Linda Williams Jackson follows up her critically acclaimed debut, Midnight Without a Moon, with a new story starring 13-year-old Rose Lee Carter. A Sky Full of Stars opens in 1955 in racially divided Stillwater, Mississippi. After Emmett Till’s murderers have been acquitted, Rose finds herself caught amid growing racial tensions and differences in opinion about political activism. How should her black community respond to police brutality and a failed justice system? Is the only answer to meet violence with violence, or can peaceful protest make a difference? Growing up during a tragic, pivotal time, Rose—who later goes by Rosa—inspires as she finds her courage and her own sense of self.

What kinds of responses did you see from readers of Midnight Without a Moon, and how does A Sky Full of Stars respond?
The overall reader response for Midnight Without a Moon has been tremendously positive. It has been a delight to hear many readers claim it as their favorite middle grade novel of 2017. When ARCs for A Sky Full of Stars began to find themselves in the hands of readers, I didn’t know what to expect. But the response has been great, with some reviewers even claiming it to be a better novel than Midnight Without a Moon, and for that I am very grateful.

What do you love most about Rosa?
What I love most about Rosa is that she can remain optimistic in the midst of trouble. With everything going on around her—the racism from the outside and the abuse from the inside—she continues to hold onto her dream that she can one day make a better life for herself.

Rosa hears of different ways to respond to the injustices in her time; some black Southerners want to march in peaceful demonstrations, while others want to use their “Fist. Feet. Guns.” What advice do you have for kids who might wonder how they should respond to injustices—in the justice system or in their day-to-day lives?
First of all, educate yourself on what is going on. Don’t rely solely on social media posts from your friends to inform you. Read the real news for yourself. Discern fact from fake, then decide what you want to do to help. Perhaps that help is by speaking out, but please do so in an intelligent, informed manner. And be respectful. Always be respectful.

Rosa’s textbooks are completely whitewashed—they don’t even mention Frederick Douglass. Even in 2017, much of black history has only begun to receive its due attention. What’s one little-known story from black history you wish all young readers could learn about?
Almost every young reader knows about Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. But one little-known story that most probably don’t know is the connection that Mississippi has with this historical event. And most young readers probably have never heard of the little all-black town of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, that was a huge part of the burgeoning Civil Rights Movement. This is the little-known story from black history that I want all young readers to learn about in A Sky Full of Stars—the history of Mound Bayou, Mississippi, and its connection to Martin Luther King, Rosa Park and the Montgomery Bus Boycott.

How do you write about historical racism for a young audience? What are the greatest challenges in doing so?
I never set out to write about historical racism for a young audience. Instead, I set out to share a story about historical racism with ANY audience, but told from a young person’s point of view. From that intent morphed a story geared toward any audience, but more targeted for a younger audience. The challenge, however, in actually writing for a younger audience is not talking down to the audience by assuming that children can’t handle difficult topics.

What do you love most about writing for a younger audience?
What I love most about writing for a younger audience is having the opportunity to tell a story from a young person’s point of view. I spend a great deal of my time around children, so what interests them interests me. Therefore, I consider it a privilege to put myself in a young person’s shoes and relive youth in the form of a story.

Will we see Rosa again?
Yes, there will be more of Rosa’s story. But mostly, I would love to see Rosa’s story in movie form or as a TV series. I think young readers would love that, too.

Childhood buds Truman Capote and Harper Lee bonded over their shared loves of big words and Sherlock Holmes stories in G. Neri’s beloved middle grade novel Tru and Nelle. They return for three Christmases in Tru and Nelle: A Christmas Story, as the two friends come of age amid troubled times in Monroeville, Alabama. These Christmases aren’t always cheery, as Tru and Nelle face family struggles, racism, the injustice of the judicial system and much more. But hope—and good friendship—finds a way.

Tru and Nelle have started to grow up here. What kinds of individual changes did you want to explore, and what kinds of changes to their relationship?
I wanted to show the arc of a friendship. The first book focused of their childhood year, but the second is really about their coming of age as adolescents. The big thing I was trying to write about was that when you move away, everything changes in a friendship while you’re gone. Especially in your teen years. If you are away for two years, that’s like a fifth of your lifetime. You are undergoing big changes, which makes reunions so difficult to navigate. By the time you may find your rhythm, you’re torn apart again and have to start all over the next time.

Why did you continue their story through three Christmases?
I was thinking about the play, Same Time, Next Year, and what a wonderful narrative device that was to show the arc of a friendship. To tell a story over three separate reunions of sorts was always there. I was also struck by the beauty of Truman’s Christmas short stories, too, and wanted to pay homage to them as well. Whereas the first book was a tribute to To Kill a Mockingbird, this one focuses more on Tru’s world and the deep love of family in the face of the lack of understanding form the outside world.

The story opens with scenes about the good old days disappearing—there’s a sense of things lost, of favorite memories slipping away before childhood has even ended—but it seems to make way for new questions for Tru and Nelle. Tough goodbyes and forts burning down sever them from parts of their childhoods, but it opens them up to adolescence. This is a messy, gradual process; why signal this transformation with such sudden and sharp events?
Look, the teen years are a tough and glorious times of upheaval and discovery. The transition can be devastating for some but always life affirming if you can make it through intact. I was trying to find physical manifestations of this inner struggle, both the pain and joy of it. I wanted to show that, while things may be tough, they will get better and you’ll be the stronger for it later on.

Among many things that unite them, Tru and Nelle are outsiders. How do you think these “differences” from the rest of their small town impacted the writers they would become?
It’s the glue that bonds them together, through thick and thin. They may be opposites from each other, but they are each other’s yin and yang, and stand together against the outside world. Their outsider status also allowed them to be great observers of small-town life since they were not popular. They turned their pains and joys into writing and produced amazing literature because of it.

I especially enjoyed the character Sook, as I grew up reading and loving Capote’s A Christmas Memory. What is your favorite event from Tru’s and Nelle’s real lives that inspired something they wrote later on?
Mostly that they acted like detectives from an early age, solving small-town crimes together. It always amused me that they were still at it as adults, and that experience informed In Cold Blood, which they collaborated on in the research phase.

The scene of the murder trial is somber but incredibly well handled for the age group. What is the best way to approach topics of racism, mental illness, the failure of the judicial system, etc. with young readers?
I always like what E.B. White said: “Anyone who writes down to children is simply wasting his time. You have to write up, not down. Children are demanding. They are the most attentive, curious, eager, observant, sensitive, quick and generally congenial readers on earth. They accept, almost without question, anything you present them with, as long as it is presented honestly, fearlessly and clearly.” I believe in being honest in a human way about these issues. Kids don’t want a lecture or a moral at the end of a story. Start a dialogue with open questions that allow the reader to form their own answers. Let them discover and draw their own conclusions. That’s what life is all about.

Will we see Tru and Nelle again? What are you working on next?
I wrote a short story about them in old age which will complete this trilogy of sorts. But now I can put them to rest (unless less someone wants to make a Netflix series about them). I have two books coming out in 2018: When Paulie Met Artie, a picture book about the childhood friendship between Simon & Garfunkel (coming in March), and a graphic novel about my cousin, the racehorse thief turned advocate, called Grand Theft Horse (late fall). I’ve also just returned from two months in Antarctica and will be beginning a new book about that adventure, starting in the New Year.

Leslie Connor has never shied away from tackling tough topics in her books for young readers—including issues that seem strictly grown-up, such as incarceration, depression and economic instability. Integrating such real-world problems into her fiction requires a deep understanding of a child’s point of view.

“My sense with middle grade books is that life is really being done to these kids—the adults are in charge,” Connor says during a call to her home in Connecticut. “But maybe for that reason, [kids] can sort of deal with it. You only know what you know. . . . You don’t fully know what’s wrong, and so you cope with what’s there.” Connor is the author of several books for middle schoolers and teens, and has even authored a picture book. In her latest novel, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle, Mason Buttle is doing his best to cope. Ever since Mason lost his mom and grandpa six years ago, his grandma and uncle haven’t had as much energy to maintain their “crumbledown” farmhouse, and the beautiful family apple orchard has been gradually sold off to developers. Mason’s biggest tragedy, though, was the death of his best friend, Benny, in an accident for which he fears he is blamed by Benny’s dads—and by police investigator Lieutenant Baird.

