Coming Soon to a Blog Near You

If you haven't yet had a chance to grab Sara Lewis Holmes' newest book The Wolf Hour the following posts and her various guest post/interviews around the web will raise this book on your TBR list.

Sara's talking music with picture book writer Liz Garton Scanlon. Calling it a "musical novel by a lyrical poet," Liz's interview arrives just in time for Poetry Friday. Liz asks Sara questions which are both deep and broad, and, frankly, Sara says, have her learning more about her book post-publication than she knew going in! That sort of interest and scrutiny is what we can all only hope for in our book interviews!

Sara's earlier interviews on THE WOLF HOUR can be found at Laura Purdie Salas' site, where she also talks of the music in poetry; at Charlotte's Library where she unpacks some of the deeply intriguing quotes from the book; Maureen Eicher's review at 'By Singing Light' and our interview here at Wonderland, which kicked off this slowly perambulating blog tourback in September.

Cheers, and happy reading!

Don't Miss...!

If you haven't yet had a chance to grab Sara Lewis Holmes' newest book The Wolf Hour the following posts and her various guest post/interviews around the web will raise this book on your TBR list.

This week, Sara's talking music with poet Laura Salas. Interestingly, the poetry in THE WOLF HOUR is something that Sara, a poet herself, excels at -- but isn't something you'd ordinarily expect in a fairytale, which is what makes it significant and fun.

Sara's interviews elsewhere can be found at Charlotte's Library where she unpacks some quotes from the book; Maureen Eicher's review at 'By Singing Light' and our interview here at Wonderland, which kicked it all off is right here.

Cheers, and happy reading!

Starring Sara Lewis Holmes

It's Day One of The Wolf Hour blog tour!

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Welcome, my little lambs, to the Puszcza. It's an ancient forest, a keeper of the deepest magic, where even the darkest fairy tales are real. Here, a Girl is not supposed to be a woodcutter, or be brave enough to walk alone. Here, a Wolf is not supposed to love to read, or be curious enough to meet a human. And here, a Story is nothing like the ones you read in books, for the Witch can make the most startling tales come alive. All she needs is ...
      A Girl from the village,
            A Wolf from the forest,
               & A Woodcutter with a nice, sharp axe.

So take care, little lambs, if you step into these woods. For in the Puszcza, it is always as dark as the hour between night and dawn -- the time old folk call the Wolf Hour. If you lose your way here, you will be lost forever, your Story no longer your own. You can bet your bones.

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And with a bit of a shiver, come in! We bid you Welcome!

Sara Lewis Holmes has been a very dear friend since 2007, when Tanita joined she and five other women in a year-long poetry challenge which culminated in a National Poetry Month Crown of Sonnets way back in 2008. This poetry effort then turned from a trial experiment for one poem into a yearly, year-long delight of poetry and wordplay. We expected good things when we reviewed Sara's second book, and when Sara joined our writing group, we were pleased to indulge ourselves in talking craft and sharing stories. Today, we celebrate the release day of Sara's fourth book, and we're excited to tell you all about it! Well... all about it within reason, anyway. We're focusing on writing details, and the craft of fiction today, and working hard to present NO SPOILERS here, so you may find this interview vague on points of plot. -- No worries, though! You'll have all the plot you'd like when you pick up your own copy. So, without further introduction, we're thrilled to welcome author and poet Sara to the Wonderland Treehouse!

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Finding Wonderland: Hi Sara! Let's get right into it - THE WOLF HOUR is a "Once upon a time" type of tale, but stories don't always actually start that way for writers. What was the starting point of this story for you? What initially inspired you to write this book, and which character(s) sprang to mind first?

Sara Lewis Holmes: I’m more like a magpie than a spider when it comes to story. I don’t spin a carefully symmetric web of plot and character out of my guts, as much as I would love to say I do. Rather, I collect shiny baubles over the years, hoarding and obsessing over them until I figure out how to make a story out of all the strange beauty.

For THE WOLF HOUR, those glittering pieces included: a conversation with a stranger about why some stringed instruments howl when played, the image of a child clinging to a tree rather than be forced to lessons, a rotund china pig given to me by my mother-in-law, and a former piano teacher whose entire house bloomed with pink.

Those elements were in my magpie’s nest of a journal but it took an encounter with a wolf to set them free. Not a real wolf, although I’d seen one, in a carefully fenced wolf park, and listened to one howl in a chilling YouTube video, and read about many in both fairy tale and fact—-but one whose voice stole into the forest of words crowding my head, and told me that if I wanted to write about wolves, he would be my guide. His name was Martin, and he had been raised by books, and knew everything about everything—-except the human heart. I could not help but love him, and be terrified for his future, too.

Finding Wonderland: Okay, we LOVE that you based this story on actual items that you were GIVEN! Story magpies! How cool a concept! So, let's talk readers --

Despite their often bleak or violent content, fairytales are traditionally seen as stories intended for children. What's the optimum age of your target reader for THE WOLF HOUR? Who is this book for? Who, if anyone, is it not for?

Sara Lewis Holmes: Age and readership questions are hard. Do you like to shiver and chew your lip ragged as you read? Do you like a story that twists and turns and doesn’t go where you expect it to? Do you enjoy a story that KNOWS it’s a story, and might even challenge you to think about your own Story and whether you like your place in it? If you do, even if you aren’t in the 8-12 age range for this book…read on!

Finding Wonderland: Ah. So, what books are for you? What are a few of your favorite fairytales, and why do you love them?

SLH: East of the Sun and West of the Moon has to be the most lovely title ever for a fairy tale. And in it, the girl rescues her prince, instead of the other way round. Also, there’s a princess with a nose that is “three ells” long! I’m also fond of works that focus on the told nature of stories, such as William J. Brooke’s three part TELLER OF TALES book series, as well as the 2000 American/British TV miniseries, ARABIAN NIGHTS, adapted by Peter Barnes. Like a hall of mirrors, these “stories within stories” crack open my view of the world. Finally, I’d add that all fairy tales are, to a fault, weirdly defiant of the world’s conventions. They are like poetry in that way, and I love their wildness.

Wonderland: I'm going to have to look up what how long an 'ell' is!

Often, setting is itself a character in a novel, acting as an active metaphor. Would you say that you consciously, or unconsciously used THE WOLF HOUR'S setting to speak to the reader? Do you consider this novel a "fairytale mashup”?

