Before she became a Newbery Honor-winning author, Margi Preus spent 25 years as the artistic director of Duluth’s Colder by the Lake Comedy Theatre, where she wrote, produced and directed sketches, operas, plays and adaptations. So why the switch to children’s books? “I had kids!” she says with a laugh.

“Something really happened to me when my older son [now 26] discovered the magic of books at age 2 or 3. He wanted me to read him book after book, and he’d watch my lips and . . . eyes, look at the page, then back up at my face and mouth. I could see he was putting it all together, that those little squiggles on that page are making her say words that have meaning to me. This magical thing is happening to me, and a story is happening somehow. That was a big part of my inspiration, of wanting to try [writing books].”

And so she did, first with three picture books, and then historical fiction for middle grade readers: the 2011 Newbery Honor book Heart of a Samurai and 2012’s Shadow on the Mountain.

Her new book, West of the Moon, was another new writerly adventure for Preus: It’s inspired by the writings and art of her real great-great-grandmother, Linka, who came with her husband to America from Norway in 1851, but the story and its characters are not as tied to history as in her previous works. Preus spun a mere few lines of text from Linka’s diary into a magical mix of folklore, myth and adventure set in the sometimes beautiful, sometimes forbidding mid-19th-century Norwegian mountainside.

The heroine in West of the Moon is not unusual for Scandinavian folktales. "Girls can be very strong; even if a boy comes to rescue them, they tell them what to do.”

It’s the story of 13-year-old Astri, who (in today’s parlance) kicks some serious butt. She’s smart and savvy, and ably navigates strange, stressful situations even if she’s sad or scared—which is fairly often, considering her mother’s dead, her father is somewhere in America, and her aunt has just sold her to a filthy, mean goat-herder, thus separating her from her younger sister Greta.

Astri strives to maintain her safety and dignity, recalling favorite folktales and memories when she needs a mental lift, and using all her guts and wits on a daring escape-and-rescue mission that’s often as funny as it is suspenseful. And the mission continues on—ill-intentioned pursuers and bridge-trolls be damned—because Astri decides it’s time to go to America.

While many details of her ancestors’ own immigration experience informed West of the Moon, Preus says her great-great-grandmother’s brief mention of a girl she met on the ship to America revved up her imagination.

“As I read over [those lines in the diary],” she says, “I wondered . . . what kind of girl would get on a boat alone and go to America, not knowing anyone? I thought I’d see if I could figure out a story for her.”

But, she adds, this “was a bit scary for me. . . . I had so many ideas, and it was hard to settle on what should happen next. [When] writing the two earlier books based on real people . . . I couldn’t go off in a direction too far afield from what actually happened. With Astri, I just had to decide or feel how I wanted it to be.”

One important decision: Preus infused Astri with the strength and smarts typically found in Scandinavian folklore, as well as in the pages of her great-great-grandmother’s diary.

In Astri’s favorite folktale, “the girl goes three days past the end of the world to rescue a guy,” Preus explains. “That’s not an unusual heroine in Scandinavian folktales and fairy tales. Girls can be very strong; even if a boy comes to rescue them, they tell them what to do.”

She adds, “I was thinking about that, looking through the diary again. The night before [Linka] got married, she wrote . . . ‘A human being is a free and independent creature and I would recommend every woman consider it, and I insist that every maiden owes it to herself to do so.’ That is a fairy-tale heroine. . . . She kind of got in trouble as a pastor’s wife, because they were supposed to be submissive.” (At the book’s end, readers may peruse Linka’s actual drawings and a handwritten excerpt from her diary.)

Lucky for readers, Preus’ great-great-grandmother didn’t stop writing and drawing in her diary because others disapproved, and Astri wasn’t meek because dastardly people wanted her to be. That drive for independence, the belief that something better lies ahead, is an inspiration for readers of any age—and, perhaps, an impetus to read Scandinavian folktales.

For now, though, Preus has put folktales aside to work on her next book, a companion to Heart of a Samurai. “It picks up where that book left off, historically.” She’s working on it in her backyard writing house, built for her in 2009 by her younger son (artist and furniture designer Misha Kahn) and her husband, a designer and contractor.

Preus' backyard writing house, where she crafts her stories and wears fingerless gloves as needed.

“It’s a wonderful place. I love it!” she says. “It’s got a real wood stove, great big picture windows looking out over a frozen creek, all birch inside. . . . I’m sure if I looked hard I could see a deer in the woods behind it.” The little wooden house has become vital to Preus’ writing process, now that she’s left the comedy theater (and teaching, which she also did in previous decades) and has been transitioning to writing full-time.

But her years spent focusing on laughter have served her well, as evidenced by the bouts of humor that buoy West of the Moon and in the way she approaches her stories.

“[At the comedy theater], I didn’t write the funny stuff. I just took all these ideas everybody had, all these little scripts and pieces and improv bits, and made them into a show. I feel like writing a novel is a lot like that, with all the different themes that have to come together to make a whole story.”

While she does miss collaborating on comedy productions, “I don’t miss the ego things, which are rampant when doing theater. . . . I have very little patience for that now.” It works out nicely, then, that the woodpeckers and chickadees—and the occasional black bear—in her yard aren’t likely to bicker over personal issues. They’ll do their outdoor things; Preus will write indoors; and Astri will journey on.

Writing house photo courtesy of Preus.

Inspired by the author’s own childhood in Mississippi in the ’60s, Revolution is an unforgettable story of big changes—for a nation and for the two young characters at the heart of this book.

