The Childrens Book Review » Books for Girls

Award-Winning Illustrator Marla Frazee & the Best Interview Ever

Bianca Schulze — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 20:50:03 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 30, 2012

Marla Frazee

Marla Frazee is the award-winning author and illustrator of many celebrated bestselling books including The Seven Silly Eaters, Stars, The Boss Baby, Roller Coaster, and the Clementine series. Her acclaimed books All the World and A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever received the Caldecott Honor Award. She lives in southern California with her husband and three sons, where she works in a backyard studio under an avocado tree. I’m willing to bet she makes some crazy delicious guacamole.

Nicki Richesin: You knew from a very young age that you wanted to become a children’s book illustrator. It must have felt incredibly gratifying when A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever won the Caldecott Honor Award. How does it feel now looking back on your youth and realizing your single-minded determination and drive has helped you achieve your goal?

Marla Frazee: You mean aside from making me feel old? Well, I guess I had determination and drive to some extent, but when I compare my growing up years to my children’s growing up years, I honestly feel like I was a slacker! I just loved children’s books, and I loved drawing and reading and writing stuff, and I never stopped loving all of that. I did get very serious in college – I attended Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and the program was so grueling that I hardly retain any memories of that time because I was so sleep-deprived.

NR: Your latest book Stars is a gorgeous, magical book about stars and all their practical applications, but it’s also about wishing. Could you tell us a bit about working on this project?

MF: When I first read Mary Lyn Ray’s manuscript, it reminded me of A Hole is to Dig with its seemingly random, childlike sentences and it’s high-wire act of how-is-she-gonna-pull-this-off, oh-my-god-she-just-did! I thought it would be impossible to illustrate, which is why it was so intriguing. I spent many months just thinking about it before I started sketching. It is always fascinating when a book begins to take form, because it goes from being abstract to tangible almost on its own accord. I am often surprised by this, even though I am making it.

I work very closely throughout this process with my editor, Allyn Johnston, VP and Publisher of Beach Lane Books, and we discuss the emergent book at every single stage of its development. I depend on that give-and-take very much.

When it was time to paint the finishes for Stars, I had to make an effort to slow myself down. Some of the paintings in Stars were laborious. Hundreds of layers of watercolor, hundreds of snowflakes, hundreds of mossy stars, etc. But it was calming, too, and I usually need to calm down.

NR: Many of our TCBR readers are aspiring authors and will be encouraged to learn that it took you a long time to break into children’s book publishing. You worked in advertising, educational publishing, and toys and games wherein your artwork was used to communicate messages or teach something, but with children’s books you had to tell a story. You’ve said it took you quite a while to develop this storytelling component in your illustrations. How did you eventually learn to do it?

MF: Yes, it is always helpful to hear a story such as mine and I am more than happy to share it. Even now, I get all prickly when I hear about someone who was offered a contract by the first publisher who saw their work or someone whose first book hit #1 on the NYT bestseller list. I hate those kind of stories. I’m all for delayed gratification.

What I had to do was learn how to tell stories with my pictures. At first I didn’t even know what that meant because I thought I was already doing it. After all these years of drawing stories and trying to teach it, I think it boils down to a pretty simple rule: it takes time to get to know the characters in a book and the world they inhabit. My first sketches are always horrible. Stereotypical. Contrived. Generic. I have to put in the time in order to deepen them and have it all mean something.

NR: In the Clementine books, you wanted your images to hearken back to that era and to look as if they came from that time. You’ve said you’d like your work to appear as “fresh as paint, but to have been around long enough to be a classic.” How do you accomplish this in your illustrations?

MF: This is a hard question! No one has ever asked me that before.

I work on the book’s structure before I know what the content of each illustration will be. I think there was a formality to the classic books I admire and I try to riff on (or out-and-out rip off!) some aspect of that with each book. I never just wing it when it comes to structure – and I’m referring here to the pagination and layout of words and pictures within the picture book form. I plan it out, using the rhythm and meaning of the manuscript to dictate what the relationship between words and pictures should be on the page.

NR: When you’re searching for a manuscript to illustrate, you look for a challenging and exciting project- almost like a puzzle you want to understand. You work on a book for about a year. At which point in this process, do you usually feel as if you’ve begun to solve the puzzle?

MF: I definitely feel like it is solved when I have a finished sketch dummy, with text and images in place, page turns figured out, content in the pictures established. Before that, it is all in flux. By the time I start to paint, I’ve got a pretty good handle on what is going on with the book. Then it is a matter of executing it. Sometimes there is a lot of trial and error in the beginning of the painting process before I get a sense of the materials and color palette I want to use. But that’s a different and lesser challenge to me, because by that time, the puzzle of the manuscript is solved.

NR: I loved one of your earlier books called Mrs. Biddlebox about a frustrated crank who decides to bake a cake to lift her mood. I was shocked to learn that the author Linda Smith died the same year this book was published. I wondered whether you knew Linda personally and if her death affected your work on Mrs. Biddlebox?

MF: I didn’t get to meet Linda in person, but we spoke on the phone a few times. I called her to see if there was anything she might want to share with me about the book. This is not the way it typically works between authors and illustrators, of course. Usually discussions about the development of a book go through the editor. But I knew that there was a chance Linda would never get to see the finished book and I felt it was important for me to hear what she might want to say. I’m glad I did, because Linda died before I even started the first sketches.

Linda was very professional during our phone conversation and didn’t want to influence my thinking, but she finally shared some of her thoughts. One was that Mrs. Biddlebox should have a pet of some kind, and she suggested a mangy dog or a skinny cat or something. In the initial sketches, I drew Mrs. Biddlebox with a dog and a cat and then a goat and I even tried a raccoon. Finally I settled on the goose. It seemed right. It turns out that Linda used to have a goose named Gabby who would follow her around and bite her through her jeans. Linda’s husband and kids said Linda would have been delighted with Mrs. Biddlebox and her goose. This convinced me that I was taking good care of Linda’s brilliant story, even though she wasn’t alive to see the finished book.

While I illustrated Mrs. Biddlebox, it was often hard to keep from focusing on the sadness of Linda’s death and still honor her wickedly subversive and darkly funny manuscript. It was a balancing act, and maybe because of that it remains one of the most gratifying projects I’ve worked on.

