Author Interview: Mary Quattlebaum

by Cordelia Jensen

Today, we have with us the charming Mary Quattlebaum. She is the author of many books including Pirate vs. Pirate and The Jackson Jones series (more details at her website www.maryquattlebaum.com). Her latest picture book is a new installment in the Jo MacDonald series, which centers on a naturalist girl who goes into different environments and learns about the creatures she encounters. Jo MacDonald Hiked in the Woods just hit the shelves this September.

Thanks for having me, Cordelia!  It’s a treat to talk with you and your blog readers.  Hope your writing is going well.

Thanks Mary! It's going . . . but let's talk about you!

       Tell us about how you thought of creating this delightful series.

Being a mom, you probably notice how curious kids are about the natural world--  the ants on the sidewalk, the squirrels in the trees.  Often their connection to and interest in the natural world evolves from experiences close at hand.  The three Jo MacDonald books feature a pond, garden, and forest ecosystem, which are the “nearby nature” of Jo’s world.  I grew up in the country, with all these things, and it has been a great joy to revisit that childhood landscape in writing.  Doing the books have given me a chance, too, to thank my dad, who has shared his knowledge of and love for nature with his kids and grandkids.  My dad is the model for Jo’s grandfather, Old MacDonald, in the books.  In Jo MacDonald Had a Garden, the grandpa even rides a horse, one of my dad’s favorite activities, even at the age of 80.

One of my favorite parts of these books is the four end pages that include nature facts and resource suggestions. I particularly love all the activity ideas. As one of your former students, I was reminded, in a way, of the word play exercises you assign. Tell us about the process of writing these.

They are sort of like your wordplays, Cordelia!  I loved creating these activities, as a way to help deepen a child’s experience both of the book and the wider natural world.  In designing them, I tried to think about how best to engage the various senses and how to “jump off” the books to allow for experiences outdoors, with the creative arts (drawing, writing, drama), and with science.  These activities and those on publisher Dawn’s website www.dawnpub.com connect with National Science Standards for preschool-grade 3.

Hopefully, the books and activities also help to connect with some of the aims of the “Growing Green” movement.  Parents and educators are recognizing the importance of prying kids from screens and getting them outdoors on a regular basis.  Richard Louv brought this need to national attention in his book Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-deficit Disorder and Todd Christopher offered playful models in The Green Hour: A Daily Dose of Nature for Happier, Healthier, Smarter Kids.  The National Wildlife Federation, American Hiking Society, and National Gardening Association are but a few of the organizations with family- and school-related initiatives. 

So far, Jo has sung her way through the Garden, the Pond and the Woods. Is she going anywhere else?

Maybe a meadow—though the series may end with these three books.  The publisher has also done board books of the series and plans to do audio books.

 Sounds are a huge part of these books. I would have had an especially hard time coming up with some of the animal sounds in your book. Like, what does a chipmunk say? You seem to have figured it out. Did you listen to a lot of animal sounds while writing these books? Did you do a lot of the writing “on location?”

I did, indeed, go back to those childhood places and listen.  And YouTube was a big help in the research.  You know how YouTube is, though, so sometimes I found myself digressing to view whining deer and trampoline-jumping foxes.

The Jo MacDonald series is published by Dawn Publications, a press that specializes in connecting children with the natural world. Did you have a press like this in mind when you created these books?

I had long known of Dawn and admired their books, having purchased several for my daughter when she was little.  I didn’t have Dawn in mind initially but they were the perfect fit.  I have loved working with the editor and art director there and was delighted that they chose the very talented Laura J. Bryant as the illustrator.

You don’t only write picture books but you also write books for older children. Does the writing process feel different when writing picture books?

In some ways, the process feels very different because with the picture books, I often have to think about and carefully revise for the “illustratable moments” and to leave space for the illustrator to work her magic.  

Okay, now for our “3 for 3 Book Questions":

What were your three favorite books from childhood/teen years?

I still have my childhood copies and just had to peek at them, in gratitude, as I answered your question.

Misty of Chincoteague by Marguerite Henry (a gift from Santa in second grade).

Jane’s Blanket by Henry Miller (the first book I ever owned, all to myself—a rarity in a family of 7 kids).

The Golden Treasury of Poetry, edited by Louis Untermeyer (where I first came across the poetry of Elizabeth Bishop).

What three books have you read recently that surprised you?

I loved Wein’s suspenseful Code Name Verity for its fully realized characters and setting and Tan’s Tales of Outer Suburbia for his ability to find the surreal in the most ordinary of things/circumstances and vice versa and his compressed, beautiful language.  And I recently re-read (for fourth or fifth time) Grace Paley’s three collections of short stories and was amazed, all over again, by her playfulness and ability to capture the pulse of life.

What three books influence/d your writing?

Gosh, that’s a hard question because there are so many! So I’m going to re-name my 3 childhood favorites and the “surprising” ones mentioned above.

Thanks again for this lovely visit, Cordelia.  Wishing you and your readers many creative adventures this fall.  Happy Trails!

