–The Snoops

We have read many memorable, extraordinary and powerful books, ranging from fun and funny and light to very heavy and serious and moving. We have met characters we will never forget, enjoyed wild and fantastical plots, and expanded our literary genres. We have especially enjoyed recommending the right book to the right reader at the right time, and we cherish our collective role as “book matchmaker.”

It has been so much fun for our children to be able to ask the authors themselves specific questions about the books they have read, and meeting some of the authors in person…well, it doesn’t get much better than that!

We have had some truly thrilling moments when we have seen replies from some big time authors in our inbox, and have absolutely loved getting the opportunity to ask them questions about some beloved books. Banned Books Week, Teen Read Week, Children’s Book Week – all of these literary events have provided fantastic opportunities to celebrate books and writing and authors – all things that are near and dear to our hearts!

So, as we celebrate two years of StorySnoops, we would like to extend a very special thank you to the authors that have so graciously granted us interviews, and we look forward to many more in the future!

Stephanie Barden

Dave Barry

Josh Berk

Judy Blume

Frank Cottrell Boyce

Jennifer Brown

Meg Cabot

Cassandra Clare

Emma Clayton

Chris Crutcher

Sarah Dessen

Ellen Hopkins

Ryan Jacobson

Kimberley Griffiths Little

Cynthia Lord

Lois Lowry

Wendy Mass

Sarah Mlynowski

Walter Dean Myers

Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Richard Newsome

Kiersten White

Clare Vanderpool

Or to see the entire group together, visit our author interview archive page. Thanks!

-The Snoops

In celebration of Children’s Book Week, StorySnoops is once again hosting interviews with some of our friends in the literary world. Children’s Book Week is the national celebration of books and reading for youth. We hope you enjoy our special posts this week.

Today we are joined by one of our favorite authors for middle-graders, Rebecca Stead. Rebecca’s most recent book, When You Reach Me, is the winner of several prestigious awards, including the 2010 Newbery Medal, the Boston Globe Horn Book Award, and more. Destined to become a beloved modern classic, When You Reach Me is a must-read for middle graders of both genders.

Hi Rebecca! We are so happy to be featuring you today! We read that while you have always been passionate about writing, you were actually a public defender at one time. What is it about writing for children that appeals to you?

Writing for children is pretty incredible: First of all, I’m free to write about things that interest me, to dive into big questions about how life works, and more importantly, why. When the story is going well, writing is more satisfying than any other work I’ve done. Second, the community of people in this field – readers, writers, editors, publishing staff, booksellers, teachers, librarians – is unfailingly warm and wonderful.  It’s always a privilege to write for a living, I believe. But to write for children is a privilege and a joy.

Judging by the homage you pay to her in When You Reach Me, you are obviously a huge Madeleine L’Engle fan. Which other authors did you enjoy reading as a child?

So many!  To name a handful: Judy Blume, Louise Fitzhugh, Norma Klein, James Herriot, Louise Meriwether, Robert Heinlein, Paula Danziger, and Sydney Taylor. I read all kinds of books, and was, as you can probably tell, a child of the 70′s.

How has winning the Newbery Award changed your life?

The Newbery has changed my life both irrevocably and not at all. It’s higher praise than I’d ever dared to dream about, and has brought me a lot of readers and invitations to travel, both of which are incredibly wonderful. Again, the word privilege comes to mind. But an award doesn’t change the experience of writing at all (or if it does change the experience, it certainly doesn’t make it easier!).

Have your children read any of your work?

Both of my sons have read my books, including Liar & Spy, which will be out in August. They have favorites (and unfavorites), but I’m not going to disclose them.  They’re 11 and 13, and have high privacy needs.

You have many young fans out there. Do you have any advice for budding young writers?

