend Amy Griffin, an editor at Scholastic's Orchard Books imprint, was working on a new line of titles called First Person Fiction, which focused on the immigrant experience. She'd seen one of his stories in Zoetrope magazine in 1999 and thought he'd be right for a First Person Fiction book.

Son, however, wasn't sure he agreed. "I never intended to write for a young adult audience and didn't know if I really had something important to say about the immigrant experience," he explains.

Griffin had planted the seed of an idea, however, and Son found himself reading more and more YA books. He read Burger Wuss by M.T. Anderson, and Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas, and lost any remaining skepticism about the genre. "These books blew me away. They weren't like the YA books I read when I was a young adult. I identified with these characters a lot more," he told BookPage during a recent telephone interview.

But it was a New York Review of Books reprint of Darcy O'Brien's 1977 novel A Way of Life Like Any Other that convinced Son to start writing. "I just love the entire tone of the book," he explains. "That was the ideal I wanted to approach." Son's book, like O'Brien's, is a humorous, straightforward take on coming-of-age with plenty of comic potential. In Finding My Hat, narrator Jin-Han grows from a toddler to a teenager, traveling with his family from Chicago to Memphis to Houston as his father searches for a better way to support the family. The voice of the book is convincing all along the age-spectrum: Jin-Han's confusion on his first day of nursery school rings just as true as his endearing gullibility on class-picture day in elementary school, and the excitement and embarrassment he experiences when he falls for his high-school lab partner.

Son says that, as his writing progressed, he found his views were changing. "I realized I like writing for this age group. I fell in love with it, because writing for this audience seems more pure; there are fewer stylistic elements in the writing you have to just clearly paint the picture." This experience with purer writing has changed Son's approach to the craft overall. "I have changed my adult fiction writing, too. I try to be less show-off-y, or flashy. YA audiences can sniff out fake-ness very quickly, so I felt my writing had to be emotionally honest." Those who are curious about novelistic honesty (as represented by the eternal question: How much of this fiction is in fact true?) may sate their curiosity by reading the book's epilogue, in which Son details when and how Finding My Hat mirrors the events of his own life. For example, Jin-Han's parents own a wig store, with kooky results, and Son's did, as well. Jin-Han feels joy when he discovers books and rapidly becomes a bibliophile; Son is an avowed bookworm, too.

The author and his character also share a major turning point in their lives: Son's mother died when he was 29, and in Finding My Hat, Jin-Han's mother dies when he is 15. Son notes, "One of the big things about the book was that it was for my mom. I wanted to get that [experience] in there." In addition to offering him a way to explore his feelings about his mother's death, Son says that writing Finding My Hat prompted him to further consider his own feelings about his identity. He made his first-ever visit to Korea when he was halfway through his novel, and says, "I saw relatives I hadn't met before. Half of the people look like my dad, half like my mom. It was a very genetic experience." The Korean excursion reinforced Son's feelings about where his happiness lies. "It was great to be in touch with my culture, but I couldn't wait to get back home," he says. "Going to Korea made me feel more American than I realized I was."

 

Linda Castellitto is the consulting creative director at BookSense.com.

A reluctant convert to the young adult genre, John Son resisted writing Finding My Hat, his debut novel, for almost 18 months. Son says his friend Amy Griffin, an editor at Scholastic's Orchard Books imprint, was working on a new line of titles called First…

YA FictionYA

Carolyn Mackler

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

When it comes to creating a true teen voice, author Carolyn Mackler has it down. Readers of her first two novels, Love and Other Four-Letter Words and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, found remarkably realistic portraits of today's teenagers. In her latest novel, Vegan, Virgin, Valentine, she channels the teenage voice once again with hilarious and enlightening results.

"I'm definitely attuned to that age group," Mackler tells BookPage. "It's a combination of having a very clear memory of my own teen years it's a hugely significant time, and I really remember the emotions, what I wore, the heartache, friendships, wondering where I fit into the world and just a fascination with teenagers."