SLH: The Wolf Hour, in legend, is the hour between darkness and dawn; it’s the hour more people are said to be born into this world and more people leave it than any other —-and, if you are like me, you are often awake then, wondering if you will ever get your Story right. So I would say that part of the “setting” of my novel deals with such fairy tale time—-how twisty it is, and how “once upon a time” can stretch to many, many days and nights, and how being in charge of your own time means being in charge of your own story. Easy to say, difficult beyond measure to do.

The other part of the setting is the deep, dark forest. In Polish, the word for such a place is “Puszcza,” and yes, I absolutely wanted the reader to feel that such a place was both desirable and dangerous. I wanted the reader to feel its call, as Magia does, and to discover the Stories that dwell there. I think it’s those various Stories that make me say THE WOLF HOUR is not a re-telling but “a fairy tale mashup.” It’s a story about the power of stories, and how everyone tries to cast you in the story that is easiest for them to hear—-but not necessarily the one you want to live in. How do you fight that?

Wonderland: How one combats someone trying to recast their Story is something few tales look at quite so directly, so this is very interesting.

Those of us who know you through your work know that you delight in Shakespearean stories, and acting as a tool for self-understanding. How did your appreciation for the Bard and your interest and skill in theater help to shape this novel?

SLH: Reading Shakespeare taught me that disguise is uncommonly common, death is a persistent beast, and love is found in unexpected places. His plays are filled with a more than a touch of unbelievable—-a trait I admire in novels such as COSMIC by Frank Cottrell Boyce, THE WHITE DARKNESS by Geraldine McCaughrean, and NATION by Terry Pratchett—-not to mention most fairy tales. The Bard was also a master of the “story within a story” trope, which I find irresistible, as I mentioned earlier, and he absolutely inspired me to make up words as needed, and to not be afraid to pair utter despair with low comedy. (I think of the pigs in THE WOLF HOUR as a villainous take on his “rude mechanicals.”)

Finally, I am ever grateful to the brilliant artists at the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton, VA, who hold a Shakespeare camp for adults every summer and stage the most compelling theater I know. Their work informs mine in ways I cannot explain, but I do know that they remind me that Magic Happens. Every Day.

Wonderland: All hail the magic, indeed. We never quite know how it works... but sometimes, it's enough that it does.

So, softball question: If you could write yourself into a fairytale, which one would it be? Would you prefer a role which gave you Power or Guile?

SLH: Puss in Boots is a master class in Guile, or How to Make Something from Nothing. As a writer, I identify. However, if I had to pick some boots to fill, I prefer seven-league boots. The power to travel great distances without burning carbon fuel would be both practical and fun.

Wonderland: Ooh, good answer. Definitely, we writers must use all we've all got to get ourselves as far along as we can!

So, while you studied the Bard, my studies were in 19th c. British and American lit... and the 19th century canon uses a lot of intrusive narrator/direct address authorial comment to help readers gain a deeper understanding of the characters, but authorial insertion is largely absent from modern novels. What prompted you to use that 'Dear reader' sort of narrative technique in THE WOLF HOUR? Do you think more novels would benefit from that sort of "breaking the fourth wall" technique, in order to allow readers to come closer to the action?

SLH: My editor, Cheryl Klein, and I talked at length about the challenge of signaling to a reader HOW to read this story. I needed to convey that all was not going to proceed as normal, and that the path ahead would be scary and often double-back on itself before coming to a conclusion. After all, the novel is ABOUT how to find and live in your own story…and how unbelievably hard that can be. So we decided that a direct reader address would set the right tone for the three-stranded tale that would follow, and that the voice would re-occur at the beginning of each section, to both invite the reader forward, and to chillingly warn them of the darkness ahead. This is a choice, obviously, that most novels don’t need, so I wouldn’t recommend it often. (I found it enormously fun to write, however.)

Wonderland: Many American kids have never heard of Scottish author Andrew Lang's 12-volume "Coloured" Fairy Books. Which one is your favorite? Do you own them all? How were you introduced to them?

SLH: The only one I own is The Green Fairy Book, and it sits on my desk along with my other favorite fairy/fantasy books. I was introduced to the Lang Fairy Books by finding them mysteriously lined up in the non-fiction section of the children’s room of Lawson McGee Library in Knoxville, TN. I mostly went to the non-fiction section to hunt down books on magic tricks and codes and secret languages, so it was a surprise to find stories here, too. Especially stories that couldn’t be true: tales of iron shoes that tortured their owners; of Winds who offered you soaring rides along with their down-to-earth advice; and of children who were loved less than coin shine and left to die. Casual cruelty and stunning beauty lived side by side. Animals and people fought and slept and morphed from one form to the other. Nothing made sense, and everything did. And most of all, these tales seemed to offer a glimpse into the dangers of “adult” life. I was utterly fascinated.

Wonderland: I can see why! So, from language hints, we can tell The Wolf Hour takes place in a specific geographical setting, in a fairytale Poland. First, what prompted your fairytale Eastern European setting, especially now? Additionally, how did you select the stories that you used, and what prompted you to choose them?

SLH: Originally, the humans in the novel were a default English family, but I questioned if that was laziness on my part. Stories are everywhere, and even though most of our American fairy tales come to us filtered through Western European tellings, stories such as Little Red Riding Hood and The Three Little Pigs are told the world over. So why not draw on my Polish heritage and research and feature a fairy-tale Polish family encountering these tales instead—-although perhaps in a form they hadn’t seen before? (Miss Grand, however, DOES retain her English name, which might tell the reader a thing or two about the specific tellings of the Stories she controls.)

Additionally, when I chose the Stories to “mashup,” I was looking for those tales which featured a Wolf. (To my surprise, there were not as many as you would think.) And then I let those stories “live” in the forest—-in the Polish Puszcza—-where they could cause trouble for Magia and the townfolk of Tysiak—-at least until they could confront those tales, and face up to their own hunger in creating them. Hunger, by the way, is a big theme in the book—-hunger for what you can’t have, hunger for the truth, hunger for safety, and hunger for home. (You see now why I needed stories in which a Wolf swallows people and Pigs employ a giant cooking pot?)

Wonderland: Ah! What a fun way to explore your own heritage and metaphor at the same time. SO, to wrap up our time with a cheater question - and I'm kind of cheating, because AF and I are in your writing group... but, every writer comes to the end of the first (few hundred) drafts with bits of the story that end up on the cutting room floor. What were the bits of THE WOLF HOUR which you needed to cut that you wish you could have kept?

