Linda M. Castellitto

Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Sharon M. Draper

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Thanks to a smart-alecky student who sat in the back row of her classroom, Sharon M. Draper went from teacher to award-winning writer. Of course, there were other factors: a lifelong love of reading, plus years of hard work and outstanding scholarship, for starters.

But as Draper tells BookPage from her Cincinnati home, that student’s challenge—“Why don’t you write something?”—led her to an entirely new career.

Further inspired after winning an Ebony magazine short-story contest and receiving a lovely letter from author Alex Haley, Draper began writing longhand while she served as a study-hall monitor. “I got 24 rejection letters in a row,” she recalls. “And the very last letter was a ‘yes’ from Simon & Schuster.”

It’s been 20 years and 25 books since that yes for 1994’s Tears of a Tiger, which won Draper her first Coretta Scott King Award. Since then, her accolades have been many: National Teacher of the Year, five-time Coretta Scott King Award winner and New York Times best-selling author. She’s been honored at the White House no fewer than six times.

Draper, who retired from teaching in 2000 to write full time and to speak at schools, book festivals and other events, takes readers to 1932 North Carolina in her new novel, Stella by Starlight.

Ten-year-old Stella, her parents and her brother Jojo live in Bumblebee, a tiny town united by hardscrabble life in the Jim Crow South. There’s love and laughter, but, Stella observes, “Every Negro family in Bumblebee knew the unwritten rules—they had to take care of their own problems and take care of one another. Help from the white community was neither expected nor considered. It was as it always had been.”

One night, Stella and Jojo realize it’s not just the bright stars that are casting a glow outside; the Ku Klux Klan is burning a wooden cross, sending an eerie red light flickering through the trees. Draper skillfully builds suspense around this frightening event and subsequent unrest which, while handled peacefully by the black community, is still dangerous to them and the few white townspeople who aren’t racist. Even a visit to the candy store is layered with risk and tension. Draper offers comic relief through schoolhouse scenes and an accidentally hilarious school play.

Although Stella by Starlight is fiction, Draper drew inspiration from her own family’s story. “The timing falls within my father’s childhood, but I wanted the main character to be based roughly on my grandmother . . . [who] used to go outside at night and write in her journal. All of them were lost except one; she gave it to my father just before she passed away. He gave it to me and said, ‘I want you to write my mother’s story.’ ”

And so, like Draper’s grandmother, Stella is bright and hungry to learn. She asks lots of questions, papers her walls with newspaper articles and eagerly listens while the grown-ups talk—which Draper loved to do during her own childhood visits to North Carolina.

“Sitting on the front porch at my grandmother’s, I wasn’t taking notes to write a book as a 10-year-old, but I was absorbing things about these people,” Draper says. “Everybody was different at night. They worked all day in the fields, no cushy office jobs. At night, they were telling stories, relaxed, and could be themselves. . . . When it came time to write the book, the rhythms of their voices were what started it and triggered my memories.”

Draper is curious to see how Stella by Starlight resonates with young readers. “I have grandchildren this age, and they really don’t think much beyond yesterday,” she says. “To go way back and ask them to care about a child who lived in 1932 is asking them to take a journey.”

If anyone can get kids to take that journey, Draper can. Through Stella’s eyes, readers learn about societal and political issues from 1932 that, alas, are still relevant today.

Universal themes, important lessons, plus some fun—it’s very teacherly, isn’t it? That’s inevitable, as being a teacher is part of Draper’s identity: “Wherever I go, I teach . . . not from a script, not by rote. I speak from the heart.”

 

This article was originally published in the January 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Thanks to a smart-alecky student who sat in the back row of her classroom, Sharon M. Draper went from teacher to award-winning writer. Of course, there were other factors: a lifelong love of reading, plus years of hard work and outstanding scholarship, for starters.
FictionWomen's Fiction

Susan Mallery

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Susan Mallery is a sparkling conversationalist: She’s funny, smart and easy to talk to about all manner of topics, from her writing career to dog breeds to her favorite eyeshadow brand (it’s Laura Geller).

That accessible quality is reflected in her books: Mallery has a talent for building vivid fictional worlds, creating characters we can relate to and skillfully depicting the highs, lows and occasional weirdness of relationships—whether between friends, lovers, co-workers, family members or even owners and pets.

Her ability to connect with readers has won Mallery legions of fans around the world. She has sold more than 23 million books, with more than 50 of her novels landing a place on bestseller lists for a combined 500 weeks.

Now in the third decade of her career, she has written more than 100 novels, ranging from spicy romances featuring sheiks and cowboys to more recent women’s fiction set in beach communities with dazzling scenery and small-town intrigue.

Fans of Mallery’s best-selling Blackberry Island books will be excited about her new series, which debuts with The Girls of Mischief Bay, set in a coastal community in Los Angeles County. Three friends—30ish Nicole, 40ish Shannon and 50ish Pam—find themselves at turning points in their lives, whether they want to be there or not.

Nicole was happy with her husband Eric, young son Tyler and her Pilates business, until Eric quit his job to work on a screenplay without discussing it with her first. She struggles with resentment and uncertainty, and tries to maintain hope for the future of her marriage.

Meanwhile, Shannon is proud of her successful career in finance, but wishes she could meet a man who’d appreciate, rather than be threatened by, her work. Adam is an excellent prospect: He’s smart, determined to learn from mistakes he made in his first marriage and has two cute kids. But will conflicts about stepparenting derail them?

And then there’s Pam, who wants to shake things up a bit. She’s happily married to John, has a good relationship with her adult children, and her dog Lulu is an adorable sidekick. But she wants more . . . or different . . . or something. Just when she starts to feel re-energized, something terrible happens—and she has to figure things out all over again.

What these women are dealing with is the stuff of life, and that’s what Mallery likes about writing both women’s fiction and romance
—the kinds of relationships she can create, the topics she can tackle and the chance to do new kinds of stories.

“I’m really lucky because I get to do both. It keeps writing fresh for me, and it’s fun. I’m actually plotting the next book right now,” she says during a call to her Seattle home, where she lives with her husband and their three pets (a toy poodle and two ragdoll cats). “I’ve written three pages, am working on characters—only 547 pages to go! By the time I hit 500 I’ll be desperate to return to Fool’s Gold,” one of her wildly popular romance series, “and so ready for boy meets girl.”

Romantics need not fret; when Mallery writes a women’s fiction book, “one storyline is always straight romance. In The Girls of Mischief Bay, it was Shannon.” And while there’s certainly sex happening in the lives of the Mischief Bay characters, more is left to the imagination in this and Mallery’s other women’s fiction. Overall, though, she says with a laugh, “It’s the real miracle of my career that, even after I’ve done so many books, I still want to write about sex.”

She’s been writing about sex and love in its various guises since 1992, when her first book, Frontier Flame, was published—right after she graduated from college with an accounting degree. She’d been an avid romance reader since her teen years, and when she saw a notice for an adult education course on romance writing a few months before graduation, it called to her. “I was used to doing assignments for college, so I figured I should write a book . . . and then I realized that’s what I wanted to do.”

And do it she has: She publishes four or five books a year, does readings and blog-tour interviews and interacts with fans on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, Mallery says, social media has become integral to the detailed worldbuilding she does for each series.

Visitors to the author’s website, susanmallery.com, will find recipes from the restaurants of Mischief Bay, along with a map of the town and a list of clever business names, like Chinese restaurant Wok’s Up and the Strung Out Kite Shop.

“All the businesses in Mischief Bay have been named by Facebook fans, and some are hysterically funny,” Mallery says. “I hope it’s a fun little diversion for [readers].

