With more than 150 million copies in print and three feature films, the fictional illustrated diary of middle school misfit Greg Heffley is one of the most popular franchises in publishing. BookPage spoke with Kinney about Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Old School, in which Greg suffers the injustice of life without electronics.

Ten Wimpy Kid books is quite a milestone! Did you ever think you’d make it to 10? Any plans for celebrating?
I’m very excited to get to 10! When I started off, I imagined one big fat book. Then my publisher asked me to break it into a series of three books. At the time, that seemed like a huge number to me. Ten would have been inconceivable. Now I’m thinking about 20. I’m celebrating by going on a global book tour. It’s daunting, but it should be fun.

Greg must do the impossible in the new book: survive with NO electronics. Is this even possible?!
For a modern kid (and this modern dad), it seems impossible. In fact, I just got an Apple Watch, so I’m part cyborg now. We’ve gotten a little carried away, I think.

The Wimpy Kid books avoid a heavy moral hand, but Greg’s hilarious adventures often impart a lesson. How do you find that balance?
I go back and forth on this. I don’t set out to teach a lesson in my books, but sometimes I do. In the latest book, Greg is at his Greggiest. There’s a moral lesson, but it’s subverted.

For each of the Wimpy Kid books, you write all the jokes first, and then the text. What joke kicked off Old School?
That’s right. The first joke I wrote for this book was one I ended up not using. Greg’s parents put Greg’s old baby supplies out by the curb for recycling pickup . . . including a Diaper Genie that has “Gregory” written on it.

What can you tell us about your tour for Old School?
I’m going around the world, hitting as many countries as I can in about six weeks. I did a pre-publication trip to Brazil. Next up is Japan, China and Australia.

What has been most surprising about Greg’s universal appeal?
I’ve been very surprised by the global appeal of Wimpy Kid. I always thought Greg was too American for an international audience. But it seems that Greg’s problems are universal.

You recently opened a bookstore in Plainville, Massachusetts, called An Unlikely Story. What do you love about being a bookstore owner?
I love every bit of it. I get a thrill every time I see a car in the parking lot. I think, “Wow, if we hadn’t built this building, those people wouldn’t be here.” It’s great to think there might be people whose lives are changed because they came across a book in our store that changed their outlook.

British author Cameron McAllister was inspired to write The Tin Snail after seeing a newspaper photo of three prototypes for a car called the Deux Chevaux (or 2CV) that had been hidden in a French barn during World War II and remained there for 50 years. We spoke with the author to learn more about the fascinating true history behind this exciting middle-grade adventure.

Why did these 2CV prototypes stay hidden for so long?
The simple answer is that they were too well hidden and were forgotten about! You have to remember they were never supposed to be there at all. The boss of Citroen at that time, Pierre Jules Boulanger (Bertrand, in my book), had ordered that all trace of the experimental prototypes be destroyed so they couldn’t fall into enemy hands—not merely the invading German army, but also Volkswagen, their main rival (who were busy developing the Beetle at the time). So the story goes, the 2CV models were hidden by some of the engineers who’d helped build them, but who couldn’t bear to see them lost to future generations.

Were you able to unearth many more details about this story? Which were your favorite?
Where to start? The more I delved into the true story, the more wonderful nuggets kept turning up. I particularly liked that the car’s designer, Flaminio Bertoni (Luca, in my story) was wedded to his old BMW motorbike. When they were looking for lightweight parts to use on the first prototype, they cannibalized his beloved motorbike, stripping it of its engine and other parts. It really is also true that his boss, Boulanger, insisted that the car be capable of driving across a ploughed field with a farmer and his wife and two chickens without breaking a tray of eggs or spilling a flagon of beer. Unfortunately, the first model they built exploded! The more I discovered, the more charming the whole story became. It almost wrote itself!

Did you travel to the French countryside for fact finding? Were you able to see those prototypes unearthed in the barn?
I never found the original barn, but I pile my four children into our car twice a year and drive as far south through France as we can manage in a day. This usually gets us to the Bordeaux area, where I located the fictional village of Regnac. It’s almost exactly like a village we’ve often stayed in there. The map at the front of the book is pretty much a blueprint of the real place. However, I should say that there’s no evidence that the German army ever actually arrived in the real village—that was all my own invention. It seemed too exciting a story opportunity to pass up. I loved the thought of the German Panzer commander sitting in the local bar, determined to try and find where the locals have hidden the car, not realizing that the barmaid is pulling his glass of beer with the gear stick!

Where does the name "Tin Snail" come from?
The then-boss of Citroen, Boulanger, could be quite austere and insisted that the 2CV should be as functional as possible. This was vital if it was to be affordable to the poorest farmers and artisans in France—the vast backbone of France’s population who had been so woefully neglected by the car industry. The 2CV’s designer, Flaminio, kept trying to add little stylist flourishes, which Boulanger would insist on being removed. The final prototype was made out of little more than sheets of corrugated iron with just a single headlight, but its iconic domed shape reminded Boulanger of a snail. And so the nickname “the Tin Snail” stuck. For me, it perfectly captures the car’s quirky charm!

Tell us about your own fascination with cars.
As a little boy I loved Herbie, the movie about a VW Beetle with a mind of its own. The flying Ford Anglia in Harry Potter had a lot of the same qualities, though rather more mischievous. Strictly speaking, the car in The Tin Snail isn’t magical, of course, but it definitely has its own impish personality—especially when Angelo and Camille are being chased by a Panzer tank and it almost flies across a river.

I read that two books that inspired you were Danny, the Champion of the World, and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Did you reread them as you wrote this novel? I was also interested to read your mention of Shirley Hughes’ novel, Hero on a Bicycle, which sounds fascinating.
Both Danny and Chitty feature children thrown into dangerous and extraordinary adventures to rescue their fathers—and in both cases they do so by driving cars! In Danny’s case it’s an old Austin Seven, which he uses to rescue his father from the clutches of the evil Mr Hazell. I loved the bond between Danny and his father as they outwit the local establishment. It’s very much the same plucky spirit Angelo shows in The Tin Snail as he tries to help his father’s ailing career and outfox an entire German Panzer unit! Hero on a Bicycle is set in the same era, a delightful story about a boy running daring missions during the German occupation of Italy, only this time riding a bicycle. Like The Tin Snail, the danger of war is never very far away.

"In the end the story is about heroism—the villagers are willing to lay down their lives to safeguard the Tin Snail because it represents the very best of French values."

You’ve written TV scripts before, but this is your first novel. Did you have any difficulties with the transition? Did your TV writing experience make it somewhat easier to write some of the great action scenes in your book?
I love writing action sequences—I think it’s part of the big kid in me. But oddly they can be the most boring parts of movies to watch, especially with the advent of CGI. If there isn’t enough character or suspense, and if it all seems too unrealistic, it doesn’t matter how many skyscrapers you knock down, I’m not gripped. So when it came to The Tin Snail, I was very conscious of trying keep the action believable (just!). One of the most obvious transitions I found from writing TV dramas to writing a novel was that I needed to write a lot more description. In TV scripts you might only have a few stage directions because the viewer will end up being shown everything. In a book, of course, the writer must conjure everything up in people’s imaginations, which I loved.

Tell us about the genesis of your main character, Angelo. Were you at all like him as a boy?
When I was the same age as Angelo, one of my uncles (who was a policeman at the time) gave me a pair of very old handcuffs with the strict instructions I was never to use them as the keys were long since lost. Naturally, the first opportunity I got I locked them round his wrists while he lay in bed one morning. I remember hiding in a tree for several hours as first one village police car, then two more, arrived to offer assistance. Despite the attempts of the entire local police force, no key could be found. This didn’t deter my mother who proceeded to serve pot after pot of tea, turning the whole thing into a social occasion. Eventually my father managed to saw the handcuffs off. So I’ll let you decide whether you think there are any similarities between myself and Angelo.

You do a great job of maintaining tension about World War II and the advancing Germans throughout the novel, yet you manage to keep a lighthearted tone in appropriate places. Was this a difficult balance to achieve?
I was keen for the book to be uplifting and fun, but it would have been irresponsible not to reflect the reality of war at some level. The sense of the German army approaching also provides an underlying suspense—not least because Angelo and his father know that the rival car company’s spies won’t be far behind. In the end the story is about heroism—the villagers are willing to lay down their lives to safeguard the Tin Snail because it represents the very best of French values. It was also important for me that the Germans weren’t all painted as the enemy. Despite working for rival car companies, Angelo’s father and Engel, his German counterpart, end up being united by a common bond . . . their love of cars!