Mackler herself was a teenager in the '80s: the era when big hair was best, Arnold Schwarzenegger was just a movie star, and acid-washed denim was cool. So it works out nicely for her research that Mackler has a 16-year-old stepsister to keep her informed about current teenage trends. "She lives in Manhattan, where I do, and I quiz her about her life and friends and social scenes. It helps me keep my stories authentic and current."

A bit of eavesdropping comes in handy, too, for getting the lingo and rhythms of teen-speak just right: "I'm often on the bus, and if there are two teenagers in front of me, I'll take dictation!"

That dedication to research pays off, for the two young women at the center of Vegan, Virgin, Valentine 17-year-old Mara and her 16-year-old niece V are tempestuous, caring, rebellious, confused and utterly believable characters. Mackler takes a classic tale of repression vs. exuberance, responsibility vs. rebellion, and gives it a modern twist in an interesting setting: the author's own hometown of Brockport, New York. Mara's thoughtful, honest narrative voice adds credibility, and there are several crossroads at which the girls must make important and often difficult choices. This is no accident, of course. "I feel the best place to get information and see the real world reflected is in fiction," Mackler says. "[YA novels] are a safe and quiet place for kids to find the information about their lives that they're wondering about."

Thus, she says, the book is meant not only to provide an entertaining read, but to give readers "things to think about, to serve as a way to let people consider how they would handle certain situations." While it has obvious appeal for the younger set, Vegan is a good choice for parents, too. Mackler does an excellent job of showing the ways in which adults and kids can learn from one another, which is sure to offer hope to adults who are a bit mystified by their teenagers' new propensity for door-slamming and to teens who are frustrated that their parents can't seem to just, well, chill out.

And chilling out, or learning to just slow down a bit though not at the cost of maintaining responsibilities and a good heart is a central theme in the book, one that often results in scenes that are poignant, funny or both. For example, Mara, a type-A overachiever, scrupulously maintains a vegan diet, but has recurring, lustful dreams about cheese. Mackler, herself a vegetarian, notes, "Mara became a vegan around the same time she got dumped because she wasn't lusty enough, and veganism became part of her repression."

The author says she once temporarily denied herself the pleasure of full-time writing, though she always knew she loved reading particularly YA books. "I read in gulps, and I've always passionately loved YA novels. During college, I realized how much I like writing. I enjoyed the hours at the computer, feeling so connected to myself and the world in my head." Since becoming a successful author, she says she has received "some wonderful notes from people saying thank you, I identified with the characters, I feel like you read my journal."

Right now, Mackler is working on another novel and using strategies to find balance between working hard and enjoying her life. She says her husband helps her keep on track: "There's a challenge: if I write until noon each day, I get a star, and after 10 days I get ice cream. If I screw up one time, I lose all the stars on the sheet. I have to have strict rules and stick to them, otherwise I get completely distracted!" No matter what, though, she always gets to have cheese.

 

Linda M. Castellitto long ago learned to embrace her lusty love for cheese. Especially brie.

When it comes to creating a true teen voice, author Carolyn Mackler has it down. Readers of her first two novels, Love and Other Four-Letter Words and The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things, found remarkably realistic portraits of today's teenagers. In her…

Children's & YA

Patricia Reilly Giff

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Many a fiction writer will demur when asked if their work is autobiographical. Not so Patricia Reilly Giff, who deliberately and gracefully combines elements of her family history with fictional threads of plot, people and place.

In an interview from her Connecticut home, Giff, who has written more than 60 books for children including the Kids of the Polk Street School series, as well as Newbery Honor winners Lily's Crossing and Pictures of Hollis Woods, says, "My biggest thing is family, and I love to write about family." Thus, her characters are based on everyone from youngsters she encountered during her teaching career (Giff began to write full-time at age 40) to her own family. "I warn my children," she says, laughing, ”'If you do something I don't like, you'll appear as a villain in one of my books.' "

This is apparently an effective disciplinary measure, as Giff's children have grown into well-behaved adults who get along quite nicely. In fact, her son operates a Fairfield, Connecticut, children's bookstore called The Dinosaur's Paw (named after one of Giff's books), and the whole family pitches in on the endeavor. "We all own a piece," Giff says. "It's been there since 1990, and it's a wonderful thing for us."