Mason desperately wants to tell the truth about what happened that day in the tree house, but his brain doesn’t work like most people’s; when he tries to tell a story, his mind gets all tangled up. “My story is mixed,” he says. “Some things are past things. Some are right now.” He has trouble with reading and writing, too. Mason knows he’s not stupid—despite what his bullying neighbor might say—but how can he make other people believe the truth that’s in his heart?

Even though it’s firmly grounded in a child’s hopeful perspective, The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle could’ve been a dark, heavy tale. Fortunately, it is lightened by Mason’s distinctive, honest voice. Mason is buoyed by the important people in his life, including his grandma, who’s always happy to make him banana milkshakes; Ms. Blinny, the school social worker who introduces him to new technology that helps him overcome his fear of storytelling; and his new friend Calvin Chumsky. Calvin and Mason are opposites in many ways, but their individual skills and different ways of viewing the world balance one another perfectly.

“Calvin and Mason both have something to offer each other. I think that can happen for real,” Connor says. “I remember hearing two kids playing on the beach, and one of them knew the physics about waves and everything, and the other one was just pretending to dive with sea monsters—seeing and understanding the world in two totally different ways, but being friends regardless.”

“A lot of kids could be learning more or better outside. . . . It is who they are.”

Connor also views her novel as participating in the “No Child Left Inside” movement, which encourages environmental education for children; while Calvin may be perfectly happy to play indoors and work on his tablet, Mason only comes into his own and thrives when he’s outdoors. “I do feel that a lot of kids could be learning more or better outside, because it just suits them better,” Connor says. “It is who they are.”

Mason and Calvin’s complementary talents are most on display when they solve problems and tackle challenges together, whether that means outsmarting neighborhood bullies or transforming the crumbledown’s derelict root cellar into a cozy hideaway inspired by the prehistoric caves of Lascaux in France. Sanctuaries are important in Connor’s novel, whether it’s a tree house, an underground den or the safe haven of Ms. Blinny’s office.

“I was constantly making those types of spaces for myself,” Connor says of her own childhood. “There were always kids building forts and linking them together. I love that sense of building things and creating spaces, and I know that these days, kids mostly are doing that only at the computer. I sense a little bit of a loss there; building things with your hands is really important. I think we’re all fort-builders at heart.” Now, Connor says, she creates her “forts” by building worlds and characters in her novels.

Along with everything else that’s happening in this rich, rewarding story of friendship, loyalty, justice and new beginnings, it’s also a wonderful dog novel. Mason absolutely adores Moonie Drinker, the dog next door (who happens to belong to Mason’s nemesis), and Moonie loves Mason right back. Mason’s bond with Moonie Drinker—along with his intimate knowledge of the family apple orchard and his facility for building things with his hands—helps Mason gain confidence and courage when he needs it most. Connor, who has three rescue dogs of her own, modeled Moonie Drinker after her dog Atticus: “He’s just a really happy dog. Dogs are just like people, in that they come with different personalities—serious, moody—and he’s just a really happy dog. He seems to know when to offer comfort, too.”

Moonie Drinker, Calvin and Mason will remain in readers’ hearts long after they finish The Truth as Told by Mason Buttle. Even Connor admits that she’s particularly fond of her protagonist: “He’s very close to my heart somehow.” Readers lucky enough to get to know Mason will certainly feel the same.

Norah Piehl writes from Belmont, Massachusetts. Her childhood hideaway was a walk-in closet so big that, rumor has it, a previous owner rented it out to college students as a bedroom.

This article was originally published in the February 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by J.F. Connor

When Newbery Medal-winning author Sharon Creech and her husband moved to coastal Maine six years ago, they knew the change would be good for their family. Several books later, it seems the move has also been a boon to Creech’s writing.

Creech’s adult daughter, her husband and their two children also settled in Maine, and Creech’s 2016 novel, Moo, dramatized her granddaughter’s experience of helping raise a cow with their new hometown’s 4-H Club. After that, Creech’s granddaughter and grandson cared for rescued lambs, which inspired Creech’s new middle grade novel, Saving Winslow―although this time the writing involved some negotiations.

“They’re so cute,” Creech says, speaking by phone from Maine. “The grandchildren would be sitting in chairs, holding a little lamb, trying to get the bottle in their mouth, and the looks on the children’s faces were just like you see with a mother and a newborn. Just witnessing that simple, pure kind of transaction has made it all worth our while to move to Maine, to be close to them and to witness this.”

When Creech mentioned to her daughter and granddaughter that she wanted to write about the lambs, they both said no—they wanted to write that story themselves. “They’re both really good writers, so I think they will do it one day,” she says. Creech decided to draw on their experiences but to write about another animal instead. When family members sent her a video of a miniature donkey swinging in a hammock, she was hooked.

However, Creech was still thinking about her granddaughter’s first rescue lamb named Winslow, so she countered with, “Can I at least use the name?” This time the answer was yes. With all the makings of an instant classic, Saving Winslow is one of those seemingly simple animal stories that is beautifully understated yet emotionally complex, bringing to mind the beloved tales of E.B. White and Kate DiCamillo. Told in exceedingly short, riveting chapters, it’s the story of a young boy named Louie who cares for a struggling baby mini donkey.

“I try to get in this very tranquil place in my mind.”

Louie is also learning to navigate life without his beloved older brother, Gus, who is serving overseas in the army. Louie meets a girl named Nora, who’s dealing with her own family tragedy. “Somehow Louie felt that saving Winslow would also save and protect Gus, like the two were connected somehow,” Creech writes.

“I constantly return to themes of grief or letting go,” Creech says, noting that she wrote her first book the year after her father died. A stroke six years before had robbed her father of his speech. “So it felt like my obligation to use all those words that I could see that he wanted to say but couldn’t. I’m probably always going to be touching on these kinds of themes, all of those things that are crucial elements of life.”

Creech concludes that writing about a donkey instead of a lamb ended up being for the best, making the novel “almost funnier” and “less likely to get treacly.” Creech adeptly avoids sappy pitfalls, describing, for instance, a baby boy who lives next door to Louie as having “a tangled curly blob of black hair that looked like a burnt cauliflower had exploded there.” Small details like these, combined with the novel’s structure as a whole, make Saving Winslow a master class in superb writing.

Over the years, working in both poetry and prose, Creech acknowledges that her writing process has become increasingly succinct, partly to allow her time to pursue family obligations and other interests. She now usually writes for about three hours in the morning, having fine-tuned her routine.

“I try to get in this very tranquil place in my mind,” the author explains. “I think that comes from writing almost every day for 20 years. You have your cup of tea. You have your little chocolates. You tell your husband that you are going to be incommunicado for a couple hours. You put the phone away. And then I just sort of sit there, and I’m relaxed. I look at what I did the day before, and then I just go.”

Creech is currently having what she calls “an interesting relationship” with a new project that’s “driving [her] crazy.” So far, it’s written in prose, and it doesn’t feature animals, although “there’s a character who thinks about animals.”

Should she need a diversion from writing, she has a steady stream of fan letters that arrive frequently. She keeps some favorites nearby, such as a note from a boy who recently informed her, “If I had time, I still would not read, but I might write poems or something. I would hopefully have something better to do than read, but I might read. But if I liked to read, I would probably read your books.”

“There’s something in his voice,” Creech says of the backhanded compliment, chuckling. “I want to write his story.”

Such honest letters are refreshing, she admits, “particularly when you’ve waded through 50 or 100 or so from the more rote ones, where they’re being very correct and polite. It’s a relief―like a real person.”