I’m afraid I have the usual advice, because it is the truth at the deep, deep bottom of my writing life: READ.  Also, don’t question your instinct to write, and don’t ask yourself whether your writing is any good.  Raw material is raw material -protect it, treasure it, and, when you have enough of it, use it to craft your story.  (Do not expect a gorgeous, well-crafted story to simply spill out of you – that happens for no one I know, and this comforts me.)

We are excited about your new book, Liar & Spy, coming out August 2012!  Can you tell us about it?

Liar & Spy is about Georges (pronounced “George”), a seventh-grader in Brooklyn who’s having a tough year: his best friend has ditched him, his dad got laid off, and his family had to sell their beloved house and move into a neighborhood apartment building. There, he meets a kid named Safer who quickly drafts Georges to help him spy on “Mr. X” in the apartment upstairs. At the bottom of all this is a not-so-simple question: what can Georges do to live the life he wants, instead of the one he has?

Thanks for joining us today, Rebecca! If you’d like to keep up with Rebecca and her books, visit her at her website. And don’t miss Liar & Spy, coming out in August. Join us tomorrow for a special StorySnoops retrospective

In honor of Children’s Book Week, StorySnoops is hosting interviews with some of our friends in the literary world, as well as some of our own fun blogs celebrating this special week. Children’s Book Week is the national celebration of books and reading for youth. We hope you enjoy our special posts this week.

Today, we are featuring an interview with a reluctant reader to see what makes him tick.  This son of a StorySnoop volunteered himself for the job when we did a poll of our kids’ favorite reads and he scornfully said, “Mom, I don’t like to read.”  Duh.  So here’s a look inside the mind of one thirteen-year-old reluctant reader and what he is willing to read.  We hope it will give you some insights about your own reluctant reader.

What do you think makes you a reluctant reader?

If I feel like if there’s no suspense in a story or something I can relate to, I get immediately bored, which makes me want to read less.

I know you don’t enjoy reading but you do have to read for school.  So what do you look for in a book when you have to choose one?

The only books I like are books with suspense, books about surviving in the wilderness, and biographies or autobiographies.

What is it you like about each of these genres?

Suspense keeps me interested enough to keep reading.  With a story about survival, I can put myself in that position and see what it would be like.  I always read biographies or autobiographies about people I can relate to because I like to understand what they go through.

Is there something that a book has to do from the beginning to catch your attention?

Not necessarily.  What helps is if I’ve heard from others that don’t like to read very much that a book is good.

And it doesn’t help if your mom says it’s a good book?

Not at all because it’s usually not. (Ugh!)

What about graphic novels?  Do they appeal to you at all?

Not really because they usually don’t have the kind of plot that intensifies and keeps you hooked.

Do you care if a book is about a boy or a girl?

No.

If you had three books in front of you that you’ve heard nothing about, how do you choose between them?

I would first look at the title.  Then I would look at the blurb.  If the description matches what I look for in terms of the genre or topics, I flip it open to see how many pages it is and how big the lettering is.

So you wouldn’t just choose the shortest one?

No.  That’s just one factor in my decision.  I don’t really like it when there is a long exposition because the climax gets too long and then it gets boring.  It might enrich the story but the action and the telling of the main events is what holds my attention.

Since you say that you like to get recommendations from readers like you, what books would you recommend to other reluctant readers?

For people who enjoy suspense, I recommend The Hunger Games.  If you like survival stories, my favorite is My Side of the Mountain.  And if you’re into skateboarding, Dropping in with Andy Mac: The Life of a Pro Skateboarder is really good.

Thanks for joining us today! Come back tomorrow to read our interview with award-winning author Rebecca Stead, author of When You Reach Me.

In celebration of Children’s Book Week, StorySnoops is once again hosting interviews with some of our friends in the literary world. Children’s Book Week is the national celebration of books and reading for youth. We hope you enjoy our special posts this week.

