Abby Hanlon Talks About Dory Fantasmagory: Can’t Live Without You

A podcast interview with Abby Hanlon on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

In this episode of The Growing Reader’s Podcast, Abby Hanlon discusses how she infuses authentic moments into her Dory Fantasmagory chapter books and proves that learning and play go hand-in-hand.

Abby’s background in early education, combined with her passion for literacy, has led to the creation of relatable, humorous, and engaging chapter books for young readers. The Dory Fantasmagory series features realistic problems while providing a character that pushes boundaries in good fun. Her raw illustration style is also something that children easily relate to. Abby’s work inspires all, reminding us to create and provide educational, fun, and engaging content for children.

Abby Hanlon talks about:

• Her background in early education and her drive to create chapter books for young readers with relatable scenarios and humor
• Incorporating realistic problems in her latest book
• How she taught herself to draw and her raw style that kids can relate to
• The relatable and boundary-pushing character of Dory
• Accessibility and appeal of the illustrations in the Dory books, as well as the silly and relatable moments that kids enjoy
• A theme in the latest book involving Mozart and death, based on a real-life experience
• Fart jokes and quirky moments in the books
• The importance of play in children’s development and how the Dory books focus on play

Get ready to giggle and nod in agreement with Abby Hanlon as you listen to this interview about Dory Fantasmagory: Can’t Live Without You and more!

Listen to the Interview

The Growing Readers Podcast is available on all major platforms. Subscribe Now.

Read the Interview

Bianca Schulze

Hi Abby. Welcome to the Growing Readers podcast.

Abby Hanlon

Hi Bianca. Thanks so much for having me here today. I’m so psyched to be here with you.

Bianca Schulze

Oh my gosh, it’s an absolute honor. Obviously, I’m a book lover through and through, and sometimes there are just books that really feel special to me because they’re the ones that I snuggled in bed with my kids reading. And my middle kiddo was a huge Dory Fantasmagory reader, and we would just giggle together all the time. And so, I have a real soft spot for yay. So, I want to ask our typical questions that I love to get to the bottom of on the Growing Readers podcast first before we dive into Dory. Just in general, I know that you have an educator’s background in early education, and so I’m just curious: what is it in your core that drives you to write for kids?

Abby Hanlon

Well, I think it changed over time, but I think what drove me at first was that I just wanted to make a chapter book that little kids could read who were not particularly advanced readers. And I just had trouble kind of finding those books when I was looking for them for my kids when they were in kindergarten. So that’s what kind of drove me at first, which I was like, I’m going to make a book that is a chapter book and that kids can have this satisfaction of having read a whole chapter book but also give them tons of support.

So, there’s like probably 150 illustrations in each book, and I always make sure that the text and the illustration correspond. So, it’s like I’m always trying to think through the eyes of a child, so if the illustration is after the necessary text, it’s not helping them. So, I always kind of rewrite to make sure that those two things go together. And clarity is the most important thing. If something is a tiny bit confusing, then it needs to be rewritten.

And I think humor is also like from my background as a teacher. I noticed the kids want funny books, and when you can get kids laughing, I think you can get them reading. And so, humor has been a big driving force, and just, I guess, I go from action to action. I don’t have kids waiting around in description and not sure where are we, who’s talking. I just try to make everything super clear and just have funny, relatable, everyday scenarios. I guess the second part is that that was kind of my driving force. But now that I have just worked on the 6th book that just came out last week, I’m thinking more as an author about creating realistic problems in my books for kids that I can kind of tap into those universal fears and anxieties of kids.

Abby Hanlon

My books all have a real problem and an imaginary problem, but I take the real problem very seriously and think a lot about it in the current book. She has a lot of separation anxiety, and I think that is something that a lot of kids go through.

Bianca Schulze

Something really fun about you is that you can correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t think that you studied art and you just taught yourself to draw. Is that right?