Meanwhile, life beckons outside of her office door. “We’re very, very glad we made the move here,” she says. “We’re loving Maine so much.”

Coastal Maine has been home to many authors and illustrators, including none other than the late E.B. White, who lived and wrote from his home in Brooklin, Maine. Creech, a longtime fan, says she’s become re-immersed in his writing. “You know,” she says, “now I really understand where all that was coming from, his affiliation with animals and his understanding of them.”

This article was originally published in the September 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Karin Leuthy.

This BookPage Icebreaker is sponsored by Candlewick.
 

Mega-bestselling author Megan McDonald’s Judy Moody series is beloved by readers all over the world—Judy made her big-screen debut in 2011’s Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer and she now stars in two additional spin-off book series. The 14th installment, Judy Moody and the Right Royal Tea Party, follows the outspoken third-grader on her quest to complete her family tree. But when Judy uncovers her family’s English roots, she gets a little (or a lot) carried away with dreams of royal relatives and fancy tea parties. 

We spoke with McDonald about Judy’s enduring popularity, what she loves about her fans and her ideal tea party fit for a queen.

Judy Moody is such a beloved series for young readers. What was the initial inspiration for the character?
The original idea was to showcase moods. What better way to demonstrate a range of moods than through an 8-year-old? I combined that idea with stories inspired by my own childhood growing up with four older sisters.

Judy has been having adventures since 2000! After all these years, what do you love most about her?
Her resilience. No matter how many setbacks and disappointments she goes through, she always seems to bounce back with enthusiasm and creativity.

What are some of your favorite interactions you’ve had with young readers while on book tours or during school visits?
Third-graders crack me up! I meet a lot of readers who have created their very own “I ATE A SHARK” shirts. My heart skips a beat when I see this because it points to how much they connect with and relate to Judy Moody in their own lives.

Judy throws a tea party fit for royalty—and she gets a bouncy castle! What would your ideal tea party be like?
At my ideal tea party, they would serve hot chocolate! Hardee-har-har. There would be miniature teacups, purple streamers, fortune cookies and cool party favors (like sock monkey keychains and troll doll pencil-toppers), and cootie catchers would complete the party. Oh, wait, did I mention Hula-Hoops?

Do you have any royal relations in your own family tree?
As far as I know, no royal rat catchers in the McDonald family tree!

What’s the most rewarding part of writing for young readers?
Discovering that one of my books has turned a child into a reader.

What lesson do you hope young readers take away from Judy’s brush with royalty?
Family and connection with one another is what’s important, royal or not.

Any idea what Judy’s next adventure will be?
Judy, Stink and company go crazy for books as they prepare to face a formidable opponent in a funny book-quiz competition.

Vermont is a place where the boundaries between past and present are porous. And at no time is that more evident than in autumn, when ghosts are on everyone’s mind.

“One fun thing about Vermont is that you can be running through the woods and just stumble over a random graveyard,” says Katherine Arden, who lives near Vermont’s Green Mountain National Forest. “They’re everywhere, and there’s a very powerful sense of history because people have been farming this part of the country since the 1700s.”

Arden’s name may be familiar to adult readers who are fans of her novel The Bear and the Nightingale and its sequels in the Winternight trilogy (the finale is set to publish next year), set in a magic-infused version of medieval Russia. Her first middle grade novel, Small Spaces, is similarly epic in scope, but it is also deeply imbued with the landscape and traditions of Vermont. “I had so much fun filling the novel with the things I see every fall near my home,” she says. “Corn mazes, scarecrows, haunted houses—these are part of the fall landscape here.”

Small Spaces opens when 11-year-old Olivia (Ollie), a book lover who’s recently lost her mom, comes into possession of a mysterious old book, also titled Small Spaces. As Ollie reads the creepy old story of a family torn apart by loss and regret, she begins to recognize references to local names and places. Readers may begin to see other connections between Ollie’s life and the ominous scenes that play out in the book. “A strange and disturbing family history offers a parallel to Ollie’s own experience of dealing with loss and gives a weight and perspective to her journey,” Arden notes. “History does teach us things, especially if you read it seriously and intentionally—and Ollie learns to make different choices than a previous generation did.”

But those lessons are hard won, especially during Ollie’s class field trip to a local farm. She starts to suspect that something is very wrong, especially when their school bus breaks down as a dense fog descends. And are those scarecrows getting closer?

Ollie decides to strike out on her own instead of waiting for trouble to catch up with her. Arden suggests that Ollie’s bravery comes partly out of her experience with loss and grief after the death of her mom: “Ollie’s loss makes her feel so separate from her classmates. They don’t understand what she’s been through, and so she no longer cares what they think. She’s able to make decisions and take actions independent of her classmates, which is something that’s very hard for a middle schooler.”

Ollie isn’t alone in her journey, as she is reluctantly accompanied by her new friends Brian and Coco. Like Ollie, Arden enjoys breaking down middle school stereotypes, or “boxes,” in the characters she’s created. “I wanted to come up with characters who aren’t so easily defined,” Arden says. “I also wanted to change how boy-girl friendships are depicted. In books, so many kid trios are two boys and a girl. I wanted the guy to be the odd person out.”

Without giving too much away, Ollie, Brian and Coco are in for more than a little horror as they flee for their lives and eventually try to make a bargain that will save their classmates. Readers are likely to find Small Spaces to be the kind of book that will, as Arden suggests, “make them scared to get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night.”

“Even if things are ominous, as long as they resolve in a way that’s uplifting and satisfying, I don’t really feel like I have to restrain myself.”

So how scary is too scary when it comes to spooky stories for young readers? “It’s great to read scary books when you’re young,” Arden says. “It’s a way to deal with fears in a safe environment. It’s kind of fun to be that afraid, and to know that you can always close the book.”

Other than ensuring that she didn’t paint any truly gruesome scenes or disturbing images, Arden didn’t hold herself back when it came to creating a terrifying mood. “Tension and dread are fine—the problem [is] if you make it not be OK at the end,” she says. “Even if things are ominous, as long as they resolve in a way that’s uplifting and satisfying, I don’t really feel like I have to restrain myself in the narrative. It’s a safe fear.”

Arden says she enjoyed incorporating elements of some of her favorite books into Small Spaces, from subtle nods to portal fantasies like Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and The Chronicles of Narnia to a Japanese folktale called “The Boy Who Drew Cats,” which provided direct inspiration for the repeated advice in the novel: “Avoid large places at night . . . keep to small.” Like Ollie, Arden admits she was a voracious reader from a young age. “I remember that feeling of the real world just not existing while I was in the pages of a book,” she says.

With the novel’s condensed time frame, Vermont setting and young characters, the writing process of Small Spaces presented a different set of challenges to Arden than she’s previously faced—differences that helped her grow as a writer. “Writing this book was pleasurable,” she says. “Changing pacing, tone, mood, everything—it helps keep you fresh as a writer, and it can be inspiring, giving you scope to play with ideas you might not otherwise have a chance to explore.”

It’s lucky for readers that Arden enjoyed her first foray into middle grade horror, because Small Spaces is the first in a quartet that will continue the stories of Ollie, Coco and Brian. Each book will be tied to a different season and to different iconic locations in Vermont. Small Spaces is the fall book, of course, and the winter book (which Arden is writing now) is set at a “down at the heels” ski resort that happens to be haunted.

Arden won’t say much about what happens next, except that “mayhem ensues.” In the meantime, Small Spaces is sure to provide plenty of shivers of its own.

This article was originally published in the October 2018 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Author photo by Deverie Crystal Photography.

Debut author Marie Miranda Cruz shines a light on the forgotten children of Manila’s cemetery slums in her hopeful middle grade novel, Everlasting Nora. When 12-year-old Nora wakes to find her mother missing from their makeshift grave house—the mausoleum where Nora’s loving father was recently buried—she finds a wellspring of resilience and strength and teams up with her caring and supportive neighbors to find her and bring her home. Filled with vibrant details of life in the Philippines and brought to life by a wealth of Tagalong phrases, this is a unique story that will bring American readers face to face with a beautiful island nation that has strong cultural ties to our own. We asked Cruz a few questions about her memories of living in the Philippines, the importance of Filipino-American literature, what she’s working on next and more.

