Linda M. Castellitto

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Sarah Weeks

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Much of the time, Sarah Weeks feels like she’s still in middle school. As the author of some 50 books for kids, that’s a very good—almost essential—thing. 

“I remember what it feels like to make believe,” Weeks explains during a call to her home in Nyack, New York. It’s an attitude that has stood her in good stead over the last 20 years, during which she has written picture books and middle-grade novels, including the award-winner So B. It and her new novel, Pie.

To write for kids, Weeks says, “you have to have arrested development on some level. It probably makes me annoying to live with, because I’m basically a kid. I think of myself as being very deeply rooted in sixth grade.” 

When it came to writing Pie, the author says it “was by far the most fun I’ve ever had writing a book.” It’s certainly fun to read: Pie combines stories of family, food and friendship with comical shenanigans and well-crafted characters—including a mysterious pastry thief and a cranky cat named Lardo.

Things start to get strange when Aunt Polly bequeaths her prized pie crust recipe to her cranky cat.

There are pie recipes, too. The first, apple pie, was provided by Weeks; for the rest, she “wrote to friends and family and teachers and schools I’d visited. . . . I got back recipes, stories and lots of pictures of pies.”

Pie has long been part of the author’s life: Growing up, she and her mother baked together, and Weeks bakes for her own family. But despite the pastry’s prominence in Pie, the author says, “It was not my intention to write a book about pie, but to write about gratitude. I have a huge amount to be grateful for.”

Alice, the young heroine of the book, learns gratitude from her beloved Aunt Polly, who shows her by example the joy of doing things for the experience, whether or not it results in plaudits or paydays. Polly is the Pie Queen of Ipswitch, Pennsylvania. People come from near and far to bring Polly fresh ingredients that she makes into delicious pies. This makes her visitors very happy—but leaves Alice’s mother feeling jealous. And when Polly dies in 1955, she leaves her Blueberry Award-winning pie crust recipe to her cat, Lardo . . . and she leaves Lardo to Alice.

That’s when things start to get strange. There’s a green Chevrolet rolling slowly through town, Alice’s mother insists on baking pies (even though she’s terrible at it), and it turns out Alice’s friend Charlie possesses strong amateur detective skills (which come in very handy).

Although Alice’s life gets chaotic after her aunt’s passing, the goings-on are set against a simpler backdrop: a small town in the 1950s. “I was born in 1955, and Pie takes place there,” Weeks says. “I wanted to set it in a time where there were no worries about cell phones, computers, Google.”

She also kept research to a minimum. “I’m very lazy about it,” she says with a laugh. “My dad was always reading the newspaper, and I watched ‘Sky King’ every day. I used references that were actually relevant, rather than searching to find things.”

In fact, this focus-on-the-actual approach is what got Weeks started as an author. For many years, she was a singer-songwriter. Then she met an editor who suggested she turn her songs into books: “It was a fairly direct translation, because many of my first picture books had a CD in the back with me singing. I segued to picture books without songs, and then chapter books.”

Weeks had two young sons when she started writing, and they weren’t big readers—a boon to her writing, too. “The way they fought and talked to each other was very funny. It was a goldmine—I could put embarrassing things in my books and they’d have no idea. They know now, though. Gabe got a girlfriend, and she started reading all my books.” 

Although her own kids are on to her, Weeks’ abiding fascination with the younger set provides ample story fodder. “I’m interested in what makes them tick. I like the weird kids, the ones that do something unusual.”

Perhaps that explains her fondness for the final recipe in Pie: Peanut Butter Raspberry Cream Pie. “It’s the one I feel most grateful for, from a teacher whose school I visited in Illinois. Her grandma was a little senile and mixed up two recipes. We now call it PBJ.”

If events thus far are any indication, Weeks will get to taste plenty more pie—unusual or otherwise—as the word spreads about Pie. Her publisher, Scholastic, hosted a “Pie Palooza,” she’s scheduled to judge a pie contest in Connecticut and she will visit “everywhere there’s pie.” 

Here’s hoping the crusts are flaky and delicious, just like the ones on Aunt Polly’s award winners.

Much of the time, Sarah Weeks feels like she’s still in middle school. As the author of some 50 books for kids, that’s a very good—almost essential—thing. 

“I remember what it feels like to make believe,” Weeks explains during a call to her…

YA FictionYA

John Green

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

It would be completely understandable to discover, upon meeting John Green, that he’s tired and hoarse and must sleep with his hands elevated on the softest of pillows every night.

After all, the award-winning, best-selling author lets nary a day go by without updating his Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube, Facebook and blog. And all the while, he’s writing books, too—including his latest novel for teens, The Fault in Our Stars, which goes on sale January 10.

“It was sort of fun in a weird way,” Green says of signing more than 150,000 books.

Still, Green was energetic and smooth-voiced (and, because “it’s all about keyboard positioning,” carpal tunnel syndrome-free!) when he spoke with BookPage from his home in Indianapolis, where he lives with his wife and son. This despite having recently added a significant undertaking to his daily routine: He signed his name for 12 hours a day, seven days a week, for about a month. 

Why 400 hours of writing “John Green,” Sharpie marker in hand? “I came up with the idea to sign all the pre-orders of The Fault in Our Stars,” he says. “I kept thinking about all the kids who live in North Dakota or Guam, places I’m never going to go on tour. It seemed unfair that people who live in major metropolitan areas could get a signed book, but people who don’t, can’t.”  

He adds, “It became clear that the only way to do it was to sign the entire first printing, because of the nature of book warehousing—150,000 [autographs], plus an extra 2,000 in case of spoilage.” 

After Green announced plans for the signing last summer, pre-orders shot the novel to #1 on bookseller websites. Of course, Green posted progress videos of the signing on his website and—despite getting a bit wild-eyed, mussy-haired and tense-armed—he says, “It was sort of fun in a weird way. I got to watch lots of Ken Burns, ‘MythBusters,’ a show I didn’t even like called ‘Pawn Stars’ and listen to lots of audiobooks. In the end, it was a privilege, honestly. It felt very much like a gift given back to me by my readers.” 

Green’s willingness to undertake the task is but one indication of his connection with his fans, who call themselves Nerdfighters. Other authors may have a social media platform; Green has a loving, vocal community that works toward common goals and has its own lexicon. 

While Green’s fan base has been growing since his first book (2005’s Looking for Alaska), the Nerdfighteria community was born during a project he started with his brother, Hank. During 2007, the two communicated only via YouTube videos. Their VlogBrothers YouTube channel now has 607,000 subscribers, and they’ve launched VidCon, an annual conference for creators and fans of online video.

“I’m ultimately much more passionate about writing and books, but I really love YouTube and the community that’s built up around our videos,” Green says. One example: “We’re one of the largest groups that donate to Kiva, a microfinance website that makes loans to entrepreneurs in developing countries. We’ve loaned more than $100,000 in the last six months. Books are great, but you can’t have a visceral connection to changing the world, and doing stuff that makes you feel better about being a person. It’s a different kind of work.”

The Fault in Our Stars has already developed a following; at presstime, two chapters had been released online, plus video readings by the author. No spoilers here, but we can say this: Green’s trademark grace, wit and creativity have resulted in a story that will stir the Nerdfighters to even greater adoration.

Sixteen-year-old Hazel Lancaster is the narrator, and the heart, of The Fault in Our Stars. Diagnosed with incurable thyroid cancer at age 13, Hazel left school, but got her GED and now attends community college. She gets around all right, oxygen tank in tow—and dreads going to a weekly support group attended by a “rotating cast of characters in various states of tumor-driven unwellness. Why did the cast rotate? A side effect of dying.”

