In Their Own Words:
Interviews with Children's and YA
Authors & Illustrators
Klause - Kvasnosky
Sample these Author Profiles and Stories Behind the Stories, then follow the links to the full interviews.
"The Amoeba, Aiden's friends in BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE were based on my group of friends known as The Blob. We used to go to free rock concerts in the park, and some of us would talk our way in free to pay concerts by flirting with the bouncers."
— on BLOOD AND CHOCOLATE (YA)
Author Update: Annette Curtis Klause
"I don't think it's true that all children choose their own friends. It certainly wasn't always the case for me. I began to wonder why some friends behaved the way they did --how a person could be so kind and cruel at the same time. And why? I started writing that night."
— on LESSONS FROM A DEAD GIRL (YA)
"I was working nights and weekends at the Cornell University library when I wrote it, and certainly the library aspect comes from that, along with memories of other school and public libraries... But I'm really not sure about the lion."
—on LIBRARY LION (PB)
"I write and then read out loud what I've written until it sounds right to me just like composers fiddle with a score until the dissonance is in the right place."
— on BOY GIRL BOY (YA)
"I think Ana, in A PLACE TO CALL HOME was most like
me as a teen — awkward, shy, deeply insecure. But Ana is strong, too — a
survivor, and I think I am as well."
— on A PLACE TO CALL HOME (MG)
"Above all I wanted to write a first person survivor's story that I wouldn't be embarrassed to have an actual teenager with cancer read."
—on SIDE EFFECTS (YA)
"It really helped my writing to work on something for
very young readers, forced me to focus on the essentials."
— on YOGA CLASS (PB)
author update: Uma Krishnaswami
"My grandmother's mother traveled on the trail as a little girl, and my grandmother grew up to homestead on the eastern Oregon plains—a very hard life!"
— on I’M SORRY, ALMIRA ANN (CB)
"Stephanie explained they had bought it as a universal story of loss and grief and putting a community back together...not just the history of one flood."
— on RIVER FRIENDLY, RIVER WILD (PB)
author update: Jane Kurtz
“As the middle of five children, I have experience being led around by an imaginative but bossy older sister and I took the role of the bossy older sister to my younger sibs. This is probably why the push and pull of sibling rivalry fascinates me.”
—on ZELDA AND IVY (PB)