Some may think of New York City’s Upper West Side as “Seinfeld” stomping grounds, but fans of Rebecca Stead know better: These apartments, shops and streets are where Stead does her own stomping—and where the characters in her critically lauded middle grade novels live.

While Stead’s first novel, 2007’s First Light, was set on the quite different island of Greenland, her three subsequent books are set in New York City past and present: 2010 Newbery Medal winner When You Reach Me takes place in Stead’s childhood neighborhood; and Liar and Spy explores Brooklyn. Stead’s new book, Goodbye Stranger, which takes place 10 blocks from where the author grew up, gives readers a window into living one’s formative years in a city that’s both a world-famous object of fantasy and home to lots of regular people doing regular stuff.

“As soon as I started writing about childhood,” Stead tells BookPage during a call to her home, “it was inevitable the characters were going to end up in New York, because that’s where I’ve always been. It’s weird to live in the same neighborhood in New York City for so long. Things change so much.”

"A lot of girls feel fantastic about the way they look at this age, and they should. It’s not something kids should have to deny."

She adds, “Every once in a while I have a moment: For a second, walking on Amsterdam Avenue, it feels like my childhood. It lasts about six seconds, three steps—it can be something I see or hear, music, people playing dominoes—and I think about how it was . . . and then it’s gone.” 

But her memories, her touchstones, do wend their way into her fiction: “Somehow, it’s all feeding me.”

Just as the city itself is both glittery and dun-colored, modern and historic—depending on the perspective—the characters in Goodbye Stranger are figuring out who they really are as well. They consider how others see them versus what they feel inside and ponder grand-scale existential questions, too.

For seventh-grader Bridget Barsamian (you can call her “Bridge”), the latter sort are front of mind. They have been since she survived being hit by a car at age 8 and a nurse commented, “You must have been put on this earth for a reason, little girl, to have survived.”

In the intervening years, Bridge hasn’t figured out that reason. Lately it doesn’t help that she’s been getting homework assignments like, “Answer the question, ‘What is love?’ ” That’s heady stuff for anyone, let alone someone who’s negotiating the oh-so-challenging middle school years, rife with physical and emotional changes, odd behavior from longtime friends and a tentative new friendship with a boy named Sherm.

And sure, books have come before that have trod these roads—and books will come after—but Stead’s approach is a moving blend of present-day and historic, romantic love and familial love, deep questions and just-for-fun pursuits like sock buns and a hilariously intense competition between Bridge’s brother and his frenemy.

It therefore follows that Stead likes “to read books that are a little challenging or complicated, or feel off-balance a little bit. For me, that’s a great pleasure of reading, slowly doing the reader’s work of putting the story together and building an understanding of what’s happening. It’s important to me as a reader, so I always think about that when I’m writing.”

To wit, Goodbye Stranger is told from three distinct points of view: Bridge, Sherm and an anonymous narrator whose identity is slowly, tantalizingly revealed. “I like the idea of the reader synthesizing the character over time,” says Stead. “Hopefully it creates a little bit of a moment for the reader, because that’s how people are—so different internally from how we present.”

That issue is also explored through the characters’ texting, sharing and judging of photos and the supposed motives therein. Bodily autonomy figures in, via the question of whether it’s perfectly healthy for girls to be happy about how they look—or if they should feel abashed at any sense of pride. 

“There are a lot of different questions around this time of life, and it’s important to keep in mind that a lot of girls feel fantastic about the way they look at this age, and they should. It’s not something kids should have to deny. It’s a complex issue.

“Also, the level of control . . . [is] lost because there are so many images online . . . but at the same time, you can really decide how you will present yourself. And people can pull up your page and study it for an hour, forward it or link to it.”

But even as Bridge juggles her friend Emily’s texting habits, a new distance from their friend Tabitha and an unexpected affinity for the Tech Crew (which is cool because it’s a crew, not a club), ancient history looms in interesting ways, from the car accident’s continued presence in Bridge’s thoughts to Sherm questioning whether the Apollo 11 moon landing was real. 

About that: Stead says, “I’m entertained by the fact people deny that it happened. The whole question of, what do we really know?”