Hazel’s matter-of-fact-ness doesn’t go untempered by fear or sadness, but she and her cohorts are nothing like the saintly, heroic, very quiet sick people who populate so many books and movies. 

The creation of un-saintly characters was essential, Green says, to the genesis of The Fault in Our Stars. “After I graduated from college, I spent five months working in a children’s hospital. Immediately after I left, I started writing a story. . . . I was trying to write about sick kids that were like the sick kids I’d known in the hospital, not these fountains of wisdom, and not a sentimental story about poor little kids. Everything I wrote was crap. I couldn’t . . . imagine them as people outside of their illness.”

All that changed when he encountered another young cancer patient. “I met Esther Earl in 2008. I never thought about her as inspiration for the story—it’s the one I’ve been waiting to write pretty much my whole career—but I wouldn’t have been able to write it if I hadn’t known her. She was so funny and thoughtful and normal. I was able to find another way into thinking about illness and lives that are shorter than they ought to be.” Esther’s was: She died of thyroid cancer in 2010, at age 16. Green dedicated the novel to her. 

 “To be frank, I think it’s extremely difficult not to be nihilistic when faced with the reality that children die,” Green says. “That’s the real reason I couldn’t write The Fault in Our Stars until I knew Esther: I couldn’t reconcile myself to looking at it honestly, and being hopeful. [And] reading should be fun; I wanted to write something that was funny and evocative of life and embraced life. That was important to me.”

Throughout his career, Green has been a vocal proponent of the importance of books and reading. Speaking of change in the industry, he says, “I really believe in publishers and publishing, [and that] publishers serve a tremendously important role in literature in the U.S. Even if that’s not a statement in favor of print, hopefully it’s a statement about quality. I don’t care if people use e-readers, I just want them to read books.”

Green’s doing his part to keep people turning those pages, and they’re clearly responding. In fact, the Nerdfighters’ enthusiastic pre-ordering resulted in an earlier release date for The Fault in Our Stars (it was moved from May 2012 to January). Now that shows the power of the people—especially those who really, really want John Green’s autograph.

 

Did you love The Fault in Our Stars? Wondering what to read next? Check out our "Read it Next" blog post!

It would be completely understandable to discover, upon meeting John Green, that he’s tired and hoarse and must sleep with his hands elevated on the softest of pillows every night.

After all, the award-winning, best-selling author lets nary a day go by without updating his…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Jacqueline Woodson

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

For Jacqueline Woodson, hope is an essential component of a good story. Whether she’s reading or writing, “happiness doesn’t have to come at the end, but there has to be hope somewhere, to keep me engaged and wanting to move forward.”

Since her first book was published in 1989, the much-lauded author of 30 books and counting has created many characters who are dealing with difficult problems. “They have to figure out what they’re going to do with the hand they’ve been dealt,” Woodson says from her home in Brooklyn, where she lives with her partner and their two children. “For the most part, kids are so resilient, and they do figure out a way to move through it.”

Her latest book for teens, Beneath a Meth Moon, opens on a bleak day in the life of 15-year-old Laurel. She’s a pretty blonde who, not long after moving to a town called Galilee, makes the cheerleading team, meets a new friend (Kaylee) and boyfriend (T-Boom) and becomes a meth addict.

Laurel and Kaylee’s budding friendship will feel familiar and sweet to anyone who’s felt that frisson of delight at the start of something good. And under Woodson’s hand, when Laurel and T-Boom lock eyes on the basketball court, their attraction is palpable: “Just me and T-Boom, seeing each other—not for the first time, really, but yes, for the first time. . . . He’s home to me, and I don’t even know him.” 

Behind the 7-Eleven just hours later, when T-Boom offers Laurel meth and she unhesitatingly breathes it in, her acquiescence is horrifying and sad but, thanks to Woodson’s skill, not entirely surprising. Readers have already learned that Laurel is hobbled by grief and searching for a way to blunt her feelings of pain and sadness.

Woodson doesn’t reveal Laurel, or her other characters, in a linear manner; she moves back and forth through time, from present-day conversations to snippets of thought and memory. Until she was 11, Laurel and her family lived in Pass Christian, Mississippi, on the Gulf of Mexico with its pretty water and warm sand. But those memories get crowded out by what came in 2005: Grandma M’lady decided not to evacuate during Hurricane Katrina and Mama stayed with her, while the rest of the family went to Jackson to wait for them. 

Like so many others, M’lady and Mama did not survive the hurricane. Woodson compassionately renders the shock of those left behind, and, by extension, the efforts made by anyone experiencing such sadness to adjust to their new burden. Laurel’s father moves her and her younger brother, Jesse Jr., to Galilee in hopes of putting the past behind them, but, Woodson says, “This promised land, this dry land, is not what they expected.”

“There are so many great reasons to be here, to be whole, to be fully in the world no matter what our life situation is.”

The author’s own grandmother died a few years ago, and her mother died suddenly just before she started to write Beneath a Meth Moon. “You have to figure out what happens to you,” she says. “How does the world change for you, what do you do with that change? And here’s Laurel having lost two important figures very quickly, and being lost in a way that makes absolute sense.”

While Laurel’s meth use doesn’t make sense to Woodson in a literal way (like this writer, she read Go Ask Alice in her youth and the book had the desired, frightening effect concerning the dangers of teenage drug use), she says that writing Beneath a Meth Moon was a way to explore things she’d wondered about—like the children who survive a massive, tragic event, or people who decide to take a drug they know to be dangerous and destructive.

She says of the young Katrina survivors, “What happened to those kids, emotionally, psychologically and physically, given this kind of loss? You just don’t hear about them, unless they survived and went on to play for the Dallas Cowboys . . . otherwise, people are apt to just disappear. I don’t want that to happen.”

And, she asks, “Why would anyone even put meth to their nose? Seeing the damage that drug can do, why would you make the choice to do it? Who would do it, why would they do it, what would be their reason for living?”

Through the character of Laurel, Woodson says, “Hopefully what readers get is that there are so many great reasons to be here, to be whole, to be fully in the world no matter what our life situation is.” 

That sense of promise—that hope—is present not only in Laurel’s story, but in those of her family and friends, too.

There’s Kaylee, who sticks around even when she doesn’t understand or agree with Laurel’s decisions. “To some extent, Laurel is Kaylee’s hope,” Woodson says. “What Laurel brings to her is the bigger world. She’s done something else, lived another life, and they’re going to escape together.”

And there’s Moses, a young man who paints murals of children who died of drug overdose. He’s kind to Laurel, but also matter-of-fact in noting that she may well be one of his subjects someday.

The author says she can relate to the push-and-pull of being a teenager trying to imagine the future: “I think kids have to make choices all the time about who they are becoming. It’s part of identity politics: ‘Am I who you’re naming me to be?’ Those moments of not being who you want to be, of wanting to get past it and be something else. And having gone through that myself as an adolescent, not wanting other people to decide my fate—like becoming a writer, when the message was, you don’t come out of this community to be a writer, you become a blue-collar worker.”

Certainly, Woodson has moved far past that proscription. Her books have garnered many honors—including several National Book Award nominations, three Newbery Honor awards, ALA Best Book for Young Adults nods and more. 

With the timely, unflinching and empathetic Beneath a Meth Moon, she adds another powerful story to her critically acclaimed body of work. 

For Jacqueline Woodson, hope is an essential component of a good story. Whether she’s reading or writing, “happiness doesn’t have to come at the end, but there has to be hope somewhere, to keep me engaged and wanting to move forward.”

Since her first book…

Children's & YAPicture Book

Lita Judge

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

If you’ve ever wondered—or tried to explain—what birds are saying as they flit about in trees or preen on their perches, help is here: Lita Judge’s new book, Bird Talk: What Birds Are Saying and Why, is a wonderfully illustrated compendium of bird behavior and communication for young readers.

