Featured Author: Caroline Adderson
 
Bibliography at Orca
I, Bruno: Bruno is a boy with particular tastes and ideas. He will not, for example, eat anything green. He spends one day as Sir Bruno and another as the Queen. He is an entrepreneur and he understands the language of Car. Bruno is a boy worth knowing.
Interview
Why do you write, and why children's books?I started to write about twenty years ago and now it's too late. I can't stop myself. In fact, whenever I'm not writing, I'm so grumpy everyone chases me back to the computer. I write for children because I have a young son who inspires me and because it's so much fun.
What kind of research do you do before you write? My research involves noticing what is happening around me. I'm both a people-watcher and an observer of nature. I also pay attention to the interests and ideas of young people, who are usually very original thinkers.
What are you working on now? I'm working on a novel for adults. As soon as I have finished the first draft, I plan to put it away and write more for children. Writing for children is my present to myself.
Do you think Harry Potter has been good or bad for children's literature? What do you think will happen “post-Potter”? I actually haven't read the Harry Potter books or seen the movies, but I think any book that gets children to love reading is a good book. However, when a book is very, very popular it is often imitated. So now fantasy literature is all the rage and books without dragons or magic spells are sitting unread on the shelves. Personally, I think real life is absolutely fascinating and just being a kid is magic.
What are the best and worst things about writing books? The best thing about writing is when something you didn't plan happens on the page and takes you completely by surprise. The worst thing is the self-doubt. It can take many drafts for a book to come to shape and during that time I usually think I'm the worst writer in the world.
What's the funniest or most interesting reader response you've ever had? Someone, an adult not a child, once asked me why I don't write more about trains.
Biography
Caroline Adderson is the author of Very Serious Children (Scholastic 2007), a novel for middle readers about two brothers, the sons of clowns, who run away from the circus. I, Bruno (Orca 2007) is a collection of stories for emergent readers featuring seven year-old Bruno and his true life adventures.
Caroline Adderson also writes for adults and has won two Ethel Wilson Fiction Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, as well as the 2006 Marion Engel Award given annually to an outstanding female writer in mid-career. Her numerous nominations include the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize.
Her eight year-old son Patrick and his many friends inspire her children’s writing. Caroline and her family live in Vancouver, B.C.
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