This book started out with a story my mom liked to tell about her childhood. She grew up in New Jersey with her mother and maternal grandparents. Her grandmother (Nana) was from Key West, Florida. During the summers, Nana would take my mom to Key West to visit relatives there. My mom didn’t really like going to Key West. It was a long drive by car, and Key West in July is hot and sticky and people didn’t have air conditioning back then like they do now. But strangest of all to my mom was what her mother told her to do in Key West: she was to “shake out her shoes” before she put them on. My mom didn’t know why her mother wanted her to do this, but she did it anyway. And then one day, she shook her shoes and out popped… a scorpion!

Writing Turtle in Paradise was a wonderful way to reconnect with my Key West heritage. My great-grandmother, Jennie Lewin Peck, emigrated from the Bahamas to Key West at the turn of the century. She considered herself a “Conch,” what the local Key West folks called themselves, after the native mollusk that so many fished for in the Bahamas. Nana was always talking about how she missed sugar apple ice cream and Spanish limes. When my editor, Shana Corey, started asking me about Nana and my Key West family, I just knew that there was a story somewhere in there.

Researching this book was also an interesting way to experience a different side of living through the Great Depression. While Key West suffered significant economic hardship (the town went bankrupt and the majority of the citizens were on economic relief), it didn’t have the same sort of feel as most of the depression stories I was used to hearing—soup lines, tent cities and the Dust Bowl. Key West was warm for one thing, and there was plenty of free food, courtesy of the sea; one man told me he ate lobster during the Depression! Key West was a freewheeling town full of characters and bygone industries—sponge fishing, rumrunners and, of course, pirates! It had all the ingredients for a fabulous setting.

The main character, Turtle, grew out of my fascination with Shirley Temple. To be blunt, I never really liked Shirley Temple, even when I was a kid. She was so perfect—those ringlet curls! That smile! And she could tap-dance! (Have I mentioned I was “asked” to leave ballet class when I was six?). Needless to say, Turtle shares my opinion of Shirley Temple. She’s tough and scrappy and has seen it all with her single mother.

Turtle’s mom gets a job as a live-in housekeeper and the new boss doesn’t like kids, so poor Turtle is sent to Key West to live with family she’s never met. Suddenly, Turtle is thrust into a hot, strange place full of rumors of pirate treasure and ornery boy cousins with funny nicknames. Does Turtle get a Hollywood ending like Shirley Temple? Well, you’ll have to read Turtle in Paradise to find out.

And if you happen to go to Key West, take my advice: shake out your shoes!

By Kristin Tubb

Growing up, I once told my father that I wanted to “own NASA.” Monetary and logistical issues aside, this seemed like an excellent career path to pursue. Space shuttles! Space stations! And, well . . . Space!

It was with much regret that I left this dream behind, and focused instead on the more realistic dream of studying to become an Aerospace Engineer at Auburn University. Alas, this was not to be my calling, either, as I consistently fell asleep during my classes and while reading my textbooks. (I took this as a sign. Rightfully so.)

Many years and numerous job changes later, I found myself nodding eagerly when editor Kathryn Knight at Dalmatian Press asked me to write an elementary-school-age activity book about space.

“It’ll be the universe, in 64 pages,” she said. I might’ve squealed.

I am terrible at arts and crafts. Seriously. When my daughter needed a toga for Roman Week, I outsourced it to a tailor. (She said, “But Michaela, I’m just sewing some armholes in a sheet.” I was too mesmerized by her skill to speak.) I lived in fear of my kids’ class projects. Dioramas—I’d rather die. Posters? Pose too many challenges for me. So when my third grader told me that she had to choose a famous person for “Living Biography Day,” my antenna went up. What exactly was required? Some research. No problem. A short paper, check. Oh and I have to dress up like that person—KLANG KLANG Warning Bells. I hate costumes (don’t even ask about Halloween).

“Hmm,” I said, “what about Amelia Earhart?” I knew I could manage a leather jacket, a long white scarf and goggles. “OK,” my daughter shrugged. But things are never that easy. She came home that night, looking very sad. “What happened?” I asked. “Five other kids wanted Amelia Earhart!” Ah, I thought, I am not alone! “So who did you get?” I asked. “Louis Braille,” she said in a wail. (I ended up dressing her in a white button-up shirt, sunglasses and a purple beret—she looked like Tom Cruise in Risky Business—but by that point I was past caring!)

