Heidi Henneman

Try to imagine a perfect world, where pollution, cell phones and poverty do not exist. A place where world peace reigns and no one has ever heard of war. This is Atherton, and it is the setting of best-selling author Patrick Carman's new book for young readers, Atherton: The House of Power.

Carman is not a novice when it comes to creating strange new worlds. His previous series, The Elyon Trilogy, took his readers into a place filled with talking animals, mysterious beings, evil and magic. In Atherton, Carman pares the planet down to just a few inhabitants rabbits, sheep, figs, horses, people and enormous garbage-eating bugs but he tackles a monster of an issue: the destruction of our environment.

The story is set on a man-made, self-sustaining planet, created by a brilliant but mad scientist. On a quest to understand this strange homeland, a young orphaned boy named Edgar encounters interesting new people, discovers mysterious lands and uncovers a deep, dark secret about Atherton—a secret that could lead to the end of the world as he knows it.

Carman came up with the idea of a self-sustaining planet while on tour for his first book, The Dark Hills Divide, the first entry in the Elyon trilogy. "My family and I were zigzagging across the country in a 40-foot RV," the author recalls, "and every time we stopped for gas, it would really bother me that we were using so much."

At the time, he was reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, and over the four months that he spent on the road, the two ideas melded. "I was trying to come up with a topic that was important for young people to grapple with," he says, "and the concept of an environmentally balanced world designed by a mad scientist came to mind."

Carman, who lives with his wife and two daughters in Washington state, takes the challenge of protecting the environment seriously. "The smaller we can make our carbon footprint the better," he explains. To that end, he contributes to a carbon fund when he flies, rides his bike whenever possible and has retrofitted his house to be more green.

Most importantly, Carman makes sure that the next generation is aware of and working on the problem, too. "I talk to schools about trying to have the smallest footprint in their city," he says, "and as it turns out, a lot of young people think that's sort of cool."

Although environmental awareness plays a pretty big role in the book, Carman isn't necessarily trying to send a do-good message to his readers. "When I write, my number one focus is to engage kids to want to read." Having spent the better part of the past three years making author visits to more than 400 schools, Carman knows quite a bit about the subject. "There are a lot of kids, especially boys, who are hard to engage with a book," he explains. "Part of that is because they are surrounded by cell phones, iPods, video games, movies and television. And in the face of all of that, it's difficult to interest kids in reading."

In an effort to attract those would-be readers to his book in particular, Carman has incorporated a slew of interactive features into Atherton, including weblinks to videos, animation and voice recordings of the characters. "I wanted to reach into the world of kids today and bring them into the world of my first love, books," says the author.

In addition, Carman has filmed several behind the book segments that walk the reader through the writing process. "For one segment, I went to a climbing wall so I could get a feel for what Edgar would be going through as he climbed the walls of Atherton," he recalls.

Although Carman clearly enjoys the writing process and speaking to young people, he was not always on this path. Out of college, he started his own advertising firm, and after several years of success with that endeavor, tried his hand at creating board games, developed an online technology company, and dabbled in television production. "I guess I've always been a storyteller," he says, but it wasn't until he started telling bedtime stories to his two young daughters that the true storytelling bug emerged.

With another Atherton book scheduled for next spring, a prequel to the Elyon books coming out in the fall and a couple of new ideas brewing, it looks like he's going to be sticking with this career for a while. "I feel my calling is to go out to schools and get kids excited about reading," he says.

And if he is even half as successful in getting kids to think about their environment as he has been in getting them to read, Patrick Carman might just save this world, one reader at a time.

Heidi Henneman writes from the brave new world of New York City.

The signs are everywhere, if you know how to read them: fireworks, birds, poppies, music. Signs of joy, remembrance or of something yet to come or could they be merely figments of your imagination?

In award-winning author Patricia MacLachlan's new book for young readers, Edward's Eyes, we meet a young boy with a special ability. His eyes are not only remarkably beautiful, they are so perceptive that they can see the future, appreciate the past and be fully conscious in the moment. Through Edward, we are able to understand a world that is more magical than many of us can ordinarily perceive. MacLachlan, who won the Newbery Medal two decades ago for Sarah, Plain and Tall, came up with her latest story after a conversation with her son, a former photographer who now works in Tanzania with the renowned primatologist Jane Goodall.

