Q&A with Author James Mihaley

1.    There are some wildly imaginative—and hilarious—characters in You Can’t Have My Planet, But Take My Brother, Please. How did you come up with characters like a talking parking meter?

Well, I was coming out of a store and a parking meter started talking to me.  He said he was depressed because no one ever parked in his spot.  He hadn’t had a quarter in two weeks.  He was starving to death.  I felt really bad for him.  I fed him fifty cents and said I’d put him in my book.  That made him very happy.   


2.    Do you have a favorite character?

I love the Bridgelings but they’re not my favorite.  Please don’t tell them that.  If they ever found out they wouldn’t let me walk across them to other universes.   And for goodness sake, don’t tell the Kundabons they’re not my favorite.  If they find out, they’ll toss me in their hairy cages.

If you must know, my favorite character is the boy or girl who opens up my book and starts reading it.  In a weird sort of way, the reader is actually part of the book.  They bring it to life through their imaginations.  They step into the story.  They may not realize it but it’s true.  For all of you who have already read my book, I bet you smell like a cloudfish.

3.    Do you see a little bit of yourself in Giles, the 13-year-old narrator? If so, what?

My capacity for mischief.  Causing mischief is a real strength of mine, just like it is for Giles.  I love mischief.  I absolutely love it.

4.    The alien characters in You Can’t Have My Planet, But Take My Brother, Please sometimes relate closely to humans: one is a realtor, one is a lawyer. Explain the process of creating your characters.

I go to coffee shops in LA where aliens hang out.  I try to get a table right next to them so I can eavesdrop on their conversations.  They usually whisper because they know humans are listening.  Fortunately I have excellent hearing.

5.    If you could create your own planet and live there, what would it be like?

No bullies, no bombs, no tears, no litter, no smog, no lies, no greed, no hatred, no jealousy.  Lots of dancing.  DJ’s would be more powerful than politicians.  Everyone on my planet would be a poet.  We would all speak in rhyme.  Brussels Sprouts on my planet would taste exactly like cheesecake.  Every child would have his own forest.

6.    Some readers have identified with the book’s “green” theme. Did you set out to write a story about environmental awareness?

Absolutely.  But I wanted it to be a grand adventure, something that would inspire children, make them believe they could do something monumental.  Cleaning Manhattan in one day is quite monumental.  And of course, the story had to be funny.  Even if there’s a good message, it still has to be funny.  Otherwise, the message might bounce off the kid’s soul and never get in.


7.    Giles feels especially ordinary compared to his talented siblings. Do you think a lot of kids with siblings feel this way? What makes Giles extraordinary?

Sibling rivalries happen all the time.   The key in my book is that Giles comes to terms with his jealousy of Bobby.  He has to, so they can work together in harmony and perform the quest.  

What makes Giles extraordinary? He isn’t a goodie-goodie and yet he is still a hero.  I think it’s hard to be a hero these days without being a goodie-goodie.  Somehow Giles pulls it off.

8.    You Can’t Have My Planet, But Take My Brother, Please makes readers laugh out loud with its great plot and cast of characters. Why do you believe funny books are good for kids? What makes you laugh out loud?

We adults like to think we’re the only ones who have problems.  But kids get their share of lousy stuff.  Laughter helps them deal with it.

What makes me laugh out loud is when an alien with two heads tries to impersonate a human.  As though I can’t tell you’re an alien.  I mean, come on.

9.    Did you have any favorite books as a kid? If so, please list a couple and briefly state why.

My favorite book as a kid was the Encyclopedia of Monsters.  It had sharp fangs and a tail like an alligator.  I used to walk it on a leash.  Its favorite food was boring books.  I fed it every book that ever bored me!  The Encyclopedia of Monsters will be a character in one of my future books.  Keep on the look out!  

10.    What did you want to be when you grew up?

 A professional basketball player.

My entire life centered around basketball.  Morning, noon and night I had a basketball in my hands.  I must’ve bounced a basketball fifty trillion times as a kid.
 
11.    When did you realize you wanted to be a writer?

I was hiking in the woods one day.  A giant pen fell from the sky and hit me in the head.  The pen was bigger than a baseball bat.  I took this as a sign.

