Gary Schmidt
ReadKiddoRead Talks to Gary Schmidt
ReadKiddoRead: We’ve been getting some really great feedback, not just from authors that we’ve spoken to, but teachers and librarians and parents. We’ve been really pleased with the site so far. Just the basic premise: he put together this site to help all adults make really great choices in terms of books that will excite young readers, that are sort of guaranteed to excite young readers. His idea is the best way to get kids excited about reading is to give them a book that they’re going to love. He feels that The Wednesday Wars, which is reviewed on the site, fits right into that category of books that really speaks to kids and keeps them coming back for more. So I have a bunch of questions from him that I’m going to read off and then we can go from there.
Gary Schmidt: Okay!
ReadKiddoRead: So, as you know from People magazine, he loves The Wednesday Wars.
Gary Schmidt: That was really, really nice, that was out of the blue.
ReadKiddoRead: Yeah, did you see the magazine?
Gary Schmidt: Actually, just the other day someone came by with a page that they had taken out from it, and it was truly the first time I had seen it. But I had met all these people who said “Did you see this?” It was really, really funny.
ReadKiddoRead: That’s exciting.
Gary Schmidt: But now I actually have one over there on my shelf right now.
ReadKiddoRead: Well that’s great. So the first question is: do you have a particular inclination to bring history alive, or do you write about certain moments in the past that happen to interest you?
Gary Schmidt: I think both things are true. You are not going to be able to do the first without the second, where you have an intrinsic interest in a certain period of history, for whatever reason, and then that will help you make it alive or it will bring you there so that you are interested in it. So, ’67-’68, when the book is set, and ’68-’69 when the sequel is set, if it ever gets finished, are periods, you know, I’m in early adolescence and it’s huge, it’s a huge time. And what Holling is going through there was fascinating for me back then because we were living in a time when—and you don’t know you’re living in a transition time when you’re living in it—but it really was a transition time, when we lose the notion of heroes, that just dissipates, goes away, when we see a loss of our faith in government, which is happening in Vietnam before we get to Watergate, which is the sort of complete downfall. And all the kinds of things that we live with today, as though we’ve lived with them all along, really there is so much that can be traced back to those times in the late ‘60s. And, so, yes, I was really interested in that, and it does seem to me that if you’re going to write, and this is a historical period, that you need to figure out how it is that that historical period speaks to the contemporary world. So it’s not just, “let me entertain you by putting you back in World War I,” which I guess could work, but it has to be much more, “well, what is this character living in World War I learning, experiencing, doing, that is exactly, on some level, analogous to what you’re doing in 2008-09?” And there needs to be those connections, otherwise you’re looking at just kind of a period piece and going, “well, that’s a sort of ‘gee whiz’ thing.”
ReadKiddoRead: Right, but it doesn’t have the emotional connectivity.
Gary Schmidt: Exactly.
ReadKiddoRead: Were you a big reader as a kid? Were there books back then that really captured your imagination and made you an active reader?
Gary Schmidt: I was a big reader. My grandmother went with me weekly to the library, The Hicksville, no kidding, Public Library, and she was the one who got me my first library card, my first permanent library card, and I still have it. I read books like Freddy the Pig books, and fantasy. I loved fantasy. I don’t know if people read Freddy the Pig books anymore. The Doctor Doolittle books, I loved those. There was a set of books called My Bookhouse, that was put together in the ‘20s, that we had at the house. They were the great, sort of Victorian heroes. I read through all of those. I loved the Greek myths. I read every version I could possible read of all that. My favorite book in the world, still my favorite book, is a book called The Little World of Don Camillo, which I read exactly at Holling’s age, 7th grade. That is why the junior high is called Camillo Junior High.
ReadKiddoRead: Oh, that’s cool.
Gary Schmidt: It was after that book. Yes. But I did read a lot.
ReadKiddoRead: That’s great. Now were your parents as actively involved in getting you—you said your grandmother took you to the library—do you believe personally that grandparents, parents, adult mentors, have a responsibility?
