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MEET BARBARA KERLEY
by Bonnie O'Brian

What books influenced you most when you were growing up?

Barbara Kerley

My favorite book for years and years was Louise Fitzhugh’s HARRIET THE SPY. I probably read it a dozen times—so often, in fact, that I had to tape the binding to keep the book from falling apart. My mom has told me that after I read the book in 3 rd grade, I started walking around taking notes. I don’t remember doing this, but I’m not surprised to hear that I did; I still love thinking about people and what makes them tick.

What was your first job when you graduated from college?

I joined the Peace Corps and went to Nepal to teach math, science, and English. My village was a day’s walk up, up, up a dirt path to a small village without electricity or running water. In fact, going to the community water tap each day was the inspiration years later for my book A COOL DRINK OF WATER.

Was your first book accepted immediately? or did you experience a number of rejections?

My first book, SONGS OF PAPA’S ISLAND, was actually published fairly easily—I found a publisher on my third try. Getting my second book published was a lot trickier, however. When I do school visits, I put up an overhead of a letter from an editor saying that yes, indeed, she’d like to look at my manuscript called THE DINOSAURS OF WATERHOUSE HAWKINS. On that letter I have written the number 17. I ask the kids in the audience what they think the number 17 stands for. They tell me, “It’s how old you were when you wrote the book!” or “It’s how many pages are in the book!” I say those are good guesses, but 17 is the number of times that I had to send the book out before it found a home. In other words, I heard “NO” 16 times before I heard a “YES.” It’s a good example of how persistence can pay off.

What are the topics are some of your books?

For the past several years, I’ve been thinking a lot about peace. On the day of ‘Shock and Awe,’ as the bombs were raining down on Baghdad, I was home in California revising WALT WHITMAN: WORDS FOR AMERICA, about one of America’s greatest poets and his experience healing soldiers during the Civil War. I’d go downstairs and watch the bombs exploding on CNN and then go back upstairs to my office and revise some more. It was a very emotional day. I explored the theme of peace in my novel GREETINGS FROM PLANET EARTH, which takes place just after the Vietnam War, and in A LITTLE PEACE, which is a beautiful book of photographs from around the world conveying the simple message that we all have the power to make the world more peaceful.

What kinds of things inspire you to write?

I try to stay very open to the things around me—what I see and hear and read. And often, when I do, I will suddenly have what I call an “Oh, cool!” moment when something strikes me as wonderfully improbable. That was the case with THE DINOSAURS OF WATERHOUSE HAWKINS; I turned the page of this huge book about dinosaurs and saw an illustration from an 1853 newspaper of a fantastical dinner party held inside an iguanodon model. My first thought was, “Oh, cool!” My second thought was, “What’s the story behind this picture?”

What gave you the idea for your debut novel, GREETINGS FROM PLANET EARTH?

Another “Oh, cool!” moment: reading an article about the 25 th anniversary of the Voyager space probe launch. Both Voyager probes carry a Golden Record of music, pictures, sounds, and greetings from planet earth, in the hopes that the Records will one day be found by other life forms out in space. I was really taken by the idea. What would you put on a Record like that? What would you leave out? Thinking about the launch in 1977 brought me back to the 70s and the Vietnam War. To me, both ideas—space exploration and war—represent the range of what human beings are capable of, and seemed perfect to explore in a book which asks the question, “What does it mean to be human?”

When is your next book going to be in book stores?

In March of 2008, I have a new picture book biography coming out called WHAT TO DO ABOUT ALICE? It’s about Alice Roosevelt, the exuberant and irreverent daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. Alice was one of America’s first real celebrities—she was constantly in the papers, and not always in a flattering light. In fact, she so exasperated her father that one day he exclaimed, “I can be president of the United States, or I can control Alice. I cannot possibly do both!”

Do you like hearing from readers?

Absolutely! They can email me via my website, www.barbarakerley.com.