The talented author-illustrator of 10 books and counting (including the recent picture books Red Sled and Strange Creatures), Judge knows what our feathered friends are up to—whether a series of caws or a sudden flurry of poop-missiles—thanks to a childhood spent immersed in nature.

Born on a small Alaskan island, Judge and her family traveled wherever her father’s soil-scientist jobs took him. Home base was in Wisconsin, where her grandparents, who were both ornithologists, lived on a remote farm with no TV or running water, but plenty of bird-centric chores to be done. “When I was young, I thought everyone had eagles and owls in the house,” she says in an interview from her home in New Hampshire.

At age 14, the author was accepted for two summers of work on a dinosaur dig in Canada, and after college, she became a geologist. She eventually quit her geologist job to work as an artist—mostly painting landscapes for galleries—but never stopped feeling a pull toward books.

“I always had a huge desire to be a writer and artist, but I didn’t have role models to show me it could be done professionally,” Judge says, adding that she spent some time wishing she’d gone to art school. But, she says, “I’ve realized I am who I am because of my past. I believe really strongly my background in science taught me a lot about art.”

She explains, “To get birds to look fluid and gestural and come to life when they’re essentially made out of graphite, you have to know anatomy and behavior; you have to spend a lot of time watching them. Geology is a science of observation, and as a kid, I spent hours on the marsh with my grandparents. I would write and draw what I saw, but I didn’t see it as art—more as a contribution to what they were doing.”

Her grandparents were “strong disciplinarians, and I spent hours and hours in blinds being absolutely still. To make a book takes so much patience and contemplation, and that training gave me a peaceful stillness and the ability to observe subtle things.”

In addition to her childhood adventures, Judge says she draws inspiration from the wildlife that surrounds her home. “I spend a lot of time outside going for hikes, where the inspiration comes, and I do the work in my studio. It’s a regular thoroughfare here because we have feeders everywhere. At any one time, we have 40 wild turkeys circling the house, bears looking right in at us, foxes, bobcats and lots of deer.”

The creatures that populate Bird Talk are a delight to behold, from the elegantly arched neck of the Indian Sarus Crane to the tensed body of a striped American Bittern who’s hiding in tall grass—but risking a yellow-eyed peek to see if his ruse is working.

And Judge’s eye for color will help young readers connect the fascinating images and facts in the book with what they see in real life, whether gazing up at flashes of blue or red in a tree, admiring vivid plumage in the bird-house at a zoo, or clicking through bird photos online.

“I wanted every child to have a bird they could identify from their backyards. I also wanted to include those really bizarre things kids just love. So, it’s a healthy mix of birds I’ve seen firsthand and those I remember being thrilled by,” Judge says.

The Sage Grouse will not disappoint (think: blowfish with feathers), and the charm of the Blue-Footed Booby belies its name. A bird-guide and glossary, plus a list of references, will aid curious kids in learning more about bird appearance, behavior and habitat.

Through her books, Judge says she hopes to convey the thrill—and value—of being around animals and exploring nature. Based on her visits to schools, there is a receptive audience: “The average kid is much more articulate [than kids of decades past] about the consequences we have on the environment.”

She adds, “They don’t have to be watching wild animals personally to care about them. I find they’re all heart and want to make a difference, but at the same time they have a lack of knowledge about just how complex the natural world is. One thing I want to do with this book is hopefully fuel kids’ natural inborn curiosity and love for animals, and give an appreciation of how complex animal behavior is.”

Bird Talk is just the vehicle to spark, or enhance, that appreciation: Judge’s expressive illustrations and textual translations add dimension and personality to the feathered creatures we see and hear every day. Her deep knowledge of and affection for nature is evident—not to mention her delight in at last becoming the author and artist she was meant to be.

“When I finally switched to children’s books, and to doing what I did as a kid with writing and visuals working together to tell a story . . . it felt like falling into myself,” she says.

If you’ve ever wondered—or tried to explain—what birds are saying as they flit about in trees or preen on their perches, help is here: Lita Judge’s new book, Bird Talk: What Birds Are Saying and Why, is a wonderfully illustrated compendium of bird behavior and…

Children's & YA

Blue Balliett

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Eight-year-olds should not be underestimated. Just ask author Blue Balliett, who says children of that age "have tremendous brain power and are not bound by convention." In fact, Balliett says she couldn't have written her new novel, Chasing Vermeer, without having taught for a decade at the University of Chicago's Laboratory School. "I learned so much by being able to watch so many different kinds of brains every year," she says.

In Chasing Vermeer—a multilayered story about art and learning, coincidence and mystery—protagonists Petra Andalee and Calder Pillay serve as "a vote of confidence for kids' brain power, at a time when not much credence is given [in the education field] to kids' thinking and imagination . . . everything is quite formulaic these days." Balliett has created an intriguing fictional world where patterns and coincidences deserve a second look, and happenstance can hold great meaning. Petra and Calder, two inquisitive, imaginative sixth-graders, join forces to track down the thief who has stolen a valuable Vermeer painting no small task, especially when mysterious letters appear in mailboxes up and down the street of their neighborhood, the neighbors are acting cagey, and their beloved teacher, Ms. Hussey, has become a bit twitchy. The case soon becomes a national scandal, but the two children explore the Hyde Park area of Chicago and learn more about Vermeer as their determination to rescue the painting grows.

The book's masterfully detailed, richly colored illustrations by Brett Helquist (of Lemony Snicket fame) add to the story's appeal by offering more than mere representation of the book's events (keep an eye out for clues to a secret message!). The pictures each of which is an oil painting are not only lovely to look at, but accurate as well. "[Helquist] visited Hyde Park in order to make the illustrations true to their environment," Balliett notes, and while there, he studied everything from buildings to gargoyles to an ornately carved staircase. Balliett says writing the book was "like weaving. I did a string based on art, wove across that with the pentominoes [mathematical tools], and added in the classroom scenes. I wanted people to read the book on different levels. It [ended up being] more complex than I thought it would be." And, she adds, "Kids are such natural pattern-makers; they can live with gray areas better than adults can." Matters of perspective and imagination fascinate Balliett, and both are important elements of Chasing Vermeer, as is art, of course a topic that has interested the author since childhood. She grew up in Manhattan, "an easy walk from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Frick Collection, at a time when kids could wander in and out without paying big fees." It was then that she became familiar with Vermeer and his work, which, she says, offers a "sense of immediacy, of peering into a private relaxed world. It appeals to all kinds of people."

Balliett never liked "being told what to think" about art, whether on a museum tour or as a student in a classroom. To engage her own students at the Lab School, "I used to make scavenger hunts. We set off three different alarms on one trip to the Art Institute of Chicago." Aside from irritating the security guards, such exercises were intended to get the children to really think about art. "Kids are good critical thinkers, if you let them do it." This conviction drove Balliett to write Chasing Vermeer. "There's been nothing since The Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler that exposed kids to real art issues," she says. "I was looking for a way kids can feel comfortable thinking about real art, and the real questions art historians live with."

Readers who find themselves energized by the twists and turns, the puzzles and problems, presented in Chasing Vermeer will be pleased to learn that Petra and Calder will return in Balliett's next book. It will be "set in Hyde Park, with ghosts in it," and Helquist will do the artwork. In the meantime, though, Balliett will be visiting bookstores and schools, and attending a luncheon in honor of Chasing Vermeer at the Art Institute of Chicago. Will the security guards be ready for her?

Linda M. Castellitto wrote a paper about Vermeer for a college class. She got an A-minus.

