They have
my name on their covers and on the title pages.
They are
books I've written.
BUT
THE MINUTE YOU READ ONE OF MY BOOKS, IT IS NO LONGER MINE
-- IT IS YOURS! Emotionally, the book belongs to you!
Every book has a
story behind it- something or someone who inspires the story
or planted the story's seed in the writers mind. A writer's
mind is a fertile place, one in which weeds compete against
what the writer would like to grow. Sometimes the weeds are
more interesting and win. Sometimes, what grows from the
story's seed is a wonderful surprise-a little like blue
tomatoes or sweet corn in which various kernels are shaded and
combine to make pictures or squash that grow little toy cars
inside.
I share these stories
behind my stories with the hope that you will read them after
you've read the books, not before. I want you to bring nothing
to my books except your life experiences.
DEAD
BIRDS SINGING
1985 (Purchase a copy)
The last year I taught fifth grade, a
student in my class died in a car accident. I
got the news from my principal on a Saturday, soon after
he found out. It devastated me. I knew that on Monday morning, when my students
walked into the classroom, that they would need help. I would, too.
I went to our school library, hoping to
find books that would help me to help my
students with the grieving process. I was disappointed. If
I had looked in the right place, I would have found BRIDGE TO TERABITHIA by
Katherine Paterson, but I wasn't familiar with any of her books back then.
Standing in the library, holding what
little I'd found, I promised myself that if I
even had a chance, I would write a book about death,
something for kids dealing with the death of somebody their own age.
Instead of using books to help me, all
of us in Room Five talked. We talked and cried
and were angry and were afraid. We went to the funeral.
We visited the funeral home a month later and talked with the funeral
director about embalming and toured the room where they embalmed bodies.
The chance to write a book about death
came five years later, when I was between
speeches at the National Science Foundation in Washington,
D.C. While I sat in my office a block from the White House, I remembered
the promise I'd made to myself in the school library.
The trouble was, I did not know the
first thing about writing a novel. After a lot
of agonizing, I sat down one day and began writing.
Much of the things my students and I
had shared came back to me. Feeling came back to
me from the time a friend of mine died in a small airplane
crash-at the last minute, I had decline to fly with her and her family
to Colorado for a skiing vacation. Feelings came back to me from watching
two older relatives of mine decline and die of old age.
After six months, I had a pile of paper
on my desk (each page typed and retyped on an
electric typewriter many, many times). A manuscript.
I showed it to a neighbor of ours who worked for Little, Brown & Company
as a regional sales representative. To my relief he (and his wife)liked it. He
took it to Boston, and gave it to the woman in charge of children's
books. She read it within a week, loved it and offered me a contract.
Of course, I signed up.
My career as a novelist was launched.
THIN
ICE
1986 (Purchase a copy)
DEAD BIRDS SINGING was enthusiastically
reviewed and was also sold to publishing house
in Great Britain, Spain, Norway, Denmark, and Japan (where
it became a best-seller). Of course, Little, Brown & Company wanted me
to write another book.
The trouble was, I did not have another
idea for a book. They offered me a contract and
an advance that was very attractive. I figured that
for so much money I could come up with an idea.
I did. A few weeks after I presented it
to Betsy Isle, my editor, she called to tell me that, sadly, one member of the
editorial review committee did not like my idea. She told me to come up with
another idea.
I did. They liked it.
THIN ICE came to me as a story about a
boy whose world is falling apart. So many of my
former students wrestled with issues surrounding divorce.
Divorce became part of the story-the catalyst for so many changesin the life of
my protagonist, Martin.
So many of my former students wrestled
with issues of friendship. How many times had I
seen best friends turn into worst enemies? Martin
would have such a friend.
So many of my former students wrestled
with responsibilities at home, especially if
they lived with only a mother or a father. I
gave Martin a sister who is diabetic and who needs help with her daily
insulin shots. This gave me a chance to remember the diabetic children I
had worked with during the summers I went to college.
And so many of my former students
wrestled with a teacher (me) who did not
hesitate to call in their parents when I needed help. And then the
story took over. It became something that was different from anything I experienced
or that my students had experienced.
What if Martin's mother and Martin's
teacher discovered that they liked each other's
company? How did Marin feel when his mother started dating
his teacher?
About as well as you would have, if you
had been in his shoes.
I mixed up all these elements and
wrote. It was hard work, the hardest writing I
had ever done before. A second novel is almost always hard,
especially if the first novel is a critical and popular success. Writing
THIS ICE has hard; also because Betsy Isle left Little, Brown &
Company. Luckily, the book was taken over by Stephanie Owens-Lurie (now of
Dutton books) who loved it and did a wonderful job
editing it, making it shine.
To my relief, it got good reviews and was published
in Great Britain.
TOBY
1987 (Purchase a copy)
This is the novel I wanted to write
after DEAD BIRDS SINGING. By the time THIN ICE
was in the thick of being published, I had an agent who suggested
I take my idea to Dial Books for Young Readers. I did. They loved it.
I wrote it. They published it.
The story behind this story? Of course.
The first year I taught, I had a
combined fifth-sixth grade in Marshalltown, Iowa.
Talk about trial by fire ants! Fifth graders and sixth graders are very
different from each other and have very different needs. Also, my school
was on the wrong side of the tracks (for those of you who do not know,
it was in the poor part of town) and right next to the hog packing plant
(for those of you who do not know, it is the hog slaughter house and pork
processing factory). Also, I had some emotionally disturbed kids who being
mainstreamed in to my "regular" classroom. One of them had such a
severe learning disabilities he could not spell his own
name.
