Tag: Oz First Editions Club

History, mystery, and the open road in Nic Stone’s ‘Clean Getaway’

by Andrew Hedglin

William “Scoob” Lamar, the protagonist of Nic Stone’s fantastic new middle grade adventure, Clean Getaway, has a lot of questions at the beginning of the book. He just doesn’t know it yet.

When his grandmother, his beloved “G’ma,” shows up in an RV at the beginning of his spring break, to jailbreak him from being grounded, he jumps at the chance. He writes a note to his dad, and leaves his phone at home so he can’t be called. Just the wide open road, and the person he adores and trusts most in the world.

It’s not until they leave Atlanta and cross into Alabama that things start to get a little…weird. Why has G’ma sold her house to buy this RV? Did she really just dine-and-dash? Are they really headed all the way to Mexico? And does Scoob’s dad even know where they are?

He’s not getting answers to these questions immediately, but he is learning a lot, that’s for sure. It turns out his G’ma, a white lady, and his G’pop, a black man who he never met and died in prison, tried to take this very road trip all the way back in the 1960s. Of course, they had some help from Green Book, the famous guide for black travelers in the dangerous days of segregation and Jim Crow. As an African-American himself (with a serious, conscientious father), Scoob already knows some things about his history–he’s read To Kill a Mockingbird, and visits MLK’s home and church every January)–but some of what he learns really opens his eyes to how things were (and what still is).

Nic Stone has written an outrageously fun adventure with real tension and emotion mixed in. What really stands as a highlight in how well Stone understand how kids and adults relate to each other, even (and especially) they care a lot about each other. G’ma is completely over-the-top, fun, emotional, and increasingly mysterious, torn between unburdening secrets and teaching and protecting Scoob. Scoob himself is smart and and has a certain down-to-earth cool (he has a girlfriend, Shenice, back home in Atlanta), but can sometimes be a little impulsive and mistake-prone, as well as vulnerable in his powerlessness to the whims of adults, as all kids sometimes feel.

I think this book has a wide audience because while its colorful text (along with evocative illustrations by Dawud Anyabwile) and well-plotted structure are easy enough for kids on the earlier end of middle grade to digest, its keen emotional intelligence and relatable themes keep it interesting for kids on the older end of the middle grade age range. I found it pretty enjoyable as an adult, to tell the truth. As a bonus, this road trip novel even winds its way through Jackson, Mississippi (to pay respects to the great Medgar Evers). Whoever chooses to pick up this great middle school tale, they should know that they’re in for a wild ride!

Nic Stone will be at Lemuria on Friday, January 10, at 5:00 p.m. to sign and discuss Clean Getaway, in conversation with Angie Thomas (author of The Hate U Give). Lemuria has selected Clean Getaway as a January 2020 selection for its Oz Books First Editions Club.

Curl up with a middle grade mystery with Haddix’s ‘Greystone Secrets: The Strangers’

by Trianne Harabedian

Thrillers, mysteries, books with suspenseful intrigue? They have never been my idea of a good time. I often find them frightening and too intense, which can sometimes mean nightmares. Yep, I’m an adult who gets scared of the dark.
So when I heard that Margaret Peterson Haddix was coming out with a new book, Greystone Secrets: The Strangers, I hesitated. She has a reputation for being an amazing mystery writer for kids, keeping her readers in suspense and elevating tension while staying age-appropriate.

“But it’s a middle grade book,” I told myself. “It’s for ages nine to twelve. How scary can it be?” Not scary at all, as it turned out! In fact, I devoured it like pizza on a late night. It was the most engaging middle grade novel I’ve read in a long time.

The book is about the three Greystone children: Chess, Emma, and Finn. Their dad died when they were young, and they live normal lives with their mom. At least, everything is normal until their mom stumbles across a news article about three kids across the country who have been kidnapped. The Greystone children are bewildered when the article lists their own names as the lost children! These others look different from Chess, Emma, and Finn, but they share first names, middle names and birthdays.

