photo: Annmarie Algya

Clare Vanderpool’s highly anticipated second novel, NAVIGATING EARLY (Delacorte Press / On sale January 8, 2013) is a mesmerizing epic of adventure and self-discovery, set against the backdrop of post-World War II Maine. Her debut novel, MOON OVER MANIFEST, won the 2011 Newbery Medal. Clare lives in Wichita, Kansas, with her husband and their four children. Learn more at ClareVanderpool.com.

NAVIGATING EARLY incorporates plenty of mystery and adventure as Jack and Early travel the Appalachian Trail, but perhaps the most intriguing aspect is the role played by pi (3.14…). Can you tell us a little about how this mathematical concept is interwoven in the story?

Early Auden, described as "that strangest of boys," sees numbers differently than most. For him, the number pi—that mystical, never-ending, never-repeating number—reads like a story. It is the story of a young man named Pi, whose real name is Polaris but who is told by his mother that he hasn't yet earned his name. The number pi, beginning with 3.14, tells of the epic journey of Pi who is the first to venture beyond his own shores, to see what lies beyond. He is in essence, the first navigator.

The conflict for Early comes when he learns of a famous mathematician who discovers that certain numbers of pi have ceased to appear in the number. He has developed a theory that, eventually, more numbers will disappear and the number pi will in fact end. This is very upsetting to Early, who is deeply invested in the story of Pi.

In NAVIGATING EARLY, Jack and Early go on their own quest on the Appalachian Trail in search of a great black bear. Both of these epic journeys, that of Pi and of Jack and Early, begin to mirror each other in strange and coincidental ways. But as Jack's mother says, “There are no coincidences. Just miracles by the boatload.”

Your debut novel, MOON OVER MANIFEST, earned you the 2011 Newbery Medal and an adoring fan base. What’s it like to work on the follow-up, knowing that there are such high expectations from both critics and readers alike?

It's pretty challenging. Fortunately, I was well into the story of NAVIGATING EARLY before the Newbery was announced. Part of the challenge, even before the Newbery, was just getting acquainted with and really falling in love with these new characters—spending time figuring out the story they have to tell.

Of course, winning a Newbery on a first book does come with a certain amount of pressure. I knew the next book would be ripe for comparison. I really had to work at setting aside thoughts of expectations and comparisons and just let the story take its course. Jack and Early are fairly assertive characters and, once I could let go a little, they were more than willing to take the lead.

You’ve said that you’re very attached to your home state of Kansas, which is also where MOON OVER MANIFEST is set. Kansas figures into NAVIGATING EARLY, but this time it’s a place that Jack is forced to leave. How did displacing your protagonist from your beloved home state affect the process of writing a second novel?

It was fun, actually. Jack is a Kansas kid, so I completely understand his outlook and sensibilities. He talks about being able to see for miles in every direction and always knowing where he is based on familiar landmarks. I've traveled a lot and know the feeling of being away from my natural surroundings. I adapt pretty easily, but when it's time to go home, I know where I want that to be.

In NAVIGATING EARLY, Jack's Kansas roots represent home, stability, connection to place. But I knew Jack's story was very much about being lost. With the unexpected death of his mother and the return of the military father he barely knows, Jack's world is turned upside down. He comes from a long line of Naval men and using Naval language he says he has lost his bearings. Jack's physical displacement very much reflects his emotional displacement. His father is stationed off the coast of Maine and when Jack, a land-locked Kansas kid who also suffers from motion sickness finds himself teetering on the brink of the constantly moving ocean, I think the reader definitely gets a sense of Jack's loss of bearing.

A quote from MOBY DICK—“It is not down on any map; true places never are”—sparked your imagination for MOON OVER MANIFEST. That quote also seems apt for Jack and Early’s quest in NAVIGATING EARLY. What intrigues you about fusing history with the great mysteries of the American landscape?

As writers, I don't think we really know who we or what we are about until we recognize some of our own story in the things we write about. As a kid, we took a three-week vacation every summer in a Holiday Rambler travel trailer. My dad would map out a section of the country each summer and eventually we had driven through every continental state along with parts of Canada and Mexico. At the time, I'm sure I was the first to want out of the car and I know I often asked, “How many more miles?” To which the answer was always, “Umpteen.”

But it was probably those hours spent looking out a car window that led to a deep love and appreciation for landscape. But it's not just about the view; it's about the bigger questions stirred by that landscape and my place within it. Where do I belong? What is my place in this world? Do I matter in this big open space?

As far as the fusion of history and landscape, I think these are the questions people have been asking throughout all of history. One of my favorite scenes in NAVIGATING EARLY takes place in a cave and involves ancient drawings on the stone walls. People from thousands of years before who recorded their journeys, wanderings, and discoveries. I guess I'm fascinated by the fact that we as human beings have shared the same stories for all of time. The human story is very much a never-ending, never-repeating story.