Want to work on Jupiter this summer ? check out these outrageous tips for getting a summer job!

by James Mihaley

With summer rapidly approaching, kids are wondering about summer jobs.  Here are a few you may be interested in:

Summer Job 1: Valet parking spaceships at a hotel on Jupiter

No, you don’t need a driver’s license.  However, you must have extensive experience playing video games. It will also help if you’ve read Chapter Three of my book, You Can’t Have My Planet But Take My Brother, Please. The main character, Giles, gets hired to valet park spaceships. You can learn some tips from Giles, like what to do if a shrunken head keychain starts talking to you when you stick the key in the ignition.

Summer Job 2: Working as an eyeball retriever for Dr. Melissa Sprinkles

In my book, Dr. Melissa Sprinkles is an extremely important alien mad scientist.  She creates eco-droids that turn paper back into trees. Giles wouldn’t be able to clean New York City if it wasn’t for Dr. Sprinkles.

Dr. Sprinkles has a moveable face. It shifts to different parts of her body. Once in a while, an eyeball will actually leave her body to go watch a movie or to check out the sunset. You must retrieve the wandering eyeball for Dr. Sprinkles. 

If you do a really good job, she might give you your very own eco-droid. Then you can go around your neighborhood turning discarded paper back into trees. You’ll become a hero.   

Summer Job 3: Working as a poet at a factory on Neptune that makes spaceships that run on rhyming

Giles has a spaceship that runs on rhyming.  He uses it to remove graffiti from the streets of Manhattan.  We desperately need poets to work at that factory because aliens don’t rhyme well.  They do lots of other stuff really well but they’re lousy rhymers.

You probably didn’t know spaceships can run on rhyming.  Well, they can, just like the environmental movement runs on kid power.  Natural beauty will never survive without kids cleaning up, kids teaching their parents how to recycle and encouraging them to use solar power, and kids doing everything they can to help protect endangered species.

Kid power.

I’ve just listed three summer jobs that require kid power.  If any of these jobs interest you, please shoot me an e-mail at Jmihaley@yahoo.com and I’ll pass it on.

Good luck!

James Mihaley



AM I REALLY TOMMY GREENWALD?

 

In response to a recent Times article author Tommy Greenwald read, he drummed up a little fodder for our blog:

Patricia O’Brien had five novels to her name when her agent, Esther Newberg, set out to shop her sixth one, “The Dressmaker”… A cascade of painful rejections began… Just when Ms. O’Brien began to fear that “The Dressmaker” would be relegated to a bottom desk drawer like so many rejected novels, Ms. Newberg came up with a different proposal: Try to sell it under a pen name.

Written by Kate Alcott, the pseudonym Ms. O’Brien dreamed up, it sold in three days.

            -THE NEW YORK TIMES, FEBRUARY 23, 2012

Dear Readers:

I sympathize with Ms. O’Brien completely. The publishing world is a jungle, and I’ve never been particularly fond of jungles, what with the mosquitoes and humidity. So when it came time to publish my modestly successful children’s book, CHARLIE JOE JACKSON’S GUIDE TO NOT READING, I too decided to use a nom de plume (which is French for “unlisted number”).

I went with Tommy Greenwald because I thought it had a nice ring to it, plus it’s a name that makes you think of a kind, humble, extremely handsome person.

But if I’m not Tommy Greenwald, who am I really?

I’m not quite prepared to tell you.

I will, however, give you a hint: My actual identity is one of the following five people. Please examine the following choices carefully, then decide for yourself who you think I am. You may well be right. And if you’re not right, please be at least assured in the knowledge that you’re wrong.

Here are the possibilities:

MITT ROMNEY – I had to change my name because no one would believe I would spend time on something that would yield so little income.

JEREMY LIN – I had to change my name because people would expect a better vocabulary from someone who went to Harvard.

THE GUY WHO STARS IN “THE ARTIST” – I had to change my name because people think I can’t form actual words.

BARBARA KELLERMAN – I had to change my name -- even though you don’t know who I am -- because I’m Tommy’s mother, and I’m so desperate for him to be successful, I wrote the book in his name.

J.K. ROWLING – I didn’t have to change my name – I don’t have to do anything for anyone, as you well know – but I’m tired of people telling me how bloody brilliant I am all the time, and if I had to go on one more publicity tour (you know I love you, Oprah, but enough is enough), I may well have clobbered someone.

So those are your choices. What do you think? Who am I? And perhaps more importantly… did I really write this Op-ed piece?

Come to think of it, this would make a great mystery! Someone should write a book about it.

Skiff

by Craig Moodie, author of Into the Trap

SKIFF: (Old Ger. Skif) Any open boat that is propelled by oars, sail, or motor and used for any purpose.