Readers of Goodbye Stranger will know that, as always, the author has a keen eye for and an empathetic take on what it’s like to be a middle-schooler—and what it’s like to be a thoughtful kid like Bridge. “I think it’s an incredible time of life, and I have such enormous respect for kids that age. They’re really deep.”

Stead adds, “My memory of that age is just full of existential questions about how the world worked. I don’t think I was special—kids really are asking a lot of deep questions about themselves, how other people see them, who other people really are. It’s an incredible widening and explosion internally and intellectually. . . . That’s why I write for younger kids. That, for me, was a really incredibly interesting, fruitful time of life.”

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

2008 Newbery Honor Book

Author Gary Schmidt's Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy (2004) was that rare book that appealed to both teenagers and younger readers. An eloquent, beautifully written novel based on the destruction of an African-American community in Maine in 1912, it came as no surprise that it earned both a Printz and Newbery honor.

Now, with Schmidt's new novel, The Wednesday Wars, he has achieved something equally rare: a book that manages to be an accessible, humorous school story, and at the same time an insightful coming-of-age tale set during one of the most turbulent times in 20th-century America.

Like his 12-year-old protagonist, Holling Hoodhood, author Gary Schmidt grew up on Long Island. Schmidt's own school recollections include vivid memories of a middle school teacher named Mrs. Baker. Holling also has a teacher named Mrs. Baker, and as the book—and the school year—open, he's convinced she has it in for him:

Of all the kids in the seventh grade at Camillo Junior High, there was one kid that Mrs. Baker hated with heat whiter than the sun.

Me.

On Wednesdays, you see, everyone in the seventh grade—except Holling—is excused early to go to weekly religious classes. Half the class is Catholic; the other half, Jewish. Holling, being the only Presbyterian, is left behind to be the bane of his teacher's existence.

"Just as in the book, I really was the only one in class for the last couple of hours every Wednesday afternoon. But my Mrs. Baker really did hate me," notes the affable Schmidt, a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids. "After all, I was standing between my teacher and freedom—early release every Wednesday."

Like his young hero, Schmidt breathed in his share of chalk dust cleaning erasers on those Wednesday afternoons. But unlike young Holling, he most definitely did not spend the year exploring the plays of Shakespeare, gaining a fuller appreciation of his teachers as adults with their own trials and problems, and coming to terms with complex school and family relationships. Most especially, the author did not have to grapple with two gigantic, escape-artist rats named Sycorax and Caliban. "I haven't told you about Sycorax and Caliban yet, and you might want to skip over this next part, since it's pretty awful," Holling courteously warns readers.

Holling's year in seventh grade takes place in 1967-1968, a time of social upheaval in America. Although the timeframe does not correspond to Schmidt's own seventh-grade year, his choice was deliberate.

"This was one of our country's most violent years, with the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy. Vietnam dominated the evening news, with 250 soldiers being shipped home in body bags every week," says Schmidt.

To better understand this era, Schmidt did extensive research. "I read The New York Times for the entire time that is covered in the novel. And although this was not in any way meant to be a book about Iraq, over the past three years as I was writing it, I was struck by the similarities to headlines today."

Although the issues in The Wednesday Wars are serious—prejudice, the backdrop of Vietnam, uncertain family and school relationships—Holling is a self-aware, engaging narrator, and the situations he relates are often laugh-out-loud funny.

There are those rats, of course. And there's also the matter of Holling's costume for his debut as Ariel the Fairy in the Long Island Shakespeare Company's Holiday Extravaganza. "I got through the whole dress rehearsal playing Ariel the Fairy while wearing bright yellow tights with white feathers on the . . . well, I might as well say it—butt. There. On my butt!" Holling tells readers. "White feathers waving on my butt."

"I wanted to try something different by writing in a colloquial voice," says Schmidt, noting how different The Wednesday Wars is in style from Lizzie Bright. "I also wanted to show the mixture between drama and comedy, sad moments and silly ones. That's how we live our lives:really ping-ponging back and forth."

One of the most poignant relationships in the book is that of Holling and his father, an architect with ambition. Holling's father rules "the Perfect House," which is scrupulously maintained to outshine every other house on the block. He's also determined to be the head of a perfect family, which inevitably leads to conflicts with Holling and his older sister.