Eight-year-olds should not be underestimated. Just ask author Blue Balliett, who says children of that age "have tremendous brain power and are not bound by convention." In fact, Balliett says she couldn't have written her new novel, Chasing Vermeer, without having taught for a decade…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Patrice Kindl

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

There are many reasons an author might have a tough time meeting a deadline, from writers’ block to family drama to, say, a hurricane hitting her house even though she lives hundreds of miles inland.

Despite Hurricane Irene’s unlikely arrival at Patrice Kindl’s rural upstate New York home last August, the author kept things moving along on her YA novel, Keeping the Castle, albeit from an office not her own, because her usual writing spot was thoroughly waterlogged. “It’s been a difficult seven months,” she says by phone from her home, during a break from lugging ruined furniture to the curb. “There was eight feet of water outside and four inside. It was a major blow.” Another, longer-term challenge for Kindl was an illness that led to a decade-long pause in her writing career (she published four YA novels from 1993-2002, including the critically lauded Owl in Love). Fortunately, “major surgery a couple of years ago resolved the worst problems,” she says.

Keeping the Castle represents her return to writing, as well as the author’s own pursuit of truth in fiction: She was motivated to create her own Regency novel because, she says, “I’d read one too many historical fictions in which the heroine is totally opposed to getting married and goes off to London and becomes a detective. They didn’t do that!”

In fact, she says, during the early 19th century, “Women got married because they had to; there were just so few choices, aside from becoming a governess, which is one step up from a servant, or a hat maker or dressmaker. These were very dependent positions with no security, so marriage was the best option—unless, of course, they were in the unusual position of being independently wealthy. A woman in control of her own money was very rare.”

And another thing: Kindl’s a bit indignant about writers who shirk Regency conventions. She “looove[s] Jane Austen” and doesn’t understand “why writers want to take a period and violate all the rules and conventions of society at the time. Half of the ones I’ve read, women had sex outside marriage. That’s something they just didn’t do. It would’ve had serious repercussions. I wanted to do something appropriate for the genre, and it’s nice having the framework, like with a sonnet or haiku—you know the rules.”

Thus, Kindl’s heroine, 17-year-old Althea Bears, doesn’t swan about the countryside while pondering which glamorous career will suit her, should she feel like having one. Instead, she worries every day about whether she can find a financially solvent husband in time to save the elegant yet crumbling castle in Lesser Hoo, Yorkshire, where she lives with her widowed mother, stepsisters and young brother.

She also feels responsible for the fate of their servants—a devoted, resourceful bunch who gamely help Althea engage in social subterfuge as a means to preserving the family’s we’re-doing-just-fine facade.

Althea’s worries are especially timely, and some young readers will find themselves identifying with her money-centric concerns. But even those who are blissfully unaware of financial matters will find themselves caught up in the humor, suspense and moral dilemmas Kindl has conjured up.

For example, Althea may seem a bit mercenary, but is it wrong to think of marriage as a means to an end first, an opportunity for love second, if it means saving her family from ruin?

Creating a protagonist with such mature (and, it must be said, often hilarious) concerns is another departure from Kindl’s previous books. She says, “One of the limitations of doing a romance with a 14-year-old is there can’t be any closure. You’d be surprised how many kids write to me and ask, ‘Did they get married?’ So, doing a 17-year-old in this time period is fun, because I get to marry her off. It’s satisfying.”

Another reason Kindl enjoyed Althea’s story arc: “I am definitely pro-marriage. When it works, there’s nothing like it, and I’m in a position to know,” says the author, who has been married to her husband, Paul, for 35 years.

She adds, “I do think any time you give women power in society, divorces are going to go up because [women] don’t have to put up with creeps anymore . . . but that doesn’t mean marriage isn’t going to work. You have to be lucky, and it’s not something everyone is going to be able to achieve, but I do think it’s a worthy goal.”

The author’s current goals include doing more hurricane cleanup and continuing Althea’s story. The manuscript for book two is under way, and readers will delight in catching up with the goings-on in Lesser Hoo.

As Kindl notes, “no one at [Althea’s] age realizes how long life lasts,” but it’s going to be fun following along as she figures it out.

There are many reasons an author might have a tough time meeting a deadline, from writers’ block to family drama to, say, a hurricane hitting her house even though she lives hundreds of miles inland.

Despite Hurricane Irene’s unlikely arrival at Patrice Kindl’s rural upstate New…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Jessica Khoury

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Publishing phenom Jessica Khoury has had a busy couple of years: In 2010, she graduated from college and got married. In 2011, she wrote a book (in about a month) that was snapped up by Penguin’s Razorbill imprint. This year, she finished revising the book, appeared at book and library conventions and traveled to the jungle for the first time.

On September 4, Origin—a thought-provoking YA novel with a fascinating premise—debuts with an impressive 250,000-copy first printing. And that’s not all: The 22-year-old Khoury is already writing her second novel for Penguin, and she has embarked on the publisher’s Breathless Reads tour.

But while the past two years have been a veritable whirlwind, Khoury wants to emphasize—especially to aspiring authors—that, as easy or speedy as her timeline might appear, writing and publishing a book takes significant time and effort.

“It’s important to know it’s a long process. You can write a book in a month, but it takes months and months to get it ready to go out into the world,” Khoury says in an interview from her home in Georgia. “Some people may say this just happened overnight, but it didn’t . . . and I have a great team of supporters who worked with me."

Origin isn’t the first book Khoury created. After being homeschooled, she entered Toccoa Falls College, a Christian school in her small north Georgia hometown, and began working on a high-fantasy trilogy. (Khoury says she has loved fantasy since “my dad forced me to read Lord of the Rings in elementary school.”) She was in the midst of querying agents and publishers about that book when the idea for Origin struck during a walk in the woods near her home—and that, as they say, was that.

"You can't get a more universal theme than mortality. We all think about it, and we all have to make our own decisions about what it means."

At the heart of the novel is a 17-year-old girl named Pia. She’s been genetically engineered to be perfect—and to be Person No. 1 in the immortal race a group of scientists has been secretly and feverishly working to create in their hidden compound, Little Cam.

This coming-of-age story is rife with romance, suspense and danger, plus musings on nature vs. nurture, the notion (and possibility) of immortality and archetypal mad-scientists-vs.-noble-savages, all set against the lush backdrop of the Amazon jungle.

The scientists are the only people Pia knows. They praise her superiority even as they groom her to carry on their work and strive to keep her ignorant of the outside world.

But, like any good coming-of-age tale, the time comes when Pia is offered a glimpse into a different sort of future, and she rebels—though the consequences are far more dramatic, even deadly, than typical teenage turbulence.

Pia begins to question her own viewpoints, and her very existence, when she sneaks away from the compound and encounters Eio, a handsome young man who lives in a nearby village. As she gets to know Eio and his tribe, she is shocked to realize the world is much bigger than she’d realized—and perhaps the goings-on (and people) at Little Cam are not what they seem.

Khoury describes the jungle’s flora and fauna, its colors and scents, in colorful detail. That’s no small accomplishment, considering she had never been to the jungle when she wrote Origin. “The jungle has always fascinated me. When I had the original idea, I knew the jungle had to happen, I just didn’t know which; I had to do a lot of research to decide which one.”

And research she did, “probably two hours of research for every one hour of writing,” Khoury says. “The week I came up with the idea and started writing, I made my husband drive me to Barnes & Noble and we bought coffee-table books, folklore anthologies and video documentaries; Wikipedia was perpetually open. I learned a lot as I wrote, and I tried to research every little detail so it would be real to the readers.”

