We haven't read any new Ramona Quimby adventures in about 15 years, but she is back, and she is more fun than ever. Ramona's World finds Ramona entering the fourth grade, longing for a best girlfriend, and still being happily disgusted by Yard Ape. BookPage had the delightful opportunity to talk to Newbery Medalist Beverly Cleary about her writing, her life and her beloved Ramona Geraldine Quimby.

Cleary became interested in writing for children because reading meant so much to her as a child. "I was a great reader of fairy tales. I tried to read the entire fairy tale section of the library: Andrew Lang's Blue Fairy Book, Red Fairy Book, and so on, probably down to the Puce or Chartreuse fairy tales," she laughs. These days, Cleary reads biographies and some fiction by English women writers.

Ramona was first introduced to readers in the 1950s as a peripheral character (Cleary interjects, "a nuisance") in the Henry Huggins books. Had she visualized developing Ramona's character, or did Ramona take on a life of her own?

"Well, I didn't visualize anything more about Ramona. In fact, she was an accidental character. It occurred to me that as I wrote, all of these children appeared to be only children, so I tossed in a little sister, and at that time, we had a neighbor named Ramona. I heard somebody call out, 'Ramona!' so I just named her Ramona."

The Quimbys' third child, Roberta, is now a toddler in Ramona's World. Generations of readers have watched Ramona grow up book by book. Will we be following Roberta's life in the same way? "Oh, I rather doubt it. I guess I was influenced by readers who asked that Ramona have a baby sister. It just started me thinking of how she would react." Ramona is a caring older sister because "she's old enough not to be consumed with sibling rivalry. She's more charmed with Roberta's tiny hands, etc. I think if they'd been closer in age, there would have been a problem." Cleary agrees that Ramona's relationship with Roberta is much different than that of Ramona and Beezus.

Henry Huggins, who was once a staple in Cleary's books, has faded into the background. What ever happened to Henry and Scooter McCarthy? "Well, they're floating around, but Ramona isn't particularly interested [in them]." Ramona is quite interested, however, in Jeremy, the older brother of her new best friend. "Oh yes," Cleary agrees, and adds that Beezus is very interested in Jeremy as well, but continues, "I don't know, I just became interested in Ramona. I once had a letter from a child that said 'Don't ever put Henry in anything else'."

No reason was given for the reader's anti-Henry stance, but Cleary does add that, in a previous book, Mr. and Mrs. Huggins make an appearance at a neighborhood brunch.

A new novel by Newbery award-winning author Karen Hesse is a cause for celebration. Hesse combines a remarkable storytelling ability with thorough research and the capacity to create fascinating and compelling characters. In her latest book, Brooklyn Bridge, Hesse shines a light on Brooklyn in the summer of 1903.

Ever since his Russian immigrant parents invented the stuffed teddy bear, life is moving fast for 14-year-old Joseph Michtom. But as his boisterous family is busy working to achieve the American dream, Joe begins to wonder if he'll get the chance to realize his own dream: visiting magical Coney Island.

We caught up with Hesse at her home in Vermont to explore how she came to tell this memorable tale, inspired by the real-life figures Rose and Morris Michtom.

Brooklyn Bridge is full of wonderful period details. How did you go about your research?
Where would I be without archived newspapers? Some days I feel like the nursery rhyme character, Jack Horner, who sticks in his thumb and pulls out a plum. The New York Times archives yielded many useful articles, but the newspaper that proved indispensable in this project was The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. I also used Sears, Roebuck catalogs, fiction from the period, nonfiction about the period, and photographs. Music, too. I try to absorb music from the period and play it in my computer's CD drive as I'm writing.

Brooklyn Bridge includes a parallel plot about life under the bridge itself. Were there children and others living under the Brooklyn Bridge in the early 1900s?
When I was reading through those New York Times articles, I found a piece about "the children under the bridge." Immediately, bridge children grew from the damp earth of my imagination. Only after re-reading the article did I realize these were probably children on the Lower East Side living under the "shadow" of the bridge. Too late. I already had my population of homeless children.