"I saw his driver's license and realized he was an organ donor," MacLachlan says. "Since he no longer uses his eyes for photography, we joked about how great it would be if someone else got a chance to use them." That conversation stayed with MacLachlan for several years. She even went so far as to write the beginning of a book with that concept in mind, but it wasn't until Edward introduced himself to her that things really got started.

MacLachlan, an only child who became a voracious reader and often acted out the stories she was reading with her parents, does not simply make up characters, they come to her. "When I was young, I had all these imaginary friends that I had conversations with," she recalls. In fact, her bond with these imaginary friends was so strong that she insisted her parents set a place for them at their dinner table. "They tolerated it with good humor," MacLachlan says, "but I'm sure it was trying."

As an adult, she draws from this wild imagination and meets characters everywhere in her car, in the shower, in bed or whenever she has a quiet moment to think. The inspiration for her characters' personalities or abilities is usually related to what she is experiencing or noticing at the time. "There is something magical about a child's mind," says the author, who is married to a clinical psychologist, "and I began noticing how some children are more tuned into the world around them than others." Thus Edward's character came with a special gift of sight. Although MacLachlan writes about the beauty this ability reveals, Edward's Eyes is not simply a story about magic or spirituality. Instead, it is a story about the relationships of siblings, the fragility of life and the ability to overcome tragedy. MacLachlan handles these difficult themes with empathy, optimism and a clear prose that speaks directly to the reader without being heavy-handed.

The storyline follows Edward, through the eyes of his older brother Jake, as he grows into a young boy and learns how to throw the ever-elusive knuckleball the poetry of which MacLachlan learned from her son. This eccentric young character goes on to predict his new sister's birth going so far as to name her long before her parents even know her sex and then, shockingly and tragically, dies in a bike accident. But this death is not the end of Edward or of the story. In effect, it is just the beginning of Edward's legacy. After the accident, his organs, including his beloved eyes (corneas), are donated to several patients awaiting these precious gifts of life.

"I thought the idea that someone's heart is beating in someone else's body was pretty powerful stuff," MacLachlan says. It is the journey of these eyes, and their effect on their recipient, a minor league baseball player, that brings the story to its heartwarming and poignant climax.

The author admits it is refreshing to get to know a new character after all the incredible years she spent working with Sarah of Sarah, Plain and Tall, including the sequels and the screenplays, for which MacLachlan received an Emmy nomination. "I felt like I took Sarah into menopause," she says. "It was sad, because I knew her so well, but it is a relief to be writing about another family."

MacLachlan plans to focus her next efforts on several picture books that she is writing with her daughter, Emily. The mother-daughter duo has already published one book, Once I Ate a Pie, and is working on their next collaboration. In the meantime, MacLachlan, a Wyoming native who splits her time between a home in Williamsburg, Massachusetts, and a cottage on Cape Cod, will be on a nationwide book tour for the release of Edward's Eyes, including a highly anticipated trip back to her hometown of Cheyenne. After that, it will be up to the characters she encounters in her back seat or in the bathroom to show her the signs to her next book and MacLachlan certainly knows how to read them.

Heidi Henneman writes from New York.

Always carry a notebook—and at least two pens. Those are some of the words of wisdom that first-ever Children's Poet Laureate Jack Prelutsky imparts in his how-to guide, Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry: How to Write a Poem. Having written more than 70 books of poetry in his 40-plus year career, Prelutsky certainly knows a thing or two about the craft. This book, his first-ever work of prose, combines helpful insights, personal anecdotes and several "poemstarts" to help young writers tap into their own creative talents. The book is being published as a companion to Prelutsky's latest book of poetry, My Dog May Be a Genius.

Prelutsky stumbled upon his craft quite by accident. "In my early 20s I was searching," the author recalls in an interview from his home near Seattle. "I always knew I was going to be doing something in the arts." To that end, he acted, he sang folk songs, he made terrariums, he was a sculptor, a photographer and a potter, but the idea of being a poet never crossed his mind. At one point, Prelutsky tried his hand at drawing. "I spent more than six months working on a sketchbook containing two dozen imaginary creatures," he says. As an addition to the project, he sat down one night and wrote verses to accompany the sketches. Soon thereafter, a close friend suggested that Prelutsky show the artwork to his editor. "I had no interest in being published. I didn't even know what I was doing," he says, "but I thought, sure, why not?" His friend's editor happened to be legendary children's book figure Susan Hirschman, who took one look at Prelutsky's work and told him that he was "the worst artist" she had ever seen, but that he did have a natural gift for poetry. More than 40 years, 70 books and a Children's Poet Laureate title later, it seems safe to say that Hirschman was right.