What do you drive? Do you have any “fun” cars, or are there any special cars tugging at your imagination?
When I worked in London, I used to ride around on a Vespa scooter, which was great fun, if a little hair-raising. Now, because we have four children, I have to drive what feels like a large truck—made by the 2CV’s rivals, Volkswagen, no less! However, I’m always on the lookout on my travels for a 2CV to buy. It seems to be only dotty old aunties who still drive them in Britain, but I’ve seen some wonderfully preserved models in France and Italy. I think the nearest British-made car to the 2CV must be the Mini (now remade by BMW, of course, and originally designed by an Italian, just like the 2CV). Or perhaps the Morris Minor. Maybe one of these will inspire my next novel!

Sometimes the best—and only—answer to difficult times is to embrace a big, beautiful imagination. In The Land of Forgotten Girls, 12-year-old Filipino Soledad lives in Louisiana with her little sister, Ming. Abandoned by their father, they live in an ugly subsidized apartment with their evil stepmother, Vea. Both Sol and Ming inherited a lively imagination from their mother, who passed away long ago, and they surround themselves with stories when everything seems hopeless.

Filipino-American author Erin Entrada Kelly grew up in Louisiana, and her mother was the first in her family to emigrate from the Philippines. In The Land of Forgotten Girls, as with her previous novel, Blackbird Fly (2015), Kelly offers a tale of hope for Filipino-American misfits.

Blackbird Fly also featured a young Filipino girl moving to Louisiana. As an author, in what ways are you drawing from your own childhood as a Filipino-American living in Louisiana?
Living as a Filipino-American in the South is much different than living as a Filipino-American on the East or West Coasts. I grew up in an area with a small Asian population and was the only Filipino in my school through college. That being said, Blackbird Fly and Land of Forgotten Girls depict very different immigrant experiences. Neither of them are direct interpretations of my personal journey—for one thing, I was born in the States—but they each draw from my life in various ways. I think that’s true for most writers, no matter what they’re writing.

How do you feel the Filipino immigrant experience is unique from other immigrant experiences?
The long and complicated relationship between the U.S. and the Philippines play an important role in the dynamics of the Filipino experience. Also, the Philippines is the third-largest Catholic country in the world and one of only two predominantly Catholic nations in Asia. According to the Pew Center, there are about 76 million Catholics living in the Philippines—roughly the same as the number living in the U.S. I’ve always found that fascinating.

The Land of Forgotten Girls isn’t your first time writing about orphans or abandoned children. Why do you think you continue to return to these types of characters?
In both books, the children nurture gifts left behind by their parents—in Blackbird Fly, Apple’s father, who died when she was three, leaves behind a cassette tape of Abbey Road, which inspires Apple’s love for the Beatles; in Forgotten Girls, Sol cherishes the power of imagination left behind by her mother, who died of cancer.

In many ways, it’s far more powerful to appreciate the gifts of people you love when they are no longer around to offer them.

Sol is forced to grow up a lot faster than most girls her age, which results in a bit of an attitude, and she even throws a pinecone at an albino girl from another school and hurts her. Why did you write a character that sometimes isn’t so likable?
Because no one is perfect.

What do you think readers will connect with most about Sol?
Her hope for something better. Her love for her sister and family. Her imagination.

“It’s far more powerful to appreciate the gifts of people you love when they are no longer around to offer them.”

Sol feels a lot of pressure to play the role of strong older sister for little Ming. But Ming’s hopefulness is one of the many positive influences that keep Sol from losing herself in the bleak conditions of their life in Louisiana. Why did you want to emphasize the power of sisterhood with this book?
Sisterhood has its own unique dynamic—complicated, beautiful, tender, frustrating. I have an older sister and the face of our relationship has changed in many ways over the years. We’re very different, but we’re also very close. I have such admiration and love for my sister. She taught me how to blow bubbles, she taught me how to roller skate, she tattled on me when I irritated her, she put a sign on her door that said No Erins Allowed, and she was there any time I needed her. Basically, all the moods a relationship can experience. I wanted to celebrate that.

Stories and the imagination play major roles in shaping Sol and Ming’s life, but the line between reality and fairy tale is sometimes blurred. Is Aunt Jove real? Does Sol really see her dead sister as a ghost? Even evil stepmother Vea isn’t all evil, as she continues to be the guardian for these two girls. Does this reflect your own experience?
In many ways, yes. I’ve been a writer all my life. I’m pretty sure I was born holding a pencil. As a little girl, I had an active imagination and spent a lot of time in my head. (And still do!) I believe the truth has many voices.

This book deftly handles issues of both race and class. What do you hope young readers take away from this book?
My goal is to write the world as it is. Although the book doesn’t overtly tackle issues of race and class, it exists on the page in many ways—subtle and not-so-subtle—which is just how it is in daily life. What I want readers to takeaway is a deeper understanding of their own world, whatever their world or that understanding may be.

What do you love most about writing for young readers?
At the risk of sounding anti-adult, I find young people to be far more interesting. They’re honest, generally unfiltered and full of lively stories and imagination. They read the books they want to read, and they’re honest about how they feel about them. No pretention. I love hearing from young readers, and I especially love hearing from young writers.

What’s next for you?
More books! My third novel is just about wrapped up and will be released by Greenwillow next year. Right now I’m hard at work on my fourth.

Author photo credit Laurence Kesterson.

Kate DiCamillo is a nervous Nellie. You’d think that after winning two Newbery Medals, the publication of a new children’s book would be old hat. “It’s like putting your kid on the bus for the first day of school, and you don’t know what’s going to happen,” she says. This time, the “kid” is Raymie Nightingale, her most autobiographical book yet.

DiCamillo, who launched her acclaimed career with the publication of Because of Winn-Dixie in 2000, quickly points out that writing such a personal book wasn’t part of her plan. “I thought I was going to write something funny and lighthearted about someone Ramona Quimby-like entering a beauty pageant,” she says during a call to her home in Minneapolis. “And then bit by bit, all of these pieces of me came in there, and it became a heavier story than I had intended.”

DiCamillo needn’t worry; her new novel is a gem, full of laugh-out-loud situations, heartfelt moments of kindness and genuine heartache.

The novel’s heroine, 10-year-old Raymie Clarke, is taking baton-twirling lessons during the summer of 1975 with the goal of becoming Little Miss Central Florida Tire. She hopes such acclaim might lure back her father, who has run off with a dental hygienist.

There are parallels aplenty between Raymie and the author. In a note at the beginning of the novel, DiCamillo writes: “Raymie’s story is entirely made up. Raymie’s story is the absolutely true story of my heart.” 

“Raymie’s story is the absolutely true story of my heart.” 

At age 6, DiCamillo moved with her mother and brother from Pennsylvania to Clermont, Florida (near Orlando), to try to end DiCamillo’s frequent bouts of pneumonia. Her father, an orthodontist, was supposed to sell his practice and join them, but he never did. 

As soon as DiCamillo realized that her manuscript-in-progress was becoming a story about a girl whose father had left, her response was, “Uh-oh.”

But that, it turns out, was actually good news.

“I’ve been doing this long enough to know that when the uh-oh shows up, I’m in business,” she says. “It means that the story is in charge and not me. So when something happens that I’m totally unprepared for, I also know that I’ve got something that matters.”

When she was 7 or 8 years old, DiCamillo competed in the Little Miss Orange Blossom contest, which, alas, she didn’t win. She remembers being at the pageant and thinking, “This is not where I should be.” And even before the pageant, during baton-twirling lessons, she realized, “This is just not who I am.”

Raymie’s baton lessons don’t go well either, but they introduce her to two lively, endearing characters: the tough-as-nails Beverly Tapinski, who plans to sabotage the contest, and the ever-optimistic Louisiana Elefante, who lives with her grandmother and claims that her parents were known as the famous Flying Elefantes. Before long, Louisiana has dubbed the unlikely trio the “Three Rancheros.”

Their subsequent adventures form the heart and soul of this novel, with madcap exploits that include secret nursing home visits and a night raid on the Very Friendly Animal Center in search of Louisiana’s beloved cat, Archie. (Animals are a necessity in every DiCamillo book!) But while the novel is full of action, the text has an exquisitely spare quality. Despite the outlandish predicaments they get themselves into, the Three Rancheros’ thoughts and dialogue always ring true. 

“Those characters,” DiCamillo says with a chuckle. “Just get out of their way because I don’t know what they’re going to do and what they’re going to say.”

It’s fitting that the words that pop out of these characters’ mouths—surprising even the author—are the actual seeds from which she begins creating their personalities. “As they talk to each other, that’s how I find out who they are,” she says. “Like when Beverly says at the beginning of the book, ‘Fear is a big waste of time. I’m not afraid of anything.’ I’m like Raymie; I just idolize people like that. I can’t conceive of not being afraid.”

