How did you come to know June Bug?
June Bug and I share a lot of different qualities, so I came to know her by examining myself and my own childhood. Like June Bug, I grew up in a suburb of Boston called Newton Highlands, a neighborhood that seemed perfect on the outside but that really was just as complex and imperfect as any real place where people do there best to live together. In Newton Highlands, families suffered. They kept secrets. They didn’t let their neighbors know that they were hurting. Like June Bug, I was a quiet, watchful, observant kid, who often felt like an outsider because of the hardship that was going on in my own family. When I was June Bug’s age, I wish I had known what I know now, which is that many people have secrets that hold them down. Deciding to tell the truth about your past is a powerful choice that can sometimes save your life.
What do you think is her most admirable quality?
June Bug has many admirable qualities, but the one that makes me happiest to think about is her creativity. She uses her fantastic powers of make believe to imagine herself in worlds where she is able to control the people and the lanscape around her. In the story, she uses her imagination to fly, to breathe fire, to scream, to conjure beasts, to move objects with her mind and to cast spells on the earth. It is her imagination that allows her to forge such a strong friendship with Ziggy Karlo, and it is this that ultimately allows her to find her own brave voice. June Bug’s creativity gives her a way to escape worry and hunger and to experience joy even in the face of hardship.
Is there anything you wish she would have changed or done differently in her story?
I wish June Bug had been able to tell the truth sooner. I wish she hadn’t had to suffer for so long or wait so long for the comfort she needed. It is too bad we live in a culture where we are taught to hide what hurts.
What do you think she can offer to other children that are experiencing similar situations to what she went through?
I think June Bug can help other children realize that even though human beings and families are imperfect, and even though sometimes the people we love are not able to give us what we need, we can still love them and be loved by them with every ounce of our being. June Bug teaches us that you can be angry and disappointed at someone you love, and you can even tell the truth about secrets that have always seemed too scary to speak out loud, and the world will not collapse around you. Love can be strong enough to withstand moments of crisis and conflict. The world is big enough and strong enough to hold everything we have inside us. We can tremble and we can shake sometimes, but if we are lucky, we can find the strength and support we need to heal.
How did you research June Bug and the circumstances she found herself in?
Because I lived in Newton Highlands in the 1980s, researching this book was really a walk down memory lane. I looked through old photographs, listened to old records, and googled images of how people looked and dressed during that very particular time in history. Because June Bug’s father died of AIDS, I read newspaper articles about the AIDS crisis that were published in 1983 and read about the hysteria and homophobia that fueled people’s ignorance at the beginning of this crisis. This research helped me to make June Bug’s father into a three-dimensional human being who needed to become an essential and complex part of the story even if he did only appear in flash backs.
Do you and June Bug share any similarities?
Both June Bug and I grew up in complicated families. When I was a little girl, my father was sick with advanced stage heart disease. We were told by doctors that he could die at any time, and so every day we expected the worst and my mother became extremely depressed as a result. (My father ended up living to be almost eighty years old so that is a very long time to be expecting the worst.) Like June Bug, I sometimes felt as though I was yearning for more attention than I was getting. Like June Bug I hid how hungry I sometimes became for affection and comfort while my own family was shaking. I also have a lot in common with June Bug’s mother, Angela. I have had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder since I was a very young child, and like Angela, most of my repetitive worries center around ideas of sickness and infection. I know how difficult it can feel to manage obsessive thoughts and how sometimes simply engaging in the world in the seemingly simplest of ways can take an enormous amount of strength and bravery.
What was the hardest scene to write about her?
The hardest scene to write was the bathtub scene where Angela Jordan makes June scrub off all the germs she imagines are on her body after playing outside. I needed to make sure this one scene did not overpower the book or make it impossible to feel empathy for Angela. It was very difficult to find a balance in this scene and to make sure it was brief enough to be palatable for a young reader. This scene went through many revisions and in the end, it was drastically shortened from early drafts that went into more detail. We decided to cut back on the imagery and allow the silent spaces between moments to speak for themselves. It was essential that this scene, which can be scary and disturbing for a young reader, was followed by scenes that focused on imagination, friendship and strength and that showed June Bug learning that she was brave enough to make her own decisions and get away from her mother’s obsessive worries.
Who do you think was her biggest supporter and why?
Even though June Bug’s family life is imperfect, and even though her mother can’t always give her what she needs, June Bug is lucky that she has helpers around her can build her up and feed her body and her soul. Her friendship with Ziggy is essnetial, because it gives her a kind of support that she has never had before. Not only does Ziggy help unlock her imagination, but he is able to sit by her and simply be there for her when she needs an ally.
Why do you think young people, like June Bug, are sometimes more resilient during difficult situations than the adults in their lives?
That is a great question. Maybe it is because they have the strength of their imagination. I wish as an adult that when I was angry I could imagine myself as a dragon breathing fire or darkening the sky with my own enormous wings. When I need to feel like I am in control, I wish that I could still imagine myself moving objects with my mind like smoke or milkweed or clouds. Imaginary play is important even for adults. It allows us to gain access to the parts of ourselves we need the most.
What do you think she is doing as the present time?
I think June Bug has grown to become a woman who has learned that the best way to make sense of her own complicated past is to write stories and to share them with other people who need them. Becoming a writer helps the adult June Bug to keep a little bit of the magic of make believe in her life and it helps her to make sense of what hurt when she was younger. Maybe June Bug has made it her life’s work to write stories that inspire children to be brave, to tell the truth, and to find the magic inside themselves that can nurture and sustain them, even when times are hard. I think June and Ziggy are still friends and I think she and her mother are very close. They have learned how to talk with honesty about what it was like when their lives were shaking, even though sometimes honesty can be hard. June Bug still likes playing make believe sometimes when times get tough. She still imagines that she can fly and move objects with her mind.
