Erin Dealey

It’s the Book Birthday of Chris Raschka‘s middle grade novel, Peachaloo in Bloom

(Neal Porter Books/ Holiday House).

Wait –are we talking about a novel

by TWO-time Caldecott Medalist –and honoree Illustrator

Chris Raschka?

Why, yes indeed. We are. And what a fun adventure!

But don’t take my word for it…

Raschka draws on his inner teen and grown-up as well as his inner child for this wry tale. . . . The strength of small-town stories like this is nearly always in the cast, and here the author ropes in a lively one. . . . Still, it’s Peachaloo . . . who really owns this beguiling story. . . . Fourwords’ small-town characters and character come alive in the frequent black-and-white sketches.
—Booklist starred review

“Humor joins clever dialogue and an engaging plot that will sweep readers away to a whirlwind ending. . . . Eccentricity abounds in this fantastical underdog tale of natural and historical preservation.”
—Kirkus

About the author…

Chris Raschka is the Caldecott Medal-winning and Hans Christian Andersen Award-nominated author and illustrator of dozens of books for young readers, including A Ball for Daisy, Yo! Yes?, The Hello, Goodbye Window (written by Norton Juster) and Nothing: John Cage and 4’33” (written by Nicholas Day). He is also a violist. He lives in New York City.

Let’s ask some questions!

Q 1. What inspired this clever story—a wasp experience of your own, or a super power? A sketch of Peachaloo? The amazing adventures of a family member or friend with “uneven legs”?  

Chris Raschka: In the summer of 2020, just as the worst of Covid was passing in New York City, I was stung by a wasp, passed out, and wound up in the hospital. This has happened to me once before. As I recuperated happily, I got to thinking about how an unfortunate turn of events might with a little imagination turn fortunate. Thus was Peachaloo born.

As to Peachaloo’s uneven legs, I wanted her to be unique in a special way, that brought its own challenges.  It’s an open question whether Peachaloo always had the ability to decipher coded speech but didn’t know it, or whether it was the wasp. The nurse’s comments on Peachaloo’s unevenness is the first real instance of her using her new power. Maybe having a little down time in a hospital bed allowed Peachaloo to fine tune her good senses.

Setting

Q 2. Is the small town of Fourwords based on a real location?  

Chris Raschka: Fourwords is basically the small town in Pennsylvania that I was born in, though I did not grow up in. My mother has returned to this town and lives just down the hill from the hospital where I was born.

I’ve gotten to know the town well over the last twenty years and have great affection for the place. Almost no events in the book have ever taken place there however. There was  a Schwartz Music Store. The surroundings, the feeling, the weather, the air, the rumpled sidewalks, the trees and river are all as I see them.

On Process

Q 3. I read that you write your first draft of a novel in long hand, in notebooks. Is this partly because of your work as an illustrator? Do you doodle in the margins as you write? Starting with longhand is my process too, and I’ve always felt a pencil (or pen) and paper bring us closer to the concept of writing as a Language ART. 

Chris Raschka: I agree. For me there is  a connection between my handwriting and what I’m writing. I used to dislike my hand-writing, but now I quite like it. It must have something to do with relaxation, equanimity, and perhaps, confidence.

Oddly enough, sometimes if I look at what is coming out of my pencil, or nowadays, my pen, and if I find it beautiful, then I generally like what I’ve written. Perhaps it has to do with the speed of thought and writing and for me they mesh best through this work of the hand. I know for many the keyboard can have the same effect. 

From Longhand to Keyboard

A funny thing happens to me when it is time to type the manuscript into a computer document. If I’m really reading the text as I type I get extremely bored with it. It practically puts me to sleep. And I am not a quick typist. A 60,000 word manuscript takes me some weeks, I’m not typing all day, mind you, but it’s slow going. My solution is to listen to something when I type; not music, but podcasts. I turn off my reading brain entirely. I make it strictly visual: see an ess, type and ess, see a period, type a period. Once it’s in the computer I can read it again and begin editing.

Q 4. Which podcast do you listen to when you type?

Chris Raschka: DR. GAMESHOW on Maximum Fun.

Characters

Q 5. They say each of our books is a tiny bit biographical. Which character is most like you:

a.     Peachaloo

b.     Helena

c.     Georgie

d.     Lily

e.     Ira

f.      ________________ (Your choice.)