That’s something DiCamillo shares with one of her literary heroes, E.B. White. “I’m super neurotic,” she says, “and I think that maybe he was, too, from what I’ve read about him. But he did things with words that very few people do, and I can’t figure out how he did it. And I think if I asked him, he wouldn’t be able to answer.”

DiCamillo says she wonders whether White’s apprehensions affected his writing. “It’s just that everything is burnished with love for him, and he manages to convey that to us. So the question is, does all the worry get in the way of the love, or does the love win over the worry? Because it looks like it did, from what he wrote.

“I sure would like to worry less,” she adds with a cheerful sigh.

DiCamillo believes the writing process helps her overcome certain personal shortcomings by keeping her eyes and heart wide open. “It’s my connection to my better self,” she says. “You have to pay such close attention to the world and people, and it changes how you look at the world.” Storytelling keeps her gaze outward, even as it teaches her more about herself. 

Does this process of paying attention mean that she’s always on the lookout?

“I am,” she admits. “And I think a lot about a friend that I grew up with named Kathy Lord, who is interested in everything and everybody. She liked to sharpen her pencil as much as she could in the classroom because that gave her a chance to walk to the front of the room, and not for something to do, but to look at what everybody else was doing. Other people were so fabulously interesting to her. I think of her sometimes when I’m out in the world. Pay attention that way. Make like Kathy Lord on the way to the pencil sharpener. Every little detail of somebody is interesting.

“And Kathy Lord’s mouth was always slightly hanging open as she did it, because she was just so gobstopped by people and what they were doing. And I think about that with me, and then I have to be careful sometimes to close my mouth as I’m staring at the world.”

As Raymie grapples with her father’s departure, she’s surrounded by a host of helpful adults. A young DiCamillo also benefited from such reassuring presences, including three kind, widowed ladies who kept close watch over the many children who lived on her dead-end street. “That’s one of the things that I was aware of consciously when the book was done,” DiCamillo says, “that this was kind of a tip of the hat to all those adults.”

When she tells fans about her childhood, DiCamillo is often delighted by young readers who come up to her and ask: Do you think that if your father hadn’t left that you would be a writer? Do you think that if you weren’t so sick all the time as a kid that you would have become a writer?

“I never say that explicitly,” DiCamillo says, “but that they get there is astounding.” These are her most satisfying encounters with kids, when a child walks away knowing that things that once seemed so hard and impossible actually helped shape her.

As for Raymie and her struggles, DiCamillo says, “The same thing that happened with Raymie happened with me. I found what friendship can give you. And there aren’t always answers, but there’s love and friendship.”

This article was originally published in the April 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Multiple award-winner Avi is a prolific and talented author who is unafraid of trying new formats. With more than 70 books, his canon of work includes almost every genre—contemporary fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, mysteries, YA and short stories. In The Most Important Thing, Avi returns to short stories, providing brief but keenly observant glimpses into the lives of seven boys and the fathers or grandfathers in their lives. He examines this powerful dynamic, this influential bond—which sometimes succeeds and soars, sometimes disappoints and wounds.

On the book jacket, you are quoted as saying, “Writing a short story is like trying to light your way through a dark cave with a tiny birthday candle. The flame may be small, but in the darkness, if the writer has done their job, how bright the light.” Just how hard is it to “shine that light,” to write short-form fiction, compared to the novels and historical fiction for which you’re prominently known?
Writing short stories is a singular challenge for me. I have to decide that is what I’m going to do and prepare myself by reading and rereading great short stories, reminding myself how short stories work. I need to think as a short story writer. 

You’re both a father and a son; how do you answer the question posed in your title? What is the most important thing a father can do for his son?
Over the years I have been parentally responsible for six kids. What I have learned is that the most important thing you can do is love your children. But equally important—and often much harder—is (particularly when they are teenagers) to convince them that you do love them. There are aspects of parenting that can be automatic. But for the most part, it is hard, conscious work. I also think, in our culture, fathers struggle with this more than mothers.

"If boys saw their fathers read, it would make a huge difference. In families where parents read to their children (which has a big impact), more often than not it is the mother that reads. Why not fathers?"

What have you learned as both father and son that helped you form these stories? Is one more personal to you than the others?
The relationship between father and son is complex, changeable and always challenging. It is also deeply rewarding. While fathers and sons obviously share many, many things, they are different people. There is a need to respect these differences, even as there is a need to celebrate the similarities.

My father was a poor father, often psychologically abusive. That said, I learned from him what not to do and be. The story "Beat Up" is based on something that really happened between us.

Most of the stories in this collection aren’t set in a specific geographic place, making them a bit more universal. Was this intentional when you first began to assemble this collection?
I did want to locate them in different places, which allows for different worlds to explore.

The boys in this collection face danger, death, broken families, new relationships and acceptance—or lack thereof. Those are some tough yet very realistic topics. What do you hope readers will take away from this collection?
The goal of all my writing is to entertain and bring emotions to my readers, whether it be excitement, laughter or maybe even fear. Hopefully that will happen here. But just as I don’t think fathers are always willing to grasp the complexity of their son, sons are often not fully understanding of their fathers. Maybe these stories will help with that.

While this book can be enjoyed by any young reader, it will speak to boys—who can be reluctant readers. It’s a constant struggle for parents, librarians and educators to get books into the hands of boys and to keep them interested enough to keep reading. Based on all your experiences as an award-winning writer and father, do you have any advice for getting boys more interested in reading?
In our culture, reading in many ways has been feminized. That’s to say boys generally see more girls and women read than men. If boys saw their fathers read, it would make a huge difference. In families where parents read to their children (which has a big impact), more often than not it is the mother that reads. Why not fathers? And if families can share a book all together that’s the best. Talking about books, characters, plots etc., makes books more of a living experience.

Let boys pick the books they wish to read.

Listening to books (audiobooks) can make an impact.

You’ve been frequently honored for your work, and you’ve been doing it for so many years. What does the process of writing continue to bring to your life? How has it changed, if at all?
I never cease to enjoy the writing of a good story, one that will grab and entertain a reader. That said, writing is hard and, if anything, gets harder, because I want everything I write to be better than the last thing I wrote. Doesn’t always happen, but I try. All day. Most days.

Your next book, The Button War (2018), is a return to one of your fortes, historical fiction. Can you tell us a bit about it?
There is no book until it’s written, and not merely in my head. I can’t wait to write it so I know what it will be about. Till then . . . 

Karen Harrington has described her books as “coming-of-age survival stories,” and she’s certainly on a roll. On the heels of two award-winning novels, Sure Signs of Crazy and Courage for Beginners, her third, Mayday, begins with a bang. Specifically, a plane crash.

Harrington’s latest inspiration struck while watching an episode of “Air Disasters” about a plane crash over France, during which a coffin, of all things, fell into a farmer’s field. “Imagine finding this really odd thing in the middle of a field,” she says. “That really caught my attention.”

Speaking from her Texas home, Harrington is excited about her new book, though she jokes, “My husband says now I’ve written a book that’s guaranteed not to be in airport bookstores.”

That said, she doesn’t believe her book will increase readers’ fears of flying. After conducting research that included interviews with several pilots, she concludes that survival rates are “actually pretty positive.” One vital piece of information she learned about accidents and disasters is crucial to Mayday’s plot: “If you just get moving in those first 90 seconds, your odds of survival increase tenfold,” Harrington says.

“My husband says now I’ve written a book that’s guaranteed not to be in airport bookstores.”

The novel’s central character, seventh-grader Wayne Kovok, does just that, guiding himself and his mother to safety after a commercial plane crash. However, his world is dramatically changed when he emerges with bruised vocal cords that leave him unable to speak for several months. His recovery involves not only physically regaining his voice, but also learning to confront the adults who seek to guide his life, including his difficult, divorced father and his military-minded grandfather, who moves in after the crash.

Wayne had been on Harrington’s mind for quite some time, after appearing as a minor character in Courage for Beginners. In both books, he’s known for sharing his love of trivia and intriguing facts. “He never fully emerged there,” Harrington says of his role in the earlier book, “and I was just so curious about him. It made sense to me that he might come from a family of very strong people, and that’s why he was trying to stand out in his own way.”

As a result, Harrington decided that one side of Wayne’s family would have strong military roots, as is the case with her own family, whose involvement dates back to the Revolutionary War. In middle school, her father gave her a copy of Howard Fast’s April Morning, a fictional account of the Battle of Lexington. “There are, like, 14 Harringtons in it,” she says. “I remember that making a big impression on me, connecting me to history, and my family being in it.”

