I picked up a recent issue of Entertainment Weekly and opened to the page where they asked authors questions about books.  The quirky question that jumped out at me was:

What book would you use to swat a fly? 

What a terrific question!   Years ago I picked up a young adult novel and began reading.  The two girls, who were best friends, talked to each other.  It went something like this: 

“Mary, I do so admire your father, the town vet, who took care of my horse when he was so sick and saved his life.” 

“June, we’ve been best friends since kindergarten.  Isn’t it great to have been friends for ten years?” 

I read a few pages more, and yes, the author continued to give information the characters already knew in dialogue rather than in narration.  Of course I didn’t read it. 

Which classic have you never read –but pretended you did?  

As a children’s author, you’d think I’d have read all of the children’s classics.  In college, I played a role of the queen in a take-off in Alice-in-Wonderland.  I double-majored in education and children’s theater.  OF COURSE everyone in the child drama center knew that book by heart.  Everyone but ONE PERSON. 

Uh-hem.  Try as I might, I couldn’t get through that book.  Of course, a little background information of the time and place when the author wrote it may have helped me but that never happened. 

Eventually I did ‘fess up and admit I hadn’t read it.  A copy was bestowed upon me and I can’t remember if I choked my way through it or not.  (Apologies to all Alice fans out there!)

Tell us what your favorite childhood books were.

Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, The Borrowers by Mary Norton, The Little House in the Big Woods series by Laura Ignalls Wilder, and The All-of-A-Kind-Family series by Sydney Taylor. 

Are there books you’ve gone back to and read over and over again?

Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank.

Is there a book that scared the pants off of you?

If there had been I would have closed it so fast . . . I wouldn’t have read it. 

Seriously, although I love good suspense stories, they don’t seem to “stay” in my mind as other books do.

Is there a book you always meant to pick up but never did?

I never read Gone with the Wind.  I asked my mom to give it to me for Christmas one year as an adult and she did.  And yet, it still sits on my shelf unread.  I’m not sure why.  Perhaps because I’ve already seen the movie and I know how it ends? 

What do you want to read next?   I have a book by Carson McCuller’s The Member of the Wedding on request at the library.  It was suggested by a friend.  I love adult books where the main character is a child.  Another friend told me I have GOT to read the children’s books Heart of a Shepherd by Rosanne Perry and Chicken Boy by Frances O’Roark Dowell.  I read her fabulous book Falling In so now I’m hooked on her!