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.

Three-time National Book Award finalist Steve Sheinkin offers a new work of nonfiction as riveting as any historical novel you are likely to read this year. Undefeated exhumes football’s early years and a period in American history not as far removed from today as we might like to believe.

Why do you think this story of a football team from the early 1900s will resonate with a 2017 audience?
At heart, Undefeated is about Jim Thorpe and his teammates taking on enormous obstacles, on and off the field. I feel like once readers get to know the characters, and what they’re up against, it’ll be easy to start rooting for them. I’m a huge fan of underdog sports books like The Boys in the Boat or Seabiscuit—and I really couldn’t care less about rowing or horse racing. But those stories pull you in, and you find yourself worrying and cheering, as if these races from the 1930s were taking place before your eyes. I tried to capture this same edge-of-your-seat feeling with the football games in Undefeated. And I think it adds to the drama that modern readers have no idea how Carlisle’s big games turned out.

You fit so much into Undefeated—the formation of the Carlisle Indian School, the early years of football, Pop Warner’s backstory, the origins of the Carlisle football program, the rise of Thorpe and his teammates and on and on. Were you aware of all of these strands when you started this project?
Projects always grow on me as I research and begin to outline. I started off with the idea of making the rise of Jim Thorpe the spine of the story, and that didn’t change. But as I read more, I kept finding more to put in. After lots of trial and error, I decided to start with three stories: Thorpe’s childhood and teen years, Pop Warner and the early days of football, and the Carlisle Indian School and the formation of their football team. I get all three stories going right away in the book, and sort of juggle them until they all come together. And of course, I wound up writing way too much, and had to cut some of my favorite scenes.

“The Carlisle team changed everything by inventing a new and more exciting (and slightly safer) way to play. They saved the sport—and made it a lot more fun to watch.”

What was the most surprising fact you discovered while researching this story?
I was really stunned by the details of just how violent early-day football was—far more dangerous than it is today. Basically, it was loosely organized combat. The forward pass was not allowed, and there was no place for speed or strategy. Teams ran what were called “mass plays” over and over—walls of men crashed into each other, and guys openly punched each other in the pile-ups. In the year 1905 alone, 19 young men died playing football. Colleges were beginning to ban the sport, and momentum was building to ban football entirely in America, when the Carlisle team changed everything by inventing a new and more exciting (and slightly safer) way to play. They saved the sport—and made it a lot more fun to watch.

Beyond Thorpe and Coach Pop Warner, were there any other figures in this story that really caught your attention—people you wished you could have written more about?
One was Richard Henry Pratt, the founder of Carlisle. He’s a complex and controversial guy, a man who cared about the future of Native American kids at a time very few white American leaders did. Yet the school he founded, which was designed to strip Native kids of their culture and assimilate them into white America, inflicted tremendous and lasting pain on the people he claimed to be helping. Pratt is an important figure in my book, but I focus more on the Jim Thorpe years at Carlisle, after Pratt was gone. Besides, this is a sports book, and I didn’t want to go too heavy on the history.

You use the term “Indians” throughout Undefeated. Can you explain why you opted for that term, as opposed to more contemporary terms like Native Americans, indigenous or first nation’s peoples?
Where possible, I refer to the specific nation a person is from, rather than the more general Native American or American Indian. But those terms are used a lot too, when speaking of diverse groups, like the Carlisle team. The reason “Indians” comes up so often in the football scenes is because that’s what the Carlisle team was called—the Carlisle Indians. It’s what newspapers called them, and what they called themselves. In the epilogue, I take up the issue of modern sports teams using the name “Indians,” or other stereotyped variations, and ask the reader to think about the appropriateness of this.

By contemporary terms, Thorpe was mixed race, but seems he thought of himself—and was pretty universally described—as “Indian.” Why was this?
It’s true, Thorpe always referred to himself with pride as “Indian.” From the start, his Native heritage—Pottawatomie on his mother’s side, Sac and Fox on his father’s—was a central part of his life. As a young kid in what was then Indian Territory, he literally watched some of the Oklahoma land rushes, as the government opened Native American land to settlers. And he was later sent to a series of Indian boarding schools. All of this must have shaped the way he saw himself, though it’s not something he talked about publicly. In terms of how non-Native people saw him, that was pretty simple. He wasn’t white.

“I love the challenge of picking stories and figuring out how to tell them. It’s like trying to solving a puzzle that has a thousand possible solutions, most of them wrong.”

You started your nonfiction career writing history textbooks—which, it seems, you didn’t much enjoy. What is different about writing historical nonfiction that you find so appealing?
When I visit schools I always start by confessing that I used to write history textbooks. Kids get mad at me, and rightfully so. But some forgive me when I explain that I’m trying to make amends with the narrative nonfiction books I’m doing now. For me, the beauty is that I get to focus on people and the stories, as opposed to dates and facts. I think nonfiction for young readers should be as exciting and entertaining as fiction. I love the challenge of picking stories and figuring out how to tell them. It’s like trying to solving a puzzle that has a thousand possible solutions, most of them wrong.

When you were a young reader, what was the first historical narrative that you remember capturing your imagination?
I was captivated by stuff I didn’t think of as history—tales of shipwrecks and lost treasure, outdoor adventures, survival stories. I was learning history, but I didn’t know it! And there were also some historical novels that really blew me away, like Michael Crichton’s The Great Train Robbery, a very well-researched book about a famous heist in Victorian-era England. The mix of history and thriller in this book really stuck with me. I’ve been trying recreate that feeling ever since.

What are you reading now? What further reading would you recommend to readers of Undefeated?
I’m always reading a mix of things; work and pleasure reading tend to get mixed up, and I like it that way. Right now I’m fascinated by a book called Operation Overflight, the memoir of Francis Gary Power, the U2 pilot who was famously shot down over the Soviet Union in 1960. I’ve also been reading the amazing letters of Abigail Adams, for a younger fiction series I’m trying to get started. And I always seem to have a graphic novel or two going. For recommendations, let’s see . . . Ghost by Jason Reynolds, which won over my non-sports loving daughter, and Joseph Bruchac’s Jim Thorpe: Original All-American. For page-turning nonfiction, check out Lost in the Pacific by Tod Olson, Sabotage by Neal Bascomb (who also wrote a great sports book called The Perfect Mile) and Dive by Deborah Hopkinson.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Undefeated.

