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.

From running dogs in Alaska’s famous Iditarod to sailing around treacherous Cape Horn by himself to writing more than 190 books, author Gary Paulsen seems to have a passion for life like nobody else. In his new book, The Glass Café (or the Stripper and the State; How My Mother Started a War with the System That Made Us Kind of Rich and a Little Bit Famous), he takes his writing to a new extreme by capturing the unique voice of 12-year-old Tony.

A young boy Paulsen met while living in Hollywood, Tony is, of course, no ordinary kid. He is thoughtful, intelligent, incredibly artistic and the son of a stripper named Al (short for Alice). Even though Al dances for a living, she too is an intelligent, thoughtful person, with a sensibility Paulsen brings out in unsurpassed form. Through a series of misunderstandings, prejudices and comedic moments, he creates an entertaining yet true-to-life account of the struggles single parents often go through and the intense love, protectiveness and loyalty they have for their children.

Paulsen has written numerous books for young readers as well as adults. While he admits there is more adult writing he would like to do, he prefers to reach out to the younger crowd. "I think it’s artistically fruitless to write for adults. They’re locked into car payments and divorce, and not open to new ideas," he explains. "If you really want to write artistically, you have to write for the eighth or ninth grade. Adults just don’t have time to appreciate artistic, new things."

Paulsen has won several Newbery Awards (for such books as The Winter Room, Hatchet and Dogsong), and his titles continue to gain critical acclaim. Oddly enough, English was never one of his favorite subjects in school, and his decision to become a writer came about in a surprising way. "I had become an electronics engineer in the Army, and I was tracking satellites one night when I had an epiphany and realized I needed to be a writer," he recalls.

Even though he had never composed a single story, that night Paulsen walked off his engineering job to begin a career in writing. And the rest, as they say, is history. His many titles have ranged from adult westerns and mysteries to children’s picture books. But his favorites of the bunch are books for young readers that center on tales from his childhood, "all true stories," he says. Paulsen’s next grown-up adventure will be sailing his boat, an 1820s-design sailboat with no motor, around Cape Horn.

"Sailing the Cape is the maximum expression of sailing a boat," he says, "the same way the Iditarod is the maximum expression of running sled dogs." And the maximum expression of writing? "I’m going to write until I die," claims the author.

His trick is to approach the craft the same way he did dog running. "When you’re racing dogs you focus for 20 or so hours at a time, so that’s what I do for writing," says Paulsen. But one thing has changed where his working habits are concerned: instead of writing from the frigid north, he now works on his sailboat, which he navigates on his own for months at a time. "I set the steering vane and write for hours," says Paulsen. During one recent trip, he cranked out four books. "I write until I’m finished," he says, "then I fly back to do book tours."

Paulsen loves the inspiration that being on the open water, miles from land, brings him. "When a story works for me, the hair goes up on my neck," he says. "It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it is elegance." Make no mistake about it: although he has run dogs through 1,200 miles of frozen tundra and although he sails through some of the most treacherous waters on earth, Paulsen’s true passion is writing.

"I am a writer who runs dogs and a writer who sails," he says. "To me, writing is everything. Everything else is just a place to write."

Heidi Henneman writes from San Francisco.

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

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

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

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

Linda Castellitto is the creative director of BookSense.

Paula Danziger owes a slice of her success to a pizza party. Her popular books about Amber Brown were inspired by a phone conversation with her then seven-year-old niece, Carrie, who was obviously upset.

"She was a crazed person," Danziger remembers.
"Aunt, we're having a pizza party at school," Carrie told her.
"Calm down," Danziger said. "You've had pizza before. What's really going on?"
"It's a going-away party for my best friend, Danny," Carrie confessed.

The result of that exchange was Amber Brown Is Not a Crayon, about Amber and her very best friend Justin, who is about to move. The feisty, pigtailed heroine has taken on a life of her own ever since, and young readers can now find this title in paperback. The latest installment is Amber Brown Goes Fourth, in which Amber enters fourth grade and looks for a new best friend. Next month Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit will be published, and more of her adventures are in the works.

Danziger's niece, now 13, is sometimes embarrassed by her literary counterpart, especially her hair. Carrie notes that the Amber shown on the cover of the paperback editions "has split ends," and, frankly, "shouldn't be wearing those stupid pigtails in the fourth grade."

