When she began to write her eighth novel, Rita Williams-Garcia decided to try something different. “Every writer should get a little antsy once they get too familiar with the worlds they create—if that happens, you’re not working hard enough, and there’s not enough in it for you as a writer,” she says in an interview from her home in Queens, New York. “I have a very different background from the kids I tend to write about, so I thought, for a change, why not tap into the childhood I did have?”

And so she did, setting One Crazy Summer on the West Coast rather than in her usual locale of New York City. “My sister, brother and I were always amusing ourselves in the wide-open spaces of Seaside, California. I was determined to have the three girls in my story run around outside in California in the 1960s, too.”

Eleven-year-old Delphine and younger sisters Vonetta and Fern live in Brooklyn with their father, Papa, and grandmother, Big Ma. The adults decide to have the girls spend the summer of 1968 in Oakland, California, with their mother, Cecile, who left them after Fern was born. Big Ma has never forgiven her, but Papa prevails, and off they go.

The scenes depicting the girls at airports are just a few of the many moments in One Crazy Summer wherein the author’s gift for combining everyday settings with social commentary and wry wit make for memorable, but not heavy-handed, reading. Delphine rolls her eyes (and bites her tongue) when she and her sisters are stared at as if “on display at the Bronx Zoo,” and the girls engage in what Williams-Garcia calls “colored counting.” It’s an activity she and her siblings “did everywhere. It was a time when, in public places, you might not see a lot of African-American people. We’d count how many of us were there, how many words we got to say on TV.”

These small but telling moments are the ones that most interest Williams-Garcia. “Usually I don’t like to do ‘the race book’ because it’s not how people live,” she says. “Not to say racism doesn’t exist, but it’s not this moment-to-moment consciousness. I like to include the domestic, intimate things about race and identity that never really make it into books or media—you mainly get big or dramatic events of racism, violence or discrimination.”

Thus, when none other than the Black Panthers become part of the sisters’ everyday lives, there aren’t cinematic goings-on at every turn. Sure, the girls initially are anxious when Cecile sends them on all-day visits to the Panthers-run community center, where they have free breakfast and learn about the group’s political causes and views. And the political rally at book’s end certainly is exciting.

But in between, the children develop friendships and enjoy being part of something larger than themselves, even if they understand only some of what’s going on at the center. Cecile keeps a printing press for the Panthers in her kitchen, which she fiercely protects as her own space for working, thinking and writing her poetry.

Cecile and the other women in One Crazy Summer—smart, strong, often unrepentant—are in many ways like Williams-Garcia’s own late mother, whose influence was central to another change in approach for the author. Her previous work—including the 2009 National Book Award Finalist Jumped—“always seemed to mourn the loss of childhood,” she says. This time, “I decided to celebrate my experiences. My mother was the super-mother of all mothers; she made it clear there was only one woman in her house, and my sister and I did not qualify.”

With that in mind, she wanted to have a chasm between mother and children in One Crazy Summer. “I respect the difference between parent and child. Delphine and her sisters haven’t earned their mother’s story, and she hasn’t earned their forgiveness.”

Ultimately, what is attainable for Cecile and her children is a truce of sorts, one characterized by hope for mother and daughters, as well as the America they’re living in.

As for Williams-Garcia, herself the mother of two daughters, she’s hoping to challenge herself even more via her next book, a gaming novel: “I’m estrogen-ed out—it’s time for me to write about a boy.”

Linda M. Castellitto writes from North Carolina.

Opening a new novel by Polly Horvath is a bit like going on an adventure—on each page something new and unexpected unfolds. And that’s part of the reason Horvath is one of the literary stars in the universe of children’s literature. The author of the National Book Award-winning The Canning Season (2003), Horvath also received a Newbery Honor for Everything on a Waffle (2001), while The Trolls (1999) was a National Book Award finalist. Horvath’s books have often been chosen as Best Books of the Year and Editors’ Choices, along with several other honors.

Horvath makes her home on Vancouver Island in British Columbia with her husband and two daughters. While her creative process includes a daily writing schedule, along with long walks in the rainforest and on nearby beaches, the inspiration for her recent books about the Fielding family came to her in an unusual place: the bathtub.

“I was reading a Country Living magazine in the tub,” Horvath explains with a laugh, “and an article by the poet Mary Oliver sucked me in. It led me to read her poems and some of her essays in which she talks about being a poor poet. And so the character of Jane’s mother, Felicity [also a poor poet], took off before Jane did.”

Jane Fielding is the eldest daughter in a quirky family that includes sister Maya and two little brothers, Max and Hershel. Jane’s mother comes into strong focus in the first book, My One Hundred Adventures, set during Jane’s 12th summer at the family’s home on a beach in Massachusetts.

But it is Jane’s relationship with her recently acquired stepfather, Ned, which Horvath explores more fully in her new novel, Northward to the Moon. As Jane sees it, she and Ned “have our own subset built on the understanding of adventures and the lure of outlaw life.”

“Writing is kind of interesting,” muses the author, who doesn’t outline her award-winning books, but rather discovers the story along with her characters. “The character that surfaced in this book was Ned.”

As Northward to the Moon begins, the family has lived in Saskatchewan almost a year. But things are about to change. Ned has just been fired from his job teaching French at the local school. The reason? Well, he doesn’t speak French.

Ned has been a wanderer almost all his life. When he gets a call about a dying friend from his past, he proposes that the family travel across country to visit her. Jane is delighted by this turn of events. “Finally, I think, an adventure. Ned had promised me nothing but adventures when we got to Canada, but this is the first whiff I’ve caught of them.”

They set off on a journey that, after some twists and turns, eventually lands them on a ranch in Nevada, with Ned’s aging mother, Dorothy. And it is here that the real journeys actually begin.

Northward to the Moon is a story about families that sometimes work well—and sometimes don’t. It’s also a book that explores the challenges different generations face. At Dorothy’s Nevada ranch, Jane develops a crush on a ranch hand, and her little sister Maya forms a deep bond with her step-grandmother. Ned and his siblings, and Dorothy herself, must grapple with difficult life decisions after Dorothy suffers a broken hip in a riding accident.

When things come to a head at dinner one night, Dorothy bursts out, “I’ll admit I may have to move somewhere where someone will assist me . . . but I don’t have to put up with you all planning it behind my back like I’m senile. . . . Sometimes I wish I’d had gerbils instead when the mothering instinct came over me.”