SLH:In an early draft, I had one more fairy tale that was active in the Puszcza—-that of the Little Lambs whose Mother tells them to keep the door locked while she is away. Then the Wolf comes to their cottage, and to fool the wooly wee ones into letting him in, he dips his paws in white flour and pretends to be her. Holy Horrors, that fairy tale scared me when I was a kid! I still remember the picture of the rangy wolf with his snowy paws on the door’s transom to this day. But…the novel didn’t need another cast of characters, so those Lambs only make a teeny-tiny appearance now---for when the Story voice addresses the readers, this is its endearment for them: my Little Lambs. I hope we will all be frightened (and saved) together.

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"Fairy tales are precarious places for girls and wolves. In a brash, dazzling break with tradition, Sara Lewis Holmes arms a woodcutter's daughter and a sensitive wolf pup with a means of defense against the old familiar roles that threaten to swallow them whole. The story of how they come together to rewrite fate is bewitchingly delicious; you'll gobble it up." -- Christine Heppermann, author of Poisoned Apples: Poems for You, My Pretty

Thank you, Sara, for your quirky, funny, thoughtful comments, and thank you, Readers, for joining us on the first stop of The Wolf Hour tour!

Friends, you do not want to miss this dreamy, scary, funny, unusual retelling of Little Red Riding Hood and the Three Little Pigs, all tied up in a very Sara sort of collision. Readers who enjoyed last year's THE GIRL THAT DRANK THE MOON may find this is right up their alley. Stay tuned for more chat with Sara Lewis Holmes through October at Charlotte's Library, with Maureen at By Singing Light, with Laura at Writing the World for Kids, with Tricia at The Miss Rumphius Effect & Liz Scanlon's blog.

Images used in this interview courtesy of the author. You can find THE WOLF HOUR by Sara Lewis Holmes at an online e-tailer, or at a real life, independent bookstore near you!

AUTHOR INTERVIEW! Sarah Beth Durst on THE GIRL WHO COULD NOT DREAM

A little while ago I had the privilege of reading Sarah Beth Durst's latest fantasy novel for middle grade readers, The Girl Who Could Not Dream--the tale of a girl whose parents distill, bottle, and sell dreams out of a secret room in their secondhand bookstore. In my review, I wrote:

Durst's books always charm me with their imaginativeness, and this one is no exception. How wonderful, to bring all sorts of dream monsters and fears and mythical beasts to life, from frighteningly surreal Dali-esque creatures to good old flying unicorns. But, hands down, Monster is the best monster. I'll leave it to you to read the book and find out why.

It's got such a fun premise, set in a world very like our own, and I was thrilled to get to ask the author some of my burning questions about the book. She always comes up with such quirky, unique, highly individual fantasy stories, whether writing for MG, YA, or even adult fiction, and here at Finding Wonderland we've been lucky to host multiple interviews to find out more about the story behind the story.

With no further ado, here it is! Thank you to Sarah Beth Durst for agreeing to stop by again and share this with us.

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FW: The Girl Who Could Not Dream is so imaginative, set in a world where dreams can be distilled, bottled and sold. Where did the idea for this story start? With a character, a phrase, an idea?

It started with a wish, actually. "I wish I could remember my dreams."

Sometimes I have these dreams filled with dragons and aliens and telepathic dolphins, and in them I'm heroic and wise and witty and a lot more athletic... then I wake, and the dream slips away like a cloud dispersing in the wind. I often wish I could bottle up my best dreams and save them for later, to replace all the boring missed-the-train dreams.

So that's where this book started: with the wish to bottle dreams. That led to the idea of the dream shop -- a secret store where you can buy, bottle, and sell dreams. And to Sophie, whose parents own the shop and whose best friend is a cupcake-loving monster who came out of one of those bottled dreams.

FW: What were some of the challenges to writing this story? Was it difficult to strike a balance between fun/charming and scary? Did you worry at all about making it too scary or not scary enough?

One of the things I like best about writing for kids is that you can be silly and serious in the same story, even in the same moment. You can have a moment that makes you cry, and you can have a unicorn that poops rainbows.

Balancing those moments was very important to me, and it was something that I paid a lot of attention to as I was writing this book -- I wanted this book to have both, because I think life can often be funny and scary and silly and sad, all at the same time.

FW: With so many books out there that focus on dysfunctional families, it was refreshing to read a story with strong, loving family bonds, in which Sophie and her parents are a team. Was this a conscious choice?

Yes, it was. You see a lot of stories out there about characters who are strong because of pain in their past -- and I do think that's a very valid and powerful narrative structure -- but in The Girl Who Could Not Dream, I wanted to play with a character who came from a safe place... and see what would happen when she took her first step outside that familiar safe haven. I wanted to see what she'd do if everything she valued was threatened.

FW: Sophie and her friends (dream-world and real-world) seem to have a lot of potential for further adventures. Are you planning to write any other books set in this world, or with the same characters?

I don't have any immediate plans for sequels, but I have to admit that I miss Sophie and Monster and the others, so who knows what the future will bring...

Monster in particular was so much fun to write. Usually, for me, characters develop during the course of writing the story -- it takes me numerous pages to discover their voice and learn more about them -- but Monster appeared fully formed from chapter one. It felt like he plopped down on my desk and said, "Tell my story! And give me a cupcake."

FW: What are you working on right now—what's coming up next?

Right now, I'm working on an epic fantasy series for adults (and teens) entitled THE QUEENS OF RENTHIA, about bloodthirsty nature spirits and the women who can control them. They will be published by Harper Voyager, starting with THE QUEEN OF BLOOD on September 20th. I'm very, very excited about them!

Thanks so much for interviewing me!

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You can read more about Sarah Beth Durst and her work on her website--including a sneak peek at The Queen of Blood!

Guest Post: Elizabeth May On Writing Faeries and Creating Monsters

Today we are excited to host a guest post by the author of The Falconer Trilogy, Elizabeth May. We're concluding an action-packed blog tour schedule that includes the following:

Tuesday, 6/21/2016: The Reader's Antidote
Wednesday, 6/22/2016: Tales of the Ravenous Reader
Thursday, 6/23/2016: Once Upon a Twilight
Friday, 6/24/2016: Mundie Moms
Saturday, 6/25/2016: Fiction Fare
Sunday, 6/26/2016: Cracking the Cover
Monday, 6/27/2016: Stuck in YA Books

Without any further ado, here is Elizabeth's guest post shedding insight onto her inspiration and writing process when it comes to writing faeries and monsters...

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All images are provided courtesy of
the publisher and author.

The fae are an incredible example of how beauty does not necessarily mean goodness. They’re romanticized due to their otherworldly good looks, and their sexual allure is, literally, written into their legends. But more than that, faeries are interesting to write about because their moral ambiguity is a feature of their mythology. They are quick to offend, and very, very quick to resort to punishment and murder.