But this is only the beginning of the strangeness. Before the children can ask questions, their mom leaves on a mysterious work trip and sends them to stay with a friend they hardly know, whose own daughter wants nothing to do with them. The Greystones begin to worry when their mom doesn’t call to check on them, returns their texts with cryptic messages, and appears to have completely vanished. The suspense only grows as the children investigate, find clues, and decode messages that lead them on adventures beyond their belief.

With a hint of A Wrinkle in Time, lovable characters, and a well-woven story, I’m excited to present Margaret Peterson Haddix’s The Strangers as one of our picks for the First Editions Club for Young Readers! It’s engaging, literary, and perfect for the middle grader in your life–whether they are easily frightened or not!

Author Q & A with Jo Watson Hackl (Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe)

Interview by Clara Martin. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 8)

In Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe, you’ll find a ghost town in the middle of the woods in South Mississippi, a girl named Cricket, a cricket named Charlene, and a poetry-loving dog. They’ve got eleven days to find a mysterious room painted with birds, and thirteen clues will lead them there. Combine the Mississippi Wild, a Walter Anderson art mystery, and a young girl who is taking a chance on herself, and you have Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe, great for kids (and adults!) ages 8 and up. You’ll laugh, maybe cry, and have a lot of fun reading this book. In an interview with author Jo Hackl, she talks about her inspiration for this story, and what it means to be a writer for children, writing about a place like Mississippi.

Where are you from, and where do you live now?

I was born on Keesler Air Force base in Biloxi and moved to the real-life ghost town of Electric Mills when I was eleven. I now live in Greenville, South Carolina, but still have deep ties to Mississippi. Most of my extended family lives in the state and I get back whenever I can.

Do you do anything else besides writing books for young readers?

Jo Watson Hackl

My husband and I have three children who keep us very busy. I also practice corporate law (part-time), operate outdoorosity.org, a free resource about nature, and volunteer in the community. I’m working with a local school to develop a cross-curricular plan of instruction to use Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe to teach art, creative writing, geography, math, literature, science and social studies and to help the school incorporate nature into the school day. Together we’re building a flower fort, just like the one in the book, that will be used as a reading space.

In your own words, what is Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe about?

Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe is about learning to take chances on yourself. The story takes readers on an adventure with 12-year-old Cricket and her companion, a field cricket named Charlene, through an overgrown ghost town in Electric City, Mississippi, to solve a thirty-year-old clue trail in search of a secret room that may or may not exist, all to try to win back Cricket’s run-away mother.

Cricket must use her wits and just a smidgen of luck to live off the land in a Mississippi winter, survive sleet storm and snake-bite, and work to solve an increasingly baffling clue trail left by an eccentric artist with a logic all his own. Along the way, Cricket meets the reclusive last resident of the ghost town, enlists the help of a poetry-loving dog, and takes up a touch of grave-robbing. These experiences awaken Cricket to the possibility of finding strength in the most unlikely of places—within herself.

“The woods smelled like a hundred and fifty years of dark. A goose-bumpy ghost-town kind of dark.” This is Electric City, Mississippi. An abandoned electric lumber mill town, where honeysuckle vines grow around pillars that used to prop up houses, and weeds push through a sidewalk, left right in the middle of the woods, and it is where Cricket makes her makeshift home while she searches for her Mama.

You actually lived in Electric Mills, Mississippi, the inspiration for Electric City. Can you talk about what it was like to grow up in a place that was neither here nor there? A ghost town, of sorts?

Growing up in a ghost town made every day interesting. The real town still has a few houses, but I made the fictional town empty to make it better fit the story. Growing up, I loved exploring the woods, walking the old sidewalks, and searching for signs of the people who used to live there. Many of the things that people had planted in their yards–rose bushes and daylilies and privet bushes–still were there, even though the houses were missing, and I tried to imagine the houses that had once stood where toppled-over pillars and thick thorny rose vines now reigned.

Can you tell our readers what a doogaloo is?

A doogaloo is a coin that the mill used to pay its workers. I am happy to say that I have a real doogaloo from the original town and I kept it propped on my desk for inspiration as I was writing the book.

