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1. What initially drew you to write for young readers?
When I was in third grade, I remember being given a copy of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. I read the first chapter before bed that night, and I was enthralled - so much so, in fact, that the next morning, I got out of bed, knelt on the floor, and shoved my face against our heater vent for five minutes, just so that when I told my mom I was sick, her forehead check would register a "fever." It worked, I got to stay home from school, and I spent the whole day reading the rest of that book. I can also recall with vivid clarity every voice my father used for the characters in The Hobbit as he read it aloud to us; many are the same voices I've used when reading it to my classes over the years. In short, I fell in love with stories when I was a kid, so I figure it makes sense that I'd want to keep running around on that same playground as an adult. Or, you know, maybe my sense of humor failed to evolve past the fifth grade. Either way.
2. What message/s do you hope to share in your work?
I love to write stories wherein kids are powerful uniquely because they're kids. Whether it's something as simple as their size (Cleo Porter escaping her apartment because she's small enough to wriggle her way through the chute) or as nuanced as their perspective on the world (Nicki Demere being able to help the Trevors because she understands how to blend into a family she's never met), I want my readers to be able to see that there is validity and strength in childhood itself; it's not just the time you have to endure before the world decides you matter.
3. Please tell us about your latest book (and any future work you’d like to share about).
My latest is The Ghoul of Windydown Vale; it came out in January. It's my first mystery/horror novel for upper middle grade readers. There's monsters, mud, mayhem, murders, and the kind of triple-cross plot twists that are a nightmare to keep track of on plotting boards but are (hopefully) a heck of a lot of fun to read. The kid at the center of the maelstrom is Copper Inskeep. By day, he helps his parents run the local inn (which happens to also be a giant treehouse - best way to keep your establishment from sinking into the swamp). At night, he puts on a gruesome costume and goes out into the bogs surrounding the Vale; Copper IS the Ghoul of Windydown Vale. His goal? To scare folk away from the real dangers of the swamp. It's going well enough, until a terrified girl shows up in town, claiming her daddy was dragged away by the ghoul the night before. That's a problem for our protagonist, because Copper? He wasn't out last night. The mystery deepens when the girl's pleas for help finding her father are answered by the world's most ruthless and successful monster hunter. He rides into Copper's town promising to rid Windydown Vale of its "ghoul problem" once and for all. Great news...if you're not The Ghoul. If you like fast-paced stories with surprises and scares, The Ghoul is for you.
This summer, I'll be working on my sixth book. I can't say too much about it, except that it's a wild, globe-spanning fantasy that questions everything we think we know about our universe. Go big or go home, eh?
4. Any message for young writers and creators — and the teachers who work with them?
For young writers: find people to read your stuff. Get them to give you honest feedback. Enter contests and submit stuff to your school's student lit magazine. Start a writing group. There's this notion that writing is a solo act - the lonely author clackin' away on a typewriter in an attic somewhere. And there's some of that, to be sure. But that's not where or how authors improve. We improve via critique, and the more you can get, the better, especially so that you can hone two skills in particular: 1) How to accept critique gracefully (so that people will want to keep giving you helpful feedback), and 2) How to know when someone's critique is utter nonsense that you can feel free to summarily ignore.
For teachers: Give kids that meaningful feedback. That "GOOD JOB!" stamp you have? The one you order a new inkpad from SchoolSMART for every year? Save it for spelling tests and math homework. On your students' writing, tell them what they've done well, even if it's just constructing understandable sentences. Then tell them how to improve. Since judging writing is intrinsically subjective, lean into that, because your students love you and want to do well for you. Start comments with, "For me, this would've been clearer if..." or "I love it when stories like yours..." or "I had trouble understanding what you meant when you..." When kids know they have a caring, vested audience, they'll rise...indeed, they'll rEVise...to the occasion.
5. How has your work as a teacher influenced your work?
I sincerely hope my time with my students has allowed me to write characters that seem grounded and real, even if the circumstances I put them in are as outrageous as possible (see above re: The Ghoul of Windydown Vale). Simply put, kids are weird, and I try to page homage to that weirdness every chance I get. Ask a class of eighteen fifth graders to line up to go to PE, and at least one of them will, while standing there, use her hair to make a fake mustache, lean obnoxiously close to the kid in front of her, and whisper, "A bowl of Wheatus prevents diabeetus..." into the other kid's ear. Now, of course there are regional, cultural, and nonsensical variations on that theme, but the basic premise holds. I try to capture some of that...magic? Whimsy? Entropy?...in each of my novels, no matter how dark things get.
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