NR: You received the Caldecott Honor Award in 2009 for A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever. You must be grateful that you created this thank-you card/book at your editor’s suggestion. Did it feel different working on a project that sort of documents your son’s adventures rather than working on a fictional project that another author dreamed up?

MF: Absolutely. My editor (whose son is the other boy in the story) and I were often worried that we were engaged in a vanity project, God forbid. Luckily we never thought this at the same moment or we would’ve bagged it. But one of us was always convincing the other that there was something happening with it that was worth our attention. As the book came into being, the story began to take on a life of its own. Basically, A Couple of Boys Have the Best Week Ever is a highly fictionalized account of a very real week. The emotions are all true. The events, well, not so much.

NR: The Seven Silly Eaters is a family favorite in our home. I especially love that Mrs. Peters found the time to play her cello, as if! Could you describe how you first brought the Peters’s family’s adventures to life with your humorous and lively pictures?

MF: Mary Ann Hoberman is brilliant, of course. But the premise of The Seven Silly Eaters – seven children, all of them with weird eating issues, and a mother who is actually attempting to meet their needs – is almost disturbing. The challenge was how to temper it. Linda Zuckerman, my first editor and the editor of The Seven Silly Eaters, thought the way to do that was to illustrate it with animal characters. But I really wanted it to be a human family. I related very strongly with the mother. The story is really about how she is pulled in all directions by the demands of raising children. What parent among us can’t relate to that?

I felt the cello was a way of reinforcing the mother’s identity. She is in danger of seeming like a dishrag. I also pared down the world this family exists in. They have no neighbors, no jobs, no car, no phones, no TV. And I put a dad in the book. Mary Ann Hoberman never mentions a dad in the text. Imagine. A woman having a baby every time there’s a page turn? With no dad in the picture? THAT wouldn’t have worked at all! Of course, he’s implied. But it is amazing how when we look at picture books, it is often hard to remember what story is being told in the words and what story is being told in the pictures. And that’s how it should be – a seamless experience of words and pictures telling a larger story together than could be told by either the words or pictures alone. That is what we aim for every time up to bat.

NR: Your Caldecott Honor Award-winning All the World is truly a masterpiece. It somehow subtly balances the stunning splendor of the world (in your illustrations) with the beautiful simplicity of the poetic text (by Liz Garton Scanlon). I’d love to know more about your creative process on this book.

MF: Liz Garton Scanlon’s manuscript is an incredible mix of expansiveness, intimacy, specificity, poetry, emotion, and universal truth. When Allyn sent it to me seconds after she received it, she didn’t wait in a polite way to see if I would be interested. She demanded that I drop what I was doing and start illustrating this thing called All the World right away! This is not the way we usually talk about new projects. There is typically a lot of hemming and hawing and whatnot. But as soon as I read it, I understood where she was coming from.

All the World was daunting. The challenge here, for me, was how to portray “all the world.” An impossible task. When I am confronted with an illustrative problem that seems insurmountable, it is usually that I am thinking too literally and I need to find the emotional truth of whatever it is I’m trying to figure out. In the case of All the World, I decided that no one – certainly not me – has ever experienced “all the world,” but we all have the sense that we belong here. On good days, at least. When I personally feel like I belong to the world, it is because I am with people I love in places I love. So I decided that would be my solution. I set All the World in a place I love – the central coast region of Southern California – and populated it with people and things that I love. I stopped worrying that I wasn’t representing every place, every person, every possible experience. And I hoped that through this personal expression of mine, others would find their own personal meanings as well.

I do believe this to be the over-arching philosophy behind most of the books I’ve fallen in love with over the years. The more personal and heartfelt the story is for the author and/or illustrator of the book, the more universal the emotion that can be gleaned from it. We see this again and again. But it’s hard to remember. It is so easy to go to a place of, “Well, that’s just about me. No one will care about that.” But actually, if it comes from a true place and is spoken from the heart, people do care. A lot.

NR: Could you tell us a bit about your upcoming book Boot & Shoe and any other projects you’re working on?

MF: I’ve just put the finishing touches on Boot & Shoe. It’s about two (almost) identical dogs who live in the same house – one spending his days on the front porch and one spending his days on the back porch. This is the perfect arrangement for them, until a squirrel comes along and seriously messes with their heads. The most difficult thing about Boot & Shoe was keeping it light and not bogging it down with extraneous detail. I hope I did that. I think I did, because when I look at the completed book, I wonder why on earth it was so hard to do. It seems like it should’ve been so easy. I think that’s a good sign. I am going to take it that way because otherwise I’m just beating myself up.

Now I’m beginning work on the 6th book in Sara Pennypacker’s Clementine series. There will be 7 altogether. Sara is bringing this series to a close in the most amazing way.

My next project after that is still under wraps because it involves a book with a text that was published previously, but was not illustrated. I’m very excited about it. And in preparation, I’ve signed up for an oil painting class at Art Center. So I am suddenly a student again, instead of a teacher, working totally out of my comfort zone.

That’s got to be good, right?

Nicki Richesin is the editor of four anthologies,What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding On To, and Letting Go of Their Daughters; Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond; Crush: 26 Real-Life Tales of First Love; and The May Queen: Women on Life, Work, and Pulling it all Together in your Thirties. Her anthologies have been excerpted and praised in The New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Boston Globe, Redbook, Parenting, Cosmopolitan, Bust, Salon, Daily Candy, and Babble.

Review: Coral Reefs by Jason Chin

Bianca Schulze — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:53:06 +0000

By Nina Schuyler, The Children’s Book Review
Published: January 27, 2012

Coral Reefs

By Jason Chin

Reading level: Ages 5 and up

Hardcover: 40 pages

Publisher: Flash Point (October 25, 2011)

Source: Publisher

What to expect: Science, Nature, Biology, Marine life, Water

Jason Chin does something pretty wonderful in his nonfiction book, Coral Reefs: He hasn’t forgotten the wild imagination of a kid.

What makes Coral Reefs unique is that along with loads of interesting information, he’s included colorful watercolor illustrations that tell their own story. In a sense he is blurring the boundary between fiction and nonfiction. The result is something completely engaging. And this hybrid form dishes out just enough facts without overwhelming. So you learn that though coral reefs may look like plants, they’re actually animals; and at the same time, the pictures, which often take up more than half the page, tell the story of a girl who goes to the library and picks up a book about coral reefs.

