Heidi Henneman

Ann Brashares has taken the teen world by storm. A former editor, last fall she broke out from behind the scenes with her first novel, the surprise bestseller The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. This year, she returns with another book for savvy young readers, a smart sequel to her first book called The Second Summer of the Sisterhood.

With her newest title, Brashares again takes us into the hearts and minds of four teenage girlfriends, Tibby, Carmen, Lena and Bridget, whose mothers met at a prenatal aerobics class while they were still in the womb. "When I thought about when these girls become friends, it was never early enough," says the author. "I wanted a totally unquestioned relationship to one another, like siblings." And Brashares has indeed created a sisterhood with these girls a set of siblings like no other: one is Greek, one Latino, one blonde and one somewhat nondescript. While the author does hint a little at the ethnicity and background of each of her characters, she leaves much to the imagination.

"I wanted to indicate that there is variety and a general openness among the girls," she explains. "It’s a colorful picture, but not specifically drawn."

More important than their backgrounds, though, are their friendships. Realistically enough, each girl has her own quirks, and she is loved by the others in the group for them. Brashares expertly captures the essence of true girl power through these characters, but she is also able to express the emotions and difficulties that almost every teenager goes through. Brashares’ first book centered on a "magic" pair of jeans (any pair of pants that can fit perfectly on four unique teenage bodies has to have special powers). The girls pass these jeans along to each other throughout the summer and find romance, friendship and strength by wearing them. As each of the "sisters" takes her turn with the pants, she finds that the summer isn’t filled with all the happiness she had hoped it would be: Tibby has to learn the hard way who her real friends and family are; Carmen jealously destroys her mother’s new relationship; Bridget faces the truth about her mother’s death; and Lena deals with an unexpected pregnancy.

Indeed, the first passing of the pants proves to be bad magic rather than the good omen that the girls had envisioned. But as the pants and the summer move on, the girls come to realize that it’s not the pants that help them survive their traumas and see them through their joyous moments, but the closeness and comfort of their strong, lasting friendships. "I think of the pants as pulling them into the plots of their lives," says Brashares, "and there needed to be a challenge, something difficult in their lives." Compared to the first book, the second is a bit more daunting. The challenges the four mates face are somewhat more adult in nature: restoring faith in friends and family, dealing with a single parent’s romantic life, coming face-to-face with death.

"The girls are aging with each book and will continue to do so," says Brashares. "I felt that they were more mature and capable of dealing with some weightier issues." Brashares’ books aren’t just how-to guides to surviving the curve balls of the teenage years. They are a peek into the lives of everyday people who have their own personalities, styles, histories and dreams. Love, friendship, commitment and honesty are important elements here, and Brashares combines them all flawlessly.

So what’s next for the Sisterhood? "I’m not sure where it’s all going," admits Brashares, "but it’s going somewhere." At the very least, we’ll see another summer of trials, tribulations and triumphs from the girls, and we may possibly see a glimpse of their colorful faces on the big screen. But time will tell with all of that. Until then, remember: Pants=love. Love your pals. Love yourself.

Heidi Henneman writes from San Francisco.

His name is Charlie Ashanti, a.k.a. Lionboy. He talks to cats, he moonlights in a circus, he saves his parents from kidnappers and very soon he’ll be known to young readers throughout the world. Charlie’s story, told in the new novel Lionboy, is an unassuming tale full of heroics and adventure, all created from the bedtime stories shared by adult author Louisa Young and her 10-year-old daughter, Isabel Adomako Young. Writing together under the penname Zizou Corder, the dynamic writing duo is taking the U.K. and the literary world, it seems by storm. Their extended tale of adventure, intended as a trilogy, has been compared to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. The film rights to the book have already been snatched up by Steven Spielberg’s DreamWorks company, and the book is set to be published in 33 languages. The mother-daughter team, who live in London, recently took a break from their busy schedule to answer a few questions for BookPage about their creative process and their whirlwind success.

BookPage: What was your initial inspiration for the stories of Charlie and his adventures?
Louisa Young: Isabel was my inspiration. She said, tell me a story, and I said, OK, what about? And she said, a naughty little boy called Charlie. We used to tell each other stories all the time when she was little. She’d want a story, and I’d make her do half the work.