“What mothering instinct?” whispers one of her daughters.

Horvath believes the family issues in Northward to the Moon will be very familiar to children today. “Especially as people are living a lot longer, dealing with aging grandparents is a part of children’s lives,” she says.

Will there be another book about Jane Fielding’s adventures? Horvath, who has been writing since she was eight, is definitely planning on it.

“I began wanting to do to nine books about a character, from childhood to 90s. The voice that came to me was that of a 91-year-old lady looking back on her life, and I’m intrigued by the idea of taking someone through a life.”

Based on the first two books about Jane Fielding, readers will have a lot to look forward to from this original and talented writer in the years ahead.

In the meantime, Horvath is embarking on her own adventures this spring: a national book tour to meet her readers in person.

Deborah Hopkinson’s latest book is The Humblebee Hunter, inspired by the life of Charles Darwin.

Most people are satisfied to come back from a vacation with a few souvenirs, perhaps a tan and some fond memories. Award-winning author Pam Muñoz Ryan, on the other hand, returned from a recent trip to Chile with the idea for her next book. “Inspiration for books arrives in different ways,” she says in an interview from her home in Southern California. “In this case, it was like a confluence of rivers.”

In preparation for her trip, Ryan had brushed up on the biography and writings of several Chilean authors, including Pablo Neruda, the beloved poet whose work she had read as early as high school. While in Neruda’s native country, she visited two of his childhood homes and became fascinated by tales of his early life. Then, shortly after her return home, she met author and illustrator Jon Muth, who told her a story about Neruda that became, in many ways, the centerpiece of her beautiful new novel The Dreamer, which centers on the childhood of the budding poet.

In the story, the painfully shy young Neruda (known as Neftalí) finds the courage to exchange small gifts with another young child, a stranger, through a hole in the fence that separates their properties. Neftalí receives a beloved toy sheep, and offers up a remarkable pine cone that had already sparked his own imagination. The encounter, and the human connection and imaginative power it conveys, highlight the themes of Neruda’s early life as well as his later writings.

Stories like these inspired Ryan’s own imagination and sent her to the library, where she read biographies about Neruda and also became reacquainted with his writings. “Living with the poetry day in and day out,” Ryan says, “I became particularly fascinated with the Book of Questions and I became intrigued with the idea of integrating questions into my own book.”

Ryan’s novel does incorporate many questions—“Is fire born of words? Or are words born of fire?”—that will rouse young readers’ own inquisitive natures. She hopes that these questions will “allow readers’ imaginations to extend the text beyond the page.” As she wrote the novel, she imagined a reader, a daydreamer or “closet poet,” who might be inspired to jot down his or her own verses and images in the margins of her book.

As is fitting for a novel that relies so heavily on visual details and concrete images, The Dreamer is generously, almost magically illustrated by award-winning artist Peter Sís, whose delicate, pointillist drawings help enhance Ryan’s dreamlike, magical realist world. For Ryan, working with Sís was a true collaboration, a dream come true in many ways: “I’ve been a huge fan of his work for many, many years,” she says. “I remember many years ago going to a museum in Chicago and never even imagining that he would illustrate something of mine one day.”

Ryan, who has published numerous picture books, points out that writing an illustrated novel is a fundamentally different process than writing a picture book for younger readers. “A picture book is a marriage of art and words,” she observes. “When you write a picture book, you write with a more limited palette. In the case of the novel, the words were written first and his illustrations just added a whole new dimension.” Each chapter of Ryan’s novel opens with a Sís triptych that illustrates images, objects and moods that will play key roles in the chapter to follow. Larger-scale drawings also vividly illuminate the fanciful wanderings of young Neftalí’s wholly original imagination, accompanied by lyrical passages of text: “I am poetry, lurking in dappled shadow. I am the confusion of root and gnarled branch. I am the symmetry of insect, leaf, and a bird’s outstretched wings,” Ryan writes.

Young readers—and, in many cases, their parents and teachers—who come to Neruda’s work through Ryan’s fictional portrayal may wants to read more of Neruda’s original poetry. Ryan recommends that young readers start with his Odes, especially his “Ode to a Bicycle” and “Ode to a Lizard,” and, of course, with the Book of Questions. Several of Neruda’s own poems, as well as information about collections of his poetry, are gathered at the back of Ryan’s novel.

Poetry, too often, can be seen by middle-grade readers as opaque, abstract, difficult. In The Dreamer, Ryan expertly utilizes Neruda’s own excitement about nature, his enthusiasm for language and his unbounded imagination to inspire young readers’ inner poets. By giving them her own “book of questions,” Ryan prompts children to consider their own answers, and by doing so, perhaps write the world, as Neruda does, through their own unique perspectives.

Norah Piehl is a writer and editor who lives near Boston.

The first book in The Books of Elsewhere series has a tall order to fill: publicity materials compare author Jacqueline West to Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman. Luckily for readers, The Shadows does not disappoint. In her first book for young readers, West—who is also a poet—introduces a spooky, magical world that will captivate middle schoolers.

Olive Dunwoody, a shy and curious child, moves with her “dippy” mathematician parents into a Victorian mansion. Olive soon learns that they’re not alone in the dusty, antique-filled house. With talking cats as her guides, Olive discovers that she can travel through paintings on the walls, as long as she’s wearing a certain pair of glasses. But the paintings hold a dangerous, life-or-death secret, and it’s up to Olive to figure out the mystery.

In an interview with BookPage, West elaborates on why she likes writing for kids, her preferred type of superpower and what to expect in the second book of the series.

You have mentioned your interest in magic—talking cats, paintings as portals to another world. What sort of magical adventure would you like to go on; is there a power you’d like to have?
Back when I thought I might be a superhero when I grew up, I wanted to be a shape-shifter. Actually, I’d still like to be one. I know this is sort of like wishing for more wishes, because it’s one power that would come with all kinds of other powers: flying, breathing underwater, running at incredible speeds. But I’m greedy that way. I’d like to see the world from all different points of view, to experience life as a whole slew of people and animals and objects. Of course, this is the same reason I wanted to be a writer.