Later, while doing more research in Brooklyn, I haunted the underbelly of the bridge and saw that what I had envisioned was entirely possible. By 1903, efforts had begun in NYC to alleviate some of the problems of homelessness but there were still street children . . . still are.

The book is alive with strong female characters, including Joe's colorful aunts and his nose-in-a-book sister, Emily. Did you base your characters on people you know?
The family constellation of three sisters and a brother reflects my mother's experience, though these siblings are nothing like my mother and her sisters and brother. Still, I do borrow from my memories of family gatherings to create the chaos and banter that occurs around Joe's kitchen table. And the longing in each of my aunts, my uncle, my mother, my grandparents and great aunts and uncles to achieve the American dream, this I know intimately.

Did you find out any great tidbits in the real Michtom family's history that you'd like to share with readers?
The Ideal Toy Company was founded by Morris and Rose Michtom as a result of their success with the teddy bear. Some of the many well-known toys, games and dolls produced by the Michtoms include the Magic 8 Ball, Rubik's Cube and the Shirley Temple doll. The Michtoms and their children used their wealth, in part, to support causes that bettered the human condition both in this country and overseas. I learned that the real-life Joseph wanted nothing to do with the toy company. He became a dentist. His sister Emily actively pursued a philanthropic life, and Benjamin took over the family business from his father.

What is your favorite thing to do when you're not writing?
I'm so grateful for every day and how it fills up with these beautiful, painful, surprising, inspiring, moving moments. I love reading. I love film. I love taking photographs. Listening to music. I love hiking. Spending time with family and friends. Being alone. Eating out. Washing dishes. Folding laundry. I just love being. Life is such a gift.

Finally, we have to ask: did you have a teddy bear when you were a girl?
I'm smiling because I did not. My husband, Randy, however, did. His bear, whose name is Brownie, is a tattered, one-eyed, threadbare, roughly patched, much beloved presence on my shelf. Brownie looks nothing like the Michtom bears. Early on in the journey of this book I picked up in my local thrift shop a bear very similar to the original Michtom design. Brownie and my "new" Teddy spend most of their days and nights nuzzled up together on the third floor of my house.

Great stories are about the human situation first and any particular ethnic group second. The story collections and picture books created by Gary Soto are clearly set in Mexican-American communities, yet their universal themes speak to every adolescent. Soto, a Chicano ("That's what I am"), is quick to say that he feels a certain obligation to that ethnic group, but he's no cheerleader.

Born and raised in Fresno, California, Soto decided while in college that he would be a poet. He began writing poetry for adults and received much recognition for his work. In 1990, his first two books for juveniles, one of poetry and one of short stories, were published to wide acclaim, with Baseball in April and Other Stories, named as an ALA Best Book for Young Adults. Now 45, Soto's stream of creativity is still flourishing as he continues to write novels, plays, essays, and poetry for adults and young readers.

His newest title, Petty Crimes, is a collection of ten stories about kids in the middle-grade years who are dealing with contemporary issues on their own — resisting bullies, petty thievery, a grandfather in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease, a girl trying to buy back her dead mother's clothes.

"La Guera," the first story in the collection, begins with Priscilla in kindergarten, where all the children hold hands and sing of rainbows, unicorns, lakes, and sheep. But by sixth grade, Priscilla has become La Guera. She teases her hair, wears mascara, and steals constantly, especially candy and cake. Desperate to find a solution, her mother sends her for a summer visit with her aunt and two cousins, but it's too late for change. At the end of the story, we find La Guera back in the city in a vicious street fight with another girl.

Not a pretty story! Although touches of humor dot the landscape of several of these stories, most are depressing with occasional violent outbursts. When I asked Soto what he was trying to say in these harsh scenes, he replied, "Petty Crimes is about youth not using their minds or their bodies very well. And it is about the development of character." He went on to discuss a recent incident in California where a child tried to shoot his principal. Disturbingly, this type of violence in schools is becoming a nationwide trend.