What was your initial inspiration for Everlasting Nora?
I decided I wanted to write a children’s novel a little over 10 years ago. I had written a short story about a pair of Filipino brothers and their strange encounter with a goblin on the night of All Saints Day in a cemetery and thought I could expand this into a novel. So I began doing some research on cemeteries in the Philippines. During my research, I came across a blog post written by a missionary about his trip to Manila. While there, he met an orphan named Grace who had been abandoned by her mother. She begged in the streets for money to buy food and slept wherever she could find safe shelter in the cemetery where other squatters lived. Eventually, Grace died all alone in a charity hospital. I was so moved by her plight that I couldn’t stop thinking about her. I wondered how she coped with being abandoned and what she did to survive. I wondered if she had friends. This was when I began weaving together Nora’s story.

Readers may be unfamiliar with Nora’s makeshift home in one of Manila’s cemetery shantytowns. Have you visited one of these communities, and if so, what was your experience?
I haven’t been inside any of those homes but I have seen them while traveling through Manila. It’s heartbreaking to see so many people living in such desperate conditions.

Although there are more than 3 million Filipino Americans living in the U.S., there aren’t nearly enough stories with Filipino protagonists that are set on the islands. Are there other Filipino authors that have inspired you?
Definitely! I love Erin Entrada Kelly’s books. She is the first Filipino-American author to publish books for children with Filipino protagonists. Her novels are beautifully written. She fills the lives of her characters with wonderful Filipino cultural details. After reading Blackbird Fly and The Land of Forgotten Girls, I knew I had to hold on to my dream that my own books with Filipino main characters would someday be published. Another favorite of mine is Mae Respicio. Her novel, The House that Lou Built, debuted last June. It’s a story set in Northern California about family, friendship and home.

What details about Filipino culture were you excited to include in your novel and bring to a wider audience?
Many Americans know about Filipino food and how much Filipinos love to feed anyone who walks through their front door, so of course, I had to include mouth-watering descriptions of dishes like pancit and arroz caldo in my book. I was excited about showing what it’s like to walk the streets of Manila and the people you’d encounter there. More importantly, I wanted to show Americans (and the world) the dynamics of family and community in the Philippines. A dynamic reflected in Filipino families all over the world. One of the basic tenets of Filipino culture is bayanihan. The word essentially means community—people working together and sharing goods and services with one another. For example, in my novel, Nora and her mother help Jojo and his grandmother with their laundry in exchange for water Jojo fetches for them.

The other important cultural aspect I wanted to include in the book is pakikisama, which means doing what you can to get along with those around you, and it is how Filipinos adapt to social situations. Nora recalls what it was like for her and her mother to live with her father’s aunt. They do what they can to blend in, to adjust to the day to day rhythms of their aunt’s family. These two aspects lie at the heart of Filipino culture.

Although Nora is hesitant to open up to others living in the cemetery, her neighbors Lola and Jojo rally around her during a crisis and feel like family by the end of the story. The concept of found families is so important for many children, yet it still feels like this is rarely highlighted in children’s stories in the U.S. Why did you center your novel on this concept?
My memories of growing up in the Philippines helped inform much of Nora’s story in terms of her relationships with family and friends. After my father retired from the military, we moved back to the Philippines and we lived in my mother’s family compound. My mother’s two sisters, brother, and their families lived there. I remembered my mother and aunts cooking together, how they would go to market for each other and how they spent afternoons with one another playing bingo or having manicures. I remembered my older cousin, Cesar, who used to make moccassins for me and my younger cousins out of remnant cuts of leather. This was a special time in my life.

Another memory that influenced this concept in my novel belonged to my mother-in-law. Both my in-laws came to the U.S. as physicians in the ’70s. During their years of residency at a hospital in Camden, New Jersey, they had kind neighbors who looked after their children while they worked long shifts. The spirit of community within my extended family and between my mother-in-law and her neighbors is what exemplifies the bayanihan and pakikisama aspect of Filipino culture I wanted to share in my story.

This story is filled with delicious-sounding descriptions of Filipino cuisine. What’s your favorite local dish, and what memories from your own childhood in the Philippines is it tied to?
I have lots of favorites! But if I had to choose one, especially one associated with fond memories of my childhood, it would be halo-halo. This is a delicious, sweet, icy, milky concoction usually eaten for Merienda, which is an afternoon snack time practiced in the Philippines as well as in Southern Europe and Central and South America. I remember going to neighborhood Merienda stands with my own glass where they would spoon sweetened beans, sugar palm fruit, tapioca balls, nata de coco (a delicious jelly made from fermented coconut water—sounds weird but it’s so good) and ripe jackfruit into the glass. Then they would fill it with shaved ice, packing it in tight, and drench it in evaporated milk. Halo-halo comes from the Tagalog word “halo” which means “mix,” so the way you eat halo-halo is to take a spoon and mix it all together. It makes a hot afternoon so much better!

What conversations do you hope Everlasting Nora opens in classrooms and in homes?
I hope it inspires conversations that center on empathy and the importance of community, kindness, and how these aspects can be a beacon of light in a world already full of darkness.

What do you hope your young readers take away from this story?
Once again, empathy and awareness of how people live in other countries. I hope Nora’s story inspires curiosity and a desire to know more about the Philippines and its history, and perhaps even visit someday.

What are you working on next?
I’m working on my next middle grade novel! It’s about sisters who reunite on an island resort. It’s a story of friendship, sisterhood and healing with a little Filipino mysticism mixed in.

This BookPage Icebreaker is sponsored by Candlewick.

In T.R. Simon’s honest, humorous and equally heartwrenching middle grade novel, Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground, a young Zora Neale Hurston and her best friend, Cassie, investigate a town secret that is tied to their community's roots in slavery. Alternating between Hurston’s childhood in Eatonville, Florida, in 1903 and the horrors experienced on a nearby plantation in 1855, this is an important and poignant story that is sure to become popular in classrooms. We spoke with Simon about the importance of Hurston's legacy, honestly discussing the dark parts of American history, the joys of girlhood friendships and more.

What was your first experience with Zora Neale Hurston’s writing, and how did it influence you as a writer?
I discovered Zora Neale Hurston my sophomore year in college when I read Their Eyes Were Watching God. I remember coming alive to the words and how completely they conveyed the feelings of a young black woman in the rural south. It was also my first experience reading a book that posed and answered questions that made me know it was a book for precisely the kind of black girl I was.

As I researched Zora’s life, I learned that she was not only a novelist and playwright but also an ethnographer, a folklorist and an intellectual adventurer. I longed to understand the world, so I studied anthropology in graduate school, just like Zora. Unlike Zora, it took me a long time to own my desire to write, and then a bit longer to act on it.

There are some very honest and nuanced, yet graphic descriptions of slavery and physical abuse in this story. Did you feel it was important to fully investigate these horrors for your readers, which are so often glossed over in classrooms?
I don’t shy away from the physical brutality of slavery because it happened and because it is a reflection of the emotional brutality at the heart of the institution. Sadly, slavery is a ubiquitous fact of human existence and it has taken many forms throughout history. The race-based caste system of American slavery was particularly physically brutal. Black folks were seen as an ultimate other, so other that we were no longer considered human. Declared apart from the race of “man,” slaveholders believed we felt no pain, so action against our minds and bodies was not an action against a person. American slavery cannot be fully understood without understanding the hateful interpersonal logic that undergirded it. Glossing over the physicality of slavery allows it to become abstract, theoretical. By making the bodies of those impacted by slavery part of the story, I hoped to make the horror more personal, to force my reader to take a moral position. I was also careful not to make the slaveholders in this story mustache-twirling villains. And that is ultimately the point: Very regular people did very brutal things to other human beings under slavery. If we can’t understand that, we are at great risk of repeating the past.

