There were plenty of opportunities for booksellers to hear authors speak about their lives and work at this year’s Heartland Fall Forum, held October 3–5 in Minneapolis, in between attending the educational sessions in the Marriott Renaissance Hotel and the exhibit area in the Historic Union Depot’s 19th-century train shed.
Beginning with the opening night presentations by two of this year’s recipients of the Midwest Booksellers Choice Awards (given by the Midwest Independent Booksellers Association), Margi Preus (middle grade book winner) and Bao Phi (children’s picture book winner), and continuing with Loren Long, a recipient of the Great Lakes Great Reads Awards for children’s picture book (given by the Great Lakes Independent Booksellers Association), children’s authors acted like bosses at the podium in the Depot’s Great Hall throughout the show.
The Thursday morning marquee keynote featured Kate DiCamillo, a Minneapolis resident who has often appeared at Heartland since the two regional bookseller organizations merged trade shows in 2012. During a Q&A conducted by Travis Jonker (The Very Last Castle), the crowd veered between laughter and tears as DiCamillo dropped juicy tidbits right and left, such as that she was born with a gill—but that “it doesn’t operate under water”—and that Louisiana Elefante “insisted” that DiCamillo write her story “of figuring out who she is and finding her way home” in Louisiana’s Way Home, the sequel to Raymie Nightingale. The booksellers erupted with applause when DiCamillo revealed that she was going to “complete the trinity” by writing about the third “Ranchero,” Beverly Tapinski.
Kate Rattenborg of Dragonfly Books wasn’t the only bookseller to rave about DiCamillo’s keynote afterwards. “In addition to her obvious love for her characters, it’s awesome to listen to her talk about her love for her writing. She’s very authentic, she’s very real.”
On Friday morning, the children’s breakfast authors also blew away booksellers with their powerful presentations. The breakfast kicked off with Kaedyn Oliphant and Zoe Peterson, two 12-year-old guests of MIBA executive director Carrie Obry, who praised morning speaker Soman Chainani and thanked booksellers for putting great books in the hands of children like them. The girls’ words caused Jess Norcross, co-owner of McLean & Eakin in Petoskey, Mich., to turn to PW and exclaim, “I’m not crying! You’re crying!”
Children’s book illustrator Sophie Blackall kept the tears flowing with her presentation on Winnie’s Great War, written by Lindsay Mattick and Josh Greenhut (Little, Brown, Sept.) for readers ages 8–12. Reciting Gwendolyn Brooks’ poem, “Books Feed and Cure and Chortle and Collide,” Blackall explained that it resonated with her, and that she collects the books she has most loved since her childhood. Holding up a dog-eared vintage copy of A.A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh, she said that it was her first book and that owning such books made her “feel a connection to everyone who came before me.”
Blackall also discussed her research into World War I and how she turned actual photographs and other images from that period into the line drawings incorporated in Winnie’s Great War.
Concluding her presentation, she asked that if anyone wanted her copy of Winnie the Pooh, to raise their hand—but only if they would promise not to lose it. When Lois Hanson of Paragraphs Bookstore in Mt. Vernon, Ohio, raised her hand, Blackall walked to her and gave her the book—causing Hanson to burst into tears.
Next, Soman Chainani spoke of how his childhood inspired him to write the School for Good and Evil series. The four volumes in the series (Quests for Glory has just been released, and A Crystal of Time is scheduled for 2019) are dark retellings of classic fairy tales, set in a magical academy where children train to be fairy tale heroes and villains. Recalling that his parents once gave him as a gift “all 55 Disney cartoons” (full-length animated feature films), he complained that his entertainment as a child consisted of watching Disney movies rather than playing Nintendo. Confessing that he could never relate to the heroes of the movies, because he looked like the villains, who were always dark and swarthy, Chainani argued that the villains were not entirely evil—nor were the heroes entirely heroic.
“Simba [in The Lion King] was an idiot,” he said. “Scar was the strongest character. Scar had initiative. And the moral of The Little Mermaid to kids: it’s telling girls to give up your family and your friends, even your voice—whatever you need to do to get the guy.”
The Disney versions of classic fairy tales lack nuance, Chainani said, “Sometimes people can be heroes, and sometimes they can be villains. There is no pure good, there is no pure evil. That feels like real life.”
Adam Gidwitz disclosed that he had been a schoolteacher for eight years, and that he was “a terrible teacher” who could only get children to “shut their mouths and listen to me, just for one second” by telling them stories. The author of the Grimm books, which are retellings of Grimm’s fairy tales, Gidwitz is currently writing the Unicorn Rescue Society series, a collection of fantasy-adventure tales inspired by legends of mythical creatures told by different cultures: the Jersey Devil, the Basque Dragon, and, most recently Sasquatch.
Gidwitz explained that, to be sensitive to retelling the legends of cultures outside his own, he pairs up with a writer who belongs to that particular culture. “Each book is curated by an expert in that culture,” he said. “With each book I learn so much and I learn how much I get wrong.” Native American author Joseph Bruchac co-authored Sasquatch and the Muckleshoot (Nov.), and Mexican-American author David Bowles will co-author The Chupacabras of the Rio Grande (Apr. 2019), which is set on the Texas/Mexico border.
The morning’s final speaker, Daniel José Older, did not disappoint, delivering a barn burner of a presentation on the real-life history behind The Dactyl Hill Squad. His latest YA fantasy novel is set in 1863 New York City, as the Civil War rages down south between raptor-mounted armies. A group of orphans flee to Brooklyn and set up a safe haven there while training to fly on dactyls to rescue another group of orphans kidnapped by an evil magistrate.
Discussing some of the incidents that he discovered had occurred in mid-19th-century New York City while doing research in the archives of the city’s historical society, Older said that he used “my imagination” to tweak actual incidents and incorporate them into his tale, and then added dragons to the mix.
Reflecting upon the heroism of otherwise ordinary people during “a terrible time,” like the Civil War, and the many people who helped slaves escape bondage, Older brought up his mother, who left Cuba alone when she was 16 years old to live in the U.S. “She didn’t speak a word of English and couldn’t understand her teacher,” he said, disclosing that she went on to earn a Ph.D. in literature. “That’s a hero.”
Explaining that being a hero can also mean simply being a good friend, Older mused on how important it is for children to see themselves reflected in the books they read. “It’s important for kids to see themselves as the heroes of their lives by being a good friend.”