While at the outset Holling is simply "the Son Who Is Going to Inherit Hoodhood and Associates," by the end of the school year he has begun to develop the courage to stand up for the right to choose his own future.

"The idea for this book originally came to me as one simple image," Schmidt explains. "I could see a kid running, with a teacher standing on the sidelines, shouting encouragement."

That scene does, in fact, make it into this rich and multilayered story. It occurs toward the end of the school year, in April. And it is well worth waiting for, both for readers and for Holling, who has begun to realize just how special his Wednesdays with Mrs. Baker have been.

One thing readers will not have to wait too long for is another book by Schmidt, who somehow manages to balance being the father of six children, a professor of English and one of the most talented and thought-provoking writers for young people.

The next novel, he promises, is already done.

For two girls on opposite ends of the world, adventure begins with a mysterious book.

In Georgia, Kai is staying with her great-aunt and finds a gorgeous, ornate book called The Exquisite Corpse. Its pages are almost completely blank, but it soon begins to share its secrets. In Pakistan, Leila finds a copy of The Exquisite Corpse as well. As A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic unfolds, told by a mysterious omniscient narrator, the two girls discover that their books are connected—and that together they’re spinning a truly magical tale.

What inspired this book?
This book was inspired by my very own magic book! When I was 10 years old, my German grandmother gave me a book of fairy tales. She explained that this book was a gift to her from her father, my great-grandfather, who had bought it from a bookstore in France during World War I because he wanted his daughter to learn English. The stories are beautifully illustrated and told, and as I read it and re-read them, I realized that I wanted to write stories when I grew up. I knew that this book was magical, and that it was meant for me—look at how far it had traveled and how long, just to reach me.

A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic is about two girls on opposite sides of the world who are linked by a magic book and a series of mysterious events. It’s about the way the past and present intersect, tying together people and events. And the nugget of that story is right there, in a book I got when I was 10 years old.

Kai and Leila’s stories are delivered by a very assertive omniscient narrator. (“In the gutter, Kai saw a squashed frog that had dried to leather in the Texas heat. I like to call that road jerky.”) Why did you choose this narrative style?
A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic is a book about a book. The Exquisite Corpse is the magical book that ties two girls—one in Texas and one in Pakistan—together. But The Exquisite Corpse is, itself, a character. It has a goal in mind. It wants the girls to connect, and—in some cases—it even writes directly to them. It is a book with a particular voice, and I wanted that voice to be distinct.

The narrator of A Tale of Highly Unusual Magic is the voice of The Exquisite Corpse. The same voice addresses both the characters and the reader. There are even a few places in which the voice talks about itself. For example, page 210: “Of course, the book knew the ending. But it was a very intelligent book, and knew that the best stories only give enough information to keep the reader interested. It wasn’t about to start explaining too much. Instead, it let Kai wonder.”

Even reading that makes me giggle. That book has some serious attitude!

There’s something very untrustworthy about magic items, especially magic books. As much as it could hold wonders, a magical book could turn out to be, oh, you know, a Horcrux. But that’s the risk of any type of magic, isn’t it? It could be sinister or kind, and often characters don’t know until the end. How do you think kids implicitly understand that magic is worth the risk?
(Awkward, embarrassed pause as I google “Horcrux.”) Interesting! “A powerful object in which a wizard has hidden part of his/ her soul in a bid for immortality.” That sounds a lot like . . . books. Arguably, every book ever written is an attempt at immortality, an attempt to connect to people beyond the depth and scope of our limited lives. This is a really interesting question.

Yes, magic is risky, but the danger is part of the appeal. I think that kids understand that—often—magic is highly influenced by the user. Someone who attempts to use magic for selfish or poorly-thought-out ends is likely to encounter danger. Someone with a kind heart and good intentions is likelier to have a good outcome, or is at least likelier to escape harm. Kids understand that intentions matter.

What is your connection to Pakistan, and what has been the most surprising or enjoyable part of getting to know Pakistani culture?
My husband is from Pakistan, and my in-laws have welcomed me into their big, vibrant family. My daughter is 7, and she identifies very strongly with her Pakistani heritage, as well as her American heritage. I think most people don’t understand how colorful and joyful Pakistani culture can be. The typical news images we see are nothing like what I experience when I go there: colorful clothing, dancing, incredible music, delicious food and a lively art scene. These are the things I wanted to reflect in my book.