Mary Quattlebaum is the author of twenty award-winning children’s novels, picture books, and books of poetry, including Pirate vs. Pirate, Jackson Jones and the Puddle of Thorns, Sparks Fly High, The Hungry Ghost of Rue Orleans, and the Jo MacDonald nature series (picture, board, and audio books). Awards include Random House’s Marguerite de Angeli Prize for a middle-grade novel, Parenting Reading Magic Award, Bank Street Best Book, SIBA Best Picture Book, NAPPA Gold Award, and inclusion on numerous state children’s choice lists.  Mary’s stories and poems are published frequently in children’s magazines (Cricket, Spider, Ladybug, Babybug), and she works regularly for educational publisher Gale/Cengage on projects ranging from famous explorers to Ancient Greece. Mary is on the faculty at the Vermont College MFA program in Writing for Children and Young Adults and also a creative thesis and independent study advisor for the Johns Hopkins University graduate program in writing. Mary now reviews children’s books regularly for the Washington Post and Washington Parent and blogs with five writer-teachers at penciltipswritingworkshop.blogspot.com.  She lives with her family, dog, and bird in Washington, DC, and tends a backyard wildlife garden to help sustain native birds and beneficial insects. For more information, visit www.maryquattlebaum.com or contact Mary Quattlebaum directly at 202-362-5621 or MQuattle@aol.com

Thanks for reading!!! If you're local to the area, please let the bookstore know if you would like to place a special order for Jo MacDonald Hiked in the Woods. You can email orders to orders [at] bigbluemarblebooks [dot] com, call (215) 844-1870, or come see us at 551 Carpenter Lane, in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Next up: Be sure to check back on October 22nd when Cordelia interviews Amy Rose Capetta, author of the new, starred review YA sci-fi book, Entangled.

Author Interview: Caroline Carlson

by Cordelia Jensen

Hi, Caroline! Welcome to the Big Blue Marble Bookstore Blog. We are very happy to have you here so close to your book release. Before we get started, here's a synopsis of Magic Marks the Spot:

Hilary Westfield has always dreamed of being a pirate. She can tread water for thirty-seven minutes. She can tie a knot faster than a fleet of sailors, and she already owns a rather pointy sword. There’s only one problem: The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates refuses to let any girl join their ranks of scourges and scallywags.

    But Hilary is not the kind of girl to take no for answer. To escape a life of petticoats and politeness at her stuffy finishing school, Hilary sets out in search of her own seaworthy adventure, where she gets swept up in a madcap quest involving a map without an X, a magical treasure that likely doesn’t exist, a talking gargoyle, a crew of misfit scallywags, and the most treacherous—and unexpected—villain on the High Seas.

MAGIC MARKS THE SPOT is the first installment in the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates trilogy. Books 2 and 3 are forthcoming in 2014 and 2015.

Your book is so funny and when my husband read it aloud to my kids, I could hear them laughing and laughing. Is most of your writing humorous? Did you always write funny stories?

I’m so glad your kids thought the book was funny! I’m always a little worried that I’ll be the only one who thinks my jokes are worth laughing at. But I figure if people only laugh at a quarter of my jokes, I’ll throw in four times as many jokes as I think there should be, and then the book will be just funny enough for readers.

I love writing humor, and I find it very difficult to write fiction that’s not funny. I hate being bored while I’m writing—I’m convinced that if I’m bored while I write a scene, my readers will be bored while they read it. So I write little jokes into the manuscript to keep myself laughing, to keep myself engaged in the story, to keep myself glued to the page in the same way I hope my readers will be.

In college, I spent nearly an entire week trying to write Serious Fiction with no jokes in it. I produced the single most obnoxious, pretentious, and dull piece of writing that has ever been created. It was a crime against fiction, so I don’t do things like that anymore. I do enjoy reading other people’s serious books, though.

There is also a lot of heart to your book. And Hilary herself is very brave. Did you know what Hilary's emotional journey would be from the onset or was it something that changed as you did revisions?

One of the things I struggle with most as a writer is remembering to give my characters rich emotional lives—or any emotions at all, really. Characters’ emotional journeys just don’t come as easily to me as their physical journeys do, and that’s been very problematic, because a character’s emotions should always be informing her external actions and the choices she makes.

When I started working on MAGIC MARKS THE SPOT, I knew that I needed to give Hilary a very simple, straightforward emotional journey that I could state in one sentence so I wouldn’t forget about it. And I knew that I would have to be quite deliberate about working her emotional arc into the book. I decided that Hilary’s emotional object of desire would be her father’s respect; her longing to earn her dad’s approval is what drives her forward. I thought keeping track of this emotional thread would be simple, but it actually grew and changed and became much more complex and interesting as I drafted and revised (and revised and revised) the story.

In revisions with my editor, I did a lot of work to draw out Hilary’s emotions in specific moments. It can be difficult to gauge whether you’re giving your readers too much emotion or too little; there’s a fine line between writing characters who are maudlin and writing characters who are emotionless zombies, and I’m still working on finding that balance in every scene I write.

The gargoyle is my favorite. I read on the blog El Space that the gargoyle came from a story you wrote in high school. Are there any other characters in the book that existed before--either in your mind or on the page?

I’m happy to hear you like the gargoyle! I love him, too. Actually, I have to say that I really like all of my characters, even the villains. Other than the gargoyle, all of them are brand-new for MAGIC MARKS THE SPOT, but some characters were planned more thoroughly than others. I knew a lot about Hilary before I started writing the book, and I knew quite a bit about her father and about her mentor, the pirate Jasper Fletcher. Other characters, like Hilary’s school friend Claire and her governess, Miss Greyson, showed up without any introduction and proceeded to make themselves at home; I had to learn about them as I wrote.

What scene in the book do you feel most proud of? (Without giving too much away . . .) Is it one you struggled to write or one that came to you all at once?

