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The second edition of the Mother-daughter book club newsletter will be on the way in just a few days. There’s still time to sign up and receive the latest issue.

This month I’ll be featuring a review of Frank Cottrell Boyce’s new book Cosmic, and The Adoration of Jenna Fox by Mary E. Pearson. There’s also an interview with Heather Vogel Frederick, author of The Mother-Daughter Book Club, and a profile a the book club I’m in with my youngest daughter, Catherine.

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Mother-daughter Book Interview

When I interviewed author Christina Hamlett recently (read interview), she then turned the tables and interviewed me about mother-daughter book clubs for American Chronicle. How interesting it was to be on the other side of the pen. Here’s a link for you to read Christina’s interview. Check it out!

An Interview with Markus Zusak

Madeleine and I recently had the opportunity to interview Markus Zusak, author of The Book Thief and I Am the Messenger, when he was in Portland to speak at Powell’s bookstore. Madeleine was thrilled to meet one of her favorite authors, and Markus was generous with his time. I’ve praised Zusak’s writing in other posts, and I can’t say enough about how thought-provoking and original his books are. They would be great to read and discuss with reading groups of high school girls and their moms.

Here’s a picture of Madeleine and Markus the night of the event, followed by an excerpt from the interview. To read the entire interview, visit MotherDaughterBookClub.com. You may also want to visit Zusak’s Web site, which has great information.

MDBC: The Book Thief was written from an angle that you rarely see, that of ordinary German people living under the Nazi regime. Why did you choose to write that story?

MZ: There are a few reasons, but the main one is that those are the stories I knew. My mom is German my father is Austrian. I grew up hearing those stories. One of my mum’s stories was about something that happened when she was six. She heard a noise that sounded like cattle being herded down the street. It was people being herded to a concentration camp. There was an old man who couldn’t keep up, and a boy gave him a piece of bread. They were both whipped, one for giving the bread, one for taking it. When you see a soldier chase a boy down and beat him to the ground for being kind to somebody, when you see that when you’re six, what could you possibly make of that?

You don’t really think of humor when you think of that time, but there were a lot of funny stories as well. I knew about my dad “jigging” as we say in Australia the Hitler Youth meetings, because he had a friend who suffered at the hands of the leaders. So they just said, “We’re not going. We’re going to go to the river instead and get dirty enough to fool our parents.” Another story I knew was about Hitler’s birthday, and my mother’s foster father refused to fly the Nazi flag. His wife said to him, “You’re going to fly the flag or else they’re going to come for us.” These are the stories I knew, and I thought, “I haven’t seen that on all the documentaries. I’m going to use these because this hasn’t necessarily been done a lot.”

MDBC: Did you think of this as a book about the Holocaust?

I never thought of this as a Holocaust book, ever. When you think of World War II and what happened in Germany, you immediately think Holocaust and concentration camps. Once I started researching I kept uncovering more and more things like the beautiful acts that some Germans did such as hiding their Jewish friends in their basements. And the more I’d see of this the bigger the book got and instead of a 100 page novella that I was thinking about, I ended up with a 580 page book. All my books are important to me, but this is the one that is everything to me because of where it came from.

MDBC: How did you decide to use Death as the narrator?

The decision to use Death as a narrator only came off the second time around; if I had stuck to publishing deadlines Liesel would probably be the narrator. I went from Death as narrator to Liesel telling the story herself to even trying third person. The real breakthrough was when I thought of the last line of the book. I was in down in Tasmania and there was water everywhere around me. I was reminded of the last line of a book called “A River Runs Through It,” which is, “I am haunted by waters.” I thought, “Aaaahhh, Death is afraid of us and haunted by us, because he is on hand to see all the terrible things we do to each other. It makes sense that he is telling the story to prove to himself that humans can be beautiful and selfless as well.”

Interview with Gennifer Choldenko

Gennifer Choldenko, whose latest book If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period was released last month, spoke with me recently during a phone interview. I posted the full interview on MotherDaughterBookClub.com today. Here are a few excerpts:

Tell me about If a Tree Falls During Lunch Period.

GC: I had a lot of fun working on this book. My voice is naturally contemporary. It’s more of a challenge to get it to work in a historical setting.

There are a lot of issues in this book. You’re writing about classism and racism along with typical middle school issues of being popular and going through puberty. How did you decide to write about these things?

GC: I think a lot of things came into play in this book. Classism bugs me, and yet I see it all around. Also, when I was kid I was bused from a predominantly white school to a predominantly African American junior high. All of a sudden I felt like I was the color of my skin wherever I went, and I felt like somehow I had to be representative of that. Or else people judged me based on skin color before they knew me. I had never experienced anything like that. I had never thought about the color of my skin. So it made a huge impression and I think that sort of seeped into this book also.