The novel’s exploration of the possible consequences of immortality wasn’t something the author needed to research. “It has always been of weight with me because of my faith and religion,” Khoury says. “You can’t get a more universal theme than mortality. We all think about it, and we all have to make our own decisions about what it means. Pia struggles with that.” (It’s fun to note, too, that, not unlike Eve biting that fateful apple, Pia eats fruit-flavored Skittles shortly before her first escape from Little Cam—something Khoury says, “I didn’t even think about!”)

The weight of others’ expectations is also something Khoury’s felt, and explores through her protagonist. “For me, I’m still kind of coming from Pia’s angle and dealing with the expectations of people,” she says. “When I have kids, I’ll be looking at it from the other angle. I do that a little bit now with my four younger sisters [she has a younger brother, too]. I think, I don’t agree, but I support you, and nothing’s gonna change how I love you.”

Speaking of love, Khoury says her husband and family are very excited about her becoming a full-fledged author (not least her Syrian grandfather, whose last name she is using in tribute to him).

“My family has been waiting for this as long as I have,” she says. “I’ve been telling them I was going to be an author since I was four years old. They’re my biggest cheerleaders.”

They’ll have lots to yell about in the coming months, for sure. And of course, there’s Khoury’s next book, which may be a companion to Origin, maybe not: “Anything could happen down the road,” she says. A fitting outlook for a newly minted author.

Publishing phenom Jessica Khoury has had a busy couple of years: In 2010, she graduated from college and got married. In 2011, she wrote a book (in about a month) that was snapped up by Penguin’s Razorbill imprint. This year, she finished revising the book,…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Jacqueline Kelly

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Jacqueline Kelly has had a mole, a badger, a rat and a toad in her head for 50 years. But not to worry—it wasn’t due to anything frightening or medically improbable. Rather, the four are the charming protagonists of The Wind in the Willows, one of Kelly’s lifelong favorite books.

Kelly, a 2010 Newbery Honoree for her first book, The Evolution of Calpurnia Tate, told BookPage in an interview from her Austin, Texas, home that she was eight years old when she first turned the pages of Kenneth Grahame’s classic tale (which was first published in England in 1908). “I was in bed with the flu, and [the book] immediately transported me to the riverbank,” she says. “I loved everything about it, and reread it over the years. The characters never went away.”

And now, she’s set them free in Return to the Willows, a charming sequel that’s faithful to the original book while adding creative touches of her own.

Some might suggest that Kelly’s got a lot of moxie for writing a sequel to a beloved classic—and adding new characters, to boot—but, she says, “It didn’t occur to me that people would think that. I’m just being a worshipful fan of the original, my favorite book when I was a child.” She is aware there are other sequels out there, and says, “When I started writing, I didn’t know about them, and was rather dismayed when I learned they existed. I made the decision I wasn’t going to read them. . . . I still haven’t.”

When she began to write her sequel, Kelly says it was because she “felt compelled to do it. The characters were being insistent!” Judging from the hilarious and heartwarming result, Kelly (and those characters) made the right decision. Return to the Willows is an engaging, imagination-stimulating read for longtime fans and first-time visitors to the River, Wild Wood and Toad Hall.

"I'm just being a worshipful fan of the original, my favorite book when I was a child."

The author’s adoration shines through in the book’s tone and rhythm; reading Grahame’s book, then Kelly’s, does feel like a continuation, rather than a re-interpretation. She attributes that to the sounds and words of her youth: “My childhood was in Canada, and kids there read more British-based literature than kids in the States do, so I heard that sort of language and tone at an early age. Plus, my family is from New Zealand. . . . It’s easy for me to hear an English accent in my head while I’m writing.”

For American readers who might be puzzled by phrases like “bib and tucker” or words like “tittle” (that’s “best clothing” and “little bit,” respectively), Kelly included footnotes. “I wrestled with it,” she recalls. “Do I keep the British terms? If I convert to American terms, wouldn’t the text look very strange? So I thought I could deal with it by using footnotes, and try to make them entertaining.”

And of course, as a devotee of the book (and author—she’s a member of the Kenneth Grahame Society), she carefully considered things like new technology and those new characters. “I did contemplate—for about two seconds!—giving them computers and cell phones. But I just couldn’t see it. I’m too old-fashioned to see these characters texting each other,” she says.

Kelly decided that new additions would serve the story well, so readers will meet Matilda, a lovely and clever rat, and young Humphrey, the intelligent (and adorable) nephew of Toad. “I thought Matilda needed to be added for contemporary girl readers,” Kelly says, “and Humphrey would be a good foil for Toad, who’s not so smart.”

Speaking of the irresponsible yet irresistible Toad, readers needn’t fret: He’s just as wacky and daring here as he was in Grahame’s original. In Kelly’s story, his new mode of delightful destruction is a hot-air balloon (which is, of course, not unrelated to his own propensity for gassing on). He also sustains a head injury that transforms him into a genius with a seat at Trinity College in Cambridge, where his smarts (and Kelly’s sly humor) know seemingly no bounds. He does the Sunday Times crossword in pen; publishes a scientific paper called “Jam Side Down: A Discourse on the Physics of Falling Toast”; and casually memorizes the score to Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore . . . which comes in handy when he serves as a virtuoso last-minute replacement for the female lead.

There are river excursions, giant explosions, swimming lessons and an all-out animal-on-animal war, too; adventures, friendships, dramatic plots and all sorts of excitement abound (not to mention references ranging from Austen to Shakespeare to a certain Disneyland ride). The striking realism of certain events was aided by consultations with Kelly’s husband, who attended Cambridge and has connections there—and with the explosives experts who work in the federal building in Austin where Kelly practices medicine part-time.

That’s right: Kelly went to medical school, then law school (she no longer practices), and then began to write when she was in her mid-40s. “I always wanted to be a writer, from the very beginning, and I took these long divagations along the way,” she says. “I’m very grateful now . . . this is how I want to spend my time.”

Thanks to Kelly, readers certainly will enjoy spending their time catching up on old friends and meeting new ones along the riverbank. Clint Young’s illustrations add much to the experience; his artwork is masterfully done, with detail, depth and plenty of emotion. Return to the Willows will inspire us to respect nature, be kind to our friends, be open to change, embrace hilarity . . . and perhaps take another, closer look at any furry or amphibious creatures we encounter.

Jacqueline Kelly has had a mole, a badger, a rat and a toad in her head for 50 years. But not to worry—it wasn’t due to anything frightening or medically improbable. Rather, the four are the charming protagonists of The Wind in the Willows, one of Kelly’s…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Clare Vanderpool

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

In both of Clare Vanderpool’s artfully written novels, the young protagonists’ fathers yank them out of the lives they’ve known and deposit them in unfamiliar surroundings, where they must make sense of the past and find their way in a strange new present.

But while Abilene (the main character in the 2011 Newbery Medal winner Moon Over Manifest) and 13-year-old Jack Baker of Navigating Early both narrate richly layered tales that explore memory, loss, discovery and redemption, their stories are in fact quite different.

Vanderpool says in an interview from her home in Wichita, Kansas, “Abilene has never lived in one place or been grounded in a community, and that’s what she’s sent to.” By contrast, “Jack was comfortable and grounded, and now he’s at the edge of the country without any bearings.”

Indeed, when Kansas-boy Jack sees the ocean for the first time, he throws up. A bumpy cargo-plane ride to the Maine coast contributed to his stomach upset, but his disorientation also stems from emotional upheaval: World War II has just ended, Jack’s mother has recently died, and his father has brought him east to attend a boys’ boarding school near his military post in Portsmouth. Although Jack can appreciate the salty air, the ocean waves are forbidding and the multi-hued sand reminds him of his beloved mother, who was like “sand that clings to your body, leaving its impression on your skin to remind you of where you’ve been and where you come from.”