Explain how the presence of art, nature, and the creative process are intertwined in your book. Cricket says, “And if you’re going to last any time out in the woods, you’d better get comfortable with whoever it is you are.” What is your own creative writing process? How did you start writing Cricket’s story?

I absolutely believe that art, nature, and the creative process nourish each other. Writing the book, I surrounded myself with art of all kinds, visited galleries and museums, and talked to visual artists. I also spent a lot of time in nature and my home office overlooks our woods so that I can be close to nature even when I’m inside. I started writing Cricket’s story in my head back when I was a child exploring the woods. As I grew older, I knew I wanted to write and I knew I wanted to set the story in the ghost town. In a lot of ways, Cricket’s advice about the need to get comfortable with whoever it is you are applies to my writing process. I had to learn to take chances, to try things that might not work, and to write the scenes I was more than a little scared to write. I brought my whole self to the process, vulnerabilities, quirks and all, and tried to create an experience that would draw readers into Cricket’s world and make them feel like they were right there with her.

Cricket is in search of her mother by way of a “Bird Room,” and clues that lead Cricket closer to this mysterious room painted with all kinds of birds, trees, and flowers, painted by a man named “Bob.”

Please explain why you decided to use Walter Anderson and his “Little Room,” as inspiration? Do you have a favorite Walter Anderson painting? If so, please share!

I am a life-long fan of Walter Anderson’s work. He drew from direct observation of nature and his quick, efficient line-work captured the essence of whatever he was drawing or painting. As Cricket says about the fictional artist “Bob” in the book, “some pictures weren’t much more than thin pencil strokes. But they showed more than I could ever say in a lifetime about a raccoon or a dragonfly or a duck.” My favorite Walter Anderson piece is the “Little Room,” where he captured the beauty of a day on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Walter Anderson used the light from the windows to illuminate the paintings, beginning with sandhill cranes and a rooster at dawn, as the sun moved throughout the day. This was the inspiration for the “Bird Room” in my book.

Of course, writing about serious subjects doesn’t mean there cannot be humor! I loved the moments of comedy in your book, particularly the opening scene in Thelma’s. What was one of your favorite scenes to write?

Great question! One of my favorite scenes to write was at the end when, without giving anything away, Cricket finds herself in the middle of Aunt Belinda’s trailer with Aunt Belinda and her suffocating hairspray and hidden tattoo. The pastor and the entire and the whole youth group are there as Aunt Belinda tries to hide the fact that she accidentally left Cricket in Thelma’s Cash ‘n’ Carry even though she told the whole town that she suspected foul play. Let’s just say that Charlene, the cricket, plays a leading role in adding some humor to the situation.

As a writer from Mississippi, what does it mean to write about the South, the place you grew up, and incorporate art, nature and family? Why do you think young readers will enjoy Cricket’s story?

I think that Mississippians have a unique sense of connection to place. The land where I grew up is a part of me, and I wanted to share that with readers. I also wanted to combine art, nature and the importance of family, no matter who your family is. Young readers have told me that they’ve enjoyed being part of Cricket’s world, experiencing the woods, exploring the ghost town, and using their wits to solve the clue trail. One of the great things about being a writer is that, if you can figure out a way to work a really cool thing that interests you into the book, you can do it. Without giving away the clue trail, I worked a lot of really cool things that interested me into the book and I hope that readers enjoy solving the trail as much as I enjoyed creating it.

Jo Watson Hackl will be at Lemuria on Thursday, July 12, to sign and read from Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe. Smack Dab in the Middle of Maybe is Lemuria’s July 2018 middle grade selection for our First Editions Club for Young Readers.

Bury your nose in ‘Bob’ by Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead

I picked up an advanced copy of Bob during tech week of my school musical, which was not the best idea. I spent every moment I was not onstage reading and nearly missed my cue several times! I should have known that any book by acclaimed authors Wendy Mass and Rebecca Stead would be difficult to put down when it was time to go on stage. And with illustrations by Nicholas Gannon, author of The Doldrums? I mean, come on. What was I thinking?