In Katharine Briggs’s book The Vanishing People: Fairy Lore and Legends, which I used a great deal for researching my series, The Falconer Trilogy, she has an entire chapter devoted to the morality of fae. She concludes her analyses with a statement I kept turning over in my head as I wrote my books: “We are dealing with a pendulous people . . . whose mirth is often hollow and whose beauty is precarious and glamorous. From such no great compassion can be expected” (p. 161).

Briggs draws a comparison between faeries and humans being equally morally ambiguous, and this is an idea I kept coming back to: what would a human be like if they never aged, couldn’t die, and watched as other creatures lived and died and lived and died through the centuries? What kind of monster would that create?

A big part of The Falconer Trilogy is an exploration of what creates the conditions for monstrosity, and in what conditions they’re reversible. In The Falconer, Aileana slaughters faeries because she feels justified at first (one killed her mother; they also murder people), but realizes that in doing so, she’s become something of a monster herself. Her love interest, Kiaran, is a faery with a very awful past (revealed in The Vanishing Throne), who finds himself becoming more like a human as he begins to feel for her.

My trilogy is, at its heart, like any fairy story: monsters are neither inherently good nor bad; they’re created by circumstance.

The excerpt I’ve included here is from The Vanishing Throne, and it touches a bit on this. I hope you enjoy, and thank you for reading!

Xx Elizabeth May

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Huge thanks to the author and her publisher, Chronicle Books, for putting together this blog tour! It was a privilege to catch a glimpse into another writer's process, and of course it's always fun to promote an enjoyable YA fantasy adventure series featuring a strong heroine.

Click on the respective links to read longer Scribd excerpts of The Falconer and The Vanishing Throne. 

Visit Elizabeth May online on Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Interview (Part 3) With Ashley Hope Pérez, Author of OUT OF DARKNESS

Happy Monday! We're back again today with the final installment in our interview with the wonderfully articulate and interesting Ashley Hope Pérez, who has stopped by on her blog tour for her forthcoming novel Out of Darkness. The story is based on real-life events of the March 1937 gas leak which caused a massive explosion and killed almost 300 children and teachers at a school in New London, Texas. It also explores the fraught racial, cultural, and economic environment of Depression-era, pre-WWII small-town America.

In the conclusion of our interview, we talk about what effect writers can have in exploring stories like the one in Out of Darkness; what responsibilities authors might feel when writing a story that examines issues of race and violence, whether it takes place in the historical past or the present; and how writers decide to tackle endings that don't conform to the traditional "Happily Ever After."

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Tanita Davis: Can reading books like OUT OF DARKNESS, which examines the racialized violence of the past, do anything other than provoke disdain for an ignorant history and ancestry and reinforce the idea that racism is a boogeyman from the past for teens who are allegedly post-race and colorblind?

Ashley Hope Pérez: For students who have not had the history of race relations in this country impressed on them (whether academically or in how they experience the world), I can imagine that there will be a desire to quarantine racism to the ward of “evils from history.” But I think readers can do more with Out of Darkness than that. I’ve already begun to suggest this, I suppose, when I said that Out of Darkness asks us to think about the present as well as the past. But you’re right that a lot depends on how readers receive the world of the novel.

Perhaps notions like “post-race” and “colorblind” do have relevance for some teens of color in some places, but for the most part it’s hard for me to imagine how anyone following the news—or just paying attention to the world around us—could believe race has no impact on contemporary experience. In my view, the notion of colorblindness has been a tactic of (often well-meaning) people who want to avoid the discomfort of talking about race. Other people have made better arguments than I can about why this is problematic, both for people of color and for well-meaning white people. You can see one example of this line of reasoning—that conversations of race matter for everyone, not just people of color—in this article about why and how to talk about race with kids.

TD: So maybe there’s an alternative reaction to racism as the boogeyman from the past…

AHP: I think so. Although racism is rarely expressed as openly and directly today as we see it in the experiences of the characters in Out of Darkness, the novel can still attune readers to how racism and inequality persist in our world. The vulnerability of brown and black lives in public spaces is one example; another is the view that some loves are legitimate and some are not. I hope readers’ empathetic response to Naomi, Wash, and other characters primes them to embrace the precious humanity of people like and unlike themselves, especially when those people encounter discrimination or other injustice.

Sarah J. Stevenson: Do you see your book, or other books like it, as a call to action or a form of action in and of itself (or both)? If so --what did writing this book FEEL like you were doing, besides writing a compelling story? What do you feel is the author's responsibility, if any, for making a social statement, and did you feel like you needed or wanted to convey a particular message? Did the act of writing this book feel like it ought to be a crusade?

Photo of the 1937 New London school explosion

AHP: I didn’t have a message in mind as I was first figuring out what the book would be. In the beginning and for much of the way, there was just the painful work of trying to draw my story out of a set of historical possibilities and one actual event. I did know, though, that my starting place for telling this story was not the white community, which has been the focus of pretty much every account of the New London school explosion. The heroes of Out of Darkness are people who, if they were real, wouldn’t even register in the official historical record. If I was crusading for anything, it was for the notion that these experiences at the margins of history matter. They matter deeply because every experience deserves a place in our understanding of the past. When we broaden our criteria for whose stories “count” in history, our notion of what the past was changes.

An East Texas oil field, historical photo

Authors have many responsibilities when they write, but I think any social statement has to grow out of the dynamics of the narrative; it can’t be imposed or decided in advance. Of course, plenty of writers have done this, but I don’t think it works. I think that, when I’m writing, my biggest responsibility is to pay attention to what the story is trying to become. When I revise, I revise to make my story more like itself, more what it wants to be. I realize that this sounds very mystical, so let me give an example.

Originally, I hoped for a different ending to Out of Darkness. I researched possibilities, charted escape routes, pondered the rare spaces in the world (Canada? The Caribbean? A black colony in Mexico?) where my characters might succeed in making their family. I wanted a positive outcome for Naomi and Wash, a future that, in spite of its challenges, was made bright because they were able to share it with each other. What happened? It wasn’t that this happy ending was impossible; as I said, I ferreted out some historical possibilities and tried to force it for a while. But ultimately that ending proved to be profoundly at odds with the story as it wanted to be. So even though the ending of the novel brings shade upon shade of darkness, even though it denies the reader’s desire for “Happily Ever After,” I believe writing it was my responsibility.

TD: And as tough as it was, at the end of the day, telling the true, and not rearranging for a “Happily Ever After,” is always the right call.