Abby Hanlon

Yeah, that is right. I used to say I taught myself how to draw, but then I realized that that is not correct because I still don’t feel that I know how to draw. So, I’m still drawing, I guess I should say. But I don’t feel like the learning part is over, and maybe that’s a lot of illustrators feel that way. I started off as a first-grade teacher, and I didn’t draw. That wasn’t, like, who I was at all. I hadn’t drawn since I was a child, so when I was a teacher, the kids would write stories in the class, and I would write my own story, and they were supposed to go off and make these little books using words and pictures. And so, when I modeled my own story, I would kind of try to draw, like, a little thing with stick figures.

Abby Hanlon

I was so excited by their stories, and then we’d publish them and have a little publishing party. I loved that part of teaching so much. I mean, it was just so cool to see kids who are kind of, like, forming words for the first time in early first grade to be able to communicate something with this whole new ability.

Abby Hanlon

Yeah. I started to think, like, wait, I should do this too. This is so much fun. And so

Abby Hanlon

I’ve been teaching myself how to draw ever since. I got a book for kids called Ed. It’s called Make a World by Ed Emberley, and I use that book to learn how to draw stick figures, and I still don’t know how to draw realistically. I took a life drawing class a couple of years ago, thinking that if I learned how to draw anatomically correctly, it might change my drawings and make them better. But I just went straight back to what I was doing. I was the worst in the class, and I was so embarrassed. And all these young people were like, Wait, are you an illustrator? And I didn’t want anybody to know.

Bianca Schulze

I’m not a kid, so I’m projecting here, but I imagine that what kids really relate to in your artwork is the level of rawness that you bring. Right. They can connect with it because there’s something similar about the way that they draw. I don’t know if it was just one illustration in particular when I was just reading this latest book, but there was a face, and the art reminded me a lot of another series of books that was in a picture books series. The Charlie and Lola series.

Abby Hanlon

I love them.

Bianca Schulze

Lauren Child

Abby Hanlon

Wait, that’s such a nice compliment. I adore Lauren Child, so that is really that, yeah. That’s awesome.

Bianca Schulze

All right, well, so the other question I love to ask is, to be a writer, they say you need to be a reader first. So, was there a pivotal moment in which you considered yourself a reader? And also, if you don’t even agree with that statement, you can say that, too.

Abby Hanlon

Well, that’s so interesting about that statement. To be a writer, you need to be a reader. Yeah, it’s so interesting because my son and I both kind of have a similar energy of just being extremely hyper. And so, we both spend more time writing than we do reading, probably. But I do think that the reading is still really important. But when I am writing something actively, I actually try not to read so much because I just need quiet in my head because, don’t know, the ideas sort of just come to you sometimes when you’re not thinking, and I just don’t want to be clouded by kind of other people’s imaginary worlds.

But, yeah, I think I was always a reader. I sort of used books as a child to extend my play. So, the books that I loved the most were Richard Scarry’s books. And I was very inspired by his world. And I would turn my bedroom floor into one of those little towns using every block and object I could find in my house.

And then, kind of in a similar vein with Shel Silverstein’s books of poems, I would also use those to play, and I would act them out with my friends. And then I loved Beverly Cleary. And I also loved Charles Schultz’s peanuts. And those are so fun, too, to have. I got a bunch of them for my kids because he was so prolific. It’s insane. And there’s, like, 26 volumes or something from, like, 1950 to, I don’t know, up to the think. And so, I loved reading those.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. Have you ever been to the Charles Schultz Museum in California?

Abby Hanlon

You know, I was in Santa Rosa three nights ago for my book tour, and I did not get to go because it was just, you’re at the hotel for 9 hours. You wake up, and you go. So, yeah, I was pretty bummed about that.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, it’s pretty neat. I used to live in California, so we went a couple of times. I loved that Lucy’s psychiatrist box was out the front so you could pose and have a picture and pretend to pay your $0.05 for your piece of advice.

Abby Hanlon

Love it.

Bianca Schulze

All right, so let’s see. All right, well, now you are six books into the Dory Fantasmagory series, but I would love to return to the beginning. So, you’ve kind of spoken a little bit about where the idea came from in the sense that you wanted to fill the gap in books that you were trying to find for your own kids. But just in terms of Dory specifically, where did the idea for this particular character come from?