Gary Schmidt: Absolutely. My parents were not so much there, but my grandmother really was. I never, never walked into her room—she lived with us—I never walked in there without seeing a stack of books, actually two stacks, one of which was “to go” and the other was “finished and to go back to the library.” I loved that about her, that even as she aged she kept her mind really open and she would say, “listen to this,” and it wasn’t even something that I could pick up because it was in the middle of a narrative, but it was just a beautiful sentence. She loved that, and it was important for me to see something to hear, something beautiful, and to see that writing could affect someone powerfully. That’s a big deal that somehow you can sit down at a desk and write something and someone that you don’t know can pick it up and suddenly it is one soul speaking to another soul and you are both affected. I think that I learned that by watching her. And, yes, I would say that, I don’t think we make readers if there are not readers in the house.
ReadKiddoRead: I completely agree. And with that, how about your own kids? I know that there are a lot of benefits, I mean.
Gary Schmidt: Well, they read a lot, not mine, because it’s just Dad’s job, after all, they wouldn’t read too much of mine. But I teach children’s literature and I teach young adult literature, and so I get a lot of books. Yes, we have more books in the house than are probably healthy.
ReadKiddoRead: Are all six kids pretty active readers, or, have you had to do anything sort of different or interesting to get one or more of them sort of committed to the idea of reading?
Gary Schmidt: It goes differently. We have to recognize that not all the kids are going to want to read the books that we want them to read, and sometimes the death knoll is, “kiddo, why don’t you try this one,” and then, you know, that they’re not going to try that one. But you do find interests, and, so, with one kid you find fantasy and put those on the table and hope that they’ll be found, or on the stairs as they’re going up. Another kid will be historical fiction, Ann Rinaldi for a long time, Rick Riordan right now for my youngest, and all fantasy for my next to youngest, and on and on. You find ways to make sure that they have access to the books and, it seems to me—and I’m left with this because I teach the thing, so I’m reading them anyway—to be able to say, well, I’ve just read this Riordan one, what do you think? And then you know what really works when a kiddo says to you, well, I just read this one, why don’t you try it and see what you think?
ReadKiddoRead: That’s got to be great, really.
Gary Schmidt: That’s fantastic. It’s wonderful. And then, of course, you better do it, you better follow-up on that.
ReadKiddoRead: Of course, and then you have to report back.
Gary Schmidt: Exactly.
ReadKiddoRead: Dutifully.
Gary Schmidt: To have conversations about art, to have conversations about writing, it’s amazing, and it really does set up not only a relationship but how they’ll read in the future.
ReadKiddoRead: If the interest doesn’t start at home, where does it start?
Gary Schmidt: Exactly.
ReadKiddoRead: So here’s a question, we’ve been reading a lot about how a lot of statistics say that boys get into reading later than girls, and not quite as voraciously as girls. How about in your own household?
Gary Schmidt: That’s probably true.
ReadKiddoRead: You think it’s a little bit harder to get the guys going?
Gary Schmidt: Yes, I think it is, and there is something in the culture—a sort of a very gendered sort of way of looking at reading. There is a kind of leap for a kid to be able to say, “yes, I’m going to sit here in this armchair and read this book.” For a boy to say that, somehow our culture sends messages that says, that’s odd. And not so much for a young girl, but for young boys it does send those messages. A kid has to get past those and has to have people who affirm those skills and those interests. Yes, that’s for the home, it’s huge. Or the great librarian or the great teacher who can also model that. One of the many reasons, and there are lots of reasons, why there needs to be more male teachers in the elementary school classroom where some of those stereotypes can be just blown away.
ReadKiddoRead: How long have you been a teacher at Calvin?
Gary Schmidt: At Calvin, this is year 24.
ReadKiddoRead: Wow!
Gary Schmidt: I can hardly believe it myself.
ReadKiddoRead: So you’re an expert in experiencing young people’s relationships with reading and writing.
Gary Schmidt: I’ve seen a lot of it.