Do you believe that houses can really be haunted? Would you be delighted—or terrified—if you discovered your house was built on a graveyard (or came with a talking cat)?
Sadly, I’ve never had a personal experience with ghosts or haunted places. I’ve lived in several old houses and even in rooms where people had died, and I remember wishing that their ghosts would show up and keep me company and be my quirky roommates. But it never happened. That’s not to say it couldn’t happen . . .

The Books of Elsewhere: The Shadows is your first book for young readers, although you are an accomplished poet. Have you always wanted to write novels for kids?
When I started writing The Shadows, I was experimenting with all kinds of genres and forms—poetry, short fiction, scripts for a series of graphic novels (which no one ever needs to see), an adult novel (no one ever needs to see this, either)—and I’ll try to keep challenging myself this way. Focusing on writing for kids has been a huge pleasure, in part because I’m writing for my inner child rather than for my inner critic, but I know I’ll continue to write poetry, I’ve got drafts and notes for several middle grade and young adult books underway and maybe someday I’ll baffle myself by waking up with the plan for a three-act melodrama in my head.

Your book has been compared to works by Roald Dahl and Neil Gaiman, and there are scenes reminiscent of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. What are your favorite books for children? Do any authors inspire your writing?
As a child, I read A.A. Milne, Lewis Carroll, J.M. Barrie, Roald Dahl and Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes collections over and over so intently that I think they became part of my genetic makeup. I can still remember finishing Matilda for the first of many times. I was in the backseat of the family car, it was dark outside the windows and I felt as though my whole body was full of lit fireworks . . . It was that exhilarating. My favorite books for kids haven’t changed much—I still love Milne and Dahl and Shel Silverstein (I also deeply admire some writers who are currently working, like Gaiman and Rowling and Kate DiCamillo)—and I suppose it was the joy I got from reading these books that indirectly influenced me to write for kids myself.

The Shadows is filled with descriptions of paintings and antiques—do you have a particular interest in art? Did you do any research on art and architecture when writing the book?
This was drawn more from memory and imagination than from research. I’ve worked as an arts writer, and I’ve spent considerable time wandering in a happy daze through museums, so I had quite a lot of material stored up.

Throughout the book, Olive’s only companions are Morton, a boy from a painting, and three talking cats. Why does Olive have trouble making friends her own age, when she’s clearly funny and spunky?
The qualities that appeal to grown-ups aren’t necessarily the qualities that appeal to kids when making friends. Among kids, fitting in is generally more important than standing out, and even standing out in a good way can be a liability. Olive is shy and awkward, she has moved from place to place a lot and she’s the only child of parents who are more than a bit out of touch with the real world. She certainly hasn’t been prepared to fit in.

Although The Shadows is magical (and often creepy), it also includes themes that are timeless and very real: trusting others, taking chances, being lonely. Are there any lessons (or types of encouragement) you hope kids take from the book?
I certainly didn’t write this with any type of lesson in mind, but I suppose any book in which a child protagonist has to solve her own problems lets the reader learn from her mistakes and her growth. I hope kids will identify with Olive and that getting to know her might make them feel a bit less alone or misunderstood or out of place. Aside from that, I just hope kids will be entertained.

How many books to you intend to write in the Books of Elsewhere series? Can you give us a hint about Olive and Morton’s next adventure?
The total number of books is still up in the air at this point, but I’d estimate four or five volumes in total. Volume Two is already written, so I can tell you that the house has some more big secrets waiting to be revealed, including an object that begins to take over Olive’s life. Olive also makes a friend who isn’t from a painting or covered in fur, and someone else—someone Olive thought she knew—turns out to have been fooling everyone all along.  

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Twelve-year-old Lucy, the heroine of  Valerie Hobbs’ lyrical new novel for young readers, treasures her summer visits with Grams, an artist and “a hippie before hippies were invented.”

But this summer turns out to be different. For one thing, Lucy’s longed-for, precious time at the lake with her beloved grandmother is disrupted by a surprise visitor, one who’s not altogether welcome. And then there are the disturbing incidents: Grams forgetting the day of the week, a dish towel left too close to the burner, an ill-advised canoe trip in threatening weather.

As the days pass, Lucy wants to cling to the way things have always been. She doesn’t want Grams to change. Yet she can’t forget what her mother told her as she said goodbye: “This might be the last time, you know.”

The last summer. Lucy wants it to be the best.

The Last Best Days of Summer was inspired by a film on Alz-heimer’s disease, which prompted Hobbs to think about family members, like Lucy, who get left behind. This can be extremely painful for children, especially those being raised by their grandparents, or those who have close ties to a grandparent or relative.

Now a grandmother herself, Hobbs believes her own experience has helped her appreciate in a new way the special bond that can exist between grandparents and grandchildren. “I wanted to speak to that connection,” she says in an interview from her home in Santa Barbara, California.

In writing her latest novel, Hobbs also drew on her experiences with throwing pots, a skill Grams is teaching Lucy in their time together. “I did pottery for a couple of years. I got to the point where I could center a pot. It’s a really strange and profound feeling—a feeling of being centered on the Earth, and centered within yourself.”

The author of 12 novels for young readers and one for adults (Call It a Gift), Hobbs writes for both middle grade and young adult age groups. She says it’s really the story and characters that shape whether a book is for middle grade readers or an older audience.

“It really depends on what story hits me,” she notes. Though she adds with a laugh, “I think I got stuck at about age 14 so I can go either way.”

Hobbs, who likes to visit schools and talk with students, believes that writing can help young people find themselves. She works with young writers to enable them to recognize that their own lives and stories are important.

“I start out with a banner that reads, ‘Only You Can Tell Your Story.’ I want them to know that they have the power to write from their hearts and their experiences. To get those real stories out is important,” the author says.

Hobbs practices this in her own work. Her novels have sometimes drawn from her personal experiences, including the tragic death of a boyfriend when she was a teenager. But while she has found that writing some of her books has been challenging emotionally, others have turned out to be pure fun, especially her 2006 novel Sheep, about the adventures of a border collie.

Despite its bittersweet story, The Last Best Days of Summer is never dark. Instead, it seems infused with joy and an affirmation of family. Part of the reason may be that Hobbs, who lived in New Jersey before moving to California at the age of 15, has wonderful memories of her own summers as a golden, carefree time. “We were gone all day. We ran. We made forts. We only came home when we were hungry.”