A perfect book for children in the fourth and fifth grades, Bob follows a girl named Livy who visits her grandmother’s house in Australia for the first time in five years, only to find that she has forgotten almost everything. The only thing Livy does seem to remember is a “wrong chicken” that her grandmother denies ever existed. Upon further investigation, however, she not only finds the “wrong chicken,” but also learns that his name is Bob, he has no idea what he is, and he has been waiting for Livy for five years.

Livy spends the rest of her time in Australia helping Bob search for his family and learning as much as she can about him and what he may be. But something strange happens whenever she leaves him for even a short period of time, something that may keep her from remembering Bob ever again. This heartfelt story of friendship and childhood memories is definitely worth finding time to read between summer reading books!

Bob is Lemuria’s May 2018 Middle Grade selection for its First Editions Club for Young Readers.

Offering children a look at ‘Love’

loveThis book shows love’s many and varied journey through the world. The narrative voice in this book speaks to the child and leads the young reader by the hand to show examples of love that a child may not recognize. The images de la Peña uses to describe love are from the child’s point of view. The very first illustration is from the child’s vantage point in a crib looking up at his/her parents, with the words

In the beginning there is light

and two wide-eyed figures standing at the foot of your bed,

and the sound of their voices is love.

The narrative voice describes the music in the back of the cab driver’s cab, the color of the sky at sunset and playing in summer sprinklers. The narrator says to the child, “the echo of your laughter is love.”

And yet, love is not just in things seen or heard in the natural world, but most importantly, the selfless actions of one human for another. The turning point of this picture book is where Loren Long shows two young boys, perhaps brothers, the elder holding out a piece of toast to his younger brother, where a figure outside the window walks in the snow towards the bus.

Accompanying that illustration are the words:

And in time you learn to recognize a love overlooked

A love that wakes at dawn and rides to work on the bus.

A slice of burned toast that tastes like love.

The full effect of this book is magnificent. Words shine through his gift  for lyricism, his finger on the pulse of those small moments that often go unseen, but are, indeed, love.

Love by Matt de la Peña is Lemuria’s January 2018 picture book selection for our First Editions Club for Young Readers.

Climbing the Wall in Dan Santat’s ‘After the Fall’

“Life begins when you get back up”

after the fall

Now we all know the story of Humpty Dumpty and how he fell and couldn’t be put back together again. But in Dan Santat’s beautifully illustrated new picture book After the Fall, he has already been put back together, but is now terrified of heights. His fear was so crippling that he could no longer enjoy things he once loved, like the good cereal on the top shelves of the grocery store or bird watching on top of the wall.

atf pictures

But Humpty Dumpty will not give up all the things he loves just because he is afraid of heights. No! He will just have to be more creative about enjoying them. He starts making paper airplanes to fly alongside his beloved birds. But tragedy strikes again, and his favorite plane gets stuck on top of the very wall he first fell off. Now Humpty Dumpty has to face a hard decision.

Does he let his fall define him or does he get back up again?

Dan Santat’s storytelling and illustrations blend perfectly together to create this vibrant and heartfelt story. With some fun twist and surprises to a tale we all thought we knew, After the Fall will inspire all that read it (trust me, I loved it so much that I bought it for myself). This is not just a book for children, it is a fun reminder to everyone that the important thing is not that you fell, but whether you get back up again.

Author of ‘The Doldrums’ to visit Lemuria for second installment

The Doldrums: The Helmsley Curse is a stand-alone sequel to The Doldrums, published in 2015. doldrums 2In Nicholas Gannon’s first novel for kids ages 8 to 12, the reader meets Archer Helmsley, grandson to two of the most famous explorers, but who lives a very sheltered, unadventurous life himself. The book also features Oliver Glub, Archer’s best friend and next-door neighbor. Then there’s Adelaide, a girl with a wooden leg. Her leg, it was rumored, was bitten off by a crocodile. Now their second adventure begins following “the tiger incident,” an escapade that convinced Archer’s parents to send their son packing to boarding school, where he will be safely away from trouble.