To help connect her own two daughters (ages 11 and 12) with their storied past, she and her husband hung a gallery of family photos in their home to honor the many hard-working people who came before them. The photos include a grandmother who was a gifted seamstress and model and a grandfather who painted sets for RKO Studios and brought home gifts from Cary Grant. These photographs inspired “The Wall of Honor” in Wayne’s house: a hallway photo collage of deceased military ancestors. That wall takes on new meaning early in the book when Wayne’s beloved Uncle Reed dies while serving his country.

On their way home from Uncle Reed’s burial in Arlington National Cemetery, Wayne and his mother end up in the plane crash, and during the terrifying descent, Wayne lets go of his uncle’s burial flag, which he remains determined to find.

“At the time, I was feeling patriotic and having a lot of discussions with my father, and I thought I would love to link those,” Harrington says. She even modeled Wayne’s grandpa after her father. “My dad is extremely patriotic, and I get 100 percent of my patriotism from him.”

This isn’t the first time that a family member has given rise to one of Harrington’s characters. The mother in Courage for Beginners was inspired by Harrington’s late mother, who suffered from agoraphobia. 

After writing two novels that featured mothers with mental illness—the family situation in Sure Signs of Crazy is loosely based on the horrifying Andrea Yates case, in which the Texas mother drowned five of her children in the bathtub—Harrington made sure that Wayne’s mother was “awesome.” Nonetheless, Mayday does indeed feature another largely absent parent: Wayne’s father. 

While she says such recurring themes are “accidental,” Harrington muses, “Who knows? My favorite writing professor in college said that you will find your ‘country,’ and you continue to return to those themes. So if you think of someone like Pat Conroy, he stayed with his themes of his family and the Lowcountry. So perhaps that’s part of my country.”

Harrington had an important early influence on her writing career: Her middle school English teacher was a prolific historical novelist, the late G. Clifton Wisler, know for books such as Mr. Lincoln’s Drummer and Caleb’s Choice.

“There’s something about meeting somebody who is doing the thing that you are dreaming of doing that makes it seems possible,” Harrington says. “They no longer seem like they’re off in this magical writing place, wherever that might be. They’re right there; they’re in the lunchroom. That just made a huge impact on me.”

Many years and a lot of hard work ensued before Harrington’s literary dream became a reality, including years of night school and working as a speechwriter for Greyhound Bus Lines and Electronic Data Systems. “I remember really bad days when I would get binders thrown at me by speakers,” Harrington recalls. “I remember thinking that they don’t even know that a future novelist lurks in their midst.”

Just like Wayne, Karen Harrington has indeed found her voice.

This article was originally published in the June 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Cecilia Galante, author of The World from Up Here, talks about the constant process of being brave, what it means to share your unspoken secrets with the world and the incredible power of her eighth-grade students.

Your book begins with a letter to readers confessing that both you and your daughter are worriers like your character Wren, and that you both faced separate quests to act bravely. How are things going for the two of you in the worrying and bravery departments? And how does Sophia like your new book?
I’m pretty sure at this point in my life that being brave is a continual, ongoing process. It’s never a one-and-done kind of deal that gets shoved back on the shelf after we’ve successfully stared down a snake or found our way home out of the woods. There are opportunities every day to dig for courage, whether that means sitting down at your computer and waiting for the words to come (me) or going to Philadelphia to watch your older sister graduate even though large cities terrify you and you are sure that something terrible will happen (my daughter, Sophia). And the truth is that neither Sophia nor I get it right every single time. There will be days when I throw up my hands and shut my computer screen—after only 10 minutes. And the day we plowed through those congested Philadelphia streets, Sophia gripped my hand so hard that I was pretty sure at one point the blood had stopped flowing through it.

But here’s the other side of those scenarios: I came back to my office the next day and opened my computer and waited for the words to come. And despite her terror of being in the city, Sophia actually let go of my hand for a few minutes on the way to the Mexican restaurant afterwards for lunch. So I guess the short answer is that we’re both doing OK in the bravery department because we keep showing up and doing the best we can with it. And showing up, especially when you’re scared, is half the battle.

As for how Sophia likes the book, that remains to be seen, as she is still making her way through Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson series. But she has a copy of it on her desk, and every once in awhile, I’ll see her pick it up and gaze at the cover, so I know it won’t be long!  

You teach eighth-grade English. How does that experience enrich your writing, in terms of plot, characters or in other ways?
Oh, my eighth graders! How I love them so! Interacting with them on a daily basis enriches my writing in so many ways, if only because they are so full of life and energy. Even their shortcomings are inspiring; their doubts and fears and lack of confidences are all so true and deeply felt. Everything with 12- and 13-year-olds is completely in the moment, wholly and unequivocally now, and always a life-or-death situation. They are convinced that most things are really the end of the world, that they will never survive the next test or crush or undertaking required of them, and that, despite a fledgling maturity, they will never get older. Being immersed in their world has been one of the best experiences of my life, because it reminds me of how important it is to live in the present, how deeply we all feel things and how critical friendships are to help us navigate those feelings.

"Being immersed in their world has been one of the best experiences of my life, because it reminds me of how important it is to live in the present, how deeply we all feel things and how critical friendships are to help us navigate those feelings."

I’ve only developed a few plot lines for my books from working with my students (The Summer of May was a big one), but you can see facets of their personalities in almost all of my characters. I tell them that I keep a notebook in my desk drawer full of secret notes about them, which is not entirely untrue. I don’t have a notebook, but I do have a very, very good memory!

The World From Up Here deftly explores several relationships, especially between Wren, her mother, her brother and her newly discovered cousin, Silver. It also features great mystery and excitement in the form of Witch Weatherly. Did you have any difficulty combining these two elements into a single narrative?
My goodness, did I ever! This book went through several major rewrites. And when I say major, I mean throwing out hundreds and hundreds of pages and then starting over again—four or five different times. My primary difficulty was figuring out how to combine the mystery of Witch Weatherly’s backstory with an interesting and plausible story regarding the two girls, each of whom come from very different backgrounds. I can’t begin to tell you how long it took for me to figure all of that out. Lots and lots of drafts. Some tears. Even a completely abandoned manuscript at one point. But something about the story—and Wren herself—wouldn’t let me give up on the book for good, and when I pulled the manuscript out for what might have been the 12th or 13th time, I was determined to keep trying until I got it right. I still don’t know if I’ve ever felt so simultaneously amazed and grateful when I realized that I finally did.  

Cousins Silver and Wren are both dealing with an absent parent, or in Wren’s case, two briefly absent parents. Your books often feature absent parents, estrangements and family secrets. Does your exploration of these potent themes stem from the fact that you spent your first 16 years in what you have described as a religious cult? And what is your relationship with your parents today?
I actually hadn’t realized just how many of my books featured absent parents or secrets until last year, when I started talking about my next book with my editor at Scholastic. We were throwing around story ideas and at one point she said, “How about something kind of light with a two-parent family?” I remember the question catching me off guard, and I sort of laughed it off, but later, on my three-hour drive back home, it gnawed at me. Why hadn’t I written a book yet that was somewhat “light” and involved a kid from a “two-parent family?” And what did it say about me that I still didn’t want to?

I think all writers probably draw from some aspects of themselves and their childhoods in their work, and this is certainly true of me. The strange uniqueness of my background, as well as the fractured relationship I had with my parents, has contributed to much of the material in my books. Despite the fact that my parents never divorced and that we lived as a “normal family” after the commune deteriorated, I think my early knowledge of such a tenuous parental structure continues to influence many of my fictional families.

It’s the secrets though (which I’ve come to understand most families keep) that I find the most interesting to write about. For years, I was forbidden to talk about where I’d come from or how I’d been raised, lest my family be seen as a bunch of freaks. I understand now that my parents were trying to protect me, but keeping a secret like that was akin to living with cancer. It slowly and very deliberately killed off any sense of trust I might have built in myself and the world around me. Luckily, I found a way out through my writing, but how many kids never find a portal to freedom? How many of them walk through their days at school, having heard their parents screaming at each the night before, or their mothers crying themselves to sleep? How many young girls sit at birthday parties and eat cake and ice cream with their friends, only to excuse themselves to go make themselves throw up in the bathroom? How many of them have heard a mother or father or an older brother say, “But don’t you dare tell anyone. Don’t even think about it.”

Many of my books address these types of situations because that time in my life is still such a vivid memory for me. I know what holding loaded images inside your chest every day can do to a kid. I know how it shapes the way they see others, themselves, everything around them. What my books try to explore ultimately, in a variety of different ways, is what a kid might realize, or even become finally, if those secrets implode and make their way out into the world. And that’s why I want to keep writing those kinds of stories.

"I know what holding loaded images inside your chest every day can do to a kid. I know how it shapes the way they see others, themselves, everything around them."