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We are thrilled to have had this opportunity to have such a deep, meaningful conversation with the author about the book, about writing, and about the power of stories to help us forge connections with our own history, even (perhaps especially) when that past is uncomfortable or difficult. Thanks, Ashley, for stopping by, and a hat tip to her editor, too, the amazing Andrew Karre at Carolrhoda LAB. If you missed Part 1 or Part 2, just click the links! Also, Ash is over at Diversity in YA today with an essay which gives a bit more background on the hows and whys of her writing OUT OF THE DARKNESS. The essay is called, "Words That Wake Us."

Interview (Part 2) With Ashley Hope Pérez, Author of OUT OF DARKNESS

Welcome back to our conversation with author Ashley Hope Pérez, author of the forthcoming YA historical novel OUT OF DARKNESS, which is based on real-life events of the March 1937 gas leak which caused a massive explosion and killed almost 300 children and teachers at a school in New London, Texas. This is part two of our three-part interview.

OUT OF DARKNESS has been described as,“a powerful, layered tale of forbidden love in times of unrelenting racism,” while BookRiot's Kelly Jensen calls it “powerful, painful, raw, and easily one of the best books I’ve read this year.”

It's always great when a book receives a lot of quiet but intensifying buzz, as people all over the blogosphere begin sharing their experiences with it. Notable for its timeliness as well as its gut-wrenching love story, you also won't want to miss:

• 8/5: A detailed review @ The Midnight Garden: YA for Adults,
• 8/9: A Q&A with Shelf Life @ U of Texas
• 8/10: Sarah's Monday Review @ Wonderland.
• 8/12: An interview/giveaway @ YA Outside the Lines
• 8/17: A guest post on that elegant cover art @ Actin’ Up With Books,
• 8/21: A giveaway and 8/28 review and imaginary casting @ Forever Young Adult,
• 8/28: A review and exploration of history @ The Sarah Laurence Blog,

...as well as our three-part interview here, 8/28-31.

There's a real beauty to this type of meandering blog tour, where bloggers get a real chance to actually discuss a topic in-depth. We as bloggers can take the time to do a bit more thinking so as not to trot out the same questions everyone else is asking, and this gives Ashley a larger platform for a deeper exploration of her work. There's just a lot to explore, and a lot to discuss, so on that note - on with the show.

We rejoin the conversation, musing a bit on reading tough, uncomfortable books - and what we gain from reading them. Today's conversation is both on reading -- and writing.

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Sarah J. Stevenson: In my experience, teens learn a lot from challenging their comfort zones, as readers and, of course, in life. Empowering and encouraging them to examine WHY they feel a certain way and learn to articulate it, rather than avoiding uncomfortable feelings entirely—that seems like a critical life skill.

Ashley Hope Pérez: A life skill and a way of exploring the ethical implications of how and why and what we read. This subject of “difficulty” or discomfort in reading is an area of overlap between my fiction, which makes some people uncomfortable, and my academic work, which often examines how difficult topics are handled in literature. Some treatments of violence, for example, are horrifying but cathartic in a way that lets readers “move on” from the tragedy. Other treatments don’t give the reader that kind of release. It’s terribly uncomfortable to be put in that position as a reader, and yet I also think it’s important. It’s important because it shouldn’t always be easy to “read past” suffering. I’d even say that reckoning with discomfort often has an ethical dimension.

Tanita S. Davis: This kind of inescapable, you-can't-shut-your-eyes-on-it discomfort - I love how Kirkus uses "unrelenting" in this context - this is something that I think a large part of our population (READ: me) would do anything to avoid, and yet I agree with Sarah -- it tends to teach us a great deal to get out of our comfort zones. It's like taking an Implicit Bias test and realizing that we're frozen on a "right" answer -- because it's not right to us, not really. As hard as it is to learn – and it really does sometimes feel impossible, with the way we avoid, avoid, avoid any hint of "not nice" feelings – we have to pay attention to what our discomfort is telling us, as human beings, about our resistance, and about the ethics of bias and racism.

AHP: In the past ten years, I’ve seen students become increasingly receptive to this kind of work, especially around race, gender, and other forms of difference. The generation of students in my classroom now is still struggling with how to talk about these areas of life, but they get that they need talking about.

I think it helps to shift some of the focus from the “what” of the text (topics that make me uncomfortable, etc.) to the “who” of the reader. I often ask my students to register and then examine their reading responses. The sources of discomfort in reading can be hard to diagnose, but often when we really dig, we discover something about ourselves as well as the literature we’re reading.

At least that’s what I believe. And it’s an idea I encourage my students to try on.

TD: Yes. The idea of reframing a perspective as a new way into a story resonates with me. If I might bring up a book of mine, in a way, I did that with MARE'S WAR -- we've all had WWII history ad nauseum, but telling that familiar piece of history from the POV of a person of color, a runaway, an underage, cynical little soldier whose future generations in the form of grandchildren were in every way her opposite (except in cynicism, in Talia's case) - opened it up for ME to find a place in it, not to mention readers.

AHP: I find a lot of overlap between the ways of thinking and the practices that make writing possible for me on the one hand and the kinds of experiences or thought experiments that shift readers’ thinking on the author. Also, there’s such a difference between big-h history and all the smaller histories that are, fundamentally, about human experience rather than about big events.

SJS: Yes, I thought that was a really insightful comment about historical fiction, and the reason why readers always have the potential to learn something new even from fictional accounts of the same event or era.

TD: Jumping off of that, I wonder how writers can kind of take that advice, about reframing perspectives, and use it to delve into other works of historical fiction -- more specifically, I wonder if that's actually the key to working with fictional accounts of real things which happened entirely...?

I think of the incidents of racial violence in Charleston this summer and imagine how those events will be seen, seventy-eight years from now, the way we're looking at the New London explosion – and I imagine how I would tell this story which is still so, so raw, and find a new way in, find a way to make it relevant and immediate to young readers seventy-eight years in the future who might have heard of it as simply another piece of history. Just as an exercise, how would you guys frame that history, if you were finding a way to tell it to young adults in the future? Is there anything which would cause us as writers - and readers and thinkers - to dig deeper, to see more, to care more, and thus extend those emotions to others? For myself, I think I'd be... I'd be a relative of the shooter, I think. That's WELL outside my comfort zone - White, Southern, possibly public school educated to my years of private, religious education, possibly less involved in higher education -- a working class person, living comfortably in a solid community, in a smaller, and in some ways more secure and insular world. How would something like that change me, as that extended family member? How would it change my belief in myself and in my place in the world?