A few weeks later I was visiting my mom. I told her the story, hoping for sympathy. She laughed and said, “You should have suggested she do Beryl Markham.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Don’t you remember?” She went unerringly to the spot on the bookcase where West With the Night was. (My mother is irritating that way—I could never put my hand on a specific book without a 20-minute fruitless search.) It looked familiar. I opened to the cover page and saw an inscription from me to Mom, “To the next famous aviator.”

I had given Mom the book in 1987 when she got her pilot’s license. My mom did stuff like that. When I was in high school she applied to NASA to be an astronaut. When she decided to fly, she got her license within a year and enrolled my little brother in the Civil Air Patrol (she’s a lieutenant colonel now). Beryl Markham’s exciting memoir was the perfect gift to celebrate her accomplishment.

I started reading it for the first time and was absolutely blown away. Beryl was amazing. I loved her matter-of-fact approach to risking her life and the wonderful language she used to describe it.

“You know,” Mom said, “Beryl would make a good book. Maybe a biography.”

I agreed, especially since I discovered that there were only two old biographies of Beryl for kids and both felt very dated. In my naïveté, I said, “How hard can it be to write a biography?”

As it turns out, biography is not easy at all. I thought with my research skills, it would be a snap. I thought I would tell her story in a nonfiction way but intersperse the narrative with stories from her life. Well, to my surprise, the nonfiction was a total dud. The only part I liked (and the only part that was any good at all!) was the stories. My writing teacher, Patricia Reilly Giff (a lady who knows more than a little about storytelling!), finally suggested I stop fighting the fiction. “Write the story you love,” she said.

It was good advice. And several years later Promise the Night is about to hit the shelves. I wrote the parts of Beryl’s life that were the most exciting: the lion hunts, the sadistic governess, sneaking out into the African night looking for adventure, not to mention the mean girls at boarding school. I started with a girl who was brave but vulnerable. I explored how she grew into herself and into the woman who would set records in a flimsy flying machine.

And it all happened because I don’t know how to sew a costume.

Once, several years ago, I went to listen to a lecture on writing children’s fiction. There I was told that main characters in children’s books should always be more special than those around them. Orphans must be plucky. Protagonists must have secret royal blood, be the long-lost heir to something-or-other, or be half elf, half Greek god or all alien. Even those that might seem rather normal at first must be destined for greatness, or at least have more gumption and be able to overcome greater odds than the average everyday type. They must be heroes ready to answer the call and start on a hero’s journey. Above all else, the main character of a children’s book must never ever ever be ordinary.

The implication of this is simple. Ordinary characters don’t have stories worth telling. And this bothered me for a very simple reason. I’m quite ordinary myself.

I’ve been ordinary ever since I was a short, plain and moderately dorky child. And my ordinariness was made to seem even more ordinary (if this is possible) by the fact that I had two older sisters who are utterly amazing. One (dubbed “the super genius” by my neighbor) speaks four languages fluently, is proficient in several others, and has the uncanny ability to practically absorb everything she’s ever read. I’ve never had any understanding of how she does what she does—and I’ve certainly never had any hope of doing it myself. If she were a main character in a book, she’d be a super spy, a beloved headmistress, or the solver of complex ciphers.

My other sister (dubbed “the supermodel” by the same neighbor) is tall, athletic, photogenic and indescribably cool. Once, when I was a freshman in high school, and she was a senior, she refused to let the student council (which she was a member of, naturally enough) count the votes that might have led to her nomination as prom queen. She didn’t want to be prom queen. She had better things to do with her time. It was in that moment (oh, who am I kidding—it was in that moment and many more just like it) that I realized just how impossible it would be for me to ever live up to the example she’d set. If she were a main character in a book, she’d be a duly elected queen, the leader of a revolution, or the romantic lead.

And then there is me—the ordinary one. I was a middle-of-the-road student who started my non-illustrious academic career by flunking kindergarten.  I was never particularly popular or unpopular. And I was involved in a number of activities (softball, volleyball, band, theater, mock trial and so forth), but I was never a standout at any of them. In short—according to the theories being put forth in that lecture on writing children’s literature—I wasn’t main character material.