In keeping with the author's focus on family, the life of Giff's beloved great-grandmother, Dina, was the inspiration for her latest book, A House of Tailors. The central character is a talented young seamstress named Dina. Just as she was in real life, the fictional Dina is a spirited, vibrant girl who emigrates from Germany to 1870s Brooklyn. Although she possesses incredible skill as a seamstress, Dina hates sewing and looks at the move as an opportunity to start a life devoid of needles and thread.

Says Giff, "Dina died a few years before I was born, but everyone would refer to her as the heart of our family. When I knew I wanted to write, I would say, 'Dina, if I get a book published I will write about you someday.' "

Nearly 30 years later, Giff did write about Dina. A House of Tailors is the fascinating result: a story rich with history and family love, with a focus on the ways in which children can be strong and creative in unusual situations. Dina survives a difficult crossing from Germany to America, not to mention incredible homesickness. That fortitude serves her well as she adjusts to life in America and the realization that, rather than escaping the sewing she dreads, she has moved into another house of tailors. Dina's irrepressible character enables her to turn the bad news into a positive situation and she eventually finds her own sewing-centric place in the world via humorous, memorable situations.

Key elements are drawn from Dina's real life and from the history of the era. "I did research about Brooklyn and read what it was like in 1870," says Giff, who has herself lived in Brooklyn. "The story of the smallpox was true . . . plus, Dina really was a beautiful seamstress." In fact, says Giff, "Dina's sampler, which she did at age eight, was the only thing that survived her trip from Germany to Brooklyn. It hung over my bed throughout my childhood, and even now hangs in my bedroom." This notion of family bonds that remain strong through the years and of history's influence on each one of us is a central element in Giff's work. "This book will be great for my grandkids. Dina was born in 1855, and this will be there for them and [will] go into the next century." Inspiring and guiding children is what compels Giff to keep writing.

Says the author, "I have a very strong memory of childhood and a very strong feeling about writing for kids. I think about the kids I worked with [as a teacher] all the time when I'm writing I always say they dance in front of my typewriter." Their arabesques and dips must surely be inspiring – Giff has another book, Willow Run, due out in 2005.

Linda M. Castellitto lives in Rhode Island, where she writes and occasionally sews.

Many a fiction writer will demur when asked if their work is autobiographical. Not so Patricia Reilly Giff, who deliberately and gracefully combines elements of her family history with fictional threads of plot, people and place.

In an interview from her Connecticut home, Giff, who…

Children's & YA

T.A. Barron

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Enter the world of Avalon: a wondrous land where all manner of creatures coexist around a great tree. Grown from a seed planted by none other than Merlin himself, the tree is cultivated and nurtured by T.A. Barron, author of numerous fantasy books and possessor of a fabulously fertile imagination.

Barron, perhaps best known for The Lost Years of Merlin series, continues the magic with The Great Tree of Avalon: Child of the Dark Prophecy, the first book in a trilogy featuring a trio of young would-be heroes who find themselves charged with saving their beloved Avalon. As droughts drain the land of its lushness and stars fall dark in the sky, the three wilderness guide Tamywyn, priestess-in-training Elli and eagle/man Scree realize they must move beyond their uncertainty about the future and work together to protect Avalon.

"My job, as an author, is to raise issues about living sustainably with our fragile and beautiful planet. I try to raise them as passionately and convincingly as I can, yet never lecture and sermonize so the reader can form his or her own conclusions," says Barron, who spoke with BookPage from his home outside Boulder, Colorado, where he lives with his wife and five children. And, he adds, "I truly believe every person can make a difference that's why I'm drawn to heroic quest stories." Barron himself undertook a quest that led to author-dom, one that began when he was a Rhodes Scholar. Between the two years of his scholarship, Barron took a year to travel and, he says, "I got a bad case of dysentery and an enormous number of story ideas." He turned one into a book, "and got rejected by 30-plus publishers." After that less-than-encouraging experience, Barron returned to the United States to work as a venture capitalist. "I was constantly finding myself getting up at 4 a.m. to write for a couple of hours before the phone calls and meetings began," he recalls.