Lucy’s summer with Grams may not be what she was expecting, but by the end it has been touched by love and a kind of magic. Lucy has come to feel that sense of being centered, in spite of the changes and emotions that envelop her.

“I hope kids get that,” says Hobbs, “that feeling of knowing who you are, and knowing ‘this is right.’ ”

And really, isn’t finding out who you are exactly what summer reading is all about?

Guerilla warfare, child soldiers and landmines: What do these ripped-from-the-headlines terms have to do with a coming-of-age story for young readers? As it turns out, quite a bit.

While displacement camps and military maneuvers are not the trappings of your standard touchy-feely “do the right thing” tale, they bring a sense of hard-edged reality to Mitali Perkins’ Bamboo People, an intriguing and insightful story about two boys learning how to become men in the midst of chaos.

The award-winning author of such internationally diverse books as Monsoon Summer, The Not-So-Star-Spangled Life of Sunita Sen, Secret Keeper and Rickshaw Girl takes us, this time, to the border between Burma and Thailand—and into the eye-opening lives of children in the midst of a war zone. Bamboo People follows two boys caught in the crossfire of the ongoing border fight—a cultural and land battle that has been waged for decades, but in recent years has escalated dramatically through the forced enlistment of child soldiers.

Chiko, a scholarly and quiet Burmese teen whose father has been imprisoned for having anti-government sympathies, longs to be a teacher and avoids conflict at all costs. In an unexpected turn of events, Chiko is forced to enlist in the Burmese army, where he learns that education is more than the stuff of books. On the other side of the lines is Tu Reh, a member of the Karenni ethnic group displaced by the fighting, who would give anything to prove he is man enough to carry a gun. Tu Reh and his family have lost their homes, their loved ones and much of their sense of community during the many years of fighting, and his prejudice against everything Burmese runs deep. When Chiko is injured behind enemy lines, it is up to Tu Reh to decide whether this boy, his supposed mortal enemy, lives or dies. It’s a decision that changes both their lives.

Perkins was inspired to write the story during the three years she and her husband, a Presbyterian minister, spent on a missionary assignment near the Burmese border in northern Thailand. Here, Perkins witnessed firsthand the hardships, tenacity and hope of those affected by war. “These people are in conditions that seem nearly unbearable: They have been hunted, forced into labor, lost their homes, and many are hiding in the jungle,” Perkins explains. “You see them trying to perpetuate nationhood, trying to teach civility to a younger generation, trying to keep a hold on their culture and language. It’s fascinating and sad, but amazing to hear their stories.”

She also learned that war is never black and white. “When you think about the Burmese army from the Karenni point of view, it’s easy to think about them as evil. But Burma used to have one of the highest literacy rates in the world, and now it has the most child soldiers. So you have all of these soldiers who are really young and uneducated. They are trying to send money back to their families, trying to make ends meet, and they are desperate. It’s not always clear who are the good guys or the bad guys.”

Having traveled the world from an early age, Perkins knows a little about how diverse the world can be. Her father, a civil engineer who developed shipping ports, took the family from their home in India to live in such places as Cameroon, Ghana, Mexico and London. But it wasn’t until she landed in America that she felt a culture shock. “I was often between cultures,” Perkins recalls. To find refuge, she would sneak onto her family’s New York City fire escape—and there she also found her passion for writing. “I used to take my Sweet Tart candies, a pen and my journal and go out there to write,” she remembers. “It was in between the world of home and the world outside, and even today the fire escape metaphor really works for me.” Indeed, Perkins has a blog called Fire Escape where she invites her readers to join her for chats, discussions and a place to “explore hopes, dreams, and fears.”

Her own sense of being in between cultures is also why she is so interested in sharing stories from around the world with her readers.

“I like opening the eyes of children,” Perkins says. “They are much more open-hearted and aware than many adults believe them to be.”

“I think there is a lack of respect for what children do and want to know,” the author says. “They understand the human experience much more than they are sometimes given credit for.”

Megan McDonald’s Judy Moody series has sold millions of copies, captivating early readers with the oddball adventures of a feisty third-grader. In the series’ ninth installment, Judy Moody, Girl Detective, Judy and her little brother, Stink, find themselves in the middle of a mystery: Mr. Chips (a dog) has gone missing! Luckily, Judy is a student of Nancy Drew, and it doesn’t take her long to start looking for clues.

The popular series will reach an even larger audience when Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer—the movie—is released next summer.

McDonald took a few minutes to give us her take on the new book, Judy’s resilience and the upcoming film adaptation.

Was your personality like Judy’s when you were in third grade?
Do I have to admit it? I’m moody! Judy and I are a lot alike—we both have messy hair, can turn anything—a Band-Aid, sock monkey, scabs, ABC gum—into a collection, and yes, I once went to school in my pajamas. I would like to think that Judy and I are both a good friend and a good sister, despite our shortcomings. And . . . our favorite color is purple.

How were you different?
Judy is a bossy BIG sister (based on my four older sisters!) and I’m the youngest, like Stink. I think Judy is much more outspoken and sure of herself than I was at her age. She has a strong voice, and is not afraid to speak up with creative ideas. She is not crushed by disappointment—she picks herself up and keeps going, even though lots of things don’t turn out the way she’d hoped. Judy certainly has her failings, and one of them was spelling. I, on the other hand, was a Spelling Bee champ from way back. Can you spell pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis?

In your opinion, what is Judy’s best quality?
Resilience. Call it lively, spirited, energetic, feisty, or go-getting . . . I set a lot of obstacles in Judy’s way, but she always meets the challenge, and in the end, overcomes them with humor and imagination.

Judy has a lot of opinions on “Rule Number One” of being a good detective. (From “A good detective does not get in a bad mood,” to “Never give up!”) In your opinion, what’s the real Rule Number One of being a good detective?
My own favorite Rule Number One is: NEVER leave home without your S.O.S. lipstick! (For writing a HELP message in red in case you find yourself in danger.)

Rule Number One-est of Them All: TRUST YOUR INNER NANCY DREW!

What’s your favorite Nancy Drew mystery? Why is Judy so drawn to the girl detective?
2010 marks the 80th anniversary of my girlhood favorite—Nancy Drew! Who doesn’t remember Nancy and her blue convertible Roadster, taking on ghosts, villains and jewel thieves of every stripe! The clever, gutsy, independent teenage sleuth has impacted generations of women, from Supreme Court Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Sandra Day O’Connor to Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey and Diane Sawyer. My favorite Nancy Drew book would have to be . . . #21: Secret in the Old Attic. A dead man’s letters, secret clues, an unpublished musical manuscript . . . great stuff!