“Facebook, for me, is extraordinarily fun,” she says. “We do surveys or ask questions and get a lot of feedback. . . . Even if it’s not what I want to hear, it’s really nice to know what people are thinking.”

That’s a lot of information to manage and cross-check, whether ensuring consistency in Mischief Bay’s locations and storylines, or in the other books and series Mallery has in play at any given time.

Might her accounting background help with that? “Managing that much work does require a skill set,” she says. “Being organized and breaking a project down really does make a huge difference. I simply couldn’t do the volume I do if I wasn’t able to, in essence, be a project manager.”

And of course, she says, “I enjoy creating relationships and exploring friendship and throwing in an element of life that sends characters down a path they didn’t anticipate.

“It’s interesting to me, and I do get to giggle through my day. I’m very, very lucky. I love what I do.”

This article was originally published in the March 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Susan Mallery is a sparkling conversationalist: She’s funny, smart and easy to talk to about all manner of topics, from her writing career to dog breeds to her favorite eyeshadow brand (it’s Laura Geller).
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Cynthia Rylant

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

It’s been 20 years since Cynthia Rylant’s beloved middle grade novel Gooseberry Park introduced the world to Stumpy the squirrel and her quirky, clever, community-minded friends. Now, the furry and feathered bunch is back in Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan, and readers will delight in discovering that the Gooseberrians are as adorable, smart and resourceful as ever.

Teamwork and lots of laughs help solve a water shortage in Gooseberry Park.

The park is still a peaceful, beautiful place, too. As Gwendolyn the hermit crab observes, “There was a stillness to Gooseberry Park that is rare in this world. It seemed that every tree, every flower and bird and creature, had taken a deep breath and settled in.”

Despite the lovely qualities of the characters and place she’d created, Rylant hadn’t been particularly keen on writing another Gooseberry Park novel. She explains to BookPage via email from her home in Portland, Oregon, “Animal fantasy is harder for me. My imagination is not really very good. . . . So even though I wished I could write a second story, I wouldn’t try, sure I couldn’t make it happen.”

It must be noted that in the intervening years since Gooseberry Park, the Newbery Award- and Caldecott Honor-winning author was busy writing many, many other books, including entries in her Henry and Mudge series, seven other series and numerous standalone titles.

And then, one day, the characters pushed aside Rylant’s doubts and demanded another outing. “All I know is that Kona and Gwendolyn and all the rest of the gang came back. I went to a coffee shop to read the New York Times, and before I finished page one, suddenly I was fishing my little notebook out of my purse, and I wrote the entire first chapter without stopping. No editing. No pausing. What I wrote is what is in the book. It’s inspiration, and it just has its own calendar.”

She adds, “I didn’t know what the book would be about exactly, just a water shortage. I like the characters to be able to do brave and noble things, so I give them weather disasters.”

Everyone at Gooseberry Park rises to the occasion, working diligently to craft and implement the titular Master Plan to bring water to everyone in the drought–bedeviled park. First, Gwendolyn and Kona (a black Labrador retriever) realize they need their neighbor, a genius crow named Herman, to help them figure out the mathematical aspects of their ambitious strategy.

Herman agrees to join the cause (thank goodness he likes a challenge). Next, they need to recruit a few more animals, gather 20 packs of chewing gum and corral 200 teamwork-averse owls. Good thing Murray the bat’s long-lost brother is coming to town; he’s super-aggravating to Murray (who copes by using his “toesies” to shove raisins in his mouth even as he complains to his friends), but he’s also got the gift of gab—just the thing to get those owls to work together, even for a little while.

And yes, the book is as funny, even funnier, than it sounds here. Rylant’s gift for sly yet sweet humor is on every page, whether describing Herman’s learned family of crows (“At suppertime . . . every member . . . ate with a book in one foot”) or Kona’s wandering thoughts during a serious discussion about the need for water (“For a moment he wished he were someone else. Maybe one of those dogs on a surfboard in Hawaii.”).

As with Gooseberry Park, Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan will simultaneously entertain and teach readers about the relationship between human actions and consequences for our earth, and inspire them to look at animals with a more imaginative eye.

The illustrations by Arthur Howard contribute to that cause and are wonderfully suited to Rylant’s prose. His portraits are evocative: Augustina the owl looks thoughtful, a bit skeptical and ultimately, er, unflappable. Howard’s action-shot drawings are a joy to behold as well: pictures of animals solving problems, cooking with The Zen of Stir-Fry cookbook and relaxing, as in the hilarious image of Gwendolyn giving Murray a soothing Reiki massage in the warm glow of a single candle.

That perfect pairing of words and pictures is no surprise. Rylant and Howard have worked together for decades. The author says, “He and I have still never met. We did our first Mr. Putter and Tabby book back in the 1990s. . . . Arthur has been a part of my life ever since. I think he and I have the same child inside us.” In fact, she says, “I don’t tell him what to draw. Arthur is really a genius (just like Herman).”

Speaking of Herman, Rylant says that while much of the book came to her as she wrote, there was one sticking point: “The hardest part for both Arthur and me was trying to figure out Herman’s mathematical calculations. We drove ourselves crazy counting seconds and minutes and making sure the clocks had the right time in the drawings. Our editor also. She even called in her math-teacher husband to double-check our numbers.”

Headaches aside, she says, “We had a really good time with all the work, because we all really love the characters. They are part of us. They are our better selves.”

That respect and appreciation for nature and its creatures is palpable in Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan, in the way the characters communicate, accept each other’s differences (not without a little teasing, of course) and work to ensure a healthy, safe environment.

Here’s hoping Rylant’s latest inspires her readers, young and not-as-young, to enjoy and care for their own version of Gooseberry Park.

 

This article was originally published in the May 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

It’s been 20 years since Cynthia Rylant’s beloved middle grade novel Gooseberry Park introduced the world to Stumpy the squirrel and her quirky, clever, community-minded friends. Now, the furry and feathered bunch is back in Gooseberry Park and the Master Plan, and readers will delight in discovering that the Gooseberrians are as adorable, smart and resourceful as ever.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Cassie Beasley

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

When we reach author Cassie Beasley at her family’s home in rural Georgia, it’s 50 days until the release of her debut, Circus Mirandus . . . not that she’s counting.

Oh, let’s not be silly—of course she’s counting! On a huge calendar hanging on the wall: “I mark off the days and get more and more excited until I feel like I’m about to burst!” Beasley says.

Too late: Beasley has already burst onto the children’s publishing scene. Her magical tale for middle grade readers sold to Dial after a five-publisher bidding war, and a Hollywood production company has pre-emptively purchased film and TV rights.

“It’s been a whirlwind, and so much fun—everything that happens is a revelation!” Beasley says. It’s also the culmination of steady progress along a path to authordom that began in childhood. 

“I loved books from a very early age and read everything I could get my hands on,” Beasley says. “But it took me a while to make the connection that I didn’t have to just read books, I could also write books.”

Beasley figured this out in high school, which led to her choosing an undergraduate writing program at nearby Georgia Southern University, followed by getting her MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts, where she wrote the first draft of Circus Mirandus.

“Writing that first draft was very exciting and fun and all so new. . . . I loved it, loved it, loved it,” she says. “Then came the years of revision! That’s where the work comes in. But it can be really exciting, too, seeing it getting better as you progress. It’s so rewarding, now that it’s done, to see how far it’s come.”

All that work was certainly worth it. Circus Mirandus is an engaging, innovative tale that balances fantastical goings-on with an exploration of love, loss, friendship and the value of being open to the unexplainable. The latter has been part of Beasley’s mental makeup from an early age. 