ReadKiddoRead: Where do you think that most of your students get their encouragement when it comes to books they’re reading? Do you think it’s in the classroom, or do you think that, again, it starts at home with them?
Gary Schmidt: Yes, see, it’s sort of a skewed group for me because I teach in an English department, and, so, a lot of the kids who come to us have an enormous interest already. They are already readers. They become English majors because they are already fascinated with that. I think a lot of them have, in fact, gotten kudos and congrats and affirmations of writing, and their response to reading. You can always tell a good writer almost immediately because of the way they use language, and that all comes from reading. In a freshman writing class it’s so obvious within the first paper which kid has been a reader and which kid has not because they have facility with language that a non-reader won’t have.
ReadKiddoRead: That’s really interesting. Now, do your kids, do any of your kids have an aspiration at this point to be a writer?
Gary Schmidt: Oh yeah! I would say big time.
ReadKiddoRead: I guess having a dad who has been a successful author is encouraging.
Gary Schmidt: Well, and they’re good at it.
ReadKiddoRead: That’s fantastic.
Gary Schmidt: Two of my older daughters have worked in an independent children’s bookstore. One is now an acquisitions editor at a publisher here in Grand Rapids. The other will be, I hope, an editor. She’d like to go to Boston this summer to start that whole process. So, yes, there’s a lot of interest in doing that. Not so much with the two oldest guys, but maybe the third guy will certainly be a writer.
ReadKiddoRead: Well, we’ll see, it could always be a second career.
Gary Schmidt: Absolutely.
ReadKiddoRead: I mean, that’s what happened with Patterson.
Gary Schmidt: As is writing for most people. It’s so hard to make a living as a writer in America. You know, Hawthorne never did it, so you do end up trying to find other ways, writing in the cracks.
ReadKiddoRead: Sure. Your wife said in an interview that you get inspiration from your kids when writing your books or for the subject matter in your books. Do any particular stories or sources of inspiration stick out?
Gary Schmidt: I never use something that really happened to one of my kids in a book. That just feels, it’s almost like it’s not my story to tell, and it also sort of violates just privacy issues, it seems to me. Sort of like when a minister tells a story during a sermon about his kid, a kid that is sitting in the front pew and just dying, that kind of thing. I don’t do that. It is the case though that just because I’ve had six kids you do have some sensitivities to how children in the contemporary world are going to respond to certain situations. I think that’s kind of more what I take from the kids, and sometimes language issues to get the sort of contemporary feel, though most of my books are set back earlier. I think, actually, in some ways most writers with children really take their inspiration more from their own childhood than they do from the childhood of those immediately around them. There’s that great scene in a Johnny Depp movie, Finding Neverland, where they are in a party or a reception following the success of the first night of Peter Pan, and some of the adults turn to the child Peter and say, “oh, so you’re Peter Pan,” and the kid turns to Johnny Depp’s character, J. M. Barrie, and points at him and says, “no, no, he is.” And that’s really right. It’s exactly right. He is Peter. I mean all the, A.A. Milne is writing not really about Christopher Robin, but about his own childhood, and on and on and on. I do think that you learn a lot, take a lot from your own childhood. So Wednesday Wars is almost entirely from my own childhood.
ReadKiddoRead: Sure. That’s fascinating. How about the Newbery honor, how did that feel?
Gary Schmidt: That was great. It was completely unexpected. It was amazing.
ReadKiddoRead: It’s got to feel particularly wonderful that you were able to successfully communicate to the younger generation, that this book, that this award sort of--
Gary Schmidt: That affirms it!
ReadKiddoRead: Yes, that it not only was a book that adults appreciated and loved and wanted their kids to read, but the kids themselves embraced it in such a way.
Gary Schmidt: Yes, and that has been really, really very sweet, or the times when you get letters when they’re not letters that are forced. You know, the letters that every kid in the room has to do a project and they have to choose an author—who they hate by the time they’re done with this project—and so you get a letter like that. You get letters that just are excited and then the letter ends up by saying, “I’m doing my own writing now, I’d like to be a writer,” and you go, “wow, that’s pretty cool.” That is worth all the hard work and all the hours sitting at your desk, to get a letter like that.