Why did you choose to tell the story of the Freedom Summer through the eyes of a white character, especially one who isn’t initially a firm believer in civil rights?
I chose to tell the story as I witnessed it in 1964. I was a white kid in Mississippi in 1964, and I didn’t understand what was happening. I couldn’t be called a “believer” in civil rights per se, as I didn’t know what that meant. Children have a finely honed sense of justice and fairness, however, and I knew something was wrong and unfair, although I couldn’t articulate it. At first, when “everything closed”—the pool, the rollerskating rink, the ice cream place, the library, the movie theater—all I could think was, now I won’t be able to do these things—how unfair! I hadn’t realized that there were kids my age who had never been able to do these things, because of the color of their skin. I always say this was the summer I began to pay attention.

When I wrote Revolution, I wanted Sunny to have such an awakening. I wanted her to begin to pay attention. I wanted her to expand her thinking, and thereby her world. Everything she hears, sees and experiences serves that awakening.

You don’t shy away from depicting the violence directed at blacks and the whites who are trying to help them. Why do you think it’s important for Sunny to observe this violence firsthand?
I need the reader to observe it! Sunny and Raymond are the eyes and ears of the reader, and through them the reader experiences Freedom Summer, as well as what it’s like to grow up with hopes and dreams within a loving family; what it’s like to weather storms together, to be scared together, to face hatred and change together; what honor and dignity look like; what it’s like to not understand what’s happening in your world, to seek out answers.

You spent much of your childhood in Mississippi. Were you able to draw on any personal experiences when writing Revolution?
I was born in Mobile, Alabama, and spent my growing up summers in Mississippi, at my grandmother’s home. I went to college in Mississippi in 1971, where there were still “colored” and “white” drinking fountains on campus. I grew up as an Air Force kid—which I write about in Countdown—so going home to Mississippi (where my parents were born and bred) was like entering another world, but one as familiar to me as breathing. I loved it fiercely—still do. I was largely sheltered from any civil rights unrest. Our little town was very rural, and there was no Freedom House in Jasper County, but I have vivid memories of “everything closing,” and of the small moments I observed as I began to pay attention. I saw, for instance, how Annie Mae, who worked for my grandmother, was treated in town. I wrote about this in my first book, Freedom Summer. I was confused and longed to talk about these things and understand what was happening. In creating Sunny, I gave myself a way to be part of the Movement.

The articles and photographs never overwhelm the story, but rather provide glimpses of the historical backdrop. How should young people approach these documentary materials?
They serve as a way to look at the larger world while the more intimate story plays out in the book. As writers and readers, we often look at a story—especially historical fiction—as happening in one small pocket of the historical world, when in reality so much is happening that’s important to a story, that defines it. The Beatles coming to America in 1964 is a defining feature of Sunny’s life and friendships, and I want you to see it. I want to see it, as I am such a visual learner and reader. I teach writing in schools, where I tell students and teachers about the awakening moments for me as a writer, when I learned that I could access the whole world in telling my story—an outer story and an inner story, if you will.

What was your favorite thing you learned during the research process for Revolution?
It astounded me, first of all, how little I really understood about Freedom Summer, especially as I had written a picture book called Freedom Summer in 2001, which had required me to do some research into the Civil Rights Act. As I dug deeper for Revolution, to write a documentary novel, I was most surprised to find what a local movement Freedom Summer had been. Yes, SNCC organized Freedom Summer, working with other civil rights organizations. Yes, they came into Mississippi—1,000 strong in 1964, mostly white, mostly college students—to register black voters, and yet the philosophy of SNCC was to help the local people who were already ready for change—already working for it—stand up and be supported and learn the tactics they could use after SNCC left to continue to work for change.

What would you say to young readers who want to make a positive change in the world?
Ask questions. Pay attention. Educate yourself. Find your people and stand for what you believe in. In Revolution, Sunny is almost 13 years old, and she makes a difference. Raymond, who is 14, certainly makes a difference as he learns to work in his community, learns to channel his frustration and anger, and learns that his dignity has no price. He teaches Sunny this, too, without saying a word to her. This is how we make a difference, one choice at a time, over and over again.

What can readers expect from the final installment in the Sixties Trilogy?
Book three takes place in 1968, in the San Francisco Bay area, and takes us into the turmoil of that year with the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the Democratic National Convention, the Vietnam War, the counterculture, rock and roll (baby!) and the antiwar movement. I can’t wait to be steeped in this world and to find my story. I’m convinced that stories help us to understand ourselves and change the world.

A portion of this interview was originally published in the June 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Lisa Graff has written several books for middle grade readers, including the National Book Award nominee A Tangle of Knots. Graff has an uncanny ability to give a simple story an intensity that makes you want to keep turning the pages. In her latest offering, Absolutely Almost, 11-year-old Albie is struggling with the idea that he should be “better” than he is: better at math, better at spelling, better at being cool. We asked Graff a few questions about Albie, writing and fitting in.

The narrator in Absolutely Almost sounds exactly like a fifth-grade boy. How did you find that authentic voice?
I never write a single word of a new book until I can completely hear the voice of the main character and have worked out the entire first chapter in my head. I’d been mulling over Albie’s character for some time, when it suddenly solidified while I was on vacation at the Jersey Shore. The next morning, I got up at the break of dawn, grabbed my beach chair and wrote the first two chapters longhand in a journal with the waves lapping at my feet. Those two chapters remained in tact nearly word for word through every revision.

I’m never quite sure where a character’s voice comes from. I spend a lot of time visiting schools all over the country to talk about writing, and I love meeting students and hearing from them about whatever they want to talk about. So that sort of thing keeps your toes in the water, so to speak. But sometimes the voices really seem to leap out at you from nowhere. That was the case with Albie.