“I always gravitated toward fantasy novels,” she explains. “It’s probably my parents’ fault—they had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves with fantasy books, so I was always imagining I could go to Narnia or Hogwarts. Even when I try to write contemporary books, there’s always some magic because I can’t help myself.”

Ten-year-old Micah Tuttle is wide open to magical thinking, thanks to the stories Grandpa Ephraim (who has cared for Micah since his parents died) tells him about the amazing, magical Circus Mirandus. There are talking animals, invisible tigers and otherworldly performers—not least The Man Who Bends Light, a magician who transports his audiences to places and times they can only dream or imagine.

When Grandpa falls ill and his sister, the awful Great-Aunt Gertrudis, comes to stay, she won’t allow them to talk about the Circus . . . or spend much time together at all. But Micah sneaks in to see Grandpa, and that’s when he learns something astonishing: Circus Mirandus is real! And Grandpa has written a letter to the Lightbender, because the magician owes him a miracle.

As if finding out magic is real and having a sick grandpa and a mean great-aunt isn’t stressful enough, Micah also has an important project due at school—and his partner, the super-smart Jenny Mendoza, is not going to be pleased when she finds out he hasn’t finished his part yet. 

Micah wracks his brain to come up with an idea and decides to make an Incan quipu, a series of intricate knots that represent numbers, words and other information. It’s somewhat of a natural choice for Micah: “Grandpa Ephraim liked to say that Tuttles and knots went together like toast and cheese.”

It’s also a somewhat unusual story choice, in that knot tying is a bit of a lost art (and skill). Beasley was fascinated to learn about quipus in sixth grade, and the idea resurfaced as she wrote Circus Mirandus. “I like that knot tying’s a physical thing and not a super-powerful talent, so it’s subtle, in a way.” 

And it’s a recurring element that showcases Beasley’s gift for conveying detail and sentiment in unexpected ways, whether Micah is contemplating a classmate (“A Nathan Borgle knot would be big and sturdy and not too good-looking”) or creating a harness for an airborne adventure. 

That adventure is just one of many as Micah and Jenny team up to find the Circus and convince the Lightbender to give Grandpa his miracle—all while attempting to keep the grown-ups none the wiser (and to get their schoolwork done on time).

Circus Mirandus is an exciting and entertaining read, rife with inventive surprises, stories from the past and shiny hopes for the future, feats of derring-do and much more. There’s plenty of humor, too—from science-loving Jenny’s initial resistance to the Circus (“You must have a wonderful team of geneticists working with you to create bioluminescent bush babies”) to a wallaby who burps the Greek alphabet to nearly everything done or uttered by Chintzy the tart-tongued messenger-parrot.

It’s also an excellent testament to the upside of believing in magic. After all, as Grandpa Ephraim tells Micah, “Once in a while, it’s good to be ridiculous and amazing.”

Words to live by. And—especially if you’re Beasley, who will soon be on the road sharing the Circus Mirandus magic—it’s probably a good idea to practice your half hitches and your square knots, too

When we reach author Cassie Beasley at her family’s home in rural Georgia, it’s 50 days until the release of her debut, Circus Mirandus . . . not that she’s counting.
YA FictionYAFantasy

Daniel José Older

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

For 10 years, Daniel José Older worked as an EMT in Brooklyn, and he blogged each day about what he’d witnessed the night before: tragedy and joy, blood and bandages, dead people and living people—and people who hovered somewhere in between, their fates as yet undecided.

“It’s part of how I became a writer,” he says during a call to his home. “It’s the roots of my fiction. It helped me just tell the f__king story. That became my motto as I went on to become a writer and realized it’s so easy to get caught up in head games.”

His motto worked, and write he did. He left his ambulance-based career in 2013 and has published three books in the last three years: 2012’s Salsa Nocturna, a collection of noir ghost stories; Half-Resurrection Blues, the first book in the Bone Street Rumba urban fantasy series, which debuted in January; and now his new YA urban fantasy, Shadowshaper.

It makes sense that this Boston-to-Brooklyn transplant who’s undergone a medic-to-author metamorphosis could so capably and creatively write a story about the transformation of teenager Sierra Santiago, who herself undergoes some major life changes and astonishing shifts in perspective right after school lets out for the summer. 

In fact, Sierra goes from newbie muralist to spirit wrangler in a matter of days—and she’s surprisingly adept at working with both paint and dearly departed ancestors. But why isn’t her brother surprised by this? Just what has her family been keeping from her? And what does her abuelo, speech strained by his recent stroke, mean when he warns her about “shadowshapers”?

The notion of spirits among us, of people who may not be alive but aren’t quite dead, is something Older has considered a lot in his own life, not least because, like Sierra, he’s Latino and accustomed to “the idea of history being present with us.”

One day, when Sierra is up on scaffolding, painting a mural on an abandoned building, she sees that a face in another nearby mural has shed a single real tear. She’s weirded out, but she doesn’t panic and fall off the scaffolding, which might be the reaction of someone less spirit-friendly. And when a creepy zombie-esque guy crashes the first party of summer and seems to know her by name, she’s scared—but also determined to find out what’s going on, and fast.

 “Sierra walks in both worlds, and she has to get used to that,” Older says. “[For anyone who] grew up Latino, they probably had some ghosts around. So it’s not that big a shock to her. . . . She gets through that pretty quickly because she’s already been preparing for that moment, in a way.”

Five years ago, Older was initiated into the Lucumí (also known as Santería) priesthood. “It was an intense process,” he says. “Shadowshaper, which I wrote in 2009, became a totally different book when I rewrote it that initiation year. . . . [My religion plays a] huge part in my understanding of spirituality . . . [and] of spirits and ancestors being part of daily life.”

"If death wants to win, it will win. And that’s also not necessarily the worst-case scenario.”

Harking back to his time as an EMT, he adds, “As a paramedic, you’re walking on the line between life and death constantly. It takes some of the freakiness out of it because it’s a regular occurrence, and there’s also more respect because if death wants to win, it will win. And that’s also not necessarily the worst-case scenario.”

These concepts come forward, then drop back, then surge forward again in the pages of Shadow-shaper, as Sierra’s understanding and fear grow apace. She roams from the subway to the Columbia University library, Bed-Stuy to Coney Island, dank basements to dark beaches, in her attempts to unravel the history and mystery of the shadowshapers. In addition to everything else, her neighborhood is rapidly gentrifying and everyone’s feeling unsettled; her awful aunt won’t stop spouting racist nonsense; and her handsome new artist friend doesn’t seem unfamiliar with the shadowshaper concept.

Older’s Brooklyn is beautiful and dangerous and busy and ever-changing; his love for his adopted hometown is evident. His characters are friends with people their age, older and younger; they speak different languages and have different backgrounds; their families are sometimes loving, sometimes not. It’s a refreshing (and, to anyone who’s lived in Brooklyn or a place like it, realistic) mix of viewpoints and ways of moving through life, for better or worse.

That ability to share his Brooklyn—to tell it like he sees it—has been cathartic for Older, though he’s far from finished. “So many black women on Twitter [saw the cover of Shadowshaper and said], ‘That’s me!’ It’s so powerful, because urban fantasy has failed people of color in general as far as representation goes, so for that to happen, it really moves me,” he says.

“We [authors of color] all want to be picked up by a big publisher but fear the corruption of our voices, the clipping of our wings. It’s a story heard over and over—not an idle fantasy or fear, but what has historically happened in publishing. I went in prepared and was pleasantly surprised. Both houses I work with, the editors are open, accountable, honest, admit things they don’t know. All I—all we—ask is that we work with people who will hear us out, trust our voice. . . . I’ve been really blessed to find the people I have found. That’s the miracle.”