Several of the character in this book have interesting names, such as Silver, Bedelia and Witch Weatherly. Did you happen to draw upon any literary inspiration for these names, such as, perhaps, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, in which Whethersfield, Connecticut, is mentioned?
Wow, you’re good! I wish I’d been inspired by something as complex as The Witch of Blackbird Pond or Whethersfield, Connecticut! The truth is much simpler. It always takes me a long time to choose my fictional names; I spend hours on the Baby Name websites, scrolling alphabetically through endless lists of them and sometimes even studying their meanings. For this book, the name Wren came very quickly, because I already knew I wanted my protagonist’s name to be associated with birds in some way. Wren just sort of jumped out at me when I started researching the names of different birds, and I never looked back. As for Silver, I think the word itself is lovely and fluid sounding, and I’ve always been a sucker for alliteration, which is where Witch Weatherly came from.

Your book features some notable appearances by “hornet-head snakes.” Are you referring to coral snakes, by any chance? And have you had any run-ins with snakes, or do you harbor any particular fears?
I’m terrified of snakes. Mice, too. Animals like that, which have the ability to move so quickly, darting this way and then that, maybe deciding to bite, are just a little too much for my overly active imagination. Putting a little girl on the trail of an overgrown mountain swarming with hornet-head snakes was my idea of creating a legitimately terrifying situation. Obviously the snakes in the book, with their tiny horns and yellow eyes, aren’t real, but they do share a commonality with coral snakes in that they have the same unusual coloring and can deliver a fatal bite. Scary enough for me!

Witch Weatherly saves Silver with a concoction she calls “herb glue.” Is there such a thing?
I did a ton of research on the various herbs that Witch Weatherly could use to treat Silver’s injury. I was stunned to find that there were so many plants that had real medicinal qualities, such as elderflower, which is used to treat common cold symptoms, comfrey, which alleviates sprains, and dandelions, which are used as a diuretic. I definitely used the ones that would help treat wounds, such as yarrow and aconite, but ultimately I imagined the “herb glue,” which the Witch created by boiling the herbs down into a thick paste and then using to seal Silver’s wound.

What exposure to literature did you have while growing up in that environment? Did you go to school? And how did your love of reading and writing develop?
We were very well educated at the commune where I grew up. Our school was tiny—there were only two of us in the sixth grade!—but we had skilled and very dedicated teachers. I remember reading the Little House on the Prairie series not once but twice all the way through, as well as an entire biography collection of famous historical Americans including Ethan Allen, Clara Barton and Sacajawea. I think my love of reading began and developed with those early experiences, although it didn’t click that I might also love to write until I read The Catcher in the Rye in high school and realized that I could write about things I’d never said out loud—to myself or anyone else.

Author photo credit Herbert Plummer.

Children’s novelist Kelly Barnhill had been thinking about her fourth novel for months but wasn’t sure where to set her story. That’s also when, after 15 years of marriage and three children, she and her husband decided it was finally time to take their honeymoon. A trip to Costa Rica solved both issues.

There, the two former park rangers spent a thrilling day hiking in the volcanic Rincón de la Vieja National Park, where they had to carefully avoid poisonous fumes, sinkholes and steam vents spewing boiling mud. “I’d never been in a landscape like that before,” Barnhill says, speaking by phone from her home in Minneapolis. “Rivers would just sort of erupt out of the side of the mountain and then go into a hole and disappear.”

The next morning Barnhill woke early, grabbed some coffee and her purple notebook and began to write. “Suddenly I realized my characters were on a volcano, and I wasn’t expecting them to be there,” she recalls. “And once I began, it was like it was always meant to be. I couldn’t imagine that story being in any other landscape.”

“That story” turned into The Girl Who Drank the Moon, an adventure-filled fantasy featuring a town whose leaders order that a baby be sacrificed each year to a supposedly evil witch named Xan. But instead of harming these babies, Xan actually delivers them to families on the other side of the forest. 

“Xan was doing what she truly thought was the right thing,” Barnhill says, “placing these babies with families, but she was unwittingly allowing this terrible injustice to persist.”

One day, Xan accidentally feeds one of these babies moonlight, imbuing her with magic powers. Xan decides to raise the child, whom she names Luna, with the help of a swamp monster named Glerk and a “Perfectly Tiny Dragon” called Fyrian. In the lovingly chronicled years that follow the baby-snatching, Xan desperately tries to shield Luna from the magical powers that will erupt when she turns 13, thus leading to an inevitable clash of forces in the novel’s cataclysmic conclusion, bringing together a large cast of characters followed through 48 chapters.

“It’s an odd little thing,” Barnhill says of her latest book, which follows 2014’s The Witch’s Boy. “I’m kind of surprised that people are enjoying it. I really thought I would be the only one.”

For a novel so clearly based in fantasy, a variety of its central elements arose from Barnhill’s real-life social concerns. Xan, Luna, Glerk and Fyrian form what Barnhill calls “that odd little family at the edge of the crater,” and when creating them, the author drew from observations she made while teaching homeless youth in Minneapolis years ago. “When you work in those contexts,” she notes, “you see the different ways in which families organize themselves. This notion of family is much more flexible and fluid than we tend to think.”

The author describes a sad reality behind one of the novel’s most arresting scenes, when the town rulers, known as the Protectorate, arrive to pry baby Luna from the arms of her mother, who tries to escape by climbing high into the rafters of her home. Barnhill acknowledges that this heartbreaking confrontation was difficult to write, and that the desperate mother reminds her of a mom she once encountered while working at a battered woman’s shelter whose child was seriously ill and being denied medical treatment. “It was like she filled up the entire room,” Barnhill recalls. “I was 16 at the time, and I felt like her shoulders were touching the ceiling.”

Barnhill’s own childhood changed in seventh grade when her mother helped rescue her from a school bullying situation. “Gosh, I was a lonely kid,” she recalls. “I was socially awkward. I just never felt OK in my own body. I was easily targetable.”

When her mother got wind of her daughter’s distress, she transferred her to a small, all-girls Catholic school, where she was taught by nuns who were “go-getters,” and the principal had walked arm in arm with Martin Luther King Jr. “It was a magical year for me,” Barnhill remembers. “It was the first time I had seen that kind of activism that was part of everybody’s story.”

“Everything will alter when you follow this trail of breadcrumbs into the forest. And we tell these stories to remind ourselves that it’s OK. You do make it to the other side, and you are OK, even if you are altered.”

Just as Luna’s magic reveals itself at age 13, Barnhill’s own special gift was ignited about this time, thanks to a nun named Sister Geron at her new school, who required her students to write a short story each week. “I had this inexhaustible well of story ideas inside me,” Barnhill says. “I could just sit down and write a new one and then write another one. Just the practice of writing woke up something in me.”

Despite her love of writing, Barnhill was a delayed reader, not reading at all until the end of third grade, nor on her own until fifth grade. However, she loved listening, and her father read often to his five children, especially from a mammoth volume of fairy tales that became so tattered that he rebound it using an old checkerboard and duct tape, which his children then dubbed “the Checkered Book.” 

Barnhill notes parallels between the “metamorphosis narratives” of fantasy and fairy tales and adolescence, pointing out that such similarities are one reason why these stories are so appealing to kids. That’s certainly the case in The Girl Who Drank the Moon, in which Luna’s magic so vividly erupts as she turns 13.

“The deep dark woods [are] dangerous, and it’s scary, but you have to go in there and you are going to be irrevocably changed,” Barnhill says. “Everything will alter when you follow this trail of breadcrumbs into the forest. And we tell these stories to remind ourselves that it’s OK. You do make it to the other side, and you are OK, even if you are altered.”

This article was originally published in the August 2016 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Applesauce season has finally come, but for siblings Faith and Peter, it’s a bittersweet arrival. It’s the first year they’ll harvest the apples without their Aunt Lucy, who planted the apple tree when she was a little girl. They’re not even sure Uncle Arthur will come at all, and when he does, he’s lost the twinkle in his eye.

Gentle Faith and clever Peter are here to help, and slowly Uncle Arthur—who can tell a great story better than anyone—finds his twinkle. Throughout Applesauce Weather, the three characters remember Aunt Lucy, in particular reflecting on the love story of Lucy and Arthur. (Are these tales fact or fiction? The kids may never know!)

In this charming novel-in-verse, it becomes clear that young and old understand each other much better than they realize.

What inspired you to write Applesauce Weather?
My grandmother grew up on Prince Edward Island and moved to Minneapolis with a group of friends and relatives. Among this group was a couple who never had children of their own, but were beloved by the children and grandchildren of others in the group. We called them Uncle Arthur and Aunt Lucy, though they were not blood relatives. Uncle Arthur was missing a finger and would never give us a straight answer about what had happened. That was the seed of the story, and for many years I tried to write it as a picture book. But as many editors told me, it was not a picture book.