In the book, Charlie joins a circus. Have either of you had the desire to run away to the circus?
Louisa: Oh yes. When I was a teenager there was a fantastic outfit called Le Grand Magic Circus, full of incredibly handsome French and Italian hippies with long curls and satin trousers. I just adored them, and desperately wanted to be one of them. Real circuses though are different. I don’t like the performing animals thing. In fantasy it is beautiful and exciting, but not in reality. It’s just sad.

I’ve read that both of you are allergic to cats. Why, then, did you choose cats to be such an important element in the book?
Isabel: We didn’t choose them, they just arrived.

Louisa: There’s a lot less decision-making involved in writing stories than people expect. Half the time stuff happens, characters do stuff, and you haven’t the faintest idea why or where it came from.

What kind of cat is your favorite?
Louisa: The kind that doesn’t poop in our garden. Otherwise I love the Iberian lynx, a wildcat which still survives just in Spain. It has the most charming ears. And it lives in the wild in Europe, which is a pretty extraordinary achievement, given what’s happening to so many wild animals.

Isabel: The cats in our street Missy and Freddy. They’re just ordinary cats.

Are you excited about having your story made into a movie?
Louisa: It is really exciting to think that our finished product now becomes somebody else’s raw material. At the moment it’s all in the future, and we have no idea what they’re going to do with it. But our producers made the Austin Powers movies, and Memento; and DreamWorks made Shrek, and the screenwriter wrote Edward Scissorhands and The Secret Garden, so we’re in really good hands. People say, oh, what if they ruin your book? To which we just reply, the book is fine! Look, there it is on the shelf. It’s fine! Isabel: Someone said you shouldn’t get excited about a film till you’re getting dressed to go to the premiere because up until then you don’t know if it’s really going to happen. But I’m really excited already.

How has writing this book together affected your mother/daughter relationship?
Louisa: Well, it hasn’t ruined it. We’re still talking to each other. Plus, it lets us go off on lovely trips together to meet our foreign publishers.

Do you ever have creative differences?
Isabel: Yes. Mum wants to kill one of the characters and I won’t let her.

What do you get when you combine two critically acclaimed authors, two alternating voices and a set of twins? One laugh-out-loud look at sibling rivalry and adolescent angst. Newbery Medalist Avi and renowned children's author Rachel Vail combine forces and double our pleasure in Never Mind! A Twin Novel, an inventive tale for middle-grade readers. The dynamic author team recently gave BookPage the inside scoop and outlandish humor of co-writing a novel. BookPage: What inspired you to write this book together? Avi: We were old friends, living in different parts of the country (Denver and New York). One day I mentioned to Rachel that I had asked my twin sister to write a book with me, but my sister had said she "had better things to do." Rachel however said, "I'll be your twin and write a book with you." Rachel: Actually, that's not really how it happened.

Avi: It's not? Rachel: No. I was moaning and complaining about the book I was having trouble writing at the time, and you said it sounded like the book you had wanted to write with your sister.

Avi: And I was happy to get away from the book I was working on at the time, too.

Rachel: So we came up with a premise and named the characters and I joked, "E-mail the first chapter to me by tomorrow morning." Avi: You were joking? Rachel: Totally. But the next morning I checked my e-mail and there it was: a really funny chapter.

There are two main voices in the book, Meg and Edward. Who wrote which voice? Avi: While the two characters have distinct voices, there is nothing in the book that was not, in essence, written by both of us. As writers we each have our strong points and, dare say, weak ones, but opposites. Moreover, we admire each other's particular skills. This made for a fairly perfect fit. In the end, neither of us knows who wrote what, though we can think of a few ideas one or the other put forward.

Rachel: It was always my fantasy, while in the mucky middle of writing a book, that some bookmaker's elves would come and just write the next chapter. I didn't need them to do all the work, but just jolt me to a new place, surprise me. I'd get this book back from Avi and read from page one. Words had been changed, the story improved, and then there was a new chapter at the end, which often ended in a cliffhanger. Then I would write from there and try to leave him in the same lurch.

What similarities do you have with the characters in the book? Rachel: This is a work of fiction. My resemblance to everyone in it is purely coincidental.