For readers who’ve long been hoping to see themselves represented on a book cover or in its pages, Shadowshaper may well feel a bit miraculous. Older makes the historical elements seem as cool as the artistic ones, but there are plenty of scary and exciting action sequences as well—not to mention hilarity (see: a dog named Cojones). 

And ultimately, the most powerful presence in Shadowshaper is the Puerto Rican teenager Sierra. There are no wizened, white-bearded wizards here. Older says, “I think most people will be excited to have a Latina heroine running around doing magic stuff.”

 

This article was originally published in the July 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

For 10 years, Daniel José Older worked as an EMT in Brooklyn, and he blogged each day about what he’d witnessed the night before: tragedy and joy, blood and bandages, dead people and living people—and people who hovered somewhere in between, their fates as yet undecided.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Rebecca Stead

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Some may think of New York City’s Upper West Side as “Seinfeld” stomping grounds, but fans of Rebecca Stead know better: These apartments, shops and streets are where Stead does her own stomping—and where the characters in her critically lauded middle grade novels live.

While Stead’s first novel, 2007’s First Light, was set on the quite different island of Greenland, her three subsequent books are set in New York City past and present: 2010 Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me takes place in Stead’s childhood neighborhood; and Liar and Spy explores Brooklyn. Stead’s new book, Goodbye Stranger, which takes place 10 blocks from where the author grew up, gives readers a window into living one’s formative years in a city that’s both a world-famous object of fantasy and home to lots of regular people doing regular stuff.

“As soon as I started writing about childhood,” Stead tells BookPage during a call to her home, “it was inevitable the characters were going to end up in New York, because that’s where I’ve always been. It’s weird to live in the same neighborhood in New York City for so long. Things change so much.”

"A lot of girls feel fantastic about the way they look at this age, and they should. It’s not something kids should have to deny."

She adds, “Every once in a while I have a moment: For a second, walking on Amsterdam Avenue, it feels like my childhood. It lasts about six seconds, three steps—it can be something I see or hear, music, people playing dominoes—and I think about how it was . . . and then it’s gone.” 

But her memories, her touchstones, do wend their way into her fiction: “Somehow, it’s all feeding me.”

Just as the city itself is both glittery and dun-colored, modern and historic—depending on the perspective—the characters in Goodbye Stranger are figuring out who they really are as well. They consider how others see them versus what they feel inside and ponder grand-scale existential questions, too.

For seventh-grader Bridget Barsamian (you can call her “Bridge”), the latter sort are front of mind. They have been since she survived being hit by a car at age 8 and a nurse commented, “You must have been put on this earth for a reason, little girl, to have survived.”

In the intervening years, Bridge hasn’t figured out that reason. Lately it doesn’t help that she’s been getting homework assignments like, “Answer the question, ‘What is love?’ ” That’s heady stuff for anyone, let alone someone who’s negotiating the oh-so-challenging middle school years, rife with physical and emotional changes, odd behavior from longtime friends and a tentative new friendship with a boy named Sherm.

And sure, books have come before that have trod these roads—and books will come after—but Stead’s approach is a moving blend of present-day and historic, romantic love and familial love, deep questions and just-for-fun pursuits like sock buns and a hilariously intense competition between Bridge’s brother and his frenemy.

It therefore follows that Stead likes “to read books that are a little challenging or complicated, or feel off-balance a little bit. For me, that’s a great pleasure of reading, slowly doing the reader’s work of putting the story together and building an understanding of what’s happening. It’s important to me as a reader, so I always think about that when I’m writing.”

To wit, Goodbye Stranger is told from three distinct points of view: Bridge, Sherm and an anonymous narrator whose identity is slowly, tantalizingly revealed. “I like the idea of the reader synthesizing the character over time,” says Stead. “Hopefully it creates a little bit of a moment for the reader, because that’s how people are—so different internally from how we present.”

That issue is also explored through the characters’ texting, sharing and judging of photos and the supposed motives therein. Bodily autonomy figures in, via the question of whether it’s perfectly healthy for girls to be happy about how they look—or if they should feel abashed at any sense of pride. 

“There are a lot of different questions around this time of life, and it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of girls feel fantastic about the way they look at this age, and they should. It’s not something kids should have to deny. It’s a complex issue.

“Also, the level of control . . . [is] lost because there are so many images online . . . but at the same time, you can really decide how you will present yourself. And people can pull up your page and study it for an hour, forward it or link to it.”

But even as Bridge juggles her friend Emily’s texting habits, a new distance from their friend Tabitha and an unexpected affinity for the Tech Crew (which is cool because it’s a crew, not a club), ancient history looms in interesting ways, from the car accident’s continued presence in Bridge’s thoughts to Sherm questioning whether the Apollo 11 moon landing was real. 

About that: Stead says, “I’m entertained by the fact people deny that it happened. The whole question of, what do we really know?”

Readers of Goodbye Stranger will know that, as always, the author has a keen eye for and an empathetic take on what it’s like to be a middle-schooler—and what it’s like to be a thoughtful kid like Bridge. “I think it’s an incredible time of life, and I have such enormous respect for kids that age. They’re really deep.”

Stead adds, “My memory of that age is just full of existential questions about how the world worked. I don’t think I was special—kids really are asking a lot of deep questions about themselves, how other people see them, who other people really are. It’s an incredible widening and explosion internally and intellectually. . . . That’s why I write for younger kids. That, for me, was a really incredibly interesting, fruitful time of life.”

 

This article was originally published in the August 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Some may think of New York City’s Upper West Side as “Seinfeld” stomping grounds, but fans of Rebecca Stead know better: These apartments, shops and streets are where Stead does her own stomping—and where the characters in her critically lauded middle grade novels live.
YA FictionYA

Jack Gantos

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Small notebooks, black covers, Strathmore brand: For years, Jack Gantos wrote in journals with “no lines, so you could draw and write.” As he explains in a call from his Boston home, “When you finished one, you had a book. You could put a rubber band around it and put it on a shelf.”

But the author’s path to the writing life wasn’t quite as linear as a row of black journals on a bookshelf, as fans of his New York Times best-selling YA memoir, Hole in My Life, know. In it, he describes his decision, at age 20, to earn cash for college by helping to smuggle a ton of hashish (via yacht) to New York City, and the year of prison time that followed.

Everything certainly turned out well: Gantos has written some 50 books, including picture books (Rotten Ralph series), fiction for young readers (Joey Pigza series), and YA and adult novels. He’s a Newbery Medalist and Scott O’Dell Award winner, as well as a National Book Award nominee.

But it’s easy to wonder about what came before, to ponder how the whip-smart, self-aware, charming author could also be the guy who thought sailing a drug-laden yacht was a good idea. Of course, that’s occurred to Gantos, and to the myriad children he’s encountered on his frequent school visits. 

So he wrote The Trouble in Me, his new autobiographical novel for young readers—wherein, with help from those journals, he harks back to the events that forged the 14-year-old kid who became that 20-year-old guy, and explains what was on his adolescent mind and in his unsettled heart. 

“A lot of middle-school kids read Hole in My Life but usually miss the deeper points, a lot of the interiors,” Gantos says. “They get the ‘Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum!’ part, but don’t slow down enough to see themselves in the emotional mirror of the book, and I thought, this other story will slow them down.”

In the fictionalized memoir, Gantos’ family’s frequent moves are beginning to wear on him; nearly every year he’s the new kid, always striving to adjust and fit in. Add some unhealthy family dynamics that can’t be tempered even by reading his beloved books (“my imaginative world wilted away as the printed words bruised and darkened like fruit rotting on a vine”), and young Gantos is fairly miserable fairly often. 

