The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook - Interview with Joanne Rocklin

Rocklin, Joanne. The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook. Amulet Books, April 2012. 240p. $16.95. 978-1-4197-0192-4.

Check out my review of The Five Lives of Our Cat Zook.

Joanne Rocklin talks about change as loss, being a tween, how her pets help her find things, storytelling vs novel writing, and why seeing and noticing can change your life as well as those around you!

How do you write about loss for young readers?

It is interesting that you ask that question first. I did indeed want to explore the illness and potential death of a pet from the eyes of a middle grader, or “tween.” I remember being struck reading a story about a father who was deeply mourning the death of his dog. He described how the memory of that family pet seemed to be fading very quickly for his three-year-old daughter. I may be wrong, but it seemed to me that there are more stories on this topic written for the picture book age, yet it is the tween who truly understands the loss, intellectually and emotionally.

You ask how I write about loss. Let me say first that I am always writing about loss in some way, because change itself implies a loss. I write about kids going to a new school, or experiencing a family crisis, or a new family dynamic. In THE FIVE LIVES OF OUR CAT ZOOK, yes, I am writing about illness and death, the ultimate loss. Oona and Fred’s father has died, and now their cat is ill. 

But as a writer (and even as a parent, or friend or teacher) I know that adjustment to any loss is an important process, and that’s how I tell my story. At first, Oona wears her father’s Raiders sweatshirt all the time. And she retells her father’s stories, to keep him alive in her mind. She tells her brother Fred a big “whopper”—that cats have nine lives, and Zook has only lived five of them, hoping to assuage Fred’s anxiety. Yet deep down she herself also wishes the whopper were true. Eventually, by telling her stories her own way, and taking care of her brother, and opening up her heart to new people in her life, she’s able to say her good-byes. And that means letting go of any fantasies, removing her dad’s sweatshirt, yet understanding that her father will always be part of her, as will every single living thing she has loved. Five-year-old Fred holds onto to his own fantasy about Zook, and Oona knows she must allow him to go through his own process of understanding.

How do you capture the mind of the tween in your work?

I love tweens! That is the part of my own childhood I remember best, when I fell in love with books and libraries and writing stories, poems and journal entries. I wrote long, long detailed letters to my best friend when we were both at different summer camps. We exchanged letters, so I still have mine in the garage! I love that tweens are struggling to understand Big Things, but often miss the mark a little bit, which can be humorous. Oona wonders about true love, magic and God in my story, and finds her own answers eventually. I love their forthrightness as they show off their newfound knowledge. But I also love their ambivalence—they love conflict and independence, but are fine without it, too, from time to time. In other words, there is much to write about, and remember. “Capturing the mind of the tween” is a matter of remembering my own tweenhood, as well as cherishing the tweens I meet in my life.

Do you think pets keep you sane? What about your pets?

with Mitzi and Zoe

I talk out loud to myself when I’m alone. (And writers are often alone; it’s practically a 

requirement for the job. . . .) I just can’t help myself. Frankly, when I do that, I feel crazy. But if my cat or dog are in the room, I address my comments to them. That makes me feel less crazy, especially when they answer me. The other day my cat Mitzie pointed out, “Your glasses are on the dining room table, where you left them.” And she was right!

I do love having pets. They raise my self-esteem. Mitzie makes me feel like a movie star when I enter a room. (“Oh, wow! It’s her! She’s back!”) My dog Zoe is more laid back, but I do feel calm and virtuous, massaging her arthritic hip. They say pets are good for one’s blood pressure. 

How do you transfer the art of storytelling to print?

It was fun and challenging to have Oona tell the stories she’d heard from her father. These stories are variants of very old tales from several cultures. The structure of her stories remain the same, but she adds bits and pieces of her own life to make them hers, as she grows to understand her world. She has learned from her dad to use sparkling, descriptive language, to surprise her audience with loud sounds and odd plot twists, to pull her ear to signal the onset of a tale. I tried to show how being in command of her story gave her a sense of personal power.

I am a writer, not a professional storyteller (as I understand the term). But I do have a sense of what it feels like to relay polished, rhythmic, fully formed stories to an audience, when I speak to kids at schools about my writing. There are certain stories I tell that capture exactly what I want to say about creativity, and it’s enjoyable to repeat them over and over to different audiences. The more I repeat, the more I’m able to perfect them. But the stories are essentially the same. It’s like singing a song I know very well. 