SJS: I agree—a relative of the shooter, or a neighbor or former classmate, would be an interesting perspective from which to approach the story. To add to what you said above, I think I gravitate toward that perspective because it would be a means to increase my own understanding of how such a tragedy could occur, what would lead someone to do that, to feel that way, and to choose to ACT that way. I guess that's the former psychology major in me, always trying to understand why people do what they do.

AHP: Or even the shooter himself. That would be the most radical—and uncomfortable—narrative space to enter for most of us. I found myself recoiling from the idea of narrating parts of Out of Darkness from the perspective of Naomi’s racist, abusive step-father, but I think I had to go there to capture the particular kind of horror that is part of her world. One of the best compliments my editor gave me about the book was that it was made more terribly by the fact that Henry (the stepfather) emerges as a deeply flawed human being rather than (just) a monster.

TD: Whoa. That's an amazing compliment. When we see even our enemies in all their humanity, we've then truly achieved something in our understanding of the world - and in our ability to forgive. ...all that being said, I definitely agree it would be a radical and uncomfortable narrative space, and take some major work to go there, and not punk out.

“...there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the surface ...we see within our enemy-neighbor a measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts not quite representative of all that he is.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., July 1963

Adorbs photo courtesy of the author.

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Ashley Pérez is an enormously talented and intelligent human being as well as a brilliant writer, and we're grateful she took the time - out of caring for her two little guys, the newest of whom arrived in June - and doing all of her other teaching and writing and family stuff to speak to us.

Stay tuned for the conclusion of this conversation on Monday!

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What does it take to write and to edit a book like this? If you missed Ashley's conversation with editor Andrew Karre back in May, pop over to Cynsations and give it a read.

Interview (Part 1) with Ashley Hope Perez, Author of OUT OF DARKNESS

Welcome to Part 1 of our 3-part interview (we just couldn't stop chatting!) with Ashley Hope Perez, author of the forthcoming YA historical novel Out of Darkness, which is based on real-life events (and which we reviewed here).

Not only was this a great opportunity to learn more about the story behind the story, it was also a chance to have a virtual conversation with one of our long-running blog buds and writer friends--because we DO like to put these in a less structured, more interactive form, going back and forth with the interviewee for more information and putting in a few thoughts of our own here and there. Check out the results today, tomorrow, and Monday! We were really pleased to delve into meaty topics like the difficulties of tackling such a tragic real-life event in fictional form and the challenges of writing about such events for teens (and teaching them).

With no further ado, here's Ashley. :)

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Sarah J. Stevenson: How did you get interested in this particular piece of 1937 history? How is it remembered in Texas?

Ashley Hope Perez: I grew up one county over from New London, so from a pretty young age I was at least vaguely aware of the disaster and the fact that many children had died. But until about 10 years ago, the explosion was almost never discussed. I think that silence was deeply painful for survivors and their families, and I’ve heard many stories of people who believed that they’d done something to cause the explosion (kicking a pipe, telling a lie) or were otherwise responsible for someone’s death. In the novel, two children change seats, and one of them dies. That’s the kind of situation that leaves the survivor wracked with guilt. “It should have been me…” That sort of thing did happen.

SJS: Was it was difficult to find first person narrative about the New London explosion? What kind of research did you do? Did you base your characters, however loosely, on historical individuals and to what extent? Did this story start with the characters, the setting, the premise, or...?

AHP: Most of the details related to the explosion are drawn from historical accounts. There are many oral histories and other records related to the disaster, and I was fortunate to access these at the London Museum and in the Stephen F. Austin University archives. About two years after I started writing the novel, an excellent non-fiction book came out on the explosion: Gone at 3:17: The Untold Story of the Worst School Disaster in American History by David M. Brown and Michael Wereschagin. From reading the book, I learned quite a few things I hadn’t uncovered on my own, like the fact that the Texas Rangers came out to guard the houses of school board members and that they actually turned away a mob of angry men. That detail becomes important in the novel, where I imagine what would have happened if the men had sought out another scapegoat, one whom no one was protecting.

For me, character almost always comes first. But then again, characters emerge in large part from the situations we place them in. I guess I could say that I almost start by writing somewhere in the middle of the story—a story whose arc I don’t even know yet.

Tanita Davis: I’m definitely a character person too – character and connections.

SJS: I can relate to both of those, as a writer—the story starting from a character, but also from a "what-if". What if something different had happened? What if we followed the event from behind the scenes, or through the eyes of a different character? In a very fundamental way, character + what-if = STORY. 

AHP: Absolutely. The “what if” about the Texas Rangers is actually secondary to another “what if”: What if a Mexican American girl from San Antonio found herself in rural East Texas? Where would she fit? What would her life be like? I think these kinds of questions are especially important when working with a historical topic. I can lose myself in research for weeks—almost a year for this book—but at some point a writer has to turn loose from the historical record and enter the world of fiction. That happened rather quickly since, at least in New London, minority voices simply weren’t a part of the account of the New London explosion. That exclusion went beyond this particular event; for example, when a “colored” school in the nearby town of Longview burned down, it wasn't even covered in the local newspapers.

TD: Since you have a lot of background in education and are currently teaching at the Ohio State U, where would you see Out of Darkness fitting - in a history, sociology, poli-sci course? College, high school?

AHP: I’m interested in all thinking, feeling readers, but I write YA because I trust teens with even the most difficult stories. When I write, I often think of the students I taught during my three years in Houston. Whereas What Can’t Wait and The Knife and the Butterfly are about (very different) contemporary Latino experiences, Out of Darkness digs into aspects of history that I felt were still relevant to the lives of my diverse but mostly Mexican American students. I wanted to write a book that would make my students think and feel, not only about the past, but also about the present.

And I certainly hope Out of Darkness has a place on high school library shelves and in high school classes. Some brave HS teachers out there will recognize what it can offer to the study of literature and history (among other subjects).

TD: In that case, how would you see teaching this book?

AHP: I’d never dare teach one of my own novels, but if I were giving advice, I’d say that certainly the historical context needs attention. For example, the novel demands that we investigate the particulars of school segregation, which was three-fold in some Texas settings like San Antonio and Houston (white, black, and “Mexican” schools). There’s also the nature of migration and the patterns that can be detected in certain kinds of racialized violence (e.g., how violence is often triggered by external pressures on a community, such as economic stress or disaster).