But here’s the thing: We are all the protagonists of our own lives. I may have been a deeply mediocre child, but my childhood wasn’t dull, horrible or tragically lacking. It was filled with all of the wonderful elements of everyday drama. There was ordinary joy, heartbreak, frustrations and anticipation.  There was conflict, hope, disappointment and resolution. Ordinary doesn’t equal boring. And as for my sisters—I adore them—but not particularly for their extraordinary qualities. Instead, when I’m thinking of our best times, I think about a millions of ordinary moments I had with them—watching TV together, getting donuts after school, fighting over the bathroom, playing hide-and-seek with the other kids in the neighborhood, and going to the library together.

And I think that ordinariness is actually the element in fiction that is often overlooked and underrated. For example, it’s all well and good that Harry Potter is “the boy who lived,” a wizard and the only one who can save the world from Lord Voldemort, but I don’t think this is what most people love about the story. What makes Harry memorable is all of his ordinary characteristics: his friendship with Ron and Hermione, his frustrations with schoolwork and rules, his interactions with the other students at Hogwarts, his minor triumphs and his embarrassments. In short, it’s all of the ways he seems just like any ordinary kid you might know.

And all of this brings me to how I came to write Remarkable. After leaving the lecture, I decided it was high time someone wrote a story about an ordinary protagonist who doesn’t discover that she is deeply exceptional in some way. Instead, by the end of the story, this protagonist would learn to appreciate her own ordinariness. And since everyone else around her is exceptional (and some of them are struggling mightily with very qualities that make them exceptional), she’d start to realize that that extraordinariness isn’t a necessary quality to having a worthwhile life.

Not every story—real or imagined—has to have a heroic journey. Not every protagonist has to be exceptional. The fiction-writing rules that say otherwise aren’t rules we need to live by. There is enough delight and drama in the ordinary for millions of fantastic tales.

In Lizzie K. Foley's debut novel for young readers, Remarkable, young Jane Doe must find ways to make herself stand out in a town where everyone is extraordinarily talented or extraordinarily gifted. Foley, who holds a master's degree in education from Harvard and taught women's studies at Northeastern University, lives in Montclair, New Jersey.

On the heels of his multiple-award-winning 2012 release, Bomb: The Race to Build—And Steal—The World’s Most Dangerous Weapon, author Steve Sheinkin returns with another thrilling true-life story pulled from the pages of history. In Lincoln’s Grave Robbers, the former history textbook writer unravels the details of a 19th-century plot to steal Abraham Lincoln’s body from the grave and hold it for ransom. Sheinkin—who won the Sibert Medal, a Newbery Honor, a YALSA Award and a spot as a National Book Award finalist for Bomb—explains here why his latest true story of cops and robbers, counterfeiters, body-snatchers and the Secret Service is sure to catch the attention of young readers.

One of my recent school visits was not going well. The students hadn’t heard of me, hadn’t read my books, weren’t buying my whole “history is cool,” premise. I was losing them. So naturally I started talking about cannibalism.

One of my books tells the tale of the Donner Party. I read the section and asked kids to imagine themselves stuck high in the snowy Sierra Nevada, facing starvation, with no hope of rescue. Would they kill one of their fellow pioneers for food? If one died of cold and hunger, would they roast and eat the flesh to keep themselves alive? 

They all had opinions (most along the lines of “No way!). Best of all, I had their attention. And the experience gave me a great idea for testing potential subjects for future books. I picture myself standing in front of a room full of students. They’re staring at me. They’re waiting to see if I’m going to be boring. I imagine myself telling them the story in my book, and watch their reaction. Are they intrigued? Most of them, at least? If so, the idea has a chance.

As soon as I started researching the story behind my new book, Lincoln’s Grave Robbers, I knew it had a good shot to pass the test. Basically, it’s a true crime thriller about a bunch of Midwest counterfeiters who decide it would be a good idea to steal Abraham Lincoln’s corpse. This was 1876, eleven years after Lincoln’s death, and the gang was desperate to get their best engraver out of the state pen. Their plan: bust into the Lincoln Monument in Springfield, steal the body, stash it under a bridge, and refuse to give it back unless the government lets their partner out of jail. And the most amazing thing of all is how close this crazy-sounding scheme came to working.

It’s so bizarre, kids accuse me of having made it up. But on top of the priceless plot, what makes this story great from a nonfiction writer’s point of view is that the sources are so rich. The main lawman in the story, Secret Service agent Patrick Tyrrell, took extensive notes on all his cases. He was busy chasing counterfeiters (that’s what the Secret Service was formed to do) when he stumbled onto the Lincoln plot. You can almost see the plot unfolding as you read his detailed daily notes.