But the city of Rosewood is getting colder by the minute, and the only explanation is the Helmsley Curse: as the Helmsleys approach Rosewood on their iceberg, everything gets colder. When Archer’s grandparents sent him a piece of the iceberg they were rumored to have vanished on, Archer is sure they are soon to return home. However, with more rumors swirling in the air with the snow, will anyone welcome the Hemsleys–or will they think they are cursed?

For children who are fans of The Mysterious Benedict Society and A Series of Unfortunate Events, Nicholas Gannon’s books are wholly original, featuring a new cast of characters, secrets, and mysteries to uncover in The Doldrums: The Helmsley Curse. Gannon, in addition to being the author, graduated from the Parsons School for Design, and he also illustrates his books.

Meet the author of The Doldrums on Monday, November 6 at 5 p.m. at Lemuria Books. The Doldrums: The Helmsley Curse is the Oz First Editions Signed Book for the month of November.

Discovery brings Twain back to life in kid’s bedtime story

By Clara Martin

What do cooking grease, ornery dragons, and Mark Twain have to do with each other? As it turns out, quite a lot.

At the Bancroft Library in Berkeley, California, in a search for recipes relating to a Mark Twain cookbook in the Twain Archives, the word “oleomargarine” pulled up 16 pages of handwritten notes. But the notes weren’t about cooking. These 16 pages comprised a bedtime story, a fairy tale that Twain told his daughters, Clara and Susy Clemens, while in Paris in 1879.

The story ended abruptly with Prince Oleomargarine being kidnapped and taken to a cave guarded by dragons. The Mark Twain House sold the rights to Doubleday, an imprint under Penguin Random House. But with the author long gone and only 16 pages of notes to work with, the story needed some guidance.
Lucky for us readers, Philip and Erin Stead, the team behind the Caldecott Winning picture book A Sick Day for Amos McGee, took the reins in The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine.

prince oleomargarine

But how do you work with a dead man who was writing before the 20th century? By turning him into a character, of course.

In the story (and in real life), Philip goes out to a cabin on Beaver Island to write this story and converse with the ghost of Twain, who interjects in the first half of the story quite frequently. The banter goes on back and forth, with Philip Stead asking Twain “what happens next,” and when Twain’s own story doesn’t fit with Stead’s vision, he goes ahead, sometimes with Twain’s permission and sometimes without.

What ensues is a hilarious feat of storytelling that hearkens back to the oral tradition. As you read, you will feel the need to read this to someone else, to share the story. After all, aren’t the best stories meant to be shared?

So while the Steads make some changes, they stick to the theme that runs through all of their books–the importance of kindness.

The hero of the story, Johnny, is a young African-American boy whose grandfather is a “bad man.” His only friend in the world is a chicken named “Pestilence and Famine.”

He sells his chicken to an “old, blind woman, thin enough to cast no shadow.” This beggar woman gives Johnny a handful of pale blue seeds in exchange for the chicken. She promises him that if he plants the seeds under very specific conditions, then a flower will bloom. If Johnny eats the flower, he will never feel emptiness again. He plants the seeds, and one flower blooms. Johnny eats the seed, ravenous with hunger, but he does not feel fulfilled. He is about to give up when he hears a voice: that of a talking skunk named Susy. As it turns out, the magic flower allows Johnny to talk to and understand animals.

Johnny’s life with the animals is filled with peace. As the old beggar woman promised him, he does not feel emptiness because of his friends. But when they come across a notice proclaiming that Prince Oleomargarine has gone missing, Johnny and the animals go forward to help.

As it turns out, the King is very, very short. So, all of his subjects must stoop before him (or they will be enemies of the state). He claims that giants have taken his only son and heir to the throne. Johnny and the animals follow the trail and end up at the entrance to a cave, guarded by Two Ornery Dragons. AS the narrator says: “An important thing to know about dragons is this: They are always arguing with one another. No two dragons can agree on anything.”

And, as this is where Twain left Philip Stead to pick up the storytelling mantle, this where I will leave you to discover the rest of the tale.

