ReadWonder: An Inside Look #215 (Author Interview)

An Inside Look with Lauren Wolk

(Author of My Own Lightning)

*Season #ONE (June of 2016 to March of 2017)

*Season #TWO (Summer of 2017)

*Season #THREE (School Year 2017/2018)

*Season #FOUR (Summer/fall of 2018)

*Season #FIVE (School Year 2018/2019)

*Season #SIX (Summer 2019)

*Season #SEVEN (Fall 2019)

*Season #EIGHT (Winter/Spring 2020)

*Season #NINE (Fall 2020)

*Season #TEN (Winter/Spring 2021)

*Season #ELEVEN (Fall 2021)

*Season #TWELVE (Winter/Spring 2022)

*I'm excited to present season #THIRTEEN 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 Second interview in which I'm calling Season #THIRTEEN.

*Thank you to Lauren for being the Two Hundred Fifteenth author I've had the pleasure of interviewing. I truly appreciate it.

My Own Lightning

by Lauren Wolk

(May 3, 2022)

How did you come to know Annabelle?
Wolf Hollow and its companion, My Own Lightning, were inspired by my mother’s childhood and the Pennsylvania farm where she grew up and where I myself spent quite a lot of time. My mother’s stories and my own experiences on the farm with my grandparents and uncles all helped me create Annabelle. She’s a blend of my mother, my grandmother, me, and my imagination. I call her one of my “book daughters,” a truly fictional person, but we have a lot in common. We’re family in a very real sense.

What do you think is her most admirable quality?
Her courage. As a child, I was afraid of almost everything. I worried all the time (still do), fretted about things big and small, spent a lot of time focused on threats that were beyond my control. Because Annabelle is braver than I was, she does more. She takes action. Yes, she makes mistakes along the way, but she has the courage of her convictions. And I both admire and aspire to that.

Is there anything you wish she would have changed or done differently in her story?
Great question. Since I don’t map out a story before I write it, I don’t spend time considering what a character ought to do. I simply follow her as she lives her life, building on what I discover as we go. As a result, I am complicit in her mistakes. We make them together, Annabelle and I, and we live with the consequences. Of course, I regret some of those consequences, just as she does, but mistakes and regret are part of life. My mistakes have taught me to be more thoughtful and deliberate, to think before I act, to consider a situation from all sides and carefully weigh my response to it before I jump in. But Annabelle’s quite young, inclined to leap before she looks, though she acquires wisdom every time she steps off the cliff into the unknown.

What do you think Annabelle can offer to other children that are experiencing similar situations to what she went through?
Annabelle grapples with issues that are as relevant today as they were in the 1940s. As she learns to look past the obvious to the hidden layers of a person, she realizes how complicated we all are and how unwise it is to rush to judgement. She comes to understand how difficult it is to be a fair and kind person in an unfair and often unkind world, but that it’s worth the effort. Worth the work. I think young readers benefit from role models who are honest and brave about difficult issues, willing to put in the work to solve their problems, and strong enough to admit when they’ve been wrong.

How did you research Annabelle and the circumstances she found himself in?Wolf Hollow and My Own Lightning are set in a place and family history I know well, and I was fortunate to have a primary source – my mother – to provide information I needed to make the stories accurate and authentic. But I relied on libraries to provide what I didn’t know about the science of lightning strikes, interspecies communication, and the inhumane treatment of dogs. That sounds like an odd trio of topics, but they’re connected, through Annabelle and her story.

Do you and Annabelle share any similarities?
Annabelle’s a good girl. Really decent. She’s a better person than I am, but if effort counts (and it does), I can say that I gain a lot of fullfilment by trying to be more like her. We both come from and strive to build strong families. And we both have a deep respect for and connection with the natural world.

What was the hardest scene to write about her?
Without giving too much away, I’d say that the scene in which she puts herself in harm’s way was the most difficult to write, not because she gets hurt but because it’s difficult to write dramatic scenes well. I like understatement, but sometimes a scene calls for something … louder. I struggle with getting that right.

Who do you think was her biggest supporter and why?
Annabelle is always her own best supporter. She has great parents and grandparents, and her brother Henry is certainly a powerful ally in My Own Lightning, but Annabelle always finds her own way. I love that about her.

Why do think young people and animals have such a strong connection?
Young people, like the young at heart of any age, have plenty of imagination, faith in possibility, and an innocence that allows them to believe what others disregard as impossible or silly. And children are closer to the time when they could not yet use formal language to communicate. When they relied on different ways of connecting with others. Just as animals do.

What do you think Annabelle is doing as the present time?
Annabelle is watching the world. Listening. Learning. She’s a curious creature, and a thoughtful one, constantly exploring, especially her own self and the gifts she has not yet unwrapped. I can only imagine what she’ll do with her life when she opens them.

Book Pages

Monday, June 6, 2022

An Inside Look #215 (Author Interview)

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