Anne Ursu is the award-winning author of Breadcrumbs, a contemporary retelling of  The Snow Queen, and the three books in The Cronus Chronicles series—The Shadow Thieves, The Siren Song, and The Immortal Fire. She has also written two books for adult readers. Anne teaches at Hamline University’s MFA in Writing for Children, and lives in Minneapolis with her young son.

Hi Anne, and thanks for joining us today.

We have heard a critic call your Breadcrumbs “hypnotizing”, and we can’t think of a better adjective to describe it. Did growing up in Minnesota help you paint such a dream-like and magical snowy world?

Thank you! I certainly did call on my childhood memories writing this book. I remember the feeling of waiting for the school bus standing in snow that rose above your boots. There’s so much character to winter in Minnesota—sometimes you have big fairy flakes, sometimes it’s ice pellets that assault your skin. I vividly remember walking around with my family after an ice storm and it was like the entire world had been encased in ice—perfectly frozen, perfectly still, like it was always going to be that way. So the whole book really is filled with the texture of those memories.

Of all the fairy tales written, what was it about The Snow Queen that made you want to write an updated version of it?

As soon as I read The Snow Queen I was struck by the story of the friendship that was torn apart overnight. It seemed to me to be about how growing up changes and ends friendships, and I immediately wanted to write about that, using contemporary kids but keeping the skeleton and flavor of the fairy tale.

Many characters in this story are attempting to avoid pain by escaping reality –  but they can’t feel happiness either. What inspired/prompted you to write about this theme?

That’s a very interesting question. At first, the story was about Hazel and her escapes—in her games with Jack, in her books. She’s struggling with reality and retreats into fantasy. And as she got into the woods, I found the people she encountered were all doing something similar—they choose escape, but suffer greatly as a result. I think it was important for Hazel to see that, to learn how to live in the world she has—and also for her to understand she can make a choice: numbness or reality and the joy and pain that comes with it. She figures out the real world is better—then it becomes her job to convince Jack.

Sometimes, you figure out what a book is about by writing it. I didn’t really set out to write about this theme; it just kept happening, and eventually I figured out how important it was to the story. So these ideas were ones I tried to bring out in revision.

This is a coming of age story about the inevitable pains that accompany growing up. What message do you want to convey about growing up?

I think as adults we have a tendency to want to protect our kids from any pain, to keep hard things from them, to pretend everything is always going to work out. Except growing up is tough, and part of growing up is becoming aware of the world and how hard it can be. And if we are so busy protecting our kids that we forget to keep them company in the pain and the hardship, we’re leaving them to go through it alone. And I think for Hazel, the book is about realizing how hard growing up can be, but also realizing that she’s up to it, and that these pains bring joys with them as well.

What do you have in the works? What can we look forward to reading from you next?

I have a short story coming out in the next Guys Read collection—Guys Read: The Sports Pages—and I’m just working on beginning a new book now. I’ve found that, after writing a book, it takes me a long time to get over it—I have the world and story and characters so much in my head I can’t even conceive of writing something else.

And from the girls of StorySnoops’ resident book club, the Green Oompa Loompas:

Hi Ms. Ursu! We thought your book was fantastic! It was suspenseful. We’re sure a lot of boys AND girls can relate to this book. We loved how you wrote realistic fiction at the beginning, and then put a whole bunch of fantasy the rest of the way. You described everything really well. We could seriously imagine everything you wrote about. This book is a work of art and we hope to read a lot more of your writing! Thank you for this story!

Thank you! I’m so happy you guys liked it.

We are exactly Hazel’s age and can relate to the changing and growing apart of friends, especially between boys and girls. Do you remember this happening to you when you were our age?

I do. My two best friends for much of elementary school were from the neighborhood, and one was a boy. But by fifth grade, I’d grown apart from both of them. It wasn’t something that happened overnight, like in the book, but so slowly you don’t really even notice until it’s happened. From fifth grade all through middle school my friendships shifted a lot—some of them did end overnight. And some of them were really painful.