After letting it sit for awhile, I decided to try rewriting it as a novel-in-verse for children a little older than “picture book age.” This opened up many possibilities, including what became so central to the story—the intergenerational love of the family, focused on their missing Aunt Lucy.

Several voices contribute to this story. Which came first? Which spoke loudest to you? Which was hardest to write?
At first it was Faith, then Uncle Arthur, the two of them back and forth together, telling the story. Then Peter’s voice came in, expressing the skepticism that balances Faith’s eager-to-believe delight in life.

As I wrote, the voices seemed well-balanced, none speaking more loudly than the others, and each of them actually quite easy to write, which is not usually true for me. Uncle Arthur’s grief paralleled a grief of my own at the time I was writing, and that was hard in a way, but also comforting, as he could ask some of the questions I wasn’t quite ready to ask myself.

Not all children grow up on a farm, but this book has great reverence for a child’s relationship with growing things (from Aunt Lucy all the way to Faith). What are some ways kids can forge this relationship with the earth, even if they’re not growing up on a farm?
Whether in a small garden, a window box or an old boot filled with dirt, children can plant seeds and watch them grow. If they live in a city, they can pay attention to what’s going on in the parks or curbside plants. Schools can often find a patch of earth for a garden, in which students can grow food they enjoy eating or perhaps sunflowers to fill birdfeeders, or milkweed and parsley to attract butterflies.

Children everywhere can be encouraged to know where their food comes from, and what the growing season is for the food they eat.

“When we are grieving, nothing is more comforting than to know that our love is shared and our loved ones are remembered.”

When a family member is grieving, what are some ways a child can feel like they’re helping?
I love this question. Children can help in a very particular way because they are the ones who will carry memory farthest into the future. When we are grieving, nothing is more comforting than to know that our love is shared and our loved ones are remembered. So children can say, I’ll never forget how she . . . or Remember when we. . . . In Applesauce Weather, this kind of remembering happens naturally through the things the family does together, more than through words.

While we feel Aunt Lucy’s absence, her voice is so powerful through her songs and her apple-tree traditions that she feels both missing and present, all at once. What do you hope young readers will learn about love and loss from Aunt Lucy’s voice?
Exactly what you are describing here—that a loved one can be present, even in absence, through the things we love and remember about them. In missing them, we hold our loved ones close and in that way we keep them alive for one another.

What do you think is the key to talking to young people about death and grief?
As Lucille Clifton so beautifully reassures us at the end of Everett Anderson’s Goodbye: “…love doesn’t stop, and neither will I.”

Did you grow up celebrating the arrival of applesauce weather? What other traditions did you have as a child that you looked forward to with as much anticipation as Faith?
​When I was Faith’s age, I lived in a small town in the Midwest, and watched the seasons change in many ways that are still part of my life. Certain fruits ripen at the same times: blackberries and apples, blueberries and peaches, strawberries and rhubarb. Applesauce weather follows shortly after blueberry-and-peach jam weather, which follows strawberry-rhubarb cobbler weather, which follows maple-syrup weather, which alerts us to the end of winter, much as ripening apples signal the end of summer.

Perhaps I should add that not all my memories are about food. For example, when I was a child, we lived in a big house with no air conditioning, and it was quite a project to change the storm windows for screen windows every spring, and then back again in the fall. I always looked forward to those days, even though they were a lot of work. Another memory: My father was a basketball coach, and my sisters and I loved going with him to put posters of the basketball schedule in all the small towns.

So many ways of marking the changing seasons.

What do you love most about writing for children?
It’s different for each book. In this book, I love bringing memories from my childhood into a new time and place and seeing how they emerge as a story for today’s children to enjoy. It’s a way of expressing several loves at once—for poetry, for story, for people I miss and for children.

It will be fun to share this book with children. I’m sure I will be asked, “What really happened?” To which I will invite, with a twinkle in my eye, “You tell me and we’ll both know.”

Author photo credit Chad Thompson.

Jason Reynolds inaugurates his new Track series with Ghost, the story of young Castle Cranshaw, who discovers something about himself the night his father shoots at him and his mother: He can run fast. When Coach Brody puts him on the track team, Ghost finds a community he never expected, one that includes different kinds of kids, some with stories like his own, all ready to be there for each other.

In his signature prose style—full of affection for his characters, humor and wisdom—Reynolds has crafted another novel with the same subtle elegance that has earned him several honors from the Coretta Scott King jury as well as a recent Walter Dean Myers Award. In fact, Reynolds has been hailed as the heir to Walter Dean Myers by writing fine stories about black kids, especially boys, stories that “peel away some of the layers and walls to expose the humanness and the connectivity in us all.”

Ghost begins the Track series. How many volumes do you envision?
As of right now, there will be four. But who knows? Maybe people will really like them, and I can convince the publishing company to let me write four more. We’ll see!

At the beginning of Ghost, Castle Cranshaw sees basketball as his real sport; he never really planned on joining the track team. What is your sports background?
I grew up loving basketball. I played almost everyday until I got to high school, where I joined the wrestling team and the track team.

“If writing isn’t an adventure for me, I can’t expect it to be an adventure for you all.”

What will you say to middle school readers, who don’t always like open-ended endings, when they ask why you concluded the novel at the start of the race instead of at the finish line?
That they have to check out the next book to find out what happened!

You seem to have a fondness for tough, independent-minded girls in your books: Love in The Boy in the Black Suit, for instance, and Patty in Ghost. Are they like the girls you liked in high school?
Absolutely. And the girls after high school. And the girls I still like. They’re my mother, my cousins and almost every girl/woman in my life.

In the touching scene in the Chinese restaurant when Ghost reveals his family secret to his teammates and coach, he thinks to himself, “I felt like they could see me. Like we were all running the same race at the same speed.” Was that a conscious theme—a character named Ghost and the theme of seeing—when you began the novel, or did it evolve?
It definitely evolved. I’m actually not even sure where the nickname, Ghost, came from. It just popped in my head and I ran with it (pardon the pun). But as the story started to unfold, the name Ghost unfolded with it, and I love when that happens. If writing isn’t an adventure for me, I can’t expect it to be an adventure for you all. 

When Coach reveals his own story to Ghost, he says, “You can’t run away from who you are, but what you can do is run toward who you want to be.” One aspect I especially like about all of your books are the adult characters who act as mentors—parents, Mr. Ray in The Boy in the Black Suit, and in Ghost Mr. Charles and Coach, along with Ghost’s mother. Do you see these characters as your way to offer life lessons in a natural way, without ever needing to impose a lesson on a story?
Honestly, I struggle with this. I’m not sure if I ever approach a story thinking about what I can teach. And I typically don’t even think about that as I’m writing. I mean, I contemplate what the story’s about. But not what a kid can get out of it. On the other hand, I love adult characters who are interesting and complicated, and usually people who are that way always have really interesting nuggets to share. All of my mentors were that way—human fortune cookies—sweet but broken, with a tidbit of wisdom to share.

You said that writing As Brave as You, your debut middle grade novel, was the hardest thing you have written yet. Why was that?
For a few reasons. The first being that it’s in third person. I rarely write in third person POV, and, a little secret, As Brave As You was originally written in first person. But my editor said it didn’t work. So I re-wrote the whole book in third. Another hiccup for me was convincing myself that I could just write. When I thought of the term “middle grade," it immediately spawned the envisioning of a child swaddled in a blanket. Someone too young for reality, and so I wound up “talking down” to the reader. But thankfully my editor snapped me out of that one quickly. And lastly, I was used to writing young adult, which most people think of as stories about firsts. But middle grade stories are all about the curiosity and the questions that will eventually lead to those firsts. So there was definitely a recalibration that had to happen.

The cover of When I Was the Greatest features a gun on the cover, sparking challenges in some schools. How do you feel about that, given that guns and violence are a fact of life for many of your characters?
I’m torn. I understand the sensitive nature of the gun argument and would understand the outrage over the gun on the cover of When I Was the Greatest if we also thought about challenging covers with scantily clad teenage girls on them. And is it just that it’s a gun with no one holding it that makes people uncomfortable? Because there never seems to be a problem when that gun is being held by, say, a soldier. Ugh. Can I say ugh in BookPage? Ugh.

You have now been honored several times by the Coretta Scott King jury. What has that meant to you and your work?
Everything. It means that I’m part of an incredible legacy, and with that legacy comes responsibility. It means that I have work to do.