Since that serendipitous encounter, Prelutsky has written poems about witches, vampires, werewolves and skeletons, bananas, pigs, flying turkeys and weasels, baby brothers, moldy leftovers and fed-up fathers, and much, much more. All these subjects are presented in a style that reminds us what it is truly like to be a child—carefree and funny, courageous and silly, and, most of all, curious about the world. As a young boy growing up in the Bronx, Prelutsky had a very active childhood. He would sometimes do childish things, like throwing meatballs out of his sixth-floor apartment window. He could be daring, like the time he and his friend ate worms off the ground. And more often than not, he would do something ridiculous to get himself into trouble, like the time he painted all of his father's underwear with finger paint. "I wasn't the best behaved little boy," Prelutsky admits, but luckily for his legions of young fans, his misbehavior in childhood has led to some very funny poetry. "You have to use your own life to generate ideas," Prelutsky explains. Indeed, the poet suggests that his readers (and future poets) should draw on things that actually happened to them. "Think about something you did, accidentally or on purpose, that made your parents mad at you," the author suggests. "You'll have lots of fun writing about your own misbehavior."

Pizza, Pigs, and Poetry, however, wasn't quite as fun or easy for Prelutsky as his poetry writing. "They had to wring this one out of me," he says. "Prose is not something I do." In fact, he recalls, "I worked on it for several months, and wrote only two pages!" After those first frustrating months, Prelutsky says, "I decided that the book would not be about poetry per se—you don't need me to tell you what a sonnet or iambic pentameter is." Instead, he preferred to talk about the creative process, how to generate ideas and what to do from there. "Once I got into that, I wrote about 30 pages in a day," he says. His tips include such basics as "keep your eyes and ears open," "write your ideas down immediately" and "don't be afraid to exaggerate." For Prelutsky, what makes writing poetry interesting are the surprises encountered in the process. "If the creature you have in mind isn't as big as you want it to be, make it bigger . . . alter its shape and hairstyle," he says. "The only limitation is your own imagination." Prelutsky's own imagination seems boundless. He is currently working on what he calls a "silly" book about birds, inspired by the avian marvels he has seen near his home on Bainbridge Island. Other projects in the works include a lullaby book, a year-round holiday book and a book of scary poems from outer space, just to name a few. "You can never predict when and why an idea is going to happen," the poet says. So, just in case, he always carries a notebook.

Julia Gillian is a master of many things. She is skilled in the Art of Papier-Mâché Making, she is skilled in the Art of Telepathic Human-Dog Communication, and she is skilled in the Art of Chopsticks. Unfortunately, she is not as skilled in the Art of the Trumpet, and even worse, she is learning to be skilled in the Art of Lying.

In award-wining author Alison McGhee’s Julia Gillian (and the Quest for Joy), the second title in her three-part series, we find our precocious and loveable heroine struggling to find herself—and happiness—in the fifth grade. Her best friend is treating her strangely, her favorite lunch lady has been replaced by a tyrannical lunch man, and her dream of becoming a famous jazz trumpeter is quickly being dashed. Julia Gillian is a very serious young girl who never-in-a-million-years would lie to her parents, talk back to her teachers or fake her way through trumpet lessons—until she does.

McGhee captures Julia’s struggles with amazing dexterity, balancing the delicacy of the young girl while respecting the weight of her very mature worries. “I always try to honor the child of whatever age,” McGhee says from her home in Minneapolis. “Too often, adults dismiss the concerns of children—or they are terrified of them, especially teenagers—but children are wonderful, magical beings. They are young, but they have these incredible inner lives, and they are so tender. So I always keep that in mind when writing for children.”

In retrospect, McGhee thinks she might have been a bit like Julia in her own childhood. “I was the oldest child and ultra responsible,” McGhee recalls. “There is some of that in Julia.”

