Hiaasen

James Patterson Talks to Carl Hiaasen


James Patterson: Carl—welcome to ReadKiddoRead. So what got you into writing for kids?

Carl Hiaasen: Oh, man. It was an editor who called me, I forgot which publishing house, not my publishing house –but he thought of writing a story, writing a novel for kids and my reply was, “You’ve obviously haven’t read any of my adult novels, asking me that question.” And she said, “No, think about it, you’ll still have the same smart-aleck attitude and the same irreverence. Kids dig that and you get some of the themes that you write about in the adult novels, certainly, in kids’ novels.” I sort of laughed it off but I talked to my agent about it and she said, “Well, you might want to try this, just for something new to do, something fun.” And I think the main thing with me was, I had kids, my own family, my extended family who are all 11, 12, 13, and my step-son, my nephew and my nieces… I couldn’t really show them the grown up novels. So I thought, at least I could write something that I can still feel okay about giving them to read. It was just sort of a way to satisfy my own family members who want the kids to read my books, but I just don’t think they’re ready yet.

JP: How old are Quinn and Ryan now?

Carl Hiaasen: Well, Quinn is eight and Ryan is seventeen.

JP: Okay.

Carl Hiaasen: So he’s well equipped to handle the adult novel. But Quinn is still on the other stuff and Quinn reads veraciously.

JP: Oh, good, that’s good.

Carl Hiaasen: He reads like crazy. Your son is ten?

JP: Yeah, Jack is ten. Now, did Quinn get into books naturally or did you help him along?

Carl Hiaasen: Well, I don’t know, he’s always been a reader, we’ve been lucky like that. I think we helped him along by just giving him as many books as he wants and giving him reading time every night. And the teachers here are good enough about that and we try to, you know, not steer him one way or the other but giving him a variety of options.

JP: Right. Have you helped him to take out books at times?

Carl Hiaasen: Oh, certainly, like last night, as a matter of fact, we were looking into the Scholastic catalog that comes in to the schools and there’re hundreds and hundreds of books for various ages. So we go through his age group and what he’d be interested in and what he has read in the past by a certain author. If he comes upon an author that he likes, he’s very interested in reading everything that he or she has written.

JP: We all do that.

Carl Hiaasen: Yeah. But I think it is very good to start young. I mean it is easy to bail out.

JP: First of all, learning how to read is not fun for most kids; it’s kind of boring and the early stuff that they get is kind of boring, beneath their intelligence. Then a lot of times they keep feeding books to the kids, but they’re thinking, “I don’t really get it.”
My Jack, he’s a smart kid but he didn’t particularly like to read. At eight, I went out and picked out a dozen or so books that would work—this was after talking to people at Little, Brown, and really trying to figure out what books really turn kids on, generally speaking. And the first time, he would say, “Do I have to?” The second summer he said, “Okay.” And the third time he was saying, “Sure, absolutely.” This past summer he read twelve books.

Carl Hiaasen: That’s a great thing.

JP: So he’s into it now.

Carl Hiaasen: When it kicks in and the switch goes off, you’ll start wanting to read everything.

JP: So much of it is that they have to get some experiences -- to a lot of kids, there are millions of kids in this country who’ve never read a book they’ve liked.

Carl Hiaasen: Yes, yes and they feel like reading is a compulsory duty inflicted on them by their teachers or their parents instead of -- and we make field trips of going to the bookstore. We have a great independent bookstore here in Vero Beach.

JP: I know it well—that’s a terrific store.

Carl Hiaasen: And we just make a trip of going in there and letting him wander. And of course make sure he’s in the section that’s at his level of reading or higher. But beyond that it’s a fun place to go.

JP: Yeah, that’s a very stimulating store.

Carl Hiaasen: And I mean, in your case, is Jack, I mean is he sort of aware and hip to what you do?

JP: Yeah, he knows. He gets it.

Carl Hiaasen: But I mean, he understands it –what Dad’s work gets like. I mean, Quinn has a sort of natural curiosity about when I disappear into the office and what comes out of that day or that whole process. And I mean he’s at an age where it interests him because they are doing a little bit of creative writing in school.

JP: Well, Jack has written three novels already. The first one he wrote, I think he was seven when he wrote it, Death is Like a Butterfly Catcher. Butterfly Catcher gets on a plane, travels half way around the world, doesn’t catch a butterfly, gets on a boat travels another half of the way around the world, doesn’t catch a butterfly, gets on a train, Jack loves trains, catches the butterfly, steps off the train, isn’t looking, gets hit by another train, death of the Butterfly Catcher, butterfly flies away.