Yet the telling of the story has to seem fresh and alive, and the tale fully formed, as if the teller is discovering the tale along with the audience. How different from my own lonely, rough drafts as I rework a novel! Writing a novel is a messy, circular process. I bounce back and forth, revising. The finished linear tale that results is so very different from the drafts. Do storytellers have their “rough drafts?” I’ve always imagined the gifted storyteller inhabited by a muse. The muse whispers a story in her ear, leaving just enough space between the words for the storyteller to add her own. That’s how I imagined Oona, telling her father’s stories.

Your book points out differences and similarities between observing and seeing. How does this inform the story you've written?

Oona fancies herself a terrific observer, a “noticer,” she tells us. Based on her observations about life, she’s come up with quite a few theories: her Rainbow Whopper Theory, her Cats Have Nine Lives Theory, her Name Theory, her Wishing Theory, her Hope of the World Theory. Most of her theories sound terrific “in theory,” and will improve as she gains experience and maturity. She has even been known to admit when a theory is flawed.

She is also struggling to develop a theory about true love, what it means, and how you know you’ve found it. Galileo, she learns from her respected teacher, wasn’t afraid to base his celestial theories on what he himself actually saw, rather than mere assumption. And as Oona puts it, sometimes you can “notice the obvious but wrong things.” When it comes to relationships, especially new ones, Oona begins to realize that her theories are based on what she hopes or wishes to be true, rather than what she truly sees with her eyes, and is beginning to feel in her heart. 

About the Author

Photo by Gerry Nelson

I was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, the land of four distinct seasons. The winters are so long! Wintry days and nights inspired me to read many, many books, the most important thing a writer can do. Of course other seasons inspired me, too! And as soon as I learned to hold a pencil I began writing poems, stories, and diaries. I loved reading my own stories. As an adult I moved to L.A., where my two sons were brought up, and my first books written. Now I live in Northern California, in Oakland, with my husband Gerry, near my sons and their families. I spend my days writing, reading, gardening, cooking up a storm, singing in our synagogue choir, babysitting for my grandchildren, and playing with our golden retriever, Zoe, and cat, Mitzie.s well as library books to my two younger sisters. I have always owned cats (or they have owned me, a cliché, but true!) Coincidentally, all our cats have been authors, and I’ve compiled their writing secrets in the essay “Why Cats Write.” We found our current cat, Mitzie, hungry and flea-bitten, outside our favorite Thai restaurant. Following in my other pets’ paw prints, she is presently revising her heartrending memoir Please Take Me Home With You (It Will Be Worth It, I Promise). 

Check out Joanne Rocklin's blog for some fun with Zook, including a sample chapter!

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Interview - Fade to Blue by Sean Beaudoin

Fade To Blue
Sean Beaudoin

Today, August 28, is Sean Beaudoin's birthday!
Happy Birthday Sean!

My Thoughts
I totally loved this book. I read it the day I received the ARC from Little, Brown on Facebook. Fade to Blue is not only the title, it tells the story of two characters in the book, Kenny Fade and Sophie Blue. The chapter titles were pretty cool because they go from 0 and count up, then there's a comic, and then it counts down to 0 again. All 3 stories are related. We follow Sophie as she tries to figure out what happened to her dad and why is that psycho ice cream truck always following her! If you like smart, funny reads loaded with pop culture, music references, and sarcasm this is your book. It also has virtual reality and comix!

About the Author
58% of the letters in Sean Beaudoin's name are vowels.

In ASCII binary code, his name is 01010011 01100101 01100001 01101110 00100000 01000010 01100101 01100001 01110101 01100100 01101111 01101001 01101110

Backwards, it's Naes Nioduaeb. In Pig Latin, it's Eansay Eaudoinbay.

Sean Beaudoin has used his B.A. in photography as a springboard into the following jobs: construction laborer, circus roustabout, busboy, used book buyer, hotel desk clerk, camp counselor, statue repairman (really), seller of jazz vinyl, and a nine-day stint as The World's Worst Telemarketer. He now resides mostly in Seattle, but also sometimes San Francisco, with his wife and daughter.

I also tend to list my history and traits in the third person, as if someone else were writing it for me. I love hot sauce and almonds and Turkish coffee. I hate the phrase "it is what it is." When people say that, I tend to respond, in a much deeper voice than I really have, "NO, IT ISN'T." I like vinyl and French movies and books about unhappy people from the Fifties. I'm not particularly crazy about police procedurals, ketchup, rap-metal, Julia Roberts, cell phones, or Sudoku.