Boats of all kinds play important roles in Into the Trap, almost becoming a class of character (although they have no dialogue).

You might have heard of the term “character boat” which is typically used to describe a boat with as many quirks as ribs.

The skiff Eddie takes out to Greenhead Island is one such character boat, complete with leaks and a recalcitrant Evinrude outboard. Just like Eddie’s skiffs, the skiffs I’ve known over the years have all had some number of defining peculiarities (not unlike the people I’ve known).

The clam boat I helped my old friend Chris Green and his dad Joe build was one big peculiarity. About twelve feet or so, it was essentially a box built out of sheets of plywood whose only nod to marine design was its slanted scow-style bow. It resembled the Higgins boats used for ship-to-shore transport in World War II. We painted it olive drab, too, probably because Joe picked up the paint on the cheap.

As rudimentary as it was, it floated, and we kept it moored in Round Cove in East Harwich and now and then took it fishing in Pleasant Bay out past Great Island.

Mostly we used it for quahogging. I spent many days puttering out of the cove and then opening up the throttle of the outboard to plow along to where the clam beds were in the open bay, and there to spend the day among the other quahoggers raking clams from their skiffs. The boat was no speedboat, and it was tender, meaning that if you moved, it moved with you. Taking a long trip in it wasn’t something I had the stomach for.

But it made a serviceable floating platform from which to put your long-handled aluminum bullrake over the rail, work the teeth of the rake into the unseen sand and mud below, and scrape up the blue-gray nuggets of littlenecks, cherrystones, and chowder clams in the rake’s basket, and then to empty the basket on the culling board.

You just had to remember to bail out the water that constantly leaked in before you put the rake back over again, or your boots would be ankle-deep in seawater before you knew it.

(Both photos are courtesy of NOAA. That’s not the skiff I used, but it’s certainly a character boat with a couple of characters quahogging.)

Confronting Fears in Soviet Russia

By Eugene Yelchin, author of Breaking Stalin's Nose

Before immigrating to the US, I lived in the former Soviet Union. Once in the early 1980s, an official from the KGB called me in for an “informal” chat. A typical Soviet secret policeman, he locked the door of his office, put the key in his pocket, and invited me to discuss the political views of my coworkers. His goal was to recruit me as an informer. I had no idea what would happen to my family or to me were I to refuse, but I suspected bad things. The KGB terrified everyone, and I was afraid. But I could never become a snitch, either. For two straight hours, I played dumb, evading questions and pretending I didn’t understand him. He got bored, unlocked the door, and finally let me go. I felt insulted and humiliated, but I was not harmed. Had that happened some years earlier, when the ruthless dictator Joseph Stalin ruled Russia, I would not have gotten out of that office alive.

During his reign, from 1923 to 1953, Joseph Stalin ensured his absolute power by waging was against the Russian people. Stalin’s State security executed, imprisoned, or exiled over twenty million people. Not a single person, be it a government official, war hero, worker, teacher, or homemaker, could be certain he or she would not be arrested.

To arrest so many innocent people, crimes had to be invented. Stalin’s propaganda machine deceived ordinary people into believing that countless spies and terrorists threatened their security. Tormented by fear, Soviet citizens clung to Stalin for guidance and protection, and soon his popularity reached cult status. “The father of all Soviet children” smiled and waved at his supporters during parades and celebrations, while at night, in his Kremlin office, he was signing orders for innocent people to be shot without trial.

Paradoxically, when I was growing up in the Soviet Union, few people of my generation were aware of what had transpired under Stalin. During his lifetime, the crimes had been carried out in absolute secrecy. After his death, the secrecy continued: All evidence was classified or destroyed. Older generations, either still terrified or responsible for the crimes, kept silent.

But Stalin could not simply disappear; his legacy endured in the Russian people. They had lived in fear for so long that fear had become an integral part of their very beings. Unchecked, fear was passed on from generation to generation. It has been passed on to me, as well.

My book Breaking Stalin’s Nose is my attempt to expose and confront that fear. Like my main character, I wanted to be a Young Pioneer. My family shared a communal apartment. My father was a devoted Communist. And like my main character, I too, had to make a choice. My choice was about whether to leave the country of my birth.

I set the story in the past, but the main issue in it transcends time and place. To this day, there are places in the world where innocent people face persecution and death for making a choice about what they believe to be right.

—Los Angeles, California