Author photo credit Erica Miller.

“It’s an odd little thing,” author Kelly Barnhill told us last summer, when we interviewed her for the release of The Girl Who Drank the Moon. “I’m kind of surprised that people are enjoying it. I really thought I would be the only one.” We assumed Barnhill would be even more surprised when her magical middle grade received the 2017 Newbery Award. We were right.

What was the first thing that went through your head when you found out you won the Newbery?
Honestly? I assumed they had the wrong number. I can’t exactly remember what I said to the committee—probably a lot of garbled nonsense, as I had been woken from a dead sleep and was just generally flabbergasted by the whole notion—but I’m pretty sure I said something along the lines of, “How is this even possible?” over and over and over again.

Who was the one person you couldn’t wait to tell about the award?
A group of someones, actually: my writing group, The Black Sheep (Steven Brezenoff, Kurtis Scaletta, Karlyn Coleman, Christopher Lincoln, Bryan Bliss and Jodi Chromy). They were there when I wrote the book, then erased the book, then wrote it again and erased it again, lost hope, found hope and so forth until I finally sent the thing to my editor.

Do you have a favorite past Newbery winner?
Well, The Tale of Despereaux will always be a touchstone book for me, as with Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH and A Wrinkle in Time. Also, from the point of view of a teacher, two of my favorite memories from my teaching days were with the books The Watsons Go to Birmingham and Holes. Both of those books are magic in a classroom.

“Kids have to be data collectors, experimenters, analysts, scientists, memorizers, cartographers and psychologists. They literally have to write the whole universe with every moment they move through the world. This is why stories are so important.”

What’s the best part of writing books for a younger audience?
I have a profound respect for the inherent dignity and courage of children as a group, and for childhood as a concept. It is not easy being a child: The world is confusing and incongruous and conflicted and sometimes scary. The rules are constantly in flux. Kids have to be data collectors, experimenters, analysts, scientists, memorizers, cartographers and psychologists. They literally have to write the whole universe with every moment they move through the world. This is why stories are so important. Stories are their memory banks, their scripts, their translators. Stories are the maps of the heart and the maps of the mind and the maps of the world. They illuminate, bridge, shelter and blur the rigid line between the I and the Thou. Stories allow children to be more than themselves. This is true for all of us, of course, but frankly, kids are more fun, and far less boring, than grownups. This is well known.

What kind of reaction have you gotten from your readers about this book?
When I visit classrooms, I get a lot of hugs from kids. I mean a lot. This book has meant more to my readers than I could have possibly imagined or guessed. This has been a gratifying experience for me, for sure, but I remain surprised by it.

Have you read or listened to past Newbery speeches? Are you excited (or worried!) about your own speech?
Oh my gosh! Don’t even ask me this question. I’ve read lots, and I don’t know how I’m going to make anything that can even stand in the same room as those speeches. I’m really worried about it. Good heavens. But I’m reading lots of fun texts on the purpose and power of the imagination and the use of fantasy and how allegory forces us to cast a clear eye on aspects of the world that we have allowed ourselves to obscure and minimize. I’m not sure what I’m going to write about, or if it ends up being useful or relevant to only me, but it’s allowing me to sit in some interesting places in the Mind, so that is pretty fun.

What’s next for you?
Do any of us really ever know? Are we not always standing on that next wild, wondrous shore? I think we are. I know I’ll be working on my next book The Sugar House for the next few months, and after that will be diving into the next project, Dispatch from the Hideous Laboratories of Dr. Otto Van Drecht. Other than that, who knows? Perhaps I’ll sail to a distant land, slay a dragon, save a city and become King. Or perhaps I’ll finally learn to knit. The world is wondrous and strange, and I am currently open to all possibilities.

Author photo credit Bruce Silcox.

Jack Cheng’s all-time favorite book is The Little Prince, the beloved classic in which a pilot who has crashed in the desert encounters a young interplanetary traveler. So perhaps it’s no coincidence that Cheng’s inventive middle grade debut, See You in the Cosmos, concerns an 11-year-old traveler named Alex Petroski who is making a recording that he hopes extraterrestrials will hear.

Cheng came up with the idea several Thanksgivings ago while hanging out in his younger brother’s room. He spotted a Carl Sagan book that reminded him of the Golden Record that Sagan helped create, containing images and sounds intended to portray life on Earth to extraterrestrials, which was launched aboard two NASA Voyager spacecraft in 1977.

“The next morning I woke up and had this idea for a story about a boy and his dog, and trying to launch a rocket into space,” Cheng recalls, speaking from his home in Detroit. “It immediately started to take on a life of its own.”

His character Alex idolizes Sagan so much that his dog is named after the astronomer. The pair board a train from their Colorado home to travel to a rocket festival in New Mexico, where Alex hopes to launch his own vessel into space. Meanwhile, he’s recording his thoughts on his golden iPod, transcripts of which comprise the novel’s chapters.

Alex is also in search of his father (who died when Alex was 3 but whom he suspects may still be alive), and so he travels in some unexpected directions, ending up in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. One reason that Alex is able to embark on his journey is that his mother has “quiet days” in bed. She’s eventually hospitalized for schizophrenia, an illness that Cheng portrays compassionately without making it a focus.

“That magical surprise of finding a new character or having your characters see something completely different from what you’re expecting—that’s one of the reasons I keep writing.”

Along the way, Alex stumbles upon many discoveries, including a half-sister named Terra, whose existence was equally surprising to the author. “When I started that chapter, the door opens and Terra was there,” says Cheng. “That magical surprise of finding a new character or having your characters see something completely different from what you’re expecting—that’s one of the reasons I keep writing.”