There were two scenes that I rewrote dozens of times each: the second scene in the book, and the scene that takes place at the story’s climax. I’m sure I could rewrite them both another dozen times, but I’m proud of the work I put into them, and I’m happy that I was able to make them work more or less the way I’d hoped they would.

My favorite scene in the book, though, is one that came easily to me. I barely touched it in revisions, so it’s still almost exactly the same as it was in the first draft. It’s the scene that involves a lot of pirates standing in line to interview for a job on a treasure-hunting expedition. It also happens to be the only scene in the book that was written at a coffee shop. I don’t like writing in public places, and I prefer to write at my desk at home, but the only two scenes I’ve ever written in coffee shops (one in MAGIC MARKS THE SPOT and one in its sequel) have been two of my favorites, and they haven’t needed much revising. I may need to rethink my stance on coffee-shop writing.

When you write do you think about a specific kind of reader or audience? Do you think about what you want this reader to take away from the story?

In general, I try to write the kinds of stories that I loved when I was a kid, but I’m not usually consciously aware of my audience while I’m writing. (Now that the book is about to come out, though, I feel extremely conscious of my audience!) I also don’t think consciously about the book’s themes or messages, and I’m always surprised when my editor or another early reader points out the themes that have popped up in my manuscript. Somehow, my own interests and questions about the world manage to sneak onto the page while I’m not looking.

I know you are currently working on sequels to Magic Marks the Spot. This must be very time-consuming. Do you ever do any free writing on the side on other stories or do you strictly stay in the Pirate world?

At the moment, I’m thoroughly in pirate mode: I just turned in my final draft of book 2 in the Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates trilogy, and I’ve been doing some brainstorming as I prepare to write book 3. I do have a couple of other projects I’m looking forward to working on when VNHLP #3 is finished, though, and I’ll occasionally take notes on those projects when I get a good idea that I don’t want to forget.

And now for our "3 for 3" book questions:

1. What were your 3 favorite books from childhood/teen years?

THE DARK IS RISING by Susan Cooper

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE by Diana Wynne Jones

I CAPTURE THE CASTLE by Dodie Smith

2. What 3 books have you read recently that surprised you?

LEGACY OF ASHES: A HISTORY OF THE CIA by Tim Weiner

AKATA WITCH by Nnedi Okorafor

OCD LOVE STORY by Corey Ann Haydu

3. What 3 books influence/s your writing?

HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE (again)

THE THIRTEEN CLOCKS by James Thurber

FEELING SORRY FOR CELIA (and its sequels) by Jaclyn Moriarty

Thanks so much!

Caroline Carlson is the author of MAGIC MARKS THE SPOT, a funny and fantastical seafaring adventure for young readers. She grew up in Massachusetts and holds a BA from Swarthmore College and an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.

Caroline lives with her husband in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, amidst many stacks of books.

Thanks for reading!!! If you're local to the area, please let the bookstore know if you would like to place a special order for Magic Marks the Spot (The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates #1), due out September 10. You can email orders to orders [at] bigbluemarblebooks [dot] com, call (215) 844-1870, or come see us at 551 Carpenter Lane, in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Next up: September 24th, Cordelia interviews her former teacher the charming author Mary Quattlebaum!

Author Interview: Catherine Gilbert Murdock

by Jennifer Sheffield

Hi, Catherine! I’m so excited to see a new book from the Dairy Queen universe -- thanks for bringing it to our attention! Heaven is Paved with Oreos was a lot of fun to read, and full of fascinating images and plot turns.

While D.J. Schwenk doesn’t appear all that often in this book, her character is clearly important to Sarah, the narrator. It was cool to see D.J. from the outside, from the point of view of another character. How did it feel to write this shift? Also, is there another person in your life named D.J., or did you really dedicate a book to one of the characters inside it?

Ever since Dairy Queen, I've wanted to show who D.J. is from *our* perspective rather than simply her self-deprecating voice … so the shift to Sarah's POV was really wonderful. I dedicated the book to D.J. because she's been such an important person in my life. In many ways, she's made me who I am, and I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to thank her. (And, yes, I do understand that she's a fictional character. But as many writers will tell you, fictional characters take on their own voices and power. Writers have much less control than one would think.)

I love Sarah’s voice, which is so different from D.J.’s and yet is imbued with the same sense of being entirely hers. What got you interested in Sarah Zorn as a character with a story of her own? I remember you saying once that you often rewrite scenes from the points of view of other characters, to see how they look different. Did this story come out of that process?

Sarah, I will confess, is the byproduct of my desire to write a book about Rome. Once I decided that, I spent years (literally) searching for a character to narrate the trip. I also had (see question #1) this desire to write a bit more about D.J. With hindsight, Sarah seems the obvious choice, but boy oh boy did it take a while to settle on her. It helped that she was such a minor character within the Dairy Queen trilogy -- I don't think she had a single line of dialogue. This gave me the freedom to really explore her, and make her who *she* is; I didn't have many constraints.

The trip to Rome is full of references to a 150-year-old travel book, Two Lady Pilgrims in Rome, by the intrepid Lillian Hesselgrave. Is this based on a real book? How did you learn about the 7 pilgrim churches?

