The Whole Megillah (TWM): What inspired you to write this book?
Tracy Newman (TN): I was inspired to write Uncle Eli’s Wedding after hearing a wonderful presentation by Chris Barash, the Chair of the PJ Library‘s Book Selection Committee, at the Jewish Book Council’s Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference in 2011. Not only was Chris’s enthusiasm for discovering new Jewish children’s stories infectious, but she also provided some topics that the PJ Library thought would appeal to their participating families. Hearing that PJ was interested in receiving a wedding story was enough to get me thinking about how a child may feel during the wedding of a beloved family member.

TWM: Bubbe Tillie and Bubbe Millie add vibrance and fun to the action and certainly the rhythm of the text. Can you talk about that?
TN: Thanks very much! The characters and comments by Bubbe Tillie and Bubbe Millie were definitely fun for me to write. To create their dialogue, I tapped into my love for language and my desire to incorporate rhythm and rhyme into my stories. In addition, I consider the marriage (so to speak) of Yiddish into a Jewish-themed story to be natural.

TWM: Did you have role models for the two grandmothers? (I have to admit—they were my favorite characters!)
TN: Absolutely! And I’m so glad that you enjoyed the bubbes. To create these characters, I channeled the voice of my own beloved grandmother and cloned her into two adoring bubbes. My Nanny Rose was the quintessential Jewish grandmother, whose first language was Yiddish and which always remained a vital part of her daily vocabulary. I was fortunate that my grandmother informally schooled her grandchildren in her native tongue, while also sharing an abundance of love and home-cooking with us.

TWM: How many drafts did you have to go through to get to the final product?
TN: Many. Without counting, I would say that this story easily went through at least 15 drafts.

TWM: How did you find your agent?
TN: In 2013, I attended the Women Who Write conference and was fortunate to have a manuscript critiqued by Laura Biagi. Laura and I hit it off and I was very happy to sign with her a few months later.

TWM: Do you see yourself primarily as a picture book writer?
TN: For the moment, I do. I am thrilled to have a mixture of six board books and picture books in various stages of publication, so I hope that I can consider myself to be a picture book writer.

TWM: Do you work on one project at a time or multiple projects?
TN: Given the nature of having various projects in different stages of review (by my agent or an editor or with my critique group) at any given moment, I definitely work on several at a time.

TWM: Are you promoting the book through the Jewish Book Council’s Jewish Author’s Network?
TN: I was delighted to work with the Jewish Book Council’s Jewish Author’s Network for my book, Shabbat Is Coming. By participating in this program, I was able to meet varied Jewish communities across the country and engage with many vibrant Jewish audiences. Since I’ve only just finished these trips, I will wait a bit before continuing with this wonderful program.

TWM: What’s next for you?
TN: I am excited to share that my next book scheduled for publication is Hanukkah Is Coming, which will be released in the fall of 2015. After that, I have several more on the way, so please be sure to check my website.

The Whole Megillah talks to Meg Wiviott, author of the new lyrical Holocaust novel, Paper Hearts, due out September 1, 2015 by Margaret K. McElderry Books.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What inspired you to write this book and to write it in verse?
Meg Wiviott (MW): When I first heard about the Heart, I was immediately drawn to Fania and Zlatka’s story. The more I learned about it (see research question below) the more I knew this amazing story of friendship had to be told.

I first wrote this story as a non-fiction middle grade, but then decided it needed to be written for older readers.  I put it away for about a year or so. While the story was stuffed in a drawer I started reading a lot of verse novels, thinking this would be a good way to tell the story. When I returned to the story I tried straight narrative, but it was too difficult (emotionally) and I got bogged down in a bunch of stuff that didn’t matter. I began writing in verse. Of course, this created a whole different set of problems in that I am not a poet. I had never even particularly liked poetry. It confuses me. So I had to give myself a crash course on poetry and I began reading: I started on page one of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Modern poets—Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop—quickly became my inspiration and I would go back to them when I needed to re-immerse myself in the sound.

TWM: How did you conduct your research?
MW: The first I knew of the Heart was the documentary “The Heart of Auschwitz” (Ad Hoc Films 2010). I read online about their search for the girls who signed the Heart and the release of their film. I then looked at the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre’s website and read everything they had posted about the Heart and Fania and Zlatka. They also have a film clip of Zlatka talking about the Heart. My next step was to travel to Montreal to visit the museum and to talk with one of the film makers. After watching the film, I was hooked. I then began reading. There’s an extensive bibliography included in the book, but I read as much as I could about Auschwitz, the Union factory and the deals the Nazis made with private industry to use the prisoners as slave laborers, the death marches, and survivor stories—from the Union Kommando, the orchestra, and the Sonderkommando. Both Fania and Zlatka made Shoah testimonies. Zlatka’s was done in Spanish so a friend and I went to Rutgers University and she listened to the tape, translated, and I took copious notes. Fania’s testimony was done in Yiddish, so I had to hire someone translate and transcribe her testimony for me. In both cases, hearing their voices—in the testimonies and in the film—made them real. I could then begin to hear their voices in my head.

TWM: How long did it take you to write?
MW: I wrote the first draft through the fall of 2012 and winter 2013. I sent it out to my beta readers in the spring, did revisions, and had a presentable version to take the NJSCBWI Conference in June 2013, where I met my agent, Janine Le.

TWM: Please describe any challenges in selling a book in verse.
MW: I didn’t face any challenges in selling a book in verse. Especially this book. The verse suits the story.

TWM: How do you think your MFA helped you write this book, if it did.
MW: I could not have written this book without having earned my MFA! At VCFA (Vermont College of Fine Arts) I learned about metaphor, symbols, objective correlative, elision, white space, trust, bravery, self-confidence, friendship, and community.

TWM: Did you receive any resistance to writing a Holocaust-related book?
MW: I received more resistance to Benno and the Night of Broken Glass. The only resistance I encountered to Paper Hearts was from a Jewish agent who would not read the manuscript because she didn’t represent Holocaust books.

However, the reviews are not all in, and I am sure, as with Benno, there will be Holocaust deniers, and even some Jews, who will say there are already too many Holocaust stories in the world. I whole-heartedly disagree! Every survivor story is unique. Every survivor story deserves to be told. And a writer can only hope that her story will touch a young reader in such a way that perhaps some day that reader, when he or she encounters injustice in the world, will stand up and say, “No, this is wrong.”

TWM: What was your thought process in composing these poems? Some have distinctive forms, like the left-right formatting for Selection, and the column format for train-related poems.
MW: Starting out, I thought of the poems as vignettes, stepping stones that got these young women through a horrible time in their lives. We all know the adage, Show don’t tell. The concrete poems—the three Train poems, Triangles, and Yellow Triangles—form the shapes of the images being evoked:  train tracks, triangles, and a Star of David. Additionally, the train poems have two syllables in each “track” so there is a rhythmic feeling, like a train ride, when reading them. I confess that the ideas for the train poems came from two of my beta readers; one who suggested the rhythm and the other who suggested the concrete format.

The Left/Right format is used when there is a death/life moment. In most of the stories I read, survivors recalled the Right as life—the right to live, was how many expressed it. So by using right justification margins, the poems illustrate life. That’s the beauty of a novel verse.

TWM: What advice do you have for others considering novels in verse? What advice for those considering Holocaust novels?
MW: My advice for anyone considering a novel in verse is to read poetry! Lots of poetry! But, that said, there is a lot of discussion about novels in verse right now. Are they poems or novels?  Are they a new genre or just a fad? What is the point of a novel in verse? Are novels in verse just narrative novels with creative margins? Personally, I think some marketer needs to come up with a new term to use instead of “novel in verse.” I am not a poet. However, I write poetically. I borrowed heavily from the world of poetry and from the world of narrative fiction. I like to think of Paper Hearts as a novel with white space.
My advice for anyone considering a Holocaust novel is be honest—to your characters and to history.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What gave you the inspiration for this story?
Linda Elovitz Marshall (LEM): Hi Barbara,thank you for asking that question…and for inviting me to be interviewed. It’s always nice to hear from you and to exchange ideas.

As for the YUM Kippur story, the inspiration came in two parts. The first part came just after Rosh Hashanah when I was visiting two of my grandchildren (one of whom is, not surprisingly, named Talia). I told her—jokingly—that, after Rosh Hashanah, comes a holiday called YUM Kippur. When I explained I was making a joke because you don’t eat during Yom Kippur, Talia giggled. That’s when the inspiration came. Hmmm…I thought, maybe there’s a story in this. But that idea, that tiny germ of inspiration, simmered for a long time. It may have simmered forever but, then, another inspiration came along…

The second inspiration was a week-long vacation in Rome. Perhaps it’s because I’m an anthropologist by training or perhaps it’s because I get lost easily but wherever–and whenever–I travel I like to have (or find) friends in the places I go. So, while I was pondering whether I had any connections to anyone in Rome, I recalled that Francesca Assirrelli, the illustrator of Talia and the Rude Vegetables, lived there. I emailed Francesca and asked if we might meet in person. She said yes, of course, and we made arrangements to have a pranza together upon my arrival in Rome. I wanted to bring her a gift…a something…But what could I bring to the person who made Talia come alive on the page? What could I possibly bring?

At last, I knew the answer.

I would bring Francesca another Talia story and, hopefully, my editor would like it…and it would be acquired.

So, little by little, the YUM Kippur joke became Talia and the Very YUM Kippur.
But like a good Italian tomato sauce, it simmered a long time before it was done. It wasn’t until I was on the plane to Rome that I finished writing the first draft of the story.

Thanks to Joni Sussman at KarBen, it’s now a book.

TWM: Your stories usually include food and animals. Is this a coincidence or a strategy?
LEM: I raised my children on a small farm and, along the way, I learned about farming and animals. Also, much of my Judaism is associated with food. So, I guess that makes it a coincidence.

On the other hand…maybe it is strategy….So much of the Jewish calendar is tied to our agricultural origins yet we, as contemporary Jews, are often urban dwellers. I take great solace in nature and in quietude…in the wonder and awe of the natural world…I try to draw on that for my stories, especially for my Jewish stories. I want to give them a special soul…in the hopes that others, too, will feel the inspiration of nature and quietude.

TWM: Do you plan on writing books about other holidays featuring Talia, your main character?
LEM: Most definitely. Another Talia book—a Purim story entitled Talia and the Haman-tushies—will be out in Spring, 2017!

TWM: This book, like Talia and the Rude Vegetables, depends on word play. So: How many drafts do you typically go through to make your word play work and has word play been a pastime of yours?
LEM: Some word plays are more challenging than others. Sometimes I go through a zillion drafts. That’s okay. For me, it’s not work. It’s play.

TWM: Do you create a dummy when you write picture books?
LEM: More or less. I always paginate and try to figure out what the action is on each page and whether there’s enough for the illustrator to work with. Although I don’t actually draw things to make dummies, I do try to think pictorially.

TWM: Tell us about your writer’s journey.
LEM: Such a long journey….I wanted to be a writer when I was in fifth grade but then I got side-tracked by all sorts of other things that I wanted to be, too….So, I’ve been a poet, a writer, an anthropologist, toy inventor, teacher, sheep-farmer, chicken-raiser, mother, grandmother, explorer…I keep re-inventing myself…and learning more along the way. I think I have a short attention span, but I also think having a short attention span is a totally under-appreciated attribute!

TWM: What’s next for you?
LEM: Whew! There’s a lot on my plate. I’m finishing up a middle grade novel. I’m also developing a character that, I hope, will find her way to become a chapter book series. Also, after hearing from the fabulously brilliant librarian Betsy Bird that books for emergent readers are the most difficult to write as well as the most needed, I’ve challenged myself to write some. Not sure I’ll succeed, but I’ll have fun trying!

Also in the “what’s next” department, in addition to Talia’s upcoming Purim book, I have another three picture books forthcoming: You’re In Kindergarten (Scholastic, 2016), Sh-Sh-Shabbat (KarBen, 2016), and Ixchel Weaves a Rainbow (Lee & Low, 2016).

Well, that’s about it…
Thank you, again, Barbara, for inviting me to participate.

Please visit Linda at her website or Facebook page.

Photo by Erica Miller

In July 2015, Publishers Weekly posed the question: Is children’s nonfiction having its moment? The article mentioned Steve Sheinkin, with whom The Whole Megillah has spoken before. It seemed like a good time to talk to him again.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): At what point in your life did you realize you were a writer?
Steve Sheinkin (SS): Back in the days when my younger brother and I shared a bunk bed, we were always coming up with ideas for stories, comics, little comedy skits. We didn’t think of it as “being writers,” but I can see now that that’s what we were doing.

TWM: What inspires you to write for young readers?
SS: Well, for years I worked in the education publishing market, mainly writing history textbooks. Those books really don’t reach young readers at all, and out of sheer frustration I decided to try to do better on my own. Until that time, I hadn’t thought at all about writing nonfiction for kids or teens.

TWM: What draws you to your subjects, like the atom bomb and the Pentagon Papers?
SS: I like dramatic, complex stories—and I like a real plot, with lots of twists and turns. History is full of stories like this, so it’s just a matter of finding one that grabs my attention. And of course, since we’re talking nonfiction, I have to make sure the source material is rich enough to allow me to tell the story the way I want to, as (hopefully) a page-turner.