Abby Hanlon

I think Dory, from the beginning, came from my feelings as a child. I was just the youngest of three kids, and my brother and sister kind of gravitated toward each other, and I was kind of like the oddball. And my family. I think what started was my family. Actually, when they’re mad at me, their go-to insult is that I’m being immature. And they still call me a baby, even though I have a job, a pretty good job. And I have a husband and two kids, and I own a house. But I’m still a baby.

And so, I thought that it would be that’s kind of what clicked, which is that I thought it would be, like a fun it’s sort of just like a vicious cycle where it’s like, you can’t shed this identity. And that with Dory, her siblings, it’s like the more they call her a baby, the more she kind of retreats into her own world, and the more she talks to herself, the more babyish she seems.

So, I didn’t really use much of what actually happened from my own childhood. It’s really just that core feeling. And then I sort of took that and mixed it with those feelings and mixed it with so many details from my kids’ childhood, from them, their friends, our neighbors, their cousins, just like all the kids that I’ve had the pleasure of being around the last 16 years. I guess I’ve just put a lot of the funny things, like when something makes me laugh, I write it down. I just put a lot of those things in the book.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, right. Well, Dory, for me, is such a great character, but Dory alone needs the supporting characters, and the supporting characters, for me, are just as well developed. Dory is by far the star of the show, but we’ve got Mrs. Gobble Gracker and her mom and her dad and her siblings and the friends at school. So, I would love for you to just take a little moment. I definitely want you to talk about Mrs. Gobble Gracker, but maybe pick two or three characters to just kind of share a little bit about them and what they bring to the stories.

Abby Hanlon

Okay, sure. Yeah. So, we can start with Mrs. Gobble Gracker. So, when I was creating this book, I actually thought of using some of the archetypes from Fairy Tales because I thought that it would be fun. I knew that my kids at the time were really into reading Grimm’s Fairy Tales, and I thought it’d be fun to make a book that had a little bit of a scarier, darker element. So, Mrs. Gobble Gracker just started off as a little doodle in my sketchbook

And then I kind of realized that she’d make such a great villain, and I was sort of inspired, I guess, by I think I just read my kids Matilda, and I was just so over the top having fun with reading Miss Trunchbull’s lines. And my daughter was at the same time obsessed with Miss Hannigan from the movie Annie. She was scared of Miss Hannigan but also could not stop talking about her. So, I think those couple influences definitely went into Mrs. Gobble Gracker. And then

Abby Hanlon

I still sort of can’t believe that they let me write a book about a woman who’s threatening to take the child away. I’m so glad that it was ten years ago, I guess, now, because I’m not sure if they’d say, like, oh, that’s too.

Abby Hanlon

Yeah, that’s where Mrs. Gobble Gracker comes from. And then Mr. Nuggy is kind of like the helper archetype, and he’s not actually super helpful. He makes lots of mistakes. But I just thought Dory—her siblings are often her enemies, and then she has Mrs. Gobble Gracker to contend with, so she needed somebody who was on her side. Totally. And so, you know, he makes mistakes, but he’s always polite, and I think he always retains his dignity. And then I guess I’ll talk about Mary, who is also kind of an archetype of the Trickster character. She’s sort of like Dory’s alter ego. At first, Dory kind of blames certain mishaps on

Abby Hanlon

her. Her purpose is to be goofy and also, in contrast to Dory’s siblings, to kind of worship.

Bianca Schulze

You know, I don’t know if it’s because I led with Mrs. Gobble Gracker there, but I noticed that the characters you chose to talk about are all imaginary. Like, are they are they your favorite to write?

Abby Hanlon

No. In the new Dory book, I didn’t have Mary in the whole book until the very end, where I was like, oh, no, kids love Mary. So, I had to get Mary in. And so no, I think she’s hard. I think I’m having an easier time now with the realistic— with the family, like the family dynamics. The parents are just it’s funny because, like, the parents, to me, I’m just trying to make them realistic. And also, I was trying to make Dory realistic.

