Look what I discovered in my mailbox: Little Red. Yes, the determined heroine featured in Bethan Woolvin's delightful picture book has journeyed over the pond, halfway across a continent, and into a little mailbox in South Texas. Welcome to Texas Little Red!

Update: Little Red will get a thorough Scotchgard fabric treatment to protect her from multiple tiny hands. Yes, she can take on wolves. But with a roomful of excited youngsters, Little Red requires additional protection.  Soon she will be ready to face even a Texas coyote!  

 Meet the artist and learn more about her  in this informative interview.

Here is Bethan displaying some of her creations. Can you spot the Little Red doll? She's the one keeping an eye on the table's contents. Nothing escapes her notice. If you can't manage at trip to England for this sale, you can view a selection of Woolvin's work here. Several of her prints are available for online purchase.

Bethan's books feature a wickedly sharp sense of humor. Check out her Twitter feed for a wry take her last name, her interactions with her readers, and comments about her books. Classroom visits with Bethan must be ever-so-fun!
​Pro Tip: Bethan is available for Skype visits with student groups.

​In addition to vividly portaying Miles' inner struggles, Reynolds does a brilliant job of capturing the flavor and charm of the Brooklyn community. I especially enjoyed the dialog overheard when stopping by the barbershop, visiting the bodega, and hanging around the card table.
Reynolds shows his writing chops not only with character development but with a knockout action scene near the book's conclusion. He delivers the goods with heart-pounding intensity. That action left me breathless.
You've done it again, Mr. Reynolds. Another stellar novel to add to your expanding constellation of Middle Grade and YA hits.

Your book covers a lot of territory: from impoverished neighborhoods in the Dominican Republic to middle class privilege in Minneapolis.  It also shifts between the present and the past. How did you plan the composition of your book? Did you use some type of visual organizer?
Yep, my most important project management tool is a good ol’ calendar. I write down what happens each day for a character over the span of a story. In this case I also needed to include a real baseball schedule for the teams Rafael is playing on. I feel it adds verisimilitude if I’m working from a real schedule.
This was more complicated for Rafael’s half of the story because it takes place over years, but I had to think about the DR baseball season, major holidays, school year, and even the sugar season. And I had to think about his age and where a boy would be in the process, coming up as a baseball player.
In terms of plot I use a skeletal outline for each character, showing their setbacks and successes. It is a zigzag, not an arc… ups and downs.

How did Rafael and Maya develop? Was each character’s story initially created separately or did they evolve together during the writing process?
I went back and forth between the two as I wrote, but was usually immersed in one or the other. I knew from the start it was a dual narrative, and where they would first intersect, but bringing them back together in an interesting way took some creativity.

I was intrigued with the first sentence in your acknowledgments: “It is audacious to write outside one’s own cultural experience.”  I have listened to several authors speak on this topic and they mentioned that in addition to the extensive research  that is required when writing about other cultures,  the “devil is in the details.” Each noted specific changes that were made to the manuscript after it was read and vetted by those with first-hand knowledge of the culture.  Were there elements which required modifying after others read drafts of your book? 
Yes, I got feedback from several readers from the DR and am very grateful for their input. 
One of the early “oops” moments was that I kept having Rafael’s family sitting down for supper at the end of the day, before being reminded that the big meal of the day in the D.R. is lunch and that was when they would have their family talks.
Another change was, it is very easy for North Americans to fall back on nuclear family as the basic unit for writing about family, and that’s not true for most of the world… the DR has a much more expansive idea of family, where uncles and aunts and grandparents and cousins are part of your daily life. It’s hard to manage a large cast of characters, but realizing that helped me shape the character of Rafael’s family and contrast him more with his friends.

I notice that you infuse the text with Spanish words and phrases, often in italics, which are not translated into English. What influenced your decision to include Spanish words and phrases? 
I wanted a sprinkling of Spanish to add color and remind readers that these characters are actually not speaking English; I especially used words that show a little slang and baseball terminology. That was a lot of fun to do. I spent pretty much the whole time I was writing it actively learning Spanish.