Avi: I am a twin, and while I once wanted to be a pop singer, I in fact don't sing well.

What is it about twins that you find intriguing? Rachel: Everything. I have always been fascinated by twins, about what it would be like to have to contend with, in some sense, a double of yourself.

Avi: Nothing. Including my twin sister. Do you plan to write more books together? Rachel: We have a plan but we can not divulge it to anyone at this time.

Avi: Executive privilege and all that.

Rachel: We work very well together, very easily, though we don't, in the old twin clichŽ, finish each other's sentences or anything. We sort of . . .

Avi: Augment, or . . .

Rachel: Edit each other . . .

Avi: Hone the other's points, so to speak, but not finish . . .

Rachel: Well, I trust him to finish mine well. But so far we haven't written . . .

Avi: More that we'll admit to except . . .

Rachel: This interview.

What's the one message you'd like your readers to take away from Never Mind!? Rachel: I don't want them to take any messages away. They should leave all the messages exactly where they found them in the book.

Avi: You never told me there were messages in the book.

Rachel: They're hidden.

Why are people so strangely drawn to others' misfortunes? Like car wrecks? Or reality shows? Or the hapless misadventures of the Baudelaire children in the Lemony Snicket tales, A Series of Unfortunate Events? Regardless of the reason, it certainly seems to be a steadfast phenomenon. In the best-selling series of novels for young readers by slightly elusive author Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket, three orphaned children are dealt unlucky twists of fate. Just as they seem to overcome one insurmountable obstacle, they encounter yet another unfortunate turn. To be fair, the reader is forewarned about the outcome before any adventures begin. In the opening line of The Bad Beginning: Book the First, the author warns, If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. And he is true to his word.

The author himself finds it fascinating that his fan base is so vast. "It turns out there is quite an audience of people who enjoy reading about bad things happening to children," says Handler. "It was the sort of thing I would have loved to read when I was eight or nine, but certainly not something I thought adults would actually let children read." In fact, Handler originally presented the idea for A Series of Unfortunate Events to his editor as "proof that it would be a miserable idea [for him] to write for children." Handler's first novel, The Basic Eight, had been set in a high school, and his editor thought it would be a great idea if Handler wrote for young people, instead of about them. Handler initially said no, but came up with the Snicket series as a kind of joke. "We met in a bar to discuss it," recalls Handler, "because I didn't want either of us wasting our time." In the end, however, the editor loved Handler's twisted idea and the Lemony Snicket series was born.

From the very first chapter of The Bad Beginning (the first book) to the last lines of The Grim Grotto (the latest title, which goes on sale Sept. 21), the Baudelaire children Violet, Klaus and Sunny face grief, misery and disaster. The series begins with the children enjoying a day out of the city at a nearby beach, only to be jolted with the news that their family mansion has burned down and their parents have been killed in the fire. The orphans are left an immense fortune, but no legal guardian to care for them. Soon, they are shipped off to live with a money-hungry relative, Count Olaf, who will do whatever he can to get his hands on the Baudelaire bucks including murder, if need be. In the latest installment, The Grim Grotto, the Baudelaires take a wild undersea ride with Captain Widdershins at the helm of a submarine. They must battle poisonous mushrooms, a huge, deadly octopus and a sinister hook-handed man in their effort to outsmart Count Olaf.

The grimness of the storyline hasn't deterred many. Handler's tales have an almost cult following and with every book published the fan base seems to grow. A San Francisco native, Handler initially released the first book to independent bookstores in the area, which immediately started to buzz. Still, Handler was convinced that the books would be failures. "I couldn't believe it when we sold 5,000 copies," he admits. That the books have now sold more than 18 million copies and dominate the New York Times children's book bestseller list is "mind-boggling," he says.

Although Handler had originally signed on to do four books, he was sure he wouldn't make it that far. "I thought that by the second book my agent and editor would tell me, thanks, but we've had enough." Not so. With The Grim Grotto coming out this fall, and two more books (a total of 13) due out by 2006, Handler's appeal seems to be even stronger.