TWM: How do you conduct your research, and how do you fund it?
SS: I spend more time research than writing, which I guess is typical of nonfiction writers. Much of it is old fashioned reading: books, newspapers, etc. I’ll also often travel to special libraries or archives, and, when possible, I try to go to places in my stories so I can see them for myself. Only in my newest book, Most Dangerous, has it been possible to actually talk to the people in the story. That was a very exciting change from writing stories set farther back in time. In terms of funding, I think of it as part of the job. So I’ll use some of the advance I get for this purpose—if I got bigger advances, I’d travel a lot more!

TWM: Do you have experts vetting your manuscripts? If so, what’s your process?
SS: I have turned to experts at times, yes. With my book Bomb, for instance, I sought out a couple of scientists to read over my descriptions of fission and other scientific concepts in the book. With the Port Chicago 50, I shared the manuscript with people who know the story well and listened carefully to their feedback.

TWM: How would you characterize your move from Rabbi Harvey books to these nonfiction books for kids?
SS: I still like to draw comics, so I’d say it’s not so much of a move as a gradual transition to doing more nonfiction and less of the comics. Basically, the nonfiction books have done really well, and that’s turned into a full-time job, which is great. Leaves me less time for side projects, but I still love Rabbi Harvey and hope to revisit him at some point.

TWM: What were your favorite books growing up?
SS: I loved historical novels, like the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy for instance, and outdoor adventures, like My Side of the Mountain. Mostly I read nonfiction, though I didn’t know that term. I read anything to do with train robberies, buried treasure, sea adventures, sharks, and sports.

TWM: What advice do you have for aspiring nonfiction writers?
SS: The process of writing nonfiction is different from writing fiction, of course, but I don’t think any of the advice is different. Just find a story you feel passionate about, and tell it. The thing with nonfiction, of course, is that the sources have to be really good. So before I go too far with an idea, I track down as many sources as I can. I’m looking for characters, bits of action that can be turned into scenes, and even dialogue where possible. If these things don’t exist I abandon the story, even if I love it. So I guess that’s the advice—stack the deck in your favor by picking stories with rich sources.

For more about Steve Sheinkin, please visit his website.

I first encountered Sue William Silverman through the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ Post-Graduate Conference in 2012 and then at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Program (AWP) conferences. When I think of memoir, I think of Sue. Here’s my recent interview with her.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): In general, what is the most gratifying aspect of writing memoir? The most challenging? Now specific to The Pat Boone Fan Club, what were the most gratifying and challenging aspects—and why?
Sue William Silverman (SWS): One of the most gratifying aspects of writing memoir is the opportunity to fully explore one’s life. In my own case, I don’t truly understand my life until I write it. Through writing, I’m able to reflect back on the past and discover the metaphors of any given experience.

Ironically, that’s the most challenging aspect, too! Writing a life is not simply stating the facts as in “this happened, and then this happened, and then this next thing happened.” Rather, one has to dig deep into an experience and discover the “story behind surface story.” What does the experience mean?

In The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, I explore my ambiguous relationship toward Judaism, growing up. Because my Jewish father sexually molested me, I was very drawn to Pat Boone, the antithesis of my father; Pat Boone, in addition to being a pop-music idol, was also known for his wholesome, clean-cut, Christian image.

In this book, I needed to discover the origin and the depth of my crush on Pat Boone. I mean, as a kid, I just thought he was cute – much as any kid would have a crush on a celebrity. It wasn’t until I wrote the book that I discovered how, in fact, he was a metaphor: a metaphor for a safe father I never had.

TWM: How do you prepare a proposal for a memoir? Do you already know your theme(s)?
SWS: I’ve never written a book proposal! I always have to write the book itself in order to fully know what the theme, the arc, the metaphors will be. In many ways, there’s almost no reason (for me) to write a proposal since I have to write my life, anyway, whether the book gets published or not.

TWM: Did you already have essays that you assembled into this book? How did The Pat Boone Fan Club come about?
SWS: Initially, I didn’t know I was writing a book. The title essay was the first piece I wrote but, at that time, I just thought it would be a stand-alone essay. As depicted in that essay, I saw in the newspaper that Pat Boone was giving a concert about 20 minutes from my house. (This was relatively recently, so he was no longer a teen idol—rather an aging idol—and I was no longer a teen!) But, I’d had a crush on him most of my life, so I figured I’d go to the concert and sneak backstage to tell him what he meant to me. I did just that, wrote an account of it, and published the essay.

Then, I simply continued to write what I thought were all stand-alone essays. I was about two years or so into this essay writing, when I realized that all of the essays had a similar theme: a search for identity because of my ambiguous feelings toward Judaism. When I had that epiphany, I realized I could collect these thematically congruent essays into a book as a unified collection. At that point, I then wrote additional sections that weren’t stand alone, but that would help to enhance and round-out the book.

TWM: What was your strategy with the direct address, “Dear Gent[i]le Reader?”
SWS: Those “Dear Reader” sections act as a through-thread to make the book more unified and whole. In other words, in my first two memoirs, each has a unified structure or narrative. Not so with the Pat Boone book. There is a unified theme, but not a unified narrative. In other words, not all the sections are about Pat Boone. In one section, for example, I write about my feeling of being “other” when I attend a mostly Christian high school. In yet another section, I write about a search for my Jewish identity by working on a kibbutz in Israel. Through these “Dear Reader” sections, I’m better able to suggest to the reader how all these sections, together, form a thematic whole.

TWM: The Pat Boone Fan Club takes a departure from your other two memoirs, Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, and Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You. What led you to go in this direction?
SWS: Each memoir, generally speaking (for all writers), is not about a whole life; rather, any given memoir, ideally, explores a slice of a life, following one theme. At the same time, all of us are complicated human beings, and, in this regard, we all have many stories to tell.

In this instance, after exploring my incestuous childhood in the one book, and writing about recovering from sexual addiction in another, I was led to explore, in more detail, my search for identity. I didn’t start out knowing what I was going to write. Rather, it was the writing, itself, that led me to this theme.

TWM: The subtitle of The Pat Boone Fan Club is: My Life as a White Anglo Saxon Jew. Was mentioning “Jew” a selling point? How did you characterize your target market?
SWS: I guess the word “Jew” in the subtitle is really just meant to be descriptive of the book and its theme, in that the book is about my life as a white, Anglo-Saxon Jew! I don’t exactly write with a target market in mind. That said, I do hope that my tribe will find the book of interest. Of course I hope others will, too. I think the search for identity is, to some extent, a universal theme.

TWM: What drove your decision to move from fiction writing to memoir?
SWS: Initially, yes, I started as a fiction writer and tried to tell my story as a novel. I wrote about four or five novels. None of them are published and none are very good! Really, I could never find an emotionally authentic voice in fiction. It wasn’t until I switched to memoir that I found that authentic voice in which to write my stories.

TWM: Did you ever encounter any repercussions from your memoir writing? 
SWS: Virtually none from my family, which is surprising. Both my parents, I hasten to add, however, had died when I wrote my first memoir.

The main repercussions I experienced had to do with Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction. While I was promoting the book, I did many radio interviews and was asked some very inappropriate questions by radio “shock jocks.” Oh, one asked “where’s the kinkiest place you’ve ever had sex”—along those lines. In other words, I wrote a literary book about personal experience, and the interviewers wanted to sensationalize my story. Kind of demoralizing!

But, more importantly, I’ve received hundreds of e-mails from people (mainly women), from all over the country thanking me for my books. They relate to my experiences. Readers, in effect, thank me for telling their stories, too. That’s incredibly gratifying!

TWM: Do you use any type of beta reader or workshop for your own writing? Please talk about that.
SWS: I have one person who is a terrific editor who reads everything I write. I trust his feedback and judgment and pretty much always implement it.

TWM: As a teacher of memoir, what three mistakes do you see aspiring writers making time and time again?
SWS: To be honest, for the most part, it’s just one mistake. Beginning writers tend to mainly focus just on the surface experience: what happened.

Yet, the more important part of writing a memoir is to discover one’s metaphors, to reflect back on the experience, and discover, as I mentioned above, “the story behind the story.” What did the events in the past really mean? Looking back, what do you understand now that you didn’t at the time? And how does the writer, then, form an arc to show that internal growth, so that who the narrator is at the end of the memoir is different from who s/he is at the beginning.

TWM: What advice do you have for aspiring memoirists?
SWS: I teach in the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and what I always assure my students is that their story is important. I encourage them to believe in themselves. Believe in their stories.

In other words, if you are writing memoir, and turning your life into art, you are writing a universal story, one which will resonate with others. Additionally, if you don’t tell your story, no one will. It will be lost for all time, which is incredibly sad. So it’s imperative to put aside your doubts and write, write, write!

About Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman’s new memoir, The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, was a finalist in Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book of the Year Award. Her two other memoirs are Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, which is also a Lifetime TV movie, and Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, which won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs award in creative nonfiction. Her craft book is Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir. As a professional speaker, Sue has appeared on various national radio and television programs such as “The View,” “Anderson Cooper—360,” “CNN-Headline News,” as well as the Discovery Channel.  She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

The Whole Megillah talks to Angela Cerrito, author of The Safest Lie (Holiday House, 2015, 181 pp.)

The Whole Megillah (TWM): You had a long journey with this book. What was your process?
Angela Cerrito (AC): Honestly, in the beginning there wasn’t much of a process. I went through many stops and starts as well as several attempts to tell this story different ways. I always went back to the original draft of the middle grade novel and re-wrote it. Finally, I stopped trying to fix that early original draft but allowed myself to use it as an outline (or an idea, actually) and gave myself permission to create something new with the same characters and in the same place and time. This worked for me and, after many years, I had a new first draft. 

TWM: What was the most satisfying part of writing it?
AC: My agent, Caitlin Blasdell of Liza Dawson Associates, encouraged me to create more tension for Anna in each of environment and to revise in a way that made her more active in the story. Every time I had a challenge revising and could weave some of my earlier research into a new storyline was extremely satisfying… almost a tactile and audible “click” of things fitting together…finally! 

TWM: What was the most challenging part of writing it?
AC: There were many challenges for me. It was difficult become immersed in research and then exit my office into the real world. During the writing process, it was a challenge that I couldn’t include everyone I wanted in the novel; many amazing, courageous people didn’t fit into Anna’s storyline. I have plans to add content to my website to share some of this research.

 TWM: How did you come up with the character of nine-year-old Anna Bauman?
AC: In earlier versions, the main character was younger and named Roza. It was between one of my stops and starts that the character of Anna began to develop. When the project grew to a middle-grade novel, the main character was a bit older and, as I learned more about her family, she seemed to be a different person than Roza. While researching at the Jewish Historical Museum in Warsaw Poland, there was a portrait hanging above the research area. I asked about the artist, the girl in the portrait but nothing was known. I’m not sure how it happened, but the girl in this portrait inspired Anna. 

TWM: How did you decide to write short chapters?
AC: It isn’t much of a conscious decision for me, I think I simply tend to write short chapters. I did so with my first book, The End of the Line, too. And my current work-in-progress also fits this pattern. Even though the chapters are short, the breaks feel natural to me. I hope they do to the reader as well. 

TWM: Did you have any trepidation about writing about the Holocaust?
AC: Yes, I had a great deal of trepidation. And doubt. And fear. 

TWM: How did you handle the trepidation, doubt, and fear?
AC: By talking long breaks and allowing myself a great deal of time to think and reflect. I continued to speak about my research to a variety of groups including students who were very enthusiastic. Probably most important was discussing the project with other children’s writers who were a huge support system as well as friends and family who offered encouragement.

TWM: What was the most surprising discovery you made during your research?
AC: One surprising discovery was a video clip of Irena Sendler shown to me at the Museum of Jewish History in New York. In that video, Irena describes how Anton used a big dog to help with the rescue operations. She smiles during the video, obviously impressed with the creativity Anton used to carry out his dangerous missions. Another surprise came to me after some time. Irena has always stated that she isn’t a hero, that she couldn’t have possibly completed these rescues alone. When I met her and in other published interviews, she always spoke of other people who helped her. I think, despite the repeated message, I didn’t take that information to heart initially. Probably because Irena is my hero. Instead, I attributed her comments to modesty which only increased my respect for her. In time, I learned the truth of her words.  I often speak at ceremonies for The Days of Remembrance. I talk about the Warsaw ghetto, ZEGOTA and the child rescue operations. I like to create a new presentation for each event. A few years ago, I decided to focus on the people who helped Irena, those who she mentioned in our interview, in other published sources and in her authorize autobiography. It had been there in my research notes all along, but when I assembled the information in this new way, I learned a great deal.

TWM: How did the manuscript come to be with Holiday House?
AC: Holiday House published my debut novel, The End of the Line. I had a great deal of support from my editor, Julie Amper, and the entire Holiday House team launching this novel. I’m very grateful that they were just as enthusiastic about The Safest Lie. [TWM Note: Julie Amper is no longer with Holiday House.]

