It Had to Have the Cool Factor: A Guest Post by Anne and Ben Brashares
Three friends face three very different middle school social lives in an alternate history sure to get reader’s brains churning.
Hardcover $18.99
Westfallen
Westfallen
By Ann Brashares , Ben Brashares
In Stock Online
Hardcover $18.99
Ann Brashares and her brother Ben Brashares comes the first book in a “pulse-pounding” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) middle grade alternate history thriller trilogy that asks what it would be like in present-day America if Germany had won World War II.
Ann Brashares and her brother Ben Brashares comes the first book in a “pulse-pounding” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) middle grade alternate history thriller trilogy that asks what it would be like in present-day America if Germany had won World War II.
BB: The inspiration for Westfallen started with our sons. We each have middle grade readers who can be a challenge to entertain. We wanted to write something they would want to read and, ideally, talk to their friends about. This meant it had to have a ‘cool’ factor. It had to be a little scary, it had to have a good deal of mystery, and it had to be funny in parts. If we were able to spark their interest in history and some deeper issues surrounding race and identity, even better. We both love the idea of time travel and all the rich complications it brings.
AB: So we invented a mysterious radio that connects people not across space, but across time. The radio brings together two groups of friends—three contemporary kids and three kids from their same neighborhood in 1944. Once they start talking, all sorts of thrills ensue and then one stupendous catastrophe.
BB: From the outset I wanted to express my own disappointment –through the eyes of the 1944 kids– that we don’t have flying cars or jet packs by now. I was glad I got a chance to do that. 🙂 There’s a ton of fun and interesting cultural material to cover with two sets of friends talking across time –the gaming, the phones, the music, the movies, etc. It was almost too much for me at time. Ann had to wrangle me back on track a number of times. After the kids inadvertently make a big mess out of history, it was really exploring how these two groups support each other across time, both in trying to fix the timeline and trying to cope emotionally with what they have done.
AB: The two groups of kids are nearly 80 years apart. That feels like a huge distance and, at the same time, no distance at all. We use the device of a magic radio to punch a hole through time, so kids who are far apart can talk together, can see how much has changed and how little. But you don’t need time travel to show how weird the passage of time can feel.
AB: We wrote the outline together. For the first drafting of the story, I took on the 1944 kids and Ben the contemporary kids. That way we could bond with our point-of-view characters and set tone and voice in a way that felt personal to each of us. We drafted scenes separately and then went back and forth in the editing, trying to make them better.
BB: I’d say the breakdown goes like this: 45% complaining about our mother, 20% talking about our kids, 10% complaining about our spouses, and a solid 15% working on the book. Of that 15% work, I’d say 3% is spent worrying about our deadline, 2% Ann being mad at me for not writing fast enough, and 10% imagining all the ‘what if’s’ in the best way possible.
We talk a lot.
AB: Ha. I’m laughing at what Ben wrote. Not completely reliable, but funny, which about sums up our process.