Even as he grieves the loss of his mother and his home, Jack begins to explore his new surroundings, goes out for the crew team and becomes friends with a boy named Early Auden. Early is an intelligent, eccentric sort: He’s obsessed with the Appalachian brown bear and timber rattlesnake, plays Billie Holliday only when it rains, and he has excellent water-sports skills, too.

That bundle of attributes make Early irresistibly intriguing to Jack, and as the boys grow closer, Early reveals something even more fascinating: The numbers of pi have colors, and he can read in the numbers a dramatic and exciting story that’s going to help him find that brown bear—and his brother, a soldier who was lost in the war.

Jack listens to each installment of the adventures of Pi (the hero of Early’s tale), but is skeptical about the story, let alone the possibility of finding bear or brother. Even so, he joins Early on his quest: The two explore on land and sea along the Appalachian Trail, and encounter a range of unusual people with their own stories—some scary, some poignant, all of them mysteriously similar to the people and places in the tale of Pi’s journey.

Navigating Early is a complex story, to be sure, and it’s all the more satisfying for its poetic language and intimation that not everything has a logical explanation. Vanderpool herself is quite comfortable with the latter notion. “Jack’s mom introduces that idea to him . . . the way our paths cross, our lives intersect and collide,” she says. “They’re all things I’ve experienced in my own life. I know this story pushes magical realism just a tad, but I’m okay with that because, in my own life, there are amazing things that happen, coincidences and connections you would never expect.”

The novel’s exploration of the ways in which physical places can shape our emotions is also a theme that’s been central to Vanderpool’s experience. “That absolutely comes from me,” she says. “I’ve traveled a lot, and have lived in the same neighborhood my whole life, which I love. It’s very much part of my makeup.” She adds with a laugh, “When I was dating my husband, I joked with him and said, ‘Where you go, I go! Pick any house on these four streets.’” And so he did: They and their four children live in a house two blocks from Vanderpool’s childhood home.

Having her mother nearby is something Vanderpool enjoys, not least because the idea for Navigating Early was touched off by her mother’s description of a vivid dream about a young man who was an exceptionally talented pianist. “That got me thinking,” she says. “I thought it would be interesting to write about a younger character with some type of savant ability.”

She began to do research about savants, and about pi, which, she says, “is the be-all, end-all for people that are into [math]. . . . It has a magical, mystical quality.” A trip to Maine helped solidify the landscape in her mind. And then, Vanderpool says, Early made himself known: “At a certain point,” she explains, “you let go of the inspiration and research and the characters take over. . . . It might sound strange because they’re characters you’re making up, but it’s the only way I can describe it. You give them a chance to tell you who they are.”

Fortunately, Vanderpool was listening. In doing so, she has created a memorable story that is by turns poignant, funny and exciting—and reminds us not to rule out the possibility that there might be a bit of magic in our everyday lives.

In both of Clare Vanderpool’s artfully written novels, the young protagonists’ fathers yank them out of the lives they’ve known and deposit them in unfamiliar surroundings, where they must make sense of the past and find their way in a strange new present.

But while Abilene…

Fiction

Edward Kelsey Moore

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Entering midlife is often associated with trying something new, from skydiving to a new hair color to the ever-popular sports car. For debut novelist Edward Kelsey Moore—already an accomplished professional cellist and college professor—writing was that something new.

“I didn’t complete my first short story until after I turned 40,” Moore (who is now 52) tells BookPage from his home in Chicago, where he lives with his longtime partner. “It was one of those midlife things. I thought, I’m not going to be happy until I write. I wanted to all along, but had another creative outlet I really loved and focused on. Finally, I just said . . . I’ll enter the local NPR station’s yearly short-story contest, write one story, and that will fix the urge.”

But despite years of experience on stage and in a classroom, Moore wasn’t quite ready to put his writing out in front of people, and he let the deadline pass. Then came a twist of (or gentle nudge from) fate: He was hired by the NPR station, WBEZ, to play in a string quartet during the awards event for the very same short-story competition. “I was sitting there playing Mozart and being reminded that I chickened out,” Moore recalls. Sufficiently chastened, he entered the contest the following year—and won.

“That was the start of it all,” he says. Several more published short stories followed, and then, a novel: The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, published this month by Knopf. Moore says working with Knopf has been “a lovely surprise . . . and I have a lovely agent! What a wonderful position to be in.”

It’s a vantage point that’s enhanced by the passage of time: “When I was 25 or 30, I couldn’t have enjoyed this the way I am now. I would’ve been so self-conscious. But you get to a certain point where you can say, this is just good—you don’t have to qualify it or put any weirdness into it.”

That’s true of his cello playing, too, Moore says. “I was probably a better technician 25 years ago, but I didn’t allow myself to relax or take any sort of risks. . . . Now I have a lot more freedom emotionally, and knowledge the world won’t end if I make mistakes. Certainly if I’d set out to be a writer first, it would’ve brought the same anxiety. I took a long, long road to adulthood.”

The author’s current, more expansive approach to life inhabits every person and encounter—some quotidian, some dramatic, some madcap—in The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, set in fictional Plainview, Indiana, from the 1960s to the 2000s.

Via the 40-year friendship of Odette, Clarice and Barbara Jean (nicknamed “the Supremes” in their teens), Moore makes a convincing case for being open enough to take emotional risks, whether befriending people who see the world differently, speaking your mind even if it’s scary or daring to fall in love.

“I wanted to write about women who were like the women I knew, who were smart and interesting and not foolish.”

He also does an excellent job giving voice to a sizable array of characters, most of whom are women. Moore says he didn’t set out to write in the female voice and didn’t even realize it might be seen as unusual. “It wasn’t until Knopf bought the novel that anyone mentioned it. I simply never thought about it,” he says.

“Maybe if I weren’t a black man or a gay man I wouldn’t feel this way, but I spent a fair amount of my youth trying to get away from the notion that anybody should look at the world a certain way. I think once you let go of that, it becomes a lot easier to empathize with people and see there’s really not that much difference between what someone feels . . . whether it’s a person with 10 times as much money or another set of genitalia.”

Similarly, Moore says, “I wasn’t trying to make the book specific to a black experience, or anything other than who I thought these women were. When I first wrote it, they weren’t even all black—I didn’t think that was the most important thing about them, by any means.”

“That whole ‘strong black woman’ thing brings in a bunch of stereotypes I didn’t want to write about; it tends to conjure up this sassy, smart-talking TV reality-show woman,” he says of the trope that some find offensive. “It was very important to me that I not contribute to what I feel is often a popular culture that demeans women in general and black women in particular. I wanted to write about women who were like the women I knew, who were smart and interesting and not foolish.”

Moore has been lucky to know women like the Supremes. Odette enjoys her food, speaks her mind and is the de facto leader of the trio. Clarice leans toward superficial, but her friends draw out her inner empathy. And preternaturally beautiful Barbara Jean survived a difficult childhood and now struggles with new sorrow and long-held regret. The centerpiece of the novel is one year in the lives of the three friends, but flashbacks told from various points of view reveal mileposts along the women’s journeys, both individual and intertwined.

There’s also plenty of hilarity in The Supremes at Earl’s All-You-Can-Eat, whether in the guise of a faux psychic; an astoundingly hypocritical church deacon; a series of unfortunate events at an elaborate wedding; or a vegetarian dog (the only one in southern Indiana).

Throughout, everyone circles back to Earl’s, where Moore conjures up the events, sounds and scents of the diner with writerly ease. His charming, skillful evocation of the small-town life of Plainview and its cleverly crafted history will make readers curious about (or nostalgic for) Indiana, where Moore grew up and regularly visits.