ReadKiddoRead: I bet.
Gary Schmidt: Oh, it’s amazing. It’s amazing.
ReadKiddoRead: My last question is going to be the obvious one, and you sort of touched on it a little bit, but what’s next for you. What’s coming down the pike?
Gary Schmidt: Well, there’re two books going, we’ll see which one wins. The one is a companion to Wednesday Wars, and it follows a minor character for the ’68-’69 year, leading to the space shot, going to the moon. And the major characters make a cameo appearance, sort of like Albert Hitchcock at the beginning of one of his movies, for just a second at the front end of the book, but then it follows this other kid, and it’s sort of a darker book, it isn’t quite so ha-ha funny because it follows a kid who is sort of abused. We’ll see how that, if that beats out. The other one is a fantasy and it’s for younger kids, 4th, 5th grade, because I was speaking to that age group once and the kids finally said, well, do you write for our grades, and I say, “well, jeez, no I really, I write a little bit older.” They said, “well write something for us,” and I go, “okay, I will.” So, it’s a fantasy, because I don’t write fantasies, and I want to try and figure out how to do that. It’s about a kid who finds—right now it’s a ring, but it will probably be something else—that contains all the artistic ability of a whole culture which is not from this planet, and he becomes this amazing artist, but the art is otherworldly. And, so, we’ll see how it works out. Right now it’s just sort of in the initial stages. I’m having a blast with it because it’s so freeing in some level. But, we’ll see.
ReadKiddoRead: Wow! It sounds like you’ve got a way with connecting to the younger generation through your work and that’s why Jim started ReadKiddoRead. And I think that he’s had some great successes with his books for younger readers as well. So we’re just wanting to encourage the people that are doing it really well to keep doing it.
Gary Schmidt: Well thank you.
18:00 ReadKiddoRead: Take care, Gary!
18:01 Gary Schmidt: Bye-bye.
18:02 ReadKiddoRead: Bye.
ReadKiddoRead: We’ve been getting some really great feedback, not just from authors that we’ve spoken to, but teachers and librarians and parents. We’ve been really pleased with the site so far. Just the basic premise: he put together this site to help all adults make really great choices in terms of books that will excite young readers, that are sort of guaranteed to excite young readers. His idea is the best way to get kids excited about reading is to give them a book that they’re going to love. He feels that The Wednesday Wars, which is reviewed on the site, fits right into that category of books that really speaks to kids and keeps them coming back for more. So I have a bunch of questions from him that I’m going to read off and then we can go from there.
Gary Schmidt: Okay!
ReadKiddoRead: So, as you know from People magazine, he loves The Wednesday Wars.
Gary Schmidt: That was really, really nice, that was out of the blue.
ReadKiddoRead: Yeah, did you see the magazine?
Gary Schmidt: Actually, just the other day someone came by with a page that they had taken out from it, and it was truly the first time I had seen it. But I had met all these people who said “Did you see this?” It was really, really funny.
ReadKiddoRead: That’s exciting.
Gary Schmidt: But now I actually have one over there on my shelf right now.
ReadKiddoRead: Well that’s great. So the first question is: do you have a particular inclination to bring history alive, or do you write about certain moments in the past that happen to interest you?
Gary Schmidt: I think both things are true. You are not going to be able to do the first without the second, where you have an intrinsic interest in a certain period of history, for whatever reason, and then that will help you make it alive or it will bring you there so that you are interested in it. So, ’67-’68, when the book is set, and ’68-’69 when the sequel is set, if it ever gets finished, are periods, you know, I’m in early adolescence and it’s huge, it’s a huge time. And what Holling is going through there was fascinating for me back then because we were living in a time when—and you don’t know you’re living in a transition time when you’re living in it—but it really was a transition time, when we lose the notion of heroes, that just dissipates, goes away, when we see a loss of our faith in government, which is happening in Vietnam before we get to Watergate, which is the sort of complete downfall. And all the kinds of things that we live with today, as though we’ve lived with them all along, really there is so much that can be traced back to those times in the late ‘60s. And, so, yes, I was really interested in that, and it does seem to me that if you’re going to write, and this is a historical period, that you need to figure out how it is that that historical period speaks to the contemporary world. So it’s not just, “let me entertain you by putting you back in World War I,” which I guess could work, but it has to be much more, “well, what is this character living in World War I learning, experiencing, doing, that is exactly, on some level, analogous to what you’re doing in 2008-09?” And there needs to be those connections, otherwise you’re looking at just kind of a period piece and going, “well, that’s a sort of ‘gee whiz’ thing.”