What kind of conversations do you hope this novel opens up in classrooms and in homes about the ripple effects of slavery and the Jim Crow era?
I think we’re living in a very polarized time and many of today’s most pressing cultural disagreements are still rooted in American slavery. As Faulkner so famously put it, “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” In order to understand who we are as Americans, we must understand the history of America, and we have yet to do justice to an understanding of the hard parts of that history. We need more writing on genocide, slavery, Jim Crow and internment to sit side by side with the deeply researched and documented works on the Declaration of Independence, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and World Wars I and II. America was a slaveholding nation that also gave birth to modern democracy, which means freedom has been a very complicated issue for America since its inception. Slavery and Jim Crow sit in direct contradiction to the stated aim of the Declaration of Independence. The degree to which the idea of American democracy has shined like a beacon in the world is also due to the ways in which African-American bids for freedom and equality have shaped it. We can’t fully understand one without the other. These conversations and tensions are ongoing, and so our need to unpack this history is ongoing.

What do you love most about writing mysteries for children? Did you have a favorite mystery as a kid?
When I was young, my mother and I would watch all the detective shows together—“Ellery Queen,” “Cannon,” “The Rockford Files,” and “Columbo.” My favorite board game, hands down, was Clue. Nancy Drew, Sherlock Holmes, Hercule Poirot, Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey, Harriet Vane and anything by Wilkie Collins was my go-to reading. I loved superheroes and comics, too, but none of the caped crusaders could hold a candle to the superpower of brilliance. And that made Sherlock Holmes the unrivaled greatest superhero of all. I loved the idea that a person, using only their mind, could make narrative sense of purposeful subterfuge or an unlikely series of events. The power of observation and logic restored truth and justice in every mystery I read and that appealed to my young sense of karmic balance.

What is it about Hurston’s childhood in the South that sparked this series of novels? Did you grow up in the South yourself?
I’m from Washington D.C., and my father’s people are from North Carolina. My grandmother died before I was born, and I only met my grandfather once before he passed. I was three and we went to the house my father bought his parents with his World War II soldier’s pay. It was a little cottage sitting on the land they farmed, the land they had once picked cotton on. I remember how dark the night was and the sandy quality of the soil. I also remember my grandfather’s booming laugh as he bounced me on his stiff knees. His life, before he passed, bore a direct relation to the kind of childhood Zora had, in both the simplicity of living and the intricacy of the relationships between the people who lived with and near him. In writing about Zora and the turn of the century, I’m excavating a piece of my own agrarian history, my own connection to those Southern black folks whose whole lives depended on the land they stood on.

What do you love most about Carrie and Zora’s friendship?
I love that Carrie and Zora love each other. I love that Carrie sees everything that is special and complicated and brilliant about Zora, and that even when the sharp edges of Zora’s mind push Carrie out of her comfort zone, she’s willing to change and adapt for the sake of their friendship. I love that Zora sees Carrie’s fears and weaknesses and pushes her to be the very best version of herself that she can be. And I love that they are stronger and more whole because of their relationship. I think healthy, strong girlhood friendship is like a forcefield. Not only does it sow the seeds for supporting women in the future, but it lays the groundwork for self-respect in childhood. Good friends make each other better people. Zora and Carrie are better people for knowing one another.

What’s the most surprising fact you’ve learned about Hurston during your research and writing process?
Zora’s life is the most surprising fact of all: That a black girl from the Jim Crow south would come to be recognized as one of the great literary minds of American letters is a testimony not only to her ambition and brilliance but the powerful and enduring legacy that is the hallmark of book writing. Zora herself is a beautiful self-invention, and because she committed that invention to paper, we are blessed with the possibility of visiting with her mind through her books and letters.

What do you hope young readers take away from The Cursed Ground?
Last year, my daughter’s sixth-grade class was taught a relatively conventional story of slavery—that it was bad, that white people were trapped in an unjust system with black people, that it was passed down generationally, that it could not be ended until the nation engaged in a civil war. In Zora and Me: The Cursed Ground, I wanted to tell my daughter a different kind of story about slavery. I wanted to tell her a story that emphasized how participation in a system of injustice is always a choice for those who have power, that tradition is a choice, that complicity is a choice. I wanted her to understand the relationship between master and slave as a daily choice to dehumanize those we might otherwise respect, befriend, or even love. I wanted her to consider the idea that our humanity resides in our ability to see other human beings as people with the same feelings we ourselves have, and to actively choose in favor of their wellbeing as we wish them to choose in favor of ours. Slavery was not self-sustaining: It had to be enforced minute by minute, and each act of suppression represented a choice. When we understand that, we become capable of understanding just how much agency we do possess. We become free to choose love over hate, tolerance over intolerance, and genuine freedom over the privilege produced through oppression.

What are you working on next?
Right now I’m playing with the outline of a historical novel about the aftermath of violence. It’s about a young black girl forced to piece her life back together after a riot. I want to examine how we’re shaped by violence and loss, and how human resilience allows us to overcome the things that were meant to destroy us. It’s easy to invoke love, but how do you put love back at the center of your life when hatred has taken away everything you love? It’s a story about hurt and healing and how we come to have and sustain hope not just for ourselves, but for our communities. And there is a crow. A very singular crow.

Alex Gino’s You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! introduces readers to the thoughtful, ever-curious Jilly, whose new baby sister has arrived. Jilly’s sister is deaf, and in no time at all, she and her hearing family come face-to-face with a host of decisions to make about how to communicate with her. Jilly reaches out to her friend, Derek, also deaf, whom she met online. At the same time, Jilly learns from her black aunt and cousins about what it means to live a life of privilege and the ways in which she can be open to growth. We asked Gino a few questions about this thought-provoking, conversation-starter of a second novel.

You address hearing privilege and white privilege in this book, amongst other things. Did you always know the book would tackle both subjects or did the story evolve that way as you wrote?
Writing is a long and windy road. Jilly P started as an intergenerational story of deafness—Jilly’s grandmother was losing her hearing and a lot of the book was about how her story was different from Jilly’s baby sister Emma, who was born deaf. But that plotline didn’t really give much for Jilly to do—a problem for a main character, so my editor told me. But as I was revising, Derek (a deaf black kid around Jilly’s age) started to take a large role in the story. Jilly had a hard time seeing him as a full person at first, rather than as a stand-in for his black and Deaf identities. From there, the story turned into one of Jilly making sense of her privilege and how to use it well.

I spent nearly a decade as a sign language interpreter, and I especially appreciate this part in the story: Derek tells Jilly that he was annoyed by people staring at him signing in a restaurant, and she responds with “signing is pretty,” as if that excuses stares. Or as if that’s all American Sign Language, a bona fide, complex language in its own right, has going for it (“prettiness”). As someone knowledgeable of sign language yourself, have you experienced this firsthand?
Yes, and as someone who has struggled to master a language full of nuance and regionalisms, I’ve been frustrated by people who say they’ve been thinking about learning ASL because it’s “so pretty,” or they’re “so expressive” and so they’d “be great at it.” Or people who tell me they know how to sign when really they know some isolated nouns and adjectives. Do you say you speak Spanish because you can order at a taqueria? I can’t even imagine the range of inaccuracies and misunderstandings Deaf people have to deal with, even (or especially) from people who think they know more than they do.

In many ways, Jilly’s family is being tested with regard to the decision-making in their lives that they’re so used to. Derek, for instance, tells Jilly it’s not his call, nor her call, whether or not her sister should get a cochlear implant. The family is learning a lot about the deliberateness of their decisions—and the whos and whys behind them. Is this something you consciously wanted to address?
Absolutely. Parents want to do everything “right” for their children. Hearing parents of deaf babies face a lot of decisions on behalf of their infant children, often without access to information or understanding of the Deaf community. Audiologists focus on decibels and megahertz, and while many doctors now encourage families to sign, some do still advocate for oralism and lip-reading to the exclusion of the deaf child’s natural language. Cochlear implants and hearing aids are valuable tools, but they don’t turn Deaf people into hearing people. As Ella Mae Lentz says in her beautiful ASL poem “To A Hearing Mother,” “he is your son, but he is my people.”