Carl Hiaasen: That was pretty ambitious.

JP: I thought it was pretty cool. He rejects it now as a minor work from his early days. Carl Hiaasen: Well, I mean obviously he has a love of language and a love of words and the craft, and the reading has got to be a part of that. I mean, I don’t know about you, but I don’t know many writers who didn’t start writing when they were very, fairly young, even just for themselves. But also were voracious readers.

JP: Tragically, I wasn’t, which is one of the reasons I’m interested in this whole project. It is kind of weird because my parents were both readers, my mother was a teacher, maybe that worked against me, I don’t know. But I was more “let’s go out and play ball” than read. And I think, a lot of it was just the books we got in the Catholic school just didn’t turn me on. Where I picked it up was – I worked my way through college, I worked in a mental hospital and I had a lot of late night shifts and stuff, so I just started reading like crazy. And it wasn’t popular stuff, stuff that was just kind of out there, but it opened my mind up. And that’s when I fell in love with it and started scribbling right around then, too.

Carl Hiaasen: I mean, it’s like a switch that goes off and it’s so difficult now because, you know, when I go in to schools and talk to classes and things—the competition for the attention of a child so much more intense than it was when I was a kid. And even with my grown son, I have a son who is thirty-six and even when he was young, there was no internet, there were minimal electronic games, there was no X-box and no Wii and there was only a few TV stations. It sounds like the dark ages but it simply there wasn’t the grab for every hour of the kid’s time that there is today.

JP: Any tricks or things that you found that seem to work with kids as you go in to talk in to classes in school?

Carl Hiaasen: I think for some of them the process of starting with a blank sheet of paper or a blank stack of paper and turning it into a story is very mysterious. They know what a book is, they can hold it in their hands but the idea that those pages were once blank in the authors mind is very—they are very curious about it. So I talk about the process that’s sort of locking yourself up and just turning your imagination free. The other thing, I mean, obviously, I take a lot of questions but they are very interested in characters, almost more than the story and they want to know if they’re talking about Hoot or Flush, where a certain character came from and did I go through the same experience when I was a kid.

JP: Did you?

Carl Hiaasen: In some cases yeah, certainly in Hoot, that was a page out of my childhood and to some degree Flush, as well, and so I can talk about the setting. I can talk about the characters that are sort of running though those books because they were bits and pieces of my own childhood and that seems to really interest them and get them talking and also to get them thinking about their own circle of friends and their own lives and their own world and the possibility of writing about that.

JP: I talked to Jeff Kinney and he actually has a book coming out, Do It Yourself, which is basically encouraging kids to do their own cartoons like his Wimpy Kid books.

Carl Hiaasen: Well, that’s cool.

JP: Yeah, it is. He fills half the book with his own stuff and them he sort of taunts them to beat his cartoon. He’ll give the same pictures but they can fill in their own captions. And some of them are just blank throughout, make it up yourself. I think it’s the same principle you’re talking about now.

Carl Hiaasen: Well, I think fun is essential to the whole process of getting kids interested and getting them to be readers as they have to look at it as being fun and I mean, I don’t know, I talk about this sometimes, the variety of novels and nonfiction available to kids today is so much greater that it was when I was starting to read. I mean, in my case it was the Hardy Boys and I read everything, I read all the Hardy Boys in about a year. And you know, there were biographies, I’d read about Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio that sort of thing and then they’d write for kids. You didn’t have a whole bookstore just for kids. I mean if you could walk in a place like that. My eyes would have fallen of my head if I would have had those opportunities when I was a kid. So the great thing is it’s just so many more ways they could go to find books that are fun for them. They aren’t sort of relegated to a genre or a category or a particular area that they have to read. There are just tons and tons of stuff out there.

JP: One of the things that I am trying to raise awareness a little bit is with parents and grandparents… most mothers are saying, “I’ve got to give vegetables to these kids,” but they don’t think that it is their job to go find books for their kids. And when the kids do want to go to the stores, it’s kind of overwhelming, if they’re not that familiar. They don’t know where to start.