The 33-year-old’s path to becoming a writer has involved its own share of twists and turns. Born in Shanghai, he moved at age 5 to Detroit, where his father was earning a master’s degree in engineering. As a young immigrant, Cheng didn’t speak English and had a different name: Yuan. He remembers picking his English name because he loved playing cards and was familiar with the letter J on the jacks.

As Cheng reminisces about those early days in America, two of the first things he mentions are a dog and rockets—both major features of his novel. For a while his family lived in a mansion-like home whose elderly owner had a golden retriever. Cheng also remembers being mystified by the pictures of toy rockets he saw on certain cereal boxes, and describes trying to build rockets out of the cereal, not understanding that the toys were something to be sent away for.

Cheng loved to draw and later became adept at Photoshop. He majored in communication studies at the University of Michigan, then worked in advertising in New York, first as an art director and later as a copywriter. Eventually he and two partners started their own design studio, building websites and apps for startups and other companies. During this time he started journaling, which evolved into writing an adult novel, These Days, which examines relationships and technology through the lens of a young Midwesterner working in New York. He funded that novel through Kickstarter, an experience that taught Cheng a lot about publishing and also put him in touch with his agent.

“During that process I realized that I loved writing so much more than my day job,” Cheng says, “and that it was something that I would be willing to move back to Michigan and live in my parents’ basement in order to keep doing.” He did move back to his home state but, happily, never had to live in his parents’ basement. During this transition period he also took a Greyhound bus from L.A. to Detroit, commemorating a journey that his father had taken when he first came to the U.S. (a few months before Cheng and his mother arrived).

“That actual bus ride was very uneventful; I just slept most of the way,” Cheng admits. “But I think some of the themes of that trip—trying to get to know family and trying to understand my dad’s experience, and also just being around the Southwest—in hindsight those were huge influences on See You in the Cosmos.”

“There’s always a sense of finding yourself between two worlds.”

However, Cheng wasn’t ready to write a book about Asian-American identity. “Maybe that’s just an aspect of my own life that I wasn’t fully ready to explore,” he concedes, saying he may tackle the issue in future novels. In a nod to Cheng’s immigrant heritage, however, Alex is half Filipino.

“My Chinese heritage is something that I’ve been exploring more of in the past few years,” Cheng continues. “The whole question of figuring out where and what home is—I think that’s a very Asian-American question. I think it’s also very American in general; if we go back enough generations, we’re all immigrant families. There’s always a sense of finding yourself between two worlds. Alex is very much finding himself between this world—his life with his mother—and the world of not really knowing his father.”

Cheng still has one piece of unfinished business concerning See You in the Cosmos. “One thing I’m a little embarrassed about is I have never actually launched a model rocket,” he says. “As research for the book I bought one, but it’s still sitting in my closet. I think that on the day the book comes out, I’m going to try and do a little launch.”

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

Emma Donoghue, author of bestselling adult novels Room and The Wonder, offers her first book for middle grade readers, and it’s positively packed to the brim with lovable characters, new experiences and diverse voices. 

What was it like to transition from writing for adults to writing for children? Did you always plan to write a children’s book?
No, it never occurred to me until six years ago when (our kids being 7 and 3) I got the idea for the Lotterys project.

The Lotterys seem at once over-the-top and realistic. How did you achieve this? Did you set out to write the most diverse book you could think of?
Yes, I did set out to create the most diverse family I could, leavened with a lot of humor, and it’s a very loving, stable family, too. I aimed to give the book very contemporary content, but some of the atmosphere of classic 19th- and 20th-century family stories.

The Lotterys are a contemporary North American family in every way. Were you able to bring in any of your Irish background into the novel?
Well, in Ireland big families were normal when I was growing up (as the youngest of eight), so that could be considered an Irish perspective. It could be argues that the Irish talk nonstop, and the Donoghues are no different. Also, what I brought was my background as an immigrant to North America; like me, PapaDum (from India) and MaxiMum (from Jamaica) started life a long way away, as did Sumac’s birth parents, and I hope the book is celebratory of what immigrants bring to the urban mosaic.

“I hope the book is celebratory of what immigrants bring to the urban mosaic.”

Precocious 9-year-old Sumac provides a delightful perspective to the story. Will any of the other Lotterys take a turn at narrating?
No, I’m afraid I’ve promised the job to Sumac for life. She argued that the others are too exhibitionistic, self-absorbed or downright silly to be as good as observing and recording as she is.

Some of your adult novels take place in the 19th century and have required research. Was there any research needed for The Lotterys Plus One?
Just as much—it’s just that the research shows more in historical fiction! For The Lotterys Plus One, I’ve had to research everything from Toronto street food to native plants, care homes for the elderly to the effects of smoke inhalation.

With names like PapaDum and MaxiMum and the family home, Camelottery, the story is filled with wordplay. Are you a fan of puns?
I used to say no to this question . . . but I find that motherhood had brought out the bad-joker in me. In the case of this book, the reason I’ve given my taste for wordplay free rein is that I believe every family is its own little micro culture, held together by private jokes, special words for things and family stories, so it seemed likely that the 11-person Lotterys gang would do that with knobs on.

Even though this is a book for children, it deals with such complicated topics as racism, homophobia, gender identity, disabilities and dementia. Is it harder or easier writing about these topics for children? Did you ever worry that you were including too many “issues” in the story?
It’s a little tricky, at times, but so important: I’m so sick of middle grade books that stick to that Mommy-Daddy-Son-Daughter-everything’s-rosy convention. I think it’s important to distinguish between the things that freak children out and those that don’t. In the first category I’d put distressing material such as dementia or shaken-baby syndrome, for instance; here I tried to use a delicate touch, telling the readers as much as they needed without weighing down the narrative, and putting it all in a loving-family context which feels safe. In the second category I’d put differences such as Brian’s gender variance, the parents’ same-sex relationships or the family’s ethnic variety, which needn’t distress child readers even if they’re new concepts. My experience of writing books with queer themes over the past quarter of a century is that humor—and strong, likable characters—are key.

