Pumpkin-Spice Scented Wonder And Creepylicious Things: An Interview with Alexandra Bracken on The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding
Just Right Reads is a series hosted by Kamilla Benko, children’s book editor and author of the forthcoming The Unicorn Quest, featuring newly released middle grade books and Q&As with your favorite authors!
The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding (Prosper Redding Series #1)
Hardcover $16.99
The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding (Prosper Redding Series #1)
Hardcover $16.99
Alexandra Bracken, New York Times-bestselling author of The Darkest Minds and The Passenger series, chats with Kamilla Benko about her first middle grade novel, The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding, featuring a 12-year-old boy, a thousands-year-old fiend, and a family curse that’s been passed down through the generations.
Alexandra Bracken, New York Times-bestselling author of The Darkest Minds and The Passenger series, chats with Kamilla Benko about her first middle grade novel, The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding, featuring a 12-year-old boy, a thousands-year-old fiend, and a family curse that’s been passed down through the generations.
A autumn-enthusiast, Alexandra discusses what it was like to grow up without seasons, her childhood experiences with bullying, and her love of giraffes.
You’re most well known for your Young Adult series—The Darkest Minds series and The Passenger series. What made you want to venture into middle grade waters?
This is such an unsatisfying answer, but I’ve always hoped to write middle grade—it was just a matter of being patient and waiting for the right story to come along! When I was brewing this particular tale up in my cauldron, there was a moment where I considered trying to age this story up into YA. It was fascinating to see how much the tone and message of it would have changed, and, ultimately, I felt like it would lose too much of its charm. Since this story is so family-centric, and Prosper needed a little bit of innocence to him, it really clicked as middle grade. I will say, though, that I knew I wanted to write middle grade before I ever tried writing YA, and I have more of both planned—I love writing for both age groups equally!
What was your inspiration for this particular story? I’m hoping it wasn’t a Bracken family curse!
The Unicorn Quest
Hardcover $16.99
The Unicorn Quest
Hardcover $16.99
Thankfully no curses!! This story, much like The Darkest Minds series, is really a mash-up of things I love and the dark sense of humor I inherited from reading a lot of Roald Dahl at a very impressionable age. More importantly, I have a truly intense obsession with Halloween and autumn in general. I grew up in the desert of Arizona AKA Land of No Visible Seasonal Change, so movies like Hocus Pocus and Practical Magic left me spellbound. The settings and mood they depict are so different than what I knew. I didn’t get to experience proper autumn until I was eighteen and heading off to college on the east coast! With this story, I really wanted to capture that feeling of pumpkin-spice scented wonder I had as a kid, along with that magical sense of place.
Thankfully no curses!! This story, much like The Darkest Minds series, is really a mash-up of things I love and the dark sense of humor I inherited from reading a lot of Roald Dahl at a very impressionable age. More importantly, I have a truly intense obsession with Halloween and autumn in general. I grew up in the desert of Arizona AKA Land of No Visible Seasonal Change, so movies like Hocus Pocus and Practical Magic left me spellbound. The settings and mood they depict are so different than what I knew. I didn’t get to experience proper autumn until I was eighteen and heading off to college on the east coast! With this story, I really wanted to capture that feeling of pumpkin-spice scented wonder I had as a kid, along with that magical sense of place.
The other very loose inspiration for it was the idea of the Kennedy family curse—I seized upon the idea of this famous, extremely wealthy family being on the verge of losing everything because of something supernatural.
Massachusetts feels like just as much of a character as Prosper and Alastor. What kind of research did you do on the state’s history, and did you get a chance to visit Salem?
Thank you so much—I’m honored you think that! My mom grew up in Massachusetts and I still have a lot of family there, so I had many helpers in trying to capture it without falling back on stereotypes. It was hugely beneficial to be able to ask my mom things like, “What did autumn smell like to you as a kid?” and “What did you consider the first sign of it to be?” to try to make the depiction a little bit more specific.
Not to take an incredibly dark turn with this answer, but… Mom also told me so many stories about her childhood, including the many horrible ways neighborhood kids died in creepy accidents (a bicycle and a graveyard fence, a refrigerator during hide-and-seek—I will leave it to you guys to imagine the gruesome details). Those stories left me with a strong impression of New England as a beautiful place haunted by a vaguely unsettling undertone. My sense is that it has this liminal quality to it during autumn—like you could pull over to the side of the road to admire the foliage and accidentally catch sight of a witch passing through the shadows of the woods.
The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds Series #1)
Paperback $9.99
The Darkest Minds (The Darkest Minds Series #1)
Paperback $9.99
Sorry for that tangent! Back to your original question: generally speaking, lot of my research came directly out of studying early American history as a focus in college and revisiting a lot of the documents and books I’d read in that time. I did, however, make a quick research trip to Salem back when I wrote the first draft in 2011. I went just before Halloween to be sure I captured the city in its full, spine-tingling splendor and boy, Salem did NOT disappoint. Actually being there and getting to walk the streets inspired so many of my favorite things in book, including the haunted house Nell and her father work and live in, as well as chapter thirteen, when Alastor takes Prosper out for a walk. (You’ll have to read the book to find out what that means!)