On your website, you briefly mention a style of bedtime story that you and your kids call “dream presents.” These sound like pretty fantastic springboards for stories! Can you explain how they work and how they have influenced your work?

It's kind of funny to be talking about our little bedtime routine on a blog, but here goes. When my kids were little, like all kids, they wanted bedtime stories. And before lights out, as parents, we always wish our kids, “Sweet dreams.” So a “dream present” is kind of a combination of both.

I would start a story, something where the child I was telling it to was the main character, and he or she was always embarking on some big adventure. They might be escaping pirates in a hot air balloon. Or getting lost in the jungle and finding a buried treasure. There would always be some cliffhanger ending and I would tell them to “dream the rest.” I know, it's not as calming as GOODNIGHT MOON, but hopefully it made for some exciting dreams.

As for how it influences my work, I guess I've always loved a good story and feel like that is a great way to go to sleep. Strangely enough, if I get stuck in my writing, I will often lie down for a nap, and it is in that falling asleep stage where I'm more asleep than awake, that the story knot will work its way out. I think dreaming and storytelling are two sides of the same coin.



5 Questions With... R.J. Palacio (WONDER)

5 Questions With... the legendary Judy Blume!

This post originally appeared on the Engage/Teacher to Teacher blog in December 2011.

Eric A. Kimmel is the author of over one hundred books for children, including such well-loved classics as ANANSI AND THE MOSS-COVERED ROCK and the Caldecott Honor Book HERSHEL AND THE HANUKKAH GOBLINS.

Your newest picture book, THE GOLEM’S LATKES, is based on a traditional folk story from Prague. How did you come across the tale of the Golem, and what gave you the idea to remix the story into a Hanukkah book?

First of all, despite what most people think, the classic golem story is hardly traditional.

The usual versions of the story, which show up every few centuries, are little more than brief statements: "Rabbi So-and-So replicated the act of Creation by making a man out of clay." Some versions mention keeping the golem around to do odd jobs. That's all.

The main episodes of the classic tale (The Creation of the Golem/The Golem as Sorcerer's Apprentice/The Golem Defends The Community/The Golem Runs Amok/The Golem is Returned to Clay) originate with a novella written in the 1920s by a Czech writer named Chaim Bloch. It owes as much to Mary Shelley’s FRANKENSTEIN and the tale of THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE as it does to any Jewish source. Block crafted his tale using the romantic background of the Prague Ghetto and its most prominent figure, Rabbi Judah Leib ben Bezalel. Rabbi Judah Leib was a major scholar and kabbalist. However, nothing prior to Bloch’s book links him with any golem. Even more interesting, the creation of a golem is traditionally linked to another rabbi, Elijah of—of all places!—Chelm!

Can you imagine The Golem of Chelm? That has possibilities. Maybe I ought to think about it.

Bloch’s tale became a Jewish classic. It was made into a movie. It had become a very well-known story when I was growing up in the 1950s. Our Hebrew school library had an English version of Bloch’s novella. I came across it one day, checked it out, and read it in an evening. I must have been in the fifth grade at the time. I was a great reader. I loved the story from that moment because it was so wonderfully creepy. It literally is the Jewish FRANKENSTEIN.

The idea of retelling it as a Hanukkah story wasn’t my idea at all. My dear friend and editor, Margery Cuyler, suggested that I think about writing a golem story. I didn’t think that was a good idea. That story had been retold many times. I.B. Singer wrote a version. As far as I was concerned, the definitive golem is David Wisniewski’s. He nailed it with his text and amazing illustrations. What a genius! I couldn’t do better than that. So I told Margery, “Why bother?”

She persisted. I decided that if I was going to do the story, I’d have to come up with a different angle. A warm, fuzzy golem, perhaps? I began playing around with ideas. Maybe do it as a Hanukkah story? Thinking of THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE and especially of Tomie de Paola’s STREGA NONA, I started mapping out a simple plot. The golem starts making latkes. Nobody’s around to supervise. The golem keeps making latkes until they flood the city. Then they have to eat them all to get rid of them.

Once I had that outline, the rest was easy. Rabbi Judah Leib actually was an associate of the Habsburg emperor, Rudolf. Basha, the maid, is a kewpie doll. She does not intend to work any harder than she absolutely has to. Aaron Jasinski’s golem looks like Gumby. He’s perfect. I love the way the book turned out. It was lots of fun to write.