I struggled with getting the voices of Kirsten and Walk right. It was scary to create a character of a different race, because I felt like I was going to open myself up to criticism. But I also felt like not doing it was wrong. So I had to do the right thing for the book even if I didn’t feel like other people would necessarily agree with me on that.

I understand you’re in a Mother Daughter Book Club with your daughter?

Yes. I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope we continue on for many years. I think it will be fun as the kids grow and change and become more sophisticated and probably interact with books in a different way. My daughter is a voracious reader, but she doesn’t speak up much in the book group. She always looks forward to our meetings, and if for some reason I have to miss one she’s really unhappy about it. That’s the best indication that it means something to her.

For more information on Gennifer, check out her Web site, www.choldenko.com.

Yikes!

I can’t believe we’ve reached the end of September and I’ve barely had time to sit at my desk for the past few weeks. With school starting again, soccer starting up, doctor visits for my daughter who fractured her arm, and work and volunteer projects topping my list as well, I’ve had little time to write a post on this blog.

Plus, both of the Mother Daughter Book Clubs I’m a member of have not yet met for the year! But fear not, an interview with Gennifer Choldenko, author of the well-loved Al Capone Does My Shirts and a new book, If a Tree Falls at Lunch Period, will be posted here next week. In the meantime, look at Gennifer’s Web site, www.choldenko.com, for interesting information. While you’re there, check out her fall schedule to see if she’ll be appearing at a bookstore near you. When you look for her new book on the shelves, here’s what you’ll see:

An Interview with Kirby Larson

A few days ago I interviewed Kirby Larson, author of the Newbery Honor book, Hattie Big Sky. She was so delightful to talk to, and she’s got a great Web site with biographical information as well as information about her books.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview where Kirby talks about attending a mother daughter book club meeting near her home. You can read the entire piece to see what she has to say about Hattie Big Sky and other things at MotherDaughterBookClub.com.

MDBC: I understand you visited a mother daughter book club meeting with your daughter?
KL: Yes. It was really a fun evening. I am so impressed with the commitment that moms are making now to this concept. I think it’s an important way for moms to be together with girls, especially when they are pre-teen. You can talk about some tough issues that may be affecting your daughters, but since they are a character’s issues it’s a safe way to bring them up. I loved how the girls had their questions to ask and the moms had their questions to ask. They were all interacting as if they were equal. And I think it’s nice to have other adult women in your life when you’re growing up. I can see these book clubs working on a lot of different levels to help girls get through those tough pre-teen and teen years.

Interview with Frank Cottrell Boyce

Frank Cottrell Boyce is the author of two books - Millions and Framed - that are great mother daughter book club reads because their appeal spans the age groups. I saw the movie Millions with my family before I read the book, and we all fell in love with this wonderful film told through the voice of Damian, an engaging fourth-grade boy trying to find his way after the death of his mother. When my daughters and I spotted Framed on a library display shelf and noticed it was by the same author, we immediately picked up both books and chose them for each of our book clubs. It turned out to be a great decision. The three of us thoroughly enjoyed reading and discussing both books, and we had interesting discussions on them at our book club meetings.

Framed is on the list of Books to Make You Laugh Out Loud. We laughed a lot in Millions, too, but it didn’t make the list. I think that’s because it would feel like a betrayal to the main character, Damian, who was very serious in his innocence.

I recently interviewed Boyce by e-mail for MotherDaughterBookClub.com and came to appreciate this author even more. And now I know that I have another movie and a new book from his pen to look forward to soon. Here’s an excerpt from the interview. For the complete text visit www.motherdaughterbookclub.com.

The main characters in both Millions and Framed are young boys. Why is that?
Oohhh. I’m not sure really. In Millions it just worked out that way - it felt like a story about brothers. Then when I started getting letters and messages from people a huge number said the same thing - i.e. “my little boy would never read books but he read this one.” There is a problem in England about getting boys to read so I suppose in Framed I consciously decided to write something that boys would like but that wasn’t necessarily car chases and guns.

Are you planning anything that will feature girls as main characters?
Well I think Minnie is one of the best characters in Framed - she’s certainly taking up a lot of room in the screenplay. And there’s a very vibrant girl called Florida Digby in my new book - Cosmic.

Do you talk to your children about ideas for your books?
Yes. But they’re very harsh. I read my new book to them at Christmas and they hated it so much I had to start again. My ten-year-old son loves Millions and can more or less recite the first chapter.

Do you base your characters on people in your life?
Not consciously but afterwards I recognize certain things about them. For instance Dylan is lonely for male company and my ten year old is just the same. He has three brothers but two of them are much older and one of them is a lot younger. So he has no one to play football with except me. So I guess there’s a lot of Dylan in him. Also because he has older brothers and sisters, he has a big vocabulary that he doesn’t necessarily understand. So I think a lot of Anthony’s talk about mortgages and tax relief etc. comes from that.