At first this “hippy-dippy” family seems completely nontraditional, but by the end, readers are focused on their love and acceptance. Have you heard from any children who have read the book? What has been their response to the Lotterys?
Prepublication, the only children I’ve had a chance to hear from so far are my focus group of my kids and their friends, who I bribed with gift cards to a bookstore to give me feedback. Interestingly, most of the responders of 10 or 11 liked little Brian best, which proves that young readers don’t always read “up,” focusing on characters a few years older than themselves.

How similar is your parenting style to any of the Lottery parents?
It’s probably closest to CardaMom—warm and huggy, but with some of MaxiMum’s “fascinating facts” thrown in. 

Can you give us any hints about the sequel?
I’m afraid not, except that my kids are mercilessly editing the first draft now.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of The Lotterys Plus One.

Author photo credit Mark Raynes Roberts 2015.

Anthropologist and poet Ruth Behar makes her middle grade debut with Lucky Broken Girl, the story of a young Jewish-Cuban girl in Queens that was inspired by the author’s own experiences. Ruthie Mizrahi and her family are still adjusting to life in America when a car accident leaves Ruthie confined to her bed in a full-body cast. In her year of recovery, Ruthie discovers the love and support of her community and family, but also confronts anger, fear and despair as she comes to terms with her new circumstances and changing personality. A love letter to a diverse New York City neighborhood and a sensitive portrayal of growing up with unforeseen challenges, Lucky Broken Girl is gentle, heartfelt and highly entertaining.

What can you tell us about your own experience that inspired this story? Why did you decide to transform your story into a book for young readers?
The story was inspired by the year I spent in a body cast, confined to my bed, when I was 9 going on 10. It was a traumatic experience, for me as well as my family and our friends and neighbors. Imagine an immigrant family, just arrived from Cuba, penniless and afraid, and suddenly they have an invalid girl to take care of. When I sat down to write, I wanted to conjure how I felt at that young age, when it seemed to take forever to get back on my feet. I also wanted to honor all the people who surrounded me and tried to help me heal.

The child’s voice came easily. It was as if Ruthie was whispering the story into my ear, letting the adult Ruth know what she was going through. Transforming my story into a book for young readers wasn’t a choice but a necessity. It was the only way the story could be told. I was listening to Ruthie and putting down her story on the page.

What was the biggest challenge in writing your first novel for young readers?
My biggest challenge was figuring out where the drama was in a story that essentially takes place while nothing much is happening, while a girl is in bed and waiting to recover. Figuring out how to make immobility of interest to a young reader, who is more accustomed to action-packed storytelling, was something I struggled with as a writer. But then it became clear that Ruthie’s journey of the heart was filled with movement and that you can go through huge transformations while being perfectly still.

The pre-accident chapters could easily have been romanticized as a time when everything was perfect for Ruthie, but there is clear tension between Mami and Papi regarding decision-making, parental roles and finances. Did this refreshingly honest representation of family spring naturally from your experiences, or was it something you intentionally created as part of Ruthie’s narrative?
The tensions between Mami and Papi in the novel definitely spring from my own experiences when I was growing up. As a sensitive child, I worried a lot about the arguments between my parents and was scared of my father’s temper, while I felt sorry for my mother who tried so hard to please him. My parents were struggling to get by, and I didn’t want to be a burden to them. I put huge pressure on myself to succeed as an immigrant child, to learn to speak “good English” and do well in school. The memory of those feelings found their way into the novel. That’s why there isn’t a romanticized image of the time before the accident.

“You can go through huge transformations while being perfectly still.”

We don’t get to see Ruthie grow up, but you, of course, grew up to become an anthropologist as well as a writer. Did that influence the way you wrote and described Ruthie’s neighborhood?
I think I’ll always see the world as a cultural anthropologist. By that I mean I never assume that people think alike or should think alike. I am fascinated by how culture and history shape human behavior and make us different. In writing about Ruthie’s neighborhood, I tried to show how people of diverse nationalities and backgrounds intersected in Queens, New York. Bringing together immigrants from Cuba, Mexico, Puerto Rico, India and Belgium, among others, I wanted to show how people hold onto memories of their home places while assimilating in different ways to American life.

Ruthie gets to know her friends and their family traditions through food, and the food in her house is described in detail, from the flan to the arroz con pollo. What is your favorite childhood food memory?
As a child, I loved my mother’s flan. It always seemed magical to me, how the alchemy of eggs, milk, sugar and vanilla produced something so divine. I later learned to make my own flan, and I enjoy preparing it for special occasions. I also have fond memories of the cream puffs that my friend Danielle’s mother would make for us at the end of the school day. Danielle and I felt so sophisticated eating those exquisite delicacies in our working-class neighborhood in Queens.

In the afterword, you mention that the fear Ruthie develops during this difficult year is something you share with her. What about her discovery of storytelling and art? Do you credit your time recuperating with sparking your interest in artistic pursuits?
Yes, the time I spent recuperating opened my eyes to literature and art, and there is no question that this period in my life made me the person I am today. Though it was a terrible experience to go through, I am grateful for all that I learned. This is why Ruthie is a “lucky broken girl.” I was very lonely during that year and books were my best friends. I became an insatiable reader. But we didn’t have books in the house. Books were a luxury to us as immigrants. The tutor that my public school sent to our home to teach me filled our house with books. Ever since, I have lived surrounded by books. Unable to move, I had to use my imagination and pretend I wasn’t stuck in bed but solving mysteries like Nancy Drew.

Reading awakened my curiosity and made me look beyond myself. It was a time in my life when I became attuned to the suffering of others, when my heart opened. I listened to the stories of people around me and felt their pain. That time in bed recuperating taught me empathy, and having empathy is the foundation for all artistic pursuits.

“You have to give up something old in your life to let in something new.”