This didn't detract from his business success: he eventually became president of his firm, a turning point that Barron says changed the direction of his life. "It was clear if I didn't leave then [to write full-time], I never would." And so, in a bit of drama befitting one of his characters, on the same day Barron day announced good news about the company's finances, he also broke the news of his resignation. "One investor was so upset," Barron recalls, "he pressed a business card into my hand and said, here's the number for my therapist. You must call him."

"It's all about following your passion," the author says. "If you love something as much as I love stories and books, you absolutely have to follow that passion, to keep traveling." It's this persistence in the face of doubt that informs the quests in Barron's books. In The Great Tree of Avalon, Tamywyn is uncertain about his abilities and his future. Barron says, "I wanted to ground him in the world we all live in, where we often don't understand our full potential, or feel cut off from the future and what might lie ahead."

Barron says a passion for preserving the environment is also an important element of his work and his life: "I've always been grounded in nature and have always found my greatest inspiration in the natural world. To me, nature is not just a backdrop, but a full-blown character." In The Great Tree of Avalon, this is certainly so; the inextricable links between the land, air, water and sky are evident, and the fact that even Avalon a giant, soaring tree that bridges the celestial and the earthly can be weakened draws a strong parallel to the possible consequences of environmental damage in our own world. Although the author won't reveal what lies ahead for Tamywyn, Elli and Scree, readers will soon find out: the second book in the trilogy will be published next year.

Enter the world of Avalon: a wondrous land where all manner of creatures coexist around a great tree. Grown from a seed planted by none other than Merlin himself, the tree is cultivated and nurtured by T.A. Barron, author of numerous fantasy books and…

Children's & YA

Sid Fleischman

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

"My greatest fear is to bore a child," says Sid Fleischman, Newbery Medal winner and author of the swashbuckling new novel The Giant Rats of Sumatra: or Pirates Galore. Boredom isn't likely to be a problem for Fleischman's young readers, since he has infused the novel with his trademark blend of humor and derring-do, plus a dash of suspense, a bit of romance and some hard-earned wisdom.

"An adult will read 50 or even 100 pages of a book that's boring them to death," Fleischman says in an interview from his California home. "Kids are far more demanding, and should be. It's my job to hold and entertain and inform them as deftly as I can." Luckily for his readers, this talented author possesses not only a finely honed sense of humor but also a lively life story that often serves as inspiration for his books. He has worked as a magician, vaudeville performer, screenwriter and reporter, served in the Navy and written dozens of children's books during his long career.

"When I was in fifth grade, in San Diego during the Depression, I saw a magician and was absolutely dazzled," Fleischman recalls. How did he learn the smooth sleight of hand, the dramatic emergence of a rabbit from a hat? "I went to the library," he says. His studying paid off; he garnered an audience for his performances, and later invented and wrote about tricks.

"It didn't seem like writing to me," he muses. "I was published at 19. When I saw the book with my name on it, that was my epiphany: I went from wanting to be a magician to wanting to be a writer."

And how did he inform himself about the writer's craft? "Back to the library," he says.

Fleischman put his learning to good use as a writer of novels and screenplays; when a 1960 writers' strike put him out of work, he decided to try children's books. "I had three young children, and they didn't understand what I did except that I typed a lot." Mr. Mysterious and Company, about a traveling magician and his family, was his first; he's been writing books for kids, including 1987 Newbery Medal winner The Whipping Boy, ever since.

His latest is a tale of adventure on land and sea during the 1840s Gold Rush era. The Giant Rat of Sumatra is the third in a trilogy of California novels that explore the state's history during the 1840s, including "the darker side of the Gold Rush, [such as] the way minorities were treated, particularly Mexicans."

The year is 1846 and the story's protagonist, 12-year-old Shipwreck, is an American boy lost at sea who is saved and taken on as cabin-boy by Captain Gallows, a daring Mexican pirate intent on returning to San Diego to establish a rancho and find the girl he last saw when he was 12. Deckhands Sam'l Spoons and One-Eye Ginger do their best to cause all sorts of trouble while the ship's figurehead, the eponymous giant rat, leads the way with bared teeth and empty eyes. The amusing chapter headings and illustrator John Hendrix's line drawings firmly bolster the hilarious goings-on.