When you were a kid, did you ever struggle in school like Albie? Or did you ever feel like you didn’t measure up to expectations of you?
I was one of those kids who’s built to excel at school. I looked forward the first day of school more than summer vacation, I had panic attacks if for some reason I was unable to complete a homework assignment—I was that “a pleasure to have in class” kid. But I feel like all of this was due less to innate intelligence and more to sheer willpower. My older brother, Ryan, is a literal genius (I, for the record, am not). And while no one else ever seemed to expect me to live up to his level of smarts, I put a lot of pressure on myself and was always struggling to prove myself academically. I probably had some sort of complex about it, to be honest, and it took me a long time to stop trying so darn hard all the time. On a positive note, I am still really good at making deadlines!

Albie’s parents seem to be both loving and distant, understanding but clueless, supportive and demanding. Is Albie giving them more credit than they are due?
At first Albie simply assumes that whatever his parents do is the best, most “parenty” thing—because they’re his parents, so why wouldn’t they love him and support him? And I think Albie’s parents do truly care about his well-being, but unfortunately, they don’t always seem to understand what makes him tick, so their hopes and dreams for Albie often come into direct conflict with what might be the best thing for him. By the end of the novel I think they come around a bit, although they clearly have a long way to go.

"Albie is slower than most kids in a lot of ways, and I wanted to explore what that would be like for him in a world that constantly expects him to be smarter, faster, better than he is."

Albie’s nanny, Calista, is an important part of his life and a driving character in the story. It felt so unfair that his mother dismissed her! What made you decide to put that in the story? Why is it that Albie could not defend her?
I knew eventually Calista would have to leave Albie’s life, because he needed to be able to prove to himself and the reader that he could stand on his own two feet without her. I liked the idea that she’d be dismissed in a way that didn’t feel entirely black-and-white—Albie’s mother truly feels that she’s doing the right thing by her child in letting Calista go, and it’s hard to blame her for that. I wanted Albie to have to grapple with something that was both painful and slightly outside his realm of comprehension, so he could come to learn that even though things don’t always turn out the way we’d like—or even in ways we fully understand—we can still come out the other side as stronger people.

The name origins of both Albie and Calista contain metaphors that can be related to the characters—was that on purpose? How do you pick your character’s names?
Some names pop into my head with the character, and others take a bit of auditioning. Albie was one of the ones that came right away. His full name is Albin, but at one point a friend of his mother’s insists that he must be named after Albert Einstein, and for a kid who’s constantly worried about his own intelligence, that seemed like such a huge hurdle to put in front of him, which I liked.

I wasn’t sure what to name Albie’s nanny at first, so I tried on a couple names for size. Calista was the one that finally stuck, because to me the name felt artsy and unique but also like someone who was very strong and knew what she wanted out of life.

Albie and his friends excel at all kinds of things not related to school. Do you think we place too much emphasis on academic success in our society?
I’d go even further and say that we put an extreme emphasis not just on academic performance but on intelligence itself. That’s not to say that intelligence isn’t an important trait—because I very much think that it is—but it’s not the only thing that makes a person matter, and I think we often forget that.

When I first began working on the book, one of the things that really struck me was when I would describe the premise to friends as being about a boy who was not very smart, and so many of them would respond with shock. “You mean, he’s not traditionally smart?” they’d ask me. Or, “You mean, he doesn’t do well in school?” Well, yes, that’s what I meant, but also more. Albie is slower than most kids in a lot of ways, and I wanted to explore what that would be like for him in a world that constantly expects him to be smarter, faster, better than he is. In a world like that, where does a kid like Albie fit? How does he find his own worth? People honestly seemed flummoxed that I was suggesting there were kids in the world who weren’t as smart as other ones. But there are those kids; they very much exist; and just by virtue of not being quite as intelligent in most ways as their peers, they are not without value. And they are just as deserving, in my opinion, of their own stories.

You teach a course in Children’s Literature at McDaniel College. What are some of your favorite writers that you share with your students?
It’s such a challenge every year to find eight books with which I can cover everything from picture books to YA, graphic novels to nonfiction, funny to heartwrenching storytelling. I’m constantly changing the list to try and find perfect the mix. Two of the novels that have garnered amazing discussion from year to year are Patricia McCormick’s Sold and Kevin Henkes’ Kitten’s First Full Moon. I’m always astonished at what fabulous lessons students pull from such short, beautiful books. Last year I added Adam Gidwidtz’s A Tale Dark and Grimm, and that was such a good one for exploring tone and word choice and humor. This year I’m adding Coe Booth’s Tyrell to the list, and I’m very excited to discuss it in part because Coe is an old friend of mine from our New School days. I got to watch that novel grow from its infancy, so it’s going to be a real treat to get to teach it. It’s also a downright stupendous book!

If you could define for kids what “cool” should be, what would you tell them?
I wonder if anyone ever actually thinks of him- or herself as cool. I’m constantly surprised to discover that people I thought of as being the epitome of cool in high school felt just as gangly and unwieldy as I did. Perhaps that’s why it seems like “cool” isn’t really a label you can give yourself.

I guess if I got the opportunity to be the Webster’s Dictionary of redefining “cool” for small, impressionable children, I would want to tell them that the coolest thing you can be is happy. When you’re happy with yourself, and comfortable with who you are, that’s when other people begin to like you the most, and even look up to you. Nothing else is half so important as being happy to be you. It’s not exactly a new thought, but it’s a lesson that takes a long time to sink in.

Jennifer Bruer Kitchel is the librarian for a Pre-K through eighth level Catholic school.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of this book.

Author-illustrator Cece Bell has been making picture books for more than 10 years. This year she’s trying something new, as she recounts her childhood experiences with hearing loss in the touching graphic memoir El Deafo.