TWM: What advice would you give to aspiring historical fiction writers? Holocaust novel writers for kids?
AC: I’m not sure that I have advice for other writers, but I’m happy to share a few tips that helped me: Because language and memory can change with time, seek out sources that were written or recorded during the time period you are studying; avoid reading fiction set in this time period (however you may want to read fiction published during the time period, especially if it is something your characters may have read); compare sources; keep digging; ask for help from experts; prepare your translator for the subject matter; and show appreciation for everyone who helps you with your novel.

TWM: Why should writers avoid reading fiction set in the time period they’re writing about?
AC: I’m not sure this holds true for everyone, but my experience working on this novel was that I become absorbed in the world of my research. It was important for me to stick with non-fiction during the writing process. It helped me to know that the time and place I was writing about was created based on my research.

For more about Angela, please visit her website.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): Why write short stories vs. longer forms?
Erika Dreifus (ED): For me, the question is formulated slightly differently. I’ve always wondered what, for instance, made F. Scott Fitzgerald realize that “Babylon Revisited” was meant to be a short story but that The Great Gatsby demanded a longer form. In other words: How does an author know, or intuit, which form suits the material?

I’ve never quite been able to answer this question definitively. Sometimes, I’ve literally had to begin writing not knowing which form the work would ultimately take. More precisely: There have been times I’ve hoped that I might have a novel on my hands, only to discover, down the road, that the material would not budge from short-story form.

TWM: Did you always have a collection in mind?
ED: If I did, it was only in the back of my mind. I did not set out to write a story collection, but I certainly loved (and still love) reading them.

TWM: What was your process for placing the stories in journals before the collection?
ED: I followed what I think is a tried-and-true process: I researched journals to find likely matches, and I began sending the stories out. It was really that simple, and that labor-intensive.

One note: The start of my immersion in the world of literary magazines and journals began around the turn of this century, which is to say before journal websites and online publications were anywhere near as omnipresent as they are today. I was lucky to have an amazing university library nearby, where I could sample virtually any journal I wanted, plus wonderful local bookstores that stocked an array of them, too.

TWM: At my MFA program, instructors believed it’s best to get your arms around a short story and learn fiction writing with that first before attempting a novel. Do you agree with that? Why/why not?
ED: I don’t know. For me, non-MFA classes, workshops, and conferences provided a pre-MFA training-ground where I learned fundamentals of fiction-writing, for both the story and novel forms. Just as I entered my MFA program, I’d signed with an agent who was beginning to send out my novel manuscript to editors/publishers. (That novel never sold.) I focused on writing stories in the MFA program mainly because I didn’t want to workshop the novel any further at that time, I didn’t have any ideas suggestive of a new novel, and I had deadlines coming up!

I suspect that in many MFA programs, stories simply fit the workshop structure better. It’s difficult to get an entire novel workshopped in a single semester, and it can be tricky (and frustrating, for both the student writer and the critiquers) to workshop discrete novel segments beyond the opening chapter(s). I lost count of how many times my own novel’s first couple of chapters were workshopped; I’m not sure the closing chapters were ever reviewed by anyone other than the manuscript editors I hired myself.

TWM: From your posts, it’s clear you read voraciously. How do you find the time for that? How important is that for your own writing?
ED: It’s essential. Maybe I find the time by writing a little less? Alas, that may not be an inspiring answer. But it’s the truth.

About Erika Dreifus

Based in New York City, Erika Dreifus is the author of Quiet Americans: Stories, which is an American Library Association Sophie Brody Medal Honor Title for outstanding achievement in Jewish literature. A member of the advisory board for J Journal: New Writing on Justice, she has taught for Harvard University, the Cambridge (Mass.) Center for Adult Education, and the low-residency MFA programs in creative writing at Lesley University and the Northwest Institute for Literary Arts. In August 2014, Erika joined Fig Tree Books LLC as Media Editor.

You’ve now come to the final stop along the 2015 Sydney Taylor Book Award blog tour, the culmination of a full week of insightful and inspiring award-winning author and illustrator interviews.

Read about the blog tour and all 2015 Sydney Taylor Book Award blog posts.

The wrap-up and virtual roundtable

Imagine, if you will, available award winners seated at a dais table with mics, poised to answer questions from the press. We have nine participants:

Sydney Taylor Book Awards

• For Younger Readers — Author Jim Aylesworth and illustrator Barbara McClintock for My Grandfather’s Coat 
• For Older Readers — Loic Dauvillier, Mark Lizano, and Greg Salsedo, creators of Hidden: A Child’s Story of the Holocaust 
• For Teen Readers — Donna Jo Napoli for Storm
  

Sydney Taylor Honor Books

• For Younger Readers
  • Author Barbara Krasner and illustrator Kelsey Garrity-Riley for Goldie Takes a Stand! Golda Meir’s First Crusade
  • Author Jacqueline Jules and illustrator Durga Yael Bernhard for Never Say a Mean Word Again

• For Older Readers
  • Author Jennifer Elvgren and illustrator Fabio Santomauro of The Whispering Town
  • Donna Gephart for Death by Toilet Paper

• For Teen Readers
  • Una La Marche for Like No Other
  • Lila Perl for Isabel’s War

The seating’s a little crowded, but we’ve saved room just for you. The energy’s high, although we know this will be a somewhat long discussion — there’s so much to talk about!

We begin…

The Whole Megillah (TWM): Thank you all for joining us today and congratulations on your great achievement. Let’s just dive right in. What are your recommendations for great Jewish kids lit?
Jim Aylesworth: I am the author of over thirty books for children. My first book was published in 1980, and My Grandfather’s Coat is my most recent title.

These days, I’m thought of as an author, but some may like to know that for many years, I was a teacher. Yes, a first grade teacher from 1971 until my retirement in 1996, when I became a full time school presenter. I travel widely now — always doing my best to promote a love of literature in America’s school children. It’s the same effort that was always so much a part of my life in the classroom.

So if asked to discuss a strategy to promote the love of reading that would include My Grandfather’s Coat, I would say to pair the reading with Joseph Had a Little Overcoat by Simms Taback. As a teacher, I often used two versions of the same tale to focus attention on the similarities and differences in the stories – as well as the art. I would typically guide the experience by asking questions like:  “Do you prefer this part better than that part?” and “Why do you think that?”  The answers, even from very young children, are often quite literary, and they end up liking both versions better than if they had experienced just one. And it’s fun for all — including the teacher!

Marc Lizano: The Golem by Isaac Bashevis Singer, The Golem by Gustav Meyrink (it will no doubt be more difficult for young readers), Bigman  de Mazzucchelli (a splendid and magnificent variation on that theme). I don’t know if there is an English version of the book. Isn’t it only published in his own self-published revue  Rubber Blanket? Le Chat du Rabin (The Rabbi’s Cat) by Joann Sfar (funny, clever and also available in animated cartoon, even if i do prefer the books.

Donna Jo Napoli: Understanding the nature of faith, understanding how it can guide your life, these are critical things for a person of faith.  I therefore think any book that deals seriously with faith is great Jewish kids lit.  By climbing inside the skin of a person of faith in a book, no matter what the faith of that character may be, you will come to face and understand your own doubts and beliefs.  And your appreciation of your faith will deepen.

Jennifer Elvgren: Happy Birthday, Tree!: A Tu B’Shevat Story and The Schmutzy Family both by Madelyn Rosenberg, Chik Chak Shabbat by Mara Rockliff, and Benno and the Night of Broken Glass by Meg Wiviott.

Una La Marche: I don’t care if this dates me; my favorite kids’ book with a Jewish protagonist will always be Judy Blume’s wonderful Starring Sally J. Freedman As Herself. As far as more recently published YA, I think that Gayle Forman, David Levithan, and Stephanie Perkins have written — and continue to write — compelling Jewish characters.

TWM: What trends do you see coming our way?
Napoli: I’m pretty blind to trends — which is fine with me.

Jacqueline Jules: Since the BookExpo America Convention of May 2014, there has literally been a public outcry for more diversity in children’s literature with the We Need Diverse Books Campaign that made publishing headlines last spring. Another effort in this cause, Multicultural Children’s Book Day recently celebrated a second annual event on January 27^th to raise awareness for the need for children’s books that contain “characters of color as well as characters that represent a minority point of view.” First Book  and other literacy organizations have supported these efforts and several prominent journals have printed articles on the topic. It is exciting to see these initiatives calling for books which better reflect the student population in our schools. I hope that Jewish librarians and families will add their voice to this chorus. Recommended lists of multicultural books should include minority religions, too.

La Marche: Diversity! We need diverse books (for everyone, but especially for kids), and that means characters of different races, religions, ethnicities, abilities, sexual orientations, socioeconomic backgrounds, and gender identities.

TWM: What are your next steps in your literary career?
Napoli: Right now I’m working on a story in which the main character does truly wretched things, and to people she loves.  But she is going mad from mercury poisoning.  So she cannot stop herself — except through putting an end to her life.  So the big issue is: what does forgiveness mean? — how far can we extend it?  All of us make mistakes.  All of us do hateful things at some point in our lives.  Where would we be without forgiveness?

Barbara Krasner: I’m shopping around a couple of picture book biographies. This year I’ll be working on a YA Holocaust-related novel that takes place in Poland in November 1939 when the borders between the Nazi-occupied side and the Soviet-occupied side open for a brief period and a 16-year-old girl and her family are caught inbetween. I’ll also be working on a nonfiction book about Cold War spies.

Kelsey Garrity-Riley: I’m currently working on illustrating a book with Chronicle set to come out in 2016. I’d really love to be able to work more on developing my own illustrated stories!

Jules: I have completed a middle grade novel with Jewish identity themes that I hope my agent will be able to place this year. So far, I have board books, picture books, easy readers, and early chapter books out in this world. It would be very exciting to have a middle grade novel, too.

Lizano: I’m actually working on many projects as an adaptation of “Le cheval d’orgueil” from Pierre-Jakez Hélias, a trilogy with Benöit Broyart, “La pension Moreau” and also, as an author, on “Marcelin Comète.”

Elvgren: To date I’ve written picture books and magazine fiction. I’m stepping out of my comfort zone and working on a middle-grade novel about a rescue horse, which is based on a true story. I’m almost half-way through the second draft and hope to finish this spring before my children are out of school for the summer. Summer chaos makes a regular writing schedule nearly impossible!

Fabio Santomauro: The Whispering Town has been recently edited in Italy with the translation La città che sussurrò. At the moment I am thus promoting this new edition, through readings and workshops for children who are learning a lot about important themes and, in the meanwhile, enjoying the fun of drawings and stories.

Donna Gephart: I’ve written about a presidential candidate’s daughter, a boy (and his hamster) who make hilarious, successful YouTube videos, but barely manage to survive middle school, a Kids Week Jeopardy! contestant trivia whiz who misses her father and a contest-crazed, big-hearted Jewish boy, who will do anything to help his mom stay afloat and to keep a promise he made to his recently deceased father.  Next up is something very different; a humorous, heartbreaking novel about a transgender tween learning to live authentically in a world that can be less than welcoming.  I’ve never researched so much or worked so intensely as I have on this novel, due out from Delacorte Press/Penguin Random House in 2016.

La Marche: I have a comic essay collection, Unabrow, coming out March 31, and then a third, yet-to-be-officially-announced YA novel publishing around Labor Day.

TWM: What insights did you get into Jewish life as you wrote/illustrated your book?
Barbara McClintock: When I moved to northeastern Connecticut nine years ago, I fell in love with the area’s rural landscape and farm culture. There seem to be more cows than people, and the pace of traffic is often determined by the speed of a tractor driving down the road at the front of a long line of cars. What I didn’t realize initially was that many of the farm families in my neighborhood have roots going back to Jewish enclaves in Russia and Eastern Europe.

A few years  ago, my editor Dianne Hess at Scholastic Press sent Jim Aylesworth’s manuscript for My Grandfather’s Coat to me. At first, I was a bit apprehensive about taking on a story that had been so well illustrated by Simms Taback. Simms’ version of the tale is set in “the old country” — in fact, most picture books based on Jewish tales are set in Eastern Europe or in American urban settings. I recognized an opportunity to place this version in my own back yard, honoring the Jews who traveled across an ocean and found a new life and a drastically new line of work from what many of them had experienced back home.

My research began with interviewing my Jewish friend and neighbor who’s family had emigrated from Germany in the early 1900s to northeastern Connecticut. I discovered that many Connecticut Jewish farm families’ ancestors came  to America sponsored by a philanthropic foundation that had its beginnings in the 1890s. Baron Maurice De Hirsch founded the Jewish Colonization Association to help persecuted Jews establish agricultural colonies outside Russia and other Eastern European Countries. His organization continued to grow long after his death, and provided financial aid, training, and help purchasing farms to Jews immigrating to the United States, Canada, Argentina and Palestine. The JCA continued to help Jewish immigrants during and after the second world war; the association ended in the late 1970s.

The Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford provided research, support, and help as I was developing the visual narrative for My Grandfather’s Coat. The society’s website has an abundance of rich materials about the JCA and Jewish life in rural Connecticut.

“The Jewish Farmer,” a newsletter published in the early 1900s was full of advice — one gem was, “Don’t become a farmer unless your wife likes the idea.” Life for farmers was full of unpredictable events, toil and trial, but faith and community helped many overcome the struggles inherent to agricultural life.