ReadKiddoRead: Right, but it doesn’t have the emotional connectivity.
Gary Schmidt: Exactly.
ReadKiddoRead: Were you a big reader as a kid? Were there books back then that really captured your imagination and made you an active reader?
Gary Schmidt: I was a big reader. My grandmother went with me weekly to the library, The Hicksville, no kidding, Public Library, and she was the one who got me my first library card, my first permanent library card, and I still have it. I read books like Freddy the Pig books, and fantasy. I loved fantasy. I don’t know if people read Freddy the Pig books anymore. The Doctor Doolittle books, I loved those. There was a set of books called My Bookhouse, that was put together in the ‘20s, that we had at the house. They were the great, sort of Victorian heroes. I read through all of those. I loved the Greek myths. I read every version I could possible read of all that. My favorite book in the world, still my favorite book, is a book called The Little World of Don Camillo, which I read exactly at Holling’s age, 7th grade. That is why the junior high is called Camillo Junior High.
ReadKiddoRead: Oh, that’s cool.
Gary Schmidt: It was after that book. Yes. But I did read a lot.
ReadKiddoRead: That’s great. Now were your parents as actively involved in getting you—you said your grandmother took you to the library—do you believe personally that grandparents, parents, adult mentors, have a responsibility?
Gary Schmidt: Absolutely. My parents were not so much there, but my grandmother really was. I never, never walked into her room—she lived with us—I never walked in there without seeing a stack of books, actually two stacks, one of which was “to go” and the other was “finished and to go back to the library.” I loved that about her, that even as she aged she kept her mind really open and she would say, “listen to this,” and it wasn’t even something that I could pick up because it was in the middle of a narrative, but it was just a beautiful sentence. She loved that, and it was important for me to see something to hear, something beautiful, and to see that writing could affect someone powerfully. That’s a big deal that somehow you can sit down at a desk and write something and someone that you don’t know can pick it up and suddenly it is one soul speaking to another soul and you are both affected. I think that I learned that by watching her. And, yes, I would say that, I don’t think we make readers if there are not readers in the house.
ReadKiddoRead: I completely agree. And with that, how about your own kids? I know that there are a lot of benefits, I mean.
Gary Schmidt: Well, they read a lot, not mine, because it’s just Dad’s job, after all, they wouldn’t read too much of mine. But I teach children’s literature and I teach young adult literature, and so I get a lot of books. Yes, we have more books in the house than are probably healthy.
ReadKiddoRead: Are all six kids pretty active readers, or, have you had to do anything sort of different or interesting to get one or more of them sort of committed to the idea of reading?
Gary Schmidt: It goes differently. We have to recognize that not all the kids are going to want to read the books that we want them to read, and sometimes the death knoll is, “kiddo, why don’t you try this one,” and then, you know, that they’re not going to try that one. But you do find interests, and, so, with one kid you find fantasy and put those on the table and hope that they’ll be found, or on the stairs as they’re going up. Another kid will be historical fiction, Ann Rinaldi for a long time, Rick Riordan right now for my youngest, and all fantasy for my next to youngest, and on and on. You find ways to make sure that they have access to the books and, it seems to me—and I’m left with this because I teach the thing, so I’m reading them anyway—to be able to say, well, I’ve just read this Riordan one, what do you think? And then you know what really works when a kiddo says to you, well, I just read this one, why don’t you try it and see what you think?