Ruthie’s reaction when Papi suggests she be a secretary rather than an artist feels very mature—she decides to learn typing anyway, just in case, and use it to support her storytelling abilities as well. What advice would you give to children who are drawn to the arts but feel the understandable responsibility to follow more financially predictable paths?
I am a strong believer that children who are drawn to the arts should follow their dreams and not feel they have to give them up in order to be financially stable. I think doing something you hate just for the sake of a salary is not a wise choice emotionally. Doing what you love opens doors. And there are so many paths to becoming an artist. Children need to be shown the diversity of ways that artists have achieved their goals, so that they can gain confidence and be able to pursue their dreams without fear.

One of the final hurdles that Ruthie must overcome is the realization that part of her personality has changed, and it is difficult to reconcile her past and present self. How can we best help children with these complicated transitions, especially when even adults have trouble thinking of identity and personality as fluid rather than fixed?
The crux of my book is precisely that: Despite the difficulties, you can reconcile the distance between your past and present self. By the end of the story, Ruthie is aware she has gone through a metamorphosis and is not the same person she was before the accident. She mourns the loss of her former self but comes to accept who she has become. We have to help children to accept the transitions in their lives, teach them that change is inevitable, and that at each phase they will learn new things about themselves and others, and gain wisdom and knowledge. My cousin Judy told me that whenever she buys a new garment, she gives away an old garment from her closet. That’s the kind of advice we might give to children (and adults, too). You have to give up something old in your life to let in something new.

What’s next?
I am at work on a new novel for young readers. It is set in Cuba at the time of the revolution. I was inspired by Carson McCullers’ wonderful novel The Member of the Wedding. The story focuses on a 12-year-old girl who watches jealously as her older sister prepares to marry and is fitted for a beautiful lace honeymoon nightgown sewn to fit her measurements. Then things get more complicated as the revolution brings about dramatic changes and her parents decide to send her out of Cuba against her will with the Peter Pan Operation.

Author photo credit © Gabriel Frye-Behar.

It’s been a whirlwind year for Lauren Wolk, whose debut children’s novel, Wolf Hollow, received a Newbery Honor, and whose second book, Beyond the Bright Sea, will capture even more readers’ hearts.

“It’s been very hard to imagine,” Wolk says of the accolades and awards bestowed upon Wolf Hollow, which has garnered comparisons to To Kill a Mockingbird. “I’ve been a writer since the day I was born, plugging away, but all of a sudden, out of the blue, everything changes overnight. It’s funny: Just when you stop thinking maybe something big is going to come along, something big comes along!”

“In a way it feels a little more like my own child than Wolf Hollow.”

Wolk is busier than ever, but she has taken time from her day job as associate director of the Cultural Center of Cape Cod, Massachusetts, to speak about her new middle grade novel. Over the phone, Wolk sounds warm, friendly and organized. “This place has my heart,” she says of the arts organization. “We do the most amazing things. But it’s hard to do a 60-hour-week job when you’re away for several days a month, so I’m finding my way slowly.” (In addition to being a wife and mother of two sons, she’s also an assemblage and mixed-media artist, as well as a poet.)

While Wolk is a newcomer in the world of children’s publishing, she published an adult novel, Those Who Favor Fire, in 1999. In fact, Wolk wrote Wolf Hollow for adults, and was surprised when her agent suggested a younger audience. “That was out of left field,” she says, later adding, “I have to say, I don’t think I’m ever going back.”

Wolk wrote each of her middle grade books in “exhilarating” spans of three months. Like Wolf Hollow, which is set in the mountains of Pennsylvania in 1943, Beyond the Bright Sea is also a work of historical fiction, set in the Elizabeth Islands off the coast of Cape Cod in 1925. While her first book pays tribute to her mother’s family farm and stories her mother told her as a child, Wolk’s latest novel is solely her own invention. “In a way it feels a little more like my own child than Wolf Hollow,” she says, explaining that the book’s central character, 12-year-old Crow, “came into my imagination one day and just took hold of my heart.”

When just hours old, baby Crow was set adrift in a small boat upon the sea, but was rescued by Osh, a kindhearted refugee from an unnamed country who fishes and lives off the land in a small, ramshackle cottage. A nearby neighbor, Miss Maggie, is a close friend and one of the few people on the island who doesn’t shy away from the dark-skinned orphan, who may have been born on the nearby island of Penikese, which once housed a leper colony. The isolated landscape plays a powerful role in this carefully plotted, exciting story, which features buried treasure, a dangerous villain, a raging storm and the ongoing mystery of Crow’s abandonment.

Although she’s been to several of the Elizabeth Islands, Wolk hasn’t visited Penikese. Twice, when she booked a ferry passage on an Audubon Society trip, a hurricane cancelled the excursion. “Both times!” she exclaims, adding, “Somebody really didn’t want me to go out there.” Luckily, Google Earth helped her fill in the details.

“I’ve always been in love with the sea,” Wolk says, fondly remembering childhood summers she and her family spent in Cotuit, the Cape Cod village where her mother now lives. (Growing up, Wolk and her family lived in Maryland, California and eventually settled in Providence, Rhode Island, when she was about 10.) None of the family knew how to sail, a skill her father felt was best acquired by doing, so one summer when she was 11, he sent her out to sea.

Adding that Cotuit is known for its safe harbors, Wolk recalls, “He got an old Sunfish and plunked me on it, gave me a shove and said, ‘See you later.’ I cringe now when I think about that, but it was one of the greatest things he could have ever done for me. And I learned to sail really well without a single lesson, except for the lessons the sea gives you.”

Wolk had been toying with the idea of setting an adult novel on the Cape for a long time, inspired by a grave in the Cotuit Cemetery for a baby who was born and died at sea. She eventually decided that she didn’t want to write that story, but had already conducted extensive research about the Elizabeth Islands. Then, when the character of Crow appeared, Wolk says, “She just took me for a ride.”