My friend’s parents still belong to the United Brethren of Hebron Synagogue in Hebron, Connecticut. The Hebron congregation initially met for Sabbath services in the homes of its members. The congregation eventually raised enough funding to build a tiny synagogue in the 1940s, constructed in true small town fashion by the Jewish congregation and their non-Jewish neighbors pitching in. The synagogue has seating for 40-50 people, and is much loved by the current congregation.

The United Brethren of Hebron Synagogue is the setting for Grandfather’s daughter’s wedding scene in My Grandfather’s Coat.

Illustrating My Grandfather’s Coat brought the American Jewish rural experience to vivid life for me. I have the added benefit of appreciating more about my home and friends in Northeastern Connecticut. And I’m able to be more patient with that pokey tractor driver on the road as I imagine his or her families’ background and story.

Garrity-Riley: I really enjoyed getting to learn more about what life for this Jewish immigrant family looked like in turn of the century Milwaukee. Its endlessly fascinating , and sometimes exhausting to research what details of life looked like for them. What did they wear? How would their homes have looked?  But more than just the visual fabric of their lives, I love how relatable Goldie and her family are even in our 21st century world. Her feelings of doubt, determination, and learning to work together to achieve something important are timeless.

Lizano: All the elements of a Jewish life provide from the work of Loïc in Hidden. In my personal artwork, the fact that the heads are so big is probably due to my studies (I did study Philosophy in University in the ’90s) because of the concept of otherness, of alternity, directly from my reading of Emmanuel Levinas’s texts.

Napoli: In a sense my story is “pre-Jewish” in that it is pre-Abraham. But it is a study dealing with the ancient peoples that surrounded the birth of Judaism, so in that sense it deals with Jewish life. The thing that struck me most in writing this book was how very hard it was for Noah and his family to keep their faith.  Any person of faith encounters challenges to their faith, yes.  But the challenges of the great flood were exaggerated.  They would have shaken most faithful people to the core.  How do you believe that a God who wipes out so much life is “good”?  How do you believe there is any “order” to his scheme of things, when the scheme seems mad?  It takes enormous optimism and great personal strength to hold on.  I ached for Noah, as I wrote this.  I ached for all of them, but perhaps most for his wife.

Jules: Writing Never Say a Mean Word Again gave me the opportunity to research medieval Spain. I read Tales of the Alhambra and other books to imbibe the atmosphere of the era. I also scoured sources for information on Samuel Ha-Nagid and the legend of how he told the king he had torn out his enemy’s tongue and replaced it with a kind one. The Golden Age of Spain when Muslims, Jews, and Christians exchanged cultural ideas and lived in peace is a comforting historical period to remember. One of the things that attracted me to retell the legend of Samuel Ha-Nagid was the setting. And I am very indebted to Durga Yael Bernhard for her elegant illustrations which so beautifully evoked medieval Spain in Never Say a Mean Word Again.

Durga Yael Bernhard: Illustrating a book set in Spain a thousand years ago was truly a learning experience for me.  Although I have created several multi-cultural books before, I have never delved into this particular time and place.  Medieval Spain was a place that was bursting with creativity in terms of architecture, textiles, and other decorative arts.  I could have filled several books with all the arched windows, vaulted ceilings, gilded ceramics and intricate tapestries I discovered.  Yet it was also a time of drought, disease, and widespread oppression. Many of the creative forms appear “dark” by our modern standards.  My special challenge in this book was to lighten up the setting and see it through the eyes of a child.

Learning about Samuel HaNagid, upon whom two of the characters in the story are based, was even more fascinating.  In the context of Muslim-ruled Spain, he rose to the highest pinnacle of power ever reached by a Jew in his time.  I was so impressed by his accomplishments as a renowned poet, military leader, rabbi, Arabic scholar, and as royal vizier to the Muslim caliph — that I continued to study HaNagid’s life beyond what I needed for the book.

Gephart: Since I wrote about a Jewish family that was similar to the family in which I grew up, I didn’t research that element of my novel (other than making sure I got the Yiddish spellings correct for the glossary at the back of the book.)  Most of my time was spent researching sweepstakes enthusiasts and finding fascinating toilet and toilet paper facts to head each chapter.  For example, did you know the first stall in a public restroom is the least used and therefore the cleanest?

Santomauro: Illustrating The Whispering Town was very interesting. I thought it was a special book from the very first time I read the story. Considering the historical importance of the Holocaust theme, it becomes pivotal talking about it to the new generations, mostly through the use of graphics and images, which is, through a form of art highly communicative and emotional for young readers.

La Marche: I grew up, as my mother would joke, “marginally Jewish”; I’m only a quarter Jewish by blood, and completely non-religious. So deciding to write a Hasidic character presented (to put it mildy) a steep learning curve. I really came to it with zero knowledge or understanding, and what I learned really humbled me. I had always assumed that I had nothing in common with Hasidic women; it seemed like the rules (or lack thereof, in my case) that governed our lives would prevent us from relating to one another. But in speaking to women who had grown up in Hasidic homes, I realized something that, frankly, I should have already known: religion (or race, or sexual identity, etc.) doesn’t alter the fundamental experience of being a human being. We all share, to some extent, the same emotions and questions and desires. There are some things that all teenage girls do and feel, no matter where they’re from or what they believe in. I’m ashamed that this was a revelation for me, but it was.

TWM: Let’s talk about the award itself. What does the Sydney Taylor award/honor mean to you?
Aylesworth: I am very proud of this honor! And I sincerely thank AJL and all who were involved in bestowing it! Folks who know me well may notice that I’m now walking a little taller, and that I have a shinier look in my eyes — all because My Grandfather’s Coat is the winner of The Sydney Taylor Award!

But by nature I’m a very modest person, and you won’t hear me doing a lot of bragging about it. However, I will admit that I’ve begun a list of modest ways to bring it up as dinner conversation.

Lizano: I hope we reached to find the “good” tone, the right correctness, sensitivity, and accuracy of our work. That mean a lot when this kind of book is well received by the readers.

Napoli: The members of the Association of Jewish Libraries are educated, intelligent, and thoughtful people.  How could they not be: they are librarians.  Librarians are the front line against censorship.  Librarians are the ones who reach out to individual children and put a book in their hands, knowing that book is going to matter to precisely that child.  Librarians are in the job of opening minds.  When I was a child, my elementary school librarian was my lifeline.

To get an award from the Association of Jewish Libraries makes me cry every time I think of it.  Even now as I am typing this.  I am so very lucky and so very grateful to be recognized by a group that I respect so inordinately much.  Writing is a lonely business, and feedback is infrequent and often disheartening.  Getting this award means I can feel I didn’t waste people’s time with that book.  It means I can stop pacing, I can sleep at night… at least till the next book.

Garrity-Riley: It’s such an incredible honor!

Jules: I won a Sydney Taylor Honor for Sarah Laughs in 2009 and for Benjamin and the Silver Goblet in 2010. I was not able to attend the 2009 awards banquet but I did attend the 2010 AJL convention in Seattle. I still remember that trip as one of the highlights of my year. As a former synagogue librarian myself, it was a true pleasure to meet so many wonderful Judaica librarians. A night I particularly enjoyed was a Kosher Chinese dinner with members of the Sydney Taylor Award committee. Everyone was so warm and so clearly committed to Jewish children’s literature. A great deal of thought and deliberation goes into the selection of books honored by the Sydney Taylor committee. Receiving a third major recognition from this award committee is indeed a milestone for me. I have the other two certificates with the silver seal framed on the wall of my study. I look forward to placing a third frame for Never Say a Mean Word Again beside them.

Gephart: This award means the world to me.  I’d be delighted if Benjamin Epstein’s story of hope, hard work and humor to overcome his family’s serious challenges gets into the hands of more readers.  I’d love to visit Jewish schools and Jewish book festivals and talk about his story and how it might matter to young readers.  I’d also like to share my story of growing up poor and overcoming challenges with a sense of  hope and creativity and frequent trips to the Northeast Regional Branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Benjamin’s story mirrors mine in some ways, right down to the contest entries and the unfortunate toilet paper situation!

La Marche: It’s an enormous honor, especially given my marginal Jewish identity (see above). I will also take it as a challenge to continue to write complex and strong Jewish characters in my fiction moving forward.

TWM: And now for the final question for today’s discussion: Will anything be different now that your work has been recognized by the Sydney Taylor Book Award?
Napoli: Everything is always different.  :-)

Krasner: I posted the honor to Facebook, where at least two editors have seen it. When congratulating me, one asked me what other manuscripts I have. How encouraging! I think I will always hold Goldie up as the, pardon the pun, gold standard for myself.

Lizano: It is too early to say. We are far from USA. Today, we are pleased and proud of being honored. The publisher told us it was a huge honor and opportunity for the “life” of our book. I hope it will possible for me to come one day in USA to meet the American readers.

Elvgren: Because of this award, a new group of children will discover The Whispering Town and learn about occupied Denmark. In 1943, the children that were hidden and the children that helped the hidden showed extraordinary bravery and kindness. I hope today’s children are inspired by that history and look for opportunities around them to be brave and to be kind.

The Whole Megillah thanks each of you for participating in this roundtable discussion. Readers, please check out the preceding blog tour and get to know these winners and their works even better — their techniques, their approaches, their inspirations. And thanks to all the wonderful bloggers who volunteered their time and space to interview these Sydney Taylor Book Award winners.

Professor, critic, and author Morris Dickstein, author of Gates of Eden (1977) and Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression (2009), recently published a new memoir, Why Not Say What Happened: A Sentimental Education (Liveright Publishing, 2015). In this book he addresses his coming-of-age and his struggles with what he viewed as the confines of his Orthodox upbringing, among other themes.

As a graduate student of history now studying the culture of the Great Depression, I took the bull by the horn and reached out to Dr. Dickstein. He was gracious enough to grant me an interview.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): Why a memoir and why now?
Morris Dickstein (MD): Well, I’ve reached a certain age and can’t help noticing that I’ve put on some mileage. There are worlds I wanted to revisit and recapture. Also, after quite a lot of critical and historical writing I wanted to do something more personal, to tap into a different part of the brain and write in a different voice—more evocative and less analytical,  more narrative and less argumentative. And why not, since I’ve always thought of myself as a writer, not strictly a critic?

TWM: How much do you think your yeshiva upbringing factors into your writing style?
MD: I doubt it affected my writing style but it certainly affected the life I’ve lived, with one foot in the Jewish tradition and another in the secular world–exactly how my day was split when I was a yeshiva student. My yeshiva training also affected me as a critic: I became very comfortable not only with the whole process of commentary and interpretation but also with a certain reverence for the written tradition, even as secular texts, themselves hallowed by time but ripe for reinterpretation, gradually took the place of religious texts—scripture, Mishneh, the whole nine yards.

TWM: Can you comment on how you applied the “voice of innocence” and the “voice of experience” in your memoir?
MD: As a coming-of-age story it’s partly about getting wised up, taking on a wider range of experience while at the same time looking back in wonderment at where you came from and how much distance you’ve traveled. When I first learned (rather late) what actually happens between men and women I was  incredulous but then angry at how such vital facts of life had been withheld from me. Of course I continued to remain innocent for a long time to come, though at times, laughably, I took on a swaggering air of knowingness.

TWM: What authors inspire you now? Why?
MD: I go back often to the 19th-century poets, especially Wordsworth, Blake and Keats in England, Whitman and Dickinson in America. The latter two never fail to knock me off my feet—in opposite ways, Whitman with his prosey inclusiveness, seemingly swallowing the world, Dickinson with her laser-like intelligence. Among modern poets I’ve come to like Frost more and more—I go back to him frequently—and my early passion for Eliot has been reviving. Fitzgerald has gradually become my favorite novelist—his stories, Gatsby, and Tender Is the Night especially—but I had a wonderful time teaching short fiction by Tolstoy and Chekhov a few years ago. Among modern American novelists, along with Fitzgerald, I’m very partial to Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, Henry James, Edith Wharton, Henry Roth, Nella Larsen, and too many others. I won’t even go into the postwar writers I frequently reread. The common denominator among them is their emotional intelligence, a rich and complicated sense of how people interact, relationships they explore with a strong moral compass.

TWM: The book includes so many wonderful revelations. (My favorite is your comment on living through the Cold War: “Over the years students have asked me about the level of anxiety for people living under the shadow of annihilation during the cold war years. I’ve told then that we lived bifocally, in compartments, casually going about our daily lives while remaining under the gun, never quite forgetting that a cold peace, occasionally punctuated by hot wars, was built on the threat of mutual destruction.”)

Did you recognize these insights at the time, did they come later, and/or through the writing process?
MD: This is something I understood only later on, under the prodding of students, after the cold war ended. It’s remarkable in retrospect, how we all managed to go about our business and live ordinary lives while a sword of mutual and total destruction hung over our heads. Not everyone in other parts of the world was so lucky. As Americans we’ve mostly lived privileged lives in a sea of tranquility and prosperity, and as American Jews in a free society we’ve lived lives without any precedent in Jewish history.