A daily observer of the Mexican-American community, Soto wants to make clear that his stories are not based on actual events. "Although the experiences in my stories, poems, and novels may seem autobiographical, much of what I write is the stuff of imagination."

He writes in short sentences, using lots of dialogue and giving readers a vivid sense of reality with his deft use of imaginary detail. That detail includes several noticeable Soto trademarks. One of them is the frequent mention of food throughout the stories — everything from pork rinds and animal crackers to Mars bars and barbecue potato chips.

"There may be something to that," Soto replied when I asked about all the food references, "but I don't do it on purpose. Someone else mentioned a lot of references to body shape. I think it's just that I see the images of what I write so clearly."

That may also be the reason Soto includes so many Spanish and Mexican words in his stories. He grew up in a blighted area of south Fresno, and "these are the pictures I take with me when I write. They stir the past, the memories that are so vivid." Soto has a big following of Mexican-American readers. "All the Chicanos read my books," he says. A number of Soto's books include glossaries to define the Spanish words and phrases he uses so naturally in all his writing, even in his picture books.

In Big, Bushy Mustache, Ricky doesn't like being told that he looks like his mother. When his teacher brings out the costumes for a class play about Cinco de Mayo, Ricky isn't interested in any of them until she holds up a mustache. He loves wearing it; it looks like his papa's. Against his teacher's instructions, Ricky takes the mustache home only to lose it on the way. None of his attempts at making another one works, and finally, in tears, he tells his father he has lost mi bigote. The next morning Papa has the perfect solution, and Ricky goes to school with a mustache in his pocket.

Another picture book by Soto, Snapshots from the Wedding, is told from a little girl's point of view. Maya was a flower girl in an elegant Hispanic family wedding, and her special memories of the event are depicted in Stephanie Garcia's terrific clay figure illustrations.

Soto's picture books are much happier than his middle-grade titles, but touches of humor lighten those as well. In "If the Shoe Fits," one of the stories in Petty Crimes, Manuel is preparing to go to his first boy/girl party. "He got dressed, splashing his face and throat with three different kinds of cologne. He brushed his teeth until they hurt and combed his hair four different ways" — only to discover he had outgrown his dress shoes!

Soto's current passion seems to be writing plays. "It's not unusual for contemporary writers to try their hands at two or three different genres," he says almost apologetically. "I wish I could offer a brilliant thesis for my interest in so many forms, . . . but at the moment I'm still mulling over my intentions."

"If you live and pay attention," says writer Julia Alvarez, "life gives you so much to write about." Alvarez has indeed been paying attention. As a child, she and her family fled the Dominican Republic to escape the harsh dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo (her father had secretly been involved in the underground). Many miles and many years later, she speaks from an office at Middlebury College in Vermont, where she is writer-in-residence and the author of books for both adults and children, such as the award-winning How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, In the Time of the Butterflies and Something to Declare.

Her latest is Return to Sender, a novel for nine- to 12-year-olds about a sixth-grade boy on a Vermont farm who befriends the daughter of undocumented Mexican workers.

Alvarez and her husband live on their own small farm, along with cows, rabbits, chickens and a new barn. She speaks on the day before America’s presidential election, prompting her to muse, "When I get to vote, I get weepy. I know what it costs to get to this. Members of my family died so I could have this day."

When 10-year-old Alvarez and her family arrived in New York City in 1960, books and later writing became her ticket to freedom. "We had landed in this land that I had always heard was the home of the free and the brave, but I didn’t find it very friendly at all," Alvarez remembers. "The kids on the playground called me ‘spic,’ they made fun of my accent, and they told me to go back to where I had come from." 