In response, Danziger may grant Amber a haircut in a future book. Unfortunately, the new do will be "a bad one," she adds. Of course, Amber has always been wise beyond her years. Danziger originally envisioned her story in picture book form, but during the revision process discovered that it needed an older voice. As a result, the novels are chapter books for beginning readers, an audience often neglected in the publishing world.

Even Danziger has a literary counterpart in the series in the form of Amber's pal and confidante, Aunt Pam. The second book, You Can't Eat Your Chicken Pox, Amber Brown took off after Danziger invited her niece to London and Carrie came down with—well, you guessed it.

Despite the many real-life details tucked into the fiction, there are important differences between Carrie and Amber. Carrie's parents remain happily married, while Amber's have divorced. What's more, Amber is an only child; Carrie has three brothers, who have given Danziger literary fuel for other books.

While much lies in store for Amber, Danziger has vowed never to write about her niece after she graduates from sixth grade. "It just gets too complicated after that," Danziger says. "It's already complicated enough. In the book I'm writing now, she's much angrier than I ever thought she would be."

In contrast, the author comes across as a warm woman overflowing with ideas and energy. She divides her time between New York City, Woodstock in upstate New York, and London. She takes time out from writing to host a monthly literary segment for a BBC children's show called Live and Kicking. (Her popularity is secure in Great Britain. She was nominated for the British Book Award for children, but native Ann Fine, of Mrs. Doubtfire fame, edged her out.)

Perhaps some of Amber's newfound anger is rooted in Danziger's childhood, which had its share of complications, described in the well-received 1974 book that launched her career, The Cat Ate My Gymsuit, about 13-year-old Marcy Lewis.

"[The book] is very much my growing up," she says. "At age 12, I was put on tranquilizers when I should have gotten help," she continues. "There was nothing major and awful, I just didn't feel [my family] was supportive and emotionally generous. My father was a very unhappy person, very sarcastic, and my mother is very nervous and worried about what people thought. They weren't monsters, but it wasn't a good childhood."

Danziger sums up the subject with one of her trademark quips: "I always say that the family would now be called dysfunctional; back then we were just Danzigers."

One of the things that's seen her through good times and bad is her sense of humor. She even names many of her characters after favorite comedians, such as Ernie Kovacs.

The origin of Amber Brown's name, however, is a joke between fellow writers. When author and illustrators Marc and Laurie Brown-the creators of a multitude of best-selling books about Arthur the Aardvark and his sister D.W.-were expecting a child, Danziger suggested that they name their baby Amber.

"Then everyone would call her Crayola Face," Danziger told them. Instead, the Browns named their daughter Eliza, and now she receives advance copies of the Amber Brown books for critique.

Before turning to writing, Danziger was a junior high school teacher. While her students provided plenty of raw material for the beginning writer, she strongly recommends that anyone interested in the craft take acting lessons, as she did, on the advice of a teacher.

"They're wonderful for anyone who wants to learn about characterization and motivation," she explains. "No matter what age you are, if you want something more than anything else, but can't have it, to me, that becomes a plot."

As for her own plots, she says, "I think my books talk about kids learning to like and respect themselves and each other. You can't write a message book; you just tell the best story you know how to tell."

An important mentor was poet John Ciardi, whose children Danziger babysat during her college years. After learning of their sitter's literary interests, Ciardi and his wife took Danziger to literary conferences.

"He taught me a lot about language," she remembers. He suggested that she analyze one poem by underlining the funny lines in red and the serious lines in blue. By the end of the poem, Ciardi said, you get purple.

"That's what I always write toward," Danziger says, "that mixture. I think that's why Amber Brown works: the books are funny and sad, and that's what people respond to."

Danziger's titles alone are often enough to catch the attention of adults and young readers alike. Take, for instance, Remember Me to Harold Square and its recent sequel set in London, Thames Doesn't Rhyme with James. Although written for an older audience than the Amber Brown books, they have the same witty humor and quick phrasing that appeal to kids today.

Of course, appealing to kids and appealing to their parents is not always the same thing. Danziger has noticed this at book signings for Can You Sue Your Parents for Malpractice? Some parents have told her they would never buy such a book for their child; others say they can't wait to get it in the hands of their son or daughter.

"You know [the latter] are probably pretty good parents," Danziger says, "because they've got a sense of humor and they're not afraid."

Alice Cary has interviewed many writers for this publication.