Oh, Lillian. If I could, I'd write all of Two Lady Pilgrims myself. Sadly, the book doesn't exist outside of my head, though many travel accounts from the era are equally snarky -- the writing of James Jackson Jarves, for example, or the letters of Charlotte Eaton. It seems that most English-speaking visitors were as parochial and misinformed as Miss Hesselgrave. I believe I first learned about the 7 pilgrimage churches from Wikipedia -- one of those little asides that Wikipedia is so good at, "San Paolo fuori le Mura is one of Rome's historic seven pilgrimage churches" kind of thing. So I started digging around -- which was hard, because there's surprisingly little information -- and realized quite quickly that this would be a wonderful organizing principle for the trip. The 7 churches also helped reinforce other story lines, especially Z's. Thank you, 7 churches. Thank you, Miss Hesselgrave, for giving me a way to present the history of Rome.

I spent one day in Rome once (a Monday, which is a bad day for it, as many places are closed) and I was entertained by the occasional flashes of memory when Sarah went someplace I had been – the Spanish Steps, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Coliseum (which she mentioned, though I’m not sure they saw it). What are your experiences with travel abroad, Roman holidays, and pilgrimages, and how have they influenced your writing?

Obviously I had to go to Italy to research the book, so that was a hardship (joke). I went with a friend who'd never been to Rome, and we had the most amazing experiences visiting the seven churches … I'm getting chills, remembering the singing pilgrims in San Paolo, and the Sunday services at San Sebastiano (the church that Sarah doesn't make it to), and the funeral at San Lorenzo. The trip was such an incredibly special experience. If people reading my book then travel to Rome to see these churches … Wow. Wow wow wow.

I've never thought of myself as a pilgrim in the historic Catholic sense of the word. That said, I believe that a pilgrimage like this, even by someone as sniffy as Lillian Hesselgrave or as skeptical as myself, improves the totality of the universe.

I noticed that, along with Oreos, ice cream figures rather heavily in your new book -- as plot device, ice breaker, mood assessment, comic relief… I’ve observed the influence of food on your other books (particularly the fantasy ones), but it generally hasn’t been something so consistent. What role does ice cream play in your own life, and what flavor(s) do you prefer?

It's strange, but I'm not actually that passionate about ice cream, or Oreos. I mean, I like them (WHO WOULDN'T?), but I can live without them, too. Favorite flavors: coffee, vanilla, mint chocolate chip, gianduia (a hazelnut-chocolate gelato that's death) and, oddly, a coconut gelato I had in Paris that I mistakenly ordered thinking that "nois de coco" meant "chocolate nut," not "coco-nut." Surprise! But it was great.

I am passionate about food generally, which you've surmised from my other writings. I enjoy eating only slightly less than I enjoy cooking (because cooking is both cooking + the promise of eating, so it's the best of everything). And I love to write about food, especially when it's so helpful to the story!

In my second read of Oreos, I realized that, like Dairy Queen, this book deals with questions of communication and lack thereof – what people say or don’t say, and how to talk about difficult things. And of course it was funny (and gratifying) for D.J. to be giving advice and being a role model on these matters. Were these conscious decisions, or did they grow organically in the writing?

These were not conscious decisions at all. As I said, much (possibly everything) about Oreos evolved of my desire to write a book about a girl visiting Rome -- specifically visiting San Paolo fuori le Mura and observing pilgrims, and then visiting Santa Maria del Popolo and seeing the Caravaggio. I wanted her to be with an adult who falls apart in front of the Caravaggio so that the girl has to take responsibility. And learning how to talk about difficult things -- how to talk, period -- isn't that what growing up is all about?

The fact that it's D.J. giving advice on communication skills is the cherry on the sundae.

Voilà, more ice cream!
Do you have other projects in the works that you’d like to tell us about?

Last November I returned to Rome (another hardship, I know) with my husband to fact-check Oreos. While visiting our 5th church, I happened to be reading my favorite guidebook that mentioned that walking the 7 churches earned one an indulgence. "Wait a minute," I thought; "If you're supposed to WALK the 7 churches, shouldn't there be, you know, a ROUTE?" So I sniffed and sniffed around the internet, and then when we got home I sniffed around historic guidebooks and church histories, and I couldn't find one. There is no official route! So now I'm writing -- attempting to write -- an adult non-fiction book about the 7 churches and what the route might be. It's quite ambitious. If I think too much about it, I hyperventilate.

And now, for our regular "3 for 3" book questions:

1. What were your 3 favorite books from childhood/teen years?

Such a difficult question! (I just asked my daughter her 3 favorite, and she wailed, "There are so many!") But I'll try:
- The Animal Family by Randall Jarrell. The prose is so simple and so beautiful.
- Watership Down by Richard Adams. Books don't need to be about "important" subjects; they only need to be brilliant.
- Daddy Long-Legs by Jean Webster. The book was published in 1912, but it could have been published yesterday. Totally adorable.

2. What are 3 books that you've read recently that surprised you?

- Heat by Bill Buford. I managed to finish the book without eating everything in our kitchen. I only ate half.
- How to Catch a Bogle by Catherine Jinks. She weaves a history lesson into extraordinary narrative. Amazing.
- No Crystal Stair by Vaunda Micheaux Nelson. I thought it was going to be a typical biography, and it was anything but.

3. What are 3 books that influence/d your work?

- Bloody Jack by L.A. Meyer. The voice. The voice. The voice.
- Rome in the Nineteenth Century by Charlotte Eaton. The real Lillian Hesselgrave; she wraps her insults in gilt-covered ribbon.
- Several groupie autobiographies that I won't list by name because they're rated R, but they really helped me understand the 1960s and where Z was coming from.

