The Mitten: Writer Spotlight: Candace Fleming

Three-legged cat, cornucopia, Ann Schwartz, loose-leaf paper, gray areas, and baby rhinos: Candace Fleming

Charlie Barshaw coordinates our regular Writer Spotlight feature and interviews writers of SCBWI-MI. In this piece, meet prolific picture book, novel, fiction and non-fiction author Candace Fleming, esteemed faculty member of the 2014 Mackinac Island conference.

I suppose yours could have been a Roald Dahl-type story of a girl who embellished the truth and got punished/and or banished for her falsehoods. Who told adventures of her three-legged cat (when it turned out there were no cats with any number of legs—your mom was allergic), the ghost in the attic, and the fabulous family trip to Paris, all by Grade 1. But your mom was a storyteller too, and she encouraged you to write your stories. You said writing cured your itch for performing before a live audience. But did it? Don’t you still get a thrill presenting to a live audience?

Don’t get me wrong, I love talking with kids about writing. And while I wouldn’t call it a thrill, I am inspired by their enthusiasm and curiosity, their imaginations and senses of humor. Kids really are the best audience, even middle and high schoolers.

School visit, gymnasium of 1st-5th grade students 2023

Your Mom influenced at least two of the books you wrote. Boxes for Katje was based on her actual childhood experience. And your book about Amelia Earhart arose from your mother’s heartbreak when the famous aviatrix and her plane disappeared. What else did your mom inspire you to do?

Both my mom and dad inspired me to become a writer. Not literally. They didn’t say, “Candy, go forth and write.” But they were both storytellers, and valued story. They bought books for both themselves and us kids. They were enthusiastic library patrons. We talked about books at the dinner table, and on long car rides.

And our house was filled with so many books that we didn’t have shelf space for them all. It was common to have stacks of books sitting on the floor beside the shelves.

They also valued the stories I told, and eventually wrote as a kid. My dad kept them in this wooden box he brought home from Japan after World War II. He treasured that box. Putting my stories inside it told me he treasured them equally. It all sent a message: my voice had value.

Your love of language was triggered in second grade by the word cornucopia. What are some of your other favorite words?

Cattywampus, flimflam, flibbertigibbet, azalea, crepuscular, perpendicular.

Fourth Grade was magic for you. It was the year when you were Arm Wrestling Champ. Also the year when you wrote a letter to author Marguerite Henry and got a response! Do you respond to young fans?

I clearly remember feeling so special when I received both a letter and a signed copy of Misty of Chincoteague (including Misty’s hoof-o-graph) from Ms. Henry. I want my readers to feel that way, too.

And let’s face it, it’s a huge honor to get a few words or a hand-drawn picture from a reader. They’ve taken the time and effort. What a gift that is! And for a children’s writer, it’s the ultimate gift. I’m always so grateful.

Candy and Eric signing books

You said you wrote your first book specifically for fourth graders, when you found that they were consumed studying for upcoming standardized tests. Would that be Professor Fergus Fahrenheit and his Wonderful Weather Machine (1994)? Later The Fabled Fourth Graders of Aesop Elementary School (2005). What is it about that age that excites you?

To my mind, fourth grade is the sweet spot. They’re so capable, yet still so excited about school and learning. They’re funny and unsophisticated (in the best way) and willing to try new things. What’s not to love about fourth graders?

Your early picture books in the 1990’s were a mix of fact and fiction (except maybe Women of the Lights (1995), which were biographies of female lighthouse keepers.) Big hair, big cheese, bird calls, and opera singers in the Wild West. The one connecting thread—you found something interesting in every topic. What were the 1990’s like for a green picture book writer?

Wow, I hope I can remember that far back! In the early nineties you could still send a manuscript over the transom and get pulled from the slush (I did). There were fewer resources out there for newbies, and really, everyone was dependent on SCBWI because they were one of only groups doing workshops or conferences etc.

Agnes Peregrine
accomplished birdcaller

Was there more opportunity? I can’t recall. I got rejected more than a few times. But I do think publishing’s door was more wide open than it is now.

When did you meet Anne Schwartz of Random House Children’s Books? Was it love at first sight, or did it take a while for your relationship to grow?

I met Anne at an SCBWI conference here in Illinois. I went because I admired her picture books. She’d just gotten her first imprint, Apple Soup Books at Knopf, and I really wanted to hear what she had to say. I was still unpublished at the time, and certainly didn’t expect to be discovered or anything like that. I was just seeking some knowledge.