What's more, a movie compilation, Lemony Snicket's Series of Unfortunate Events, is set to open in theaters on Dec. 17. "When a film company looked at advance copies before the books were published," Handler admits, "I thought they were crazy. But as the books sold more and more copies, the interest in the film rights became more and more fervent and it became clear that the moviemakers might not have been so crazy after all."

The film, produced by Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks, features Jim Carrey as the menacing Count Olaf, Meryl Streep as the articulate Aunt Josephine and Jude Law as Lemony Snicket, the narrator who also becomes a character. As author, he was planning to write the screenplay, but after months of effort, he passed the torch on to veteran screenwriter Robert Gordon (Men in Black II).

"I was exhausted, and I realized that I wanted to write books, not screenplays," says Handler. Add to that a producer who quit, a director who got fired and a series of budget disputes, and Handler was convinced, "it was a good time for me to duck out." Taking more of a backseat approach to the film has not bothered the author in the least. "I don't feel like I own the characters," says Handler, "and I don't think, 'How dare you make up your own version of the story.' What I do believe is that any story that goes out into the world belongs to everyone and they can perceive the characters however they please."

One would expect Handler to be pretty pleased with his success and newfound fame, but the well-grounded author seems unfazed. "The goal has always been for me to write for a living," he says, "and that's what I'm doing." That he now gets stopped on the streets of his San Francisco neighborhood is just another peculiar twist to his already slightly strange view of the world. "I'm never quite sure if someone recognizes me from my work or because I grew up here. As soon as I start to think that person is an actual fan, I realize I went to high school with him."

Books. They intrigue us. They teach us. They inspire us. But what if there were no books? What if the centuries-old texts, the contemporary novels, even the modern-day textbooks all the books that teach us about our past, our present and our future what if they were destroyed? Save for one courageous and determined librarian, it almost happened. Not centuries ago, but today, in a place where knowledge is one of the few possessions one can hold dear, and in a time of upheaval, fear and war: modern-day Iraq. Acclaimed author and illustrator Jeanette Winter shares the inspiring true story of an Iraqi librarian who rescued thousands of volumes in The Librarian of Basra, a new picture book for young readers.

Winter stumbled upon the story while reading the New York Times on a Sunday morning ("Books Spirited to Safety Before Iraq Library Fire" by Shaila K. Dewan, July 27, 2003). The article told the story of Alia Muhammad Baker, a librarian whose house was full to the rafters with books she had saved from an Iraqi library. The library had become a military outpost, and the daring librarian had sneaked out nearly 30,000 books right under the noses of the soldiers just days before the building burned in a mysterious fire.

"I knew immediately that I needed to make a book out of this story," Winter tells BookPage. "It was perfect." But as is often the case with authors, she was knee-deep in another book at the time. Winter didn't want to lose the idea, so she clipped the article from the paper and started a file, and as she worked on her other project, she collected bits of information and research and added to the file.

By the time she actually started working on The Librarian of Basra, the pictures almost painted themselves. Winter had collected images of Basra and Baghdad and had gone to a photo exhibition to see war pictures from Iraq. "One was of a man in a boat in a canal," recalls Winter. "It seemed so peaceful and wonderful, a step into heaven compared to what was going on. It is this photo that inspired her to create an image in the book that she calls her peace picture, in which Alia dreams of what life might be like when the war is over."

Winter finished the book in record time. "It went so quickly," she admits. "There was no mistaking what I wanted to do." Winter contacted her editor at Harcourt and was amazed by the swiftness with which the publishing process got moving. "For those at the publisher and for me, [Alia's story] was a catalyst for our awareness of what has been happening in the world, especially in Iraq," says Winter.

In truth, the story does put a face to the war. "We see the shelled buildings and the tanks on television, but we don't see the individual stories," says Winter. "With Alia, we do." And although Winter's audience is mostly children, she believes that the message she is sending is not a negative one about atrocities or fear. "It's not bad to have a war book for children," says Winter, "but I think you have to focus obliquely."

Her belief is that although war can occur as it does throughout the world if you focus on optimism, you can tell a positive story. "It was the optimism of Alia that interested me," says Winter. "She wasn't getting help from her government, but she knew that to save the books she would be saving the past, present and future of her country."