You learn coral reefs are the largest structures built by an animal on earth! The Belize barrier reef is over 180 miles long!; and at the same time, the illustrations show the girl’s world transforming, with the library slipping away and turning into coral, along with sea plants and fish. “There are so many species living in reefs that they are often called the cities of the sea,” writes Chin. And the water whooshes into the library, and the girl is swept up on a wave that carries with it octopus, sea turtles, fish and more coral. Very quickly, the girl is floating underwater, exploring and learning about the city of the sea. It’s a city, Chin tells us, with “a complex web of relationships, and each has its own place in the system.”

“There are so many species living in reefs that they are often called the cities of the sea,”

After you’ve fallen in love with coral reefs and the teeming life that calls it home—“More than four thousand kinds of fish and thousands of other species have been discovered in coral reefs—more than in any other part of the ocean”—after he’s completely hooked you, Chin has bad news. The reefs, just like so many other living things, are threatened by pollution and over-fishing. Thankfully, he gives a list of things you can do to help. You can—and you’ll want to—form a relationship with the reefs.

Add this book to your collection: Coral Reefs

Nina Schuyler‘s first novel, The Painting, (Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill/2004), was a finalist for the Northern California Book Awards. It was also selected by the San Francisco Chronicle as one of the Best Books for 2004 and a “Great Debut from 2004″ by the Rocky Mountain News. She currently teaches creative writing at the University of San Francisco and is working on a third novel.

Fancy Nancy Dress Up App

Bianca Schulze — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 07:00:39 +0000

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Video courtesy of HarperKids: Make Nancy look extra fancy in this first-ever official Fancy Nancy game app! Nancy’s going to a splendid soiree—that’s fancy for party! Read her storybook and then create fancy outfits on every page. After all, no one knows how to dress up like Fancy Nancy!

Fancy Nancy has captured the hearts of readers, and with over 20 million books in print, she’s ready to make her dress-up app debut. With hundreds of possible outfits, and fun and fancy backgrounds and stickers to choose from, fans will love dressing up Nancy and making their very own Fancy Fashion Story. Ooh la la!

Purchase the app on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch!

Everneath by Brodi Ashton

Bianca Schulze — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 20:56:55 +0000

Reading level: Ages 14 and up

Add this book to your collection: Everneath

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Video courtesy of harperteen: “Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath. Now she’s returned—to her old life, her family, her boyfriend—before she’s banished back to the underworld . . . this time forever. She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can’t find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.”

Review: Wildwood Chronicles by Colin Meloy and Carson Ellis

Bianca Schulze — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 07:16:43 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: December 30, 2011

Wildwood Chronicles

By Colin Meloy; illustrated by Carson Ellis

Reading level: Ages 9 and up

Hardcover: 560 pages

Publisher: Balzer + Bray; First Edition first Printing edition (August 30, 2011)

Source: Library

What to expect: Fantasy

At first glance, Wildwood Chronicles may seem too massive a tome to read to your children. Although daunting, I’m glad that we undertook the challenge. For the more faint-hearted, you may want to invest in the audiobook narrated by Amanda Plummer (whom you may remember as Honey Bunny from Pulp Fiction and the axe-murder in So I Married an Axe Murderer). I’m told she employs a remarkable number of voices for this large cast of characters. The one character she cannot give voice yet seems to pulse with life throughout this book is the forest itself, the various flora and fauna that inhabit this Northwestern clime, and the ivy that lurks just below its surface waiting to engulf its very heart.

The soul of the book for me is the uncommonly bold heroine Prue who risks life and limb for her brother Mac and even puts her own parents to shame with her fearlessness. The story begins, much like Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, when baby Mac is snatched from his radio flyer wagon in the park and whisked into the sky by a murder of crows. Shocked yet undaunted, Prue returns to her house for supplies and leaves to rescue her brother early the following morning. Unbeknownst to her, she is followed by her curious friend Curtis who only wants to help her. Once past the Impassable Wilderness, they encounter an army of coyotes and lead separate adventures for most of the book until they are reunited in a battle to save Wildwood and Mac.

The inventive ragtag cast of characters befriends and tricks Prue and Curtis as they search for Mac and whom to trust along their way. They both encounter beasts and humans trying to survive in a world that has changed since the reign of Alexandra the mad Queen who was banished to the Wastelands. Her devoted legion of various birds and coyotes prove formidable foes for Prue, Curtis, the Mystics, Bandits, and the Irregulars as they mount a campaign to defeat Alexandra and her minions and take back Wildwood. Throughout the novel, Carson Ellis’s delicate illustrations provide a fantastic backdrop for her husband’s imagination. The husband and wife live just across from the Impassable Wilderness and it would seem the perfect inspiration for them to conjure Wildwood into life. I must confess, though enchanting, Meloy’s long descriptions of fern and bracken often proved too taxing for my seven-year-old. I admire the breadth and depth of his imagination and his sheer ability to bring a story to Portland that will leave a mark on this fair city for some time to come. Much like Eloise in New York or Paddington Bear in London, Prue and Curtis will live on in the hearts and minds of the citizens of Portland. I salute the pair for a masterfully good read and look forward to reading their next installment.

Add this book to your collection: The Wildwood Chronicles, Book 1

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Books for Courageous Girls

Bianca Schulze — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 07:55:17 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: December 23, 2011

I would like my daughter to read about young girls as instructive role models who will inspire bravery and determination in her. I’ve spent a bit of time searching for books with bold heroines and these are the ones I’ve found most entertaining and even a little humorous. Enjoy and please let me know which books you’ve found for the girls in your life.