In addition to The Snow Queen, we counted many other stories that are referenced in this book such as A Wrinkle In Time, The Little Match Girl, Harry Potter, When You Reach Me, The Golden Compass and many more.  Was this meant as a special treat for those of us who love children’s books?

Yes, that was certainly part of it. I really wanted kids who’d read these books to have that fun moment of recognition when they ran across the references, and I also wanted them to have that moment of connection with Hazel. But it was also really important to me that Hazel was a reader, especially of fantasy—that that’s really how she’d connect to and understand the world. Fantasy means escape for her—until she finds herself in one, that is.

Did the wolves symbolize anything? They kept popping up. Were they watching over Hazel? (We are dying to know!!)

Oh, the wolves! In the first draft of the book, they were there as menacing creatures, threats to Hazel, just like in a fairy tale. But as I rewrote the book, they changed, and became a watchful, even protective presence. Hazel goes into the woods thinking she can trust woodsmen and has to fear wolves, and learns that it’s quite the opposite. So they really symbolized the wildness and lawlessness of the world Hazel found herself in, that you can’t take anything at face value or believe anything you’ve told. I like to think that the wolves try to protect the kids who find themselves in there—they keep Hazel from the woodsman, try to keep her out of the village, and guide her to the Little Match Girl.

Once a young reader told me she thought the wolves were sent by Adelaide and Uncle Martin to watch over Hazel. I loved that.

Thank you so much for your time Ms. Ursu!  If you’d like to keep up with Anne and her latest work, you can visit her on her website. Tomorrow, please join us at StorySnoops.com for an exposé with every literary-minded adult’s favorite challenge: The Reluctant Reader!

In honor of Children’s Book Week, StorySnoops is hosting interviews with some of our friends in the literary world, as well as some of our own fun blogs celebrating this special week. Children’s Book Week is the national celebration of books and reading for youth. We hope you enjoy our special posts this week.

We come up with lists of our favorite books all the time, but we thought we’d switch it up this time and ask the kids. As our regular readers may know, the StorySnoops gang has nine kids between us, ranging in age from 9-16, all of whom fall at different places on the “love to read (or not!)” spectrum. It was a fun exercise, and we got several different types of responses, along with the obligatory eye rolls required of any good teenager. As expected, some answered quickly, no pondering or debating required. Others had trouble narrowing it down, and had to be encouraged to just pick two. Best answer? “I don’t like books.” Ha! Come back on Wednesday to hear more from that Reluctant Reader

But moving right along, here are the books that rate the highest with our gang. In the case of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter, the kids who picked those liked the entire series. What about your gang? What are their favorites?

Thanks for joining us today. Hope you’ll come back this week for interviews with two authors we love, Anne Ursu and Rebecca Stead, as well as a grand exposé on that not-so-rare creature we all know: The Reluctant Reader!

-The Snoops

Have you checked it out yet? If not, it is a virtual “pin board”, where you can post photos of pretty much anything you find on in the internet, and organize your pins into groups of things that interest you. Just like other social media sites, you follow people, although the difference in this case is that in addition to your friends, you can follow random people who share similar interests as well. For sure, this is a mecca for folks who are interested in fashion, design ideas, recipes and pithy quotes.

Pinterest is not really designed for businesses or bloggers per se, but both groups are definitely jumping in trying to figure out the best way to share their wares. We are excited to explore Pinterest as a way to showcase an informal presentation of our website, and add other literacy-related goodies that we don’t have an opportunity to post on the site.

We’ll be putting Pinterest buttons on our site soon, to make it easy to link back and forth or to pin pages that other people like to their own boards. But until then, log on to Pinterest and give us a look.  Do you have a page yourself? Let us know so we can follow you. Happy browsing!

