ReadWonder: An Inside Look #255 (Author INTERVIEW)

An Inside Look with H.M. Bouwman

(Author of Gossamer Summer)

*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)

*Season #THIRTEEN (Summer 2022)

*Season #FOURTEEN (Fall 2022)

*Season #FIFTEEN (Winter/Spring 2023)

*I'm excited to present season #SIXTEEN 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 THIRD interview in which I'm calling Season #SIXTEEN.

*Thank you to H.M. Bouwman for being the Two Hundred Fifty-Fifth author I've had the pleasure of interviewing. I truly appreciate it.

Gossamer Summer

by H.M. Bouwman

(May 30, 2023)

How did you come to know JoJo?
I started writing this story by thinking about myself and my own three sisters, and the kinds of games we used to play as kids; I also thought about the four sisters from Little Women and the kinds of games they played; and then I wondered what would happen if my fictional four sisters found something magical. Jojo has never existed outside her sisters—there was a never a Jojo without a Maisie and a Bee and an Amy; and right from the start there was also a Theo. They came into existence as a group.

What do you think is her most admirable quality?
She has so many great qualities: imagination, love for her family and friends, intensely practical fashion sense. But one of the things I love most about her is her anger. She is mad that the universe isn’t fair, that people die, that wishes don’t always come true. She’s not afraid to feel that anger. And I hope she can take that anger and channel it into something powerful as she grows up.

Is there anything she “should have” done differently in her story?
There are so many things that she should have done differently if her goal was to be polite or well-behaved: don’t yell at your sisters, don’t be grumpy, don’t tell lies, etc. But I wanted Jojo to be real, and I wanted her to feel things, and I didn’t want her to have to behave perfectly. Maisie tries to be perfect, and it almost breaks her.

What do you think JoJo can offer to other children that are experiencing similar situations to what she went through?
One of my kids’ and my favorite picture books when they were little was Molly Bang’s When Sophie Gets Angry—because it suggests that it’s okay to feel what you feel. I hope Jojo can offer that to young readers, too: the promise that you are allowed to feel your feelings, even if they make you prickly; and your family and friends will still love you. And of course, the idea that when other people feel theirfeelings, you are there for them, squishing uncomfortably onto the cooler with them and wrapping your arm around their shoulders.

How did you research JoJo and the circumstances she found herself in?
I did zero research for this book in any traditional sense of that word—which is unlike the other novels I’ve written! For this book, my research was simply to remember my own childhood, the childhood of my kids, and some of the books we loved as kids.

Do you and JoJo share any similarities?
Jojo is far more confrontational and assertive than I am! (I admire that in her!) But I think we have similar storyteller imaginations: quirky and fanciful.

What was the hardest scene to write about her?
Hmmm. I’m not sure. Maybe the nighttime sleepover discussion with Theo? Initially, I let her do most of the talking—and so did Theo, since he is a quieter kid than Jojo. But Theo had things he needed to say! So I needed to let Jojo be quiet for moment and let him talk—and I needed her to respond to Theo’s need for friendship and love as he grieved the loss of someone important to him. It took a few revisions to tweak that so that Jojo was still her impulsive self, and yet she could also hear at least some of what Theo was sad about.

Who do you think was her biggest supporter and why?
Really, I think it was Maisie. I know Theo seems like the closest soulmate to Jojo—they hit it off immediately, and it’s clear they’ll be great friends—and Roland is a creation of Jojo, after all, so he knows how she thinks—but Maisie has been with Jojo through everything, and it’s Maisie who understands her best. Their moment on the cooler near the end of the book was really important to the story, which is in part about how your sibling can be your closest ally; but the final moment is also important, where all Jojo’s sisters help her cross the yard to head back home.

Why do you think young people, like JoJo, process their grief in their own special way that may be different from others around them?
I think everyone—old and young—processes their grief in their own unique way. Of course there are similar things humans often do when we grieve (bargaining, anger, acceptance, etc), but for each of us there’s a unique emotional tone in which our grief lives and a unique path that our grief follows. One of the things I wanted to show was how different Jojo and Maisie are in grieving the same loss. (And Theo’s grief—for a very different kind of loss—is quite different, too.)

What do you think JoJo is doing at the present time?
I think that right now, she’s planning a trip back to fairyland to visit Roland; and I think that meanwhile, she’s playing long imaginative games with her sisters and Theo.

Book Pages

Monday, September 18, 2023

An Inside Look #255 (Author INTERVIEW)

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