Thank you for joining us, Catherine!

You're welcome! This was a huge treat!
___

Catherine Gilbert Murdock lives outside Philadelphia with her husband and two children. She is the author of the Dairy Queen trilogy, as well as Princess Ben and Wisdom's Kiss. Unlike Sarah, Catherine loves poached eggs on pizza -- especially when eating pizza in Rome. Although she likes eating almost anything in Rome … For more information, visit her website: catherinemurdock.com.



Thanks for reading!!! If you're local to the area, please let the bookstore know if you would like to place a special order for Heaven is Paved with Oreos, due out September 3. You can email orders to orders [at] bigbluemarblebooks [dot] com, call (215) 844-1870, or come see us at 551 Carpenter Lane, in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia.

On August 27th, come check out Cordelia's interview with Caroline Carlson, author of the forthcoming Magic Marks the Spot, first in the series The Very Nearly Honorable League of Pirates.

Janet's Five New Arrivals for Toddlers and Beyond

Where Do We Go When We Disappear? by Isabel Minhos Martins (Tate Publishing, $14.95)
Where do socks go? Where do puddles go? "Nothing is too empty a place to go. And besides, if we all go there, it will cease to be nothing in no time. (We can't do that to it.)" Can we?

Alphablocks by Christopher Franceschelli (Abrams, $16.95)
Presented in this block size book is a large cut out of each letter followed by an engaging illustration.

Journey by Aaron Becker (Candlewick Press, $15.99)
With her red crayon, a young girl creates a journey to a magical world and returns home with the help of a mythical bird.

Global Baby GIRLS by Global Fund for Children (Charlesbridge, $6.95)
Proceeds from this board book of baby girls' faces support organizations around the world which provide "opportunities for girls to grow, thrive and be strong".

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Hard Luck (book 8!) by Jeff Kinney (Abrams, $13.95)
Coming in November...Preorder your copy THIS Saturday, August 10 (from 10-1), when the Wimpy Kid Book 8 Mobile comes to your own Big Blue Marble Bookstore! Click here for the Facebook event page.

Quote: David Levithan (and Rachel Cohn)

"We believe in the wrong things, I wrote, using the same pen Boomer had used on his arm. That's what frustrates me the most. Not the lack of belief, but the belief in the wrong things. You want meaning? Well, the meanings are out there. we're just so damn good at reading them wrong.

"I wanted to stop there. But I went on.

"It's not going to be explained to you in a prayer. And I'm not going to be able to explain it to you. Not just because I'm as ignorant and hopeful and selectively blind as the next guy, but because I don't think meaning is something that can be explained. You have to understand it on your own. It's like when you're learning to read. First, you learn the letters. Then, once you know what sounds the letters make, you use them to sound out words. You know that c-a-t leads to cat and d-o-g leads to dog. But then you have to make that extra leap, to understand that the word, the sound, the "cat" is connected to an actual cat, and that "dog" is connected to an actual dog. It's that leap, that understanding, that leads to meaning. And a lot of the time in life, we're still just sounding things out. We know the sentences and how to say them. We know the ideas and how to present them. We know the prayers and which words to say in what order. But that's only spelling.

"I don't mean this to sound hopeless. Because in the same way that a kid can realize what "cat" means, I think we can find the truths that live behind our words. I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don't have the words for it, since we hadn't yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily."

- Dash & Lily's Book of Dares, by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan

This quote actually conflates learning to read with learning to talk, which makes the analogy a little inaccurate. However, while currently in the midst of the latter and heading for the former with my own child, I find the magic moment here still takes my breath away.

Five Books Mariga Liked So Far This Summer

Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made by Stephan Pastis (Candlewick Press, $14.99)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman (William Morrow, $25.99)

The Woman in Black by Susan Hill (Vintage, $14.00)

Exclamation Mark by Amy Krouse Rosenthal (Scholastic Press, $17.99)

Vampires in the Lemon Grove by Karen Russell (Alfred A. Knopf, $24.95)

Mariga Temple-West, July 2013

Janet's Five Suggestions for Hot, Humid Summer Days When Your Brain Turns to Mush and Movement Slows to a Meander

Watch a cat swat at various bugs, watch your garden grow (including the wonderful shapes and sizes of mushrooms and other forms of mold), come to Greene and Carpenter and watch the number of pregnant woman go by...or come and browse in the luxurious air conditioning at 551.

How to be a Cat by Nikki McClure (Abrams Appleseed, $16.95)
Inspired by Bud, an old and blind cat that came with a house the author purchased in 2001, our newest McClure addition appeals to the simple pleasures of cat gazing. McClure adds a kitten to her pages which increases the allure.

Revolutionary Yardscape: Ideas For Repurposing Local Materials To Create Containers, Pathways, Lighting and More by Matthew Levesque (Timber Press, $22.95)
Take a look at this book. It makes me want to take a week off to forage and build.

Beautiful No Mow Yards by Evelyn Y. Hadden (Timber Press, $24.95)
Finally an answer to living in Mt. Airy with sloped yards filled with roots or shade or rocks that we try every year to beautify by mowing, trimming, and pleading.

"Where Did I Come From?" by Peter Mayle (Kensington, $9.95)
So if your child notices and has questions about the new wave of pregnant women and newborns, try answering with this illustrated, no nonsense approach, or the following:

What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg (Seven Story Press, $16.95)
Any cover illustrated with a smiling yellow sperm and a blue smiling egg deserves attention.