If you were co-writing a book with anyone in the world, who would you choose, and what would you write about?
Wow! GREAT QUESTION! I have been very lucky to co-write with James Patterson and Chris Tebbetts, and I really enjoyed those experiences. Collaborating is wonderful, because it mitigates the isolation and self-doubt that writing alone can cause. But anyone in the world?

I think I’d like to work with Amy Poehler—something really smart and hilarious, set in middle school. Or maybe a crazy feel-good musical with Cyndi Lauper. I love Cyndi Lauper.

What do you love most about writing for young readers?
I don’t really think of young readers as being terribly different from older readers, except that they feel the books more. When I tell a joke, there are people who say, “That’s funny,” and there are people who laugh. Grown-ups will read a book and say, “That’s well-written” or “That’s moving.” Young readers will cry or giggle or screech or gasp. They’re the ideal audience, really, and they are far more intelligent than most adults realize.

What are you working on next?
I just finished a first draft of my next novel, which is tentatively titled Apartment 1986. It’s about a girl who skips school for a week to visit the art museums along New York City’s Museum Mile. It’s the usual Lisa Papademetriou mix of funny and sad and slightly weird. I’m excited about it!

Author photo credit Ellen Augarten.

Did you know buttons used to be made from shells? Delia Ray didn’t, but when she found out, an idea sparked. Her seventh book, Finding Fortune, is set in a town inspired by Muscatine, Iowa, the former Pearl Button Capital of the World.

The shell-buttons were clam and mussel, pulled from the Mississippi River in the early to mid-1900s by men, women and children who camped on the riverbanks and labored in factories. “It was a short-lived industry,” Ray says from her Iowa City home. “The rivers were harvested, the shells disappeared, plastic technology came along.”

This intriguing, little-known aspect of American history first came to Ray’s attention during a family vacation to Florida 10 years ago, when she, her husband and their three daughters paid a rainy-day visit to the Bailey-Matthews National Shell Museum. There among the showier seashells were humble clamshells, about the size of your hand, with numerous round circles punched out of them, plus a notation about a place far from Florida: Muscatine, Iowa.

“Among all the really impressive conch shell displays, 'Iowa' jumped out at me,” Ray says. She had no idea that Muscatine, just 45 minutes from her family’s home, had a rich button history. 

Thanks to her curious and inventive mind, Ray has a special talent for ferreting out pockets of American history and folding them into compelling stories. Her career began with a nonfiction book for young readers about the Klondike Gold Rush (Gold! The Klondike Adventure, published in 1989 and now out of print), which sent her to the Yukon Territory in search of information about 1890s gold-seekers.

“The best part is when it all comes together—the research, finding a way to tell the story and also just introducing kids to little slices of history they don’t know about,” says Ray.

It all comes together in Finding Fortune, an entertaining, often moving novel centered on 12-year-old Ren (short for Renata) and one memorable summer rife with growing pains, new friends, a decades-old mystery and Ren’s heartfelt question, “Why do things always have to change?”

In Ren’s world, the most vexing changes are family-centric: Her father’s due back soon from a military tour in Afghanistan, but her mom’s spending a lot of time with a guy named Rick. Ren doesn’t understand why nobody’s as upset as she is, and when she sees an ad for available rooms in a boardinghouse, she decides to run away—on a small scale, in terms of distance (the town of Fortune is only a few miles away) and population (down to 12 residents). 

The boardinghouse is the former Fortune Consolidated School, owned by the elderly Hildy, a one-time Pearl Button Queen (circa 1950) who’s determined to turn the former gym into a museum of the town’s vibrant button-making past. Ren also meets quirky kid Hugh, who lives in the library; handyman Garrett, who’s making a labyrinth out of clamshells on the old baseball diamond; and eccentric, soap-making sisters who live in the music room. There’s also a mystery afoot, one that dates back to when Hildy’s late father was one of the most skilled shell-cleaners in town. 