Since he finished the novel, he's been working on his upcoming book, a biography called Escape! The Story of the Great Houdini. "It's a labor of love," he says.

That characterization is true, too, of writing for children. "If a book turns a child on to reading . . . that is a very important reward for those of us who write for kids," Fleischman says. "And I absolutely feel a sense of responsibility, too," including that of providing a source of humor and fun for his readers.

Says Fleischman, "Kids love to laugh, and you find [humor] in nursery-rhyme books, but when you get into books for older readers, you're supposed to take life seriously. Books get a bad reputation with kids." But, he says, "If you can't laugh in childhood, you never learn to. Laughter needs practice. I want kids to know that when they open those covers, they'll find laughter inside."

 

Linda M. Castellitto writes from Rhode Island, where she practices laughing every day.

"My greatest fear is to bore a child," says Sid Fleischman, Newbery Medal winner and author of the swashbuckling new novel The Giant Rats of Sumatra: or Pirates Galore. Boredom isn't likely to be a problem for Fleischman's young readers, since he has infused…

YA FictionYA

Stephenie Meyer

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Literary legend has it that Mary Shelley's tortured Frankenstein monster came to her in a dream that inspired the classic horror tale. Twilight, a young adult novel by debut author Stephenie Meyer, has similar origins, but the otherworldly characters in her story are not lumbering monsters. Instead, they're beautiful vampires who make excellent use of their unusual abilities while trying to fit in with the other students at a small high school.

"I never really thought about being a writer, but when I had the dream, the characters were ones I didn't want to forget," Meyer says from her home in Arizona, where she and her husband are raising three sons, all under the age of 10. Writing Twilight was "an unusual experience because I felt obsessive about the process. It wasn't like me to be so focused—it's hard to be, with all the kids around."

A neophyte in the publishing world, Meyer is truly an overnight success. Just two weeks after she sent her manuscript to a Manhattan agency, she was signed on. Soon after, Twilight landed in the hands of editor Megan Tingley, head of Little, Brown's MT Books imprint. And not long after that, movie rights were sold to MTV Films.

"It's been a real whirlwind—more like a lightning strike," Meyer says. "Sometimes I feel guilty. People go through so much [to get published], and I skipped over the bad parts. It feels like cheating, somehow." Despite the occasional pangs of guilt, Meyer kept up a furious writing pace.

"Sometimes I feel guilty. People go through so much [to get published], and I skipped over the bad parts."

"I just kept going after the first one, and wrote four books in one year." Now, she's in the midst of editing her second book, a process she likens to labor: "It's equal in pain, and can drag on and on."

Despite all that editing, Twilight is 499 pages long, quite a tome for teen readers. "If it weren't for J.K. Rowling, I think publishers wouldn't be willing to put out lengthy books," Meyer points out. "It just proves that if a book is good enough, young people will read it. People say teens have short attention spans, but they are quite capable of reading [longer books]. There are tons of kids aged 16 or 17 who dig Shakespeare and Austen."

Meyer has no idea why she dreamed of vampires that fateful night, but she's always been fascinated by superheroes, and she reads science fiction and fantasy titles as eagerly as classics. In her house, J.K. Rowling and Orson Scott Card books share shelves with ones by Shakespeare, Binchy and Bronte. And, Meyer argues, as monsters go, vampires are pretty appealing: "Vampires, while dark and icky, are attractive, sophisticated and intelligent. They're forever youthful, powerful—things people crave or envy. No one looks at a zombie and wants to be like that."

The vampires in Twilight are certainly worthy of envy. The lithe and beautiful Edward Cullen looks at protagonist Bella with loving eyes (even as he fights his urge to, well, suck her blood). His gorgeous siblings are athletic, drive great cars and are far less awkward than their classmates. Of course, they don't lead a typical teen lifestyle: instead of McDonald's, they subsist on blood. Since they want to live among humans, they force themselves to feed on animals rather than people.

Meyer also has a knack for developing her human characters, especially Bella, a troubled 17-year-old who comes to realize her own intelligence and strength. "Hopefully," says Meyer, "most girls who read it will find something in Bella they can respond to."