Chris Raschka: There are bits of me in Peachaloo, Helena, and Ira, certainly, but no one is exactly me. I see a novel like a stir-fry. Whatever is in the pantry it any particular time can or might go in, the pantry in this case being whatever I remember, imagine, invent or see. Whether it works or not depends on how much of each ingredient I add, when you add it, how long I cook it, etc.

I’ve never tried to construct a verbal portrait of anyone, but I am often inspired by real people, how they talk, what they say, how they move when they talk, and so on. These might be people I know and observe now, but often are remembered friends and acquaintances. 

What’s in a name?

Q 6. I’m a fan of your wordplay and quirky character names! In your interview with Betsy Bird, you shared that Peachaloo was named after one of your favorite cacti. Is Piccolozampa also named after any flora or fauna? Are Major Gasbag, Alderman Armwaver, and Archie Collarbutton modern nods to the characters in a melodrama?

Chris Raschka: They are definitely nods to melodrama. I always liked Trollope’s character names: Sir Timothy Beeswax, Countess of Cantrip, Mr. Carbottle, Viscount Fawn, Mr. Gotobed, and on and on. The names are believable, not entirely over the top, funny, and usually determinative of the character.

I try to find names that have a pleasing rhythm, like Alderman Armwaver, that sound right, but do also indicate something about the character. In the case of the Alderman, she was originally Mayor Armwaver, but Mayor is a little too close to Major, and as the two characters are often together, the names started to blur.

Peachaloo is indeed named after a beloved cactus. Peachaloo, the name, comes from a treasured, 1930s, book of American Slang, that sits on my shelf. Peachaloo means, naturally, something very special, something that is the best.

Lastly, to my chagrin, I goofed with Piccolozampa. Peachaloo in Bloom will be published in Italian, which I’m very happy about. The title will be Peachaloo Piccalazampa. The editors corrected my mistake of not changing piccolo to piccola, the feminine form, to match zampa. We’ll blame it on the folks at Ellis Island for getting it wrong. 

Thanks, Mom and Dad

Q 7. Were you a regular at the library or bookstore from a young age? What were some of your favorite books?

Chris Raschka: I wish I could say I was, and if I’d grown up in Fourwords I might have been. As it was, I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, far from the local library, and with few cozy bookstores nearby.

Still, my mother is a special collections librarian, and my father was a historian, so I grew up around very old books, and spent some summers work old, rare, books for my mother. Now I am a regular, very regular at both the New York Public Library, and The New York Society Library, where I sit at this moment, tapping on my computer in the writers’ room.

Revision

Q 8. What was the hardest scene or chapter to write?  

Q 9. What discoveries happened as you worked with your editor, Taylor Norman?  

Chris Raschka: I’m going to combine questions 8 and 9. The hardest scenes to write for me came in the rewriting, and some of the rewriting came from suggestions and questions arising from Taylor’s very good and careful reading.

Being the child of a historian, I sometimes packed too much history into the setting or the dialogue. Some of that history was necessary to the plot. Finding the balance was tricky. Removing something early on and suddenly the whole thing looked like it was going to cave in. The ins and outs of the story within the story, that is, Ronnie and Donnie’s adventures, also raised a few thorny concerns that kept bubbling up over the course of the rewrites. 

Some characters can be very difficult. I don’t like to make characters only bad or only good, but sometimes it’s just not satisfying to make the characters too layered. Georgie was particularly difficult. He was to be shallow, untrustworthy, vain, and false, and yet he was also supposed to be the instant king bee of the high school crowd when he arrives.

As Taylor put it, “Why would anyone want to hang around with him?” Good question. That took me a while to figure out other than to say, well, we ARE attracted to no good characters inspite or possibly just because they get away with being no good and not caring about it. 

Q 10. Do you have a favorite line or scene in the book?

Chris Raschka: I am fond of that speech by Peachaloo regarding Ronnie.

ED Note — Here’s my favorite: 

“Peachaloo thought about what it meant to be Ronnie.

Helena thought about what it meant to be Peachaloo.”  

Many thanks to Chris Raschka for joining us on the blog today,

and Happy Book Birthday to Peachaloo in Bloom!

To learn more about his books, follow Chris Raschka on

IG chris.raschka

Next on the blog:

We chat with author/illustrator Jeff Mack about his new picture book,

If You Want to Write A Story