Some people think it’s supposed to be about a bad thing, and I was surprised by that because I just wanted to make a book about a real kid having real problems. And I think that it is so important for kids to read books where they’re seeing real kids kind of navigate things that life might throw at them because I think you learn from these experiences, the realistic stuff. I wanted the books to be super relatable, so I wanted Dory to be relatable. I don’t want Dory to be like, yeah, we laugh at Know, and sometimes she goes too far, but I wanted her play to still be what’s kind of considered within the healthy boundaries of play.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, absolutely. I think she is. And when you said that some parents sort of, I guess, adult readers put the stigma on her that she’s a bad kid, I have thoughts on that.

Dory pushes the boundaries a little bit, but I think that’s what’s so wonderful about her. For kids to be able to read that and recognize that there’s a boundary being pushed and that maybe if they encounter another kiddo that’s pushing a boundary around them, they can see that maybe that kid is lust in their imagination at that moment. But that kid isn’t a bad kid. That kid is just figuring out the world. And I feel like having a character like Dory allows the child reader to see Know. I don’t know if that’s clear.

Abby Hanlon

Yeah. Yeah, totally. And to sympathize with. Yeah. And I think just having somebody to relate to, I just think that when you relate to a character, it just feels good. Like, you just feel seen. And sometimes, you remember when you’re faced with a character that’s relatable; sometimes, it makes you remember something about your life that you forgot. And I love that when that happens. And I hear that a lot with the Dory books—that parents or older siblings will say, I forgot that. That’s what so and so used to do. Exactly. And I think that’s really nice when you can kind of uncover those sorts of, like, family memories.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, absolutely. All right, while we touched on the illustrations, and so you write, and you illustrate, I’m curious if you think that when readers pick up a Dory book, what do you think is the first impression that sticks with them? Do you think it’s an illustration, or do you think it’s more of a feeling from just the overall book, or do you think it’s like specific moments, like specific sentences? What do you think the majority of kids tend to pick up on first? A feeling, an illustration, or a sentence? What seems to be most meaningful to readers?

Abby Hanlon

I think kids definitely have fun with the illustrations because they’re so expressive, and like we were talking about before, they’re so childlike. So, I think that they’re just so accessible. But I don’t know if I could say what one guess. You know, kids, there’s things that kids love that they just tell me about little things that happen in the book. Like when Mr. Nuggy turns into a chicken, or Dory refuses to wear her bunchy coat, or Dory shoots Mrs. Gobble Gracker in the butt with a sleeping dart. These are some of the things that kids come to over and over again tell me that they love. So, I think it’s mostly like, the silly, goofy parts of the yeah, okay.

Bianca Schulze

Right. And then I think also what I heard, too, was, like, the relatable moments where maybe I’ve struggled with wanting to put my coat on before I wrote down a couple of funny moments, and I literally wrote funny moments that were relatable for me.

Abby Hanlon

That’s awesome.

Bianca Schulze

So, Mozart is a theme throughout this latest book, and when Dory overhears that Mozart is, she is totally shocked and stunned. And I laughed so hard at that because I literally had that exact moment recently with my son. He’s eight, and somebody talked about that Michael Jackson is dead. And he stopped, and he said, What? Michael Jackson is dead?

What inspired that moment for you in the book? Did you have a moment that was based on reality?

Abby Hanlon

Yes, it was 100%. My kids were younger than Dory, so they were like, I think, maybe three turning four. They had just come from their first concert, and they met the singer; I think it was Laurie Berkner, and they were really excited about that. And then they said, we want to meet Mozart. And then I just was like, oh, Mozart’s dead, like, without even really thinking about it. And they both burst into tears. And it was because they hadn’t really seen movies at that age, and so they had just seen little shows like Charlie and Lola. And so, they just didn’t really even know yet that people died. I was not keeping it from them, but it just hadn’t come up. And so, they both cried a lot and said, why did he die?