TWM: Why did you decide to structure the memoir as you did?
MD: It actually began with the incident described in the prologue, showing me literally trespassing on the past, barging into the apartment in New Haven where I’d once lived. Abruptly, it established how much the past meant to me. From there it seemed inevitable to evoke my mostly unhappy but productive first years at Yale, in part because I was on my own for the first time and it was when I began writing for publication and fell in love. From there it seemed natural to swoop back to my childhood, my extended immigrant family, and to proceed more chronologically. So you might say I began in medias res. Following its own course, the book seemed to round itself off when I turned thirty and left Columbia, which transformed it unexpectedly from a family memoir to a Sixties memoir, and above all the history of an education in the broadest sense.

TWM: Had you kept a journal?
MD: I kept some travel journals but only during a later period. But I did have lots of very detailed letters, especially from the time I spent in England.

TWM: What advice would you have for aspiring memoirists?
MD: I can repeat the advice a friend gave me: “Follow the emotion.” If you delve deeply into what really matters to you, it will matter to your readers as well. Also, though it’s a cliche, try to stay in the moment, to evoke the the feeling of the time you’re writing about without slighting the rush of feelings at the moment you’re actually writing. But never let hindsight distort what you richly remember.

Recently on LinkedIn, I spotted an update from Tami Lehman-Wilzig about a new digital and lesson plan project entitled, “Shabbat around the World.” I was intrigued, so I requested an interview. Here are the results.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What motivated you to come up with this project?
Tami Lehman-Wilzig (TLW): Several factors were involved. First of all, over the past eight years I’ve developed an expertise in Jewish holiday customs.  It all began when my publisher—Kar-Ben—and former editor Judye Groner approached me about doing a book on Passover customs from countries across the globe. Living in Israel, I realized that I was residing in the best possible research lab. I contacted people I knew from different Edot—that’s Hebrew for “tribes,” which is on the mark because we are a very tribal people. It was one of the most unbelievable “journeys” I’ve ever taken. The end result was my book Passover Around the World, which went over so well that Kar-Ben asked me to do Hanukkah Around the World.  Joni Sussman also suggested that I do a blog on Passover customs. At first I laughed at the idea. Then I realized she was on to something and took the idea several steps forward by creating a blog on all Jewish holiday customs from around the world, which I have been writing for the past seven years. Along the way I’ve come across unusual Shabbat customs and have a separate Shabbat dedicated file.

So that’s one. Second—after my husband, children, grandchildren and Israel—Shabbat is next in line in terms of what I love most. I am crazy about this day. My late father proved its beauty to me when I was in 7^th grade and came home one Friday with a failed math test. He convinced me to put it away for 25 hours, enjoy the togetherness of the Shabbat family meal, get together with friends the next day, read a good book and just relax. When Shabbat was over I was able to look at the test with fresh eyes and understand where I went wrong.  Ever since then, Shabbat has been and continues to be an unbelievable WOW for me.

Which brings me to point three. I have been flying to the States for the past ten years, doing author appearances at Jewish Day Schools and synagogue Hebrew/Religious Schools across the U.S. I’ve come to the conclusion that while some kids get it, many do not value how precious Shabbat is and through it, the  unbelievable gift the Jewish people has given to the world at large by creating the concept of a Day of Rest.  To a very great degree, Shabbat is our natural resource and I wanted to find a way to present this 25-hour window of disconnect in a fun and interesting manner.

TWM: How are you conducting your research for it?
TLW: This has actually been a six-year research project spanning an investigation of texts, going through books dealing with Jewish customs—such as A Mosaic of Israel’s Traditions by Esther Shkalim, books by Daniel Sperber—a professor of Talmud at Bar Ilan University and an expert on Jewish customs, The Jewish People’s Almanac, and more—as well as extensive interviews, many of which were spontaneous, man-on-the-street types, and others that were planned ahead of time. Finally, like all good Israelis, my husband and I travel abroad extensively and wherever we go, we make it our business to find the Jewish community, the main synagogue and talk to the people. I have copious notes.

TWM: Is it available now? How?
TLW: Yes, but only to schools (institutional subscription) and only through my website. At a future date, I might sell only the stories to the public at large. At this point, it’s a digital project that is much more than plain stories. I have hired a wonderful illustrator whose research absolutely floors me. She makes sure that every fully colored, illustrated story has an authentic look and atmosphere so that students can immediately absorb the specific country’s culture. Even more important, I have hired a professional American Jewish educator, who is a teacher, teacher’s coach and lesson plan developer, to create 4 unique, interdisciplinary lesson plans for each story. Together, we discuss ideas and she turns them into out-of-the box lessons on Shabbat, providing all necessary tools.

TWM: Do you plan to look at other holidays?
TLW: Good question. This is a new project that has never been done before by anyone. Like all new products, it will need time to get a firm footing. Once I feel the pieces are in place, then yes, I will definitely look into doing a similar project for other holidays—perhaps as a cluster instead of focusing specifically on one.

TWM: How can people find the project and more information about it?
TLW: I hope everyone clicks to it, starting with this page: http://www.tlwkidsbooks.com/lessons-plans
and ending with the order form for a monthly subscription. Thanks so much Barbara for letting me visit your readers.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What inspired you to write this book?
Tracy Newman (TN): I was inspired to write Uncle Eli’s Wedding after hearing a wonderful presentation by Chris Barash, the Chair of the PJ Library‘s Book Selection Committee, at the Jewish Book Council’s Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators conference in 2011. Not only was Chris’s enthusiasm for discovering new Jewish children’s stories infectious, but she also provided some topics that the PJ Library thought would appeal to their participating families. Hearing that PJ was interested in receiving a wedding story was enough to get me thinking about how a child may feel during the wedding of a beloved family member.

TWM: Bubbe Tillie and Bubbe Millie add vibrance and fun to the action and certainly the rhythm of the text. Can you talk about that?
TN: Thanks very much! The characters and comments by Bubbe Tillie and Bubbe Millie were definitely fun for me to write. To create their dialogue, I tapped into my love for language and my desire to incorporate rhythm and rhyme into my stories. In addition, I consider the marriage (so to speak) of Yiddish into a Jewish-themed story to be natural.

TWM: Did you have role models for the two grandmothers? (I have to admit—they were my favorite characters!)
TN: Absolutely! And I’m so glad that you enjoyed the bubbes. To create these characters, I channeled the voice of my own beloved grandmother and cloned her into two adoring bubbes. My Nanny Rose was the quintessential Jewish grandmother, whose first language was Yiddish and which always remained a vital part of her daily vocabulary. I was fortunate that my grandmother informally schooled her grandchildren in her native tongue, while also sharing an abundance of love and home-cooking with us.

TWM: How many drafts did you have to go through to get to the final product?
TN: Many. Without counting, I would say that this story easily went through at least 15 drafts.

TWM: How did you find your agent?
TN: In 2013, I attended the Women Who Write conference and was fortunate to have a manuscript critiqued by Laura Biagi. Laura and I hit it off and I was very happy to sign with her a few months later.

TWM: Do you see yourself primarily as a picture book writer?
TN: For the moment, I do. I am thrilled to have a mixture of six board books and picture books in various stages of publication, so I hope that I can consider myself to be a picture book writer.

TWM: Do you work on one project at a time or multiple projects?
TN: Given the nature of having various projects in different stages of review (by my agent or an editor or with my critique group) at any given moment, I definitely work on several at a time.

TWM: Are you promoting the book through the Jewish Book Council’s Jewish Author’s Network?
TN: I was delighted to work with the Jewish Book Council’s Jewish Author’s Network for my book, Shabbat Is Coming. By participating in this program, I was able to meet varied Jewish communities across the country and engage with many vibrant Jewish audiences. Since I’ve only just finished these trips, I will wait a bit before continuing with this wonderful program.

TWM: What’s next for you?
TN: I am excited to share that my next book scheduled for publication is Hanukkah Is Coming, which will be released in the fall of 2015. After that, I have several more on the way, so please be sure to check my website.

The Whole Megillah talks to Meg Wiviott, author of the new lyrical Holocaust novel, Paper Hearts, due out September 1, 2015 by Margaret K. McElderry Books.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What inspired you to write this book and to write it in verse?
Meg Wiviott (MW): When I first heard about the Heart, I was immediately drawn to Fania and Zlatka’s story. The more I learned about it (see research question below) the more I knew this amazing story of friendship had to be told.

I first wrote this story as a non-fiction middle grade, but then decided it needed to be written for older readers.  I put it away for about a year or so. While the story was stuffed in a drawer I started reading a lot of verse novels, thinking this would be a good way to tell the story. When I returned to the story I tried straight narrative, but it was too difficult (emotionally) and I got bogged down in a bunch of stuff that didn’t matter. I began writing in verse. Of course, this created a whole different set of problems in that I am not a poet. I had never even particularly liked poetry. It confuses me. So I had to give myself a crash course on poetry and I began reading: I started on page one of the Norton Anthology of Poetry. Modern poets—Billy Collins, Mary Oliver, Elizabeth Bishop—quickly became my inspiration and I would go back to them when I needed to re-immerse myself in the sound.

TWM: How did you conduct your research?
MW: The first I knew of the Heart was the documentary “The Heart of Auschwitz” (Ad Hoc Films 2010). I read online about their search for the girls who signed the Heart and the release of their film. I then looked at the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre’s website and read everything they had posted about the Heart and Fania and Zlatka. They also have a film clip of Zlatka talking about the Heart. My next step was to travel to Montreal to visit the museum and to talk with one of the film makers. After watching the film, I was hooked. I then began reading. There’s an extensive bibliography included in the book, but I read as much as I could about Auschwitz, the Union factory and the deals the Nazis made with private industry to use the prisoners as slave laborers, the death marches, and survivor stories—from the Union Kommando, the orchestra, and the Sonderkommando. Both Fania and Zlatka made Shoah testimonies. Zlatka’s was done in Spanish so a friend and I went to Rutgers University and she listened to the tape, translated, and I took copious notes. Fania’s testimony was done in Yiddish, so I had to hire someone translate and transcribe her testimony for me. In both cases, hearing their voices—in the testimonies and in the film—made them real. I could then begin to hear their voices in my head.

TWM: How long did it take you to write?
MW: I wrote the first draft through the fall of 2012 and winter 2013. I sent it out to my beta readers in the spring, did revisions, and had a presentable version to take the NJSCBWI Conference in June 2013, where I met my agent, Janine Le.

TWM: Please describe any challenges in selling a book in verse.
MW: I didn’t face any challenges in selling a book in verse. Especially this book. The verse suits the story.

TWM: How do you think your MFA helped you write this book, if it did.
MW: I could not have written this book without having earned my MFA! At VCFA (Vermont College of Fine Arts) I learned about metaphor, symbols, objective correlative, elision, white space, trust, bravery, self-confidence, friendship, and community.

TWM: Did you receive any resistance to writing a Holocaust-related book?
MW: I received more resistance to Benno and the Night of Broken Glass. The only resistance I encountered to Paper Hearts was from a Jewish agent who would not read the manuscript because she didn’t represent Holocaust books.

However, the reviews are not all in, and I am sure, as with Benno, there will be Holocaust deniers, and even some Jews, who will say there are already too many Holocaust stories in the world. I whole-heartedly disagree! Every survivor story is unique. Every survivor story deserves to be told. And a writer can only hope that her story will touch a young reader in such a way that perhaps some day that reader, when he or she encounters injustice in the world, will stand up and say, “No, this is wrong.”

TWM: What was your thought process in composing these poems? Some have distinctive forms, like the left-right formatting for Selection, and the column format for train-related poems.
MW: Starting out, I thought of the poems as vignettes, stepping stones that got these young women through a horrible time in their lives. We all know the adage, Show don’t tell. The concrete poems—the three Train poems, Triangles, and Yellow Triangles—form the shapes of the images being evoked:  train tracks, triangles, and a Star of David. Additionally, the train poems have two syllables in each “track” so there is a rhythmic feeling, like a train ride, when reading them. I confess that the ideas for the train poems came from two of my beta readers; one who suggested the rhythm and the other who suggested the concrete format.

The Left/Right format is used when there is a death/life moment. In most of the stories I read, survivors recalled the Right as life—the right to live, was how many expressed it. So by using right justification margins, the poems illustrate life. That’s the beauty of a novel verse.

TWM: What advice do you have for others considering novels in verse? What advice for those considering Holocaust novels?
MW: My advice for anyone considering a novel in verse is to read poetry! Lots of poetry! But, that said, there is a lot of discussion about novels in verse right now. Are they poems or novels?  Are they a new genre or just a fad? What is the point of a novel in verse? Are novels in verse just narrative novels with creative margins? Personally, I think some marketer needs to come up with a new term to use instead of “novel in verse.” I am not a poet. However, I write poetically. I borrowed heavily from the world of poetry and from the world of narrative fiction. I like to think of Paper Hearts as a novel with white space.
My advice for anyone considering a Holocaust novel is be honest—to your characters and to history.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What gave you the inspiration for this story?
Linda Elovitz Marshall (LEM): Hi Barbara,thank you for asking that question…and for inviting me to be interviewed. It’s always nice to hear from you and to exchange ideas.