Aunt Alicia explains microaggressions to Jilly: “It’s like the difference between stepping on someone’s foot by mistake and kicking them. Only one is mean, but they both hurt. Sometimes you don’t have to be trying to hurt someone. You just have to say the wrong thing.” In the school visits you’ve done, have you ever run across or heard about curricula that discusses racism, white privilege, etc. with students? Do you think it’s a good idea to have that as part of a curriculum in schools?
I think that discussing privilege and recognizing ourselves and others in the world is crucial to develop empathy as well as critical thinking. I tend not to talk curriculum details on school visits, but I can tell when I’m in a room with kids who are encouraged to talk candidly. One of the best things I think a teacher can do is sit with students in discomfort and complexity without trying to have all the answers. So I guess it’s not a curriculum I’m looking for so much as a class ethos that can be applied to just about any subject matter.

Jilly learns a lot about the different challenges people face—and that her responses to such things can make a difference, for better or worse. What age were you when you very first realized this in your own life?
I don’t think of it as a switch—I can’t name the first time I realized that my actions are rooted in my experience and that their consequences lay out differently based on our marginalizations. That’s something I’m still learning. And to try to name the first time feels like I’m trying to tout myself as someone who always knew. For so long, I didn’t know. But one early realization was in middle school when I realized that my “A” class was about two-thirds white, while the “B” classes were pretty mixed and the “C” classes were mostly black. And yes, they were called A, B and C tracks. I knew something was skewed, but no one talked about it, other than to lay the responsibility of where they had landed directly on them because “education is fair.” But it’s not fair when racism and class dominate the way they do in the United States.

I like the world-building of B. A. Delacourt’s Magically Mysterious Vidalia trilogy, Jilly’s favorite books. How much work did you put into detailing that world for yourself? Are you tempted to write a fantasy trilogy now?
Not even a little bit. Plot is really hard for me, and fantasy books are filled is adventure and plot twists. This way, I got to do some of the world building and character creation without having to worry about what actually happens in the books or creating a strong story arc.

Are you working on any new books?
Always. The project I’m focused most on right now is a companion novel to George. It takes place two years later, and focuses on the bully’s best friend. It’s time for Rick to get out from under his “friend”’s thumb, and junior high is a great opportunity to discover who you are and how you want to be in the world. There’s also a queer student alliance, and, of course, Melissa is in the background, happy as can be, with not a bit of the kind of adversity that a plot requires.

If there were ever a fire in author Corey Ann Haydu’s home, she knows exactly what object she would grab: her collection of 20 years’ worth of journals. “I have a huge trunk filled with everything that happened in my childhood,” she says, speaking from her Brooklyn residence. “I love being able to sneak back in there and see who I was at age 10 and 11 and 12. There’s something really comforting about feeling like your life is stored somewhere, and for me, there’s a real panic at the idea of not being able to go back and touch base with the things that happened.”

But what if she couldn’t access all of those memories? That’s the central premise of Haydu’s cleverly deep new middle grade novel, Eventown, in which a family trying to escape the aftermath of a tragedy choose to have their negative memories erased. 

The Lively family is ready for a fresh start, so they pack up and head to Eventown, an enchanting utopia without modern amenities like cars, TV or the internet. At first, 11-year-old Elodee Lively and her twin sister, Naomi, delight in their move to the town filled with identical homes, rosebushes, waterfalls, perfectly ripe blueberries and a heavenly ice cream shop. “I wrote a lot of Eventown when I was pregnant,” Haydu says with a laugh, “which is why I think there’s a lot of cake and ice cream.” She adds, “It’s fun to create your own utopia because it’s just borrowing from all your favorite things in the world.”

Of course, there’s a price to be paid for perfection and, in ways reminiscent of Lois Lowry’s classic Newbery Medal winner The Giver, the twins slowly discover that this utopia is not what it seems. Haydu’s readers have two mysteries to untangle: What are the strange secrets of Eventown, and what was the tragedy that turned the Lively family’s lives upside down? 

“In some ways, it’s a book about the fog of grief,” Haydu explains. “I didn’t necessarily want the grief to be dealt with directly for most of the book. I think having the characters and the reader face tragedy together made the most sense.” All of Haydu’s books echo her personal philosophy: “While it’s tempting to shield kids from the most difficult parts of life for as long as possible, maybe in reality the biggest lesson about hope and wonder and love comes from really facing a tough part head on. I strive to write books that encourage facing what’s really hard while also exploring what remains really beautiful in the world in spite of everything difficult,” she says.

As for her own childhood challenges, Haydu’s trunk of journals reveals both the joys and sorrows she experienced while growing up in a small New England town with an alcoholic parent—a fact that was not discussed during her childhood, as her family was concerned with keeping up appearances. “It’s hard if, at age 12, you don’t feel like everything’s fine, but everyone’s saying it is,” she says. “That’s a confusing space to occupy.”

It’s a space that Elodee refuses to occupy. Unlike her twin, she’s determined to plunge ahead and try to understand Eventown’s secrets, including its disappointing library full of blank books. After Elodee’s mother assures her that novels aren’t needed, she disagrees, saying, “It’s weird. It’s terrible. It’s . . . wrong.” Enlisting the help of a new friend, Elodee eventually breaks into the town’s strange Welcoming Center, an act that turns most of Eventown’s citizens against her in a dramatic, nail-biting showdown.

Ironically, Haydu was so focused on portraying her characters’ heartache and emotions that she had no idea that she’d written “a bit of a page-turner and a mystery” until an editor commented on the compelling result. “My book feels so personal to me,” she says. “Maybe the specifics are different, but all of the feelings in my books are mine. And that’s the important part.”

Haydu’s first book for young adults, OCD Love Story (2013), addressed her own struggles with anxiety; Rules for Stealing Stars  (2015) chronicled an 11-year-old girl with an alcoholic mother; and The Someday Suitcase (2017) followed a fifth-grader who yearns to cure her friend’s illness but can’t. And then there’s Eventown, which deals with families trying to ignore their most painful memories, an ultimately impossible feat.

“I always think I’m writing a different type of book,” Haydu confesses, “but it always turns out that the themes relate back to central stuff for me, such as pressures placed on girls, the idea of perfection, secrets and loving people so desperately and wanting to protect them, even when you might not be able to.”

Just like her heroine Elodee, Haydu acknowledges the continuing game of tug of war she plays with her memories. “There are moments when I want to dig into that box and read some of the tough parts, and there are moments that I want to lock that box away and never look at it again,” she says. Hopefully, for Haydu’s growing legion of young readers, she will peek back in and allow those glimpses to continue to fuel her fiction.

This article was originally published in the February 2019 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

Karyn Parsons talks about her debut middle grade novel, How High the Moon, her time as an actor on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” empowering children, keeping hope while fighting against injustice and more.

You’ve had such a gloriously varied career. How did you hone your writing chops?

I’ve always loved writing. Never thought of myself as a writer, though. I declared my love for acting at an early age. I studied. I got an agent and was fortunate to have success in that field early in my life. But with that success came being identified as “an actor” by everyone, including myself.

After “Fresh Prince” ended, a friend encouraged me to study writing with author and teacher, Jim Krusoe. The experience changed everything for me. I didn’t stop loving acting, but I realized there was something that I loved more. I dedicated hours every day to writing. To reading. To reading about writing. Being able to call myself a writer, however, was still difficult. Showing that part of myself to others was terrifying. I had identified myself as an actor for so long. It was hard to make that transition for me.

Honestly, though, acting and writing are similar in many respects. It’s storytelling. It’s slipping into another person’s skin. My lifetime as an actor has definitely helped me with my writing.