In the 1970s, the Phonic Ear, a bulky hearing aid that strapped to the wearer’s chest, was in vogue. For the hearing aid to work properly, the teacher had to wear a microphone, which amplified classroom discussions. The young Bell struggled with standing out and fitting in, as many children do. But when her classmates discovered that she could hear her teacher as she roamed the building, Bell’s powers as El Deafo (as she dubbed herself) were revealed.

We snagged a bit of Bell’s time to ask her about her funny and moving memoir.

After childhood meningitis left Cece Bell deaf at age 4, she had to wear the Phonic Ear, as seen in her second-grade school photo.

When did you know El Deafo needed to be a graphic memoir and not a picture book or illustrated novel?
When I got started in children’s books, I wasn’t really ready to tell this particular, personal story right away. I wanted to “make it” in the biz without being pigeonholed as “that deaf author-illustrator.” I wanted to be known only as “that awesome author-illustrator.” I’d even take “that decent author-illustrator.” Eventually, however, I was ready to tell my story. When Raina Telgemeier’s Smile came out, I was inspired by it. Maybe a graphic novel would be a good way to tell my story, I thought. But what really sealed the deal for me was the fact that graphic novels tell so much of the story using speech balloons. What better way to show what I am hearing—or even better, what I am not hearing—than speech balloons? A speech balloon filled with words fading out means my hearing is fading; a speech balloon with nonsense in it means I’m hearing gibberish instead of words; a speech balloon with nothing in it means I am hearing nothing.

I love the moment when a girl asks you if you’re “death.” Do you still find today that you have to educate people about what it’s like to have a hearing impairment?
When I meet new people, they don’t often realize I’m deaf. But in some cases, when these new people do figure it out, their countenance changes and their speech changes (over-enunciating, speaking more loudly and slowly). This is very frustrating, because these well-meaning folks were actually easier to lip-read during the first part of the conversation, before they started changing the way they were talking. People don’t talk all LOUD and sloooow in real life. . . . I think this particular issue is partly why I wrote the book. I wanted to show people that you should speak to a deaf person as you would speak to anyone else, and then make adjustments if they are needed. If adjustments are not needed, don’t change a thing!

The scene when your friend Bonnie, who is so proud to show off her sign language to you (even though you chose not to use it), rings so true. As an adult, you’ve developed an appreciation for sign language. How long did it take you to get to that point?
I think I’ve always had an appreciation for it when it’s used between deaf people and between deaf people and their hearing family members and friends. I also have an appreciation of French when it’s used between French people. Do you see what I mean? Sign language is a language—and a very important and vital one, at that. It’s just one that I don’t really know, but people assume I know it. If your name is Pierre, do you also speak French? Hee hee. . . . But to answer your question, I think the act of writing the book meant that I was finally OK with everything to do with my deafness, the good and the bad. And I didn’t start writing the book until 2010 or so, when I was 40 years old! So yeah, it took a long time. Too long, perhaps.

How challenging was it to write about something so personal?
Parts of it were very challenging. The hardest chapter by far to write was the one about sign language. I wanted to make sure that I portrayed my attitude about sign language back then as bratty, because the last thing I want is for deaf kids and adults to read this chapter and think that I think sign language is awful or something. I wanted to be clear why I didn’t want to use it, and I also wanted to be clear that I was aware that I was probably missing out on something that could be really useful to me.

The other challenging part was writing about my friends, especially the ones who I had some trouble with. . . . I’ve been so long past any feelings of shame (even though I remember those feelings clearly); it was cathartic writing about them and removing them once and for all. But I do worry about what certain friends will think if they read about those old feelings of mine that concern them.

Why make yourself and all the other characters rabbits?
Rabbits have big ears and great hearing. Showing a rabbit whose ears do not work, in a crowd of rabbits whose ears do work, seemed like a great metaphor for someone who has lost her hearing. Also, as a kid I was so ashamed of the cords that went from my hearing aid up to my ears. When I look back at pictures of me wearing this hearing aid, however, it’s really not that dramatic looking at all. By drawing myself as a rabbit, however, I can have the cords go all the way up past my rabbit head into my rabbit ears. This dramatic representation of me and my hearing aid is more closely in tune with how it actually felt to wear a hearing aid when no one else in my class was wearing one. Plus, rabbits are bunnies, right? And bunnies are cute and fun to draw.

Julie Danielson features authors and illustrators at Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast, a children’s literature blog.

This article was originally published in the September 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of El Deafo.

Why did you write a memoir? Why now?
I finally have something to say. [Laughs.] No, I think what I was saying in the session was, when my mom died suddenly, I realized there was so much I didn’t know, that I wanted to find out, so many questions I couldn’t ask. I felt like I wanted to get the stories down from people before they passed on because so many of my relatives are older. I wanted to get a sense of who my mom was before she was my mom. I felt like it was time. I had written almost 30 books—I’ve lost count—and this was the story that was coming to me, that I wanted to tell now.

Why did you think verse works so well for this book?
It’s how memory comes. Memories come in these small moments, with all of this white space around them, but the moments are very distinct. I feel like I have all this information, [but I’m] not sure what it’s connected to. And then the exploration of years and months and days brings the connection together. But it wouldn’t have been a straight narrative. A straight narrative would’ve been a lie. It’s not how you remember things—you remember them in small moments.

Some people say it’s poetry. I think the language is very poetic, but I think the verse is less intentional than poetry, so that where I have the line breaks are moments when I want you, the reader, and myself to pause and see this moment. Verse does allow for things to be more visual because of the minimalism.

What sort of challenges do you think verse poses?
I think one of the biggest challenges was consistency. There were points where I just wanted to tell the whole story and put it on the page because I had so much memory about it. I had to make the choice to say, “This is not the place for that story.” John Gardner talks about the “dream” of fiction. In On Becoming a Novelist, he says, when you’re reading and you’re in the fictive dream, if something happens that dream can be broken. I didn’t want to—it’s not a fictive dream, it’s a memoir dream—but I didn’t want it to be broken by suddenly the reader seeing a chapter pop up and thinking, This doesn’t belong here. It didn’t feel like anything [other than] the verse belonged there.