“Hildy was one of the first characters that came to me,” Ray says. “I knew I had to have a former Pearl Button Queen. I couldn’t get the idea out of my head, her riding in a giant clamshell down the street.” (There are photos and historical details in the back of the book, including a fabulous shot of a lovely button queen.)

Another source of inspiration for Finding Fortune was “a modern-day ghost towns article in the Des Moines Register. It said that Iowa had more towns with [a population of] 500 or less . . . than any other state in the nation. That fascinated me.” The article mentioned the tiny town of Le Roy, as well as abandoned button-making towns along the Mississippi River. 

“There were 13 people living [in Le Roy] at the time of the article’s [publication], and by the time I got there, even fewer,” says Ray. “It was such a haunting experience to drive up and down the streets, see where the sidewalks had been, old park benches, an abandoned playground, an elementary school.”

Ray takes special pleasure in visiting places like this, imagining a deserted town in its heyday. “[It’s an] odd collection of people who end up in places like that,” she says. “So when I was writing Finding Fortune, I was imagining what kind of characters would rent out a place like [the former school], who would end up there.”

She also visited Muscatine’s Pearl Button Museum, an experience she describes with great enthusiasm: “They were very kind and gracious about spending time showing me things in the museum, and taking me to see the abandoned button factory. We wandered along the Mississippi River, and the director showed me where the old clamming camps had been.” 

As a children’s author, Ray says, “One of the most fun parts of what I do is school visits. I love talking to fourth- through sixth-graders. They have no qualms about saying, Wow! Cool! They’re not cynical at all.”

Cool, indeed: Finding Fortune will have readers marveling at Ray’s captivating, contemplative, often thrilling storytelling—and the weird, wonderful back story of something as simple as buttons.

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

Laura Resau takes readers to the dusty, rolling hills of Oaxaca, Mexico, with her new middle grade novel, The Lightning Queen. This magical tale begins when Mateo leaves his home in Maryland to visit his grandfather in Southern Mexico for the summer. Slightly bored by his rural surroundings and the lack of an Xbox, Mateo is surprised when his grandfather asks for his help. As his grandfather tells him the story of his childhood in the 1950s, a charming and lively tale of a friendship that defies the impossible unfolds.

We asked Resau a few questions about her time in Mexico, the intriguing history of the "Gypsy" Romani people, the importance of enchanted moments and more. 

What inspired this book?
One day, when I was doing cultural anthropology fieldwork in Oaxaca, Mexico, I met a 96-year-old healer who told me enchanting stories about her encounters with the Gypsies, or Romani people. She recounted how, decades earlier, they came in caravans to show outdoor movies and tell fortunes. In her remote Mixteco village without plumbing or electricity, the arrival of the Romani was wildly exciting. After hearing her tales, I felt inspired to learn more about the Romani culture in Mexico and found myself fascinated. I became especially interested in the mutually appreciative relationship between these two marginalized cultures—the Mixteco and the Romani. In The Lightning Queen, I wove this research together with oral histories from my Oaxacan friends and my own experiences in Mixteco villages.

You spent two years living in Oaxaca, Mexico, where The Lightning Queen is set. What is it about the region that moves you?
I’m passionate about indigenous rights issues. More than half of Oaxaca’s population is indigenous, and there are more than a dozen native groups within the state. I first was welcomed into these communities as a teacher since I had a number of indigenous students at the rural college where I taught, and they would invite me to spend weekends and vacations with their families. They were kind and patient with me, helping me grow fluent in Spanish and learn the basics of the Mixteco language. I had the unique opportunity to participate in everyday activities like making tortillas as well as special rituals like healing ceremonies. I especially loved cooking and eating the local, homemade specialties, many of which have pre-Hispanic roots—mole, hot chocolate, atole, tamales, pozole. And the arts are a beautiful part of daily life—weaving palm and textiles, shaping pottery, carving dried gourds, painting little wooden animal sculptures, making dyed sawdust mosaics. I found Oaxaca to be a feast for the senses and spirit.

