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Fall 2003 Flying Starts: Clare B. Dunkle
In September 2001, Clare Dunkle, an American living in Germany, had just finished writing her first novel. She thought she'd need an agent to get it published, but she did a little sleuthing on the Internet first. The first site she checked was Henry Holt's, because back in the 1960s the house had published Dunkle's favorite books ever, Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series. Sure enough, Holt accepted unsolicited manuscripts, and although Dunkle—a former librarian—had low expectations, she sent off her manuscript. Six weeks later, editor Reka Simonsen e-mailed her to say she'd like to publish the book; this October, The Hollow Kingdom appeared—with a glowing blurb by none other than Alexander on its jacket.
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Fall 2003 Flying Starts: John Holyfield
After graduating from high school, John Holyfield decided on a graphic design major at Howard University, because it had been drummed into his head for so long that being a graphic artist was the only way he could make money as an artist. While in college, working at an art supply store, he brought in some sketches he had done to show to the other employees at the shop. They were so impressed with his work, they suggested he send it out. As luck would have it, one of the recipients wanted to publish his images as lithographic prints. Holyfield has been painting ever since.
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Fall 2003 Flying Starts: Lisa Yee
"It all came from a two-word joke," Lisa Yee says of her first middle-grade novel, Millicent Min, Girl Genius (Scholastic/Levine). And ever since the book's release, young readers (and reviewers, too) have been enjoying Yee's sense of humor. "I was thinking about the term 'child psychologist' and how funny it was," Yee explains. "Initially I thought I would write a book about a child who was actually a psychologist—and I did that, but it has since evolved into Millicent Min."
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Fall 2003 Flying Starts: Christopher Paolini
Publishers always hope for a new author to create a buzz, but few could imagine the level and intensity of attention that 20-year-old Christopher Paolini has generated. He began work on his debut novel Eragon (Knopf), the first in a planned trilogy, when he was only 15 years old; when it was finished, his family had the book printed by on-demand printer Lightning Source.
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Urban Personalities
Husband-and-wife collaborators Jim and Kate McMullan have followed up their award-winning picture book, I Stink!, narrated by a feisty city garbage truck, with I'm Mighty!, in which a tugboat struts his stuff on an animated tour of his harbor.
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Discovering the World
PW asks Peter Sis, "What attracted you to the subject of Charles Darwin?"
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Reconstructing Through Books
PW asks David Macaulay, "What inspired you to write Mosque?"
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Sunshine and Dark, Dark Shadows
PW asks Robin McKinley, "Sunshine is a big departure for you. What attracted you to a vampire novel?"
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The Secret Lives of Children
PW asks Peggy Rathmann, "The Day the Babies Crawled Away (Putnam) does not look or sound like your previous work in picture books such as Officer Buckle and Gloria. Did you start with a piece of rhyme or with the silhouettes?"
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Spring 2003 Flying Starts: Ali Bahrampour
In Ali Bahrampour's picture book Otto: The Story of a Mirror (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), the shiny, oval title character runs out on his dull job at a hat shop after dealing with an especially vain customer named Curly Joe. Otto becomes a wayfarer on the high seas, "not knowing where the waves would take him, but happy nonetheless."
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Spring 2003 Flying Starts: Kathleen O'Dell
And to Think That I Saw It on Klickitat Street. No, it's not a new Dr. Seuss title. But it could perhaps serve as a thumbnail summary of where Kathleen O'Dell found inspiration for her novel Agnes Parker... Girl in Progress (Dial). "Several years ago I was working on a historical novel and had done months of research," recalls O'Dell. "I had just read the first volume of Beverly Cleary's memoirs [A Girl from Yamhill]. One afternoon I took a break and fell asleep. When I woke up from that nap, it came to me; I shouldn't be writing something historical, I should be writing something more like the Cleary books I loved as a child. I grew up in Portland, Ore. [as Cleary did], and all our street names were in Beverly Cleary's books. I knew those places and felt like I knew those characters. I guess you could say the idea came to me during a nap. That, and I think my subconscious decided it didn't want to do any more research," O'Dell jokes.
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Spring 2003 Flying Starts: Derek Anderson
Derek Anderson's career in children's books began one fortuitous afternoon. "Just as I was graduating from college," he recalls, "My mother, a third-grade teacher, returned from a book conference where she'd met all kinds of authors and illustrators. She took armfuls of children's books back with her, which immediately caught my eye." They were books the likes of which he'd never seen before, like The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs. "I was blown away by them," he says. "The pictures were works of art."
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Spring 2003 Flying Starts: Michael Simmons
Michael Simmons knows that Brett, the narrator of his novel Pool Boy (Roaring Brook), is something of a brat. "All he does is complain," he says. "He's completely self-absorbed, he doesn't really care about anyone else."
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Spring 2003 Flying Starts: Boris Kulikov
Once you know illustrator Boris Kulikov's background, all the vintage clothing makes perfect sense. In Lore Segal's Morris the Artist (Farrar, Straus & Giroux/Foster), Kulikov's unconventional debut, he dresses his young characters in puffy knickers, sailor suits, huge rust-colored fedoras and long, flowing scarves. It's a pretty daring juxtaposition to Segal's modern "everykid" tale of a boy who yearns to keep the paint set he takes to a birthday party, but it blends seamlessly.
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Spring 2003 Flying Starts: Jeanne DuPrau
Jeanne DuPrau grew up in the 1950s and 1960s with a fear of the world coming to an end. "People were building bomb shelters, and I was afraid of the idea that we could wipe out the human race," she says, citing one inspiration for The City of Ember (Random House), which is set in a postapocalyptic underground world in which the power supply, food and other necessities are dwindling.
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The Booklover's Big Apple: PW Daily Talks with Leonard Marcus
Leonard Marcus, author of the new book Storied City: A Children's Book Walking Tour Guide to New York City (Dutton), as well as many other books focusing on children's book authors and artists, including Dear Genius: The Letters of Ursula Nordstrom, spoke with PW Daily about the seeds for his new book.
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Turning Kids On to Books
PW: What made you want to write How to Get Your Child to Love Reading?
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Donnelly's Light Shines
Jennifer Donnelly has been making a bit of a splash in the book world lately.
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Picturing the Turn of the 20th Century
PW: What was your initial inspiration to write The Silent Boy? Lois Lowry: Usually it is difficult to identify a starting point, but in this case it was photographs from my own family. My grandmother's sister was a photographer at the turn of the century, and when she died, she left me her photographs.
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Global Fly-Fishing
PW: This most recent book, Fly-Fishing the 41st, as a travel memoir, is a departure from your previous ones. What inspired this title?
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