Interview with Sean Beaudoin
Was the Ice Cream Truck in Fade to Blue inspired by your friend's Pie Truck?

That's a funny question, but no. The ice cream truck was in the manuscript a good two years before Pie Truck reared its head on the rough and tumble streets of Alameda, CA. But Pie Truck is such an excellent, endearing, and tasty idea, that it may have to make an appearance in a future book.

I loved your advice to "Neither of These is Miles Davis", you understood her dilemma so well. Describe a situation where your personal space has been invaded. How did you "handle" it?

Hmmm. I was on a flight about two weeks ago where a family of six took up the entire row in front of me. They were, I will say, not a family of rigorous dieters. For some reason, the children, who were all in their teens, took turns sitting on Mom's lap. It seemed odd to me, since they appeared to be of the age where most teens wouldn't want to be caught dead anywhere near Mom in public, so I actually found it sort of sweet. Except for the fact that with both of them in one chair, and Mom having her seat back and tray table all the way reclined, they were pretty much sprawled right up in my business. Most odd, though, was when Dad decided to take his turn on Mom's lap. I am not making this up. Suddenly, there was six-hundred pounds of married bliss and suspect spatial awareness more or less announcing itself six inches from my face. At first I thought it was a joke, but they stayed that way a very long time, watching the in-flight movie. Mom rubbed Dad's back, while Dad stroked his beard, curled on her lap like a terrier. It was exceedingly weird. The way I handled it was to say nothing, marvel at their lack of self-consciousness, and bide my time for an opportunity to relate their behavior in an only marginally amusing interview response.

How did you come up with your book rating system? What book have you rated that you're glad you didn't write? (Don't need to give title, just a quick synopsis would be awesome)

I used to be extremely opinionated and even judgmental about what I thought good literature was. It was easy for me to toss around opinions and slam works I thought were inferior, derivative, cynically manipulative, or dishonest. Then I tried to write a book. Turns out, books are hard to write. My entire evaluation system changed drastically. It's very hard for me to be negative about almost any book now, because I can instantly relate to the struggle the author went through to get it on the page no matter what I feel about its merits personally. I also think with the internet it's far too tempting, and common, for people to be anonymously flippant, even cruel, about appraising someone else's work without realizing what went into it. At this point, if you've actually finished a novel, no matter what it's about, I'm more or less on your side.

That said, with almost 150,000 books published last year, there is a vast and mathematically unavoidable disparity in quality. Yeah, let's be honest, there's a lot of crap out there. So, my rating system is set up to kind of make a joke about the idea of standing in judgment, as well as being vulnerable to others' judgment, while still allowing me to talk about other books in a consistent and honest way. If someone finds that they share my taste or aesthetics, that's great, and they can decide if they want to read what I've reviewed or not. But, to answer your question even more obliquely, I'd have to say overall, about 70% of the time, I am impressed by other author's creativity, discipline, and talent.


Statue repairman, what?

I know, it was such a funky job. Essentially, I worked in a statuary that cast cement and marble garden and house sculpture, as well as bird feeders and faux-Rodin's and mini-Davids and such. Since it was sort of a shady operation, the statues would frequently come out of the molds missing snouts, fingers, arrows, wings, talons, and unseemly cherubic attributes. My job was to "repair" them, by re-attaching the lost appendages, or sort of cosmetically enhancing the flaws with a watery mixture of Quick-crete and paint. My job was also to dip them into this huge tub of noxious chemicals wearing shoulder-length rubber gloves (but no mask) so they looked aged when they came out. I figure I lost about 30 IQ points doing that. It was like breathing in huge gusts of deck stripper all day long. I frequently drove home in a weird, nauseated haze, humming along to static on the radio. But, it paid $10 an hour, and back then, that was really good money.

Sean has a new book coming out in Fall 2010 , You Killed Wesley Payne. From Sean:

You Killed Wesley Payne is Grease meets The Maltese Falcon. It's what would result if the DNA of The Road Warrior and Beverly Hills 90210 were spliced together and then grafted to Samuel L. Jackson's coccyx. It's cops and cliques. It's love and vice. It's a band called Pinker Casket who rocks so hard they may actually all be dead. And it's a pulp-noir murder mystery in which hard-boiled seventeen year old Dalton Rev must solve the mystery of "The Body" before it solves him.

Places to find Sean Beaudoin
Twitter - @seanbeaudoin
Facebook Fan Page - Sean Beaudoin

Fade to Blue Video Review from In Search of Giants