For the most part, however, Julia invented herself. “I created a goal for myself of writing a children’s book, set in my neighborhood, with a young girl who had a big dog,” the author says. “I just let the characters do whatever they do—it’s often a great surprise to me.” This particular character became an accomplished girl with an ever-expanding list of achievements: Skilled in the Art of this, that, and the other. Oddly, she did not become Skilled in the Art of Reading. “I was surprised because I thought she would be like me and bury herself in books all the time,” McGhee says.

The author’s own love of books started at an early age. “My earliest memories were of wanting to be an actor, then a ballerina, then a singer,” she says, “but then when I was six, I started writing stories and I decided I wanted to be a writer.”

After graduating from Middlebury, McGhee spent her off hours writing, but it took six years to get her first short story published, and it was 13 years before Rainlight, her first novel for adults, was published. Her second novel, Shadow Baby, also for adults, became a Pulitzer Prize nominee and a Today Show Book Club selection. “By that time, at least I had an agent,” McGhee jokes.

Her foray into children’s book writing, however, started quite by accident. “I kept a journal about each of my children for every year of their life,” recalls the mother of three. Her sister noticed that there were quite a few ideas for children’s books in the journals, and suggested that she start writing picture books. “It was a huge challenge for me,” she says, but she became skilled in the Art of Picture Book Writing, nonetheless. Her first attempt, Countdown to Kindergarten, won the 2003 Minnesota Book Award and became a Booksense 76 pick, among other accolades.

After that, she delved into writing novels for children.  “Whether I am writing picture books, children’s novels or short novels, I try to hold the same sense of honor and respect for children, their concerns and their amazing ideas.” Indeed, she seems to sympathize with children in a fresh and personal way through her books. In Quest for Joy, McGhee says, “I relate to the fact that she [Julia] is truly at sea and yet she continues to makes things hard for herself. That has been one of the lessons of life for me, too: sometimes it’s OK to ask for help.”

Luckily for Julia Gillian, she learns this lesson as well, and in the end, she does succeed in her quest. As we learn in the book, joy comes in many forms—in the anticipation of new siblings, in freeing oneself from the entanglement of lies, and in the triumphant sounds from a challenging trumpet. For McGhee herself, joy comes in enjoying her children and her dogs, listening to music and reading a wonderful book. She should know. She is, after all, skilled in the Art of Writing Wonderful Books.

Wonderfully innovative, Locomotion is the story of a young boy named Lonnie, a.k.a. Locomotion, who loses his parents in a house fire. His younger sister, Lili, is adopted by a wealthy family, while Locomotion is placed in a foster home. The story is told through Lonnie's eyes as he attempts to express his anguish, fears and dreams through poetry.

For Jacqueline Woodson, writing about an inner-city African-American boy was only one part of her project. Locomotion not only tells the thoughtful, insightful story of a young boy in search of himself, it also teaches its readers about the art of verse. "I hated poetry growing up," says Woodson, who was raised in Greenville, South Carolina, and Brooklyn, New York. Which is why one of her writing teachers was so surprised to hear that she had written an entire book devoted to the genre. "I think it was more that I was afraid of it," says Woodson. "I didn't understand it until I started getting rid of the line breaks."

The fear of line breaks wasn't Woodson's only obstacle to enjoying poetry. "When I was growing up, we read Robert Frost's poems. I didn't know what it was like to 'stop by the woods on a snowy evening'," she says, "because nothing like that ever happened in Brooklyn or South Carolina."

It wasn't until she read a poem by Langston Hughes called "I Loved My Friend" that Woodson felt she could actually relate. "He was one of the first people I understood," she says.

Woodson has written numerous titles about city life and the neighborhoods she grew up in. Her book Miracle's Boys received the Coretta Scott King Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in 2001, while If You Come Softly was named an ALA Best Book for Young Readers in 2000.

With Locomotion, she hadn't planned to delve into a poetry narrative. "I had been reading some poetry that my friends had written, and a light came on in my head," she explains.

"Poem Book," the first poem in Locomotion, helped put her creative energies in motion. As young Lonnie says, "This whole book's a poem 'cause every time I try to/ tell the whole story my mind goes Be quiet!"

From there, Woodson explains, things just took off. "I started thinking of different circumstances and different types of poems," she says. "Commercial Break," "Lili," "God Poem" and "Pigeon" were all inspired by experiences in Woodson's own childhood, whether it's noticing the differences between TV and real life, combing out hair braids, "roofing bottles," or watching the neighbor tend to his pigeon coop.