It’s not surprising, then, that the Pagoda family next door captures his interest. They’re tactless and brash, especially 17-year-old Gary, newly out of juvenile detention. His swaggering confidence and disregard for social norms proves irresistible: “All of that longing to be like him set something inside of me on fire and I had a feeling that there was no putting me out,” Gantos writes.

After all, the author says, “Kids need lots of attention, and if they don’t get attention at home, they will surely accept bad attention elsewhere.” 

He goes on, “When I think of middle school and me at that age, I think that’s exactly where I switched gears and decided to become somebody else. . . . I was a ticking time bomb.” 

That’s an apt description, not least because it’s amazing that Gantos escaped grievous injury during this time period—think explosives, fire, theft, dangerous physical feats and way too much time spent in the company of Gary, the budding (or perhaps fully bloomed) sociopath. 

It’s quite an experience to read the book with the knowledge that this melancholy, danger-seeking 14-year-old survived and grew up to become an accomplished professor and acclaimed author—a powerful reminder that we’re not necessarily who we appear to be, and that our future isn’t determined by our past.

That’s been true of Gantos’ writing career, too. After he wrote Hole in My Life, he recalls, “There came a time when I thought, oh my god, I really like children’s books. Will people accept this? . . . This is really a good story, so I’m either gonna be really honest about who I am and my entire life, or I’m gonna go ahead and burn down my children’s book career. Quite frankly, it went in the opposite direction . . . and it reaffirms for me, as a writer, [that] I’m in the right field and now I can write everything. I’ve got plenty of room.”

Luckily for his fans, he’ll always have room for school visits, which he views as integral to his life as an author. “One of the great dividends of writing books for young readers is you get to go into schools and work with the kids, and you feel like a good human being when you do that,” Gantos says. “No matter how exhausting it can be, you know in your heart you’re walking out of a school and there’s at least one kid who went, that just rocked my world!”

The Trouble in Me will rock readers’ worlds, for sure. It is, to use a hoary phrase, the kind of book that stays with you long after you’ve turned the final page, thanks to Gantos’ gift for storytelling—and the reader’s hope that he’ll write more memoirs, fictionalized or otherwise.

“I’m not quite certain how people are going to look at this book,” Gantos says. “I hope people read it, read it sensibly, and I hope that kind of kid, that kind of guy, will get this book. I think this book will have a big blossoming inside the reader, which is where I love books to roam.”
 

This article was originally published in the September 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

 

Small notebooks, black covers, Strathmore brand: For years, Jack Gantos wrote in journals with “no lines, so you could draw and write.” As he explains in a call from his Boston home, “When you finished one, you had a book. You could put a rubber band around it and put it on a shelf.”
YA FictionYA

Gary D. Schmidt

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Gary D. Schmidt’s new novel, Orbiting Jupiter, is a moving story about love, family and loyalty. Readers likely will cry here and there; they’ll also laugh from time to time and revel in the book’s pulses of beauty—whether it’s flashes of a striking winter landscape, touching moments of kinship or grace felt after wrenching grief.

The central characters are two boys, brought together when 12-year-old Jack’s parents agree to foster 14-year-old Joseph, who was recently released from a juvenile facility.

Schmidt is a two-time Newbery Honor winner, an English professor, author of 30-plus books and a father of six. When he began writing Orbiting Jupiter, he could hear Jack’s narration quite clearly. “Every book is different,” Schmidt says during a call from his Michigan home, a farm where he lives with his family. “The big thing is, I have to have the voice of the narrator and have to hear how the book is going to sound. Sometimes it takes so dang long! But with this book, it just came.” 

As Schmidt explains, Orbiting Jupiter is “a 12-year-old kiddo telling a very adult story about finding love, having a child and losing both of them—but being desperate to get one of them back.” 

Joseph became a father at 13, after he and a girl named Madeleine fell in love. Joseph’s abusive father was the plumber for her wealthy lawyer-parents, but despite their disparate backgrounds, they found solace in one another. From this love came a baby named Jupiter, plus a series of events that culminated in Joseph joining Jack’s family on their small Maine farm.

Jack is curious and a little wary, but when Rosie the cow lets Joseph milk her on the first try, Jack figures they’ll be fine: “You can tell all you need to know about someone from the way cows are around him.”

Schmidt says, “[Jack]’s a young, naive 12-year-old. Farms are wonderful, but they can be insular. And Joseph’s a kid a couple of years older who’s lived so much more, who’s very worldly-wise because of what he’s gone through.”

The boys become friends bit by bit, smile by smile, as the weather grows ever colder. Jerk students and a judgmental vice principal -aren’t welcoming, but a few teachers bond with Joseph, including Coach Swieteck, whom fans may recognize from Schmidt’s 2011 National Book Award finalist, Okay for Now.

It’s a hopeful thing, this warmth amid the gloom of Joseph’s life. The bleakness is a bit of a departure for Schmidt, as is the book’s trim length. “I wanted it to be stark, to be close to Ethan Frome or Bleak House. It’s pretty narrow, pretty focused, like a New England winter.”

In fact, he says, “It’s the most New England of all of my books.” (Maine serves as the backdrop for both the 2005 Newbery Honor book Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy and 2010’s Trouble.) “Saying so much with so little, things that can be inferred—shared culture allows you to do that. It’s also harder for outsiders, because that laconic starkness can seem unfriendly.”

The world of Orbiting Jupiter can seem unkind at times, if not downright cruel. Not all parents are kind, attentive or loving, and kids are too often unfairly judged by those around them. 

“I talked to a pediatrician who told me, ‘You can’t believe how many kids come in who have kids,’ ” Schmidt says. “Also, years ago, I read about a kid in Arkansas who at age 13 had two children. It obviously stayed with me.”

That processing of an idea over time embodies Schmidt’s considered approach to his writing. He composes his work on a 1953 gray steel Royal typewriter that lives in a small building on his property. There’s also a wood stove that keeps the author warm as he works—and allows him to start anew as many times as he likes.

“I write 500 words a day,” Schmidt says, and he revises any previous work as he goes. The process might seem painstaking, but that’s what he likes about it. “I use scrap paper, the backs of old galleys . . . and as I write, I burn the previous copy in the wood stove. It’s so cathartic to see it going up in flames. By the end, I’ve retyped [the book I’m working on] six, eight, 10 times.”

One result of that process is the careful layering of significant elements. For example, Thoreau’s A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers and M.T. Anderson’s The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing are mentioned in Orbiting Jupiter—but not in a way that requires readers to have read or heard of either book.

However, for Schmidt, “Everything has to be connected.” Thoreau’s book is “a tremendous bonding story about two brothers who loved each other a great deal. It’s not necessarily something the reader will get, but for me it makes a lot of difference. . . . That detail reverberates through the story.” And in Octavian Nothing, “A kid is imprisoned and defined by others. . . . When Joseph reads it, he connects with it.”

As a writer, Schmidt says, “[I have] a lot of stuff going on that never appears in the book, but the book is different for my having thought of it. It’s an emotional kind of connection that starts early.”

Thanks to the deftly drawn characters that inhabit Orbiting Jupiter, that emotional connection continues until the very end, when signs of new beginnings appear like the approaching spring. 

“You’d have to be an idiot to deny the pain so often around us,” Schmidt says, “but I also want to say it’s a beautiful and glorious world. Joseph does find love, Maddie as well. . . . It’s not tragic that a broken world is one that’s also good and glorious. It’s worthy of our lives to try and make it better.”