Soon, though, he’ll be visiting other countries on an international book tour, where he’ll get practice stepping into the spotlight without his cello. “I was surprised at the feeling of nakedness in writing fiction. Every weird little thing coming out of your imagination, you have to own up to it. As a [cello] performer, you can blame Beethoven or the instrument; they serve as a shield.”

Ultimately, though, Moore says, “People are going to tell me what kind of book I’ve written, and that’s the way it should be. I wrote what I wanted to write, and what others think about it, what it means to them, is up to them.” Spoken like a true adult—and an author.

Entering midlife is often associated with trying something new, from skydiving to a new hair color to the ever-popular sports car. For debut novelist Edward Kelsey Moore—already an accomplished professional cellist and college professor—writing was that something new.

“I didn’t complete my first short story until…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Mary E. Pearson

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

A survey of Mary E. Pearson’s seven novels to date reveals an interesting trend. Namely, all of her protagonists are the same age: 17.

“That’s true! You’re the only one who’s noticed that and asked about it,” Pearson says in a call from her home in Carlsbad, California. “I just like that age. . . . You’re as old as you can be as a teenager and not considered an adult.”

Plus, she explains, “It might sound weird, but I feel like I had all of my adult sensibilities at 17, my world outlook. Hopefully I’ll always continue to change, and I have been changing, but I do feel like I was pretty much aware of the world then. I think the decisions we make at that age are adult decisions, and they last us a lifetime.”

That’s certainly true of Locke Jenkins, the 17-year-old at the heart of Fox Forever, the third and final installment of Pearson’s Jenna Fox Chronicles.

Readers first became aware of Locke in the first book, The Adoration of Jenna Fox, as one in a tight-knit trio of teens: Jenna, Locke and Kara. In that first volume, Jenna told her story, an astonishing, often disturbing tale—one in which her friends seemingly disappeared under tragic circumstances.

In book two, The Fox Inheritance, Locke recounted what had happened to him and Kara: Like Jenna, their minds were kept alive after a terrible car accident, their only physical form a couple of cubes sitting on a shelf. But unlike Jenna, who awoke after a year, Locke’s and Kara’s minds were kept in a terrifying limbo for 260 years. As they travel to a reunion with Jenna, the two must face a new reality: They’re 17, but also 277—and while their existence arguably represents a triumph of science, it’s also illegal.

Now, in Fox Forever, it’s time for Locke to strike out on his own. He wants to return to Boston, where he’s from, and search for any traces of his family. At Jenna’s urging, he’s adjusting to life as a young man who in many ways is the 17-year-old he appears to be, yet has endured things that have aged him well beyond most people. And most urgently, he needs to repay the help, or Favor, extended to him by an underground resistance group known as the Network . . . an endeavor that will be much more complicated than he anticipates.

The near-future world Pearson has created is carefully constructed and vividly depicted, from the Network to the intricate transportation system to the memorable Bots, who are programmed to be loyal but dare to have their own dreams, too.

Says Pearson, “I grew up watching ‘Star Trek’ and ‘Lost in Space,’ so the idea of something that is really like a robot but has much more humanity to it—this story gave me a chance to explore that. I’m always interested in exploring what makes us human, the differences between humans, is one person more human than another. . . .”

She adds, “Another thing I liked exploring, probably more than anything, is our relationships and how they feed and nurture us. [For some of the characters], there’s probably not any actual genetic connection after so many generations, but now they still need somebody to feel connected to this world. . . . I have to say, I cried like a baby when [certain key characters] met. I like it when a scene makes me cry—this was one of those instances where I felt like I was outside of myself and really watching it happen.”

Pearson also raises questions about science and technology, and whether the benefits of scientific advances outweigh the repercussions. It makes for a heady read, because it leads to larger questions about the effects our choices can have—not just now, but also rippling ahead through time in ways we can’t even imagine.

“I always love how science says one thing, and then a few years later, it’s ‘Maybe this is possible after all,’” Pearson says. “Science is kind of an art, too. There’s always something being discovered and unfolding, and that’s what makes it exciting.”

Pearson also enjoys writing about the near-ish future—just a few hundred years ahead—because some of the things she describes aren’t really that unlikely. “I did a lot of research, like with the colonization of Mars. Scientists are predicting it, and we’re already landing things on Mars, so it’s not so far-fetched that we’ll have people out there by then,” she says. But just in case, she’s glad that the futuristic setting means “No one can ever tell me if I was right or wrong!”

Clearly, her enthusiasm for scientific inquiry has struck a chord, to judge by all the letters she receives from science teachers. “A lot of them are using the Fox series as the literature in their science classrooms, which I think is pretty cool,” she says. “I do love exploring gray areas. The books don’t give answers, I hope, they just raise questions, and I think that’s why they’re using them.”

Pearson is certain, though, that regardless of technology or time period, “there are some things that never change, the things that truly matter.” That notion is physically embodied by the locations Pearson chose for Fox Forever, which begins in California and moves to Boston, where Locke returns for the bulk of the book’s goings-on involving the Network, numerous Bots, political intrigue and new friends and enemies. “It’s a fun thing in a futuristic book to have that old history. In The Adoration of Jenna Fox, the mission . . . in California terms, that’s old, a few hundred years. And that’s one of the things we always try to hold onto—our heritage. Since Boston is the birthplace of our country, it was a great place to have so much of Fox Forever take place.”

Bringing such a complex, thought-provoking, action-packed trilogy to a close was no small task, not least because Pearson initially had no intention of writing a series. In fact, she says, “There was a point in my life when I said I’d never write a series! I always wanted to try something new and challenging, but I realized that, after writing all different kinds of books, writing a series was a challenge.”

Pearson’s experience taking a story through three books and two narrators will smooth the way for her next endeavor: another series, The Remnant Trilogy. Although she can’t share too much about the series, she did reveal that it “explores various histories and how they contradict each other. . . . There’s definitely a romance, too, and it appears to take place in medieval times.”

If the Jenna Fox Chronicles are any indication, the new trilogy is sure to benefit from Pearson’s facility for world-building and character development, not to mention a willingness to embrace her own penchant for the far-out. And yes, for the 17-year-old protagonist—this time, a princess.

After all, she says, “People sometimes think of teenagers as some other kind of being, but they’re adults, just young ones. And ages are arbitrary. . . . Age doesn’t necessarily make you the more wise or knowledgeable person.” Wisely said.

A survey of Mary E. Pearson’s seven novels to date reveals an interesting trend. Namely, all of her protagonists are the same age: 17.

“That’s true! You’re the only one who’s noticed that and asked about it,” Pearson says in a call from her home in…

Children's & YAYA FictionYA

Sara Zarr

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

It’s safe to say that readers of all ages would benefit from pondering the big-picture questions Sara Zarr explores in The Lucy Variations: Are you obligated to “use” your talent, or is it all right to simply enjoy it? And what do you do when someone you love makes decisions you abhor?

Thanks to a family that pushes her toward achievement to the exclusion of all else, at age 13 piano prodigy Lucy Beck-Moreau found herself at a crossroads: She could keep buying into the compete-at-all-costs ethos, or just . . . quit. No more competition, no more pressure, no more piano. But after so many years of playing, a life devoid of piano isn’t one she can sustain.

That’s where Zarr introduces us to Lucy: She’s 16 now, a pariah in her own home with plenty of free time to explore her San Francisco hometown, make non-pianist friends and contemplate a future that’s no longer preordained. It’s a revelation to Lucy that there are options beyond the ones she’s been spoon-fed. Flashbacks to her 13th year reveal the circumstances that led her to quit, and in Zarr’s skillful hands, Lucy’s growing awareness becomes a delicious inevitability, as well as an object lesson for readers who aren’t quite comfortable living a life of supposed-tos but don’t know how to make changes.