Abby Hanlon

And it was partly the way I said it to them, just like so callously, that made them cry. In the book, I thought that would be a good way to begin this sort of theme of Dory, asking questions about death, but not having an actual character die to begin, but for it to be funny. And I think for a younger reader of Dory, like age four or five, I think they might be a little confused on the first know. So, I was a little bit hesitant to do the also, like, I know that so many kids that love the Dory books, they read them over and over again. So, I was like, this might trip them up on the first read, but they’re going to get it on the second.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, absolutely. And we’ve definitely, on this podcast, had books where we’ve explored topics of grief and death. And obviously, if you’ve lost a loved one, that’s one experience. But this experience is somebody from a long time ago who is no longer here, and it is just part of life. And so sometimes I just really appreciate that you were just a matter of fact in here because it is part of life. People do die, and obviously, this isn’t a book about grief and losing a loved one. And so, you are going to hear in conversations kids are going to hear of somebody passing and dying, and it’s okay to talk about. So, I like that you included it in there.

Abby Hanlon

Yeah, no, that’s good to hear because I was definitely worried about that, about that little sub-theme.

Bianca Schulze

Well, I liked it. So, then, another moment for me. So, as a parent who has volunteered in my children’s classrooms, we all know that there are often scents—smells that start wafting through. And usually, I have to laugh, being Australian, any friends with younger children, laugh at the way I say this word, but the word fart, I think you guys say fart, but there’s usually a few fart smells within the hour that you’re in there. And so, there was the funny little scene: Are you the classroom farter? And Dory’s like, not today. And I just love that the answer was not today because, obviously, everybody’s in there farting at least once.

Bianca Schulze

I love little moments like that. And then it was Mrs. Gobble Gracker. So, there’s a babysitter coming to Dory’s house, and Mrs. Gobble Gracker is like, what? I’m the only person that’s allowed to sit on Dory. And then she’s chasing Dory around the room. And how do you come up with these? They’re just quirky; they’re just silly. They’re just very in the moment and keep it going. But how do you come up with those funny moments?

Abby Hanlon

I think Mrs. Gobble Gracker is actually hard for me sometimes. I’m like, I have no idea what she’s going to say now. But yeah, I think she’s literal. She takes things literally. So, I thought that would be her natural response when she heard about it.

Bianca Schulze

She’s like she’s maybe like the villainous Amelia Bedelia.

Abby Hanlon

Yeah. And she had a similar confusion when she heard about the, um, she gets to keep children’s body parts? I kind of try to make it so that Mrs. Gobble Gracker is, like, she has very fresh eyes. She’s hearing something for the first.

Bianca Schulze

So, you mentioned just before that with Mary, who is one of the imaginary characters that you had written this entire story, and you were like, oh, I need to find a spot for Mary. And when you said that, that really surprised me because I felt like there was a very pivotal moment in you in the way that you used Mary. When the babysitter arrives, that sort of demonstrates maybe a change of heart for Dory in the way that she converses or introduces Mary. So, it just surprised me that she was more of an addition at some point. And I want to tie this also into you. So, there’s a craft glue situation.

Abby Hanlon

Oh, yeah.

Bianca Schulze

And you weave this craft glue all the way, sort of gently, throughout the story. And so, I’m just curious. It’s a bit of a callback. So, we hear about craft glue at the beginning, we hear about it in the middle, and then there’s a really sweet moment that involves craft glue at the end. So, how is it with your writing process that you are able to kind of weave these little moments that tie the whole story together? Because I’m sure listeners are thinking like, oh, what are you talking about, Bianca? Craft glue? Like, what’s that got to do with this story? But yet, it actually delivers one of the most poignant moments at the end of the book.

So, are you consciously thinking when you’re looking for a tool to help tell the story, or do you just write a story and go back and add in something like Mary?

Abby Hanlon

I always start with the little things, like with an anecdote. And so, I think it just started with, we call it Crazy Glue here so that the Crazy Glue was on the couch, and they had to buy a new couch. And then what I do when I’m writing a book is I do kind of keep track of the little elements to see if I can revisit them somewhere else. So, it’s like if I wrote about Crazy Glue, I will kind of jot that down to be like, could that possibly come up somewhere else? Because sometimes it could solve another problem I have. Do you know what I mean?

Like, one of the other things that I didn’t finish till the last minute is I was and what does Dory say to her mom at the like when she’s hugging her, and the mom’s going back to work? I just really drew a blank with that.