-Eden, StorySnoop

I just finished reading Black Heart, the final installment in one of my favorites trilogies for teens, The Curse Workers by Holly Black.  Having read my fair share of series for StorySnoops, believe me when I tell you that they can become predictable and formulaic.  Not so with The Curse Workers.  Each book is engrossing, entertaining, and unpredictable, and is based an intriguing premise that, while fantasy, is close enough to reality to be relatable.

White Cat introduces seventeen-year-old Cassel Sharpe. He’s the only one in his family who is not a curse worker, so he can’t help but feel like he’s not quite good enough. Curse work is illegal, which means anyone who is born with the ability to alter a person’s emotions, luck, or memories with the touch of a hand is a criminal or scam artist–just like every member of Cassel’s family. He may not be a worker, but he’s far from innocent and he can run a scam to rival any con artist.  When Cassel notices that his two brothers are being even more secretive than usual, he runs scam after scam to get to the bottom of their odd behavior, only to discover a shocking secret about himself that changes everything.

After his older brother is murdered, in Red Glove Cassel is surprised to find out that he was an informant for the FBI. The Feds want Cassel to take over where his brother left off and help them find an assassin. The problem is, thanks to his brothers, Cassel may be the murderer they are looking for. To make matters worse, his brother’s old boss–the head of a crime family–wants Cassel to work for him.

Black Heart finds Cassel trying to go legit. Now, the boy whose family views the government as the enemy is a trainee for the FBI. But being one of the good guys doesn’t come easy for Cassel. And when that same crime boss–who just happens to be the love of his life’s father–threatens to kill Cassel’s mother unless he finds an important artifact, being good gets even harder. Then when the Feds want to turn him into an assassin again, Cassel has trouble figuring out who the good guys are and if they even exist. Once again, Cassel has to outsmart both sides, each of which is fighting for a piece of him.

In each installment of The Curse Workers series, the plot is as spirited and intelligent as its protagonist, who has just the right mix of irreverence, street smarts, and sarcasm to appeal to teen readers.  Part of Cassel’s charm is that he is acutely aware his own weaknesses, and readers will identify with him as he struggles against his nature to do the right thing. Cassel is forced into impossible situations but uses his wits to emerge triumphant, without becoming a pawn for those who want to take advantage of him.

This series could be just what the doctor ordered for teen boys, even those tricky reluctant readers.

Happy reading!

-Jen, StorySnoop

-Eden, StorySnoop

How is it possible that I missed Teen Lit Day last week on April 12^th?? I am so disappointed in myself. As a huge fan of teen lit, I would have loved to celebrate in some wild and crazy fashion, surround myself by all my favorite teen books and look lovingly at them. Never too late though, right?

Though Teen Lit Day may have been last week, I am going to have my own ltitle celebration here on the blog, with confetti and streamers and everything : )

I still have all of my favorite books from when I was a teen – Sweet Valley High, Sweet Dreams Romances, Go Ask Alice, Zanboomer, My First Love And Other Disasters… I could go on and on and on.  I actually have about three shelves of them, and they are dated and they are beat up and they are well loved, and if my house were on fire, I would definitely grab them.

Now I have a special shelf of contemporary teen lit that I love. And… lucky me, I have a teen girl to share them with!

Maybe I have some sort of arrested development, as I am a forty-something woman who still reads teen lit – for my website though! – but I don’t even really care. There have been teen lit books I have read in the past few years that were as memorable and moving to me as those intended for my age group.

In fact, my favorite book of all time – and that is REALLY saying something – is a teen book. But, that is a topic for another blog  : )

The modern teen lit books I own that have a special shelf all of their own are very dear to my heart. They are varied and diverse, are extremely well written, have memorable characters and stood out among the hundreds of books I’ve read.  I know that some of them have made my “best of” lists over the last two years, but it can’t hurt to mention them again, can it??

So, in honor of Teen Lit Day (just a week or so late!) here is a list of some of my all time favorite teen literature. I love these books, in a ridiculously sentimental way, and reread them every chance I get.

What are your favorite teen books??

-Tiffany, StorySnoop