Janet Elfant, July 2013

Author Interview: Jess Leader

 by Cordelia Jensen

Hi there, Jess! Delighted to have you here with us today. There are so many things I love about your Middle Grade book, Nice and Mean. Before we gt started, here's a quick plot synopsis:

Marina is mean. Sachi is nice. Marina is Barney's. Sachi is Burlington Coat Factory. It's bad enough that they have to coexist in video class—but now they're being forced to work together on the big semester project. Marina's goal? Expose her wanna-be BFF as a fashion wanna-be to the entire middle school. Sachi's goal? Prove that she's not just another honor-roll Indian student and get people talking. Work together in harmony? Yeah, that would be no. How can Sachi film something meaningful, and Marina, something fabulous, if they're yoked to each other?

One of the many things I love about your book is how it directly addresses power dynamics in female social structures in an authentic way. While reading the book, I had many flashbacks to my own middle school experience and many of the characters also bring to mind kids I worked with professionally. What first moved you to write this story? Was it a story that was brewing in your mind for a long time or did it come to you all at once?

Oh yes, the characters in this story were with me for a while before I wrote it. It actually grew out of another, justifiably shelved novel that focused on—I doubt you’ll guess—Sachi’s new friend Lainey, who is now relegated to the sidelines. (Sorry, Lainey. Hopefully, readers like you anyway.)

After I finished that story, I knew I wanted to continue with Lainey’s world, and I thought I might focus on Marina. Why was she so mean? I wasn’t sure that was enough for a whole novel, but I was also intrigued by the character of Sachi, who had been inspired by an Indian-American student I’d met while student-teaching. The real-life girl was competent, charming, and admired by all, but I wondered if her classmates really knew her, and I wanted to explore that side of her further. Then I hit on the idea of having Sachi and Marina being forced to work together on something they both cared about a lot—a video that could possibly change how people saw them—and voila, Nice and Mean. 

Yes, such a good idea to have them work together on a project. Another thing I really love about the book is that these two very different girls collaborate on a creative endeavor. As a writer, I do feel like I can make a creative connection with someone who is also a writer, even if we don’t have much else in common. Did you know that the Video class was going to be so central to the book from the beginning?

Definitely. There was no way that alpha-girl Marina would have much to do with rule-abiding, gold-star Sachi unless they had a project yoking them together. When I hit on the idea of them being assigned as partners in a video class they have a lot invested in, I knew I had the engine for my story.

A third thing I just love about this book is Marina’s voice. I just really admire that you could write such an initially unlikeable character in an honest way that somehow makes her sympathetic without completely changing her or losing her essence. What was it like to write her voice? I imagine more difficult than writing Sachi’s, or no?

Oh, it was way easier to write in Marina’s voice! Think of it: she’s almost unabashedly obnoxious! Who doesn’t want to let all those zingers fly every once in a while? “Mascara boogers!” “Don’t forget to order a life!” Not only was it easy to come up with those lines; it was fun. Thank you for saying that she’s likable, though. I struggled with that in the early stages, until one of my grad school advisors tasked me with making her more sympathetic. It was a big revelation to me that we need to make our characters vulnerable in some way in order to make the reader like them (thank goodness I went to grad school!) Marina’s vulnerabilities, sadnesses and shortcomings had been clear to me as the writer, but I needed to get those on the page for the reader. I’m glad that it worked for you. 

It definitely did. I did care a lot about both girls and, actually, Elizabeth stuck with me a lot after I read the book. In a way, to me, Elizabeth is the bravest character in the book and she is the one who Marina cares the most about. Have you ever thought about writing Elizabeth’s story?

I never thought of her as being the bravest! She certainly is brave in calling Marina on her drama. No one close to her does that. As for writing a story that focuses on Elizabeth—I consider Elizabeth to be the double of Sachi, just as Sachi’s prickly friend Nicole is a sort of double of Marina (don’t you often see nice people with prickly friends and outright mean people with the nicest girls in the class? It has baffled me for decades.) Anyway, since I feel like I have already explored the plight of the pleaser in Sachi’s chapters, I never considered writing from Elizabeth’s point of view. I’d love to hear if you have anything in mind, though. You could find yourself with a very big Special Thanks…

Ha, okay. I will keep that in mind. Maybe it could be a few years later and these girls could be in high school, and . . . 

Okay, back to the interview: 

Have you had any reader response to this story that has surprised you? 

I’m always surprised when people speculate which character I am more like, Marina or Sachi. They almost always guess wrong. (I’ll never tell!) 

Are you working on any projects now?

Mais oui. Let’s see what I’ll say about it…it’s a mystery in which I use the fact that Prince Charles has hired someone exclusively to draw his bathwater. It’s not a book about bathing, or Prince Charles, but there may be another, fictional prince. 

Awesome!

And now, our “3 for 3” book questions:

1.      What were your 3 favorite books from childhood/teen years?

I suffered a major teenage book drought, but childhood favorites included:

Hail, Hail, Camp Timberwood by Ellen Conford (I was obsessed with going to camp)

And This is Laura, also by Ellen Conford (Laura was psychic!!)

No Flying in the House, by Betty Brock (which I must tell you that Amazon ridiculously characterizes as speculative fiction. It’s about an orphan who can fly, guys.)