While Teo is a native Oaxacan, Esma, Queen of Lightning, is actually a Gypsy—a member of the Romani. I was surprised to learn that the Romani traveled so far from Eastern Europe so many decades ago! Can you tell us about the history of the Romani in Mexico?
Over the past several centuries, groups of Romani have migrated to the Americas, often to escape persecution in Europe. The greatest waves of Rom came between the late 1800s and mid-1900s. Some groups first settled in the U.S. or South America and then migrated to Mexico. The Romani do not appear in much of the written history of Mexico since they have been so marginalized. El cine ambulante—the traveling cinema—was popular work for the Romani in the mid-1900s, but after the spread of VCR’s in the 1980s, many Romani have found alternate work, like machine repair; buying and selling vehicles; and performing theater, magic and clowning.

"I’ve observed that children are often more receptive to this natural integration of magic into reality, and don’t feel the need to make a distinction between the two."

There is a strong tradition of magical realism in Mexican literature, and this is woven throughout The Lightning Queen as well. Why is magical realism important, especially in children’s literature?
As an anthropologist and writer, I try to avoid imposing my own cultural categories on the experiences of people in other cultures. Many of my friends in rural Oaxaca, especially my older friends, do not categorize their experiences as being either “magical” or “real-life.” There’s more of an open fluidity in how they describe their experiences, some of which, according to my culture’s category, might be labeled “mythical” or “magical.” I love the genre of magical realism because it respects this fluidity of human experience. 

When I was a child, I remember feeling that magic was possible and that it infused my own world. I’ve observed that children are often more receptive to this natural integration of magic into reality, and don’t feel the need to make a distinction between the two. Magical realism in children’s literature lets readers embrace this world view, and encourages them to empathize with and respect cultures and people who accept magic and reality as part of a whole package.

Oaxaca is just one of the many places you’ve traveled in recent years; what location is currently at the top of your travel wish list?
I’ve never been to Southeast Asia—I’d love to go to Laos, Cambodia and Thailand. My aunt is from Thailand and lives there now, so it’s always been on my radar, but recently I find myself dreaming of the tropical landscape, delicious food, vibrant textiles, stunning architecture and other intriguing aspects of these cultures. 

Which writer do you turn to for inspiration?
Honestly, these days, the most inspiring writers in my life are the two talented and hard-working women in my writers’ group—Laura Pritchett and Bailey Cates (who has too many pen names to keep track of!). Although they both write for adult audiences, we complement each other well. Laura is always reminding me to dig deep to find the heart of a story, to search for tenderness and not shy away from the gritty and raw. She encourages me to embrace the earthy and the spiritual at once. 

And the incredibly prolific Bailey is always reflecting on her creative process, asking herself what’s working and what isn’t, tweaking her routine here or there to make the writing flow more smoothly and feel more joyful. She makes me reflect more, in a pragmatic way, on my own writing habits. And we all give each other heaps of empathy and encouragement through the ups and downs of our writing journeys.

What do you love most about writing for a young audience?
The books that affected me most profoundly were the ones I read as a child and teen. At that time, my worldview was open and flexible enough that these stories planted seeds in me and expanded my understanding of existence. I think that as adults, we tend to be more rigid in our perspectives, and it takes more to tap into our deep empathy. I love getting emails and letters from young people who tell me that my books have changed how they see themselves or the world (in a good way!). It’s an honor to see this coming full circle in my life. 

I’ve also noticed that kids are much better than adults at laughing hysterically—with utter abandon—at the funny parts of my books. I love it when kids tell me that something in my story made them roll around giggling on the floor. It’s very satisfying, and not a reaction you’d find in adult readers.

What do you hope your young readers take away from this story?
I’d love it if they develop a fascination with other cultures and languages. I hope the story helps them care more deeply about human rights issues like discrimination and racism faced by marginalized cultures around the world. But I also hope they feel uplifted and enchanted by the fun and magical elements. It would make me happy to see readers take to heart Esma’s advice: “Give yourself a fortune and make it come true.” And I’d be thrilled if the story inspired them to strengthen their own friendships, to help each other see their talents and follow their dreams.

What are you working on next?
I’m in the midst of writing another middle grade novel, also with a Latin American setting and bits of magic sprinkled throughout. Research for this book has involved a trip to the remote Ecuadorian Amazon rain forest, and multiple trips to my local chocolate shop. I’m giving myself this fortune: that there are more rain forest and chocolate shop trips in my near future . . . 

Author photo © Harper Point Photography

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.