As she began writing through Lonnie's eyes, he became a character all his own. "As it happens with many of my characters," Woodson admits, "I began to like him a lot."

The character Woodson has created in Lonnie gives the reader rare insight into the mind of a young boy on the verge of becoming his own person. It's a glimpse full of anger, sadness, fear and confusion feelings that many young readers will be able to relate to.

Equally as important, Lonnie's story reminds us that poetry is not just about sonnets and odes or Dr. Seuss rhyming. It does not have to be intimidating. Woodson, who teaches at the National Book Foundation Summer Writing Camp, offers this advice to young readers who may be put off by the genre: Try not to think about the line breaks when you read a poem for the first time. Then go back and read it a second time with the breaks, so that you can better understand it.

Indeed, if there's one thing Woodson's audience will learn from Locomotion, it's that verse can be a powerful, meaningful way to express one's thoughts. That's right—poetry is cool.

Heidi Henneman writes from San Francisco.

When Kate DiCamillo was in her 20s (not that long ago), she told everyone she was a writer. At least she thought she was a writer. In fact, she knew she was. But there was a problem: She hadn't written anything. After graduating from the University of Florida with a degree in English, she got jobs at Circus World and Disney World, where she worked the ride lines. She also called bingo at a children's camp.

"At the time I thought I was going nowhere," admits the critically acclaimed author. "Now I can see there was a pattern." When she relocated from her home in Florida to Minnesota and took a position at a children's bookstore, the pattern working with kids really began to materialize, and her dream of being an author soon came to fruition. "I finally realized that I actually needed to write something to become a 'writer,'" says DiCamillo, "so I started writing short stories."

As a Southerner far from home, the first frigid winter in Minnesota took its toll on the author. "I was homesick and couldn't afford to go home," she remembers, "and it was the first time I didn't have a dog." Out of this experience came the idea for her first book, Because of Winn-Dixie (2000). The story of a lonely little girl named Opal who adopts Winn-Dixie, a muddled mutt with a loving heart, the book set in sunny Florida won a Newbery Honor and climbed onto The New York Times bestseller list. DiCamillo's next effort, The Tiger Rising (2001), was based on a character she had written about in one of her short stories. Rob Horton, a 12-year-old mourning the death of his mother, makes an amazing discovery: there's a tiger in the woods behind the Kentucky Star Motel, where he and his father live. The magical creature opens up new possibilities in Rob's life, including a friendship with a feisty, dark-eyed girl named Sistine. Another critical success for DiCamillo, The Tiger Rising was a National Book Award Finalist and a Book Sense 76 selection.

Her latest book for young readers came about in an entirely different way. The Tale of Despereaux was inspired by the son of one of DiCamillo's closest friends. "He wanted a story about an unlikely hero," recalls DiCamillo, "and the hero had to have exceptionally big ears." She tried to explain to the boy that characters don't just materialize on demand; they have to exist as ideas in the writer's head in order to work. But over the next few months, as she thought about the request, something clicked for DiCamillo. Three years later, The Tale of Despereaux was complete. The novel's mouse-hero, Despereaux Tilling, has fallen in love with a human, the beautiful Princess Pea, whose family owns the castle he calls home. But the romance is thwarted by his father, and Despereaux is soon imprisoned in a dank dungeon. To the mouse's magical story, DiCamillo adds the adventures of the castle's other inhabitants, including a rat named Chiaroscuro, and Miggery Sow, a young servant girl who dreams of becoming a princess. With its old-fashioned, fairy tale qualities and whimsical pencil drawings by Timothy Basil Ering, the book is definitely a departure for DiCamillo, but one readers are sure to love.

Her next project, a picture book, is already in the works. Nowadays, though, the popular author has a new responsibility answering mail from fans. "It's thrilling when a kid writes you," she says, "and it breaks my heart to think they would take the time to write and get nothing back." As for future children's novels, DiCamillo promises there will be more. "I'm at the mercy of whatever character comes into my head," she explains. "Every day I get up and write two pages and only two pages. It's an easy goal that I know I can do, whether I'm working on a book or not." More importantly, it ensures that this former Disney World employee and bingo caller will continue to prove her claim that she really is a true, honest-to-goodness writer not that any of her readers ever thought differently.

Heidi Henneman writes from San Francisco.