Earlier this year, All American Boys, co-written with Brendan Kiely, won the inaugural Walter Dean Myers Award for outstanding children’s literature in the young adult category. I know Walter Dean Myers’ son Chris is a friend of yours and introduced you to the work of his father; how does it feel to be a winner of the award and a writer who is carrying on Myers’ work?
Ah. Well, first, if it is somehow true that I’m carrying on Walter Dean Myers’ work, one can only help to be a pebble at the base of his boulder. It was an honor to win that award. It was humbling, surreal, emotional. My mother was there. So many friends. And it was held at the Library of Congress. It was truly a sweet moment. But again, this award, much like the Coretta Scott King Award, is less of a hat-tip and more of a charge. And I’m going to take heed. Better yet, I’m going to take pride. 

Author photo credit Kia Chenelle.

Reluctant middle schoolers, meet Abbie Wu. Not only is she dreading middle school, but she’s also a middle child, which means she really knows how much it stinks to be stuck in the Middles. But as she bemoans her situation and gripes about each day, her friends begin to find their own passions and hobbies. Will our neurotic young hero find her “Thing”? It turns out that Abbie has far more talents than just being Frazzled.

We spoke with publishing veteran and author Booki Vivat about the Middles, impending doom and more.

How much of worrywart Abbie Wu was inspired by your own middle school self?
Abbie is very much a reflection of who I was when I was young and, to some extent, who I am now. Although our circumstances may be different, our worries still stem from the same place. Who am I? Where do I belong? What is my Thing?

It’s been a long time since I’ve been in middle school, but I think that frazzled kid will always be a part of me. There’s just something about middle school that sticks with you—for better or worse. It almost feels inevitable that so many aspects of Abbie’s story are rooted in my own personal experiences. As I was writing, I felt like I was both excavating my past for inspiration and working through my own unresolved feelings about growing up.

Did you face the same pressure to define yourself at such a young age?
The pressure to define yourself often extends far beyond middle school, but for me, it certainly started there. Middle school was when everything shifted. All of the sudden, I was expected to know who I wanted to be and what I was going to do with my life—but I didn’t know what I was doing in the present, let alone what I wanted my future to look like. The worst part was that it seemed like everyone had it figured out but me. Sometimes I feel that way now, even as an adult!

What is the most frustrating part of being in middle school? Of being a middle child?
To quote Abbie Wu herself, “The worst part about middle school is the fact that it is MIDDLE school.” There’s nothing quite so frustrating as “The Middles,” the in-between places and the gray areas of growing up. Middle school embodies this confusing transition period between childhood and adulthood. How someone actually gets from one to the other is kind of unknown, and there’s so much fear associated with the unknown—especially for kids! It’s something that is out of their control and impossible to fully prepare for, but also completely unavoidable.

Being a middle child has a different set of frustrations. Growing up, I was technically the oldest, but I spent a lot of time around our older cousin, so I still identify with a lot of those middle child feelings of being overlooked and underappreciated. Being a middle kid, there’s sometimes this idea that you need to prove you belong, to work harder and do better in order to be seen. Part of Abbie’s journey in this book is realizing that, even though she’s worried about middle school, she can still survive and find a place there. She has the power to carve out a space in the Middles that is her own.

What is there to look forward to?
Though it is undeniably intimidating and scary, middle school often marks a shift towards independence and access to more opportunities than ever before. For me, it was the first time I felt like I was making significant decisions about what I wanted in life, rather than just allowing teachers or parents to choose for me. Middle school is one of the first stages in growing up where kids can begin to really express their opinions and distinguish themselves as individuals. That comes with a lot of pressure, but there’s also an exciting element to it.

Do you cope with your worries by doodling? How did they help shape this book?
I started keeping a planner a few years ago to get my life in order, but over time, doodles of my feelings and emotions took over every page! My planner became more of a creative outlet and visual record of my life. Drawing became a way, not just to remember, but also to work through my experiences and emotions.

The idea for Frazzled actually came from a very dramatic personal doodle I drew that said: “I live my life in a constant state of impending doom.” I didn’t know it at the time, but that drawing was the beginning of Abbie Wu. I started writing about this hilariously dramatic kid who always felt like she was living on the brink of impending doom—just like me. Because the idea for Frazzled came directly out of my doodling, that set the tone for the book and established a foundation for the rest of Abbie’s story to unfold.

What advice do you have for young worriers? How can parents and teachers help ease worriers’ anxieties?
I think it’s important for worriers to know that their feelings and emotions are normal. Everyone worries, and it’s not necessarily bad to worry about things. Abbie has a lot of fears, but one of her biggest is the idea that everyone has things figured out except her. Over the course of the book, she realizes that it’s actually okay not to know what you’re doing or to feel uncertain about doing it—just as long as you don’t let those fears stop you from actually doing things!

As a parent or teacher, I think the best thing to offer is support and encouragement. That can mean anything from nurturing curiosity and creativity as an outlet for expressing these feelings or channeling them into something like a sport or activity. For me, writing and illustrating this book was a way to personally process through my worries. Everyone deals with their fears in different ways. Helping ease a young worrier’s anxiety might not necessarily be about finding a definitive solution, but rather supporting and empowering them to figure out what works best for them.

What’s it like to publish a book after working in publishing for so long?
One of my first thoughts when I saw the finished book was, “Did I really make this?” It’s so surreal to think of people reading this thing that I made, this thing that is so much a part of me. Because I work in publishing, I’m used to seeing other people’s stories at various stages on the journey towards becoming a real book, but it was an entirely new thing for me to experience this for myself. I’m very aware of how much goes into getting a book published, so to now experience that from the other side as an author is really special.

Will there be more episodes for Abbie Wu?
Flannery O’Connor has a great quote that basically says if you’ve survived childhood, you have enough to write about for the rest of your life. Middle school is such a formative time in a person’s life. There are a lot of experiences and emotions to explore with Abbie now that she’s in the thick of it. This is definitely not the last you’ll see of Abbie Wu! She still has a long way to go before she makes it out of middle school.

Author photo credit Kamolpat Trangratapit.

In 1944, 11-year-old Max Larousse has been relocated with her mother (and her ferret, Houdini) to Camp Barkeley in Abilene, Texas, where her father is in charge of a Nazi POW camp. Jewish Max, an aspiring magician, is not at all pleased about it, and she’s got the smart mouth to match her attitude. At least she can practice her illusions on the German prisoners—until several escape after her vanishing act grand finale.

Complete with illustrated “Houdini Presents” guides to Max’s magic tricks, AbrakaPOW is a thrilling blend of adventure and history that middle grade readers will gobble up. The best part is that it’s based on a true World War II story. BookPage contacted author Isaiah Campbell to learn more.

What is the true story that inspired this novel?
It all started when I was an 11-year-old magician in west Texas during World War II. Just kidding. I’m not quite that old.

So, when the United States entered the Second World War, it wasn’t very long before the military realized they would need somewhere to keep all the captured soldiers they were collecting, particularly from the warfront in Africa. In 1942, they decided they should open two POW camps inside the United States to house what they estimated would be a max of 3,000 soldiers (they thought they were overestimating, since the war surely wasn’t going to take THAT long, right?). By the end of the war, there were over 500 POW camps inside the U.S., housing 425,000 POWs (well within the original margin of error, right?). One of those camps was Camp Barkeley, located just outside of Abilene, Texas.

At Camp Barkeley, the 800 POWs comprised two factions of German soldiers, the Anti-Nazis and the Black Hand, who (surprise!) were Nazi loyalists. Obviously, the Anti-Nazi prisoners got along much better with the Americans than did the members of the Black Hand, and eventually the hostility between the two groups grew nearly unbearable. This all came to a head in 1944 when 11 members of the Black Hand dug a tunnel using broken dishes stolen from the mess hall and then scrambled to get to Mexico and, from there, back to the war. The FBI came and assisted the Army in hunting down the POWs, and amazingly, all 11 were recaptured within just a few days without a single shot having to be fired. (I can neither confirm nor deny the involvement of any amateur magicians in this process.)

“I enjoy learning about lives and events that I previously had little knowledge of, because it makes me feel like the Indiana Jones of research. I love to uncover forgotten stories and lost lessons. Plus I rock the fedora and bullwhip like a boss.”

What’s the most interesting thing you discovered while researching these events?
What I found the most fascinating was how well the POWs were treated while they were in the states, especially by the average citizen. The POWs were allowed to get jobs working the farms and factories in the communities, and many of them cultivated friendships with the locals around the country. In fact, there are many examples of these relationships that continued long after the war was over. Some of the POWs even immigrated to the United States because their experience was so positive. Way to be a good host, Uncle Sam!