When I was a girl reading Nancy Drew, she felt so grown up and independent to me. She had all these amazing adventures in faraway settings, AND she knew how to drive—a convertible, no less! I think Judy is drawn to that same spirit of adventure—the idea that there’s a mystery, with a dash of danger, around every corner.

Judy takes her place next to a slew of beloved kid heroines, from Ramona Quimby to Harriet the Spy. Has your writing been inspired at all by other authors or characters?
Katherine Paterson inspired and mentored me at a young age, long before I ever became published. She still inspires me as a person, and as a writer.

As for characters who had an important impact on me—Jo March, Ellen Tebbitts, Harriet the Spy, and of course, Nancy Drew.

Of all the Judy Moody books, is there one that sticks out as your favorite? Why?
If I had to pick one, my favorite would be Judy Moody Saves the World. I love the books that show the big-hearted side of Judy Moody, and who doesn’t think the planet needs a little saving right now?

Young readers have a lot of entertainment options, from smartphones, to the Wii, to over-booked after-school activities. In spite of so many distractions, why are kids excited about Judy Moody?
She’s funny, and makes us laugh. We see ourselves in her. Judy can always be trusted to TRY and do the right thing, but her adventures along the way are hilarious and true, like life. I do worry that reading has to compete so much with technology, sports and other activities, but I believe there’s nothing better than curling up with a good book. Reading feeds the imagination; my hope is that kids will always make room for a good story.

How did you react when you learned that Judy Moody is being turned into a movie? Are there any actors you envision as Judy and Stink?
I’m Joyful-on-top-of-Spaghetti-and-the-World that Judy Moody is being made into a movie—Judy Moody and the NOT Bummer Summer. A feature film will reach countless new Judy Moody readers. I’m kind of hoping that Judy and Stink will be actors we haven’t seen much of yet—so that they really embody and become the characters in the books.

For the movie, you share a screenwriting credit with Kathy Waugh. How is the screenwriting process different from writing a book?
Wildly different. Screenwriting is completely visual—I had to constantly play each scene like a movie in my head. The biggest challenge for me in scripting a movie is that the characters always have to be doing something—in action. I LOVE most of all to write dialogue, and there are rarely more than a few lines of dialogue at a time in the script. It was quite an education for me.

What are you working on now? Can you give us a hint about Judy’s next adventure?
Look for an on-set, behind-the-scenes, Judy Moody Goes to Hollywood kind of diary . . . Her next adventure? The good news is . . . it’s about BAD news. Judy gets tired of all the bad news in the world, and starts her own GOOD NEWS newspaper. The bad news is . . . I can’t tell you any more because it’s a work in progress!

There’s a slip of paper, pulled from a fortune cookie, taped to Cynthia Lord’s computer monitor. It says, “Someday your talents will be recognized and suitably rewarded.”

Happily, those encouraging words turned out to be prescient ones. “I put the fortune on my computer monitor as a joke,” Lord says in an interview from her home in Maine. “But I sold my first novel, Rules, two weeks later.”

That fortune was still around when Rules was named a 2007 Newbery Honor Book, and it remains with the author today. When it’s time to discard a computer monitor, “I peel [the fortune] off and apply it to the new one!”

The seeming magic of superstition doesn’t just figure into Lord’s life; it’s a central element of her heartwarming second novel, Touch Blue. The layered story is narrated by 11-year-old Tess Brooks, a smart, earnest girl who loves her island home and is determined to keep things they way they’ve always been, whether through wishing, working or some combination thereof.

Tess’ beloved island is off the coast of Maine, a place where lobster fishing is a common occupation and kids of all ages learn together in a single schoolhouse. Tess’ mother is in danger of losing her teaching job, and the community, its school: The state is threatening to close it down because of low enrollment. If the island doesn’t get more students, its residents will have to move to the mainland and leave behind their homes, livelihoods and special way of life.

Their solution? Take in foster children in an effort to save the school and do good at the same time. Although it might seem like a wild idea, “a little school in Maine in the 1960s did that to save their school,” Lord says. And she knows what it’s like to worry about such things, having taught at a Maine island school in her pre-author days. “My books always have personal experiences in them,” she says, adding that her commute from the mainland “was very romantic . . . except for December through March.”

In Touch Blue, Tess’ new foster brother arrives on a boat (in nice weather, fortunately), and she’s very excited to meet him, not least because she’s read books about foster children, like The Great Gilly Hopkins and Bud, Not Buddy. At first, she’s disappointed by 13-year-old Aaron’s reticence, not to mention his skepticism of her neighbors’ interest in knowing everyone’s business. But over time, despite run-ins with a bully and somewhat stressful preparations for a talent show, Tess learns she can’t control everything, and Aaron grows to like being around people who care enough to meddle.

Under Lord’s writerly hand, those realizations bring their own kind of comfort, the sort that even age-old superstitions cannot provide. “As a kid, you think you’re not in control of the things you care about. Superstitions are one way that people deal with that,” Lord says.

To that end, there are superstitious sayings at the start of every chapter in Touch Blue (finding them all, Lord said, “took a lot of research!”). The book’s title is drawn from one such saying—“Touch blue and your wish will come true”—and, in keeping with the book’s real-life feel, Lord notes that “lobster fishermen are often very superstitious.”

Like the fishermen—and the characters in Touch Blue—Lord loves the ocean. “I can even smell it from my front yard. It’s always so different. . . . Sometimes it’s blue, or gray or green. You never know what you’ll see.”

Her love for the water began in her childhood in New Hampshire, when she lived near a lake. It was part of everyday life, whether swimming or ice skating. “I was a voracious reader,” she adds. “I loved to lay down on the wharf and read all afternoon.”

Her next book will be set in New Hampshire, in “those beautiful mountains” around her childhood home. But first, she’ll be spending more time on the islands of Maine: Lord says she does some 40 school visits a year, and for Touch Blue she’ll go to schools like the one in the book.

Surely, thanks to what she learned writing Touch Blue—not to mention the fortune she has taped to her computer—Lord will keep in mind the superstition from chapter three: “Start your journey with your right foot and good luck will walk with you.”