The Maggie B. was my absolute favorite book as a child. Irene Haas painted an enchanting water-colored world with her sweet verse I wanted to escape to. Margaret Barnstable was everything I wanted to be: bold, resourceful, a sailor and a violinist. When a storm strikes her ship, she single-handedly battens down the hatches and cares for her brother. All this while, fishing for “beautiful blue green lobsters” she prepared in a scrumptious stew as supper for two. After all these years, I would still like to sail on the Maggie B. (Ages 4 and up)

I suppose there’s almost nothing worse than having to face a new school and make new friends when you’re young, but Molly Lou Mellon will inspire shy children with her exploits. In Stand Tall Molly Lou Mellon by Patty Lovell, Molly Lou’s grandmother offers her some sage advice when she’s feeling self-conscious and being bullied by her nemesis Ronald Durkin. David Catrow’s illustrations are so playful and funny. This one’s a keeper. (Ages 4 and up)

Pirate Girl by Cornelia Funke (illustrated by Kerstin Meyer) is a funny book about a little girl named Molly who is captured by Captain Firebeard and his crew of scallywag pirates on the Horrible Haddock. Molly outsmarts the captain and has her revenge! I like that this book doesn’t take itself too seriously. (Ages 3 and up)

Babette Cole created a whole series based on her original masterpiece Princess Smartypants. The princess is not looking for a husband, but her parents insist she challenge her suitors to win her hand in marriage. When Prince Swashbuckle performs all his tasks she must grant him a kiss, and he turns into a warty toad. There’s nothing more to life than marriage as the Disney Princesses of the world would have us believe, but this princess is more interested in playing with her animals and having fun. (Ages 4-8)

For older children:

With her luminous paintings and prose, Barbara Helen Berger (famous for Grandfather Twilight and most recently Thunder Bunny) created a beautiful adventure story for her heroine Gwinna. Born with wings her adopted family tries to hide, Gwinna feels lonely and a sense of longing each time she looks at the faraway mountain. This is a moving book about the hard journey she must endure to return to the Mother of the Owls, but it’s one of acceptance as well. Gwinna learns to embrace her difference and use her wings as a powerful gift. (Ages 6 and up)

In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s classic novel A Little Princess, Sara Crewe, a little girl who lives at a boarding school with everything in the world she could possibly want, is suddenly orphaned on her eleventh birthday. Sara’s wonderful imagination and courage help her to survive hunger, loneliness, and a cruel mistress who humiliates her. She demonstrates to the other boarding school girls how to endure and rise above terrible circumstances with grace and dignity. Of course, this book has a surprise happy ending. (Ages 9 and up)

Jo March is the bold heroine in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. A tomboy and aspiring writer, Jo dreams of one day leading an exciting life filled with the marvelous adventures she has written in plays and stories for her sisters. Set in New England during the Civil War, the close-knit family is poor, but generous. The March sisters eagerly await the return of their dear father from the battlefields. Devoted to her family, Jo willingly makes sacrifices on behalf of her father and sisters, but it’s the life she goes on to create for herself in Good Wives that will inspire readers the most. (Ages 12 and up)

An Author, a Photographer & a Child’s Exciting Adventures

Bianca Schulze — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:09:25 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: December 22, 2011

Interview with the author and photographer behind Kiki & Coco in Paris—a child’s exciting adventures in the City of Light

Nina Gruener is the author of three children’s books Above San Francisco and Above New York and most recently Kiki & Coco in Paris. Stephanie Rausser is a lifestyle photographer who has had her work featured all over the world. Together, they created Kiki & Coco in Paris, the tender story of a young girl visiting Paris for the first time with her doll.

Nicki Richesin: Congratulations on your beautiful new book Kiki & Coco in Paris. I’m sure it will make a delightful gift for little girls this holiday season. Could you tell us about how you began the project and a bit about your collaboration?

Nina Gruener

Nina Gruener: Stephanie had this beautiful idea to bring a sweet rag doll along on her trip to Paris with her daughter Kiki. I didn’t see the images until a few years later when her slideshow of the trip was all over the blog world and written up in numerous magazines. I had no idea that we lived in the same town, but had a bee in my bonnet to turn these beautiful shots into a children’s book. There was something so Velveteen Rabbit about the look on Coco’s face. We finally met through Stephanie’s aunt and the rest is history…

Stephanie, you dedicated the book to the late photographer Debra McClinton who was your dear friend. Debra had such a vibrant personality. She was alive and so open to new experiences and people. Her playful spirit is perfectly captured within your book. Could you talk a little about your friendship and how it inspired this project?

Stephanie Rausser

Stephanie Rausser: Debra was my camera assistant for many years and she was the most upbeat, positive, and refreshing person I had ever worked with and met. Her death not only left a hole in my heart, but it also left me baffled as it all made no sense. I had never experienced anything like this and so I looked for ways to explore my grief and confusion. I had always imagined I would have a girl -somewhat like Pippi Longstocking- who would love to be photographed so I figured I would test that out. I picked the place I had most loved visiting when I was younger and I went there with my daughter. The book definitely has Debra’s spirit and creativity in it and there were days we would return to our Paris flat and the doll’s arm would have fallen off while we were out and I would sit there in tears sewing the arm back on. I just remember thinking about Debra so much on the trip. I still do.

Nina, your grandfather Robert Cameron started Cameron + Company in 1964 and you and your husband Chris took over the business after he passed away in 2009. You’ve continued the writing tradition in your family with your first book as a tribute to his legacy, a children’s adaptation of your grandfather’s Above San Francisco, and you just published Above New York. Could you tell us about his influence on your life and what you have planned for Cameron + Company in the future?

NG: My grandfather (Grok as many of us called him) always seemed larger than life. He believed that anything I touched was golden. I was once in a terrible student film and he told everyone it was headed for Sundance – it was not. But he loved us that way, with flair. And he lived his life and shaped this company in the same fashion. Every time we finish a project that I’m proud of, I think of him and how much he loved beautiful things. I am excited to keep growing our children’s line with a focus on photography and art.

Stephanie, I briefly spoke with your daughter Kiki about her favorite memories of your trip to Paris and she showed me the image from the book of her getting a new coiffeur at the hair salon. What was your favorite memory from the trip?

SR: My favorite memory of the trip was going to the fair at the Tuileries. Part of the deal was if I got to take photos of Kiki and her doll for forty-five minutes, then we would go to the fair before the sun went down. It was a great place for me to people watch and Kiki just was so excited to go there and go on the rides. We went almost every afternoon. Getting her haircut was a short second favorite memory. We took the subway across town after finding a kid’s salon and Kiki almost fell asleep in the chair. It was just the perfect thing to do on a Paris trip, a makeover.

Jess Brown created a lovely ragdoll in Coco. I understand life-sized dolls like Coco are gracing the windows of Bottega Veneta around the world. Would you consider doing a Kiki & Coco in London or Rome, or maybe San Francisco? What projects are you both working on now?