As luck would have it, she came down during an open mic reading (she had begged off to go to bed but got bored in her room). She’d just sat down when my book was read. People in the room actually laughed in all the right places.

Sitting in the audience, I was blown away. I was even more blown away when Anne stood and asked who’d written it. Then she walked over and asked if she could take it back to NYC with her. My answer? “It’s not done yet.” Yup, I was green!

But I did send it to her (after I revised) and she bought it. I’ve been with her ever since and it’s been one of the most transforming relationships of my life. Not only does she understand me as a writer, and brings out my best, but she’s a good friend. We’ve been together… what… thirty years? Thirty years, twenty-six books… and counting.

Speaking of love at first sight, how did you meet Eric Rohmann?

Eric Rohmann and Candace Fleming

Who? No, just kidding. We met at a conference in Chicago and really connected. We had so much in common, not just kids books, but travel and hiking. I loved talking with him, and he made me laugh. (I still do and he still does).

For years, however, we were just close friends. Eventually, those feelings blossomed. He’s still my best friend, though. I’m blessed.

Your early drafts are composed on wide-lined loose-leaf paper, scrawled with blue Bic pens. Very common tools, and you find them freeing so that your words aren’t so precious.

Though you said the Giant Squid book started on a napkin. What are some of the most unusual “pen and paper” combinations you have been forced to use when loose-leaf and blue Bic pen were unavailable?

I’ve written on the backs of receipts and envelopes. I’ve torn out those black, back pages in books and ripped apart paper tablecloths. I used my lip liner the other day because I didn’t have a pen or pencil. It worked.

And while I hate electronic first drafts, I wrote a picture book not too long ago in my phone’s notes. You’d think I’d be prepared after all these years and carry something. But nope.

You’ve done extensive traveling, to Russia (twice) for The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia (2014) and Egypt for THE CURSE OF THE MUMMY: UNCOVERING TUTANKHAMUN’S TOMB. Where else have your books taken you?

Candy inside a pyramid 2021

South Africa (twice), Roswell, New Mexico, the Aleutian Islands, Cody, Wyoming, Bletchley Park outside of London, and every Lincoln site in the United States (just to name a few).

You described your research techniques as “chaotic.” Surely, with all the intervening non-fiction you’ve produced, you’ve sanded off some of the rough edges. Still, research and a keen curiosity can lead you down alternate paths and all sorts of rabbit holes. What have been some of the surprises you’ve uncovered while looking for something else?

Nope, my research remains chaotic, and I like it that way. It’s organic, you know? What I ask next springs from what I’ve just discovered. I never know what path I’m going to take. I purposely leave myself open for surprise and diversions.

In my opinion, it’s the diversions and surprise that create good books. Hmm…. Surprises. Here’s my favorite: When I was working on The Family Romanov I traveled to Tsarskoe Selo, the imperial family’s country getaway fifteen miles from St. Petersburg, Russia.

From my research, I knew that Nicholas and the family had escaped there so they could live away from the chaos of governing the country. No one was allowed in to see them without permission. They didn’t go out. I assumed the palace in which they’d chose to live was smack dab in the middle of this vast estate where they remained physically isolated.

But when I got to TS, I discovered that the Romanov’s palace was butt up against the wrought-iron fence. And on the other side of that fence was the town. In fact, the family’s private rooms were on the same side as the fence. That meant that the Romanovs, who had removed themselves from the Russian people, could see them every time they looked out their windows. They could hear those peasants talking and singing; could hear their babies crying; could smell their dinners cooking.

I remember standing there, and thinking, “This isn’t physical isolation, this is a psychological isolation. They’ve chosen NOT to see.” Discovering that changed the entire book. Suddenly, I knew I couldn’t write this story without the inclusion of peasants and workers and soldiers. They were integral to the Romanov story, but I hadn’t seen that until my research took me there… literally.

And that led to the book’s interstitials called “Beyond the Palace Gates,” because I had seen beyond those real live gates, and I’d discovered a newer, far richer, more honest telling.

You weren’t interested in doing a book about Buffalo Bill (even though premier editor Neal Porter asked you to). Likewise, P.T. Barnum wasn’t on your interest radar. But you found the hook in each life that opened the door for a book on each. You had your disinterest in each, and yet you persisted until you found something that spoke to you. You said you need the “vital idea.” What is that?

