Where did the idea for Little Monsters come from? - Guest Post by Máire Roche

The idea for Little Monsters hit me out of nowhere. I had been working at an edtech company that downsized and lost my job overnight. Before that, I’d been balancing writing books with a full-time job and I thought…hey, maybe this is an opportunity. I wonder how fast I can write a book. I had been wanting to write a Little Women retelling for a while—it was a favorite of mine growing up, and I wanted to reimagine it for a middle grade audience while still honoring the source that I enjoyed as a kid. Once I had that seed, Little Monsters came pretty naturally. I knew I wanted to write about witches and monsters, about siblings and grief, and I knew I wanted to set the book in Salem because it’s in Lousia May Alcott’s home state (but spookier). From there, I decided to write the book in a week, just to see what kind of pace I could sustain. 

I ended up writing Little Monsters in four days. 

This book is about so many things: sisterhood, magic, found family, first crushes. But it’s also about mental health, and the way that kids with anxiety, PTSD, and other struggles with mental health can feel alone or even monstrous. For Meg, her magic feels at its strongest when she’s overwhelmed, anxious, or upset. It even makes her associate that anxiety with a feeling of monstrousness, and it’s not until she learns to confront, understand, and accept her own anxiety does she find that she has a chance at managing her own power. 

I wanted to reach readers who feel isolated with that experience of anxiety they don’t have the words for. Not every reader, especially at that age, wants to pick up a book labeled a mental health book (though to be clear, those stories are so, so important too). When I was Meg’s age, if you’d asked me if I was anxious, I would have said no—mostly because nobody had really explained to me what that meant, but it sounded scary. 

Those readers exist, and deserve to be reached. I hope Little Monsters reaches kids like me, who might not have even known that what they were feeling was anxiety until someone helped them understand what was happening to them. 

I also spent a lot of time thinking about the ways the original text would translate to a modern setting. There are so many wonderful Little Women retellings for all ages on the market, from graphic novels to murder mysteries to upbeat contemporary romcoms. What could I do to make this one distinct while still having nods to the source material? 

For me, the most important thing was preserving the sister’s dynamic. Meg is our main character in Little Monsters. In the source text, we see Meg navigating poverty, caring for her sisters, and trying her best to fulfill the role in her family she believes is hers to fulfill. In Little Monsters, we see a modern version, (mostly) without fancy dresses, and the poverty Meg experiences is a different one than the Meg March of old did. Still, Meg is stuck between a rock and a hard place, with very little time and money to even think about what she wants. 

Finally, the heart of Little Monsters that felt important to preserve was the relationship between the four sisters. While this book is Meg’s story, it’s also a book about what it’s like to be there for your sisters in a world that can feel like it’s always trying to split you apart or pit you against each other. None of the four sisters have it easy (they’re trying to hide magical monstrousness from foster parents and friends, after all) but the one thing they always have is each other. 

Little Monsters came to me in pieces and then all at once, a little like Meg’s magic comes to her. It was the unexpected gift from a hard time in my own life, a love letter to kids growing up with undiagnosed anxiety and other big feelings they can’t name or control, and a homage to the power of sisterhood. I hope that the readers who need it find it—because that’s a magic all on its own. 

Máire Roche is a former elementary and pre-k teacher who now writes stories full of magic, mystery, and wonder. When she isn’t teaching or imagining fictional worlds, Máire enjoys running, teaching martial arts, and baking too many cookies. She lives in the Midwest with her spouse and their very disagreeable cat, Lulu.

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