Winter is not a newcomer to the children's literary scene; she has written and illustrated nearly 50 books. "I don't really know the number," she confesses. "I never know what to actually count." For now, though, The Librarian of Basra tops her list of favorites. "I'm thrilled that [Alia's] story is getting out," Winter says. "It's very rewarding to me." In many ways, she thinks, it was a book she would have enjoyed reading when she was young. Winter, who grew up as an only child, explains, "I like writing about individual people what one person does on their own really speaks to me."

Alia's story certainly spoke to Winter, and without a doubt, this book will touch the hearts of children and adults everywhere.

Just in time for the Chinese New Year, critically acclaimed author and illustrator Grace Lin brings us a heartwarming story of what it means to be Chinese and American in her new book, Year of the Dog. In this autobiographical novel, Lin gives young readers a glimpse of a year in her own young life in 1982: of finding friends, dealing with racism, learning her true talents and understanding her heritage.

Raised in upstate New York, Lin and her family were among very few Asian Americans in their small town. As a result, she had a hard time learning to appreciate her cultural traditions. "While we were growing up, there were very few books about Asian Americans," Lin says from her home near Boston. "We had a book about five Chinese brothers and then Riki Tiki Tavi, but that was about it."

Having little reference to Asian heritage in her school life affected Lin in many ways. "Most of the time, I ignored the fact that racism existed and I spent much of my time trying to forget that I was Asian," the author says. "When someone would point it out to me, it was like a slap in the face." She recalls such a time in the book, when she was excited to try out for the part of Dorothy in her school's production of The Wizard of Oz. Just before the audition, one of her girlfriends told her, "You can't be Dorothy. Dorothy's not Chinese." "Suddenly the world went silent," Lin writes, "Like a melting icicle, my dream of being Dorothy fell and shattered on the ground."

In keeping with Chinese tradition, Lin's fictionalized portrait of her experiences begins not on January 1, but with the first day of the Chinese New Year, in this case, the Year of the Dog. "You know how they say a dog is a man's best friend? Well, in the Year of the Dog, you find your best friends," Lin writes "Since dogs are also honest and sincere, it's [also] a good year to find yourself."

Lin's character manages to accomplish both goals. First, she meets her best friend, known in the book as Melody, the only other Asian-American girl in her class. Melody teaches the author that it's okay to be a little different from everyone else—and that it can even be fun. In real life, that same best friend, Alvina Ling, later went on to edit children's books, and in a wonderful turn of events, eventually became Lin's editor for this book.

Also during the Year of the Dog, Lin finds her true calling: to write and illustrate books. With the end of the year drawing near—and much self-pressure to find her path in life—Lin enters a school-sponsored writing and illustrating contest, and wins."I was crazy about books and I used to make books for every project we had to do in school," Lin recalls. "It was the first time I realized that you could actually do this as a job." Later, Lin took her love for books to the Rhode Island School of Design, where she studied children's book illustration and ultimately found an editor who prompted her to write stories about her drawings. "From then, I started writing like crazy to make up stories to go with my drawings." Soon after, her first book, The Ugly Vegetables, was born.

To date, Lin has written seven books, illustrated 10 others and has seven yet in the works—most of which are inspired by her Chinese-American heritage. Now that there are many more Asian-themed books on the market, several of which have been written or illustrated by Lin herself, the author hopes that other children won't have to face the issues she did. "With the Asian books, I'm inspired to study and learn more about my cultural traditions," says Lin, "and, hopefully, put the kinds of books out there that I would have wanted to read as a child."

Sharing Asian traditions is only a portion of Lin's incredible work. She is also dedicated to a project called "Robert's Snow," a fundraising program that began after her husband Robert was diagnosed with bone cancer. Lin asked 200 other children's book illustrators to create original art on wooden snowflake shapes, which were then auctioned off. The results were overwhelming—they raised more than $100,000—with all of the proceeds going to cancer research at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.

The original snowflakes were so popular that Lin had the artwork published in a book called Robert's Snowflakes, the proceeds of which have also gone to the Institute. This year, the amazing and tireless author has again convinced more book illustrators to contribute to the cause. The Robert's Snow 2005 snowflakes can be viewed at www.robertssnow.com, and with any luck, this new Year of the Dog (2006) will be just as lucky as the author's first.