Sideline Observation: There seems to be an abundance of children’s authors living in Minnesota. Is there something in the water? Do the long winters provide ample writing time?  Is it the state’s vibrant literary community? What is it about Minnesota?
It’s a great state to be a writer in any genre, and I think it’s also a great state to be a visual artist, filmmaker, musician, actor… anyone connected to the arts. There’s a lot of support for the arts here, from the community and from the state government. I want to mention that specifically because the Minnesota State Arts Board helped fund the writing of this book, through an artist initiative grant.
But it’s also a great culture for the arts, and I think it’s one where people lift each other up and support each other. We turn out for each other’s events, talk up each other’s books, read each other’s drafts… it’s a wonderful community and I don’t think I’d have done much without them.

I had a few questions after reading Love, Ish. Author Karen Rivers graciously took the time to provide answers. Thanks Karen.

Title
This title is brilliant! How did it come about?  Was the title part of your original idea, did it evolve as you wrote, or was it decided after you completed the manuscript?
The title was part of the original idea.  I knew the character would be Mischa, nicknamed “Ish”, and that the book was going to be about Mars and about how she learns about love.   It’s such a great tween/teen suffix.  They don’t have to feel love, the can feel love-ish.   So it was both a play on words, and obviously, her name.  

Dreams
They are such an important part of the story. I have never been much of a dreamer, but while reading this book I had one of the most vivid dreams that I can recall experiencing. It was about a deceased family member.  Do you dream? If so, do your dreams figure into your writing?
I definitely dream although I’m not sure my dreams figure into my writing very much.  The dreaming part of this book was inspired by a TV show that I saw many years ago.  It was either a medical drama or a legal drama, and it was about a woman whose reality was sub-par.  I can’t remember what the circumstances were, exactly, but I remember that she was lonely and depressed.  But at night, when she fell asleep, she entered an alternate reality.  Her dreams flowed like a continuous story in which she was happily married, kids, stability, joy.   (The plot of the episode was that she wanted to pay a doctor to KEEP her asleep so she could exist in this better, alternate reality.)  Technicalities aside, I was fascinated by this idea of realistic, somewhat continuous dreams.  In the show, I believe they were trying to answer the question:  If you perceive something as being “real”, does it matter if it is or not?   Which became part of the question in LOVE, ISH.  In dreams, if we’re lucky, we can be anyone, we can do things that are outside of the confines of reality, we can fly.

Chemo
Chemotherapy touches many lives, both those undergoing treatment and those close to the individual receiving treatment. Your descriptions of chemo are so painful, poignant, and true-to-life. The rawness was hard for me to read. How did you prepare for writing the chemo sequences?
Quite a long time ago, my son underwent some tests for what doctors thought that might be a heart defect.  (It wasn’t.) For one of those tests, we had to wait in a shared waiting room outside a pediatric chemo room.   I was struck by it, both the absolute normalcy of what was going on in there – video games abounded – and by the kids themselves.  I’ve had a few friends go through chemo (mostly as adults) and I knit their stories together with what I saw in the hospital that day to come up with Ish’s experience.   I hope that I got it right.  

Names
Buzz Aldrin. Brussels Sprout. Lunch Island. etc
The names in the story are intriguing. Do you maintain a list of interesting names/words for future stories or are the names that you use very specific to one particular story?
I SHOULD maintain a list, but instead I store things in my brain which become useful later.  For example, many years ago I was reading a book about Mars with my stepson, and we stumbled on the word Nirgal, meaning “Death Star” that was apparently (or according to this particular book) the Mayan word for Mars.   I didn’t know I was going to use it later, but it’s something that I always remembered.   The rest of the names were very specific to this story, I created them particularly for this book in the moment of writing it.  The parrot’s name made a few changes, but Buzz Aldrin is a terrific name for a parrot, don’t you think?  It fit the best.  Sometimes you have to try a few things on for size, but when it’s right, you feel it.

“Don’t touch me. No one touch me.”
What moments in your experience inspired you to include this pivotal scene?
Ah, this is a tough one to answer.  But without giving too much away, I think we’ve all experienced moments in our lives of such intense emotion that adding just one more feeling of any type –  even if it’s well-meaning and genuine sympathy – feels like it might break us into pieces.   When something happens that’s too much for us in the moment, we have to step away from ourselves before we can process kindness or compassion, or – even harder – someone else’s shock at what has happened.   Maybe it’s a bit like having to put on your own oxygen mask before you help someone else.  In that particular scene, Ish had to find her mask.  Everyone else needed something from her right away that she didn’t have available to give.  ​