“At this moment, this is what I know. Here’s something else I know. Here, read these memories. This is what I know.”

How did you decide on the poetic forms for the different subjects?
All the “How to Listen” pieces are in haiku—except there’s a typo in there, I’m so cranky! Those were just kind of writing guides that I was learning as I went along and that, once they were in the book, they were writing guides for people coming to write. So much of what I learned about writing I learned from reading. With Brown Girl Dreaming, it is a memoir, but it is also, this is how you write. You listen. You let yourself be still. You let the stories you’re being told become memory. All of these moments—those small moments of haiku are moments of instruction. That’s how I decided on that. I wanted it to be part of the story, the narrative, as it was being formed. At this moment, this is what I know. Here’s something else I know. Here, read these memories. This is what I know. That was very deliberate.

Speaking of learning to write—as there is a lot in Brown Girl Dreaming about loving words at a young age—what is your strongest influence in fostering your love of words?
Reading picture books. With a picture book, you can look at the pictures and know the story without having to read the words. Back when I was a pre-reader, I’m sure the pictures were telling me stories or I’d make up the stories, and then once I was able to attach the words to the pictures and the story, it gave me a whole new level.

Picture books are accessible, I think for anyone. College kids, high school kids. It’s one of the most approachable ways to learn about writing. . . . It really does crack the code for you, in a way. I feel like for me as a really young kid, that code began to get cracked with the reading of picture books.

And then the poems of Langston Hughes, you know, the people who were writing poems that I could understand, that were not coded. I think of, “Well son, I’ll tell you: / Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair.” It was the language. Langston Hughes was writing in a language I understood. It was the language that people I knew spoke. “Life for me ain’t been no crystal stair” was OK, I understand what he’s saying. Life has been jacked up along the way, but I keep climbing. I’m going to push through this.

You depict an incredibly complex relationship with the South.
[Laughs.] I do! Well, with the South and the North. The relationship with the North is complex in a more nuanced way because that’s what I had by the time I got there. Remember, when I was in the South, I was very young. The South, you know, this is Jim Crow, the laws were very blatant and very much understood out loud. Whereas in the North, the laws were not understood out loud and not written down, but they still existed in some way.

It is complicated for so many African Americans. The lush South, the beauty of it, the food, the people, the magic of it is so complicated and shrouded in the history of that oppression and the resistance. All of that is very complicated. But without complexity, you don’t have richness, right? The simpler something is, the less memorable and less of an impact it has.

You mentioned during your session that when you started writing this memoir, you went back to South Carolina and started interviewing family and writing down your family history, and in that process you learned something about yourself. What’s something you learned about yourself?
I feel like I learned what I already knew—that I was loved, how much I was loved and that at every corner there was someone moving me toward being a writer, even without knowing it. That came through the love. I always knew that I didn’t just wake up and say, “I’m going to be a writer.” It had to come from somewhere. And when I started to investigate and put the memories down on paper, I really got a sense of, OK, I am here because of them. I am here because of the South and because of the North and because of Ohio and because of my great-great-grandfather and the Civil War. The depth to which my history informed myself today was really both humbling and, of course, empowering.

You mentioned your favorite piece in your session, “Music,” which is about the music of your childhood and how your mother wouldn’t let you listen to any song that had the word “funk” in it. Why is it your favorite?
I love music so much because it speaks to the other complexity of my childhood. Here I was in this environment, and Jehovah’s Witnesses say that you’re in the world but you’re not of the world, and every step of the way that was true for me! [Laughs.] Including, here I am in this predominately black and Latino neighborhood in the ’70s, where the word “funk” is everywhere, and my family’s saying, “Step out of that, you’re not a part of that.” And here I am trying to define my myself and saying, “But this is what I know! This is what’s having an impact on my life!” And it’s just funny to look back on it and say, “Wow! Of course I’m writing, of course.”

I don’t know if it’s disparity, but there’s a difference between here and there, and that’s so much of what the book is talking about. Will I always have to choose between home and home? The funk was home for me, and then the white music became home for me, because that was informing so much of who I was. . . . When I get to the end of the book, I talk about, when there are many worlds, you can decide [which] you’re going to walk in. I think about the Robert Frost poem, “Two roads diverged . . .” It’s kind of all of these roads. You can take that one and you can take that one and you can take that one, and they all lead you to this one place, and you’ve always been walking all of them. The one place is the self and the complexity of the self. When you’re a writer, you have to have your eyes wide open and be aware of all of that. You can’t have tunnel vision and shut down what you don’t want to experience because that closes off the roads.

Any new projects in the works?
No, not really. [Laughs.] This book tour. Jonathan Demme’s making a movie of Beneath a Meth Moon, so when I get back I’m going to hopefully have a script to read and advise on. And then I’m going to take a little bit of a break. I’m just going to be Mom for a couple of months.

Martine Leavitt has a super-cool dad—a smart, rugged man named James Webster who, throughout his life, has gone on countless hikes into mountain ranges and national parks in his native Canada, where he immersed himself in and learned about nature. He also took pages and pages of notes, and countless photographs of the flora and fauna he encountered.

Leavitt—who, it must be said, is pretty cool herself—has done her own pages and pages of writing via eight novels for young readers, including the 2006 National Book Award finalist Keturah and Lord Death. So, naturally, when she became enchanted by her father’s account of a herd of bighorn sheep he followed for four seasons, she encouraged him to publish it.

He demurred, and several years passed. But then her father gave her a special gift: his sheep-centric notes and photos, for her to use as fodder for a book.