Wolk likes to include just enough historical details “for my readers to be immersed in that world.” Believing that “people are people,” she doesn’t want young readers to think that her historical characters “are unlike them in some way simply because of the passage of time.” She added just enough historical detail to Crow’s story—like era-appropriate ship routes and native wildflowers—to help set an authentic stage. Too much historical detail, Wolk notes, can be a distraction.

Wolk mentions the 1960 Newbery Medal winner, Island of the Blue Dolphins, as inspiration not only for the island setting but also for the character of Crow, “a really strong girl who has to find her way.” She pauses, then says, “That really didn’t hit me until I just this second said it.”

As is the case with Wolf Hollow, Beyond the Bright Sea contains some “very dark themes,” which Wolk admits she always liked in books she read as a child. “But there’s also a great deal of hope,” she says. “I like the juxtaposition of the dark and the light. And the kids I’ve talked to really seem to like that I respect them enough to know they can handle that sort of thing.”

Wolk is currently finishing revisions of a third children’s novel, set in modern times, about a girl living in the Arizona desert. But the characters of Crow, Osh and Maggie remain very much on her mind. “They’re wonderful, wonderful misfits,” Wolk says. “I miss them terribly. So maybe I’ll write a sequel.”

For anyone who reads Beyond the Bright Sea, that’s very good news indeed.

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

What was it like growing up black in a mostly white neighborhood in 1960s Los Angeles? Karen English, like the heroine of her new middle grade novel, knew the drill.

“Before we left the house, my mother would say, ‘Remember to act your age and not your color,’ ” English says. “It didn’t feel like a bad thing. It felt like, ‘Oh yeah, right. We have to show other people that Negroes are just as good.’ It was like a little responsibility that we had. It was so—I hate to use the word natural—but you know, after 400 years, it was like breathing.”

English remains a Los Angeles resident, and we speak over the phone while she’s visiting her mother in Northern California. English has written many children’s books, including the Nikki and Deja series and The Carver Chronicles, and is a Coretta Scott King Honor winner. But her latest book—the spot-on, beautifully understated It All Comes Down to This—is personal, taking on weightier themes and aimed at an older middle grade audience. Like Sophie, the novel’s 12-year-old protagonist, English grew up in an L.A. neighborhood that was “turning,” or growing more integrated.

At first English recalls idyllic touchstones: riding her bike and enjoying more freedom than today’s kids have. But she also remembers going to the house of a friend who suddenly announced, “Oh, I can’t play with colored people anymore.”

“It was like a stab in the heart,” English says. In one scene in It All Comes Down to This, Sophie isn’t allowed to swim in a neighbor’s pool, but Sophie’s white friend Jennifer sticks with her, refusing to swim.

“It was just the way things were,” English notes, “like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. You just kind of accepted it.”

English was eager to fictionalize another particularly memorable incident. Sophie’s mother is modeled after the author’s, who came to California during World War II to work in a shipyard and later briefly played Ruby, the wife of Amos, in several “Amos ’n’ Andy” television episodes. After English’s mother and father divorced, her mother remarried a lawyer and moved the family to a middle-class neighborhood. Then one day, a black housekeeper pulled English aside to criticize her light skin, saying, “If you ever [go] to Africa, they would kill you. They don’t like no light-skinned Negroes in Africa.”

Coincidentally, English ended up marrying a man from Senegal. “So I learned that wasn’t true,” she says nonchalantly. And yet that incident made an indelible impression: “I wanted to write a book around it.”

Set during the summer of 1965, It All Comes Down to This begins with the arrival of a similarly gruff housekeeper, Mrs. Baylor, who makes such a remark to Sophie. “There’s still colorism—I guess I can use that as a word—in the African-American community,” English says. “It was really big back then.”

In one of the novel’s numerous historically informative moments, another housekeeper—a beloved one—asks Sophie (who loves to read and write), “Can’t you come up with something about colored girls? Don’t they have a story?”

English, who taught elementary school for some 30 years, understands this question all too well. She calls writing “an obsession” that started at age 7, and she penned her first novel in the sixth grade. “I couldn’t make my main character black, because other than Little Black Sambo, I had never seen black people in children’s books or on TV, nor in my teenage magazines,” English says. “So when I wrote this character, I said to myself, ‘She’s Negro.’ But I gave her blond hair and blue eyes.”

The author laughs quietly, a moment of amusement that stands in stark contrast to her powerful stories of racial injustice. In much the same way, It All Comes Down to This is a gentle yet provocative book, allowing Sophie’s eye-opening experiences about race to unfold amid quiet summer days filled with Anne of Green Gables, Hawaiian Punch and “Gidget” on TV. It’s as silent as a tsunami, striking with painful force at times, like when Sophie thumbs through an old Jet magazine from 1955, spotting photos of brutally murdered Emmett Till in his casket.

Also like Sophie, the author lived in L.A. during the Watts riots, which were foremost on her radar but distant enough to seem otherworldly. “It was kind of exciting,” English says, “and yet you felt responsible because you are a Negro.” She recalls how the National Guard pulled her over as she drove to church, miles away from the riots. She notes several similar childhood memories, saying, “We knew if the police stopped you, it was hands on the wheel, 10 and 2, yes sir, no sir. It was bad, even then.”

English’s novel also records changing racial nomenclature, a helpful history for young readers. “When I was coming up,” English explains, “you wouldn’t dare call someone black. But it was kind of liberating when that word came in. It was like, ‘Whoa, we’re black.’ And there was some power behind that word.”

A lot has changed since English’s childhood, but so much remains the same. She points to beloved children’s writer Beverly Cleary as her literary heroine, saying she adores her writing and was “propelled” by her example. But English added a personal twist: “I wanted to write something that reflects another kind of African-American experience. It seems like we have this prescribed narrative of drugs, gangs, absent fathers and poverty. That is part of our story, but we have other stories.”

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

This BookPage Icebreaker is sponsored by Baen.