And there’s John Carroll Power, the 57-year-old custodian of the Lincoln Monument. He was hired to keep the place neat, but the man was obsessed with Lincoln, and created his own mini

Lincoln museum for tourists (his prized possession: a bloody strip of fabric from the dress of an actress who cradled Lincoln’s head moments after he was shot at Ford’s Theater). Protecting Lincoln was more than a job to Power, it was a calling. He was there night of the break-in, saw everything, and, wrote a whole book about it.

Many of the main characters (including the body snatchers) gave interviews to the newspapers, and, incredibly, there was even a Chicago Tribune reporter lurking around the monument the night of the attempted theft. He’d been tipped off that something big was going to happen, and was able to write an eyewitness account of the showdown between cops and robbers.

I should add, for anyone interested in recreating the robbery, Lincoln is no longer in the monument. After the 1876 attempt, his body was placed in a deep hole beside the monument and covered in concrete. But first—in another detail kids seem to love—his friends decided they’d better open the casket just to make sure he was still in there. They hired a Springfield plumber to carefully cut open the lead casket and peel back the soft metal. And there, inside, was the 16th president, looking, friends said, just “like a statue of himself.” Turns out the embalmers at the White House had done such an amazing job, the body was still perfectly preserved all those years later.

Okay, this whole Lincoln grave-robbing thing may not appear on any standardized test; it’s not something kids need to know. But it was a fun story to research and write, and I hope it’ll be fun to read. And besides, when school visits get tough, it’s good to be able to talk about stealing corpses.

Shirley Parenteau's new book for young readers tells the remarkable story of 11-year-old Lexie Lewis. It's 1926, and her class has been raising money to ship a doll to the children of Japan. Lexie dreams of accompanying the doll to the farewell ceremony in San Francisco. This warm novel is based on real events that occurred before World War II, when American children sent more than 12,000 dolls to Japan. In a Behind the Book essay, Parenteau shares the astounding and long-forgotten history of the Friendship Dolls program.

Imagine children all across 1926 America donating pennies to buy dolls for children in Japan. Imagine 12,739 dolls traveling with passports, visas and introductory letters, being greeted by children in Japan with celebration and ceremony.

The story is true, but was lost with most of the dolls in the tumult of World War II.

When I learned of the Friendship Dolls, I was looking for inspiration for a new picture book. I had written one called Bears on Chairs, adorably illustrated by David Walker, which is so popular in a Japanese translation that the bears in the book are now available there as plush toys and other items. I had a greater personal connection with Japan through my daughter-in-law Miwa, who is from Fukuoka.

When Miwa and my son took their daughter to the Girls' Day Festival, or Hinamatsuri, I was intrigued by their photos. Wondering if I could write a picture book about the festival celebrated with treasured dolls, I researched online. One source linked to this website and revealed an amazing story—the Friendship Dolls of 1926.

The project was the inspiration of Dr. Sidney Gulick, a teacher-missionary who had retired after working in Japan for 30 years. Fearing war might break out between the United States and Japan—two countries he loved—he urged American children to send dolls to children in Japan for Hinamatsuri.

All across America, children responded, emptying piggy banks and holding fundraisers. In return, donations from Japanese children allowed their finest dollmakers to create 58 large dolls to send to America. Each wore a kimono in a pattern designed by the empress’ own dressmaker and traveled with tiny accessories as examples of their culture.

Children in both countries continued to exchange letters, but sadly the Friendship Project could not prevent World War II. Fourteen years later, Japanese planes bombed U.S. ships in Pearl Harbor. The dolls became symbols of the enemy in both countries. In America, they were stuffed into storage. In Japan, they were ordered to be destroyed. Of those that survived, many were shattered during U.S. bombings.

I longed to tell this lost story through the eyes of an American girl and to set the book in Portland because I grew up on the northern Oregon coast. A second novel, Dolls of Hope (2015), will tell the story of the dolls from the viewpoint of a girl in Japan.

Happily, many of the surviving dolls have been recovered, beginning in the '70s. About 300 of the 12,000-plus dolls sent to Japan and hidden at great personal risk during the war years are on display. In America, 46 of the 58 Japanese dolls have been located. A list of 38 which can be seen in museums, along with their locations, is here.

In the past 15 years or so, children, communities and organizations in both countries have again begun exchanging dolls.

I wrote Ship of Dolls and Dolls of Hope to celebrate the unquenchable hope of children for international friendship and peace.