Carl Hiaasen: I think to some extent the internet can be helpful. There are ways of sort of exploring what’s out there for your kids without just walking in blind and snatching things off the shelves. I think you have to know your child very well, and that’s important too. You have to know what their interests are, sort of what their patience level is; how long can they sit and read a book without getting antsy and reaching for their Gameboy. I mean every kid is different and that’s where the parents have to be involved, you can’t, just can’t put a stack of books in front of them.

JP: I do find now though that there are some books that obviously don’t work with everyone, but there are a lot of kids say, “That was a cool one.” Like I remember you and your son were involved with reading Eragon. When I read it, I said, “This kid really has a gift for story telling.”

Carl Hiaasen: Oh, yes.

JP: And kids obviously responded the same way.

Carl Hiaasen: Oh, in a huge way. And you’re right, there are some books that just have the instant hook. I mean the Harry Potter books, which transcend a kid’s genre. But in any case, even when Ryan was too young to read those books, we would read them together. In other words lie in bed and I would read the book aloud to him, and when he got older he would go back and re-read them himself.

JP: She knows how to tell a story, and involve you with the characters. I had the same response with to the Tolkien stuff when I was younger.

Carl Hiaasen: Yes. I mean in no sense those books are going to be cross-generational as Tolkien has done. You’ll just going to have kids reading those books forever. And you hit it on right on the head, it’s the story telling, I think something almost primal in us, going back to the days sitting around the cave, there was the one guy who would…

JP: Who would sit back and write.

Carl Hiaasen: …and tell you what happened that day, and when it was more than oral craft, and the raconteur, everyone would sit down and listen to him. And I think you have writers like that where you could almost see the kids eyes light up, as you get in the five pages of the book, you can almost sit up a little bit…

JP: Yes. I’m a big fan of that, not for all books but certainly the ones that get kids. Just to get a book or two under their belts so they can say, “That was cool. I like that.”

Carl Hiaasen: You’ve gotten mail like this too and it’s probably the most, I think, rewarding part of what we do, when you get a letter from a parent who says, “I could not -– my kid would not read anything, I couldn’t get them to read the back of a cereal box and then finally someone gave them your book and now he goes to the library every week and he checks out a new one.”

JP: Yeah, absolutely, and that’s what got me into this. A little bit of it was Jack but a bigger part of it was people coming up to me on book tours and events and saying, “You got my kid reading.” Several times people have tears in their eyes. It’s very emotional for people.

Carl Hiaasen: And it is the greatest feeling for an author that has nothing to do with the commercial success or anything of what we do, it’s just that you’ve touched a life and the way that life is touched can make a difference of how that kid grows up and what he becomes.

JP: Yes. Well, I think that’s why the parents are so emotional because they know if kids don’t read, it’s not a good start.

Carl Hiaasen: No, it isn’t a good start and you’re already behind the eight ball before you’ve even sort of tossed that in the real world, you’ve got two strikes against you.

JP: Right. Well, that’s what we’re going to try to do with this site is, you know, recommend not a ton of books, but hopefully ones that will get kids going, “I read a couple of books that I loved.” Which is, of course, why we have Flush on there.

Carl Hiaasen: I don’t know about you, I find it one of the great, sad ironies of what I do is the busier I am, the less I have to read for pleasure, less time I have to read for pleasure. And I do try to cut out some time everyday, to sit with Quinn when he’s reading or even just lie in bed and read next to him. I don’t know if you and Jack have --

JP: Yeah, I know, we do. Especially in the summer; that sort of what I’ve done with him, that is, the last few summers, really try to concentrate more on him, on pretty much every day reading.

Carl Hiaasen: And I think about, you know, my mom and dad were big readers and they’ve encouraged us to read but the way they did it, it wasn’t mandatory. It was, this is important, this is fun, and there were always books in the house. Always. And my grandfather as well, and he didn’t even learn English till I think he was 13 or 14, but to him there was nothing more treasured and more valuable than book and it was just something we were brought up with. All of us, and we’re trying to sort of create the same atmosphere, the idea that it’s not only fun but it’s available, look around, pick out something, give it a try. Let’s not crack the whip.

JP: No, no… and I am sure you meet a lot of people who say, my wife’s the reader, we read too much at work. You know that this is somebody who has had reading be a chore for them.

Carl Hiaasen: Right.

JP: They’ve never discovered that it can be better than movies.