ReadKiddoRead: That’s got to be great, really.
Gary Schmidt: That’s fantastic. It’s wonderful. And then, of course, you better do it, you better follow-up on that.
ReadKiddoRead: Of course, and then you have to report back.
Gary Schmidt: Exactly.
ReadKiddoRead: Dutifully.
Gary Schmidt: To have conversations about art, to have conversations about writing, it’s amazing, and it really does set up not only a relationship but how they’ll read in the future.
ReadKiddoRead: If the interest doesn’t start at home, where does it start?
Gary Schmidt: Exactly.
ReadKiddoRead: So here’s a question, we’ve been reading a lot about how a lot of statistics say that boys get into reading later than girls, and not quite as voraciously as girls. How about in your own household?
Gary Schmidt: That’s probably true.
ReadKiddoRead: You think it’s a little bit harder to get the guys going?
Gary Schmidt: Yes, I think it is, and there is something in the culture—a sort of a very gendered sort of way of looking at reading. There is a kind of leap for a kid to be able to say, “yes, I’m going to sit here in this armchair and read this book.” For a boy to say that, somehow our culture sends messages that says, that’s odd. And not so much for a young girl, but for young boys it does send those messages. A kid has to get past those and has to have people who affirm those skills and those interests. Yes, that’s for the home, it’s huge. Or the great librarian or the great teacher who can also model that. One of the many reasons, and there are lots of reasons, why there needs to be more male teachers in the elementary school classroom where some of those stereotypes can be just blown away.
ReadKiddoRead: How long have you been a teacher at Calvin?
Gary Schmidt: At Calvin, this is year 24.
ReadKiddoRead: Wow!
Gary Schmidt: I can hardly believe it myself.
ReadKiddoRead: So you’re an expert in experiencing young people’s relationships with reading and writing.
Gary Schmidt: I’ve seen a lot of it.
ReadKiddoRead: Where do you think that most of your students get their encouragement when it comes to books they’re reading? Do you think it’s in the classroom, or do you think that, again, it starts at home with them?
Gary Schmidt: Yes, see, it’s sort of a skewed group for me because I teach in an English department, and, so, a lot of the kids who come to us have an enormous interest already. They are already readers. They become English majors because they are already fascinated with that. I think a lot of them have, in fact, gotten kudos and congrats and affirmations of writing, and their response to reading. You can always tell a good writer almost immediately because of the way they use language, and that all comes from reading. In a freshman writing class it’s so obvious within the first paper which kid has been a reader and which kid has not because they have facility with language that a non-reader won’t have.
ReadKiddoRead: That’s really interesting. Now, do your kids, do any of your kids have an aspiration at this point to be a writer?
Gary Schmidt: Oh yeah! I would say big time.
ReadKiddoRead: I guess having a dad who has been a successful author is encouraging.
Gary Schmidt: Well, and they’re good at it.
ReadKiddoRead: That’s fantastic.
Gary Schmidt: Two of my older daughters have worked in an independent children’s bookstore. One is now an acquisitions editor at a publisher here in Grand Rapids. The other will be, I hope, an editor. She’d like to go to Boston this summer to start that whole process. So, yes, there’s a lot of interest in doing that. Not so much with the two oldest guys, but maybe the third guy will certainly be a writer.
ReadKiddoRead: Well, we’ll see, it could always be a second career.
Gary Schmidt: Absolutely.
ReadKiddoRead: I mean, that’s what happened with Patterson.
Gary Schmidt: As is writing for most people. It’s so hard to make a living as a writer in America. You know, Hawthorne never did it, so you do end up trying to find other ways, writing in the cracks.
ReadKiddoRead: Sure. Your wife said in an interview that you get inspiration from your kids when writing your books or for the subject matter in your books. Do any particular stories or sources of inspiration stick out?
