Nicole Melleby is known for her character-driven, LGBTQ-themed realistic fiction. Recently, the Lambda Award-nominated writer has branched out into younger formats, penning a picture book about a rescue animal and a Jersey Shore-set, big-family series intended for a junior middle-grade audience. We spoke with Melleby about her new picture book, Sunny and Oswaldo; younger middle-grade series The House on Sunrise Lagoon; her collaboration with A.J. Sass on Camp Quiltbag; and the nationwide rise in book banning.

You’re known primarily as an upper middle-grade author. What prompted your decision to write books for younger readers?

I started off with upper middle grade because that’s where I felt the most comfortable and [those were] the readers I most wanted to reach. After dipping my toes in, I wanted to branch out a little bit and going younger always made more sense [rather than] going older. I got to know a lot of kids during school visits and interacting and having conversations with the younger [students] means a lot to me. I started my picture book, Sunny and Oswaldo, because I wanted to explore the same kind of conversations I was having with the 12- and 13-year-olds with my [older] books. Sunny and Oswaldo is about a girl and her dad’s cat who goes missing, but it has more to do with feelings of understanding a loved one who perhaps has depression or other mental illnesses, wrapped up in a story about a missing cat. It was exploring a way to have these conversations with younger kids who deserve to have a way to access these emotions.

For the Sunrise Lagoon books, I remembered all of those “big family” book series I had read growing up and really wanted to explore those, but set on the Jersey Shore where I grew up and live now, and with a two-mom household. You don’t see that [representation] often in those [older series].

The first two books in series each spotlight a particular member of the rambunctious Ali-O’Connor clan. Is their family dynamic based on personal experience? Why did you start with Sam and Marina?

I wanted to explore things I was used to while growing up, so I set it on the Jersey Shore, with a family who loves boats and competing among themselves. With Marina especially I knew I wanted to feature an anxious kid in the middle of this big, chaotic family, because that’s a familiar dynamic to me. In terms of Sam and Marina both being adopted, I wanted to explore the points of view of a family that will probably look like my own someday, having all of these different types of [character] dynamics involved. Sam felt like the natural place to start because she’s the newest to the [Ali-O’Connor] family and you’re learning about the family dynamics through her eyes as she settles in. I thought I was going to do the older sister [Harbor] before Marina, but Marina felt right as the follow-up [to Sam’s book] because she had a lot of story to tell and it came second more naturally. The third book is about Harbor and will come out next year. I’ll tell their stories one by one and show how this is a single family unit that works when all of the pieces are together, but also that all of these kids have different perspectives and personalities that fit in their own individual way.

Recently you co-authored Camp Quiltbag with A.J. Sass. What was it like collaborating with another writer?

It was actually a lot of fun! We weren’t entirely sure how it was going to work at first. Andrew [A.J.] and I have always connected really well but we hadn’t even met in person before we started writing. Andrew lives in California and I’m in New Jersey so our friendship was based on texting and talking [on the phone] all the time, just never in person. We were warned by people that sometimes co-writing can go really wrong, but [for us] it was pretty seamless and really exciting. I would write a chapter and send it to Andrew who would write another chapter and send it back. I would wait eagerly for him to send the chapter back to me so I could see where he took the story and what he did with it. So I was getting to not only write, which I already love to do, but getting to read a respected friend’s work and seeing how it related back to mine.

Instances of book banning are on the rise in U.S. libraries and school districts, especially for those titles with LGBTQ+ subject matter. What do you feel your role is as an author of queer stories?

It’s hard because [book banning] is becoming more prevalent. I think for now my role as an author is to keep writing these stories and putting them out there, trying to reach as many kids as I can. I’m not letting any of these bannings shy me away from that. The more stories that are available, the more chances these kids will be able to get their hands on them. If they’re going to try to ban books, the more we write the harder it will be. They can’t ban everything!

Camp QUILTBAG by Nicole Melleby and A.J. Sass. Algonquin, $16.99 May 30 ISBN 978-1-64375-266-2

The House on Sunrise Lagoon #1: Sam Makes a Splash by Nicole Melleby. Algonquin, $16.99 May ISBN 978-1-64375-310-2

The House on Sunrise Lagoon #2: Marina in the Middle by Nicole Melleby. Algonquin, $16.99 May ISBN 978-1-64375-311-9

Sunny and Oswaldo by Nicole Melleby, illus. by Alexandra Colombo. Algonquin, $18.99 Feb. ISBN 978-1-64375-095-8