Library Talks: Jesse McCreed – H-FARM International School

1) Your stories follow teenagers who discover their strength while navigating extraordinary worlds. What inspired you to write about this moment of life, when everything feels possible and uncertain at the same time?

I think I have been drawn to writing about the preteen and teen years because that is when life takes a big shift. At least when I was young, everyone was keen to tell you how your hormones and your body would change, but for me, that wasn’t the biggest shift. The biggest shift was in my mind. It was how the simplicity of childhood and the (very often) one-dimensional explanations one receives for various aspects of life no longer fit.

It happens at different times for each of us, but I remember being around ten years of age, and feeling completely bewildered by the actions of others, and the incongruity between espoused values and actions. This observation opened a door for me, so to speak, where I grew increasingly curious about what was actually real, what matters, what is honest. And also, how does one face challenges and remain kind and strong and intelligent without becoming trampled or, alternatively, a bully?

As teen years went on, these questions grew increasingly important to me. I didn’t really realize it at the time, but it was through reading that my quest for these answers was not just permitted, but encouraged. In stories, you understand the unique plight of the characters, of the challenges they face, and of the repercussions that follow from their choices. At least in my experience, I never really had that kind of honest clarity when speaking to human beings in real time. Only in books do you gain that kind of insight. Books provide this magic key, not just to other worlds, but to the moral and psychological permutations in those worlds.

For the entire interview, click the button below!

I finally got around to sharing a short video Sam took when we brought Liberty Frye to the feet of the Grimm Brothers. I thought I’d share it here as well, and in honor of the occasion, we’re running a free promo of the kindle version from December 25-27, 2024.

Here’s the Kindle link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0075SRW2E

Merry Christmas!

The best thing about school visits and having a whole hour to chat about anything tangential to writing? The sweetness and undiluted honesty with which children share their own dreams. To all the Kate’s out there, keep drawing and writing and dreaming.

You’ve got this!

Have you ever wondered if will affects fate? If you can wish for something enough that the chances of it becoming true are increased? Might a thought generate physical manifestation? Can the former beget the latter?

I often wonder. But regardless of whatever metaphysical truths we have yet to grasp, what I do know is this:

If you don’t wish it, think of it, hope for it–whatever phrase you want to use–then you won’t strive for it. And if you don’t strive for, then … what? If good fortune falls your way, even if it is exactly the thing you would have/could have wished for, you might enjoy the happenstance, but it would be devoid of the same meaning. Because you didn’t first imagine it. You didn’t will it into being. You didn’t make choices, or work for it to manifest.

Enough of that, because the point here is: Fantastico! What serendipity that I had the opportunity to visit the fourth and fifth graders at the Landstuhl Elementary School last week.

It was a great experience–I love the enthusiasm and limitless possibility that children see in life! And the bonus? Landstuhl is only 1.5 hours from Hanau, Germany: the birthplace of the Grimm brothers.

And Rodenbach, where Libby stumbles through the winter night in Chapter Thirteen, The Witch in the Woods, is only a few minutes further by car. Of course Sam and I had to pay a visit to the setting of Sabine’s home: the Wolfgang Abbey Ruins!

Sitting there, reading my story in a place where years ago, I’d had just a spark of an idea, I realized all over again how precious that ephemeral, flitting, rip-in-the-fabric-of-reality thing is that we call thought.

Because thoughts are magic.

Our minds are magic. They can create something out of nothing, change the mundane into beauty, flip sorrow into joy. Thoughts weave an idea into a story, and if you stick with it long enough, they can even breathe that story into life. Thoughts let you see glitter in a rainstorm and turn a starless night into velvet.

Thoughts are what create the world around us; they are what make us each unique; they empower us to see and create realities that might not otherwise exist; they give us hope to strive for something better, just beyond. But first, we have to have the thought, the idea.

So to every educator or nurturer who encourages children to read, and not just read, but to foster our imaginations, thank you. Thank you for recognizing the magic inside each of us.