As for the YUM Kippur story, the inspiration came in two parts. The first part came just after Rosh Hashanah when I was visiting two of my grandchildren (one of whom is, not surprisingly, named Talia). I told her—jokingly—that, after Rosh Hashanah, comes a holiday called YUM Kippur. When I explained I was making a joke because you don’t eat during Yom Kippur, Talia giggled. That’s when the inspiration came. Hmmm…I thought, maybe there’s a story in this. But that idea, that tiny germ of inspiration, simmered for a long time. It may have simmered forever but, then, another inspiration came along…

The second inspiration was a week-long vacation in Rome. Perhaps it’s because I’m an anthropologist by training or perhaps it’s because I get lost easily but wherever–and whenever–I travel I like to have (or find) friends in the places I go. So, while I was pondering whether I had any connections to anyone in Rome, I recalled that Francesca Assirrelli, the illustrator of Talia and the Rude Vegetables, lived there. I emailed Francesca and asked if we might meet in person. She said yes, of course, and we made arrangements to have a pranza together upon my arrival in Rome. I wanted to bring her a gift…a something…But what could I bring to the person who made Talia come alive on the page? What could I possibly bring?

At last, I knew the answer.

I would bring Francesca another Talia story and, hopefully, my editor would like it…and it would be acquired.

So, little by little, the YUM Kippur joke became Talia and the Very YUM Kippur.
But like a good Italian tomato sauce, it simmered a long time before it was done. It wasn’t until I was on the plane to Rome that I finished writing the first draft of the story.

Thanks to Joni Sussman at KarBen, it’s now a book.

TWM: Your stories usually include food and animals. Is this a coincidence or a strategy?
LEM: I raised my children on a small farm and, along the way, I learned about farming and animals. Also, much of my Judaism is associated with food. So, I guess that makes it a coincidence.

On the other hand…maybe it is strategy….So much of the Jewish calendar is tied to our agricultural origins yet we, as contemporary Jews, are often urban dwellers. I take great solace in nature and in quietude…in the wonder and awe of the natural world…I try to draw on that for my stories, especially for my Jewish stories. I want to give them a special soul…in the hopes that others, too, will feel the inspiration of nature and quietude.

TWM: Do you plan on writing books about other holidays featuring Talia, your main character?
LEM: Most definitely. Another Talia book—a Purim story entitled Talia and the Haman-tushies—will be out in Spring, 2017!

TWM: This book, like Talia and the Rude Vegetables, depends on word play. So: How many drafts do you typically go through to make your word play work and has word play been a pastime of yours?
LEM: Some word plays are more challenging than others. Sometimes I go through a zillion drafts. That’s okay. For me, it’s not work. It’s play.

TWM: Do you create a dummy when you write picture books?
LEM: More or less. I always paginate and try to figure out what the action is on each page and whether there’s enough for the illustrator to work with. Although I don’t actually draw things to make dummies, I do try to think pictorially.

TWM: Tell us about your writer’s journey.
LEM: Such a long journey….I wanted to be a writer when I was in fifth grade but then I got side-tracked by all sorts of other things that I wanted to be, too….So, I’ve been a poet, a writer, an anthropologist, toy inventor, teacher, sheep-farmer, chicken-raiser, mother, grandmother, explorer…I keep re-inventing myself…and learning more along the way. I think I have a short attention span, but I also think having a short attention span is a totally under-appreciated attribute!

TWM: What’s next for you?
LEM: Whew! There’s a lot on my plate. I’m finishing up a middle grade novel. I’m also developing a character that, I hope, will find her way to become a chapter book series. Also, after hearing from the fabulously brilliant librarian Betsy Bird that books for emergent readers are the most difficult to write as well as the most needed, I’ve challenged myself to write some. Not sure I’ll succeed, but I’ll have fun trying!

Also in the “what’s next” department, in addition to Talia’s upcoming Purim book, I have another three picture books forthcoming: You’re In Kindergarten (Scholastic, 2016), Sh-Sh-Shabbat (KarBen, 2016), and Ixchel Weaves a Rainbow (Lee & Low, 2016).

Well, that’s about it…
Thank you, again, Barbara, for inviting me to participate.

Please visit Linda at her website or Facebook page.

Photo by Erica Miller

In July 2015, Publishers Weekly posed the question: Is children’s nonfiction having its moment? The article mentioned Steve Sheinkin, with whom The Whole Megillah has spoken before. It seemed like a good time to talk to him again.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): At what point in your life did you realize you were a writer?
Steve Sheinkin (SS): Back in the days when my younger brother and I shared a bunk bed, we were always coming up with ideas for stories, comics, little comedy skits. We didn’t think of it as “being writers,” but I can see now that that’s what we were doing.

TWM: What inspires you to write for young readers?
SS: Well, for years I worked in the education publishing market, mainly writing history textbooks. Those books really don’t reach young readers at all, and out of sheer frustration I decided to try to do better on my own. Until that time, I hadn’t thought at all about writing nonfiction for kids or teens.

TWM: What draws you to your subjects, like the atom bomb and the Pentagon Papers?
SS: I like dramatic, complex stories—and I like a real plot, with lots of twists and turns. History is full of stories like this, so it’s just a matter of finding one that grabs my attention. And of course, since we’re talking nonfiction, I have to make sure the source material is rich enough to allow me to tell the story the way I want to, as (hopefully) a page-turner.

TWM: How do you conduct your research, and how do you fund it?
SS: I spend more time research than writing, which I guess is typical of nonfiction writers. Much of it is old fashioned reading: books, newspapers, etc. I’ll also often travel to special libraries or archives, and, when possible, I try to go to places in my stories so I can see them for myself. Only in my newest book, Most Dangerous, has it been possible to actually talk to the people in the story. That was a very exciting change from writing stories set farther back in time. In terms of funding, I think of it as part of the job. So I’ll use some of the advance I get for this purpose—if I got bigger advances, I’d travel a lot more!

TWM: Do you have experts vetting your manuscripts? If so, what’s your process?
SS: I have turned to experts at times, yes. With my book Bomb, for instance, I sought out a couple of scientists to read over my descriptions of fission and other scientific concepts in the book. With the Port Chicago 50, I shared the manuscript with people who know the story well and listened carefully to their feedback.

TWM: How would you characterize your move from Rabbi Harvey books to these nonfiction books for kids?
SS: I still like to draw comics, so I’d say it’s not so much of a move as a gradual transition to doing more nonfiction and less of the comics. Basically, the nonfiction books have done really well, and that’s turned into a full-time job, which is great. Leaves me less time for side projects, but I still love Rabbi Harvey and hope to revisit him at some point.

TWM: What were your favorite books growing up?
SS: I loved historical novels, like the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy for instance, and outdoor adventures, like My Side of the Mountain. Mostly I read nonfiction, though I didn’t know that term. I read anything to do with train robberies, buried treasure, sea adventures, sharks, and sports.

TWM: What advice do you have for aspiring nonfiction writers?
SS: The process of writing nonfiction is different from writing fiction, of course, but I don’t think any of the advice is different. Just find a story you feel passionate about, and tell it. The thing with nonfiction, of course, is that the sources have to be really good. So before I go too far with an idea, I track down as many sources as I can. I’m looking for characters, bits of action that can be turned into scenes, and even dialogue where possible. If these things don’t exist I abandon the story, even if I love it. So I guess that’s the advice—stack the deck in your favor by picking stories with rich sources.

For more about Steve Sheinkin, please visit his website.

I first encountered Sue William Silverman through the Vermont College of Fine Arts’ Post-Graduate Conference in 2012 and then at the annual Association of Writers & Writing Program (AWP) conferences. When I think of memoir, I think of Sue. Here’s my recent interview with her.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): In general, what is the most gratifying aspect of writing memoir? The most challenging? Now specific to The Pat Boone Fan Club, what were the most gratifying and challenging aspects—and why?
Sue William Silverman (SWS): One of the most gratifying aspects of writing memoir is the opportunity to fully explore one’s life. In my own case, I don’t truly understand my life until I write it. Through writing, I’m able to reflect back on the past and discover the metaphors of any given experience.

Ironically, that’s the most challenging aspect, too! Writing a life is not simply stating the facts as in “this happened, and then this happened, and then this next thing happened.” Rather, one has to dig deep into an experience and discover the “story behind surface story.” What does the experience mean?

In The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, I explore my ambiguous relationship toward Judaism, growing up. Because my Jewish father sexually molested me, I was very drawn to Pat Boone, the antithesis of my father; Pat Boone, in addition to being a pop-music idol, was also known for his wholesome, clean-cut, Christian image.

In this book, I needed to discover the origin and the depth of my crush on Pat Boone. I mean, as a kid, I just thought he was cute – much as any kid would have a crush on a celebrity. It wasn’t until I wrote the book that I discovered how, in fact, he was a metaphor: a metaphor for a safe father I never had.

TWM: How do you prepare a proposal for a memoir? Do you already know your theme(s)?
SWS: I’ve never written a book proposal! I always have to write the book itself in order to fully know what the theme, the arc, the metaphors will be. In many ways, there’s almost no reason (for me) to write a proposal since I have to write my life, anyway, whether the book gets published or not.

TWM: Did you already have essays that you assembled into this book? How did The Pat Boone Fan Club come about?
SWS: Initially, I didn’t know I was writing a book. The title essay was the first piece I wrote but, at that time, I just thought it would be a stand-alone essay. As depicted in that essay, I saw in the newspaper that Pat Boone was giving a concert about 20 minutes from my house. (This was relatively recently, so he was no longer a teen idol—rather an aging idol—and I was no longer a teen!) But, I’d had a crush on him most of my life, so I figured I’d go to the concert and sneak backstage to tell him what he meant to me. I did just that, wrote an account of it, and published the essay.

Then, I simply continued to write what I thought were all stand-alone essays. I was about two years or so into this essay writing, when I realized that all of the essays had a similar theme: a search for identity because of my ambiguous feelings toward Judaism. When I had that epiphany, I realized I could collect these thematically congruent essays into a book as a unified collection. At that point, I then wrote additional sections that weren’t stand alone, but that would help to enhance and round-out the book.

TWM: What was your strategy with the direct address, “Dear Gent[i]le Reader?”
SWS: Those “Dear Reader” sections act as a through-thread to make the book more unified and whole. In other words, in my first two memoirs, each has a unified structure or narrative. Not so with the Pat Boone book. There is a unified theme, but not a unified narrative. In other words, not all the sections are about Pat Boone. In one section, for example, I write about my feeling of being “other” when I attend a mostly Christian high school. In yet another section, I write about a search for my Jewish identity by working on a kibbutz in Israel. Through these “Dear Reader” sections, I’m better able to suggest to the reader how all these sections, together, form a thematic whole.

TWM: The Pat Boone Fan Club takes a departure from your other two memoirs, Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, and Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You. What led you to go in this direction?
SWS: Each memoir, generally speaking (for all writers), is not about a whole life; rather, any given memoir, ideally, explores a slice of a life, following one theme. At the same time, all of us are complicated human beings, and, in this regard, we all have many stories to tell.

In this instance, after exploring my incestuous childhood in the one book, and writing about recovering from sexual addiction in another, I was led to explore, in more detail, my search for identity. I didn’t start out knowing what I was going to write. Rather, it was the writing, itself, that led me to this theme.

TWM: The subtitle of The Pat Boone Fan Club is: My Life as a White Anglo Saxon Jew. Was mentioning “Jew” a selling point? How did you characterize your target market?
SWS: I guess the word “Jew” in the subtitle is really just meant to be descriptive of the book and its theme, in that the book is about my life as a white, Anglo-Saxon Jew! I don’t exactly write with a target market in mind. That said, I do hope that my tribe will find the book of interest. Of course I hope others will, too. I think the search for identity is, to some extent, a universal theme.

TWM: What drove your decision to move from fiction writing to memoir?
SWS: Initially, yes, I started as a fiction writer and tried to tell my story as a novel. I wrote about four or five novels. None of them are published and none are very good! Really, I could never find an emotionally authentic voice in fiction. It wasn’t until I switched to memoir that I found that authentic voice in which to write my stories.

TWM: Did you ever encounter any repercussions from your memoir writing? 
SWS: Virtually none from my family, which is surprising. Both my parents, I hasten to add, however, had died when I wrote my first memoir.

The main repercussions I experienced had to do with Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction. While I was promoting the book, I did many radio interviews and was asked some very inappropriate questions by radio “shock jocks.” Oh, one asked “where’s the kinkiest place you’ve ever had sex”—along those lines. In other words, I wrote a literary book about personal experience, and the interviewers wanted to sensationalize my story. Kind of demoralizing!

But, more importantly, I’ve received hundreds of e-mails from people (mainly women), from all over the country thanking me for my books. They relate to my experiences. Readers, in effect, thank me for telling their stories, too. That’s incredibly gratifying!

TWM: Do you use any type of beta reader or workshop for your own writing? Please talk about that.
SWS: I have one person who is a terrific editor who reads everything I write. I trust his feedback and judgment and pretty much always implement it.

TWM: As a teacher of memoir, what three mistakes do you see aspiring writers making time and time again?
SWS: To be honest, for the most part, it’s just one mistake. Beginning writers tend to mainly focus just on the surface experience: what happened.

Yet, the more important part of writing a memoir is to discover one’s metaphors, to reflect back on the experience, and discover, as I mentioned above, “the story behind the story.” What did the events in the past really mean? Looking back, what do you understand now that you didn’t at the time? And how does the writer, then, form an arc to show that internal growth, so that who the narrator is at the end of the memoir is different from who s/he is at the beginning.