The end result, Blue Mountain, is a wonderful, often wondrous, story about a herd of bighorn sheep who live high in mountains very much like the ones Leavitt’s father explored. One major difference: The sheep (and other animals they encounter) talk, laugh, squabble and negotiate just like human beings.

“I told my father I was going to have to fictionalize and anthropomorphize the sheep,” Leavitt tells BookPage from her home in Alberta, Canada. “I got his permission to do that.” That, plus the felicitous timing of the gift, got Blue Mountain off to a strong start.

“I’d just finished writing My Book of Life by Angel, a novel-in-verse about a teen prostitute in Vancouver,” the author explains. “It was a very dark kind of story, not a happy place for me to live while writing. . . .  I needed to do something that made me happy, that was a little bit of an escape. And I have 15 grandchildren, but I’ve yet to write a book any of them could read. That’s kind of what got me started, and it was just pure fun from beginning to end.”

Though she has created an affecting tale that illustrates the seriousness of humans’ ever-increasing encroachment on nature, Leavitt has also infused her story with fantasy and given her animal characters personalities that jive with their real-life counterparts’ behaviors and tendencies.

There’s Tuk, a young male bighorn who finds himself in charge of his own small herd, a subset of the larger, older group over which savvy matriarch Kenir presides. Fellow youngsters, including ditzy Mouf and loyal Rim, join him on an exploratory journey to Blue Mountain, which Tuk believes can be the herd’s safe new home—unless, of course, the mist-shrouded behemoth is merely the stuff of myth.

Tuk’s little band of yearlings encounter a variety of obstacles and animals along the way, from a hungrily conniving, yet easily outsmarted, bear to an otter with self-esteem issues (who may or may not help them traverse a bog). Oh, and an elk who really, really wants everyone to know that she’s beautiful.

Leavitt says she “writes the stories I feel really compelled to write,” not least because a character will insist on making itself heard. “My books often start that way—I hear a character talking to me. Before, they’ve always been teenagers.”

And so, the question: Was it difficult to think like a bighorn sheep this time around?

Leavitt says with a laugh, “I do feel you cannot construct a believable voice in a story unless you’ve lived inside the body of your characters. It was a little bit of an extra challenge for me to crawl inside the body of an animal, but it ended up being quite glorious and meaningful.”

Not least, she adds, “because I ended up thinking, is there so much of a difference, so much of a divide, that I can’t understand some things about their exigencies? If you check out a YouTube video of bighorn lambs playing, they run around like little children do. . . . These animals have their territory, their need to exist and survive. Can we really distance ourselves from that basic kind of existence?”

The author’s passion for her subject is infectious and inspiring, for sure, and Blue Mountain is a compelling echo of—and expansion on—her father’s work. Readers who already love animals and worry about the future of our beleaguered Earth will feel both indignant and hopeful on behalf of the animal characters, and perhaps those who are less aware will find their curiosity piqued, or even experience the sparking of an activist flame.

Of course, Leavitt is already there, her respect and concern for nature amplified by her Blue Mountain experience.

“I loved being a bighorn sheep,” she declares. “I felt like that’s what we need to do a little bit more of. Maybe if we stop separating ourselves so much from animals, and see ourselves as a different kind of animal, maybe if big cities could . . . feel the connection of being alive and having the same basic needs, maybe some of the efforts we have to protect wildlife would come naturally, and be even easier to promote.” Here’s hoping.

This article was originally published in the November 2014 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Susan Vaught is the author of several books for teens, including Trigger and Freaks Like Us, and is a neuropsychologist at a state psychiatric facility. Her novels often include fascinating ties to mental illness, but her first middle grade book, Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy, reveals a hilarious new side to the author.

Fifth grader Footer Davis (her real name is Fontana, but don’t call her that) and her best friend, Peavine, are investigating a fire at her neighbor’s farm that left a man dead and two kids missing. She’s a shrewd journalist, and Peavine is a clever detective—but the more they dig, the more Footer thinks the fire could be connected to her mother, who suffers from Bipolar Disorder and has been sent away to a mental hospital.

Full of sparkling humor and Footer’s wry, snappy voice, Footer Davis Probably Is Crazy is equal parts hopeful and heartbreaking.

What inspired this story?
The deep, dark truth is, trying to draw a doodlebug using computer-drawing software instead of paper-and-pencil sketches set me on the path to Footer’s story—that and writing down her name as a possible character name, and a first line to the story. My stories often begin with a name, title or first line. I haven’t ever had a tale start with a bug, though—wriggling or sketched. So, Footer is unique! She knows this. Just ask her.

You’ve written several novels on mental illness and food disorders and have an extensive background in neuropsychology. What do you wish more people knew about Bipolar Disorder (as with Footer’s mom) and repressed memories (as with Footer)?
That recovery and a full, exciting life is possible even with a diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. As for repressed memories, I think the brain is pretty amazing, not giving us information we can’t process until we’re ready for it. The return of memories temporarily held back is the beginning of a healing process.

What do you think is the hardest thing kids with parents who suffer from a mental illness must face?
The hardest thing? Worry. Kids are big-hearted and loving, and when someone they care about so much is sick, whether it be from a cold or a chronic illness, they worry. They worry about that parent, about their family, about the future. That’s a heavy load.

What were you scared of when you were Footer’s age? What are you scared of now?
SPIDERS. And spiders. Did I mention sssspppiiiiiiiiidddddeeerrrrsss??? <shiver> Anything that creeps up walls and drops in front of me wiggling eight little leggies, no thank you.

When Footer feels like she needs to prove that she’s strong, she makes jokes. What do you do when you need to be strong?
Ummm, the same thing? That might be a tad autobiographical. . . . Humor is my first and best coping mechanism. I just have to watch the class-clown tendencies in serious situations.