Carl Hiaasen: Or those who would be buying a book for themselves, and an audio book for dad because he’s not a big reader but he’s driving a lot. You know there is something about whether you’re comfortable or not sitting down with a book in your lap. And it’s something that if you can get your son or daughter to feel comfortable at the age that Jack is or Quinn is, but it is just a natural part of their life like brushing their teeth. They’re going to have a lot easier road through school and through life.

JP: Absolutely and it’s going to be a joy in their life forever. And we’re still at the point where as mediums go, books are the place where you’re more likely to meet somebody who thinks differently than you, and that’s great. Movies and TV have not evolved to that state where books are already.

Carl Hiaasen: No, I mean it’s about opening doors. It’s about, you know -- the other night Quinn put down a Hardy Boys book and he picked up a book written for kids about Greek culture because his mother was born in Athens and he did this on his own. And I went there and saying, “What happened to Frank and Joe Hardy?” He goes, “I wanted to read this one tonight.” And so you’re just thrilled, I mean, that’s probably one of the last things that I would have picked up at that age to read!

JP: Jack dragged us to Lithuania this summer because I have some Lithuanian in me. You know, what you’ve mentioned before about getting parents and kids reading the same book and then being able to talk about it, is a great thing. I mean, we obviously do that occasionally with the movies, but not so much with books.

Carl Hiaasen: I’ve found that going into classes, and maybe you have this experience talking to kids, but the kids most comfortable reading are the most comfortable writing. Whether it’s an essay for the class, whether it’s a book report, whatever it is they don’t feel so intimidated about the writing assignments that they’re starting to get now. And they feel like they understand that conversion of a thought in your head to a sentence on a page.

JP: Yeah, I think that’s absolutely true. How’s your golf? My sister just sent over your book. She’s over in the other side of Florida, in Brighton, she loved it. And she is sort of a big golfer now.

Carl Hiaasen: Well, you know, I enjoy it, but I managed to after I got back from a book tour in May, and I went out on a driving range for an hour and the last swing that I made, you’ll appreciate this, I felt something very tragic happen in my lower part of my back and I was—I was out of action most of the summer, I could not swing a club. I could barely get around. I had done some dumb middle age thing and just hurt my back. So it’s now not hurting anymore so I’m creeping…

JP: You’re getting ready to do it again, right?

Carl Hiaasen: I haven’t been brave enough to get back into it to the extent I was with the book but it’s therapeutic, you know, you get out there and you really can’t focus on much else.

JP: Yeah, now I like– I go out very early and I like to walk, nine or whatever, and then head back to the house.

Carl Hiaasen: Walking is good.

JP: I don’t mind going out by myself for, an hour, fifteen minutes, whatever, I’m not trying to rush but just to get it done.

Carl Hiaasen: I would much rather be by myself. My anti-social instinct…

JP: I have certain people that I would love to play with a couple times a year, like I have a couple of teacher friends from the North and I don’t see them except in the summer. I love to go out with them a couple times while I’m up there because it’s all fresh. But it’s a combination of reminiscing and what’s happened lately. I hate the idea of being with the same tour guides every weekend, it would drive me crazy.

Carl Hiaasen: Like you, I have a couple of old friends that got me back into it, so they’re fun to be with. They’re from high school so you can’t really embarrass yourself in front of somebody you went to high school with. But it’s when I’m sort of introduced to somebody new and I’ve got to be on my best behavior when it doesn’t work.

JP: Okay, alright thanks Carl. This is great, and if you’re ever down in the area and your back’s good, we can get together.

Carl Hiaasen: Okay, yeah, that would be fun. I didn’t realize you were down there so much.

JP: We’re here for the whole school year. And we come up every once in a while, up to Vero, too.

Carl Hiaasen: Oh, that would be great. I would love to get together.

JP: Who was that one writer… He wrote mysteries up in Vero too, but I think he moved out, he was on Orchid…

Carl Hiaasen: Orchid Island – was it Stuart Woods, or --

JP: Stuart Woods, yeah.

Carl Hiaasen: I think he was up here. I don’t think he’s here now though.

JP: Yeah, he seems to move with the new wives.

Carl Hiaasen: Yeah, well, you got to keep moving.

JP: Alright. Thanks again for the time. It was great fun and I loved all of Tourist Season, Skin Tight and Skinny Dip.

Carl Hiaasen: Oh, you’re so kind; you’re so kind to say that and I think this is a great thing you’re doing with the site.

JP: Okay!

Carl Hiaasen: Okay, thanks.