2.      What are 3 books you’ve read recently that surprised you?

The Giant’s House, by Elizabeth McCracken (she narrates like the inside of my head!

Bomb: The Race to Build--and Steal--the World's Most Dangerous Weapon (Newbery Honor Book) by Steve Sheinkin (so much historical info made page-turningly compelling!)

A Visitor for Bear and its series by Bonnie Becker, illustrated by Kady McDonald Denton (The characters are so captivating! The lines are exquisite! I am surprised by the depth of my love for a picture book.) (Totally. I love this book and hand sell it all the time at the bookstore.)

3.      What are 3 books that influence/d your writing?

The Secret History, by Donna Tartt (moody, detail-rich, amoral)

The Boy Book, by E. Lockhart (true, succinct, funny and surprising)

J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books. (Yes, I know they’re blockbusters, but in the midst of these elaborate plots, Ron will say something gloomy or Hermione will lash the others with Hogwarts, a History, and I’ll just burst out laughing, then cry when something sad happens. Plus, Rowling never stops adding gems to her wizarding world, especially with food. Not many books can claim such richness.)

Thanks so much, Jess! 

Thank you! I hope to visit you at The Blue Marble someday and buy all these great books you’ve been highlighting!!

__

Jessica Leader is an author and teacher living in Washington, DC. Nice and Mean is her first novel. It won a spot on the American Booksellers' Association's Kids' IndieNext List, which called it "Well-written, insightful, and fun to read." It was also a CYBILs nominee and an SCBWI Crystal Kite finalist for the midsouth. It is all made up, except for the part about the apron. For more details, including this apron business, you can visit Jessica online at www.jessicaleader.com or on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/jessicaleaderauthor.

Thanks for reading!!! If you're local to the area, please let the bookstore know if you would like to place a special order for NICE AND MEAN. You can email orders to orders [at] bigbluemarblebooks [dot] com, call (215) 844-1870, or come see us in the Mt. Airy neighborhood of Philadelphia at 551 Carpenter Lane.  

On August 13th, come check out Jen's interview with Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of the Dairy Queen series, including the forthcoming Heaven is Paved with Oreos.

Cordelia's Five "You Should Read These" Recently Published Middle Grade & Young Adult Books

Eleanor & Park by Rainbow Rowell (St. Martins Griffin, $18.99)
Read this critically-acclaimed, intense love story about an unlikely pair of misfit teens in the 1980s who find each other on the school bus.

The Whole Stupid Way We Are by N. Griffin (Atheneum, $16.99)
Read this heartwrenching, beautifully-written story of a life-altering friendship in one intensely cold winter. (Look for our author interview with N. Griffin on the bookstore blog.)

The Disenchantments by Nina LaCour (Speak, $8.99)
Read this fun, energetic, coming-of-age road trip story about a less-than-talented girl band and their artistically talented boy friend, Colby.

Parched by Melanie Crowder (Harcourt, $15.99)
Read this lyrical, sparse book about a girl, boy and dog all struggling to survive in a land without water. (Look for our author interview with Melanie Crowder on the bookstore blog.)

Rogue by Lyn Miller-Lachmann (Nancy Paulson Books, $16.99)
Read this sensitive portrayal of a girl with undiagnosed Asperger's Syndrome who imagines herself as a superhero, and befriends a boy who has secrets of his own. (Look for our recent author interview with Lyn Miller-Lachmann on the bookstore blog.)

Cordelia Jensen, June 2013

Author Interview: Amy Ignatow

by Jennifer Sheffield

Hi, Amy! Thanks so much for taking the time to do this interview. I've loved following the adventures of Lydia and Julie through the five books currently making up the Popularity Papers, and I'm looking forward to the sixth!

What prompted you to write about kids in this age group? What do you learn from them as they change and grow?

Before writing for middle grade I was writing a weekly web comic for adults called "Ig City." The comic got the attention of my literary agent who suggested that middle grade might be a good fit for my work. I had never before considered it but found myself really drawn to writing for kids and the ideas began to flow. Writing Lydia and Julie has made me think back on when I was their age and I feel incredibly grateful that I was lucky enough to have made wonderful friends. True friendship is incredibly important at any age but good friends are especially vital when you begin to take those first wobbly baby steps towards independence.

I can tell you've put in lots of time researching these books, particularly The Rocky Road Trip, with all its detail and Papa Dad's "fun facts". What specific research was required for each book? What parts have you liked or disliked?

Thank you for noticing! My husband is a research junkie, and in 2010 we drove from Philly to Denver and back, stopping in different cities to do book events and visit old friends (see the archives of my blog if you want to hear about what happened to us in St. Louis...) Mark had a ball preparing for the trip and printed out Fun Facts for every state that we visited, and that along with other trips that we've taken really inspired The Rocky Road Trip. But I also love learning about Norwegian folklore and Eskrima and London and nearly anything and everything. My brain is crammed with esoteric trivia for future stories (and for my own amusement).

I love Julie's and Lydia's families (and the way they seem to be family to each other), and I want to offer my personal thanks for Julie's two dads. Daddy and Papa Dad are important characters in all of the books, and I really appreciate the fact that they're accepted as given and unremarkable by most of Julie's peers and by most of her extended family. How did you decide to include them in the books, and what kinds of responses do you get from readers? Did you find any resistance during the publishing process?