And then Crazy Glue figured into there, so that was helpful. And then I was actually at the grocery store, and I heard this little girl as I was writing the book, I heard this little girl hugging her mom saying, I’m going to stick to you like Crazy Glue. And I was like, oh my gosh. That was exactly the line that I needed to end chapter one because it kind of established—I always want the very end of chapter one to establish for the reader to know, okay, this is what the book is about. They might not know the first time, but you can tell the second time the problem has been identified. Like Dory is clinging to her mother. So, yeah, I kind of just look for little places to stick it in.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I love it. Well, I feel like since you touched on it, I’m just going to go there with a little bit of a plot spoiler. So, I’m going to tell listeners, just jump ahead 30 seconds if you don’t want to hear it.

So, the Crazy Glue, it’s like, I’m going to stick to you like Crazy Glue is kind of in that 1st third. And then, when Dory discovers that her mom is actually going to go back to work and she’s not going to be able to stick with her like Crazy Glue, there’s a funny little moment where she says, I’ll give you all the money from my piggy bank. Is this because I ruined the couch with the Crazy Glue? And then the dad’s like, well, maybe the mom was like, no. And then, in the end, she actually uses Crazy Glue to make something sweet for her mom. And so, I just thought it was just so clever that it’s funny and touching, and I like the way you do it.

Abby Hanlon

Thank you.

Bianca Schulze

What do you hope that readers take away from reading this latest book?

Abby Hanlon

A lot of readers have been excited about this book. So, I hope that they don’t feel disappointed because they surely had a long wait. So, I hope that they feel satisfied with where Dory’s at and that I hope that they laugh just as much as they did with all the other books. And I hope to know if they had similar struggles to this in terms of separation anxiety. I hope that this book, I think just seeing another child go through it and also being able to laugh at some of the other child’s antics that might be a little more extreme than their own, I think that might be helpful.

And I hope with all my books that they encourage kids to play. Dory uses play to kind of solve some real, actual problems. And I think that play is such a great tool and that Dory uses it as sort of a source of independence and autonomy, but also as a way to forge connections with her friends. So sometimes readers tell me that, or parents tell me that their kids play the characters, play these Dory characters at recess, or teachers tell me, which is so cool, and that I hope they use these characters to inspire their own.

Bianca Schulze

I love that. Do you have plans for more?

Abby Hanlon

I’m writing the 7th book now, which has definitely been a lot easier so far than the 6th. The 6th was so hard because I was just walking a fine line with the separation anxiety and the kind of questions about just, I really had to be so careful that that was funny and not know, with Dory, getting lost could be really scary, I think. And so, I had to make sure that even though Dory was scared, the readers were not scared, and the reader could see where Dory’s parent was visible the whole time.

Because I do have really young readers, so I think trying to write a book that could appeal to the four-year-olds and the ten-year-olds was tricky. But the 7th book I’m having fun doing and don’t have those same problems so far.

Bianca Schulze

That’s awesome. I know. Well, that actually brings me to another question.

Bianca Schulze

Now that you’re working on the 7th, have there been some that came really easily and others that were really hard?

Abby Hanlon

I think every book is kind of hard in different ways. Like books one and two, I kind of wrote sort of together, and then book three was really hard because I could not figure out what to do with that sheep. And just the whole turning Mrs. Gobble Gracker into a kid was like a ridiculously hard challenge. I think what happens is that when a book is hard, the next one is maybe a little easier because then I feel like book four kind of wrote itself because I was able to use book three. It was such a struggle that I had leftover material for book four.

And book four started with the whole bunchy coat thing. And that whole first chapter about the coat happened to my son. So as soon as he came home from school that day and actually his teacher called me, he was in trouble. He came home crying. I listened to his story. Everybody was upset, but I knew right away; I was like, oh, my God, this is going to be the first chapter. I was like, this is too good. So, four was easy, then five was hard again. Five, I kind of dug five. I had this fear. I’m like, oh, my kids are in middle school. What if I’m running out of the little things from their life? Five, I kind of dug back into my life for the first time.