 

This article was originally published in the October 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Gary D. Schmidt’s new novel, Orbiting Jupiter, is a moving story about love, family and loyalty. Readers likely will cry here and there; they’ll also laugh from time to time and revel in the book’s pulses of beauty—whether it’s flashes of a striking winter landscape, touching moments of kinship or grace felt after wrenching grief.
Children's & YAMiddle Grade

Delia Ray

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Did you know buttons used to be made from shells? Delia Ray didn’t, but when she found out, an idea sparked. Her seventh book, Finding Fortune, is set in a town inspired by Muscatine, Iowa, the former Pearl Button Capital of the World.

The shell-buttons were clam and mussel, pulled from the Mississippi River in the early to mid-1900s by men, women and children who camped on the riverbanks and labored in factories. “It was a short-lived industry,” Ray says from her Iowa City home. “The rivers were harvested, the shells disappeared, plastic technology came along.”

This intriguing, little-known aspect of American history first came to Ray’s attention during a family vacation to Florida 10 years ago, when she, her husband and their three daughters paid a rainy-day visit to the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum. There among the showier seashells were humble clamshells, about the size of your hand, with numerous round circles punched out of them, plus a notation about a place far from Florida: Muscatine, Iowa.

“Among all the really impressive conch shell displays, 'Iowa' jumped out at me,” Ray says. She had no idea that Muscatine, just 45 minutes from her family’s home, had a rich button history. 

Thanks to her curious and inventive mind, Ray has a special talent for ferreting out pockets of American history and folding them into compelling stories. Her career began with a nonfiction book for young readers about the Klondike Gold Rush (Gold! The Klondike Adventure, published in 1989 and now out of print), which sent her to the Yukon Territory in search of information about 1890s gold-seekers.

“The best part is when it all comes together—the research, finding a way to tell the story and also just introducing kids to little slices of history they don’t know about,” says Ray.

It all comes together in Finding Fortune, an entertaining, often moving novel centered on 12-year-old Ren (short for Renata) and one memorable summer rife with growing pains, new friends, a decades-old mystery and Ren’s heartfelt question, “Why do things always have to change?”

In Ren’s world, the most vexing changes are family-centric: Her father’s due back soon from a military tour in Afghanistan, but her mom’s spending a lot of time with a guy named Rick. Ren doesn’t understand why nobody’s as upset as she is, and when she sees an ad for available rooms in a boardinghouse, she decides to run away—on a small scale, in terms of distance (the town of Fortune is only a few miles away) and population (down to 12 residents). 

The boardinghouse is the former Fortune Consolidated School, owned by the elderly Hildy, a one-time Pearl Button Queen (circa 1950) who’s determined to turn the former gym into a museum of the town’s vibrant button-making past. Ren also meets quirky kid Hugh, who lives in the library; handyman Garrett, who’s making a labyrinth out of clamshells on the old baseball diamond; and eccentric, soap-making sisters who live in the music room. There’s also a mystery afoot, one that dates back to when Hildy’s late father was one of the most skilled shell-cleaners in town. 

“Hildy was one of the first characters that came to me,” Ray says. “I knew I had to have a former Pearl Button Queen. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, her riding in a giant clamshell down the street.” (There are photos and historical details in the back of the book, including a fabulous shot of a lovely button queen.)

Another source of inspiration for Finding Fortune was “a modern-day ghost towns article in the Des Moines Register. It said that Iowa had more towns with [a population of] 500 or less . . . than any other state in the nation. That fascinated me.” The article mentioned the tiny town of Le Roy, as well as abandoned button-making towns along the Mississippi River. 

“There were 13 people living [in Le Roy] at the time of the article’s [publication], and by the time I got there, even fewer,” says Ray. “It was such a haunting experience to drive up and down the streets, see where the sidewalks had been, old park benches, an abandoned playground, an elementary school.”

Ray takes special pleasure in visiting places like this, imagining a deserted town in its heyday. “[It’s an] odd collection of people who end up in places like that,” she says. “So when I was writing Finding Fortune, I was imagining what kind of characters would rent out a place like [the former school], who would end up there.”

She also visited Muscatine’s Pearl Button Museum, an experience she describes with great enthusiasm: “They were very kind and gracious about spending time showing me things in the museum, and taking me to see the abandoned button factory. We wandered along the Mississippi River, and the director showed me where the old clamming camps had been.” 

As a children’s author, Ray says, “One of the most fun parts of what I do is school visits. I love talking to fourth- through sixth-graders. They have no qualms about saying, Wow! Cool! They’re not cynical at all.”

Cool, indeed: Finding Fortune will have readers marveling at Ray’s captivating, contemplative, often thrilling storytelling—and the weird, wonderful back story of something as simple as buttons.

 

This article was originally published in the November 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Did you know buttons used to be made from shells? Delia Ray didn’t, but when she found out, an idea sparked. Her seventh book, Finding Fortune, is set in a town inspired by Muscatine, Iowa, the former Pearl Button Capital of the World.
YA FictionYAFantasy

Alexandra Bracken

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

We’ve all had that moment when we realize our parents had a life before us, but it’s safe to say that in Alexandra Bracken’s exciting new YA novel, Passenger, 17-year-old violin prodigy Etta Spencer’s epiphany about her mom is more astonishing than most. 

As the story begins, Etta finds her mother, Rose, hard to connect with at best. But after a sudden, supremely shocking series of events, Etta realizes there’s a lot more going on behind her mother’s stoic demeanor than she could’ve imagined. Rose is a time traveler, which Etta learns after discovering she’s a time traveler, too. 

Following said shocking events, Etta wakes up on a wooden ship, surrounded by oddly dressed men with old-fashioned accents. One of them is a handsome, highly capable young seaman and freed slave named Nicholas Carter. 

Upon deducing that no, this isn’t weird performance art, and she’s definitely not in present-day New York City anymore, Etta struggles to accept her new reality—which is occurring in the 1700s on the Atlantic Ocean. She discovers that Rose has been on the run from a power-hungry, wealthy old man named Cyrus Ironwood who wants her to return something he believes she’s stolen. Etta embarks on a bizarre, mystifying, dangerous new chapter of her life, searching with Nicholas for the stolen object as they travel through centuries and continents. Her understanding of her place in the world broadens and evolves as she discovers more about her mother’s past and its repercussions for her own future.

“I’ve loved history my whole life,” Bracken says during a call from her Virginia home, but for a long time she had “an idealistic view of time travel. As I’m getting older, I’m realizing that [women would be] subjected to the standards of an era, and time travel wouldn’t be a joyful thing for people unless they go into the future.”

Etta, her mother and other female time travelers are just as savvy as men when finding portals, dodging pursuers and the like, but Etta still contends with outdated views of women as she travels into centuries past. And the powerful, time-traveling Ironwood family still adheres to antiquated and classist views of station and bloodlines, despite their extraordinary ability to visit more modern, egalitarian times. 

Equally compelling is Nicholas’ situation. He’s also under the megalomaniacal thumb of the wealthy Cyrus, yet is highly respected by his colleagues and moves freely through time and geography. He is determined to break free of Cyrus once he and Etta fulfill their dangerous quest—if that’s even possible.

“Slaves were victims of history, but I didn’t want Nicholas to have the opinion he was a victim,” says Bracken. “I wanted him to be very self-sufficient, and ultimately the person who’s saving himself, with none of the white-savior complex.”

This is just a fraction of the goings-on in Passenger, which is densely and deftly packed with all sorts of thrilling events and memorable characters. As each chapter closes, readers will certainly wonder where—and when—Etta and Nicholas will end up next.

And how did Bracken end up here, at age 28 with six books (and counting) to her name? After publishing her debut, Brightly Woven, in 2010, Bracken published four more books over the next five years, including her bestselling Darkest Minds trilogy, all while working in children’s publishing in New York City. When she was tapped to write a middle-grade Star Wars movie tie-in, Star Wars: A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel, and the Farm Boy, she admits to being a bit nervous—Star Wars fans are known for their passion and protectiveness—but ultimately felt very welcomed by the community. “A dad came up to me after a panel [at a pop-culture convention] and said his daughter will be so excited to see a girl’s name on the cover,” Bracken says.

