There's a prediction for some possible wintry mix here in the Washington, D.C., area, the first winter storm of the year, so it's a good time to take a look at some middle grade fiction for December! I'm excerpting some interviews I did with middle grade authors for my blog, Book Q&As with Deborah Kalb, over the past couple of months.
Let's start with Allan Wolf. He has two new upper MG books out--a novel (Junius Leak and the Spiraling Vortex of Doom) and a graphic novel (The Vanishing of Lake Peigneur) both dealing with the same topic, an oil drilling accident in Louisiana's Lake Peigneur in 1980. "The
truth about the Lake Peigneur Texaco disaster stands alone as a fascinating
tale, yet few people know about it at all," he said. "And what little information is
available creates as many questions as it answers. Junius Leak has his story.
But Lake Peigneur has its own separate story to tell. So, two separate books
made sense to me."
Caroline Carlson's new middle grade novel is called The Tinkerers. When I asked her about how she created her protagonist, Peter, she said, "Peter, the protagonist of The Tinkerers, and I
have a lot in common. Not externally, of course: I’ve never been a 12-year-old
boy, and I’ve never grown up with three younger siblings to look after and a
small-town inn to help my parents run. But Peter’s emotions are at the heart of this story,
and Peter is an anxious kid. He happens to be very good at a number of things,
but this doesn’t soothe his anxiety; it only gives him the misapprehension that
he’s got to be good at everything in order to prevent awful things from
happening."
Last up, Scott Reintgen is the author of the new MG novel The Rise of Neptune. I asked him about the inspiration behind the book, and he said, "The biggest inspiration was a small detail that I saw
when researching Neptune's moons. There was a line about the fact that
Triton--one of the bigger moons in that area--has a retrograde orbit. Which
means it orbits in the opposite direction of its planet. Since I often use planetary science to define the
personalities of the various dragons, that detail really stood out for me and
it defined Triton, which defined the rest of the story's conflict."
So many books to read! Whatever you read, I wish you a happy holiday season!
--Deborah Kalb
Comments
Post a Comment