Girls with gumption and a "can do" spirit will get a big kick out of Holly George-Warren’s The Cowgirl Way, which provides a fascinating history of the Wild West and cowgirls, from big names like Annie Oakley to lesser-known gals of the 21st century.

Chapters are interspersed with photos, quotes and memorabilia that nicely complement the text. And though the book's target audience is tweens (ages 10 and up), teens and adults will also enjoy George-Warren’s meticulously researched history of American cowgirls.

The author has long been interested in the Wild West culture. Read on for her take on rodeo fever, pursuing dreams—and why Lady Gaga embodies the cowgirl spirit.

You have written several books on cowgirls, cowboys and the Wild West. What sparked your interest in this culture?
As a girl growing up in North Carolina in the ‘60s, I became fascinated by cowgirls and cowboys and the West. My family used to stop at a tourist attraction called the Buffalo Ranch, which displayed Western artifacts, and real live buffalo grazed in a cow pasture. Plus I really liked watching Westerns on TV and reading biographies of historical figures from the Old West.

Your book begins with a quote from Connie Douglas Reeves: “Always saddle your own horse!” This quote has also been adopted as the motto for the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame. What does this line say about cowgirls? Why is it important?
That mandate emphasizes self-sufficiency and independence, and it epitomizes the “can do” spirit of cowgirls. That’s a great lesson for all of us.

What can young readers of The Cowgirl Way learn from cowgirls of the past?
Women in the West had to overcome numerous obstacles to pursue their dreams. They had to break down barriers that prevented women from participating fully in American life. By learning about the courage and tenacity of these Western women, hopefully it will inspire [young readers] to overcome challenges in their own lives.

You quote Florence Hughes Randolph as saying, “I had the rodeo fever, so I left Hollywood and went back to Texas.” Why do you think the cowgirl lifestyle appealed to young women in the early 20th century?
During that time, not many women could work and/or travel independently, and becoming a rodeo cowgirl opened up their options. It also gave women a chance to prove themselves in a traditionally male arena. And as America became more urbanized, ranch life signified freedom and wide-open spaces.

Who is your favorite cowgirl from history? Why?
It’s a tie between Annie Oakley and Lucille Mulhall. Each worked hard to reach the top in an area where women had been shut out, and they opened doors for other women. They were smart, charismatic and courageous, and they got to travel the world and live adventurous lives.

You mention that former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O’Connor used to be a cowgirl. Which other public figures embody the cowgirl “spunk, adventurousness and courage”?
Our First Lady Michelle Obama, filmmakers Kathryn Bigelow and documentarian Barbara Kopple, Mississippi teenager Constance McMillen and Lady Gaga, just to name a few . . .

What kind of cowgirl would you like to be? A pioneer? An outlaw? Rodeo star? Show girl for Buffalo Bill?
I would have enjoyed being a singing cowgirl like Dale Evans and Patsy Montana, or a ranch woman and photojournalist like Evelyn Cameron.

What is your next project?
I’m writing a biography of the late Alex Chilton, who first found fame as the 16-year-old lead singer of the Box Tops in 1967 and went on to form the influential band Big Star before embarking on a solo career.

Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo and #1 New York Times best-selling author Alison McGhee will make kids smile, giggle and demand pancakes with Bink & Gollie, the story of two best friends.

Bink is short and blonde and Gollie is tall and brunette, and the girls are different in other ways, too. Bink lives in a cottage at the bottom of a tree. Gollie lives in a modern tree house. Bink is loud and enjoys making unusual purchases, such as crazy rainbow socks or a fish to carry around. Gollie is level-headed and loves making pancakes. Together they make marvelous companions, sharing hilarious banter and a love for roller skates.

Bink & Gollie is the first collaboration between DiCamillo and McGhee—who were friends before they became co-authors. The two authors took the time to answer some questions from BookPage on working together, adventures with friends and how the authors and the characters have plenty in common.

How long have you known each other? How did the idea for this story come about?
Kate: Alison and I have known each other since the summer of 2001. One evening we were sitting around talking about how we wished we had a good story to work on. Alison said: Why don’t we work on a story together? I said: A story about what? And Alison said: A story about a short girl and a tall girl.

Alison: If memory serves me correctly, and it doesn’t always, Kate and I met in the fall of 2001 at the former Figlio’s restaurant in Minneapolis. We were laughing within a minute of meeting—always a good sign.

Can you explain the logistics of the collaboration?
Kate: Every morning for, I don’t know how long, I came over to Alison’s house and we sat in her office and wrote the stories “out loud” together. We yelled at each other and made each other laugh. It was a lot of fun.

Alison: I remember wanting to write a book with someone, the someone being Kate, and we decided to write about two friends. We had no idea how to begin this project—neither of us had ever collaborated with another writer—and I’m pretty sure that we began by giving our two friends a sock, just to see what they’d do with it. And it went from there.

We wrote the whole thing together. We set specific two-hour time slots to work on it, and the rule was that we were never allowed to work on it when we were apart. Sometimes we’d start to zip revision ideas back and forth over email, but that was breaking the rules, so we’d stop ourselves immediately.

Sometimes we were stumped, sometimes everything flowed easily, sometimes we argued, but we almost always laughed and laughed and laughed.

How old are Bink and Gollie? Their parents are never in the picture—will they show up in future books?
Kate: I don’t know what Alison thinks, but I very strongly doubt that we will ever see the parents of Bink or Gollie. However, I do think it would be fun to make Tony Fucile draw portraits of the parental units and have those portraits sitting on Bink’s mantel or in Gollie’s kitchen. Glowering. A little.

Alison: I’m not exactly sure how old the girls are, but I can pretty much guarantee that their parents will never show up. That would mess up the fun. I do, however, very much like Kate’s idea of having Tony draw their portraits.

You’re very clever about explaining the meaning of certain words in the dialogue (such as “compromise”). Do you hope that kids will learn new vocabulary by reading Bink & Gollie?
Kate: What would make me happiest is if kids read these books and think: there is so much to love in the world; and words are so much fun.

Alison: I don't care if they do or not. May God strike me down with a hammer on the head before I write a book with a teach-y goal! What I hope is that the book delights children. What I hope is that they laugh and laugh and laugh, just as we did when we wrote them.

