Meet Claire Dean, Author of Girlwood
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ETC: GIRLWOOD is your first young adult novel. How did the story come about? Claire Dean: I'd been a professional writer for many years when my daughter came to me and asked why I hadn't written a book for her. Everything changed for me at that moment. Suddenly writing no longer felt like a job--and a very difficult, unsatisfying one at that--but became the most joyful part of my day. I asked her what kind of book she wanted, and she told me it had to be about good stuff, about nature and fairies and hope and girls. I played with those ideas for a couple of years, starting and stopping and turning over different stories in my mind, until I finally hit upon the tale of Polly and her magical larch grove. In a way, writing GIRLWOOD was like writing a lullaby for my teenager. My main goal was to write a hopeful story, something that would bring strength and solace not only to my daughter, but to all my readers.
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S. A. Harazin
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Author of Blood Brothers ETC: How did you come up with the idea for BLOOD BROTHERS? Harazin: Most of the story comes from real life experiences that I fictionalized. I am a Registered Nurse and when I was a teen, I worked in a hospital. Harazin: The spark for the story occurred several years ago. I went to work and one of my patients was a teen who was on life support. He was going through tests to see if he was brain dead. I quickly got to know his parents and a little about what had happened. He was a great student with many hopes and dreams, but he made a bad choice and ended up in a coma. During the time I was taking care of him, I kept asking myself, why did this have to happen to him—or to anyone? I never intended on writing this story, but it was something that haunted me for years. I could not forget him. I had to write a story about a great kid—the almost perfect kid—who made a mistake that changed everything.
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Allison van Diepen
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Author of Street Pharm and Snitch ETC: STREET PHARM and SNITCH are both dead-on in their depictions of inner-city youth. Was it your teaching that enabled you to write these books?
van Diepen: Oh yes. The old adage "write what you know" holds true. Ty Johnson and Julia DiVino resembled the students I taught every day in Brooklyn, so I was comfortable writing from their viewpoints. A number of my students were drug dealers and gang members, and many of them boasted of their activities. So researching these books was not a problem either. ETC: Both STREET PHARM and SNITCH have appeared on ALA's Quick Picks for Reluctant Readers list. How do you feel about your books' popularity among reluctant readers? van Diepen: It's wonderful. I've received many emails from teens saying, "this is the first book I've ever finished" or "this is the only book I've ever liked!" Often the next question they ask is if I can recommend other books they might like - which means readers have been born. There is nothing more gratifying than that, especially for a teacher. I've always believed that you can get any teen to read if he or she is given the right book.
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Elizabeth Rusch
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ETC: The three new books you have out this year cover such a wide range of topics, from art and creativity, to astronomy, to volcanism. What connects these books? RUSCH: On the home page of my website, I feature a quotation from Carl Sagan: "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." All three books are about discovery. A Day with No Crayons is about a girl's discovery of color in the world all around her. Will It Blow? is about what scientists discovered about Mount St. Helens when they detected earthquake swarms in 2004. And The Planet Hunter is about an astronomer who wondered if there were more planets in our solar system, and whose discoveries have radically changed the way we look at our solar system.
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Brian Mandabach
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Author of Or Not? ETC: Tell us how you came up with the idea for your first young adult novel, OR NOT. Mandabach: The story began when I learned that an 8th grade girl in my neighborhood had taken her own life. I won't go into details here, but I could not get this girl–whom I did not know–out of my head. I'd be taking a walk in the night, as I like to do, only I couldn't just dig the stars and sing to myself and let my mind wander as I usually do–because I was preoccupied with wondering what could have brought this girl to take that one irreversible step. Aside from reading her obituary, I made a point not to learn anything more about her. And I've got to say that this isn't a suicide novel and that the more I worked on it, researching teen suicide–especially younger teens and girls–the more my character who became Cassie grew away from her initial inspiration. But that's where she started, and I spent the coming months filling up pages in my notebooks with Cassie and her family, discovering who she was.
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