In addition to GOLEM’S LATKES, you’ve written several stories about Jewish holidays, including the Caldecott Honor Book HERSHEL AND THE HANNUKAH GOBLINS, EVEN HIGHER!: A ROSH HASHANA STORY, and THE STORY OF ESTHER: A PURIM TALE. You’ve even got THE MYSTERIOUS GUESTS: A SUKKOT STORY, about the lesser-known Jewish harvest festival. What draws you to write about these celebrations and traditions?

I write about them because I love them. I went to a fine Hebrew school where we received a thorough grounding in Jewish traditions. Bible stories, legends, folktales were an important part of the curriculum. Also, the immigrant generation was still alive. My grandma lived with us. She could easily carry on a conversation in five languages. English, however, wasn’t one of them. I was bilingual as a child. I heard lots and lots of stories from my grandma in Yiddish. You might say I got them from the source.

Good stories are meant to be shared. Since I’m a writer, why not share the stories I love best? However, stories are never static. They intertwine. That’s what happens when I’m writing.

HERSHEL AND THE HANUKKAH GOBLINS owes as much to Dickens’ A CHRISTMAS CAROL as it does to the Hershele Ostropolier stories.

EVEN HIGHER! is a classic story by the Yiddish master I.L. Peretz with a bit of tweaking at the end that I owe to Trina Schart Hyman, whom I will always adore and admire. “Eric,” she once said to me, “I need something to draw.” It’s not much of a story if I end it with an old lady lying on a pile of rags as she does in Peretz’s original version. So I pulled her out of bed and made her dance.

I came up with THE MYSTERIOUS GUESTS one night when I was stranded in a hotel room in Cherry Hill, PA. There was a power outage and all the lights went out. The elevators weren’t running. I had nothing to do but sit in the dark and look out the window. It was in the fall, shortly after the Sukkot holiday. I began with a famous story about two brothers who exceed each other in kindness and went from there. The two brothers in the story are actually me and my brother Jonathan. Total opposites. I’ll let you guess who was the model for the good brother. Jonny may disagree.

THE STORY OF ESTHER is right out of the Bible. The idea of doing it came from my editor at Holiday House, Mary Cash. Mary was invited to a Purim party. Being a book person, she looked for a book to bring as a gift. She thought a picture book version of the story of Esther would be perfect. Unfortunately, she discovered that she couldn’t find one in print! There wasn’t one to be found in New York. Mary called me up immediately and suggested I write one. Fast!

I had always assumed that there were several versions around. I was as surprised as Mary was to find there were none available. I sat right down and got busy. I didn’t have to work out the story, so it didn’t take long to write. Maybe a day. It’s one of my favorite stories. It has everything: sex, violence, a damsel in distress, and a villain who gets just what he deserves—which, unfortunately, hardly ever happens in real life.

We have to ask: what is your favorite holiday book?

That’s easy. Charles Dickens’s A CHRISTMAS CAROL. I’ve loved it since I was seven years old and saw the Alastair Sim movie. I’ve read and reread it countless times. Dickens takes the trite and sentimental and makes it dark and creepy. It’s scarier than TWILIGHT. “I wear the chains I forged in life!” Think about it.

Folk tales factor strongly in your work. Do you have any tips for teachers looking to incorporate traditional stories into their lessons?

The best advice I can give is to focus on the story. It’s a story, not a lesson. Stories are about characters who interact. How do they treat each other? How do they face difficulties? How do they solve problems? What do we learn from them that we can apply in our own lives? Let’s talk about that after we listen to the story.

I didn’t write HERSHEL AND THE HANUKKAH GOBLINS to teach children about Jewish customs and ceremonies. I wrote it because I want them to recognize that there is real evil in the world. How do we deal with it? How do you recognize it and respond to it when it shows up in your own life? Because I guarantee that sooner or later it will.

Here’s another way to look at it. A young man in the marching band just died in a hazing incident at Florida A&M. Bullying is finally being recognized as a real problem among school age children. Nobody can haze you or bully you unless you and others cooperate by going along with it; by not taking measures to stop it; and by looking the other way when you see it happening. When you confront the goblins and refuse to play their game, their power disappears. The only power they ever had was the power our own fear gave them.

What just happened in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and now Syria are similar examples. One by one, within a span of months, we’ve seen entrenched dictatorships totally collapse once people stopped being afraid and began using the power they always had.

Was the king of the goblins really that terrifying? Or did he just pretend that he was? Maybe he had no more power than the little goblin who shows up at the beginning. He just made a bigger noise.

Dig deep. A good story will always give you plenty to talk about.