SR: I would consider it, but unfortunately Kiki is not theatrical -like Pippi- and she would prefer not to be photographed so really for me to be interested I would have wanted Kiki to do it with me. Jess thought it would be so great if we did “Kiki and Coco in Tokyo” mostly because it just sounds so great and rolls off the tongue. I have some other projects brewing but they are still in the works.

NG: I defer to Stephanie on that one! Kiki and Coco was a moment in time, and sadly, children grow up. But Stephanie’s work really does capture childlike wonder so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more concepts up her sleeve.

I am just about to tackle the children’s adaptation of Above Chicago, which will be released in the fall of 2012. But there are a few other concepts I’m toying with. I am on a constant quest to find projects that both the adult and child reader will enjoy.

Thank you so much for your time and best of luck to you both with your future projects!

Yona Zeldis McDonough: From Madame Alexander to Marilyn Monroe

Bianca Schulze — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 07:37:28 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: December 5, 2011

Yona Zeldis McDonough

Yona Zeldis McDonough is the talented author of many books for readers of all ages: fiction and non-fiction for adults and award-winning children’s books. She has most recently written the highly anticipated second book in her Doll Shop series, The Cats in the Doll Shop. Although a prolific writer, Yona still makes time for school visits and readings. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.

Nicki Richesin: It’s a great pleasure to interview you. You have proved a prolific writer of both fiction and nonfiction for adults, in addition to your award-winning children’s books. My daughter adored The Doll Shop Downstairs and The Cats in the Doll Shop. Could you explain how you first discovered Beatrice Alexander, or Madame Alexander as she’s known, and how her story inspired you to write about the resourceful Breittlemann family?

Yona Zeldis McDonough: I remember Madame Alexander dolls from my own childhood. I longed for them though I never had one back then. As an adult, I started collecting dolls and bought a few of Mme. Alexander’s creations for my collection. When I was reading about her early life, I found out that her father owned and operated America’s first doll hospital. It was on the Lower East Side and the family lived in an apartment above the shop. Beatrice (she was Bertha in those days) and her sisters were allowed to play in the doll hospital sometimes and when I learned that, I just knew: here was a perfect setting for a children’s story.

Many of your books are set in Brooklyn, where you live with your family. Why has this area of New York proved such a “fertile ground” as you put it in your work?

YZM: I love Brooklyn. It’s so vast and filled with its own history, character and even mysteries. It is both a part of New York, and yet retains a separate identity. I grew up in Brooklyn and so it holds many associations for me.

You’ve written a great many biographies for children, including most recently Louisa: The Life of Louisa May Alcott and The Doll with the Yellow Star. You collaborated on your earlier biographies with your mother the painter Malcah Zeldis. How did you enjoy working on these projects together?

YZM: As one friend said to me, “Your mother is not a person, she’s an event!” I very much enjoy working with her. She’s lively, passionate and has lots of great ideas. We brainstorm to find subjects on which we want to collaborate; we’re a very good team.

I understand you’re putting the finishing touches on a new biography about Laura Ingalls Wilder for Holt. Wilder has such a devoted following and even after all these years, her Little House books have remained in print. You must have felt a bit of a responsibility in honoring her memory for her fans. Did you discover any interesting details about her life?

YZM: The sheer volume of material on Wilder is formidable and I am not sure I found much that was new. However, I do think I offer a new and perhaps feminist interpretation of the material. In the bio I wrote, I tried to stress how her mother’s influence did so much to shape her life. Her mother was an educated woman, and wanted her daughters to be educated as well. She read to them, and did her best to see that they went to school, which was unusual for the time and their circumstances. Even after Laura’s older sister Mary went blind (from an illness), Laura’s mother was insistent that she receive an education, and managed to save enough money to send her to a college for the blind in another state. I was so struck by that. Most people would not have thought educating any girl was so important, yet Laura’s mother made so many sacrifices in order for Mary to have an education and become self-sufficient. And later, Laura communicated her love of learning to her own daughter Rose; Rose became a well-known journalist and author. I tried to stress the continuity there: how the love of books, of reading and writing, was forged and passed on by mothers to daughters.

I read on your blog that you’re putting together a new collection of stories loosely based on the lives of your American parents who lived in Israel during the fifties. You were born in Chadera while they lived there. What have you learned about your parents or yourself while doing your research?

YZM: I can’t say I learned anything factual about my parents or their past; even though my stories are based on real events, I have completely made them over, cannibalized them if you will, in my writing. The stories are more about the search and less about the discovery. I’ve also enlarged the canvas to include some stories about my grandmother as a child and a young woman; one of these stories takes place in Russia, a place I have never been but long to go. And in my fiction, I can.

You edited a highly praised collection of essays about Marilyn Monroe, All the Available Light: A Marilyn Monroe Reader. Why were you initially drawn to this project and why do you think Marilyn has held such a fascination for her fans? Will you go see the new film My Week with Marilyn?

YZM: She is that forever compelling combination of beautiful and damned. Her Cinderella-like transformation from unwanted orphan/abused foster child to Hollywood star fulfills a very powerful fantasy so many of us seem to have. I have mixed feelings about the new movie; MM’s presence was so incandescent on screen that I see no need to watch someone impersonate her. Yet the film will add to the discussion in some fashion and I suppose I will succumb.

What are you dreaming of writing now?

YZM: I’m working on a new novel set in 1947 in both New York and Connecticut. And I have some children’s projects, both fiction and non-fiction, that I’m hoping to get launched as well.

Interview with Bestselling Author Annie Barrows

Bianca Schulze — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 18:17:48 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 14, 2011

Annie Barrows. Photo credit: Annie Frantzeskos Photography, 2011

Annie Barrows is the enormously talented author of many acclaimed books including the Ivy + Bean series, The Magic Half, and The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society. She has also written non-fiction books under the pen name Ann Fiery. Annie’s latest book in the Ivy + Bean series is No News Is Good News. She worked for years as an editor until she decided to write children’s books like the ones she loved growing up. Her dedicated fans are eternally grateful she decided to pursue her dream.