Heidi Henneman writes from New York City.

Best known for his immensely popular Artemis Fowl series, Eoin Colfer departs from his usual territory and delves into the world of crime-solving with his latest book, Half Moon Investigations.

"I really wanted to do something that was quirky and funny," the author says from his home in Wexford, Ireland. Colfer's basis for the new detective novel seems to be a combination of childhood adoration for the Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators series and the adventures he shared with his five brothers. More inspiration came during a big 40th birthday party that he had thrown for himself and a large group of friends he had known since the second grade. "At the end of the night, someone asked when I was going to write a teen book," recalls the author, "and it started us talking about all of our escapades." Shortly thereafter, Colfer set about putting the shenanigans to paper, and Half Moon Investigations came into being.

Of course, he has changed the names to protect the not-so-innocent, but most of his friends know who they are. "It's liberating to write about people I know. It makes it an easy process," Colfer says. He was also adamant about making the stories seem true to life, rather than dealing with fluff cases. "I wanted my characters to solve actual mysteries," he says, "and they do."

What starts as the search for a missing notebook escalates into a whodunit involving stolen iPods, burning playhouses, a deafened dancer, a bludgeoned protagonist and more all seemingly unrelated until our brainiac detective solves the crime spree. Colfer confesses that he fashioned this quick-thinking character after another person he knows: himself. "I wanted to get away from whimsy and darkness of Artemis Fowl and have a good guy, but not a superhero," Colfer says. "To have someone with no clue about how to talk to girls and be unsure of himself, to be quite smart but have a lack of confidence. Much like myself."

As it turned out, it took Colfer a mere eight months to pen the first draft of the book and with so much material to draw on, this might be just the beginning of our journey with Fletcher Moon. "I have a second book planned, the author says, and I would like to do a series." But that's not all he has on his plate at the moment. Colfer is also writing the next Artemis Fowl book and researching a work of historical fiction.

Although Colfer's books are for readers 10 and up, his inspiration comes from a younger audience his two sons Sean and Finn, 3 and 8, respectively. "I started writing picture books for Finn," Colfer says, "after he came home one day frustrated that he couldn't read the books that people were talking about at school."

Six picture books later, he has become a bit of a master. "Picture books are quite intense," the author says. "Every word counts." As it happens, another picture book is in the works as well.

With all of these projects underway, Colfer could be forgiven if he longed for a little spare time. "Not so," says the author, who previously spent 15 years teaching elementary school. "I still treat writing as my hobby, so I think of that as my spare time."

And when he's not writing, he likes to spend time with his children. "I have an office in the back garden, so I commute about 10 meters to work every day," Colfer says. "But there are a few distractions: Every time I look up I see a child stuck to the window like Garfield."

Keeping writing close to home has always been a part of Colfer's lifestyle. His mother wrote plays and taught drama, and his father wrote academic books. "Writing and drawing was the norm in our house," he recalls. In fact, three of his brothers are also involved in the arts a screenwriter, an architect and an archaeologist who moonlights in a rock band but none are as celebrated as the Artemis Fowl author thus far.

Although he has had to deal with a bit of teasing from his brothers, for the most part, Colfer's fame hasn't affected his perspective on life. "I don't think about the celebrity end of it or let it affect me in any big ways," he says, "but I do end up having to buy the beer all the time."

The generous author may be picking up the tab even more often in the next few years. In addition to Colfer's own writings, a comic book series featuring Artemis Fowl will be hitting bookstores in early 2007 and filming for a movie on the same subject is expected to begin later this year.

2008 Caldecott Medal Winner

Brian Selznick's The Invention of Hugo Cabret is not your everyday children's novel. Its storyline is drawn from incredible, real, almost unbelievable events; its characters are in-depth, intricate sketches of compelling real-life and imagined personas. Most extraordinary, though, is its format: a mixture of the traditionally written novel, the graphic novel, the picture book and the film storyboard, yielding a unique format that draws the reader into an almost movie-like experience. It is, in short, a work of inspired genius, melding the literary and visual worlds into one beautifully drawn and thrilling tale.