You founded Sweet Blackberry to make short animated films that bring little-known stories of African-American achievement to children everywhere. In the opening paragraphs of How High the Moon, Ella runs through the blackberry bushes in her hometown of Alcolu, South Carolina. Tell us about the importance of those blackberries, how you decided to write this book, and how these storytelling projects relate to each other.

(You caught the blackberries!)

I think that sharing inspiring stories of African American achievement with children can change the way they look at race as they enter the world. By seeing someone that looks like themselves overcoming incredible obstacles, they’ll recognize their value and what they’re capable of. Children that aren’t African American will also be inspired. And I think they’ll go into the world looking at their neighbors as more than what our society often presents.

Over the years, researching for Sweet Blackberry, I often came across the story of George Stinney, Jr. I’d share it with people, but no one seemed to have heard of him. It was terrible to think that when he died the memory of that horrible tragedy was buried with him. I wanted people to know his story. It wasn’t a Sweet Blackberry story—nothing about it was empowering—but it was important.

Your mother was raised in the South. Did you incorporate any of her childhood experiences into your novel? What research did you do to bring the worlds of both Jim Crow South Carolina and 1940s Boston so vividly to life?
Oh, so much of it is my mom’s. The backdrop, anyway. Not the actual story. She told me stories of her growing up on a farm in the south and about her grandparents. She always referred to that time as so joyful. There was little to nothing about the racial discrimination, let alone the horrors. I made her dig a little deeper for me and share more when I decided to do the book. She and my aunt both shared with me. And, of course, there was plenty of research. I dug into newspaper archives and took advantage of the internet. It was a lot of fun, actually. Writing a historical novel was daunting sometimes, but then I’d wind down some unexpected path and discover all sorts of treasures from the past. People, events, details of society and culture that we don’t see today, and they’d find their way into the story.

I didn’t know that George would be in there when I first started the story, but my mother didn’t grow up that far from Alcolu where George lived. The chronology of their childhoods was close, too. When he did first appear, he wasn’t one of the principal characters in the book. His story was a memory. I was encouraged to bring him to the forefront. I think I was scared to at first. It’s a hard story to get close to.

Your novel tackles some of the horrors of human behavior, yet manages to be hopeful. Was this a difficult balance to achieve?
Well, my mother is such an optimist and such a hopeful person, so the fact her memories were paving so much of the way and the fact that I was seeing this world through a child’s eyes, I believe, kept things hopeful. And Ella wasn’t someone to be defeated by tragedy. I think she would take injustice and use it as fuel for fight.

Like Ella, you grew up in a biracial family. How did Ella’s character evolve? Is she named for Ella Fitzgerald, who sang “How High the Moon?” How did you settle on the title?
She is named for Ella Fitzgerald, yes.

Ella is at the age where she’s becoming aware of how the world sees her. How she perceives they see her anyway. She’s just left behind that beautiful space in childhood where you’re free floating. When you’re not thinking of how you look or about those superficial differences that we later become aware of and cling to and attach to identity. Ella doesn’t want to be different. But the deep, unconditional love of her family helps her to begin to accept all of who she is. And that love helps her understand what family really is.

The title, well . . .  it’s about wanting and reaching. Reaching for something that seems forever out of reach.

Each of the three cousin narrators in your book―Ella, Henry and Myrna―have unique family situations. The closing scene of your book is a beautiful tribute to families in all their wonderful varieties. Was it a challenge to incorporate so many stories and voices?
It wasn’t. They were my family as I wrote this (they still are), and even though things aren’t always smooth, they love each other and accept each other. They are all different, but they are one. And they all had something to say, so they all had to be heard.

What books were important to you as a child? What books have been meaningful to your own kids? How is children’s literature changing?
I had to read everything that Judy Blume wrote. There were others, of course, but, like so many of us, I ate those books up. I used to get an almost visceral thrill when I entered a new book. And, even recently, I was reading Jesmyn Ward in the anthology, Well-Read Black Girl, talking about a book she read as a kid, Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley, and Me, Elizabeth. I hadn’t heard or thought of that book since I was a kid, but chills ran through my body when I read the title again. I think it must’ve really affected me so long ago. My mom was a librarian and I was an only child, so I spent a lot of time in libraries by myself. I think I experienced that thrill quite a bit.

These days, it seems there’s SO much out there for young people. It’s so varied. Such an exciting time! I do hope though, that with all of the contemporary writing we have the older books don’t get pushed to the back and forgotten completely.

Do you and your family ever watch “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air?” Can you do the Carlton dance?
Ha! No, we don’t watch, but the kids have seen it. They each went through a very brief phase. They liked the show. Laughed a lot and that made me feel pretty good.

The Carlton? I’ve never been able to do it! My son can, though. He’s pretty good at it.

What’s next? More books?
Yup. Working on one now.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of How High the Moon.

Margaret Peterson Haddix has written more than 40 books for children and young adults which have been translated into more than 20 different languages and have received numerous honors, including New York Times bestseller status, the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award and they have won spots on the American Library Association’s lists of best books.

In the first installment in her new middle grade series, Greystrone Secrets: The Strangers, three young siblings must solve a mystery that involves a series of kidnappings and a parallel dimension. We caught up with Haddix to talk about how A Wrinkle in Time influenced this new novel, how her fiction has inspired young readers and more.

What were some of your inspirations for the story in The Strangers? While reading it, I found your book reminiscent of both Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time and Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events. Were these texts influential for this novel?
I would say there’s always some Wrinkle in Time embedded in anything I write because I read that book so many times as a kid; it’s hard to separate out who I would be as a writer—or a person—without it. And like Wrinkle in Time, The Strangers has siblings searching for a beloved missing parent against great odds, family members demonstrating (and benefitting from) intense love and loyalty, and kids struggling against weird and/or scary alternate worlds they don’t quite understand. I didn’t consciously intend all those connections while I was writing The Strangers, but apparently, my subconscious wanted to pay homage.

The Strangers was also probably influenced by another book I read and loved as a kid: Escape to Witch Mountain by Alexander Key. That also has siblings in danger and with a mysterious past they don’t know about until odd events begin happening. Secret codes don’t play as big a role in Witch Mountain as they do in The Strangers, but I do remember one that was very important.

I didn’t read A Series of Unfortunate Events until I was an adult, so it’s not as deeply ingrained. But you are not the first to point out that connection. Both have three siblings dealing with, well, you know, unfortunate events. It’s just that the events the Greystone kids grapple with are rather different than the circumstances Lemony Snicket puts the poor Baudelaire children through.

How much research into parallel universes did you do to take this high-level concept and make it both relatable and understandable to a young audience?
I had previously done research about parallel universes while I was writing my time-travel series, The Missing. I’d wanted to make that series as scientifically plausible as possible—which is a little laughable, of course. I came across scientific articles theorizing that time travel could never happen, but parallel universes are very likely. Regardless, I think it’s hard to write time travel without veering into parallel-universe territory. The Missing series, like a lot of other time-travel fiction, became an exploration of how different decisions in the past could create a new present and future. I also dealt with the concept of an alternate world in one of my standalones, Game Changer, so I was definitely primed for the topic. Would it sound lazy to admit that I didn’t do any extra research when I started on The Strangers? If anything, my problem working on early drafts of the book was that I was already too cozy with the topic. I appreciated my editor, Katherine Tegen, asking questions during the revision process that made me realize I needed to give more explanation because some of my younger readers might be encountering the concept for the first time. So as the Greystone kids were struggling to understand parallel universes, I had Emma think of kid-friendly examples, like the worlds diverging dramatically just because someone chose a different ice cream flavor.

Still, based on my conversations with readers, I believe kids can catch on quickly. I think it’s human nature to wonder, “What would the world be like if things were a little different? What would my life be like if only I’d done or said this or that, instead of what I really did or what actually came out of my mouth?”