Seven has been a little easier, but I haven’t finished it, so I’ll probably hit the hard part soon.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah. And what do you do when you hit a hard pot? What’s your go-to? I mean, a lot of people end up saying, I go for a nice long walk. But what do you do?

Abby Hanlon

I do lots of different things. I will take out my sketchbook and try to sketch the characters and see if something emerges. That way, sometimes, if I’m still trying to really work out the plot, I draw a narrative arc, and I just sort of try to plug in and just figure out from a structural point of view what’s missing. I also find that, like, if I’m stuck somewhere if I don’t know, I find the best way to get an answer to that is to actually write down the question. For some reason, it’s like if you ask, it will be answered. You know what I mean? But just writing it down clarifies what you need.

Also, when you have your list of questions together of everything that’s sort of unresolved, you can see that one question can answer another question. And that’s really cool, too, when that happens. So, I also drive my family crazy, and I’ll say, what do you think Dory should do in book five? I wanted her to steal something. And I kept asking everybody, like, what should Dory steal? And then I figured out that was bugging me forever. And then I was so happy when I figured out that she should steal fake. So, I do ask my family, and I think about it all the time. Sometimes, if I’m really stuck on something, I’ll think about the question right before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not like I think about it in my sleep, but I don’t know, I get kind of desperate because it’s like, you’re stuck.

Abby Hanlon

And with book six, I was stuck in multiple places at once.

Bianca Schulze

Well, Abby, if listeners were to take away just one thing from our conversation today, what would you want that to be?

Abby Hanlon

Oh, that’s hard. One thing, I guess, for now, I think a lot of people talk about, like, the importance of reading, of early reading, and I agree. I also think that play is just as important and encourages so many new skills in similar ways to reading. It builds vocabulary and language and communication skills and, depending on what they’re playing, possibly even literacy skills if they have a little secret notebook or they’re making a menu or whatever it is.

And I just think that play is so joyful and that kids don’t often have that much time to do it anymore and that they learn so many important skills like taking turns and listening and leading and negotiating and understanding people’s perspectives and learning how to read people. So, I think that the Dory books are mostly about play. So, I think that’s what I’d like to end on.

Bianca Schulze

Yeah, I think that was the perfect ending. So, thank you so much because, like I said up front, Dory Fantasmagory is hands down one of my favorite chapter book series for kids. So, it was a huge honor for me to get to chat with you about it today. And I guarantee you a bunch of our listeners are huge Dory Fantasmagory fans, too. And if they’re not, they will be now. So, thanks for coming on the show.

Abby Hanlon

Thank you for your great questions. Bianca, it was really nice to see you today.

About the Book

Publisher’s Book Summary: The wildly popular, ever hilarious Dory Fantasmagory series is back for a sixth adventure, with Dory turning separation anxiety into a ghostly, goofy escapade.

When Dory loses track of her mom in the hardware store, it leads to a touch of separation anxiety. Dory suspects her mom will soon sail off on a ship across the world to eat cake and play kickball and never return. These are big feelings, and Dory knows what to do: She throws a sheet over her head and haunts her family everywhere they go so they can’t leave her, much to the annoyance of her brother and sister.

Then Dory’s longtime nemesis Mrs. Gobble Gracker reappears, wearing a wedding dress, and Dory’s mom makes an announcement that leaves not just Dory reeling but her siblings too. Maybe a haunting is exactly what’s needed to get this family back to normal.

In her sixth book, Dory delivers hoots and oopses on every page, entangling her friends—real and imaginary—in fabulous plots that sometimes take even Dory herself by delightful surprise.

Buy the Book

Show Notes

Abby Hanlon has taught creative writing and first grade in the New York City public school system. Inspired by her students’ storytelling and drawings, Abby began to write her own stories for children, and taught herself to draw after not having drawn since childhood. She lives with her husband and two children in Brooklyn.

Resources:

For more information about Abby Hanlon and her books, visit http://www.abbyhanlon.com/.

Thank you for listening to the Growing Readers Podcast episode: Abby Hanlon Talks About Dory Fantasmagory: Can’t Live Without You. For the latest episodes from The Growing Readers Podcast, Subscribe or Follow Now.