Nicki Richesin: Congratulations on your great success with the Ivy + Bean series. When I gave my daughter your latest book No News Is Good News, she disappeared with a greedy look in her eye and resurfaced a few hours later. It must feel incredibly satisfying to know children are devoted to the characters you’ve brought to life with your words and eager to read about their next adventures.

Annie Barrows: I’m always happy when I see a kid wrapped up in a book—even happier when the book in question is one of mine.

I admired your description of how children who are opposites can often form a beautiful friendship. There is a yin and yang element to Ivy and Bean’s friendship that keeps their relationship ticking along and also adds tension. Was this your original intent when you first created these characters?

I guess I was mostly trying to create characters who lead with their imaginations—that is something that Ivy and Bean have in common—and it just turned out that they have different ways of being in the world. I read a lot of books in which the kids seem pretty generic, but kids, like grownups, have pretty distinct characters. Actually, because they’re not smoothed over by social niceties, they are more distinct than adults.

Like many of your devoted readers, I fell madly in love with The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society. You present such a fascinating setting and a rag-tag cast of loony yet lovable characters in this novel rich with hope and possibilities. Of course, I loved the plucky heroine you created in Juliet. The story is told in a series of beautifully crafted letters. I’m sure this must have proved a hindrance to your story-telling in some ways, but freed you in terms of a constantly changing voice that moves the story along. Did you find this to be true while writing the book?

The epistolary aspect of the book was something I inherited from my aunt and co-author, Mary Ann Shaffer. I think it’s the ideal way to tell about a historic period—our credibility would have been severely undermined by having a smaller clutch of characters who happened to experience a majority of the events of the Occupation. With upwards of 26 characters, we could cover the range of episodes in a range of voices, which was great. Plus, you always get a pop from a first-person POV. It has its drawbacks, but it does have energy.

I understand your aunt Mary Ann Shaffer asked you to help her finish the novel as she was very ill and you were the other born storyteller in the family. Could you talk about what it was like to work with her and how she influenced your writing life? What would she think of the international acclaim the novel has received?

I didn’t really work with Mary Ann, because she was sick. I worked with the manuscript she had written, which was wonderful because it was like hearing her tell a story. Hearing Mary Ann tell a story was one of life’s great pleasures—everyone who ever had that experience feels the same way about it—and I believe that working on Guernsey, swimming in a Mary Ann story, so to speak, gave me an understanding of the mechanics of storytelling that I never could have gotten any other way. I think Mary Ann would be thrilled—and abashed—by the reception of the novel.

You worked as an editor for Chronicle Books for many years. How is it working as an author for a publishing house where you once worked in-house? It seems like you could insist on voo-doo dolls in your books, if you wanted!

Ha! Because I knew who I was arguing with, I knew I’d never win. I think it’s a huge advantage working with a house I know so intimately. First, I know what their strengths are, and I know how I can work with those strengths. Second, they aren’t the Mysterious Monolith—I know how they’re structured, which is really helpful. And third, since it was so long ago that I worked there, all my former colleagues are now very august and powerful, so I have friends in high places.

I have to ask this question: have you ever been a member of a book club? I imagine you are contacted by them on a regular basis to discuss The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society. Do you, or have you ever, worked with a group of writers or do you prefer to work alone with your editor?

Oh boy. For years, I’ve been afraid that someone was going to ask me this. No, I have never belonged to a book club because, well, to be honest, I’m too disobedient. If someone tells me to read a book, I won’t. There are many many things I must do in my life, but reading is my freedom. I like to meander, to follow the whim of my interests. The structure of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society might have worked for me, but most current book clubs involve group reading, and that would just make me cranky.

I got an MFA, which is like having a writing group, a very surly writing group. Now I work alone—though I do sometimes ask certain friends to read my stuff for me. Bless them.

In your website biography, you allude to a ghost in your aunt’s house. Could you please tell our readers about this phantom? You also mentioned that there were a number of books that were important to you when you were young. Which ones meant the most to you?

Funny—this ghost keeps cropping up. Yes, Mary Ann and her family lived for a couple of years in a house that was haunted. I don’t know much about the ghost—it never materialized, although it did make a lot of noise—but it was not a cute, happy, friendly ghost. It was a scary ghost.

As for childhood reading, the list goes on and on. Among my favorites were the Betsy-Tacy books, the Little House on the Prairie books, Edward Eager’s books, and a book called Time at the Top, which was probably the best reading experience of my entire life.

How do you like collaborating with Sophie Blackall? Did she initially present sketches of Ivy and Bean to you or did she fashion them completely realized in one go?

I love love love Sophie, but I can’t claim any responsibility for pairing her with Ivy and Bean. Chronicle Books spent a year trying to find the right artist for Ivy and Bean and then—magic!—Sophie did a sketch that showed she was the exact right person.

I LOVED The Magic Half. Are you stilling planning on writing a prequel?

I love The Magic Half, too. And I have a prequel idea for a book about Maud, Molly’s mother. But about five months ago, I got a totally brilliant idea for a sequel, so I think that’s the direction in which I’m going to head—as soon as I finish my next novel for grownups, which is taking forever.

What can we expect next in the continuing adventures of Ivy + Bean?

I have written the ninth book, but I can only say one word about its contents: Camp.

Please describe your fantasy breakfast.

Easy-peasy: Grapefruit juice, delicious berries, buckwheat pancakes, and an ENORMOUS cup of coffee. I had it last week in Los Angeles. Yum.

Thank you so much for your time and continued success to you with all your many books!

*The Mary Ann Shaffer Memorial Fund provides a scholarship at Soapstone, the Writing Retreat for Women, for an unpublished writer who has shown a serious commitment to writing. If you’re interested in donating to the fund, donate online through Network for Good. In the “Designation” line, enter “In memory of Mary Ann Shaffer.”

Interview with Jacqueline Harvey the Mastermind behind Alice-Miranda

Bianca Schulze — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 07:47:22 +0000

By Nicki Richesin, The Children’s Book Review
Published: November 6, 2011

Jacqueline Harvey

Jacqueline Harvey is the gifted author of the fabulous Alice-Miranda book series (Alice-Miranda at School was just released in the U.S. in April 2011), the Code Name series and an award-winning picture book called The Sound of the Sea. Her latest creation Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith Kennington Jones is a delightful little chatterbox sure to win the hearts of American children just as she has won over her devoted readers in Australia. When she’s not working as Director of Development at Abbotsleigh, a school for girls in Sydney, Jacqueline is writing about Alice-Miranda’s exciting adventures.