Salvation came in the form of reading, guided by teachers and a librarian—and reading was something new. "I came from an oral culture," she says. "I was surrounded by the world’s greatest storytellers, but we were not readers. I never saw my mother or father reading a book."

Eventually, Alvarez became a writer, realizing that there were some stories only she could tell. She says her books usually start with what she calls "the pebble in my shoe." "It’s something that I try to shake," she elaborates, "but I keep going back over it. It’s usually something that has unsettled me."

Return to Sender began when a farmer brought a Mexican farm worker in to see her husband, an ophthalmologist. Alvarez and her husband soon discovered that undocumented Mexicans were doing most of the milking on the dairy farms in their county. They met some of these workers, and Alvarez was asked to help with a schoolgirl who didn’t know enough English to communicate with her teachers or classmates.

Certainly Alvarez could relate—on more than one level. She notes: "It’s not just down in the border states that [immigration] is an issue. It’s reached Vermont, and it’s so much the issue of our times: mass movements of people from one place to another. As we globalize, people become aware of other opportunities and possibilities, and want to create a new story for themselves—and therefore leave everything to remake their story."

As Alvarez began to help out in the classroom, she realized that not only was the Mexican girl disoriented, but so were her classmates. Over time the children befriended each other, until the girl suddenly returned to Mexico with an aunt, while her parents continued to work in Vermont.

"The kids were really traumatized that their classmate had disappeared," Alvarez explains. "This doesn’t happen in their United States, that somebody disappears because they’re not supposed to be here, and their parents could be rounded up and they would be deported and put in holding. All of this can be very troubling stuff in fourth and fifth grade. And I thought that we need a story to understand what’s happening to us."

Return to Sender tells this tale from both sides, using the voices of Tyler, a Vermont farm boy, and Mari, who was born in Mexico and now lives in a trailer as her dad and uncle work on Tyler’s family farm. Tyler’s father was injured in a tractor accident and can no longer handle the daily chores by himself. Mari’s mother has been missing for nearly a year, and Mari and her sisters aren’t sure if she is dead or alive. Their mother returned to Mexico when her own mother was ill, but she hasn’t been heard from since attempting to secretly cross the border to return to the U.S.

Does Alvarez worry about introducing such heavy concepts to young readers?

"I’m not just a writer," she replies. "I’ve also been an educator for three decades. And a story protects us in a way. In a sense, it’s a safe world in which to consider what’s going to hit you broadside in the real world. You give kids the things that are bombarding them in their real lives, but it’s within a safe context. It gives them a way to navigate through the world."

Alvarez navigated herself through many different parts of the U.S. early in her career, working as what she calls a "migrant writer," teaching poetry wherever grant funding was available, including Kentucky, California, Delaware, North Carolina and Massachusetts. Now that she’s settled in New England, she still travels to the Dominican Republic about six times a year, to see family and to visit Café Alta Gracia, a 60-acre coffee farm that she and her husband own.

"The mountains here in Vermont remind me of the mountains of the Dominican Republic where we have our farm," she says. "We don’t have winter there, of course, but the lush greenness of the mountains and a certain kind of accessible mentality—there’s something that’s very simpatico about the Vermont culture and my Dominican culture."

Although Julia Alvarez has found a place to call home, she continues to write about people caught between cultures. "Displacement is just part of the human story," she says. "You don’t have to be an immigrant to write about that, because we’ve all felt it."

Eve Bunting wants to spread an important message: picture books aren't just for tots anymore.

As the author of more than 150 books, Bunting has written something for every age group — everything from young adult novels to picture books, on subjects ranging from homelessness (Fly Away Home), a modern-day look at a Civil War battlefield (The Blue and the Gray), the Irish village of Maghera where she was born (Market Day), and Smoky Night, about the Los Angeles riots, illustrated by David Diaz and winner of a Caldecott Medal.