TWM: What advice do you have for aspiring memoirists?
SWS: I teach in the low-residency MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and what I always assure my students is that their story is important. I encourage them to believe in themselves. Believe in their stories.

In other words, if you are writing memoir, and turning your life into art, you are writing a universal story, one which will resonate with others. Additionally, if you don’t tell your story, no one will. It will be lost for all time, which is incredibly sad. So it’s imperative to put aside your doubts and write, write, write!

About Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman’s new memoir, The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, was a finalist in Foreword Reviews IndieFab Book of the Year Award. Her two other memoirs are Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction, which is also a Lifetime TV movie, and Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, which won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs award in creative nonfiction. Her craft book is Fearless Confessions: A Writer’s Guide to Memoir. As a professional speaker, Sue has appeared on various national radio and television programs such as “The View,” “Anderson Cooper—360,” “CNN-Headline News,” as well as the Discovery Channel.  She teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.

The Whole Megillah talks to Angela Cerrito, author of The Safest Lie (Holiday House, 2015, 181 pp.)

The Whole Megillah (TWM): You had a long journey with this book. What was your process?
Angela Cerrito (AC): Honestly, in the beginning there wasn’t much of a process. I went through many stops and starts as well as several attempts to tell this story different ways. I always went back to the original draft of the middle grade novel and re-wrote it. Finally, I stopped trying to fix that early original draft but allowed myself to use it as an outline (or an idea, actually) and gave myself permission to create something new with the same characters and in the same place and time. This worked for me and, after many years, I had a new first draft. 

TWM: What was the most satisfying part of writing it?
AC: My agent, Caitlin Blasdell of Liza Dawson Associates, encouraged me to create more tension for Anna in each of environment and to revise in a way that made her more active in the story. Every time I had a challenge revising and could weave some of my earlier research into a new storyline was extremely satisfying… almost a tactile and audible “click” of things fitting together…finally! 

TWM: What was the most challenging part of writing it?
AC: There were many challenges for me. It was difficult become immersed in research and then exit my office into the real world. During the writing process, it was a challenge that I couldn’t include everyone I wanted in the novel; many amazing, courageous people didn’t fit into Anna’s storyline. I have plans to add content to my website to share some of this research.

 TWM: How did you come up with the character of nine-year-old Anna Bauman?
AC: In earlier versions, the main character was younger and named Roza. It was between one of my stops and starts that the character of Anna began to develop. When the project grew to a middle-grade novel, the main character was a bit older and, as I learned more about her family, she seemed to be a different person than Roza. While researching at the Jewish Historical Museum in Warsaw Poland, there was a portrait hanging above the research area. I asked about the artist, the girl in the portrait but nothing was known. I’m not sure how it happened, but the girl in this portrait inspired Anna. 

TWM: How did you decide to write short chapters?
AC: It isn’t much of a conscious decision for me, I think I simply tend to write short chapters. I did so with my first book, The End of the Line, too. And my current work-in-progress also fits this pattern. Even though the chapters are short, the breaks feel natural to me. I hope they do to the reader as well. 

TWM: Did you have any trepidation about writing about the Holocaust?
AC: Yes, I had a great deal of trepidation. And doubt. And fear. 

TWM: How did you handle the trepidation, doubt, and fear?
AC: By talking long breaks and allowing myself a great deal of time to think and reflect. I continued to speak about my research to a variety of groups including students who were very enthusiastic. Probably most important was discussing the project with other children’s writers who were a huge support system as well as friends and family who offered encouragement.

TWM: What was the most surprising discovery you made during your research?
AC: One surprising discovery was a video clip of Irena Sendler shown to me at the Museum of Jewish History in New York. In that video, Irena describes how Anton used a big dog to help with the rescue operations. She smiles during the video, obviously impressed with the creativity Anton used to carry out his dangerous missions. Another surprise came to me after some time. Irena has always stated that she isn’t a hero, that she couldn’t have possibly completed these rescues alone. When I met her and in other published interviews, she always spoke of other people who helped her. I think, despite the repeated message, I didn’t take that information to heart initially. Probably because Irena is my hero. Instead, I attributed her comments to modesty which only increased my respect for her. In time, I learned the truth of her words.  I often speak at ceremonies for The Days of Remembrance. I talk about the Warsaw ghetto, ZEGOTA and the child rescue operations. I like to create a new presentation for each event. A few years ago, I decided to focus on the people who helped Irena, those who she mentioned in our interview, in other published sources and in her authorize autobiography. It had been there in my research notes all along, but when I assembled the information in this new way, I learned a great deal.

TWM: How did the manuscript come to be with Holiday House?
AC: Holiday House published my debut novel, The End of the Line. I had a great deal of support from my editor, Julie Amper, and the entire Holiday House team launching this novel. I’m very grateful that they were just as enthusiastic about The Safest Lie. [TWM Note: Julie Amper is no longer with Holiday House.]

TWM: What advice would you give to aspiring historical fiction writers? Holocaust novel writers for kids?
AC: I’m not sure that I have advice for other writers, but I’m happy to share a few tips that helped me: Because language and memory can change with time, seek out sources that were written or recorded during the time period you are studying; avoid reading fiction set in this time period (however you may want to read fiction published during the time period, especially if it is something your characters may have read); compare sources; keep digging; ask for help from experts; prepare your translator for the subject matter; and show appreciation for everyone who helps you with your novel.

TWM: Why should writers avoid reading fiction set in the time period they’re writing about?
AC: I’m not sure this holds true for everyone, but my experience working on this novel was that I become absorbed in the world of my research. It was important for me to stick with non-fiction during the writing process. It helped me to know that the time and place I was writing about was created based on my research.

For more about Angela, please visit her website.

Photo by Peter Blankman

In July 2014, The Whole Megillah interviewed debut novelist Anne Blankman, author of the YA historical drama, Prisoner of Night and Fog, the story of Gretchen Müller and her search for the truth of about her father’s death and Uncle Dolf Hitler. The sequel, Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke, was published in 2015 by the Balzer + Bray imprint of HarperCollins. Here now is a follow-up conversation with Anne Blankman:

The Whole Megillah (TWM): Congratulations on your success with both Prisoner of Night and Fog and Conspiracy of Blood and Smoke. Did you know when you were writing the first book that you’d have a sequel?
Anne Blankman (AB): I hoped there would be a sequel, but I wasn’t sure. When I was drafting Prisoner (originally titled Night’s Edge), I decided to play it safe and write a story that could stand on its own but with an open ending that left room for a possible second novel. After all, I reasoned that if no publisher wanted the first book they certainly wouldn’t be interested in a sequel. Fortunately, my wonderful editor, Kristin Rens, and the rest of the folks at Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins did want a second book, and I had the chance to wrap up Gretchen’s story the way I intended.

TWM: Please describe your research process.
AB: If I don’t know very much about a particular topic, first I’ll consult a work of juvenile nonfiction. This probably sounds strange, but children’s nonfiction books tend to be clear, concise, and hit the major points that you need to know. For example, I knew little about Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis when I was researching Prisoner, so I read Kathleen Krull’s excellent biography of Freud. (I also consulted with a psychology professor who teaches courses on abnormal psychology. Asking experts for help is a crucial part of my research process).

I also like to start with what I call “broad” books—books that present a sweeping view of a particular time period, event, or culture. Once I feel that I’ve amassed a good foundation of knowledge, I narrow my focus, reading biographies, memoirs, social histories, psychological profiles, and so forth. Old maps, newsreels, and recordings of speeches are also helpful. Diaries contain a treasure trove of details: what meals your characters might eat, how much things cost, and what commonplace smells your protagonist might encounter. Subject experts are wonderful sources of information. I often email professors out of the blue, explaining who I am and asking if they’d be willing to offer me some advice. The professors I’ve contacted have always been gracious and generous with their tips and time.

When I’m researching, I take detailed notes, making sure to include what source I used to find the information (I’ll even include the page number in case my publisher’s copy editing department needs to verify a certain detail). I love learning about history and I could continue researching forever, so I usually have to force myself to start writing when I know I’m ready.
TWM: Did you travel to Germany or England at all for your novels?
AB: I was lucky enough to study in York, England while I was in college, and I did lots of traveling then. When I drafted Prisoner, I had a new baby, so  I wasn’t able to stray too far from home. :) While I researched Traitor Angels, however, my UK publisher sent me to speak at the Edinburgh International Book Festival in Scotland, and my husband and I decided to turn the engagement into a family vacation. We spent a couple of weeks traveling all over England and Scotland, which gave me the chance to visit several locations that appear in Traitor Angels.

Traveling to conduct research can be confusing, though. For example, one of the Berlin neighborhoods where Gretchen and Daniel hide out in Conspiracy was a poor, primarily Communist area in 1933. Today it’s a hip, upwardly mobile neighborhood with trendy restaurants and lots of museums!

TWM: Both books take interesting twists and turns. Do you consider plotting one of your strengths? Please describe how you devise your plots.
AB: Thank you! Before I begin drafting, I always write detailed outlines. They keep me on track and help me make sure that the mystery makes sense and one clue leads to the next.

TWM: What was the most challenging scene to write in Conspiracy?
AB: Any of the romantic scenes between Gretchen and Daniel! Whew! Those are hard. I want to write about kissing in fresh, interesting ways.

TWM: What was the most gratifying scene to write?
AB: The last one, hands down. By that point, I’d spent a few years with Gretchen living in my head, and it felt incredibly satisfying to bring her to the point I’d wanted her to reach.

TWM: Many agents say they won’t handle historical fiction. Please tell us how you and Adams Literary came together.
AB: Well, I was extremely lucky. Tracey Adams was my dream agent, and I found out that she was attending the annual Mid-Atlantic SCBWI Conference. (For readers who are unfamiliar with the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, it’s a national organization that I cannot recommend highly enough.) Anyway, I met Tracey for a fifteen-minute critique of the first ten pages of my manuscript. Ours was the last session of the day, and I was so nervous that my hands were shaking! It was my first conference and my first critique, and I had no idea what to expect.

Tracey loved my writing sample, and we hit it off immediately. In fact, we ended up chatting for forty-five minutes! She requested an exclusive full submission and a week later I signed with her.

TWM: How long did it take to write Conspiracy? Do you have a critique group?
AB: I was drafting Conspiracy while finishing up revisions on Prisoner and researching my next novel, so it’s hard for me to pinpoint an exact length of time. It probably took me at least six months to conduct my preliminary research and another year to draft and polish Conspiracy. Some of my friends can churn out a manuscript in six weeks, which I cannot fathom!

Yes, I have a few critique partners. We read one another’s manuscripts early in the drafting process, and I’m always grateful for their fresh eyes.

 TWM: What advice do you have for aspiring novelists and especially historical novelists?
AB: Write what you love. Don’t write for trends; don’t write to get published; and write the story that only you can tell.

If you want to write historical fiction, be sure that the time period you’ve chosen is one that fascinates you. You don’t have to love the era, but you’d better find it interesting because you’ll be learning a lot about it.

TWM: What’s next for you?
AB: My third novel, Traitor Angels, comes out on May 3^rd, 2016 from Balzer+Bray/HarperCollins. Traitor Angels is a YA romantic historical adventure set in 1660s England about a girl who uncovers an explosive secret hidden in John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost”—a secret that could rip apart the very fabric of society. If you’d like to learn more about the book, here’s a link to my website:http://www.anneblankman.com/traitor-angels.

My first encounter with Lisa Rose was as an author through her Facebook group, “Missing Voice.” Like me and countless others, she is now a Kar-Ben author with Shmulik Paints the Town, a story about a painter, a dog, and Israeli Independence Day. Here you’ll find an interview with her, illustrator Catalina Echeverri, and Kar-Ben publisher Joni Sussman.

The Whole Megillah (TWM): Lisa, what inspired this story?
Lisa Rose (LR): This story was inspired by my cousin who paints pictures using dog paw prints.  She drips the paw in paint and then stamps it over the canvas.  Afterwards, she creates paintings based upon the prints.  Owners love to have this very unique work of art.  Also, sometimes people bring their old and sick dogs to her so that they can have a lasting memory their beloved pet.

TWM: Please describe your writing process for this story.
LR: I was swimmer before I ever was a writer.  It was excellent practice for becoming a writer.  Both often require you to go as fast as you can into a cement wall.  This story hit many cement walls.  I put it aside for a bit and then one day after attending a story structure workshop by Shutta Crum I figured out how to revise it.  Victory!  My advice:  Never throw out stories that aren’t working.  Simply, put them aside—you never know when you will learn how to revise it.  It may take days…or years…but it will come.

TWM: What was your greatest challenge in writing Shmulik?
LR: Because most of the action in the story is illustration driven I was concerned (worried) that the meaning would not be understood.

TWM: What was your greatest satisfaction?
LR: This is my very first print picture book.  (I have published e-book and stories in anthologies.)  So I think after wishing, hoping, praying, and working my tush off, it was finally seeing my name on the cover.  WOW!  This is really happening!  It a real book with ISBN number and everything.