Set nearly 100 years in the future, Moon Beam finds a group of brilliant kids called the Bright Sparks on an adventure of a lifetime. They have been handpicked by celebrity scientist Dr. Keenan Bright to join him on the moon and undertake their own scientific projects—while being watched by an earthbound audience. Sixteen-year-old farm girl Barbara Winton is the newest Bright Spark, and when she and her new friends are sent to build a radar telescope using an entire crater on the far side of the moon, the threat of coronal mass ejections will force the Bright Sparks to use all their smarts to survive.

Along with being the author of many sci-fi novels like the Tau Ceti Agenda series and Warp Speed series, Dr. Travis S. Taylor has worked on various programs for the Department of Defense and NASA, and he’s also the co-creator and star of National Geographic Channel’s series “Rocket City Rednecks.” Jody Lynn Nye is a prolific author of sci-fi and fantasy as well, such as An Unexpected Apprentice, Applied Mythology and much more. This is the first time Taylor and Nye have collaborated on a book, and their individual talents combine for a real-life science-laden adventure fit for readers ages 10 and up.

Cat: I’m a bit of a science and space nerd, but a casual one. I wanted to become an astronomer as a kid, but reading sci-fi is the closest I can get. And if this casual science nerd can retain a tiny fragment of what can be learned from Moon Beam, I’ll be happy.

Jody: Terrific!

Travis: I hope you enjoyed it.

Cat: I genuinely did. And I kept picturing myself in a classroom while reading it. I could see myself reading the book alongside a science textbook.

J: That’s not a bad idea.

C: It checks so many STEM boxes, and you could pull out different scenes to teach it along with a science lesson. Did you have classrooms in mind when you started writing this book?

J: We wanted this book to be in school libraries. I’d love it if someone taught the book. That would be cool.

T: When I’m writing hard science fiction, I always want there to be—I don’t want to be preachy, but I like to add stuff in there that’s real hard science that most people don’t get to be exposed to. Because I’m exposed to it on a daily basis, I like to let people feel the experience that I get from getting to see it all the time, and let them see how interesting and fun and exciting it can be.

J: And how applicable it is to their own world! We want kids to be encouraged to think of science as a normal part of their lives.

T: Because it is, whether they know it or not.

C: Tell me about the science in your non-writing lives. Travis, I know a little about yours. But both of you: How are you involved in scientific fields?

J: In a way, it’s all through my family. I come from a family with a hard science background: My mom’s a psych nurse; my uncle’s a psychiatrist; my brother was a biomedical researcher; and one of my uncles worked for the GTL jet propulsion lab. So it’s been around me all my life.

T: And I am a scientist. I wanted to be a scientist since third grade. My dad—while I was being conceived, I reckon—my dad was working on the Apollo rocket. He was a machinist on the Saturn V. I was born in that same timeframe.

J: So Travis is a second-generation rocket scientist and influenced obviously in utero.

“We want kids to be encouraged to think of science as a normal part of their lives.”

C: And then you’re both really prolific authors. I’m just astonished by how much you have both published on your own and with other co-authors. But this is the first time you’ve worked together. How did you two get connected?

T: Jody and I have been trying to put a project together for almost three years now, I think. Because of our scheduling, and because we started on one project that was going to be based on one of my previous TV shows, and then that show got cancelled and we stopped that project. For a while, we’ve had the interest and finally found the right project.

J: Our publisher is one of the few that encourages their authors to work together. Baen Books is extraordinary for its innovation. They have been at the forefront of eBooks and many other projects, but they don’t mind having more than one person working on an idea, and they’ve had some terrific things come out of that. Of which, I count us as one of them!

T: I hope so, Jody! [laughs] I’d like to think so. Jim Baen told me before he died that he wanted to consider that all his authors were going to the Jim Baen School of Famous Authors for Famous Authors. And then he said the process of that was cross-pollinating the authors, together in collaboration so they can learn each other’s Famous Author tricks. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed writing with Jody, and certainly every time I get the manuscript back from her and it’s my turn to write, I learn something—a different technique, new technique, or she does things different than I do. It gives me a new perspective on how I write. I think I’ve improved through the experience.

J: And so have I.

C: It’s like having a built-in writer’s workshop.

J: Oh, it is. On-the-job training, the kind that no one else has ever really been able to have, and that I feel privileged to have.

C: Let’s talk about the specifics of the science in Moon Beam. It all felt very real to me, but again—casual science fan, not nitpicky. Is it all theoretically possible?

J: Technically, yes. That’s our intention—not to have any black boxes or magic wands to solve problems. These kids have to take into account real science, real chemistry. This is where Travis’ education and experience comes in, as he is able to present things that we can actually say, “If you know the science, you might have an inkling as to how to work out the solution.”

T: I have two Ph.D.s in technical fields, and the last Ph.D. I got was about using lunar craters and craters on other moons in our solar system as a radial telescope or a communications antenna dish. I studied it in great detail—even picked out various craters on the moon that were potential candidates for the experiment—and so I thought, how great would it be if the first time it was actually done it was some kids, the first kids living on the moon?

C: That is so cool. And then there are the sensory details about the moon, which are very sharp and vivid in the book. Are all those realistic as well? Are any of those more subjective?

J: I think we know enough about how space travel affects people that we can actually bring forward those details of the experiences of people living in space and on the space station, and who have had experiences in shuttlecraft. I think we’re pretty close.

T: I spent a good bit of time over the years studying the environment of the lunar surface, from the Apollo missions and various lunar reconnaissance orbiters that we’ve done. I’ve worked on projects where we talked about landing particular experiments on the moon, and studied in great detail what the environment would do the equipment and what it did to the astronauts’ suits and so on. I think we got really close, as close as anyone can get. I’m not saying we nailed it, because no one’s going to get it exactly right until you go do it.

J: Space medicine is one of my interests, and reading on what kind of effects [space travel] would have [on the body]. Travis brought out the CO2 problem [when the Bright Sparks are trying to survive the coronal mass ejections], and the kids go through hallucinations, they start to get drowsy. . . . It’s not the lack of oxygen, it’s the buildup of carbon dioxide that prevents oxygen from affecting the lungs and starts to slowly suffocate neural processes. And [it builds more] tension in the story: Having done everything right, could they still die?