Bracken was also a bit apprehensive about a certain aspect of Passenger: Etta’s budding romance with Nicholas. “I was so nervous to make the jump to this book because it’s so different from the Darkest Minds series,” she says. “The romance is definitely really different. But if I did the same kind of story and characters over and over again, I’d be bored, and readers would be bored.”

There’s no chance of that with Passenger. Bracken’s rules for time travel are fun to encounter and untangle, and the far-flung centuries and locations—Bhutan, the U.K. and Syria, to name a few—are rich with vibrant detail. Etta’s determination to carry out her mission, have a relationship with Nicholas (she’s not averse to kissing him first, should her mood dictate) and use her powerful gift for good makes her a symbol of potential positive change, while also pitting her against those who want to keep things the same. And that’s all we’ll say about that, lest we spoil the complex, multilayered, time traveling, globetrotting fun.

In terms of her own future, Bracken has big things—and a lot of writing—ahead. The second book in the Passenger duology, Wayfarer, is due out in 2017. And the day before she spoke with BookPage, her four-book deal with Disney Publishing was announced, including a new series for middle graders, a standalone YA novel and one more hush-hush book. 

“It feels like a dream,” Bracken says. “But if I ever stop writing and don’t sell another book, I’m really proud of the little stack I’ve put out into the world.” 

That stack’s going to keep growing for now, and Bracken’s glad to know what lies ahead. “It’s really exciting to be gainfully employed for the next four years!” she says. And really exciting for her readers, knowing there are many more wildly inventive, eminently entertaining books to come.

 

This article was originally published in the January 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

We’ve all had that moment when we realize our parents had a life before us, but it’s safe to say that in Alexandra Bracken’s exciting new YA novel, Passenger, 17-year-old violin prodigy Etta Spencer’s epiphany about her mom is more astonishing than most.
Children's & YAPicture Book

Carole Boston Weatherford

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Whether you’re in school or at work, “TGIF” is a familiar refrain. Carole Boston Weatherford’s evocative and moving new book, Freedom in Congo Square, is about people who work for the weekend, too—but in a context that’s far less lighthearted, set during a shameful and important period of American history.

Through finely crafted phrases and vivid, painterly illustrations, the book tells how slaves living in 1800s New Orleans worked toward a precious half day of temporary freedom, on Sundays at Congo Square: “It was a market and a gathering ground / where African music could resound. / Beneath the sun and open air, / the crowd abuzz with news to share.”

In a call from her North Carolina home, Weatherford tells BookPage that, although the people in her book were looking forward to a time of fun and fellowship, “I wanted to share a realistic depiction of slavery, that showed clearly that slavery was an injustice. Yes, Congo Square was a great place, but it was all they had. Didn’t they deserve so much more, for toiling like that all week, than a half day off?”

Freedom in Congo Square’s rhyming, rhythmic poetry builds as the pages turn, with couplets about the unending, wide-ranging work the slaves performed each day (“Tuesdays, there were cows to feed, / fields to plow, and rows to seed.”) and the cruelty of their masters (“The dreaded lash, too much to bear. / Four more days to Congo Square.”).

Illustrator R. Gregory Christie’s paintings help readers feel the slaves’ suffering, exhaustion and determined hopefulness. At first, the pages’ backgrounds are brown and green, echoing the fields where the enslaved work. Then, more colors seep in: pink, blue, yellow, purple. When Sunday arrives, the words leap from their previous placement at the top or bottom of the page and swirl throughout, joining an array of blots and brushstrokes, a sea of masks, musical instruments and exuberant dancing figures.

When she began writing Freedom in Congo Square, Weatherford says, “I challenged myself to mix picture-book tropes: the counting book and the day-of-the-week book. This gave the poem its structure and form, which the subject matter needed—particularly for kids, so they could digest it. I used that to propel the story. . . . It may be a pretty scene, but it shows you it’s not fair, tells you it’s not fair, then shows you how slaves had this release for half a day on Sunday.”

During that half day, people met up with friends and family, traded goods and played music. In fact, Congo Square is considered the birthplace of jazz. “I love jazz,” Weatherford says. “That’s another reason I was drawn to the subject matter.”

An appreciation for art in all forms was instilled in the author as a child. “My mother took me to the symphony, museums. . . . She really had an appreciation for art and for history.” Weatherford’s mother even asked her father, a high-school printing teacher, to print Weatherford’s early poems. Those typeset quotes, Weatherford’s “little motivational or moralistic poems,” meant that, “at a very early age—and before desktop computers—I saw my work in print.” But she didn’t yet yearn to be a writer. “It never dawned on me that the people who were writing the books I was reading were making money, or even alive,” she says. “I never saw any of them, and authors weren’t celebrities then like they are now.”

But after graduating from American University, Weatherford had a poem published in a city magazine. “When I saw that poem in print, I thought, that’s what I want to do! I came out of the closet as a poet, I always say.”

The next phase of her writerly career began after she married, became a mother of two and pursued her MFA. “I was taking my own kids to the library, and there were so many more multicultural books for them than there had been for me as a child. I was still writing adult poetry, plus things on the side to entertain my kids. I thought, maybe I can try to write for children, and before I got out of my MFA program, I’d sold two manuscripts.”

Her first children’s book, Juneteenth Jamboree, was published in 1995, and she’s written 46 more books since then. She’s also earned numerous awards, including a Caldecott Honor, Coretta Scott King Award Honor and the NAACP Image Award. And she’s a tenured professor at Fayetteville State University. 

“I work on multiple projects, have multiple jobs and work on multiple manuscripts,” Weatherford says. “It is who I am, not what I do.” She adds, “When I teach, I learn things as well. When I’m being stimulated intellectually, there’s no telling where it’s going to go.”

Certainly, in Freedom in Congo Square, poetry, art and history combine to create a jumping-off point for readers to learn and think about our country’s past and present. An introduction by a Congo Square expert, plus a glossary and author’s note at book’s end, provide food for further thought.

“I do that in all my books,” Weatherford says. “I try to have that author’s note that says this is based on real-life events. I want kids to know, because they can’t fathom that these kinds of injustices existed in the USA. We have to continually tell them this happened in the past. It wasn’t a video game, a TV series, a movie with a prequel or sequel. It happened.”

She adds, “It was important to me with this particular project that, in portraying the world of slavery, it was not romantic in any way. [The book] is for children, but it’s not candy-coated . . . and really, even sugar was a luxury for slaves. It’s a topic that’s near and dear to my heart, and I hope that I did it justice.”

 

This article was originally published in the February 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Whether you’re in school or at work, “TGIF” is a familiar refrain. Carole Boston Weatherford’s evocative and moving new book, Freedom in Congo Square, is about people who work for the weekend, too—but in a context that’s far less lighthearted, set during a shameful and important period of American history.
YA FictionYAHistorical Fiction

Meg Medina

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

The sparkly disco ball on the cover of Meg Medina’s mesmerizing new YA novel, Burn Baby Burn, evokes the summer of 1977. But there are flames on the disco ball, too, burning with an intensity that hints at something much more dangerous than disco. In New York City, this was the summer of a relentless heat wave, ever-escalating crime and a serial killer dubbed Son of Sam.

“I like the notion of disco ball as time bomb,” Medina tells BookPage in a call from her home in Richmond, Virginia. In Burn Baby Burn, the explosion comes in the form of a citywide blackout, a real-life incident that Medina remembers well. She was 13 years old and living in Queens.