Footer really, really hates walruses. What’s so bad about walruses?
Some of them eat baby seals! They weigh around 1.5 tons, they have 400-700 whiskers, and those tusks can be over 3 feet long. Just think of them as serial seal-murderers that weigh as much as a Toyota—with giant white fangs sharp enough to stick into ice and help haul their gigantic bodies out of the Arctic Ocean.

What’s the main difference between writing for teens and writing for middle grade readers?
So far, in my learning, I’d say the amount of time/words spent on describing anything graphic (violence, romance). In YA literature, there really aren’t limits, and I didn’t have to spend time weighing how upsetting a topic or scene might be to a younger person. Also, less snark, in my opinion. I never did well writing characters with sharp, snarky dialogue because I wasn’t that way in youth, and I don’t have that in my real-life repertoire now. It’s nice to move away from needing more of an edge to my characters, and to be able to more deeply explore their innocence.

What’s next for you?
I’m working on a piece currently called Ghostology, but I rarely get to keep my titles. It involves ghost stories in the deep south (around the Ole Miss campus), the Meredith Riot, mysterious clues about what destroyed a friendship and Alzheimer’s Disease.

There’s a moment in Kwame Alexander’s middle grade novel, The Crossover, when protagonist Josh Bell’s father is telling him all about jazz musician Horace Silver: “Josh, this cat is the real deal. / Listen to that piano, fast and free, / Just like you and JB on the court.” Alexander’s poetry is the real deal, and its action, energy and heart earned it the 2015 Newbery Medal as well as a Coretta Scott King Author Honor.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you had won the Newbery?
Am I delirious? Dreaming? Did he just really say ‘Medal’? And then, like the clouds shifting to reveal the golden sun, my life changed, a new normal ablaze.

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about the award?
My father, the man who forced me to read books. The man who always told me to “Look it up” when I asked him what a word meant. And, when he picked up and I told him, you could hear it in his voice: This was his award as much as it was mine.

“I’ve seen reluctant readers pick up the book and not put it back down until the end. That’s fulfilling.”

Do you have a favorite past Newbery winner?
One of the books he forced me to read was Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry, which won a Newbery, so I guess it’s kinda cool that I’ve now won. It’s coming full circle. So, maybe Mildred Taylor. Or maybe it’s Lois Lowry. Or maybe it’ll be Katherine Patterson, whose Bridge to Terabithia I’m reading for the first time.

What’s the best part of writing books for a younger audience?
Figuring out new and creative ways to empower young people through storytelling.

What kind of reaction have you gotten from your readers about this book?
The reaction has been fairly emotional. Readers from different backgrounds, ages and regions of our country have found some relatability in the characters and really empathize with their woes and wonders. I’ve seen reluctant readers pick up the book and not put it back down until the end. That’s fulfilling.

Have you read or listened to past Newbery acceptance speeches? Are you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
I have not listened, nor am I sure I want to. I’ve written the speech in my head, where it sounds pretty amazing. Should be interesting to see if translates on the stage.

What’s next for you?
Sleep. I haven’t really slept since The Call. Also, there is a new middle grade that I am writing, and it’s called Booked, so I need to do some fine-tuning, then it’s off to more school visits, which I love as much as the writing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coretta Scott King Honor-winning author Jewell Parker Rhodes (Sugar) returns to the Louisiana bayou in her enchanting new middle grade novel, Bayou Magic. Ten-year-old Maddy is the last of her sisters to leave their home in bustling New Orleans for a summer in the bayou with Grandmére. Soon, Maddy discovers the bayou's natural beauty, close-knit community and her family's magical legacy. When an oil leak threatens the community, Maddy must rely on her strength, her smarts and the help of a mysterious mermaid. We asked Rhodes a few questions about Bayou Magic and what she loves about writing children's literature.

Bayou Magic takes a very different approach to mermaid lore than the Disney tale so many of us are familiar with. What was the inspiration for this story?
I’ve long known about different mermaid lore. I was thrilled when both UCLA’s Fowler Museum and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African Art featured an exhibit of Mami Wata, “Mother Water.” I think it’s amazing that African mermaids swam beside slave ships and remained in America to comfort the captured and to remind them of their homeland. Literature teaches culture. I want girls of color to know there are heroic mermaids that mirror them. I want all girls to know there are diverse, global mermaid tales that depart from the Western tale of a mermaid transforming herself to marry a human.

You were born in Pittsburgh, but Bayou Magic and many of your previous novels take place in Louisiana. What is it about the Deep South that moves you?
My grandmother raised me and she had deep Southern roots. She believed in holistic healing and she taught me to honor the past, my ancestors and nature. Grandmother died when I was 19 just as I was deciding to become a writer. Whenever I visit Louisiana, I feel her spirit—her good-heartedness and love. I’m also enthralled by the cultural stew—the delicious food, music and people. History feels alive in Louisiana; the atmosphere encourages dreams, magic and creativity.

What do you love most about Maddy?
Maddy was a surprise and delight for me. She’s far more quiet and watchful than any of my other heroines. And she has the biggest eyes that just glow with curiosity, intelligence and kindness. To save her family, friends and the bayou from the effects of an oil spill, she overcomes her fears and swims with Mami Wata, the most powerful mermaid of all. I also love that Maddy loves and listens to her grandmother’s tales. 

Why is magic and myth such an important part of children’s literature?
The world is already magical for children. Seeing the moon, a family of rabbits, currents in the water are spectacular for a child. However, I do think children are drawn to stories in which characters perform magic. Magic can help children overcome their limitations and, like Maddy, save the day. Combine the mythic hero’s journey with magic and young readers feel empowered.