T: That’s what a lot of people think, that you’re going to run out of air. Air, of course, is very important, but even worse than that, you’re going to build up too much carbon dioxide wherever you are. It’s sort of a silent killer—it’s going to get you before you realize. You’ll start getting loopy and groggy and lethargic, and if you don’t catch it before it’s too late, you’ll be too lethargic to even do anything about it. It was a big problem on Apollo 13, actually. Their CO2 scrubber died on them, and they had to rebuild it from stuff they could find inside the cockpit of the lunar command module. One of the astronauts had to take his sock off and stick it in it as part of the fix.

J: It’s that kind of innovation—on the spot—that we wanted to bring out, to show how kids could innovate at the spur of the moment to save their lives.

T: These are the kind of kids that will be smart enough to do that innovation. They’ve had training, they’re really smart, and hopefully they’ve got a level head in a bad situation.

J: And this is where our prime character comes in, Barbara, because she does have a level head. She’s a farm girl, grew up in a rural setting. Everything on a farm, in a way, is life and death because you’re growing crops, you’re going to feed people with it, but it’s also running close to being low on budget frequently. And she’s got natural leadership qualities, which I don’t think that she knew about until she was in this situation.

C: I really appreciated the comparison you drew between the farm technology and space technology. Obviously the farm tech is futuristic, but I thought it was nice to bring it back home, literally.

J: It also means that she’s not afraid of technology. A lot of people are afraid to touch the innards of things because they’re afraid that if they touch it, it will fail or it will break. She knows that things have a little bit more strength and stability than that. NASA builds things with tolerance and so that it has double and triple and sextuple redundancies. Dr. Geoff Landis said when they were working on the Mars lander mission, the Sojourner project, nobody wanted their part of the project to fail first. I thought that was an interesting mindset. Everyone wants things to work in the best possible fashion, but you still have to leave room for people to say, if this goes wrong, what do we need to do? And it brings out the best in people.

C: And that’s the making of the “self-rescuing princesses” idea, which is how the Bright Sparks describe themselves. It requires a lot of them to consider themselves that, but they’re so admirable and inspiring for their individual abilities.

T: The one thing missing is a Great Dane that can travel around with them on the moon.

J: [laughs] Ruh-roh!

T: We just couldn’t figure out how to get one up there and keep him fed and keep him out of trouble.

C: You know, I really love the idea of these kid scientists as celebrity figures. We’ve got a couple celebrity scientists—the big ones obviously being Bill Nye and Neil Degrasse Tyson—but this Moon Beam world is obsessed with science. Everyone’s logging on and everyone cares so much about the Bright Sparks. Sure, we’ve got reality TV, but Dr. Keegan Sparks’ show is so positive, so inspiring. Is there any way our world could ever be like that? Obsessed with scientists on this level?

T: The thing about the reality scientists that we’ve had for kids in the past is they’ve all taken the path of being goofy. Really, really young kids may get a kick out of that. But most kids have a little bit of a serious nature themselves, as long as it’s fun seriousness. You go to space camp, and that’s a serious endeavor, and the kids eat it up. It’s my opinion that we just haven’t had the right Dr. Bright show yet. It would be something that kids and grown-ups would watch, because it’s not pandering to anybody. It’s just doing the cool thing.

J: We want them to feel like the sciences are for them, that kids could do what the Sparks are doing. That’s one of the reasons we took a positive approach instead of the dystopian. I hate the cynical attitude of a lot of media. It’s as if people are saying, yes, we know you’re interested in this, ha-ha, you’re such nerds. But kids like to be challenged in such a way that really matters. That’s why books like The Hunger Games are popular. But you don’t have to have a dystopia in order to have real challenges. The trouble with today is, things are a little easy. Teens don’t feel as if anyone needs them or their talent, and that’s wrong. We need them. They are the future. And if Travis and I can encourage them to think about the sciences as something they could do, then I think we’ve done a lot of our job.

T: Let me give a perfect example of that. I just came back from Serbia. Last week I filming a new TV show that I’ve been working on. The kids there, by the time they’re 4, they start teaching them English. By the time they’re teenagers, they speak at least three languages, and that’s about 75 to 80 percent [of the population]. My kids are bright kids, but by the time they were 4 years old, we were excited they could read The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham by themselves. Look at the extreme dichotomy between our first-world country and then pretty much a third-world country in their education processes. It is possible, no matter what your background is, that you can do these things. If 4-year-olds in Serbia can learn a foreign language, it’s not hard to believe that a 15-year-old in Iowa could learn how to be an astronaut.

J: We want them to see it as possible. One of the reasons that we made our protagonist a girl is that girls are influenced by what they see, what already exists in a situation—the same goes for any child from any background, any nationality. Most scientists are men; girls may not see themselves in that role, or might not feel welcome there because they don’t see as many women [scientists]. We present girls and women in science as a given, with no apology or neon sign saying, “Look! Look! Females in science!” They are there, accepted as a vital part of the team.

T: The best athlete starts in the game. We never talk about—unless it was the first woman on Mars, or something like that—but it’s not a big agenda or anything. It’s just accepted—that’s the way things are. Nobody doesn’t accept that these people are the best athletes for the job.

“If 4-year-olds in Serbia can learn a foreign language, it’s not hard to believe that a 15-year-old in Iowa could learn how to be an astronaut.”

C: Even on social media, no one following the Bright Sparks is downplaying the fact that Barbara is a girl. It’s so positive. It’s certainly something to hope for.

T: Part of what we do with [science fiction] isn’t just to hope for a better future—it’s an intent to create a better future. If we display what the future could be like, and more and more people say, I want that future—

J: It’s a model for an ideal future.

T: Yeah, and hopefully, people see that it’s possible—even if it’s an unconscious, subconscious or conscious effort—to build the world that way.