Plenty of Bunting's books are pure fun and joy, such as Sunflower House, Scary, Scary Halloween, Dog Detective, or the forthcoming Ducky, about a yellow plastic duck. Bunting notes, however, that titles addressing what she calls "tender topics" such as poverty and racial prejudice seem to get the most attention from reviewers and readers.

"Editors are brave," she says. "I may have had books turned down because they're not good, but I've never had one turned down because it was saying something some people might consider not suitable for children."

The roots of her social consciousness date back to her childhood in Ireland. "I was aware that there was discrimination," she recalls, "although I didn't know there was anything to be done about it." She remembers that Protestant children like herself weren't supposed to play with Catholics, although her parents encouraged her friendship with a Catholic girl. Later, political and religious "troubles" between the two denominations helped convince Bunting and her husband to emigrate to the United States in 1958 with their three young children.

"We had it pretty hard at the beginning," Bunting says of their move. "At least we spoke the same language. But I do feel I'm entitled to write about migrant workers and immigrants."

Success came to the young Irish mother a few years after the family settled in California, where she continues to live. Feeling homesick and in need of diversion, she enrolled in a community college course in creative writing.

Her first published books were retellings of Irish folk tales. Since then she's branched out in diverse directions, even writing a few nonfiction books about whales and sharks for Sea World in San Diego. The nonfiction work was an exception — Bunting's chief interest is "telling a good story." She begins to write after an idea hits her with a "jolt."

Despite her many interests and concerns, however, some subjects are too much for her. For instance, when one editor confided that she'd like to have a picture book about child abuse, Bunting replied, "I just couldn¹t because my stomach wouldn't allow me to do that." And when a parent asked her to write about the Oklahoma bombing, Bunting said she couldn't tackle the tragedy.

How, then, do ideas jolt her? Recently, inspiration struck in a San Jose museum, where Bunting's daughter had taken her to see a mummy collection, a subject that had long been of interest. "I remember looking at one mummy and thinking, 'Once you were beautiful.' That was the beginning of an idea."

The fruit of the extensive research that followed is I Am the Mummy HEB-NEFERT, illustrated by David Christiana. This picture book with spare, lyrical text is a prime example of one written for older children, ages 7-12. Heb-Nefert, whose name means "beautiful dancer," tells the story of a mummy¹s life and death, how the woman once was the adored wife of a pharaoh's brother and how she came to lie wrapped in ancient linen, under glass in a museum, for all to see.

"When I finished," Bunting recalls, "I asked my editor if we'd get into trouble for saying to young people that you too will die. She said, 'What's wrong with that?' "

Bunting tells Heb-Nefert's tale so convincingly that a Canadian publisher and Egyptologist told Bunting that she must have lived in Egypt in a previous life. "She was absolutely serious," Bunting says. "She said that book is written as though you were living there and you knew every detail. I told the publisher that while I was writing, I was.

"I've led a few lives in my time," Bunting adds, laughing. One was aboard a sinking ship, as evidenced by her novel SOS Titanic, inspired by a visit to the Belfast Museum of Transport. Her husband's father and uncle both worked in the shipyard where the ocean liner was built. At the museum, a commemorative exhibit helped Bunting and other visitors feel as though they were in lifeboats, gazing at the sinking ship.

"I stood there and watched that ship in its death throe," Bunting recalls. "I felt almost as if I had been there. It was breathtaking. I started writing the book while I was still visiting Ireland."

Although many such endeavors require meticulous research, surprisingly, Bunting calls herself "an unstructured person." "My files are a mess," she confesses. "I always have a moment's panic when someone asks me to find something. And I'm not structured about my working habits, not at all. . . . I don't have set hours for work. I don't really make myself work if I don't want to. Fortunately for me," she adds, "I usually want to."

Her favorite format is the picture book. "My daughter says that's because I like instant gratification," she says, "and maybe that's true. I love to be able to say what I want to say succinctly."