What’s the best part of writing for a younger audience?
Hugs and more hugs! Visiting schools is such a life-affirming delight. But I didn’t expect cards, letters and drawings from students. It’s very precious when a child reaches out. I keep a box filled with cards and letters. I imagine when I’m very, very old they will never fail to lift my spirits.

What was your favorite book when you were Maddy’s age, and how has it influenced your own writing?
As a kid, I read everything. Little Women, Black Beauty and Nancy Drew were some of my favorites. I could only afford to buy Great Illustrated Classic comics. I’d gather pop bottles and redeem them for nickels. I loved The Prince and the Pauper and The Journey to the Center of the Earth. But the Prince Valiant comic strip meant a great deal to me. I decided that I wanted to grow up and “be valiant.” I think my characters, the strong boys and girls, are valiant—courageous and determined.

What do you hope your young readers learn from this book?
Nature needs to be cherished and the health of animals, humans and our planet need to be balanced with energy needs. Young people today will be the stewards of the future. I do believe legends of mermaids who valued waters and befriended humanity will add an emotional resonance to sustainability issues for children.

Are you working on any new projects?
I’m completing Towers Falling (publishing Summer 2016). It’s about Dèjà, a homeless girl, who discovers how her life has been impacted by the 9/11 terrorist attacks. I’m also doing research for two other historical novels. I don’t know if I’ll write one or both or none. As always my writing follows my heart. I’m open to voices, characters that appear like ghosts when I’m doing the dishes or dreaming.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Robert Beatty's middle grade debut, Serafina and the Black Cloak, is a unique blend of supernatural mystery, Southern historical and rich fantasy. Readers are sure to love this brave, brash and rather unusual heroine whose true identity may prove to be a puzzle of its own.

When a terrifying cloaked man starts abducting the children in the grand Biltmore Estate that Serafina (secretly!) calls home, she must defy her stubborn father's orders to lay low and band together with some unlikely new friends to find the missing victims and put an end to this otherworldly threat once and for all.

We asked Beatty a few questions about the history of Asheville, North Carolina, fine-tuning the spookiness of a story and more.

What inspired you to set the book in your own hometown of Asheville, on the grounds of the grand Biltmore Estate?
I love the history and beauty of Biltmore Estate. I enjoy exploring its rooms and corridors. Whenever I’m there, I envision all the stories—both realistic and imaginative—that could take place there. I think people really yearn for stories about places they love, and I’m definitely not alone in loving Biltmore.

This story is set in 1899—can you tell us about the historical research you did in preparation for your writing?
My concept was to create a spooky, mystery-thriller in a historically accurate setting, to mix an engaging fantasy within a historical texture. I researched the house and the time period extensively, both in person and in books. I’ve read every book on Biltmore and the Vanderbilt family that I could find. My goal was to make the setting and historical details of Serafina and the Black Cloak true to life, and I asked the museum curators at Biltmore to double-check the manuscript for me.

Although there is plenty of humor and adventure in the book, there are also some very dark and scary elements. What made you want to write a Gothic novel for a middle grade audience?
When I set out to write Serafina and the Black Cloak, my goal was to write a story that would engage my daughters and keep them on the edge of their seats. I wanted to write a story about a very unusual, but heroic girl who must face not only many dangers, but the mystery of her own developing identity. My wife and daughters helped me refine the story and the character. Among other things, I drew upon my daughters to help me fine-tune the level of spookiness to their liking.

Why did you decide to leave your career in the tech industry in order to pursue writing full time?
I’ve been passionate about writing all my life, but it had always taken a back seat to my entrepreneurial career. As the founder and CEO of an Internet software company, I was working ninety-hour weeks and totally loved it. But when my wife was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at the age of 31, it hit me hard. I decided to change my life, focus on my family, and pursue a new dream—one that was more conducive to a life at home. So I sold my company and started writing full time. My wife went through treatment and is now in remission. Our third daughter, and to some extent Serafina and the Black Cloak, are the rewards of our continued life together.

Has having three daughters influenced your writing in any way?
I literally write with and for my daughters. At dinner each night we brainstorm ideas, develop stories, and work out the details of the plot and character. When my daughters get home from school each afternoon, I better have the next chapter done or they get mad at me! They listen to and provide feedback on every version of every page I write, guiding me toward the story they want to hear. This has been a family project with my wife and daughters from the beginning, and continues to be that way today. For example, my wife and daughters have been deeply involved in the making of the book trailer for Serafina. They helped develop the script and fine-tune the editing. My wife made the beautiful dresses that we used in the trailer, my 15-year-old daughter trained the dog, and my 12-year-old daughter played the role of Serafina.

Serafina is not your average heroine—what do you love most about her?
I love how in many ways she is a strange creature of the night, with unusual and even somewhat unsettling characteristics, but in many other ways, she’s innocent, frightened and finding her way. I also love that she has a real fierceness to her, but a good heart.

What was your favorite book when you were Serafina’s age, and how has it influenced your writing?
I started writing novels when I was Serafina’s age, which I think is another reason that I love writing about that age. Over the years, I’ve fallen in love with the writing of Jane Austen, Ernest Hemingway, and Charles Dickens, but when I was a kid, I loved medieval fantasy novels like T.H. White’s The Book of Merlin and The Once and Future King. Despite the dark forces that my characters must face along the way, I’ve always been a romantic at heart. I love a traditional hero’s journey. Or better yet, a heroine’s journey.

Do you have any future writing projects planned?
Yes. I’ve begun the sequel for Serafina and the Black Cloak.I’m keeping my fingers crossed that Disney Hyperion will want to publish it and that there will be a few people out there who will want to read it. But in the meantime, I know there are three particular little girls who are demanding it.