Medina is the author of five previous books, including the 2014 Pura Belpré Author Award-winning Yaqui Delgado Wants to Kick Your Ass, but this is her first novel of historial fiction. She quickly realized it wasn’t enough to draw from her own memories, and so she delved into newspapers to help re-experience that summer’s terror. “I wanted to write the story as respectfully as possible,” Medina says. “It’s part of the historical record of the city, eBand I didn’t want to glamorize it or make it sensational. What I wanted to capture was the sense of horror and dread that we felt.”

That instability and uncertainty permeate the pages of Burn Baby Burn and the life-changing summer of its protagonist, 17-year-old Nora Lopez. Nora has plans for her post-high school life: She’s saving money from her part-time deli job so she can move out of the apartment she shares with her mother, Mima, and brother, Hector. In the meantime, she’s enjoying the beach and disco dancing with her college-bound best friend, Kathleen, even as they alter their daily plans to ensure they aren’t vulnerable to the serial killer. That’s something Medina remembers well: Under Son of Sam’s shadow, running routine errands “felt like a really close call . . . like he could be anywhere and anybody.”

In addition to the fear that casts a pall over the city, Nora’s daily life is marked by exhausting, ultimately fruitless attempts to avoid setting off Hector’s increasingly explosive temper. It’s clear to Nora that Mima, who’s never disciplined Hector for his behavior, isn’t going to start handling things now. It’s up to Nora to save herself.

This is a daunting prospect for a teen with limited resources. Fortunately, Nora is surrounded by a coterie of supportive and caring spirits, including Kathleen and her parents, a badass neighbor named Stiller and the funny deli owner.

“It’s important to keep young people in contact with the idea that what your situation is right now isn’t what it will always be for you,” Medina says. “There are other people around from whom you can draw strength.”

Through the people who encourage Nora to think bigger (a guidance counselor urges her to apply to colleges) and broader (Kathleen’s mother and Stiller bring the girls to women’s rights rallies), Medina skillfully and movingly demonstrates that change can come in small increments, and though there may be setbacks, that doesn’t mean it’s not worth the effort.

Take feminism, for example. Nora is growing up during the movement’s second wave, filled with marches and Bella Abzug’s bullhorn. “It’s so painful to me when we see young women now disavow that and say they’re not feminists,” Medina says. “So much of what they take for granted and are allowed to do came on the backs of women who took to the street, marching and being ‘difficult.’ So I wanted to write a story about young women in the beginning of that.”

There’s much that readers will take away from Burn Baby Burn, with its dramatic and all-too-real backdrop of a city in trouble and transition, and characters who are doing their best while realizing that it’s OK to want to do better.

“I believe in the relief of naming hard experiences,” Medina says. “There is a comfort in removing the shame around them. They happen to all kinds of people, and it’s not a character flaw in you, it’s humanity.”

 

This article was originally published in the March 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

The sparkly disco ball on the cover of Meg Medina’s mesmerizing new YA novel, Burn Baby Burn, evokes the summer of 1977. But there are flames on the disco ball, too, burning with an intensity that hints at something much more dangerous than disco.
YA FictionYA

John Corey Whaley

Interview by Linda M. Castellitto

Whether on a book tour or in the pages of a novel, John Corey Whaley’s métier is building connections. So when he had a “complete anxiety breakdown” during the tour for his second young adult novel, Noggin (2014), Whaley knew it was time to write about a subject that he’d wanted to address for a long time: mental illness and his own experience with chronic anxiety. 

“I have the opportunity in my writing to explore this thing about myself that I ignored for a decade, to understand my own anxiety more and help people understand it,” says 32-year-old Whaley (who goes by Corey) in a call to his Southern California home. “It’s also about just being ready to tell my readers this isn’t something to be ashamed of, it’s something you can figure out a way to survive with.”

In Whaley’s third novel, Highly Illogical Behavior, 16-year-old Solomon’s world is bounded by the walls of his house. He’s agoraphobic and has been living indoors since middle school, when his anxiety and panic attacks culminated in his submerging himself in a fountain in front of his school. 

Sol doesn’t see his current reality—taking classes online, limiting his exposure to stressors, relying on his supportive and kind parents—as anything negative or even unusual. After all, he reasons, “All he was doing was living instead of dying. Some people get cancer. Some people get crazy. Nobody tries to take the chemo away.”

If you’re Lisa Praytor, though, you try to leverage Sol’s life into material for your college essay. Lisa desperately wants to escape Upland, California, and she views Sol as her ticket out: cure him, write an essay about it, get into college, get out of town. She knows it’s an unethical plan at best, so she doesn’t share the details with her boyfriend, Clark, right away. What could go wrong, anyway?

Of course things go wrong, but in a way that’s nuanced and affecting. For one thing, Sol is aware that he’s not like his peers, but he also accepts himself in a way that’s refreshing and appealing. He’s initially skeptical about Lisa and Clark but is open to beginning a friendship. And he’s kind to and respectful of his grandma and parents, who offer him unstinting support and frank conversations.

“There are lots of bad parents in YA, so it’s important for me to show that there are good parents that exist,” says Whaley, who considers himself lucky for his own parental lot. “Any writer is still going from those original sources of pain or inspiration or even love.”

Whaley’s debut novel, Where Things Come Back, was a 2012 Printz Award winner, and Time magazine named it one of the Best YA Books of All Time. His second book, Noggin, was a National Book Award finalist, and he’s the first YA author named to the National Book Foundation’s “5 Under 35” list. Despite his success, Whaley isn’t quite accustomed to his life as an author.

“It’s so strange and surreal, still,” he says. “My third book’s about to come out, but it still feels like it’s 10 years ago: I’m just out of college in Louisiana, and I’m going to be a schoolteacher for five years. Half my brain is still back there because it’s all happened so fast. It’s overwhelming.”

Although Whaley says he “hated being a teacher,” those five years of teaching sixth- through 12th-graders gave him as much confidence for touring as it did fodder for writing. He immensely enjoys visiting bookstores, industry conventions and schools, where “I get to do my favorite part of being a teacher—talking [to students] about their lives, stories, the world, with no expectations attached. . . . It’s very powerful and meaningful to get to interact with teenagers. Their stories are the way I still try to understand the world.”

That translates nicely to Highly Illogical Behavior: Sol, Lisa and Clark spend lots of time sitting and talking or playing games, but connections grow, issues are gradually faced, and ultimately, motivations and deeper feelings are revealed, from Lisa’s need for escape (and its parallels to Sol’s situation) to what it means—and what it takes—to love someone. These revelations are sometimes explosive, sometimes much quieter, but their discussions always feel true and real, whether it’s some dawning comprehension or the details of a particular “Star Trek: The Next Generation” episode. 

Whaley, a “Star Trek” fan since childhood, notes, “Art inspires art, and things like pop culture references or board games can seem silly on the surface, but they’re things people find solace in, and comfort and connection.”

That’s just one of the many ways that Whaley creates connections—sometimes straightforward, sometimes complex, always worthwhile—in Highly Illogical Behavior. And as we learn from Lisa, Clark and Sol, reaching out is all it takes. 

“We’re all so much alike,” Whaley says. “You can forget that when you start growing up, but [many teenagers] have so much more clarity of thought than a lot of adults I know, if you just have a conversation with them.”

 

This article was originally published in the May 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Whether on a book tour or in the pages of a novel, John Corey Whaley’s métier is building connections. So when he had a “complete anxiety breakdown” during the tour for his second young adult novel, Noggin (2014), Whaley knew it was time to write about a subject that he’d wanted to address for a long time: mental illness and his own experience with chronic anxiety.

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