It’s pretty intense for a young Jewish girl to be performing for Nazi POWs. Why did you decide to write this story, and what do you hope young readers will take away from it?
It really is, isn’t it? This was a story that evolved as I wrote it, and the more I found its center, the more I realized just how intense and scary the themes I was exploring really were. One thing that made me feel like this story could work and inspired me to give it all I had was reading about Joe Simon and Jack Kirby, the creators of Captain America. They were both Jewish Americans, and when they created Captain America, they did it as an act of opposition both against Nazi Germany and against the anti-war movement in America. Their bravery and courage in using their talents to change the cultural view of the conflict in Europe really altered the trajectory of history in a big way.

It was that idea that became what is truly the core of AbrakaPOW and the pivot point for Max’s motivations. While she initially is looking to fulfill her selfish ambitions, she eventually realizes that she can be both great (the absolute best at stage magic) and good (using her talents to accomplish something for the betterment of those around her). It’s that sort of mindset I hope readers of this book will take from it, that it isn’t enough to be “the greatest,” you should also strive to be the best you can be for those around you.

Maxine is certainly smart-mouthed and pushy, and can even be a grump, but she’s also headstrong and a clever go-getter. What do you love most about Max?
I think my absolute favorite thing about Max (besides her wisdom in adopting Houdini, the greatest ferret the world has ever known) is when we get to see glimpses of her vulnerability. There are a few moments in the story when she’s scared or sad and stops trying to hide it behind a wall of smoke and mirrors. To me, it’s those moments that prove how strong she really is. In a book that’s all about “things are not quite what they seem,” the magic of Max is that she truly is incredibly strong, even when she’s trembling inside.

What insight do the excerpts from her diary provide?
Since I wrote this book in the third-person voice (as opposed to the first-person voice of my Johnny Cannon books), I had to find a way to make sure that we experienced the world through Max’s own eyes and in her own voice. Especially since Max is all about playing things close to the vest, it was really important to establish that additional layer so that she didn’t seem shallow or less than human. The diary gives us glimpses at her private insecurities, her hidden joys and even her opinions that she might not let most people hear. It also helps keep the timeline of the book on track and builds in a bit of a countdown, which heightens the intensity. I hope. Fingers crossed.

What do you love most about writing historical fiction for young readers?
First and foremost, it’s incredibly self-gratifying. I enjoy learning about lives and events that I previously had little knowledge of, because it makes me feel like the Indiana Jones of research. I love to uncover forgotten stories and lost lessons. Plus I rock the fedora and bullwhip like a boss.

When I’m done satisfying my own selfish ambitions, I love to see how my readers digest the stories. It’s awesome when I go to schools, and students are shocked both by the fact that things haven’t always been the way they are and also by the fact that there are some things that have never changed about the world. I like to believe that those moments are seeds which will inspire students to seek change in their world because they finally believe it can happen and also because they are convinced that it should.

You were a young magician like Max, once upon a time. Can you still do any magic tricks?
Oh yes, I have studied the dark arts most of my life and David Copperfield pays me $80,000 a month to keep his secrets safe. Just kidding. I picked up a book of coin tricks when I was around Max’s age and spent every waking moment practicing every trick in the book. That started something for me that never really went away. I read every book of magic tricks and biography of magicians that the Sweetwater Texas Public Library had in its collection. Admittedly, my repertoire is pretty limited to cards and coins, and my skills pale greatly compared to Max, but I do still perform whenever I get a chance. Like if there happens to be a deck of cards sitting out. Or if I have to distract someone when I’m losing an argument.

What are you working on next?
Right now I’m working on several ideas that are a lot of fun. I seem to have been bitten by the World War II bug and I’m discovering that, even with the plethora of stories from that time period that have already been told, there are still plenty of forgotten tales to be mined. So I’m feverishly researching and synopsizing on a couple of novels that, I think, will be pretty exciting.

We are drawn to stories set within prisons, with their tales of escape attempts, the wrongfully accused, rivalries and friendships that turn on a dime and the challenges of life after release. Jerry Spinelli’s latest novel for children takes a different tack: In The Warden’s Daughter, the Newbery Award winning author offers the perspective of another kind of correctional facility resident, middle schooler Cammie O’Reilly.

Cammie and her father live in an apartment in the Hancock County Prison, a fortress-like building in the center of their small town. In many ways, it’s a lot like any other living situation: They have breakfast in the kitchen, he goes to work, she goes to school (when she’s not watching “American Bandstand” with her best girlfriend, Reggie) and other domestic goings-on. But her father’s bedroom window looks out over Murderer’s Row, and her neighbors include prison guards and female inmates, with whom she has daily through-the-fence chats.

It’s quite the interesting life for a curious, smart kid like Cammie—one that was inspired by a friend of Spinelli’s, a real-life warden’s daughter. “After I met my friend Ellen, she told me about her life growing up in the prison,” the author says in a call to the Pennsylvania home he shares with his wife, author Eileen Spinelli. “That was 15 years ago. It’s amazing it took so many years to realize what a natural story I had sitting in my lap!”

While Spinelli says Ellen’s life doesn’t resemble Cammie’s, the prison in The Warden’s Daughter is much like the real Montgomery County Prison in Norristown, Pennsylvania, where Spinelli grew up. It was there that he had a friend whose background inspired another important element of Cammie’s life: having a mother who sacrificed her life to save her daughter’s. “I patched in the memory of an old friend and fraternity brother,” Spinelli says, “who was a baby when his mother was crossing the street and didn’t see a milk truck coming, and threw him across the street to save his life.”

Stories and memories combine to make The Warden’s Daughter a coming-of-age tale that’s both familiar and new. Readers who live or have lived in unusual places and small towns will enjoy Spinelli’s spot-on rendering of that sort of life, and those who haven’t will look at such situations with wonder. Anyone who is or has been a 12-year-old on the cusp of 13 will relate to Cammie’s struggle with wanting to be mothered yet wishing people would see how grown up she is. And readers who’ve experienced strong grief will recognize the ways in which those grieving try to carry on, while people around them strive to balance delicate sensitivity and soothing normalcy.

Stories and memories combine to make The Warden’s Daughter a coming-of-age tale that’s both familiar and new.

For Cammie, the summer of 1959 is when things go decidedly off-kilter. She’s been doing a pretty good job of compartmentalizing her feelings, finding fun and relief in long bicycle rides, pick-up baseball games, adventures with Reggie and showing her dad how strong and helpful she can be. 

But then, she realizes, “In the weeks after Mother’s Day, something was changing. Enough was no longer enough. . . . I was sick and tired of being motherless.” Of course, untreated PTSD would wear anyone down, and to make matters worse, the site of her mother’s accident, The Corner, is just blocks away from her home.

Intriguingly, as Cammie’s feelings swell toward a breaking point, Spinelli doesn’t shy away from having her rage periodically manifest itself in abusiveness toward those around her, including Eloda, the inmate trustee who’s been working as the warden’s housekeeper. 

From a practical standpoint, Spinelli says, “Considering where I wanted the story to end up, that seemed to be the way to frame it.” He adds, “Not having been parentless [as a child] myself, I did my best to put myself in her situation and went from there.” 

Cammie does realize her angry outbursts are wrong, and as best she can, she strives to manage her unmanageable feelings. Friends like ebullient inmate Boo, teen-queen Reggie and even a 5-year-old boy serve as a veritable village of support and friendship—but ultimately, it’s the steadfast and sympathetic Eloda who gets Cammie where she needs to go, emotionally and physically. 

This climax between Eloda and Cammie is a finely written, heartbreaking, cathartic scene—and far from the only tear-inducing situation in the book. When asked if he ever cries when he writes his books, Spinelli says, “I’ve never had that question, but now that you mention it, I occasionally might get a little worked up as I’m rereading aloud a particular passage. I’m straddling both sides of the fence: being dispassionate enough to write as well as I can, and somehow, without tears flowing, participating as emotionally as I can for the sake of the characters.”

When it comes to prisons literal and figurative, Spinelli (who’s a big fan of the HBO TV series “Oz”) says he joins the rest of us in our continued fascination with that institution and its metaphorical counterparts: “Once in a while, when I hear news about prisoners or even an execution, I find myself thankful I’m not in such a situation,” he says. “[Our freedoms] are suddenly framed and put into perspective . . . just as standing across the street from a building that houses people who don’t have the things we [take for granted] makes us more aware of and sensitive to our assumed conditions.”

As for the real, long-defunct prison on which Cammie’s home is based, it’s currently the subject of several renewal-project proposals (including a lovely one that’s worked into The Warden’s Daughter). And Spinelli’s friend Ellen, the original warden’s daughter? She gave the book “a rave review.”

This article was originally published in the January 2017 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.