You have to love the story. That’s the key. Which stories should you share? The ones you love. It’s your love of the tale that makes it come alive for the children. If you don’t know where to begin, start with the old favorites: CINDERELLA, SNOW WHITE, PUSS IN BOOTS. Don’t assume that children know them. They don’t, or if they do, they only know them through movie or cartoon versions. Disney’s Pooh is not Milne’s Pooh. The recent film PUSS IN BOOTS, as much fun as it is, is not Perrault’s LE CHAT BOTTÉ. Don’t believe me? Read the real Milne or the real Grimm or the real Perrault and we’ll talk.

There’s a “Hear a Story” section on your website, where kids can look at the illustrations of your books while you read them aloud. What are the most important elements in crafting a good read aloud?

It’s all in the language. A book has to read well. Words have music. A well-written book sings. The best compliments I’ve ever received about my writing comes from teachers who tell me that they enjoy reading my books “because they sound so good!” If you’re not sure what I mean, read a few stories aloud. You’ll hear the difference. Good writing has grace, elegance, wit, style. Bad writing lies flat on the page. You might as well be reading a tax form.

Good books are those you want to read again. Good stories are those you want to hear again.

It’s that simple.



'Tis the Season to Break With Tradition: Reinvent Your Holiday Book List

Reviews of New Holiday Books

Rob Buyea taught third and fourth graders in Bethany, CT for six years before moving to Massachusetts, where he lives with his wife and three daughters. He teaches biology and coaches wrestling at Northfield Mount Hermon School. BECAUSE OF MR. TERUPT, his first novel and the companion to MR. TERUPT FALLS AGAIN, was selected as an E.B. White Read-Aloud Honor Book, a CYBILS finalist, and has been named to numerous state award lists. Rob spends his summers at Cape Cod enjoying family adventures, entertaining friends, and writing. You can visit him at www.robbuyea.com.

BECAUSE OF MR. TERUPT and MR. TERUPT FALLS AGAIN cover a school year from multiple different students’ perspectives. Reviewers have noted that the student voices are “authentic.” How do you suppress your own voice as an experienced teacher and let the characters be themselves?

For me, the characters are bits and pieces of many of my former students and parts of me, all glued together. The parts of me that are in the characters I don’t suppress. Like my character, Luke, I get excited about math and science challenges. It’s easy for me to know how he feels and thinks. Knowing my characters in this way helped me make them “authentic.” Writers do best when they write about what they know.

The protagonist of your Mr. Terupt books is noted for his creative classroom antics and activities. How much crossover is there between your style and personality as a teacher and his?

A lot. I like to have fun. I want my classroom to be a place where my students want to be, a place where they feel challenged but also share laughs. I like to give my students ownership. I often provide the general guidelines for a project, but allow them to go from there. This was the case when I was an elementary teacher, and it’s a part of my high school biology classroom today. The rapport Mr. Terupt has with his students is special, and that’s something else I strive for.

You’ve said that your experience reading aloud to your students directly influenced how you wrote the Mr. Terupt books. How so?

I loved when my students wanted me to stop in the midst of a story so they could share connections, questions, and predictions. I also loved it when something came up in the story that made my students think. Great discussions always followed. And of course, I loved it when the kids begged me not to stop. I wanted those read-aloud moments to be possible with my Mr. Terupt books. Based on all the letters I’ve received from students and teachers, I know that’s happened for many. I can’t tell you how wonderful that makes me feel.

In interviews you often say that you weren’t a reader when you were growing up, but picked up the habit later. How has your reluctance to read when you were younger impacted how you approach teaching and writing for reluctant readers?

As for teaching reading, I believe strongly in letting kids self-select books. I did my best to help my students find books with which I thought they would connect, but ultimately it was their choice. I also made talking about our reading a regular part of the classroom. As adults, when we read something that excites us we like to tell someone about it, not always answer questions or write responses. I was constantly talking about my reading with my students, and that enthusiasm spread.

I didn’t set out to write for reluctant readers, but I think I’ve reached many because they can connect with my characters.

You were actively writing and revising a story with your writing group when the idea for Mr. Terupt hit you and took you in a new direction. As a writer, what’s it like to abandon an idea you’ve put so much work into for a new and fresh idea?

I actually tried to ignore the student voices and ideas for Mr. Terupt when they first came to me. As a beginning writer, I didn’t think I could worry about more than one story at a time. But the characters didn’t leave me alone, and the ideas grew. Eventually, there came a point when I was too excited to resist writing it any longer. I knew I had to get started, and I also wanted to see how my writing group would receive it. Once I got started on it, I never stopped.

I would not say I abandoned my original story idea. That’s too strong a word. I simply put it on the side for a while. I’ve continued to think about it over the years and intend to return to it. That’s a story waiting to be told.



5 Questions With... Mike Allegra (SARAH GIVES THANKS)

5 Questions With... Sean Beaudoin (THE INFECTS)