When she was a kid in North Baltimore County, Laura Amy Schlitz trained herself to sleep in a position that was similar to that of Mary Martin on the cover of the Peter Pan phonorecord: “one knee up and the other knee stretched behind me and my back arched.” She thought that if Peter popped into her window, he would think, “Oh, she’s asleep, but she definitely wants to go to Neverland.”

Considering this history, it makes sense that the author has written The Night Fairy, a middle-grade novel about a brave fairy named Flory—and the challenges she faces when a bat accidentally crunches off her wings.

In a phone interview with BookPage, Schlitz explained that fairy stories, which have a fairy as the main character, are different from fairy tales. And fairies are not frou-frou girly-girls (contrary to what you might think from coloring book pictures of fairy princesses).

“What’s enchanting about the fairy world is that it’s completely free,” Schlitz explained. “You never see a fairy with shoes on. Princesses wear shoes. Princesses wear corsets, but fairies wear loose clothes and they’re barefoot. They move and they dart and they spring. When I dreamed of fairies as a child that was part of what was so fascinating to me. Part of it was aesthetic; there was this beauty. And the other part was adventure. And I think it’s that aesthetic plus adventure quality about fairies that is so enticing.”

In The Night Fairy, those qualities are captured in Schlitz’s writing—which is wonderfully descriptive of Flory’s changing emotions and the creatures that surround her, including a praying mantis, a squirrel and a red-throated hummingbird in need of rescue. Thanks to illustrations by Angela Barrett, the book is a true work of art. Young readers will delight in discovering Flory’s miniature world, captured in vibrant greens and blues. As Schlitz says, the pictures bring a feeling to the story that is “luminous and exquisite.”

The garden where Flory lives is based on Schlitz’s own garden, and because Flory is a nocturnal fairy, Schlitz observed at night for research. “I turned off all the lights in the house and watched the garden get dark. I thought about what I could see, where the sky is lightest at dusk and what’s the last thing you can see as it gets darker and darker.” She noticed that white flowers would remain visible during the night, but after a certain point pink flowers would be gone. “It was interesting because I think in our culture we very seldom let our eyes completely dilate,” she said.

Besides writing and gardening, Schlitz has another passion: her work as Lower School librarian at The Park School of Baltimore, a position that gives her “an edge” when it comes to writing for children. Talking about her students, she said, “They both inspire and encourage me and I can try things out on them.”

This method certainly helped when Schlitz wrote Good Masters! Sweet Ladies! Voices from a Medieval Village, the winner of the 2008 Newbery Medal. The book was originally conceived as monologues for students at The Park School, and now Schlitz said her kids “own the characters; they live in their skins.”

The Night Fairy was also inspired by students—specifically, little girls. “They wanted a book about a fairy,” she said. “I went to a bookstore because I thought we should have these books; we should have more books about fairies. But when I started looking for books about fairies, there were a number of them that had quite nice illustrations, but I didn’t find many where much was happening.”

While she was working on her manuscript, Schlitz read The Night Fairy out loud to a group of second graders, watching their faces to see interest, or squirming, and identifying “good parts” based on when she got excited about sharing certain scenes.

“My students are very avid listeners as well as avid readers. They love having a story told to them. As they say, ‘I like it when I make the pictures up in my head. I like to see the pictures in my head.’ And that’s exciting to me because they may think that what they like is the way I’m telling the story, but what they really like is the way they’re participating: the things that are happening inside their brains.”

Since winning the Newbery, Schlitz has cut back to working three days a week at The Park School, and now she teaches third through fifth graders: the perfect audience for The Night Fairy, Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!, and The Hero Schliemann: The Dreamer Who Dug Up Troy, her novel from 2006. But the author is also adept at writing for different age groups, as demonstrated by her picture book The Bearskinner or her young adult novel A Drowned Maiden’s Hair: A Melodrama.

Next up will be a Victorian gothic called Splendors and Glooms, which Schlitz calls “a bizarre little book” that will appeal to readers who loved A Drowned Maiden’s Tale, since both stories have “suspense and surprises and a little whistle of brimstone.” The title comes from Shelley’s elegy “Adonaïs” and stars a boy and a girl who personify “dingy splendor” and “decorative gloom.” Schlitz hasn’t yet signed a contract for the book, although she wants to finish it soon. “I’m hoping that I can finish the second draft and that someone will want to publish it,” she said.

If the rich characterization and lovely descriptions present in The Night Fairy are any indication, that shouldn’t be a problem.