Do you hope to inspire your young readers to take up an interest in the sciences after reading your novel?
Yes! Or math. Or political science. Or sociology. Or cryptology. Or writing. Or any subject where they think deeply and investigate and try to make the world a better place. One of the great things about writing for kids is that I get to share my love of many different topics with readers. And because I’ve been doing this for a long time, I’ve now met young adults who encountered my explorations of certain topics years ago, realized they had a greater interest and dove into studying topics as far from my own areas of expertise as genetics and engineering. And now they know a lot more about those topics than I do—and hold actual degrees in those subjects—and all that is wonderful.

How have your past experiences as a newspaper editor and a reporter influenced both your writing style and your narrative choices?
Working at newspapers forced me to become a more efficient and clearer writer. Clarity and brevity are particularly valuable traits in writing for kids.

And I doubt that this was exactly what you meant by “narrative choices,” but stories I covered as a newspaper reporter literally gave me the ideas for my first three books. Since then, the seeds of the ideas for three of my other books—including The Strangers—came from reading newspapers. My background in journalism probably keeps me a little more moored in reality. Even though I’m writing fiction now, and even though it’s sometimes fairly fantastical, I still want my characters to react realistically, and I still want a certain logic to my plot choices. I always try to see my characters and their story arcs in a larger context.

Many of your novels are installments in larger series. Do you prefer to write those as opposed to standalone novels? What does a series enable you to do narratively that a standalone doesn’t, and vice versa?
I like being able to switch back and forth between series and standalones because there are pros and cons with each. (In addition to the Greystone Secrets series starting this year, I also have a standalone, Remarkables, coming out in September.)

What I love about series is the way it gives me the chance to explore more facets and tangents of a story. I’ve been able to jump to different perspectives, explore how a single event can affect different characters differently, and in general, just show a bigger, more complete picture of the fictional time and place and characters I’ve imagined. I love how readers can be so eager to see the rest of the story with a series. I love being able to give them more than the one tale that can be told between the covers of a single book.

But sometimes series can begin to feel a little like that picture book about the fish you aren’t supposed to overfeed—sometimes series grow out of control. Right now I am in the early stages of working on the third book in the Greystone Secrets series, and I see so many directions I could go, so many paths I could take. And soon I will need to aim for and then arrive at The End. So sometimes I’m just really grateful for the completeness of a standalone, the way it’s a beginning, a middle and an end, and then it’s really and truly finished.

Do you have any interest in writing books for adult readers at some point in your career?
I have thought about it and I have had ideas for adult books. There have been times when I’ve seen potential forks ahead of me in my writing career and wondered about making that leap. So far there have always been better reasons not to, but who knows what could happen later on? If I do that, it would have to be because I have an idea I’m dying to explore that has to be for adults. I think sometimes writers feel they have to write for adults to be “real” writers—or to be perceived that way by the literary community. I don’t feel that motivation at all.

What do you love most about writing stories for young readers?
I have so many mosts! I love getting to keep the childlike wonder-and-awe part of my brain alive and active. I love that perspective. I also love getting to meet so many kids, who are such interesting people. I love the way young readers can be so passionate about the books they care about. And, even though it feels like an overwhelming responsibility sometimes, I love the sense that I have an incredibly meaningful job because I am writing for kids, and they are so new to the world that a single book can make a bigger difference to them than to any adult.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Greystone Secrets: The Strangers.

The Size of the Truth is Andrew Smith’s first foray into middle grade fiction. The Michael L. Printz honoree’s latest madcap tale follows Sam Abernathy, a claustrophobic eighth grader who bridles against the stifling expectations of his parents, the identity his small-town has foisted on him, and his reemerging memories of the three days spent at the bottom of an abandoned well taking counsel from a wise and acerbic talking armadillo. Eccentric and entertaining, The Size of the Truth is for anyone who’s ever felt boxed in. We caught up with Smith to talk about forging your own path, the power of humor and more.

Sam, the protagonist in The Size of the Truth, is trapped. As a young child he was physically trapped, having fallen down an abandoned well, and now he finds himself trapped in a more existential sense—trapped by his parents’ and town’s expectations of what he is or should be. Did anything make you feel trapped when you were young?
One of the issues I tend to obsessively examine in my books is the idea of boxing (not the fighting kind) and labeling—and how external constraints and expectations on young people produce so much anxiety and unhappiness. The good news—and this may be purely anecdotal, coming from someone who’s spent the majority of his life working with kids on a daily basis—is that things are loosening up and getting better for kids, but the labelers and box-makers among us still have a lot of progress to make. I came from a very strict, regimented family, and my parents definitely started grooming me at a very young age for the future they had in mind for me. I bought into it, I suppose, until I was about 14, but after that, I was determined to go my own way. They were against my idea of becoming a writer, but that was all I really wanted to do from about that age on, so I just did it.

And how did you break free from others’ expectations of you and blaze your own path?
Or was he pushed? I don’t think I broke free so much as grew up on the outside of everything. Like Sam, I was much younger than my classmates, having been put ahead in school (which I thought was a terrific idea for about one school week). So I never fit in, and I think my peers’ expectation was that I would always be an outcast. There were no other paths but the one I had for myself, and I had no sense of what succeeding at what I desired to do would look or feel like.

I really loved Bartleby, the talking armadillo who provides Sam with words of wisdom. Did you have someone like Bartleby in your life growing up? If so, what did you learn from him or her?
First of all, I would love to have a talking armadillo, but I’d want him to be nicer than Bartleby. And I suppose the closest thing I had to him would have been a few of my favorite teachers: Miss Haines (she taught history in middle school); Mrs. Veith, who taught geometry in high school; and my favorite, Mrs. Beaubien, my high school English teacher. Mrs. Beaubien was one of those teachers who every kid was terrified of. She was brutally demanding and an impossibly hard grader, but she gave me a love for literature and writing.

Both Sam and James want to pursue careers that, to a degree, challenge stereotypes of masculinity. What made you want to focus on issues of masculinity and gender in this book?
I’ll be totally honest here—I never thought about gender roles and gender conformity when I was writing the book. I mean, James does mention the pressure society often imposes on boys who dance, but what I mostly wanted to examine and have readers question is the idea of success and the prescriptive future that so many parents construct around their children. Sam’s parents and James’s father have already mapped out for their sons what being successful and fulfilled in their futures will look like, without ever really considering what those things mean to Sam and James. As a high school teacher for going on 30 years, this is one of my biggest frustrations today. In narrowing down the fates of our children, I also see a constriction of opportunities to build a happier future for society and the world as a whole. As I often tell my kids, you only get so many trips around the sun—do you really want to spend them doing something that makes you unhappy?

Your books are, in my view, zany, off-the-wall and consistently hilarious. What draws you toward the humorous and the absurd?
Humor is the best way to challenge accepted notions of certain status-quo practices and ideas without instantly drawing dividing lines and creating enemies. And I think nearly everything has tipped toward the absurd, especially in the past few years, so we may as well just ride that wave and see where we end up, right?

Why do non-traditional characters and themes play such a large role in your writing?
Whenever I begin a new project, I like to challenge myself to come up with something that won’t be like anything else that’s out there, so I try to explore story elements and sometimes technical components of storytelling that defy the conventional. And since I like to have fun doing what I do, humor is always going to be there—even in some of my most serious work.

What’s up next for you? Do you have more middle grade books lined up, or are you back to YA?
I’m currently finishing (I swear I’m almost finished) another middle grade novel about Sam Abernathy. Then I have the young adult novel Exile From Eden, the sequel to Grasshopper Jungle, coming out in September. And I’ve also been working on a graphic novel with my illustrator friend Matt Faulkner called Once There Were Birds, which we’ve been collaborating on for more than a few trips around the sun now. I don’t envy the amount of work for Matt—illustrating is really hard! I drew the illustrations for Exile From Eden and doing it gave me panic attacks. After that? Who knows? I’m going to write some poetry for National Poetry Month in April, and one of these days I’m sure I’ll finish this adult novel that I’ve been kicking around, too.

Autho photograph © Kaija Bosket