Erin and Philip Stead

Erin and Philip Stead

While reading The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine, I felt as though I was reading a long-lost classic children’s story. Which, in a way, I was. Thanks to the magic and artistry of the Steads, the gem of the original story is not lost. With Erin’s ethereal illustrations that are suited for a fairy tale of this magnitude, she brings Phil’s words, Twain’s eccentricity, Johnny’s pure heart, and the importance of kindness to life.

To borrow from Twain, I think the moral of the story can be summed up as such: “There are more chickens than a man can know in this world, but an unprovoked kindness is the rarest of birds.”

Philip Stead will appear at Lemuria on Monday, October 30, to promote The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine. He will sign books at 5:00, and he will read from the book beginning at 5:30.

Author Q & A with Corabel Shofner (Bel Alexander)

Interview by Jana Hoops. Special to the Clarion-Ledger Sunday print edition (July 30).

Native Jacksonian Corabel Shofner (known as a child in Jackson as Bel with one L Alexander) has, with “great success, taken the long way when it came to navigating several important milestones in [her] life–but things have always, eventually, seemed to fall into place.”

At age 17, she decided to “interrupt” her education at Murrah High School–so she left, and hitchhiked around the world, landing in New York City. She eventually enrolled in Columbia University and graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa after studying English literature and Arabic. She and husband Martin Shofner now live in Nashville, where she received a degree from Vanderbilt University School of Law. They have three grown children.

almost paradiseNow in her mid-60s, Shofner is officially beginning her new career as a writer, releasing her debut book, Almost Paradise(Farrar Straus Giroux)–a story about love, self-sacrifice, and a family’s second chance at redemption.

Her shorter works have appeared or are forthcoming in Word RiotWillow ReviewHabersham ReviewHawai’i ReviewSou’westerSouth Carolina ReviewSouth Dakota Review, and Xavier Review.

Tell me about growing up in Jackson.

We lived in Lakeland and Old Canton Road. My first school was Duling, where I was fascinated by the principal, Mrs. or Miss Boutwell, because she had a mysterious medical crisis called a blood clot.

There were pine woods behind my house which I would walk through to see Ophelia, who was the housekeeper/caregiver for Mrs. Brown in Woodland Hills. Mrs. Brown is the first person I know who died. Ophelia’s lovely stone cottage was right out of a fairy tale. If someone left ashes in her ashtray she kept them because she loved the smell. I think of her every time I see or smell ashes.

We moved our house from Lakeland to Lelia Drive, down by what is now River Hills Country Club. Anybody who was alive at that time will remember the house that was stuck on the bridge for weeks. That would be mine. For year, when I would be drive home by a friend’s mother, she would pull up and gasp, “Wasn’t that the house…?”

I was a terrible student and not a reader at all, except when I crawled into the attic to read Black Beauty with my plastic horses. I did write. The first book was titled The Monsters Under My Bed. I dropped out of Murrah High School and hitchhiked away, but I go to all the 1971 class reunions.

I still have farm land in the Delta and we come home often. My children are all grown, now ages 24-31, and they are all very imaginative and artistic.

You are, or were, an attorney. When did you start writing, and are you giving up your legal career for writing at this time?

I love researching and writing law, but as a career, it is over. It was a great job, but I’m a bit conflict averse, which I should have thought about ahead of time. And I didn’t like measuring my life in billable hours. My family has a long history in law. My grandfather–Julian Power Alexander, who married Corabel Roberts–wrote a dissenting opinion when he was on the Mississippi Supreme Court that said that the constitution does not exact wisdom from its citizens, but ensures their right to folly. I love that so much.

He died at the Sugar Bowl (in New Orleans, in January 1953, two months before I was born. They took his body to Bultman’s funeral home and then on the train home. Bultman’s is now a Fresh Market Grocery Store. Pat Stevens told me that when I visited her in New Orleans recently. My father was a dear friend of her husband Phineaus.

Julian and Corabel had a Dutch Colonial house on Poplar Street in Belhaven, and I remember toddling up to the front door. My cousin (author Tom Sancton of New Orleans and Paris) tells me we are at least fifth-generation Mississippians-and 13th-generation Mayflower descendants–but, as he says, “that’s another story.”