Through Bella and the vampiric Cullen family, Meyer conveys the importance of making one's own decisions, a value drawn from her Mormon background. "Mormon themes do come through in Twilight. Free agency I see that in the Cullens. The vampires made this choice to be something more that's my belief, the importance of free will to being human."

Twilight builds to a dramatic and suspenseful second half, not to mention a nail-biting conclusion. Fortunately for impatient readers, Meyer's next book is due out within a year. In the meantime, the author will embark on a book tour this month to cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, Milwaukee and Chicago, where there will be—appropriately enough—a blood drive.

 

Linda M. Castellitto writes from North Carolina, where there is a Transylvania County. Hmm.

Literary legend has it that Mary Shelley's tortured Frankenstein monster came to her in a dream that inspired the classic horror tale. Twilight, a young adult novel by debut author Stephenie Meyer, has similar origins, but the otherworldly characters in her story are not lumbering monsters. Instead, they're beautiful vampires who make excellent use of their unusual abilities while trying to fit in with the other students at a small high school.

YA FictionYA

Sarah Fain

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain aren't fazed by blood the fake stuff, anyway. As writers and co-producers for the television show The Shield, it's all in a day's work to answer such questions as, Is this bloody mannequin bloody enough for you? Should we put more blood on the knife? And yet their latest endeavor, the young adult novel Bass Ackwards and Belly Up is a decidedly un-gory one. Craft and Fain have written an engaging, adventure-filled story about four longtime friends who, right after high school graduation, decide to defy convention, expectations and their parents, in the name of following their dreams. The authors know long-term friendship they've been close since the 1980s, when they were co-editors of their Kansas City, Missouri, high school newspaper. Almost 10 years later, the two reunited in Kansas City over Christmas vacation, and Sarah mentioned to Liz that she was moving to Los Angeles to pursue her dream of being a writer. We were home visiting our families, and we got together for drinks, Craft recalls. After the first beer, I was saying I'd visit Sarah in L.A., maybe even for a few weeks. By beer number three, I was thinking about moving. I stayed up all night thinking about it, and announced my decision to my family the next day. Soon after, the pair settled in a beach house in Santa Monica and began writing for television.

Now Craft and Fain share office space and writing duties at the Los Angeles headquarters of the FX police drama The Shield. We spoke with the authors via conference call as they sat at their desks, which are next to each other in a pit that used to be a storage closet, Fain says, with papers, DVDs and videocassette tapes piled high. The lived-in dŽcor doesn't hamper the writers' productivity. In fact, they didn't even take time off from television to write Bass Ackwards and Belly Up (or, as they call it, BABU). They worked on the book in the morning hours and turned back to TV later in the day. Adding a novel to their workload meant that, in addition to achieving new heights of time-management savvy, the writing partners had to reconsider the way they divvied up their workload and adjust their writing styles, too. In TV, every line on a page is a precious bit of space, Craft says. We had to get out of that mindset and realize it's OK to describe someone in detail. Fain adds, For TV, we separate our work by storyline. For the book, we separated it by character: I did Kate and Becca, and Liz did Harper and Sophie. There was never any question, the authors say, about writing for teens. We never considered another genre, Craft explains. To me, it was like therapy to write young adult fiction . . . reliving that difficult emotional time, taking my power back. It heals some wounds, to live vicariously through the characters. Emotions indeed shape the lives of BABU's four friends, who experience the fear, boredom, uncertainty and high drama that can come from living in the so-called real world. But they're also exhilarated to realize they're able to make important choices and survive hardships, whether on a trip around Europe (Kate), at college in Vermont (Becca), navigating the societal wilds of Hollywood (Sophie), or at home in Boulder attempting to write a novel (Harper). It's not lost on the four protagonists, though, that their frequent contact with one another (mainly by e-mail, as befits 21st-century teenagers) is vital to their confidence and appetite for adventure. That's no accident, says Fain: We feel very close to the story because it's about friends who support each other as they're figuring out what their dreams are, and pursuing them. We wanted to say through the lens of our own experience that anything really is possible. If you can pin down what you want, then you can go after it and get it. The authors aren't sure how many of their coworkers at The Shield will read the book; Fain says their colleagues are bemused by the writing duo's latest project. That's not altogether surprising, because, it's a very, very, very testosterone-driven environment. So, when we show up with our lovely purple-covered book, it's not anything they understand. Still, she says, testosterone (and estrogen) aside, in keeping with BABU's central message, they are very supportive, and very proud. Linda M. Castellitto writes from North Carolina, where she lives her dream of getting paid to read and write.