I understand that Framed is being made into a movie. Did you write the screenplay and when can we expect to see it?
I’m writing the screenplay and hoping it will be shot next Spring for broadcast the following Christmas.

Who would you recommend read your books?
Anyone and everyone! I think because the books are narrated by children, adults read them differently. I think adults find them funnier and children find them more moving.

What’s the best part of being an author?
Being able to work in bed. And also reading to children in schools.

What’s your next project?
I’m working on the films of Framed and of Terry Pratchett’s Truckers. And I’m finishing my next book (Cosmic)

Interview with Zlata Filipovic

Photo by Tobias Munthe

I first met Zlata at Looking Glass book store in Portland where she was appearing to talk about the re-issue of her diary. My daughter, Catherine, and I had recently read Zlata’s Diary for our Mother Daughter Book Club, and we had an amazing discussion at our meeting about recognizing war when it comes to your city or country as well as the everyday reality of war for the people living through it.

Seeing Zlata and hearing her speak emphasized for us all that she was a real person who had lived through everything she wrote. So when we heard she would appear in Portland again, this time promoting her new book at Powell’s books, we knew we had to see her.

The girls were so happy she remembered meeting them before, and they sat listently intently as she talked about her new book, which is a collection of young people’s war diaries beginning with World War I and continuing through today’s conflict in Iraq. It’s no surprise they chose this book, Stolen Voices, as our April book club selection.

Zlata is a very charming and well spoken young woman who easily talks about the difficulties of her war-time experiences. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Why did you start writing in a diary?
ZF: I started writing a diary because I got a very pretty notebook, and I saw some older girlfriends keep diaries and wanted to emulate them in that way. I had also read the Diary of Anne Frank as well as the fictional Diary of Adrian Mole (written by Sue Townsend) and became familiar with the diary-writing form which I liked. I was hoping my diary would be more like that of Adrian Mole, which was extremely funny, but it ended unfortunately being compared to that of Anne Frank.

How was your diary chosen for publication?
ZF: This happened completely accidentally. During the war, regular schools stopped working, but a small ’summer school’ was set up in small areas of the city, and there I joined a literary section, as I always liked to write and read. One day, in summer 1992, my teacher asked if anyone was writing a diary, because UNICEF was looking for a diary of a young person to publish. I gave some parts of my diary, and they collected these all over the city, and ended up chosing one for publication, which was mine. It came out in a small number of copies in Summer 1993 (it contained only the first three months of the war and only extracts of the original which I kept with me). Because of the strong presence of foreign journalists in Sarajevo at the time, they all started writing about it and the story got out into the world, which is when foreign publishers became interested in publishing the diary in its entirety.
To read the complete interview, visit MotherDaughterBookClub.com.

Interview with Laura Whitcomb

Our mother daughter book club with Laura Whitcomb (back left).

I interviewed Laura Whitcomb, author of A Certain Slant of Light, for motherdaughterbookclub.com last week. Here are some excerpts from the interview:

Q: The subject matter of A Certain Slant of Light is a bit mature, and it’s recommended for an audience of 9th grade and older. Did you have a young adult audience in mind when you were writing?
LW: “Actually I was just trying to write the best story I could think of in the best way I could tell it. My agent sent it out to both adult and YA editors. After it sold as YA, it made sense to me – even though the ghosts were in their twenties when they died, the bodies they took over were teens. The characters had to deal with teen life.”

Q: You’ve attended a Mother Daughter Book Club meeting where A Certain Slant of Light was being discussed. What was it like hearing readers’ comments about your book?

LW: “It’s always interesting to hear people talk about something you wrote. I was impressed by the sophistication of the questions and comments from both generations. It feels great to have your work be the fuel for such lively conversation.”

For complete text check out the interview page on motherdaughterbookclub.com.

I met Whitcomb a year ago when she came to a meeting for my Mother Daughter Book Club. At first it was a little awkward for everyone, the group members because we had never talked about a book with the person who had written it before, and Laura because she hadn’t attended a meeting where people she didn’t know were talking about her book. But Laura was truly charming and before long we got comfortable and started chatting about the characters and the story line. It was very interesting to hear her reasoning behind certain plot lines and to get a feeling for her idea of the characters’ personalities.

I’ve since heard Laura speak at the monthly meeting for Willamette Writers about her non-fiction book as well as A Certain Slant of Light and I continue to be impressed by her down-to-earth demeanor and her approachability.

It’s definitely worthwhile to see if there are children’s or young adult authors in your area who would attend a meeting to discuss the book with your group members. Some authors may not be open to this, but you may be surprised how accessible many of them are.