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Kids' Q&AThomas E. SniegoskiDescribe your new book.
It's two new books, actually. They're part of a new YA series called Owlboy. The first one is called Billy Hooten: Owlboy, and the second is Billy Hooten: Owlboy — The Girl With the Destructo Touch. There will be two more after these, and hopefully even more after that.
The series is about a twelve-year-old boy named Billy Hooten who is sort of bizarre. He's into the weird stuff like old monster movies, comic books, and action figures. One day, while reading the latest issue of his favorite comic book — The Snake — on the wall that separates his backyard from the Pine Hill Cemetery, Billy hears a cry for help. Against his better judgment, he runs toward the voice, and from that moment on, everything changes for Billy Hooten.
In the first book Billy discovers that he is Owlboy, a quick-thinking, goggle-and-feather wearing superhero who protects the bizarre and monstrous citizens of Monstros City, a city that lies beneath the cemetery that borders the backyard of Billy's house. And what a city it is: full of crazy-cool gadgets, transparent oozing police detectives, and Slovakian Rot-Toothed Hopping Monkey Demons, who aren't about to let Billy come between them and their grape bubble gum.
If they haven't already, I think everybody should be reading the Bone series written and drawn by Jeff Smith. Bone started out as a black-and-white comic first published in 1991 until, I believe, 2004. Scholastic Books then started to republish the series — now colored by the amazing Steve Hamaker — in 2005. The series centers around the Bone Family, which is made up of small creatures who talk and act like the humans in the story, but who are white, small, bald humanoids with big noses, and don't normally wear much clothing. In the opening pages the three Bone cousins — the avaricious Phoncible P. "Phoney" Bone; the goofy, cigar-smoking Smiley Bone; and the everyman character Fone Bone — are run out of their hometown of Boneville after Phoney decides to run for mayor with disastrous results. After crossing a desert and ending up in a mysterious valley, the cousins are separated, and must individually make their way across a fantasy landscape pursued by locusts and rat creatures before meeting up again. At this time, they are taken in by a mysterious girl named Thorn and her even more enigmatic grandmother. As they stay longer in the valley, they encounter humans and other creatures who are threatened by a dark lord, the Lord of the Locusts. Fone Bone is drawn into the events around him and finds himself on a hero's journey to help save the world. The first book of the series is called Out From Boneville and if you haven't ready it, I strongly suggest you do.
Describe your most memorable teacher.
My wife and I meet up with Mr. Curtis and his wife at least twice a year for dinner. And he's still cracking that whip.
What was your favorite story as a child?
When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
Why do you write books for kids?
Tell us about your pets.
Thank you, Mulder, from the bottom of my heart.
If you could pick anyone to illustrate one of your books, who would it be and why?
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