The storyline follows a young Parisian orphan, Hugo Cabret, in the early 20th century as he rescues and rebuilds an automaton, an early robot-like machine, while struggling to stay alive, protect his treasure—his only remaining link to his dead father—and avoid being caught by the police. In the process, young Hugo uncovers the identity, endures the wrath and captures the heart of a crotchety old man who turns out to be a renowned magician and filmmaker—and the very person who created the automaton Hugo is trying so desperately to rebuild. The result is a story of love and loss, discovery and magic.

Selznick is not a newcomer to the children's book world, having illustrated many acclaimed books, including The Frindle, Amelia and Eleanor Go for a Ride, Riding Freedom and The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins, for which he won a Caldecott Honor. He has also written one of his own, The Houdini Box, winner of the Texas Bluebonnet Award and the Rhode Island Children's Book Award. "From an early age, I always liked doing things with art," Selznick recalls. "I would sketch on my notebooks in high school, and my advisors kept telling me that I should do illustrations for children's books." But Selznick didn't want to pursue the field. "I rebelled against it for a long time," admits the New Jersey native, who purposely avoided classes on the genre while attending the Rhode Island School of Design, and at one point, steered clear of a visiting Maurice Sendak. Instead, he focused his efforts on theater, but when his dreams of graduate school in that area fell through, Selznick had a change of heart: "I realized maybe everyone had been right about me after all—maybe I should become an illustrator."

With his new ambition to create children's books, but with no practical knowledge of the genre, Selznick used the only resource available to him—his personality. "I charmed my way into working at Eeyore's Books for Children," the author says, referring to New York City's legendary children's bookstore. There, Selznick was taken under the wing of Steve Geck, the store's manager at the time (now an editor at Greenwillow Books), who taught him everything he knew about children's books. "That's really where I first saw the potential for what a book could be," Selznick says. It is also where he was introduced to his first editor, Laura Geringer, who later hired him to illustrate Doll Face Has a Party, the first of many books he would illustrate before trying his hand at writing.

>For Hugo Cabret, Selznick initially set out to write a "regular" novel with perhaps one drawing per chapter, but that concept was soon dismissed. "I wanted to do something unusual with the pictures," he says, "but I didn't know what." While researching the book, the author came across the works of René Clair, an early French cinematographer who incorporated bursts of sounds as narrative elements in his silent films. Selznick became inspired to incorporate pictures in much the same way: bursts of images throughout the text that provide a narrative themselves, not just an illustration of the words. "The goal is that you won't remember what was text and what was imagery," the author says. To this end, Selznick opens the book with a 26-page sequence of illustrations that grabs our attention and "teaches" us how to read the book.

The idea for the book itself was also inspired by a French filmmaker (and magician), George Méliès, who appears as a main character in the story. "It started when I first saw A Trip to the Moon [Méliès' most famous film]," Selznick recalls. "I remember being struck by the film and how beautiful and odd it was." After seeing it, he would periodically come across an article about the filmmaker and file it away in his head. "For about 10 years, I kept learning all these little things about Méliès," Selznick says. He learned that Méliès developed and built his own equipment; that during World War I, his films were melted down by the French army to make shoe soles, and forever after, he hated the sound of tapping heels on hard floors; and that after being driven out of the film business, Méliès ran a toy shop in the Montparnasse train station. Selznick later incorporated all these elements into his book.

Then two years ago, Selznick stumbled upon a review of the book Edison's Eve by Gaby Wood, about the history of automata, and found out it contained an entire chapter about Méliès and his work on the lifelike machines. "His collection of automata had been housed in a museum in Paris, but had all been thrown away," Selznick says, "and as soon as I read it, I had a very clear image of a boy finding these automata in the garbage." Thus our young Hugo Cabret was invented.

It took Selznick two years to complete the book. "You can't rush a story," he says. "It is so important to take the time it needs." These days, the author, who splits his time between Brooklyn and San Diego, is in the midst of a multi-city tour promoting the launch of Hugo. He is also working on the audio version of the book, taking on new illustrating projects and starting to do research for his next writing project. After all, Selznick is not your ordinary author—and if Hugo is any indication—his next book won't be ordinary either.

Director of Creative Services for MAC Cosmetics, Heidi Henneman is currently working on a picture book for all ages.