Have either of you ever worked with a co-author before? How is this experience different from writing a book by yourself?
Kate: I’ve never worked with a co-author before. Writing for me is a pretty scary thing, so it was a huge comfort to have someone in the room working with me. It became less like work and more like play.

Alison: I had never worked with another writer before. I loved the experience, loved loved loved it. It was so comforting to have someone else there doing the work with me—writing is such a lonely thing to do.

Growing up, did either of you have a friendship like the one portrayed in Bink & Gollie? What’s the weirdest adventure you ever went on?
Kate: The weirdest adventure? They’ve all been weird. And yes, I have had many friendships that are similar to Bink and Gollie’s. I’m always looking for someone to feed me. And to make me laugh.

Alison: Growing up, my best friend Cindy was very short, whereas I was very tall, but the dynamic was very different from Bink & Gollie’s friendship. What’s my weirdest adventure? Yikes, there’ve been so very many. Perhaps the pig+vegetable+Taiwanese-army-guys boat ride to the island off the coast of Taiwan qualifies as the weirdest. Or at least the most seasick.

Bink is short and blonde and Gollie is tall and brunette—not totally unlike the authors! Any other similarities between the two of you and Bink and Gollie?
Kate: Like Bink, I am short, loud and perpetually hungry. Also I (like Bink) tend to be a tiny bit clueless.

Alison: Like Gollie, I love adventurous travel. I also love pancakes, and making pancakes for other people. You would definitely find me in the airy treetop as opposed to below ground. We're both good in a crisis. And beyond that, Gollie and I are less self-assured than we look on the surface.

The illustrations are just wonderful, and certain details really add to the story. (For example, Gollie’s modern house in the tree’s branches versus Bink’s little cottage at the tree’s base.) How closely did you work with Tony Fucile? Did he have free rein to illustrate as he wished, or did you give him suggestions?
Kate: We made some illustrator notes on the text (that Bink is short and Gollie is tall, that we thought that Bink would live at the bottom of the tree and that Gollie would live at the top) but most of what you see is just the sheer, absolute, happy genius of Tony Fucile.
Alison: Beyond telling Tony that Gollie was tall and Bink was short, and giving him a few personality tips, Tony had free rein. And didn't he do a glorious job?

What are you working on now? Do have any individual projects planned?
Kate: I’m at work on a novel. I’m hoping that it’s a funny novel. Some days it seems funny. Other days it doesn’t.

Alison: For children: I’m writing a picture book about the Big Dipper and a novel about a cricket, a firefly and a vole. For grownups: I’m writing poems.

Rosemary Wells is one busy lady. Her prolific career as a children’s author has spanned more than 40 years and produced at least 120 books that are cherished by children around the world. However, her latest novel, On the Blue Comet, took a bit longer than most to complete—30 years, to be precise.

Three decades ago, Wells created the book’s hero, Oscar, an 11-year-old who lives in Cairo, Illinois, in the 1930s. She wrote several chapters, only to reach a moment when Oscar comes close to being killed in a bank robbery. That’s when he somehow ends up on a train—and not just any train: a Lionel electric train.

The creator of Max and Ruby turns her talents to a time-travel adventure that doubles as a history lesson.

At that point, Wells was stuck. Very stuck. “I knew that he had jumped onto the train, and I didn’t know how to deal with that. I didn’t know that it was a time-travel book,” she remembers.

That changed three years ago, when a revelation about Oscar came to her in the shower. “It occurred to me, and I immediately went to the computer and rewrote the whole thing. I just wrote it out flat,” Wells says by phone from Connecticut, where she lives, writes, illustrates and makes creative sparks fly.

On the Blue Comet was well worth the wait. This thrilling adventure and takes young readers across the country in the 1930s and ’40s. “It’s about Oscar, it’s about the Midwest, and it’s about how we were during the Depression, and how people lived through it,” Wells explains. “It’s about history and the war coming.”

She adds, "Although I was born during the war, in 1943, I still had enough contact, as most of us did back then, to know the Depression age, and to connect with the first half of the twentieth century pretty easily."

Wells, whose books include the novels Lincoln and His Boys and Red Moon at Sharpsburg, loves to dig deep into history. "There are all kinds of guessing games in the book," she says of On The Blue Comet. "There are, I think, 15 presidents mentioned. I had a lot of fun having an 11-year-old John Kennedy appear."

After Oscar’s mother dies, he and his father immerse themselves in creating elaborate Lionel train layouts. However, when his father loses his job, they are forced to sell their house and beloved trains. Dad heads to California to find work, leaving Oscar in the care of his fussy aunt and prissy cousin. The boy’s salvation comes from a kind stranger he meets, an encounter that eventually leads him to the bank on the day of the robbery. Once launched on his page-turning adventure, Oscar meets many more strangers, including Alfred Hitchcock and a kindhearted young actor nicknamed Dutch.

Of Dutch, Wells exclaims: “Oh my goodness, that’s Ronald Reagan! He was a friend of my father’s and was the head of the actor’s union in Hollywood for a number of years. My father was a playwright, and was his co-chairman, and knew him well.”

Well draws an intriguing comparison between the stage and screen and the creative process she taps into each day: "A writer has to create is an entirely different world from the reality of their own life, and enter it much as an actor has to. It's like being in a completely different world, one that's made up by yourself, and that could end also in madness. There are people who do this and . . . end up completely insane, and it is hoped that doesn't happen. Writers really create entire worlds and then walk into them and illuminate them."

That's pretty heady stuff coming from a children's author who's beloved for bringing to life such characters as Max and Ruby, Noisy Nora, McDuff and Yoko, as well as entire kindergarten classrooms. What draws all her characters and books together? Emotional content, Wells says. “It’s the center of my writing. And this is why it works. I have to make sure that the emotional content is valid, and something that is wholesome and worthwhile, even if noncompliant.”

Noncompliant?

“All my heroes are noncompliant in one way or another,” she responds. “I’m a very noncompliant person, but with very conservative standards. I have the belief system of a typical person born in 1943. As far as kids go, I believe in good citizenship, good behavior, kindness to others, no time spent in front of the television, and all kinds of things like that.”