For the story to work I needed Julie to be the sort of kid who feels no pressing need to venture beyond the comfort of her family and her best friend, so it made sense for Julie to be the adopted only child of two gay men. As anyone who has been through the process knows, it's difficult and expensive to adopt. It's even more difficult for a gay couple to adopt, so you've got these two amazing dads who have worked very hard and moved to the burbs to give their kid a great life. Julie is the center of their world and they're incredibly protective of her. Conversely, Lydia and her sister Melody have been raised by a single working mom (their father isn't introduced until the fourth book when [MINI SPOILER!] it's discovered that he's not very kind). With a gothy teenage sister who attracts all the attention by simply being her pierced self, Lydia has to work to get noticed, and drags Julie into her ambitions. This sets them on their quest to understand "popularity."

Could I have achieved these distinct personalities with more "traditional" families? Maybe. But even before I worked out all the reasons why, having a gay couple and a single mom just made sense for the story. I'm happy to say that Amulet never once balked at my decision to give Julie two fathers, and most readers are more interested in Lydia's hair color than they are in Julie's dads. I get the occasional basic question, Why does Julie have two fathers? and the rare unpleasant email, HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO EXPLAIN THIS TO MY INNOCENT CHILD? but on the whole most people don't think it's that big a deal. Gay couples are moving to the suburbs and having children and barbeques and yard sales and holiday parties and trouble finding a good gutter repair service like everyone else.

The bio in the fifth book mentions you spent some time as a back-up singer in a rock band. How long were you in the band? How old were you then? How did this experience shape Lydia and Julie's Awesomely Awful band? What was the age range of your audiences?

I was in two bands in my twenties. One was not so much of a band as a goofy acapella act, and we used to do open mic nights and also open for other bands. Despite our unwillingness to learn how to play instruments or read music we were actually quite good and were once invited to be guests on a Top 40 morning show. For a few years we also sang backup for a wonderful band called Todd Young & His Rock Band, but slowly drifted away when things like marriage and kids happened. Now Todd's kids hang out with mine. Maybe one day they'll start a band?

But the Macrame Owls in The Awesomely Awful Melodies are more akin to the garage bands I used to see when I was in high school--some cute boys abusing their guitars and our eardrums.

I like Julie and Lydia's friend Jen, whom I'm drawn to partly because of her quiet randomness and partly because of her name. How do you choose your characters' names?

I'm quite lazy about choosing names. Usually, if a name doesn't magically come to me I'll scroll through my friends on Facebook for inspiration. But I've learned that I have to be careful with that--the character of Jonathan Cravens is named after a couple of people who are very dear to me. He was kind of a benign presence in the second book but by the end of the third book he turned into a bit of a weenie, and I had some apologizing to do.

I'm so glad that you like the Jen character. She represents those lovely weirdos who even at a young age genuinely don't give a hoot about the whole popularity game. We could all be a little more like Jen.

Because Julie is such an excellent artist, I generally assume that her pictures are (with some obvious exceptions) reasonably accurate. How does her drawing style differ from yours? Are there ways in which you feel she depicts herself differently from the way she depicts others?

I think that Julie is secretly self-conscious about the size of her nose. There's no way it's actually that large. As for the style, if I were drawing it as me instead of as an 11-year-old I'd never use Crayola markers and pencils to color them in. It's a lot more work than just using ink or a computer. I need a helper monkey just to sharpen pencils.

Please tell us about your creative process. Do you work on the writing and the drawing together as you go, or sequentially? Does the story creation happen more in one mode than the other? How do you plan the pages and presentation?

First, I write a very detailed outline. My editor reads it and either gives me notes or a go-ahead. Then I write a script describing the text and the illustrations for the first twenty or so pages and when I'm done I start sketching out each page. Then I ink, then I color, then I write more, and sketch, and ink, and color, and the book begins to form. Once I'm done with the writing and the sketching and the inking and the coloring I scan everything, use the computer to fix mistakes, and then my editor gets a hold of it. Then revisions, and more revisions, and copy-edits, and discussions about the cover, and the title page, and polishing everything until it meets with everyone's approval.

And now for our "3 for 3" book questions:

1. What were your 3 favorite books from childhood/teen years?

The Brothers Lionheart, by Astrid Lindgren, Ronia the Robber's Daughter, also by Astrid Lindgren, and The Secret History by Donna Tartt (which is definitely NOT a kid's book, but I was obsessed with it when I was a teenager) (still am, truth be told, with all three books)

2. What are 3 books that you've read recently that surprised you?

Savvy, by Ingrid Law, is SO SO GOOD. Also Before You Reach Me, by Rebecca Stead. But in all honesty, most of what I read nowadays is stuff like But Not the Hippopotamus by Sandra Boynton (which I love).

3. What are 3 books that influence/d your work?

This is sort of a tricky question because I tend to pick up influences like a great big sponge. But if pressed I'd say Gnomes, by Wil Huygen and Rien Poortvliet (talk about your research journal), Welcome to the Monkey House, by Kurt Vonnegut, and Miss Piggy's Guide to Life.

Thank you for joining us!

Amy Ignatow is the author and illustrator of The Popularity Papers series. She is a graduate of Moore College of Art and Design and can fold many origami cranes. Amy lives in Philadelphia with her husband, Mark, their daughter, Anya, and their cat, Mathilda, who is an unrepentant gnawer of colored pencils.

Look for The Popularity Papers book 6: Love and Other Fiascos, coming out this October!

On July 16th, come check out Cordelia's upcoming interview with Jessica Leader, author of Nice and Mean.