ReadWonder: An Inside Look #132 (Author INTERVIEW)

An Inside Look with Kaela Noel

(Author of Coo)

*The first season of interviews ran from June of 2016 to March of 2017.

*Season #two ran during the summer of 2017.

*Season #three ran during the school year of 2017-2018.

*The fourth season ran during the summer/fall of 2018.

*Season #five ran during the 2018/2019 school year.

*During summer 2019, the sixth season ran.

*The seventh season of interviews ran during the fall of 2019.

*I'm excited to be back for season #EIGHT with brand new interviews/authors.

*It has been such an honor to connect with authors and "chat" about their novel, characters, and thoughts about the story.

*This is the TWELFTH interview in which I'm calling Season #EIGHT.

*Thank you to Kaela Noel for being the One-Hundred Thirty-Second author that I've had the pleasure of interviewing. I truly appreciate it.

*Here is my review of the Novel...

Coo by Kaela Noel REVIEW

Coo

by Kaela Noel

(March 3, 2020)

What do you think is Coo’s most admirable quality?
I admire Coo’s loyalty to her family members, both bird and human, and her courage as she tries to find a way to help those who are in danger.

Do you and Coo share any similarities?
I hope I have at least half as much loyalty and courage as she does.

How did you research Coo and the circumstances she found herself in?
Coo is a fairy tale at heart, and at the beginning, when I was still figuring out how to depict Coo’s world, I read a lot of folkore about children raised by wild animals—so-called feral children. Romulus and Remus, who were rescued by a wolf and went on to be involved in the founding of Rome, are probably the most famous. But there are also many legends about the ancient Assyrian queen Semiramis and how doves cared for her after she was abandoned as an infant. I had Semiramis in mind quite frequently when I began writing about Coo.

There are also modern stories of feral children. Some have been proven to be hoaxes, but others are very real and heartbreaking accounts of abuse, neglect, and abandonment. Real life is not a fairy tale. I tried to balance this in my depiction of what Coo goes through.

When I was in middle school, I read The Music of Dolphins by Karen Hesse (1998) several times in a row. It’s a novel about a girl called Mila who is raised by dolphins for several years after a plane crash strands her alone on an island, and what happens after she is discovered and returned to the human world. I found the book disturbing—the ending is wrenching—but absolutely fascinating. As a child, I was anxious about environmental destruction and the mistreatment of animals to such a degree that I was referred to the school psychologist for counseling about it after our fourth grade unit on ecosystems. I sought out books like Hesse’s because I was eager to read books that confirmed the intuitive feeling I had that animals are actually very intelligent and emotionally complex in ways our capitalist American culture willfully avoids recognizing.

When I set out to write Coo years later, I definitely had Hesse’s book in mind. I also knew I wanted Coo’s story to end differently than Mila’s and on a more positive note, which it does. I’ve mellowed out since I was a child—almost certainly because it is hard to survive and bear with the ecological grief otherwise.

What was the hardest scene to write about Coo?
Some of the emotional scenes towards the end were challenging, as I wanted to make sure they rang true and were impactful. I went through many drafts trying to get them right.

Why do you think humans and animals have such a special connection?
We share the same world, though at this point in time, humans have the upper hand in what effects we make on it. Animals are at the mercy of how we choose to treat them and our shared environment. It feels pretty bleak these days, but I’m hopeful that the coming generation understands just how much is at stake and treats the planet and all of its inhabitants with more reverence and compassion. Our survival depends on it.

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Monday, March 23, 2020

An Inside Look #132 (Author INTERVIEW)

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