And say it she does, with such productivity that it's difficult to keep track of each book. Also new this spring is Bunting's On Call Back Mountain. A collaboration with National Book Award-winning painter Barry Moser, it is the story of two boys who live with their parents at the foot of a mountain with a fire tower and their friend Bosco, an old man who returns each summer to work as lookout in the tower. The story of their friendship, of looking for wolves that have disappeared after a forest fire a few years ago, and of Bosco's sudden death is both realistic and a beautiful credit to the human spirit. Bunting's words and Moser's art capture the emotional rhythm of the story in an unforgettable combination.

One of several forthcoming will be a Christmas story called December, published by Harcourt Brace and another collaboration with David Diaz, which Bunting says Diaz describes as "his best work yet."

As for her own achievements, the ever-modest Bunting says, "I have succeeded beyond my wildest dreams," she says. "My success has been a constant surprise. I often think 'How can all these things happen to this little kid from Maghera?' "

Alice Cary writes from Groton, Massachusetts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A new book from Sharon Creech is always a treat. The author has delighted thousands of readers with titles such as Walk Two Moons, which won the Newbery Award, Bloomability, Love That Dog, The Wanderer and A Fine, Fine School.

In her new novel, Ruby Holler, Dallas and Florida, the "Trouble Twins," are sent away from a Dickensian establishment called the Boxton Creek Home for Children to a temporary foster home. They are to live for several months with an eccentric older couple, Tiller and Sairy, in a lush, green hidden valley called Ruby Holler. Just as in the classic tale, The Secret Garden, the mystery and natural beauty of the place begins to work miracles for the twins in this engaging story for young readers.

The place itself is as much a character in this novel as any of the people, so it's no surprise that the idea for the novel began with the setting. Creech got her inspiration for Ruby Holler by hearing a family story about her father having grown up in a "holler." The idea of a beautiful, mysterious hollow intrigued her. As a child, she had often visited her cousins in their home in the mountains of Kentucky. "It was a place where the hills were green, the streams were clean and you could run and shout all day long in the hills," Creech recalled in a recent interview.

The image grew and evolved in her mind for several years before she was ready to begin working on the book. "I had to wait until a character arrived to inhabit that place, and one day two characters arrived twins, rather rough-edged and full of spunk."

Full of spunk indeed! Mr. and Mrs. Trepid, who run the Buxton Children's Home, are constantly sending Dallas and Florida to the "Thinking Corner," a stool in the dark, cobweb-covered basement. Dallas and Florida are therefore astonished by their first few days in their new foster home. There is plenty of food, for one thing. They are sleeping, not in a cupboard, but in an airy loft with a view of deep blue mountains, and infractions aren't punished by "whuppings." Creech enjoys doing research for her books but says, "I have discovered that I work best when I trust my imagination to conjure up people and places and details. Too often research roots things too stubbornly in reality, and the story will not sing for me then."

A good example of this occurred while she was writing Ruby Holler. Foster parents Tiller and Sairy are each preparing for one last adventure: Tiller wants one twin to paddle with him on the Rutabago River, and Sairy will take the other to go bird-watching on the island of Kangadoon. But in the original draft of the book, Sairy's trip was supposed to be to China and Tiller's to the Mississippi. Creech spent three months researching those places before determining that the sections just didn't work with the rest of the story.

Young readers are often amazed when they hear that three months of work can end up being cut. But Creech is no stranger to revision. For Ruby Holler, she wrote her first draft in six months, then spent another year revising it. "A couple of my favorite chapters came to me late in the revision process probably at the stage of fourth or fifth drafts," says Creech. "It always amazes me that whole scenes can emerge after you think you might be finished with a book!"

Creech advises young readers to "read a lot, and write a lot and have fun with both!" Her many fans will be glad to know that she takes her own advice: now that the Trouble Twins' story has come to a satisfying end, she's currently working on a new book inspired by her Italian grandmother. Watch for it!

Deborah Hopkinson's latest book for young readers is Pioneer Summer, Book One of the Ready-for-Chapters series Prairie Skies.