Elizabeth Craft and Sarah Fain aren't fazed by blood the fake stuff, anyway. As writers and co-producers for the television show The Shield, it's all in a day's work to answer such questions as, Is this bloody mannequin bloody enough for you? Should we…

Pop CultureArts & Culture

Chris Anderson

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

There's a major shift in the way businesses offer their products to the public, according to Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. His new book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, explores the ways in which our culture and economy are moving away from hits (popular products and markets), which reside at the head of the demand curve, and toward a huge number of niches in the tail of that curve. This Long Tail is resulting in a massive increase in choices for consumers, who until now have, by and large, unwittingly had their tastes shaped by what is widely available or most popular. BookPage asked Anderson, who writes a popular blog on the subject, to explain it all; he responded from a plane high over Texas.

What do you mean by the Long Tail?
Last year, 65,000 music albums were released only 700 made it to the shelves of America's No. 1 CD retailer, Wal-Mart. If you're into anything that isn't in the top 700 (whether it's non-mainstream or simply not a new release), you understand the Long Tail. Likewise if you're into documentaries, foreign films, or any other kind of movie that isn't stocked at Blockbuster. Many interesting examples were put forward by readers of the [Long Tail] blog, too, such as microbrews as the Long Tail of beer and insurgency as the Long Tail of warfare.

You emphasize that, while choice is certainly preferable to scarcity, there remains a need for good filters to help people find their way through myriad options. What are the best filters?
Amazon continues to lead the way. It has good examples of the most important kinds of filters: search, personalized recommendations, reviews, rankings, even specialized filters such as statistically improbable phrases. Outside of books, Google is of course the ultimate filter and the innovation around helping you find music you'll like is just beginning.

You say the alternative to let people choose is choose for them. How do we know the limits of our filters?
I'm against choosing for people if that means guessing what they want and offering only that. I believe the best technique is to order choice in ways that reflect individuals' expressed and observed preferences, while still offering unbounded variety. The best filters will get this right and be rewarded with happy consumers; others will have to evolve until they get it right.

How should businesses alter their approaches as niches become more plentiful and influential?
Those who can see the world outside the hits will prosper most. That means understanding how to market to niches and make a profit from modest sales. A key tactic will be the ability to scale down achieve economic efficiencies so you don't have to just focus on hits. That can be as simple as digital distribution, which drops the marginal cost of goods close to zero, or as complicated as self-service, giving customers the tools to help themselves.

But hits are here to stay?
The curve that defines the Long Tail is ubiquitous in everything from markets to nature. It is, above all, one of inequality: a few things have high impact and a large number of things have low impact. This is as true of music albums as it is of earthquakes. Some things are always going to be more popular than others, and word-of-mouth will exaggerate those differences. But the difference between hits and niches seems to be shrinking: there's now room for both of them, so it's not hits or niches, but hits and niches.

The Long Tail blog's tagline is a public diary on the way to a book. How did the blog shape the book?
The blog was a fantastic aid. It had three advantages for me, in writing a nonfiction, research-heavy book based on a published article [Wired, Oct. 2004]: 1) It allowed me to keep the momentum going between the publication of the article and the book; 2) I gave away some of my research results and ideas, but got back many times that from my smart readers; 3) Those thousands of readers have great word-of-mouth influence, which I imagine will help market the book. I was so encouraged by my experience, I'm thinking of ways to introduce some of that technique to Wired.

Are there more books in your future?
Absolutely, but I've promised my wife I'd finish the book tour for this one before turning to the next!

There's a major shift in the way businesses offer their products to the public, according to Wired editor-in-chief Chris Anderson. His new book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More, explores the ways in which our culture and economy…

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