But there’s a lot to think about, too, in terms of the actual experience of reading the novel. Although it has its moments of bliss, I’m aware that reading can feel very much like a descent into darkness, a descent that may not be especially welcome for all readers but that is, nevertheless, important. When I task my students with intense (they would say “depressing”) works in my university classes, I begin by building a framework for what it means to encounter difficult subjects in literature. We talk about the fact that, our responses to what we read require reflection, even interpretation. We ask questions like, “why am I uncomfortable/angry/frustrated with this portion of a text? What does that emotion do to my reading? To what extent is it a product of narrative and style? To what extent does it result from a mismatch between what the text is and what I wish for it to be?

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Come back tomorrow--same bat channel--for Part 2 of our interview with Ashley!

Kids Comics Q&A Blog Tour: Interview with Gene Luen Yang

Children's Book Week was just last week, and thanks to First Second we're still celebrating--throughout April and May, MacTeenBooks has organized a massive multi-blog tour featuring Five Questions with a wide range of amazing cartoonists for kids and teens, with all interviews conducted by by Jorge Aguirre and Rafael Rosado, the authors of Dragons Beware! If you check out the list (RIGHT HERE!), you'll see familiar names like Cece Bell and Mariko Tamaki and Cecil Castellucci and tons of other great graphic novelists. It really is a wonderful virtual event, and it's co-sponsored by the Children’s Book Council, Every Child a Reader, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Without further ado, but WITH an awesome imaginary drum roll I'd never be able to pull off in real life, here are Five Questions with one of our favorite (and local) graphic novelists, Gene Luen Yang. He's the author or co-author of so many GNs we've really loved here on Finding Wonderland: American Born Chinese (reviewed here), Level Up (reviewed here), The Eternal Smile (reviewed here), Boxers & Saints (previewed here), Prime Baby (reviewed here) and Shadow Hero (reviewed here). We've also interviewed him before, way back in 2007 (gulp). We're stoked to welcome him back again!

RAFAEL/JORGE: Gene, when our first book came out, you let us interview you, and now that our second book is coming out, you are allowing us to bombard you with questions yet again.  You're a good man, Gene!  Thanks, again!
 

GENE:  Thank you guys for getting in touch again!  I thoroughly enjoyed the first volume of Giants Beware!  Can’t wait to find out what Claudette and her friends are up to next!

QUESTION:  The last time we interviewed you, we asked you about something we’re still struggling with:  how do you balance a day job with creative endeavors. You recently discussed your work as a High School Science Teacher.  Has the balance of day job and comics gotten tougher or easier for you since we last spoke?  Have you learned any tips that you can share with us and others? 
 
GENE: It’s funny you should ask about this.  I recently made the decision to leave my day job.  For the past seventeen years, I’ve worked at a high school in Oakland, California.  I started as a full-time teacher.  These days, I’m down to just one class, plus some database work.

Leaving will be hard.  I love the community.  I feel like I’ve learned so much from my students.  But recently, DC Comics offered me the opportunity to write Superman and I couldn’t pass it up.

I know some folks hate their day jobs, but I loved being a teacher.  Still do.  Teaching and making comics provided a great balance for me.  Teaching’s incredibly extroverted, making comics is the exact opposite.  Being around people all day often gave me the source material I needed to write and draw stories.  Though I’m concentrating on my cartooning career for now, I hope to end my working life as a teacher.

Balancing a day job with creative work can be difficult.  For a few years, I would wake up early and go to sleep late to get my comics done.  I think you have to find the right day job, one that leaves you with enough energy to finish your own stuff.  For me, teaching and comics drew from different “energy buckets” – they wouldn’t exhaust me in the same way, so it worked!

QUESTION:  We can't wait to read your Superman! Was that a goal of yours to write for the Man of Steel?  How did that come about? Any chance for a Superman - Green Turtle team up?
 
GENE: I’m definitely excited to be a part of Team Superman!  Because he’s such a popular character, Superman is the star of four different titles from DC Comics.  I’m working with the other writers to build something new for the Man of Steel, something that will hopefully be a springboard for some good stories.  I’ve learned so much from seeing how those other guys work.

I’d love to do a Superman-Green Turtle team up!  Not sure it’ll ever happen, though!

I do want to mention that Sonny Liew, my partner on The Shadow Hero, is drawing the Dr. Fate comic for DC.  I’m super-excited about it.  Sonny, of course, is one of my favorite artists, and Dr. Fate is one of my favorite superheroes!  I got really into him when I was in high school, during J.M. DeMatteis' run on the character.  Can’t wait to see what Sonny and writer Paul Levitz do with him.

QUESTION: Speaking of the Green Turtle, "The Shadow Hero" only whetted our appetite for his adventures.  Can we hope to see a sequel or two or three?
 
Thank you!  Sonny and I have talked about doing two more Green Turtle stories.  I want to do one that’s set right before America enters World War II, and one right after the war ends.  Hopefully we’ll be able to actually do it someday.  Right now, though, we’re both busy with other projects.

QUESTION:  Who are you reading these days or who are your current influences? 
 
These days, most of my reading is research.  I’m almost done with Glen Weldon’s excellent Superman: An Unauthorized Biography.  I’m also reading a couple of books about basketball because I’m working on a graphic novel about the subject.

In terms of comics, Jason Shiga’s Demon is brilliant.  Not for kids, not even for some adults, but brilliant.  Jason is one of the most innovative – and bizarre – cartoonists to have ever walked the planet.  Mind-blowing stuff.

Jillian and Mariko Tamaki’s This One Summer has won a bajillion awards, and if you read the book you’ll understand why.  Absolutely masterful comics-making.

The comic I most recently read is Superman #23.4, written and drawn by Aaron Kuder. Aaron’s another member of Team Superman.  He’s most well-known as an artist, but he’s an excellent writer as well.  The issue focuses on Parasite, who is arguably the best purple-skinned supervillain ever.

QUESTION: Is Superman the next thing you're working on or are there other things on your plate you're working on these days?
 
Cartoonist Mike Holmes and I are busy with Secret Coders, a middle-grade graphic novel series all about computer programming.  I’m really, really excited about it.  I finally get to combine my two careers – cartooning and teaching computer science – into a single project.  I’m doing the writing, Mike’s doing the art.  Mike’s stuff has this Saturday morning energy to it that’s perfect for the story—you’ll see what I’m talking about when it comes out in September.

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Thanks so much to First Second and the generous book-loving sponsors who made this blog tour possible! We're excited, too, about the upcoming Secret Coders, and can't wait to add it to our TBR pile. Thanks to Gene for taking the time to answer Jorge and Rafael's questions, thanks to the interviewers, and thanks to the amazing Gina Gagliano. Don't forget to go check out the other stops on the blog tour!