In your debut novel, Almost Paradise, the main character, Ruby Clyde Henderson, had an unpredictable life for whom things eventually worked out in an unexpected way. She is a complicated character who deserves more than she often got during the first 12 years of her life. How did you conceive of this character and this story-line for your first book?

I had been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and was heavily medicated, very worried about my children and our future. Ruby Clyde marched into my room and bounced on my bed, telling me about herself, in 2001. This book has been in and our of “the drawer” for years. Ruby Clyde is a healer and I believe that writing her story is why my prognosis is now quite strong.

It’s difficult to tell the time period in which the book is set, until we read that her aunt was digitizing document on her computer–but there are no mentions of cell phones, tablets, social media, or “devices.” Why is there no evidence of these modern distractions?

I wanted my story to be modern, but somewhat timeless, hence the computer in the backroom and a television that is rolled out of the closet. Sister Eleanor doesn’t have a phone–cell or land line. Phones were not necessary to Ruby Clyde and her mother socially or financially. Cell phones are certainly ubiquitous today, but once they are in a story it seems like tech takes over and clutters the relationships. So, even though mine is a contemporary story, I wanted Ruby Clyde and her mother to be connected by other means, and I wanted Paradise Ranch to be a very peaceful, nurturing, and healing place.

Some of the characters, maybe Joe Brewer and Lady Frank, might well have owned cell phones, but didn’t use them in my scenes. The Catfish probably had one somewhere. I thought of dropping in a mention of cell phones, but then that would bring more attention to cell phones and before you know it, everybody would be calling everybody.

By the way, you are not the first person to question the time period. I think there are several places where it is a bit more dreamy than realistic.

The relationship between Ruby Clyde and her mother is, for the most part, reversed. Explain the importance of their roles.

Ruby Clyde is competent and self-reliant by necessity because her mother has withdrawn. I have often seen that when a parent falls short, the child will step forward and take on the adult role. They lose their childhood. It is a tragedy that is overlooked because people are prone to praise the child for stepping in. That is hwy I call this a reverse coming-of-age story. Ruby is able to find adults she can trust and to reclaim her childhood. Of course, she has no entire clue this is what’s happening.

Tell me about the Christian references in the story…Ruby Clyde has an aunt who is a nun, she believes in the power of prayer, and she makes deals with God and lives up to them.

I am a Christian. Biblical imagery is some of the powerful stuff on earth. Much of it can be quite baffling. I have an odd way of seeing everything, religion included. Ruby Clyde believes and questions all at the same time. Also, self-sacrifice is important to me, as it is so difficult to do and keeps getting pushed down the list of virtues. Hence, the Tale of Two Cities thread. I was worried that I might offend people of faith, but I was relieved when a very conservative religious reviewer said that she “would definitely have no qualms about recommending the book to Christian families.”

What is your bigger message to readers who join Ruby Clyde on her journey in this story?

“Message” is a loaded word. It is difficult to write plain words and have them understood at face value. “Message” is in the ear of the reader. I certainly hope that Ruby Clyde’s bravery and compassion are contagious. Ruby Clyde likes to say that you have to love pieces of people because if you wait around for perfect, you will end up with nothing. Maybe that is a message from Ruby Clyde of her own self.

Corabel Shofner

Corabel Shofner

Tell me about your other publications.

Stuff. Short stories, essays, legal writing. I wrote a brief for the U.S. Supreme Court.

Why were you drawn to writing a children’s book as your debut novel?

I just wrote my story. (My publisher) Farrar, Straus, And Giroux told me it was for 10-year-olds. That said, I couldn’t be more enchanted with the people dedicated to children’s literature.

Do you plan to continue writing children’s (or middle years) books?

Yes. I will continue to write my stories and then be told what they are. That said, whatever I write I will always support teachers and librarians and all people who work in children’s books. They are my people.

Corabel Shofner will sign copies of Almost Paradise at Lemuria Books at 5 p.m. on Tuesday, August 1. She will also serve as a panelist on the Middle Grade Reader’s discussion at the Mississippi Book Festival on Saturday, August 19 at 12 p.m. at the State Capitol in Room H.

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