Nicki Richesin: You’ve created such a charming heroine in Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith Kennington Jones. She leads a sophisticated life- jet-setting with her parents to far-flung exotic places, has access to a personal chef and helicopter pilot and even her own pony named Bonaparte. Yet, she’s a generous girl always eager to help solve others’ problems. Her enthusiasm is infectious and I admired how she resourcefully handles every obstacle put before her, especially the masterful way she thwarts Miss Grimm and Alethea at every turn. What inspired you to create such a determined and winning character?

Jacqueline Harvey: Alice-Miranda has an extraordinary life and I think the fact that she comes from great wealth certainly makes her different from most of us. Although I had a horse as a child, there was certainly no helicopter or chef (although my mum’s a great cook). For her though, that’s the only life she’s ever known and I wanted to challenge the stereotype that because of her background she should be spoilt or nasty, or think that she was better than others. Alice-Miranda has an inherent kindness that I wanted to shine through. She may have been born to a life of privilege but it’s the only life she’s ever known and it doesn’t mean that she can’t be a wonderfully decent person along with it. Over my years as a teacher I have worked at some quite privileged schools with little girls who perhaps aren’t quite on the same economic stratosphere as Alice-Miranda but are very fortunate indeed. I think she’s the best characteristics of lots of children I’ve known.

I absolutely loved the unusually long names you bequeathed your characters and also the more fitting ones like Miss Grimm, Mr. Plumpton, Miss Reedy, and Mr. Grump. Did you encounter any of these funny people, who inspired you to create characters with such fanciful names, when you were growing up in Camden?

None of the characters are based on anyone I’ve known in real life, although I think as a writer you often hoard memories of characteristics of people, perhaps unwittingly a lot of the time. I did have one teacher in high school who was terribly tall and thin and I adored him – so perhaps he gave rise to Miss Reedy in some strange way. He taught me English and History. Generally for me, the names tend to inspire the characters. I trawl baby name websites and the telephone directory looking for weird and wonderful names. Alice-Miranda’s own name was inspired by the fact that one of my sisters had a good friend at high school called Miranda. She was a very sweet child and I always thought she was lovely and liked her name. I started by writing Miranda on a piece of paper and then I thought, it should be hyphenated. I tried Miranda this and Miranda that and after a couple of minutes put Alice in front of Miranda and I knew that was it. Her surname is the deliberate pairing of two fancier names with two more common names. I put her name up on the window outside my office at the start of a break and asked the girls to see how long it would take to remember by heart. Most of them could reel it off after only a few minutes. I think Alice-Miranda Highton-Smith-Kennington-Jones has a lyrical quality to it – and it’s not hard to remember.

Could you tell our readers a bit about your teaching background? How much of your Alice-Miranda books did you draw from your own experience as a teacher and Deputy Head at boarding schools? Did you model any of the girls after your former students?

I’ve spent most of my career teaching in schools with boarding. My first school sometimes had students as young as Year 4 who lived in. There was one little girl I particularly remember whose mother had remarried and moved overseas and her father for whatever reason wasn’t about, so she boarded. Her resilience and positive attitude were amazing, particularly as she was one of the youngest at the boarding school and had to live with the older girls.

At the school where I currently work, I spend quite a bit of time with the boarders helping to run our Indigenous program. The girls in boarding generally get on very well and it’s a lot like having a huge extended family. At my current school there is a mixture of day girls and boarders but I wanted to make Winchesterfield-Downsfordvale all boarding so you have that feeling of camaraderie all the time.

When my sisters and I were growing up boarding school was used as a threat by our parents, ‘If you don’t stop fighting with your sisters we’ll send you to boarding school,’ so I was always somewhat apprehensive about the idea until I actually worked in one. Unfortunately, or fortunately at the time, my parents never followed through on their threat – and in reality they couldn’t have afforded it.

I’ve taught so many interesting children. Funny, smart, lovable and sometimes naughty – the whole gamut and while none of the characters in Alice-Miranda is based entirely on any one child, I’m sure that lots of them have snippets of those gorgeous kids I’ve worked with in them.

Could you tell us about the plays and poems you wrote for your students in your early days of teaching, like “Tootle-loo-Tootie” and “The Adventures of Texas Jack”? What, if anything, did you learn from your students you especially wanted to convey in your books? Also, could you tell us about how your beloved teacher Sally Hogan encouraged you when you were young?

I adore working with children and wanted to be a teacher from the time I was very young. When I was in fourth and fifth class I was fortunate to have the amazing Sally Hogan. She was funny and smart and she could play the piano and sing. She made Super 8 movies with our class – I remember doing The War of The Worlds long before Tom Cruise ever did! She brought out the best in her students and I wanted to be just like her. So after finishing school I went straight to University and studied for my teaching degree in primary education (that’s elementary school in the US). When I was at Uni I studied creative writing as an elective and always thought it would be wonderful to combine being a writer and a teacher.

My classes have always been a great source of inspiration and together over the years we did some amazing things, like recreating an Egyptian dig site in the back paddock when I was teaching Year 5. The kids couldn’t believe all of the artifacts they found – they didn’t realize for ages that one of the class mothers and I had spent all of a two week break creating little statuettes and other pieces from the period, getting a bobcat to dig a great big hole and then layering and filling it back in. It makes me tired just thinking about it but it was such an amazing experience. I wrote a story about being transported to Egypt so that when we went down to the dig site the kids imagined we were really there.

Ideas like the play Tootle-Loo Tootie came from the unit on Ancient Egypt. I wanted my class to perform a play for the school and their parents and so from this small idea about Tutankhamen I wrote the play, ensuring that every child had a role. It was a mixture of fact and fantasy and the costumes and props were amazing now that I think back. The Adventures of Texas Jack was inspired by a little boy in my Kindergarten class who came in one day and said to me, ‘I think you should write a play about Texas Jack.’ When I asked him who that was, he looked at me as if I was a little bit dim and said, ‘he’s a baddie in the wild west of course,’ and so I wrote the story which the children performed.