Zarr herself grew up in a musical family; her parents were both accomplished musicians, and Zarr played clarinet through high school. But her parents never pushed her toward a career in music. In a phone call from Salt Lake City, where she lives with her husband and pet parakeet, she explains, “Lucy’s family couldn’t be more different from mine in that way. My mom was not ambitious, though she is extremely smart and talented. My late father lost his career as a musician and college professor because of his drinking. . . . There was a lot of pain around that. And my mom was just trying to survive. No one pressured me to do anything, and there was never any talk about what I wanted to do when I grew up.”

For a teenage piano prodigy, there is joy when the music stops.

Fortunately for fans of her work—four previous novels, including her debut, 2007 National Book Award finalist Story of a Girl—Zarr found her way to the writing career she believes she was meant to have. Now, with The Lucy Variations, Zarr says she wanted to try new things.

“It was a very different experience to write about a family so driven by tangible success and appearances. Usually I write close-to-middle-class or struggling-middle-class kinds of stories,” she explains. Creating characters with different concerns was a challenge the author welcomed. Also on Zarr’s to-do list: creating a story “about a relationship between a teen girl and an older man that wasn’t about abuse.” She’s done so with Lucy and Will, the charismatic young piano teacher who’s hired to teach Lucy’s younger brother Gus. Will, with his unapologetic appreciation of the beauty in life, becomes a catalyst for Lucy’s new outlook.

Zarr is aware that Lucy and Will’s relationship might make some readers uncomfortable, but she knows from experience that such friendships can be wonderful. “When I was a teen, I got involved in community theater and had a life in the world of adults in my own way. I felt like, I have a place in this world, people like me and respect me, expect me to do a good job, and treat me like an equal. That was really great for me, because I didn’t feel accepted and respected with my peers in that way.”

She adds, “Obviously there’s a line where it is something terrible, and people should be concerned, but there’s a whole range of appropriate behavior and gray area. . . . There is so much fear around it, and I don’t think it’s necessary.”

Ultimately, facing fear in its many forms is at the heart of The Lucy Variations. Because of Lucy’s crisis-induced life changes, her family and friends experience uncertainty, too. Some of them are unwilling to stray from their expected paths; after all, change and choices can be scary, especially when the people around you want to maintain the status quo.

Not unlike her protagonist, the author says she’s thinking about a change in her life. “This is my midlife crisis disguised in this book about Lucy,” Zarr says with a laugh. “I’m definitely at the point of burnout. . . . I intentionally got to the point where I don’t have any pending things that I owe anyone, and I’ll be in that space for a while before I do whatever I’m going to do next.”

Before her hiatus began, Zarr did co-write a novel with Tara Altebrando: Roomies, due out in the fall. “It felt super-easy and fun—it was a complete delight,” she says. And despite her plans to take some time off, Zarr also feels that her writerly life so far has been delightful: “My whole career has been a big surprise—I’m really grateful. . . . It’s a great place to be.” Her readers certainly hope it’s a place she’ll return to when the time is right.

It’s safe to say that readers of all ages would benefit from pondering the big-picture questions Sara Zarr explores in The Lucy Variations: Are you obligated to “use” your talent, or is it all right to simply enjoy it? And what do you do when…

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Maile Meloy

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Maile Meloy’s middle grade books mix adventure with historical fiction, scientific curiosity and a hefty dose of thrilling, mysterious magic. They also feature extensive artwork that helps to tell the story, so Meloy’s fans won’t be surprised to learn that she considers herself a visual thinker.

In fact, Meloy says in a call from her Los Angeles home, it was her habit of using clip art to organize chapters that sparked the idea for publishing the books as illustrated novels. Her middle grade debut, The Apothecary, came about after two screenwriter friends told her their idea for “a movie about a magical apothecary, set during the Cold War.” They eventually decided it should be done as a novel first, with Meloy as the writer. “They provided a beginning and some general ideas. It was fantastic to have that push. . . . And part of the reason why I used art to organize it was because they’re such visual thinkers, too. Over time, it became a great way to make sure I had the right focus, so I’d make sure I had a title and image to go with each chapter.”

The illustrations in her books certainly enhance the story, such as when she wants to “build suspense, or illustrate a samovar or Samoyed dog.” Ian Schoenherr’s artwork is detailed and vibrant, achieving whimsy without being cutesy. Even better, his line work evokes depth and darkness when something scary or sad looms, and it’s just plain fun to turn a page and encounter, say, giant frogs’ eyes calmly contemplating the reader.

The magic in her books, of course, lends itself well to fantastical artwork, and it also provides her characters with the adventure of their lives. After the events of The Apothecary, Janie, Benjamin and Pip have been scattered to the far corners of the world at the beginning of The Apprentices. The year is 1954, two years since they’ve all been together. They’re all dealing with often exciting, sometimes disturbing new realities: Janie has returned to America, where she’s diving into the intellectual challenges at a New England boarding school . . . but a jealous roommate and her sinister father just might upend everything. Benjamin and his father are working together in the midst of war in the Vietnam jungle, and Pip is swanning about Europe enjoying his new TV-star status.

Despite their geographical separation (and lots of hazy memories), they find new, strange ways to communicate and eventually start making their way back to each other as they become embroiled in a race against time to maintain world peace (and perhaps foil a few bad guys along the way). Readers will pick up some fascinating historical information, too, and they’ll be intrigued to encounter kids who sometimes know more than adults, scientists who believe in magic and birds that might not be just birds.

Meloy, who has also published four books for adults, all critically lauded, says she didn’t have to make a concerted effort to change her writing for younger readers. “I did say to myself at one point, I have the Invasion of Nanking in a children’s book—what am I doing?” she says with a laugh. “But I feel like kids do deal with big issues, so that was really the only thing where I decided to tone down the description a bit.” She explains that Janie, who narrates the books, “is writing as an adult, and everything is how she experienced it at 14, so that determined the register, and she can explain things she knows now but didn’t know at 14. Plus, she’s an intelligent kid.”

This isn’t the first time Meloy has worked on stories for children. After graduating from Harvard in the mid-1990s, she moved out to L.A. and worked in what she describes as a “funny little corner of Disney, where they did direct-to-DVD animation of things like sequels to big movies, and fairy-tale-based projects. It was great storytelling training . . . really smart people telling universal stories about love and loss and home.”

Considering her successful career thus far, it’s safe to say she took that training to heart. The Apothecary and The Apprentices have at their heart a group of characters that readers care deeply about, judging by the wonderful letters Meloy’s young fans send her. She says, “You don’t get that when writing books for adults. You don’t get letters with illustrations in the margins, or pleas for a sequel. So that’s really fun.”

Meloy also loves that the covers for both books are gender neutral. “When writing novels for grown-ups, I’d get a cover design and say that no guy will ever pick up this book, and they’d say men don’t read novels. It made me so sad,”she recalls. “With these books, they’re told by a girl, boys have a major part in it, they’re adventures. . . . I’ve really found a lot of the kids that connect to it are boys.” Mother-daughter book groups are particular fans, too.

Boys, girls, young, old: If readers loved The Apothecary, they’ll be thrilled to get their hands on The Apprentices—and to learn that Meloy is now writing a third book about Janie and her cohorts. We can’t share too many details, but she did reveal that Book 3 begins soon after Book 2, and there will be plenty of magic. Let the anticipation begin!

Maile Meloy’s middle grade books mix adventure with historical fiction, scientific curiosity and a hefty dose of thrilling, mysterious magic. They also feature extensive artwork that helps to tell the story, so Meloy’s fans won’t be surprised to learn that she considers herself a visual…

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