Gary Schmidt: I never use something that really happened to one of my kids in a book. That just feels, it’s almost like it’s not my story to tell, and it also sort of violates just privacy issues, it seems to me. Sort of like when a minister tells a story during a sermon about his kid, a kid that is sitting in the front pew and just dying, that kind of thing. I don’t do that. It is the case though that just because I’ve had six kids you do have some sensitivities to how children in the contemporary world are going to respond to certain situations. I think that’s kind of more what I take from the kids, and sometimes language issues to get the sort of contemporary feel, though most of my books are set back earlier. I think, actually, in some ways most writers with children really take their inspiration more from their own childhood than they do from the childhood of those immediately around them. There’s that great scene in a Johnny Depp movie, Finding Neverland, where they are in a party or a reception following the success of the first night of Peter Pan, and some of the adults turn to the child Peter and say, “oh, so you’re Peter Pan,” and the kid turns to Johnny Depp’s character, J. M. Barrie, and points at him and says, “no, no, he is.” And that’s really right. It’s exactly right. He is Peter. I mean all the, A.A. Milne is writing not really about Christopher Robin, but about his own childhood, and on and on and on. I do think that you learn a lot, take a lot from your own childhood. So Wednesday Wars is almost entirely from my own childhood.
ReadKiddoRead: Sure. That’s fascinating. How about the Newbery honor, how did that feel?
Gary Schmidt: That was great. It was completely unexpected. It was amazing.
ReadKiddoRead: It’s got to feel particularly wonderful that you were able to successfully communicate to the younger generation, that this book, that this award sort of--
Gary Schmidt: That affirms it!
ReadKiddoRead: Yes, that it not only was a book that adults appreciated and loved and wanted their kids to read, but the kids themselves embraced it in such a way.
Gary Schmidt: Yes, and that has been really, really very sweet, or the times when you get letters when they’re not letters that are forced. You know, the letters that every kid in the room has to do a project and they have to choose an author—who they hate by the time they’re done with this project—and so you get a letter like that. You get letters that just are excited and then the letter ends up by saying, “I’m doing my own writing now, I’d like to be a writer,” and you go, “wow, that’s pretty cool.” That is worth all the hard work and all the hours sitting at your desk, to get a letter like that.
ReadKiddoRead: I bet.
Gary Schmidt: Oh, it’s amazing. It’s amazing.
ReadKiddoRead: My last question is going to be the obvious one, and you sort of touched on it a little bit, but what’s next for you. What’s coming down the pike?
Gary Schmidt: Well, there’re two books going, we’ll see which one wins. The one is a companion to Wednesday Wars, and it follows a minor character for the ’68-’69 year, leading to the space shot, going to the moon. And the major characters make a cameo appearance, sort of like Albert Hitchcock at the beginning of one of his movies, for just a second at the front end of the book, but then it follows this other kid, and it’s sort of a darker book, it isn’t quite so ha-ha funny because it follows a kid who is sort of abused. We’ll see how that, if that beats out. The other one is a fantasy and it’s for younger kids, 4th, 5th grade, because I was speaking to that age group once and the kids finally said, well, do you write for our grades, and I say, “well, jeez, no I really, I write a little bit older.” They said, “well write something for us,” and I go, “okay, I will.” So, it’s a fantasy, because I don’t write fantasies, and I want to try and figure out how to do that. It’s about a kid who finds—right now it’s a ring, but it will probably be something else—that contains all the artistic ability of a whole culture which is not from this planet, and he becomes this amazing artist, but the art is otherworldly. And, so, we’ll see how it works out. Right now it’s just sort of in the initial stages. I’m having a blast with it because it’s so freeing in some level. But, we’ll see.
ReadKiddoRead: Wow! It sounds like you’ve got a way with connecting to the younger generation through your work and that’s why Jim started ReadKiddoRead. And I think that he’s had some great successes with his books for younger readers as well. So we’re just wanting to encourage the people that are doing it really well to keep doing it.
Gary Schmidt: Well thank you.
18:00 ReadKiddoRead: Take care, Gary!
18:01 Gary Schmidt: Bye-bye.
18:02 ReadKiddoRead: Bye.
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