Working with children and sharing stories and ideas with them is a great privilege. I love their honesty and sense of fun. Over the years I have kept in touch with Sally and just this year visited the school where she is the Principal and spoke to her students about books and writing. It was fun sharing a photo of our fourth class and asking if they could work out who was who. I’m so glad that I’ve been able to tell her how much of an impact she has had on my life.

You’ve said your husband encouraged you to take a leave of absence from your career in education to focus on your writing life? Was that a difficult decision to leave teaching or had you always secretly wanted to be a writer?

I had long wanted to be a writer but in many ways didn’t know how to go about doing it. Of course I knew that I had to write but as for the publishing part, I had no idea for a long time how that side worked – and I was hugely naïve. I had worked for ten years as a teacher and so took my long service leave (three months) and then resigned from that position to take another year off from full time work. It was a terrifically creative period, but frustrating at the same time, as publishing is a slow business. My husband had asked me if I was ever going to write anything or was I just going to talk about it forever. It was a valid question to which he added, ‘Because you know, you don’t want to die wondering.’ That was it. I didn’t want to wake up in another ten years wishing that I’d given it a proper go.

That said, it’s taken almost ten years of hard work to get to the point that my career is at now. In Australia I have had seven junior novels published (four of them in the Alice-Miranda series with another four to come) and a picture book called The Sound of the Sea which to my great surprise was an Honour Book in the Australian Children’s Book Council Awards in 2006. I was fortunate to have four books come out in quick succession from 2003 to 2005 with modest success. I had naively thought that perhaps things would get a little easier at that point, but that wasn’t the case at all and I spent almost five years in the ‘writing wilderness’ where I was having great difficulty convincing the publisher I had been with (or any others) to take my work. So during that time, rather than give up, I put my head down and worked on various projects including picture book manuscripts, a young adult book which I still hope to finish one day and Alice-Miranda. She started as an idea for a picture book but I soon found myself thinking that she deserved at least a novel and now a huge series. My publisher at Random House Australia, Linsay Knight adored her from the start and we have had such fun over the past couple of years working on all her stories. I used to say that nothing ever happens quickly in publishing but with Alice-Miranda that is not true at all. It’s been a bit like a whirlwind and I’m still working full time too.

Alice-Miranda is my first overseas publication and I’m thrilled that she’s in the US, Indonesia, Turkey, Singapore and New Zealand and next year the United Kingdom, too. I can’t wait to tour the US and the UK in 2012 and meet the readers!

Could you tell our readers about the work you’ve done with Aboriginal children with Yalari?

I’m a passionate advocate for improving educational outcomes for Indigenous students. My own great grandmother was an Aboriginal woman who was born in rural New South Wales and grew up in a camp on a river. She married a white man and sadly, shunned her Indigenous heritage. It wasn’t a good thing to be Aboriginal in Australia at the time. In fact Australian Aborigines were not even recognized as people until 1967. Prior to that time they were classified as fauna and there was a period in which children were forcibly removed from their families and taken to missions where they were educated in the ways of Anglo Australians. They were called the Stolen Generations. There is a long and complex history of Indigenous injustice and I guess my great grandmother decided that when people asked where she was from, it was much easier to be a Maori from New Zealand, which is what we had always believed. My great grandmother passed away when I was eleven and I think it’s awfully sad that she could never tell us who she really was. My aunt was researching our family history and discovered her true identity when I was in my twenties.

While things have changed markedly in my lifetime, the gap between educational outcomes for Indigenous and Non-Indigenous students is still unacceptable. I’ve been working for the past five years with a scholarship organisation which partners with independent boarding schools all over Australia to give full scholarships to Indigenous students from rural and remote areas. The difference today is that the children and their parents want this opportunity. The parents are committed to the partnership as much as the schools and Yalari are. I headed up a task force at Abbotsleigh to look at how we could set up a scholarship program. We explored a whole range of options but when I met Waverley Stanley, the Indigenous man who started Yalari I knew that we had to be involved. He’s an amazing man and a true inspiration. We now have nine girls on full boarding scholarships from Year 7-10 with another two students entering Year 7 in each subsequent year. I am so proud of the girls. Some come from really difficult circumstances but they are making the most of every opportunity and working hard. They are not held up as poster children for social justice – they are just girls at school like any other who add to the rich diversity of our community.

It’s wonderful to be able to give the girls opportunities – just the other weekend two of the girls and I were taken to the opera at the Sydney Opera House by one of our philanthropic past school parents. While The Merry Widow was a lovely production, by far the highlight for me was sitting beside Emma and Hannah and seeing them wide eyed and delighted by the show.

Yalari is like a great big extended family. The organisation has grown from three students in two schools just six years ago to 195 students in 32 schools around the country and another 50 starting next year. A highlight of my year is going to the Orientation Camp where all of the new students get together with the current first year students. The kids are nervous and excited and have such high hopes, as we have high hopes for them. There are other camp opportunities where the kids get together and support one another and also learn more about their Indigenous culture and heritage. I am particularly proud that at Abbotsleigh we have a 100% retention rate for our students. It’s a great pleasure to be the ‘school mum’ to the girls.

What adventures can we expect Alice-Miranda to pursue in your next books? Will she take Manhattan by climbing up the Empire State Building? Throw a rodeo in the Grand Canyon?

Alice-Miranda’s second adventure is being released in the US in April 2012. It’s called Alice-Miranda On Vacation and sees her heading home for the first school break of the year. She takes one of her friends with her and together they have some big mysteries to solve. A huge black car is roaring around the estate and her father brings home a handsome movie star for the weekend. There is a strange boy too, who seems to take an instant dislike to Alice-Miranda.

I am hoping that my US publisher (Random House Delacorte) will purchase the rights to more books in the series – it would be sad to stop at two. In Australia there are currently four books out with another four to come – at least. The fifth in the series is Alice-Miranda In New York which sees her attending school in Manhattan and again solving some delicious mysteries. She spends a lot of time exploring the city and her visits to The Met prove very interesting indeed.

Alice-Miranda is soon to become an author herself as I’m just about to write a new series for slightly younger students, called Clementine Rose. Alice-Miranda will be the writer, with some help from her best grown up friend Jacqueline Harvey and there will be lots of tips and ideas for young readers who want to write in the back of the books as well as a fun story.

For all the latest news on Alice-Miranda, you can read her official blog or check out her website for more details.