10½ Questions with Reshama Deshmukh, creator of THE PIED PIPER

One of the big draws of KidLitCon is getting a chance to meet your fellow bloggers, find out what their interests are, and discover where they intersect with yours. As you may know by now, here at FW our main focus is on Young Adult fiction, with an emphasis on diverse speculative fiction and graphic novels and, a bit more secondarily, the odd Middle Grade book which catches our attention. We aren't experts in MG anything, which is why we're excited to feature a change of pace today and interview our fellow KidLitCon co-organizer Reshama Deshmukh of the blog Stacking Books. She's a fellow blogger, yes, but she's also done something we know absolutely squat about: she's created and produced a book app from start to finish--one that's aimed at helping kids learn to read with their parents and on their own.

Based on Robert Browning’s well-known story The Pied Piper of Hamelin, this app has been a labor of love to produce, and now it is available for purchase on iTunes and Google Play.

We wanted to know more about what goes into the making of a book app, and we also wanted to do a good turn for one of our fellow KidLitCon peeps, so without further ado, here is the scoop on the brand-new app The Pied Piper.

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FW: Where did you grow up? What's your educational background?

I grew up in suburban Mumbai in the late 70’s and 80’s. Mostly middle class commuting, apartment community, the city was well known for its amazing performing arts center. I remember looking forward to summer drama marathons, children’s theater classes and swimming lessons.

I went to school in my hometown and graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Commerce. I was very fortunate to attend a school with a fantastic library. My parents were voracious readers. Growing up, I remember the pile of newspapers at our doorstep each morning and number of local library visits that my mother would take me to. At school too we all read a ton! The love for reading started at school and continued at home.

In US, I completed my Masters in management with a focus on Finance and Marketing.

FW: Can you briefly describe the process of getting a book app made, from concept to a finished product ready to buy?

Creating an app is much like directing a movie. From script, art, music and voiceover, the many pieces need to be put together to make an app. But it all starts with a story :)

Our Pied Piper App story started with a re-writing of the original Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamelin. Once the script was in place, we re-imagined the story book as an app. At Stacking Books, we want to make sure we inspire children to engage in literacy and excite them. That meant making a book app with incredible art, music and voice experience.

Our artist, Andrea Dailey created the original story board for the script and from there we narrowed it down to specific interactivity for the smart platform. While we envisioned the interactive aspect of a story book app to be integral, we had to constantly keep a fine balance between distracting from the reading and keeping the reader actively engaged. Andrea worked tirelessly to create the right texture, palette and characters for the story. Her high resolution art work makes it easy to fit the book for many screens.

Then came the voice over, sound and music. We interviewed several voice over artists but one voice stood out. Lucas Schuneman, with over 10 years as a voice over artist, expertly modulated his voice to suit the many characters of the book. We loved how he was able to capture the mood of the story right off the bat. Lucas successfully captures the various emotions of distress, joy and treachery of the story.

Mark Kueffner, our brilliant music and sound editor, finished the creative aspect of the app by providing original soundtrack and sound effects. We asked Mark to give this book app a sound that will take you back in time and imagine the setting of the original story. Mark experimented in his lab and came up with a tune that does exactly that. Again, our focus was to not distract but add to the experience of story- telling through the medium of an app. Mark with his many years of experience in TV and Movies, created the original soundtrack and worked from there to create mini tunes as the Piper’s magical tunes.

Parallely, at Stacking Books, we were hard at work putting all the pieces into software. Our goal, right from the beginning, was to create book apps targeting the most popular devices. Our publication as of this writing works on both iOS and Android devices worldwide.

FW: What was the inspiration for this app?

The goal of creating book apps was to create rich content for little readers. To give them a choice of reading on all platforms. Our libraries and book stores are filled with amazing literature. At Stacking Books, we hope to provide similar rich kidlit for the next generation digital readers.

We grew up reading stories by Brothers Grimm. The story of Pied Piper is one among the many stories. Robert Browning’s version of the mystery man called the Pied Piper was intriguing. Bordering on fact and fiction this was a tale that we found we could recreate with easier to understand language. We hope we got a chance to capture the same mystique from the original telling in our story book app.

FW: Who is its ideal audience?

We have seen many book apps designed for the very young. At Stacking Books, we believe that children who have a basic foundation of reading, and are engaged readers are ideal to use book apps. Our Pied Piper App, was thus designed for children 4 years and above.

FW: What made you decide to go with the app format instead of a traditional book or ebook?

The Book App is a unique story telling platform. The audio visual components of a book app are perfect for many types of readers, but especially for reluctant readers. Also, by nature book apps are interactive, which lends to more immersive experience when done correctly. At Stacking Books, we were thrilled to leverage the creative aspects of storytelling on tablets and extend, moderate and design books for this media.

FW: What was the hardest part in developing this app?

I think there was no one piece that was more or less challenging than others. Different tasks had their own unique challenges and we had to constantly re-think and re-work on our assumptions. For example, while we had worked out a storyboard, we stumbled into a particular page that simply did not work towards the flow of the story. We had to go back a re-work on the page several times before we could finally say “done”. Another time, we had a major software stumble when the software capabilities fell short of what we had envisioned as the interactive piece. We finally had to write code outside of the software and plug it in to make it work.

FW: Did you have to gain any new technological skills in order to create a book app?

Yes! In the beginning we had decided to outsource the technology piece. But we soon realized that we had less control over the creative pieces if we did so. Subsequently, I decided to simply “DIY” and dove right in. The decision paid off. We now have critical software, skills as well as processes in place to streamline the next book app production.

FW: What was the easiest part of production and development?

I wish I could actually honestly say there was an easy part :) The Pied Piper app is our first production, and it has been a thrilling yet challenge all through the way. I think once we had the software piece and skills in place, the time to create and build the latter half of the book app was slightly easier or faster than earlier.

FW: What's next for you? Is this going to be an ongoing thing, building apps?

Our fantastic group of KidLitCon organizers, including Reshama (2nd from right)

We are thrilled to release our first production. We loved every aspect of building it and look forward to making more. We are, at this point, looking for content and partnerships with publishers who might be interested to add book apps as potential extensions to their portfolio.

FW: Bonus question: What do you hope people will ask you as they interview you that no one's asked yet?

We have a wonderful blog where we share our favorite children’s books. We hope you can stop by and take a look.

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Our minds are pretty well blown at the whole project -- what a huge learning curve, and what a beautiful end product! Definitely do go visit Stacking Books, and check out the charming and visually impressive Pied Piper for yourself. Our sincere thanks to Reshama for stopping by and giving us such a vivid behind-the-scenes look at creating a book app!