Vital idea is basically this question: What do I have to say to readers of the 21^st century with this piece of history? After all, my purpose it not to write an informational book about historical events and people. I’m not writing so kids can use my book for their reports.

I’m writing to show them something about how we live today. I’m asking them to see the hooks and echoes between the past, present and future. I’m illuminating connections. I’m fleshing out context.

I always say that if a nonfiction book is only about what it seems to be about, then somehow the author has failed. So what is Buffalo Bill really about? It’s about how the myth of the American west was created by one man; how we have to remember that the pony express, wagons train circling for protection, the bugle playing infantry galloping to the rescue (among other tropes) were all invented by a showman. None of it was true. None of it happened.

Truth can be very elusive.

When doing research for a non-fiction piece, you keep a running list of questions you’d like to answer: “What was his favorite color? Did she sleep on her back? Believe in God? What did she carry in her purse? Who gave him his first kiss?” Curiosity might have killed the cat, but you thrive on it. What do the minute details of a life have to do with the Big Picture?

History is found in what I call “small moments.” It’s those dinner table conversations and shopping receipts that draw young readers directly into the lives of people from the past. Intimate and authentic, these small moments allow us to peek into a person’s soul, and in so doing, change what we know about history.

You said you like to take your non-fiction readers to the “gray areas.” Please explain.

I mean, those places in history (and there are lots of them) where one doesn’t know what to make of the truth. Ben Franklin owned slaves. What do you make of that? Charles Lindbergh was a white supremacist, a nazi and avid eugenicist. What do you make of that? Nicholas Romanov, despite his modern-day reputation as a loving father, was a virulent anti-Semite who ordered pograms killing thousands of Russian Jews. What do you make of that?

These are all “gray” areas where, through my narrative, I hand it to the reader and ask them to grapple with the morality of it. I don’t connect the dots for them. I don’t provide the answers. I trust young readers to draw the right conclusions.

But it is in those gray areas that readers will make the connection between themselves and people from the past. It’s here that they will discover something about themselves in the present.

You wrote three books on Benjamin Franklin. Ben Franklin's Almanac: Being a True Account of the Good Gentleman's Life (2003), Ben Franklin's in My Bathroom! (2017), and The Hatmaker's Sign (1998). Of course, you said, just about anyone would be fascinated by Ben Franklin. Sure: inventor, statesman, writer, philosopher, wit, ladies’ man. Why not? What fascinated you about him?

His charm, his genius, his humor, his deep curiosity and independence, his resolve, and his ability to learn and evolve as a human being.

Early on, Franklin owned enslaved persons. By the time he was an old man he’d changed his mind. In 1790, as head of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, he petitioned Congress to abolish slavery.

Since his was a revered name (having helped establish the Constitution) the representatives had to take up the matter on the floor. Too bad they didn’t listen to the sage old politician.

What’s next?

I’ve got a few irons in the fire. In March you’ll see Death in The Jungle, YA nonfiction that follows (for the most part) a handful of teens and young people who were members of Peoples Temple. Some survived the massacre at Jonestown. Some didn’t.

I’m a firm believer in the idea that if a book is only about what it seems to be about, then somehow the author has failed. In this case, the book is far more than a “cult” story. It’s about undue influence, peer pressure and personal agency.

Why do we choose to believe the patently false? Why do follow charismatic leaders? Why is everyone -- and I mean everyone -- susceptible? I had the honor of interviewing several survivors of Peoples Temple, all of whom spoke to me because they had something they wanted to say to today’s teenagers.

Next spring also sees the start of a middle-school series called “IS IT REAL?” It might look like a series about cryptids. In truth, it’s about critical thinking, “good” research, and reasoning.

Readers get the chance to delve into the evidence for, say, the Loch Ness Monster, ask questions, find answers and draw conclusions. They then get to pit their conclusions against the scientific community’s. Fun!

October 2024 research
in South Africa

In October I head off for a month-long research trip in South Africa. I’ll be taking a weeklong, wildlife forensics class with South African park rangers, then walking the park with the anti-poaching K-9 unit and helping to release a young rhino from the orphanage where it was raised after poachers killed its mother. All this will result in a middle school, nonfiction book tentatively called Rhino Country.