ReadWonder: An Inside Look #223 (Author INTERVIEW)

An Inside Look with Paul Acampora

(Author of In Honor of Broken Things)

*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 TENTH interview in which I'm calling Season #THIRTEEN.

*Thank you to Paul for being the Two Hundred Twenty-Third author I've had the pleasure of interviewing. I truly appreciate it.

In Honor of Broken Things

by Paul Acampora

(March 8, 2022)

How did you come to know Oscar, Riley, and Noah?
Oscar, Riley, and Noah began from the true stories that one of my best friends, a high school art teacher, enjoyed telling me about the fantastic students in his own clay classes. From there, I started wondering… What if? What if? What if? What if a kid discovers an unexpected talent for making pottery? What if an experience with art provided an unexpected path to friendship? To seeing the world? To healing? Who would need that? How would a person become open to it? What if, despite what we are generally taught, a person understands and accepts that breaking things can be just as rewarding and fun as making things? Who is the person that knows this? Also, broken things are much more common than things (and people) that are whole. How does a young person learn to survive that truth? With those questions in mind, I started hearing the voices of Oscar, Riley, and Noah. Of course, those characters are also informed by my own experiences, adventures, misadventures, opinions, and assumptions about art, football, faith, hospitals, family, small towns, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, among other things.

What do you think are their most admirable qualities?
Kindness. In their heart of hearts, Oscar, Riley, and Noah are all deeply kind. That’s how and why they are able to repair the world just a little bit.

Is there anything you wish they would have changed or done differently in their stories?
I don’t think so. I hope every choice made by Oscar, Riley, and Noah is driven by who they are, who they hope to be, and what they know in any particular moment. Their actions should all feel kind of necessary and even inevitable. That said, I’m sure I could go back and find opportunities to improve and revise every single scene.

What do you think the three of them can offer to other children that are experiencing similar situations to what they went through?
Sometimes I tell people that reading fiction is an opportunity to prepare for the real world, but I don’t know if I really believe that. The actual experience of losing a loved one or making something beautiful or scoring the game-winning touchdown or being the new kid on the first day of school… it’s all so much bigger and scarier and more awesome than any novel can really contain or get us ready for. I think it’s enough that reading – whether fiction or nonfiction – offers us a chance to walk with other people through good times and bad for a little while.

How did you research Oscar, Riley, and Noah and the circumstances they found themselves in?
I believe that people are shaped by places, by history, by neighborhoods, and by neighbors. For that reason, I spent a lot of time visiting the Pennsylvania coal towns in the region where the story takes place. It’s not too far from where I live now so I was able to walk the streets, tour coal mines, visit churches, and check out historical documents. I chatted with cashiers, students, librarians, teachers, priests and different people in and around places like Minersville, Ashland, Frackville, Mahanoy City, Tamaqua, Lansford, Centralia, St. Clair, and Shenandoah. On the football side of things, I have memories of being a terrible high school linebacker. Fortunately, I am acquainted with a handful of younger and older men who played the game at a high level, so I learned a lot from them. For clay, I read books and checked out websites and watched tons of videos to get a sense of how the process actually works. I also visited the classroom of my art teacher friend so I could learn more about the practice, the vocabulary, and the physical layout of a clay studio. Most importantly, I got to hear directly from students. They really loved and hated and struggled and succeeded in the art room. Those students plus their teacher tried to teach me a little bit, but I couldn’t make a single thing. The pottery wheel was an especially frustrating exercise. My own failure in the clay classroom definitely informed Riley’s experience!

Here are a few notes and photos from my research:

In Ashland, PA, they are still extremely proud of the state football championship won by the Ashland High School Black Diamonds in 1935:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k8em2vh7bfcmly9/Ashland.jpg?dl=0

Coal mining families going to Mass in Minersville, PA would walk past this mural of St. Barbara, patron Saint of Miners, as she prayed over dying miners.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/ehylju8kgscqhnr/minersville%20st%20matthew%20the%20evangelist%20p117%2056f.jpg?dl=0

Here’s the “Good American Hose Company,” in Mahanoy City, PA, where Molly Maguire Historic Park includes the statue of a hooded miner on a gallows about to be hanged. Hose companies were volunteer fire companies originally organized by immigrant communities in coal mining towns to fight fires and to prove that they were good Americans.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/gfao4ltqr37fg64/Hose%20Company.jpg?dl=0

My favorite guide, Father Tom Orsulak, led me through the #9 Coal Mine more than once:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/px5ap9rk0swumd5/CoalMine.jpg?dl=0

My high school football glory days:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mq8w9z9djr48gph/football.webp?dl=0

A couple of very patient young pottery artists:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/167m1sdb6nim303/Clay%20Teachers.jpg?dl=0

Do you and these characters share any similarities?
Oscar, Riley, and Noah are all really curious people. Whether it’s working with clay or looking at saints on stained glass windows or wrangling a balloon in the Macy’s parade or trying chocolate-covered pickles on a stick… they feel compelled to check stuff out. That’s definitely me.

What was the hardest scene to write about them?
There is a scene in which Riley and Noah are sitting on the porch at Oscar’s house while the adults are inside discussing events that happened earlier in the day. That was especially difficult to write because the situation requires the characters to remain seated in one place while they don’t do much except talk, worry, and feel guilty. I really wanted Riley and Noah to have this somewhat quiet and confused moment together. Without much motion or action, it was difficult to create a scene that would be as interesting and engaging as possible for readers and for the characters. My solution was to introduce yodeling, donuts, and Dolly Parton into the conversation.

Who do you think were their biggest supporters and why?
The biggest supporters of Oscar, Riley, and Noah are really Oscar, Riley, and Noah. Even before they become good friends, they each have the capacity to see real heartbreak in one another. As young people, they have not developed an adult ability to turn away from that.

Why do you think some young people who are completely different from each other can form a special bond, when others can only be friends with people who are just like them?
I think Oscar Hammerstein had it right when he wrote, “You’ve got to be carefully taught.”

What do you think Oscar, Riley, and Noah are doing at the present time?
At school, Oscar, Riley, and Noah have expanded their circle of friends. Now, they are with a large and varied group of classmates at their cafeteria table. They probably have to shove two or three tables together! Outside of school, they are helping Noah’s mom with the pottery business. Riley’s given up on clay, but she is successfully figuring out how to increase online mug sales. Both Riley and Noah have promised to join Oscar as a balloon wrangler at next year’s Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. Riley is excited, but Noah is concerned that he might get swept into the atmosphere by a rogue, inflatable sock monkey. Finally, Riley and Noah are going to insist that Oscar face a new fear: he has to ask Isabelia out on a date!

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Monday, August 8, 2022

An Inside Look #223 (Author INTERVIEW)

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