It was a very difficult year.
But one student of mine helped make the
year much more pleasant that it promised to be.
This student was bright. He had a good sense of humor. He was
enthusiastic. You would never have known he had a quite serious problem in
life, but he did.
Both of his parents were retarded.
Really. Not the way you sometimes thing about
your parents. His parents could not read or write. They even talked funny.
Well-meaning people in the community
though such a bright student should be in a
foster home where his "parents" could help him with his homework.
He refused to cooperate. He loved his
parents. I could not blame him. They were sweet
and wonderful people and they loved him.
It was with this boy in mind, that I
set out to write TOBY In the book is much of the
turmoil I felt when I was Toby's age and also the turmoil I felt as
a first-year teacher trying to meet the needs of all my students. I asked
the question: What is most important-being smart of
being loved and loving?
As with all my books, I wrote it not to
be sensational, but to be honest. Toby and his
parents continue to be very close to my heart.
THE
PAPER KNIFE
1988 (Purchase a copy)
Over twenty years ago, it was unusual
for men to tech fifth or sixth grade. Yet, there
I was, a man in charge of a combined fifth-sixth classroom my first
year of teaching.
In the story behind TOBY I describe
some of the reasons why it was a difficult year.
Now, for the story behind THE PAPER KNIFE, I
will describe yet another reason it was difficult.
A couple of months after school began
the principal brought a sixth-grade girl into my
call room from another part of town. It was a total surprise. I settled
her into a desk, introduced the class to her, and sent them out to recess.
I hunted down the principal to find out a little more about my new student.
He told me she was in my classroom because I was a man. She needed a
male role model in her life who did not think of her sexually. Her father
had just been arrested and jailed for making her older
sister pregnant, and he had been having sex with
my sixth-grade student also.
"Just act natural," he said.
"That's why she's in your class."
This news was too shocking to
"just act natural." My new student was painfully
shy, didn't talk to other students, and barely talked to me. Even though
she was a good student I spent as much time with her as I could. I wanted
to build trust with her. I wanted her to feel comfortable in my classroom
and to know that not all men thought about her sexually.
I think now that she probably just
wanted to be left alone.
In tying to help her, I did a little
research on sexual abuse of children. What I
found out was shocking. In every classroom I visit, I now know that at
least one student, possible two or three, have been sexually abused. And not
just girls. Boys, too are often victims of sexual predation by adults, both
male and female.
When it came time to do this book, I
did further research at a lock-up hospital for
emotionally disturbed children. I talked in depth with one
boy who had not only been severely sexually abused but who was a sexual abuser.
It was hard to ask him the questions I needed to ask. It was harder still
to listen to his answer.
From all of this came Jeremy. And with Jeremy
came his story about a deep, dark, soul-searing
secret he shares with too many other children
today.
This book was also published in
Germany.
RABBIT
IN THE ROCK
1989 (Purchase a copy)
When I finished THE PAPER KNIFE I felt
the need to write something fun. An Adventure.
And I get the need to write a novel in which the
main character was a girl. I also wanted to write a novel set in New Mexico,
which was feeling more and more like home.
I thought about my wife growing up
outside of Santa Fem at The Bishop's Lodge, a
ranch resort. I thought about some of the stories she told about
guests who didn't act well, but who had paid enough money to get away with
it. I thought about how difficult it can be to be a girl who is becoming
a woman, a girl who doesn't much like what is happening to her body or
the new ways people are thinking about her.
The character Bernie was born.
And then Sean slipped into her
life-mysterious and out of place.
Bernie loves her home. Sean hates his.
Bernie loves the country. Sean is a city person.
Despite all of this, Bernie finds Sean stirring feelings
in her that are strange and unwelcome.
When they hatch their plot involving a
random letter, I called the FBI to learn what
would happen. The story almost spun out of control.
It was fun to write. And, by the way,
there really is a rabbit in the rock a short
hike up a canyon near my house.
DOUBLE
OR NOTHING
1990 (Purchase a copy)
When my wife and I first went to New
Zealand (where I first met Margaret Mahy-
somebody who's books all of you should read), we found ourselves
in the large park in downtown Christchurch after lunch, admiring the
flowers and watching people. In the midst of all this, we noticed a boy going
from group to group performing magic tricks.
As he got closer, we noticed
that he wasn't asking for money. And good thing too-he wasn't very good.
But nobody seemed to mind. His smile and his enthusiasm were magic enough.
Watching that boy caused me to wonder:
What is magic, anyway? Is magic fooling people
into believing things that are not true? Or could there be
a kind of magic actually transforms people, that changes how they see and
experience themselves and the world around them?
You need to answer those questions for
yourself. But don't decide quickly. Read the
book first.
Sam started out as the boy we saw in
New Zealand. Slowly, in my imagination, he
became his own person, blessed by his Uncle Frank with the gift
of many magic tricks.
To see magic up close, I invited a
magician to our house, where he performed for a
group of friends. I tried some magic myself, but the more I
practiced the worse I seemed to get.
The story of how Sam becomes a magician
was magic to write. I can't do magic tricks any
better than the boy my wife and I saw in Christchurch.
But perhaps, when it's going well, writing (and reading) is magic
of that other sort.