TWM: Joni, what attracted you to this manuscript?
Joni Sussman (JS): I loved that Lisa’s story takes place in Israel and yet the focus of the plot is not just Israeli Independence Day, but rather a charming and whimsical story about a man and his talented pup, which would delight any child. This book gave Kar-Ben a chance to portray a number of aspects of Israel that we like to portray—what the desert-y landscape of Israel looks like, what Israel’s diverse population looks like, an Israeli city’s combination of old and new buildings, etc.

TWM: How/why did you choose Catalina to illustrate?
JS: Admittedly, Catalina was an unusual choice to illustrate this book as her artwork is a bit “edgy,” but my goal was to find an illustrator who could really bring personality to Shmulik and Catalina did a great job of that. I was charmed by her art style and loved the way she used color sparingly at the beginning and then saturated the story with color when Shmulik’s artwork is revealed at the end—I think it’s really quite spectacular. Both Catalina’s art and Lisa’s text take this book beyond its story about Israel and friendship between man and pup—both great themes—into the realm of art and what art means can serve as inspiration to young readers to let their imaginations soar.

TWM: Thanks, Joni. Let’s turn to Catalina. How did you develop your color strategy?Catalina Echeverri (CE): When I am illustrating a picture book by another author, I like to do a lot of research. I read the text several times and then research images or artists which somehow remind me of the text or somehow visually “connect” me to it. In this case, Lisa’s text reminded me of a book I bought on sale a long time ago from an artist called John Rombola.  I have always admired the way that his line work is so crisp and clean and the way that he incorporates colour in such a powerful way. It’s simple, and yet vibrant and graphic. He was my main source of inspiration fro this book. Modern cities in many parts of the world, have lost their vibrancy and their color and I’ve always been struck by the way beautiful murals and art interventions in urban spaces are able to bring back some vibrancy and happiness to the spaces they are placed in. So when I read Lisa’s story about little Ezra and his artistic paws that was exactly what was brought into my mind.

TWM: Did you have any particular challenges in illustrating this book?
CE: I’ve always wanted to visit Israel but I’ve never had the opportunity to actually go and because I always like my work to be faithful to the place and costumes of the country/historical period the characters are placed in this posed a particular challenge. I had to do a lot of online research about the places, the people and the buildings that the book would be set in. There were lots of hours invested on this part of the process because I wanted everything to be submerged into the Jewish culture, including the plants and the little details. Although it was a challenge it was really enriching! I learnt a lot about Israel and how beautiful it is.

TWM: Did you have any particular satisfactions?
CE: How the book has been so positively received by both the Publisher and the Writer Lisa Rose has been so encouraging!  Joni and Laura gave me a lot of creative freedom and really trusted in me for this project and so I really wanted to honour that trust. The Author’s response is also a great satisfaction because I know it is a text she has worked really hard on and I wanted to do it justice.

TWM: Thanks, Catalina. Lisa, Did the artwork surprise you in any way?
LR: The artwork looked nothing like my cousin’s paintings so at first it was a little jarring.  However, I’m so pleased with Catalina’s work.  I love how she chose to use black and white with color.  We’ve never met and didn’t even speak to her until after the book was released—but I know she “got” the story.  All my fears never came true.  I can’t wait to meet her and give her a BIG HUG!

TWM: Can you say a few words about the Facebook group you moderate?
LR: I host a discussion group on Facebook.  Many times people don’t buy diverse books, because they lack the awareness.  I’m Jewish.  However, I taught in Detroit and many of my stories are inspired by my African-American students. I believe because of my experience, I have a unique perspective of understanding two communities.  I observe how both communities can lack an understanding of each other.  Not because of hate, but because of just living divided.  I believe the way to end ignorance is with knowledge.  I call it “Missing Voice” because I want it to mean more than just race, but also include religion, and little known historical facts and people.  Once a month a new picture book is selected to read and discuss.  At the end of the month is a live chat with the author on our Missing Voice Facebook page.

TWM: Lisa, what’s next for you?
LR: My writing is very diverse.  I write Nice Jewish Picture Books and I’m working on a mutli-media project with Jeff Bass, Grammy and Oscar-winning music producer of rapper Eminem.  Also, I write non-fiction and silly secular fiction picture books.  But all of these works are linked by common theme of: cheer for the underdog!

SHMULIK PAINTS THE TOWN can be found on Amazon.  It’s the #1 New Release for Jewish Children’s Books.  It also can be purchased through the publisher  www.karben.com

To learn more please go to: www.LisaRoseWrites.org  Also, be my friend on Facebook  Lisa Rose or tweet @LisaRoseWrites.

Kathy Kacer recently published a new novel, Stones on a Grave, with Orca Press. The Whole Megillah asked her some questions about this new book, which was recently named a 2016 Sydney Taylor Honor Book!

The Whole Megillah (TWM): What prompted you to write Stones on a Grave?
Kathy Kacer: This book is actually part of a series of books called “Secrets.” We are seven authors writing seven books about seven female characters. The seven girls have all grown up together in an orphanage in a small town in the early 1960s. At the start of each of our books the orphanage burns down and the seven girls are given a chance to go off on journeys to discover where they came from and the circumstances of their births.

We seven authors were able write our books in the style and genre that we knew and loved. Within the series there is fantasy, humor, mystery, and historical fiction. The books are stand-alone and can be read in any order. But the girls are all related and linked to each other. It’s a fantastic concept, I think!

When I was approached to be part of the series, I knew immediately that I wanted to write a story about a girl who discovers her Jewish roots, and learns that she is linked to the Holocaust in some way. That’s how Stones on a Grave came about.

TWM: That’s so fascinating! How did you conduct research for the book?
KK: In Stones on a Grave, Sara discovers that she was born in a DP camp at the end of the war. She travels to Germany to try and find that camp and find any documents related to her birth. The most important research for me was related to the DP camps that were established in Europe after the war. I did a lot of research on those camps, what activities went on there, where they were located, who lived there after the war, and for how long. I also did a lot of research on Bad Arolsen and the International Tracing Service which houses documents and research on Nazi persecution during the war. Sara goes there to try and learn more about her mother and father.

I try to do as much research as possible for each of my books, and then I pick and choose the pieces of that research that will be relevant to the story that I am telling.

TWM: How different was your experience in writing this book vs. your others? Why do you think that was?
KK: Writing the beginning chapters of this book was a new experience for me. I was writing a series with six other authors and we all had to agree on the starting point for our characters—where the orphanage was that they lived in, what it looked like, who ran it, how the fire started, etc., etc. There were a million details to work out and coordinate with the other authors. We all had to be careful not to trip over anyone else’s story, and we had to carefully synchronize our time lines and story lines.

Once we had established the beginning chapters of our books, the seven of us were free to go off and write the stories that we wanted to write. At that point, the process of writing was no different than many of my other historical fiction books.

TWM: How did you come up with the idea of the dogs? Does that have any special meaning to you or to survivors in general?
KK: So many people have told me how much they love the dogs that are part of my book. But it really has nothing to do with survivors. When I was in Italy on a book tour a few years ago, I met a wonderful teacher there who was teaching several of my books in her classrooms. She and her husband had a dog named Tex Willer named after the fictional cowboy character of an Italian comic series. I loved the dog’s name and told my friend that I would find a way to include a similar dog in a future book. I thought about it when I was writing Stones on a Grave.

TWM: How did you come up with Sara’s two love interests?
KK: Originally, as I was thinking about the plot for this book, I thought it might contain a theme about neo-Nazism. That didn’t turn out to be something that I wanted to pursue. But I created the character of Luke to bring attention to some issues of discrimination that were relevant to my story and to one of the other stories in the series. It was a great way to link two of the books. Realizing just how nasty Luke was also gave my character, Sara, the ability to resolve to leave her sheltered world behind her and set off to discover the truth about her roots.

All seven of the authors in this series decided that each of our books would contain a love interest and an important first kiss. The character of Peter was everything that Luke wasn’t; he was kind and helpful and genuine. I wanted him to first be a friend to Sara—helping her maneuver her way around Germany—and then became more than that!

TWM: What was the most challenging scene to write?
KK: (Spoiler alert to those who have not read the book!) It was definitely challenging to write about the doctor’s revelation that he is Sara’s grandfather. He discloses some painful personal events about his wife’s death and about Sara’s mother. I really had to think hard about how much I wanted to write in this regard and how I would do it in a way that was sensitive to my teenage audience.

TWM: What was the most satisfying scene to write?
KK: I didn’t realize that Sara’s necklace would have the Hebrew word, tikvah, inscribed on it until I was in the middle of writing that chapter. Tikvah of course means “hope” which was the name of the town that Sara came from—a town that meant very little to her until then.

I loved writing that scene and loved that moment of uncovering something that I had not planned or thought about. It’s kind of magical as an author when that happens.

TWM: What inspires you to continue to write Holocaust-related material?
KK: Just when I think I’ve written the last Holocaust-related book I am going to write, another remarkable story comes to me and I feel compelled to write about that. I am realizing that there are still so many stories that I want to write—so much in this history that I think is important and has not been developed in books for young readers.

TWM: You certainly are prolific. What’s up next for you and do you have any plans to work with a U.S. publisher?
KK: I have a new book coming out next fall that is my first non-Holocaust book! It is a story about a young first nations girl who was taken to a residential school in the early 1900s. Here in Canada we have a terrible history involving the treatment of first nations children in residential schools. I am writing this book with a young aboriginal woman named Jenny Dupuis. This is her grandmother’s story and it is called I Am Not a Number.
After that, I return to a story about the Holocaust. I am writing a book that revolves around the trial of Oskar Groening, a former SS officer who was recently convicted of being complicit in the murder of 300,000 Jews in Auschwitz. Groening is 94 years old and is probably one of the last Nazi war criminals who will ever be brought to trial. The book is actually a true story about a young 19-year-old student who traveled to Germany to attend Groening’s trial and be a witness to this history.

All of my books are distributed in the U.S. (along with about twenty other countries), though I continue to work primarily with Canadian publishers. I am always open to the possibility of working with a U.S. publisher if the opportunity comes along!

For more on Kathy Kacer, visit her website.

I first had the pleasure of meeting Pia Wolcowitz at one of my Highlights Workshops, Writing Jewish Children’s Books. Here is my recent interview with her about her novel, The Nurse, published by Shaar Press in 2015.

The Whole Megillah )TWM): What prompted you to write this novel?
Pia Wolcowitz (PW): I was always drawn to medicine, even as a small child. While others were scared when visiting sick people, I was drawn to the mystery and puzzle of medicine. Like Rechy, I am in fact a Visiting Nurse, a Hasidic wife and mother with a Bais Yaakov education who went to nursing school. As I wrote about my journey, I fell under the spell of creative invention, a liberating spell.

Once my main character Rechy became fully formed—and that was very soon in the process—I was able to give her a life of her own and depart from the facts and people in my own life.

TWM: Are you a nurse yourself or did you base this on someone you know?
PW: I am a Visiting Nurse and I have great material. But at the end of the day, considering the federal HIPAA regulations or…the responsibility to maintain every patient’s confidentiality, I couldn’t go home and talk about any of this. Any of the challenges. [Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 ]

TWM: How long did it take you to write this novel?
PW: Six years. At first I wrote like a beginner, for ‘self expression.’ Then I wrote to work out some of my everyday experiences and of course that meant writing about my day job. Then I had to gain some kind of intelligent craft level and that took time. I’m a quick learner but there was—and is—always a lot to learn.

TWM: Did you need to conduct any research? If so, how?
PW: Yes, even though I am a nurse, about three years into the novel I needed to dig into alternative   medicine because alternative medicine creates a large plot line in my book. Obviously, the internet is the easiest and quickest way to research, but I clearly remember your very sound advice from the Highlights workshop I attended where you spoke about traveling to the locations where our story takes place and interviewing people who know about the things we write about. In fact, I contacted an Alternative Healer from the internet and consulted with him specifically about the Bach remedies and autoimmune diseases which appear in the book.

TWM: Did you ever consider a secular publisher? Why/why not?
PW: Sending this book into the hands of any publisher was a little scary.  A little like marrying off your child. So I decided to stay within my community as I had yet to grow myself as a writer too.

TWM: What was the most challenging scene to write? The most satisfying?
PW: The most satisfying and fun scenes in The Nurse were the scenes where people made shidduch (matchmaking) inquiries. Kind of a delicious fun to create those scenes.

The most challenging—and here is when I felt my growth as a writer—was writing closely from my experience but finding myself writing characters who were, on the other hand, nothing like their real life inspiration. I then had to live up to my obligation to story, to their story. I wasn’t writing for self expression anymore.

I will quote the great William Faulkner here and say that “I am not interested in facts.  I am interested in the truth.” I had to get to that place in order to go forward with this book.

TWM: Do you have more plans for this book?
PW: Although this book can be passed along to secular readers as it is written sensitively and smartly for all audiences, in fact, I am looking into creating a glossary.  

TWM: What’s next for you?
PW: I am working on a YA spin off, a prequel to The Nurse, with a main character who is a child in Romania during WWII. She is, in fact, the grandmother of the main (nurse) character in The Nurse. I also have begun an adult novel concerning that same woman who as an adult made her way to America.

TWM: I can’t wait to read them! Thanks so much, Pia. If any The Whole Megillah readers are interested in helping Pia with The Nurse‘s Yiddish/Hebrew glossary, please send me a note at barbarakrasner(at)att(dot)net.