Sorry for that tangent! Back to your original question: generally speaking, lot of my research came directly out of studying early American history as a focus in college and revisiting a lot of the documents and books I’d read in that time. I did, however, make a quick research trip to Salem back when I wrote the first draft in 2011. I went just before Halloween to be sure I captured the city in its full, spine-tingling splendor and boy, Salem did NOT disappoint. Actually being there and getting to walk the streets inspired so many of my favorite things in book, including the haunted house Nell and her father work and live in, as well as chapter thirteen, when Alastor takes Prosper out for a walk. (You’ll have to read the book to find out what that means!)
Not only do you write about modern day Massachusetts, but you also make many references to the deliciously creepy “Downstairs” and other realms. What influences did you draw from when you crafted the more fantastical world that stalks Prosperity—excuse me, Prosper?
I was a huge reader of mythology and fairytales growing up, and I think it shows here. I had zero chill about throwing in all of my favorite creepylicious things, to the point that I had to start a running list of all the creatures I was forcing myself to save for book two.
I always try to have my supernatural or fantasy elements feel grounded in reality so they’re easier for the reader to accept and digest. To help on that front, you can bet your bottom demon that I used creatures that should be recognizable to kids as part of our great cultural melting pot of inherited folklore. You’ll read about fairies, goblins, hobs, and the like, along with some monsters of my own creation. The key to doing that was to try to make sure that there element of freshness to them, especially in how they relate to their hidden world. The monsters (called “fiends” in the book) all represent some of the worst traits of humanity, and it’s no coincidence that they gather magic by feeding off the ugly human emotions of jealousy, fear, anguish, and fury.
While Prosper’s life is made miserable by a snarky malefactor, he’s also dealing with very real world problems that many kids will relate to, like navigating sibling relationships and grappling with an all-consuming desire for acceptance. How does writing fantastical elements into the real world help explore realistic middle school challenges?
Passenger (Passenger Series #1)
Paperback $9.99
Passenger (Passenger Series #1)
In Stock Online
Paperback $9.99
Poor Prosper! I loved writing in his voice. Despite all of the hostility he takes from his seemingly perfect extended family, despite the bullying at school, and the loneliness he experiences, he’s still managed to maintain his sense of humor and his warmth and goodness as a person. Prosper reminds me a lot of myself at that age: I was bullied in middle school, lost friends to the “popular” crowd, and often felt pretty uncertain about how things would get better. My anchor—the thing that allowed me to escape the pressures of the real world—was writing, much like Prosper’s is art. (Also like Prosper, I kept that creative outlet secret to protect it from any potential outside scorn.) In a way, Alastor really functions as that nagging, self-doubting voice we all have in our heads. Times, like, a hundred.
Poor Prosper! I loved writing in his voice. Despite all of the hostility he takes from his seemingly perfect extended family, despite the bullying at school, and the loneliness he experiences, he’s still managed to maintain his sense of humor and his warmth and goodness as a person. Prosper reminds me a lot of myself at that age: I was bullied in middle school, lost friends to the “popular” crowd, and often felt pretty uncertain about how things would get better. My anchor—the thing that allowed me to escape the pressures of the real world—was writing, much like Prosper’s is art. (Also like Prosper, I kept that creative outlet secret to protect it from any potential outside scorn.) In a way, Alastor really functions as that nagging, self-doubting voice we all have in our heads. Times, like, a hundred.
At twelve, your world is small, but you’re asked to juggle quite a bit inside of it at once—like you said, family, changing friendships, schoolwork, processing world and local events. Much like dystopian and post-apocalyptic books are a way to explore the worst-case scenarios lurking around the corner, fantasy can serve as a wonderful tool for showing kids that they have an inherent power in them to create change, both in themselves and in their community. It might not come in the form of a centuries-old fiend or magic, but it’s there in the choices they make every single day as they define who they want to be.
If you were a malefactor, what anima form do you think you’d take? (I’m going to go out on a limb and say that while I would want to be a cheetah, I’d probably be lucky if I even got a house cat.)
Hocus Pocus
DVD $9.99
Hocus Pocus
Director
Kenny Ortega
Cast
Bette Midler
,
Sarah Jessica Parker
,
Kathy Najimy
,
Omri Katz
,
Thora Birch
DVD $9.99
A house cat form would actually be very useful in this instance! Being a very tall person, I have always felt a kinship with giraffes… which would probably be the least helpful animal form for getting around and trying to make deals with humans. I think I’d probably want to be some sort of demonic little bunny. Always hoppin’, always making deals for eternal servitude. Eatin’ my carrots, livin’ my life.
A house cat form would actually be very useful in this instance! Being a very tall person, I have always felt a kinship with giraffes… which would probably be the least helpful animal form for getting around and trying to make deals with humans. I think I’d probably want to be some sort of demonic little bunny. Always hoppin’, always making deals for eternal servitude. Eatin’ my carrots, livin’ my life.
Finally, what was your favorite book when you were Prosper’s age?
Ooooh, tough question! I was a huge reader at Prosper’s age and was just coming out of my I Only Want to Read Star Wars Books phase. I loooooved the Goosebumps series, and there’s one in particular that still haunts me to this day: book #32, The Barking Ghost. But if I had to pick only one, I think I’d go with Catherine, Called Birdy by Karen Cushman or The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle by Avi.
The Dreadful Tale of Prosper Redding is on B&N bookshelves now.