BIO

Alan Armstrong started volunteering in a friend's bookshop when he was eight. At 14, he was selling books at Brentano's. As an adult, every so often, he takes to the road in a VW bus named Zora to peddle used books. He is the editor of Forget Not Mee & My Garden, a collection of the letters of Peter Collinson, the 18th-century mercer and amateur botanist. He lives with his wife, Martha, a painter, in Massachusetts.

INTERVIEW

July 2005

Kidsreads.com contributing writer Shannon McKenna interviewed Alan Armstrong, author of WHITTINGTON. Armstrong talks about the animals that have been a part of his life and served as the inspiration for some of the characters in his books. He explains what he thinks readers will relate to the most in his current novel, describes his writing routine, and offers valuable advice to aspiring writers.

Kidsreads.com: What made you want to write a book for young people?

Alan Armstrong: I didn't. I wrote it for myself with everything I had.

KRC: Why did you choose to have animals play such a major part in the story?

AA: Because they spoke to me.

KRC: What do you think animals have to offer people?

AA: Knowledge of what really matters in life: true feeling, honesty, loyalty. Animals may trick and steal but they don't lie.

KRC: What appealed to you about having cats as the main characters?

AA: The stray that fell in love with our daughter Abby when she needed someone became part of our family and its legend. His name was Bent Ear --- the Bent Ear in WHITTINGTON.

KRC: Do you have any pets?

AA: Not right now. I grew up with a dog named Jeep. We lived in the country. I was pretty much on my own. Jeep went everywhere with me, saved me once when I stumbled into a wasp nest and got stung senseless. He went for help. Right after we got married a noble cat named Thomissa took us on --- reached out a paw as I passed a pet shop in New Haven and said "Take me!" so I did, and for the next six years she gave us good counsel. Then Bent Ear adopted Abby. When Abby was a little older she met a wise and imaginative poodle named Jefe who became the hero of my novel, REGARDS, RODEO. He was my partner in the book van I wrote about in OFF IN ZORA and an inspiration in our family for fourteen years. I still miss him.

KRC: What research did you do to write WHITTINGTON?

AA: The bibliography about sums it up, save that to get a feeling for Dick's boyhood I read a number of DNB entries about his contemporaries.

KRC: Is the young boy Dick Whittington based on a real person in history?

AA: I worked from what we know, imagining Dick's boyhood and travels.

KRC: How does having a story within a story enhance the narrative?

AA: I didn't think about it. I wrote the story the way it told itself to me.

KRC: The present-day story takes place in and around a barn. Do you live on a farm, or have you spent time on one?

AA: We live in a farm community. Our home is on a hill above the barn in the story. We know its occupants and the man who takes care of them --- Bernie in the story.

KRC: WHITTINGTON is earning comparisons to CHARLOTTE'S WEB. Were you inspired by E.B. White's tale?

AA: Yes. I've read E.B. White all my life. He and his hero Henry Thoreau are two writers I admire.

KRC: Ben has dyslexia, and his sister and the animals try to help him overcome it and learn to read. Do you have any personal experience with dyslexia?

AA: Yes. My oldest brother was dyslexic, but it was never diagnosed as a disorder you could treat. Our son, too, had reading difficulties. A reading coach named Mr. Hamilton saved him.

KRC: What is it about WHITTINGTON that you think will appeal most to readers?

AA: What appealed to me was telling how hard growing up is. Kids fight lonely battles, like Dick Whittington and Ben. They look for help on the way --- Dick encountering Will Devlin, Fitzwarren and Sir Louis Green, and Ben meeting Ms. O'Brien.

KRC: Were you an avid reader as a child? What were some of your favorite books?

AA: Yes. I liked books about kids put to it like Dick Whittington: Kipling's CAPTAIN COURAGEOUS and KIM, Robert Louis Stevenson's TREASURE ISLAND, a depression-era story called MODEL-T TOMMY. My father was a plantsman. He put me on to biographies of George Washington Carver and Booker T. Washington and something he'd read as a boy, JUAN AND JUANITA, about two kids stranded in the high desert and how they survived. I read over and over a book about an old farmer who took care of his animals every morning before the factory whistle called him away. And MISTY OF CHINCOTEAGUE and E.B. White. I learned to read following my mother's finger as she read aloud A CHILD'S GARDEN OF VERSES.

KRC: Can you tell us about your writing routine?

AA: I carry a fold of paper and a ballpoint to scribble notes as things come to me. Ideas fly like birds; you have to catch them on the wing. I can't sit still for long, but everything added together on a good day I get in two hours in the morning, an hour in the afternoon, an hour at night.

KRC: What advice would you give readers who hope to someday become writers?

AA: Make notes when a surprise comes by. Every story starts with two or three words --- catch them! Keep a journal. Be susceptible. If a book comes to your hand unbidden, look in it.

KRC: What are you working on now, and when can readers expect to see it?

AA: ANDREW: Being the brief and true report of a page to Sir Walter Raleigh who assisted his studying of the New World, went as a spy to France and traveled as one of his Adventurers to Virginia. Out next summer I hope.

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