When creating her cheerful, colorful illustrations, she works with pastels, color pencils, ink, watercolor, gouache—all kinds of different media, she says, except acrylics and oil. However, Wells wasn't about to tackle the more complicated illustrations planned for On the Blue Comet, which were done in full color and wondrous, glowing detail by Bagram Ibatoulline.

"Oh heavens, I can't do that!" Wells says. "Bagram Ibatoulline is a fabulous illustrator. I can't draw stuff like that anymore than you could. I draw Max and Ruby, but just because I'm an illustrator doesn't mean I can do all kinds of illustrations, and this required something very different from what I do."

The artist's directive was to make Oscar's world look like one drawn by Norman Rockwell. "Everybody who grew up in the 1940s and 1950s would wait on Saturday afternoon for the Saturday Evening Post to come and see if Rockwell had a cover,” Wells says. “I would sit looking at the cover for an hour, because it was the age of high-definition, representational art that was done by real artists, not from photographs, and it was wonderful."

Years ago, in an essay called "The Well-Tempered Children's Book," Wells wrote: "I believe that all stories and plays and paintings and songs and dances come from a palpable but unseen space in the cosmos."

Wells notes: "I said those things when I was 30, and now I'm 67 and they're still true." I'm not an original thinking brain, but I do have this window that I can open. So I use that all the time."

Wells looks back fondly on what she calls the “Golden Age of Childhood,” from about 1920 to 1968: “I think there was a time there when children were taught better manners, there was very little sense of entitlement, they were expected to behave themselves and work. They were also greatly loved, and everybody had more time. I think there’s a lack of time now that marks childhood in the Western world.”

Rosemary Wells—the extremely talented, noncompliant and inexhaustible children’s author—sums up her ongoing career with eloquence: “I do my best to contribute to what I consider to be the only legitimate part of American childhood culture left, which is books.”

One night last summer, author Jeff Kinney was astounded to see that the upcoming book in his Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, The Ugly Truth, was number two on Amazon’s bestseller list.

“I didn’t even know what ‘The Ugly Truth’ was yet,” he remembers. “They’re printing five million of these things, and I hadn’t even decided.”

His series chronicling the adventures of middle school student Greg Heffley is definitely a publishing phenomenon, having sold more than 37 million copies in the U.S. and millions more in 30 countries around the world, inspired a movie and eagerly anticipated sequel (for which he is executive producer) and catapulted this quiet cartoonist to sudden fame.

“It feels like I go off and pretend to be an author, and pretend to make movies, and then come back to my normal life.”

“It’s been a strange life so far,” Kinney says.

And no doubt getting stranger. On November 8, the day before The Ugly Truth goes on sale, Kinney will share the podium with Laura Bush and Condoleezza Rice at Barbara Bush’s “Celebration of Reading” in Dallas. Later in the month he’ll watch a Wimpy Kid balloon float by in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade.

All of this might not have happened had not a savvy editor, Charles Kochman of Abrams, recognized his talent. While a student at the University of Maryland, Kinney cartooned for the campus newspaper and studied (of all things) computer science and criminal justice. He planned to become a federal law enforcement agent until a hiring freeze squashed that idea. While trying to break into syndicate cartooning, he collected several years’ worth of what he calls “soul-crushing” rejection letters.

The problem was his drawing style: “I could never get a consistent line,” Kinney says. “My hand would never obey what my mind wanted it to do. And still, it’s very hard for me to draw.” That’s why he draws Greg as a middle schooler, although he originally had an adult audience in mind. After Kochman saw Kinney’s work at Comic-Con in 2006, Abrams decided to publish Diary of a Wimpy Kid as a children’s book, and the rest, as they say, is history.

The resulting hoopla feels “make-believe,” Kinney says, adding, “It feels like I go off and pretend to be an author, and pretend to make movies, and then come back to my normal life.”

His normal life takes place on a quiet street in Plainville, Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and two sons, ages five and seven. From there Kinney heads off to a day job as executive producer and creative director of a website called Poptropica, and returns to be assistant soccer coach for his son’s team.

Through it all, Kinney remains remarkably grounded, seeming as if he has all the time in the world, despite the fact that a film crew from CNN would soon arrive on the cloudy autumn day when we talked. At times, however, the balancing act is worrisome. “If I were throwing the football with my son and hurt my hand, then that would really send everything upside down,” Kinney says.

Now that he’s finished writing, what is The Ugly Truth?

“If I said that, it would blow the ending,” Kinney says, “but I’ll say that this book is about growing up. The book is sort of a metaphor for my decision on whether or not to move forward. . . . Is Greg going to move on, or is he going to stay in a state of arrested development forever?”

Will there be more Wimpy Kid books?

“I truly haven’t decided that,” Kinney says. “I’m trying to take a few weeks to really think about this. These books look like you could put them together in a day or two, but they take about nine months of really hard work.”

The work takes place in his small upstairs office, usually at night or on weekends. The walls are purposely bare to minimize distraction, and Kinney’s concentration method is decidedly unconventional.

“I sit right here,” he says, pointing to a corner of a small couch. “I usually put a blanket over my head.”

A blanket?

“Sensory deprivation,” he explains. “I’ve tried all sorts of different things . . . to help get my mind into a thinking mode. To make a good book I need maybe 700 ideas, so it’s about four hours a night of just thinking, for about four months. Most of the time I fall asleep.”

Kinney next labels each idea A, B or C, depending on how he judges its worth. He tries to throw out all of the “C” ideas, and then strings the rest together. Finally, he’s ready to draw, necessitating another four months of 8- to 12-hour days, and sometimes 13- and 14-hour days. He listens to books on tape, usually history or historical fiction, or sometimes political books about the CIA and terrorism. “It’s very strange,” he notes of his selections. “It doesn’t really compute with what I’m drawing.”

“I do all of my drawings on that tablet,” he says, pointing to a device that links to his computer. “I just draw like mad. In fact, my eyes still can’t focus even though it’s been about 10 days since I drew my last drawing [for The Ugly Truth].”

The merging of text and drawings comes late in the process, much like a giant puzzle, Kinney says. “A drawing might end up falling halfway on one page and half on the other, so sometimes you’ll change the story itself just to make the drawings fit.”

After a tour to promote the new book, Kinney looks forward to getting back to his daily routine, putting his sons on the school bus each morning, and waiting for them when they get off.

“I’m happiest when I’m leading a normal life,” he says. “That’s what I strive for.”