An Author Interview with Laurel Snyder, Author of ‘Orphan Island’

Hello, friends! ^^ I’ve been reading a lot lately, especially with the endless rain that’s been pouring from the skies here in Thailand. (Seriously! What is up with all this rain?) Lots of new stories, new worlds, new characters, and whole new adventures. Old ones as well, and I’ve been meaning to return to a few of my comfort reads this week.

But today, I am ever so excited for this blog post, because joining us here today is the wonderful Laurel Snyder, author of Orphan Island! I read Orphan Island earlier this year in January, and it was one of my favorite books to read this year! It is such a beautiful middle-grade book, as mysterious as its ending is, and I am so excited to have Laurel here with us today for this author interview to talk about Orphan Island, how she created the setting for this world, and of course, to talk about the mysterious ending that readers of this book shall no doubt remember.

Take it away, Laurel!

Hi Laurel! Thank you so much for being here for this interview! 🙂 To start us off, can you tell us a bit about Orphan Island and how you got the idea for this novel? What was your favorite part about writing this novel and do you think was the hardest?

Orphan Island was something of a departure for me.  I’d written five novels before this one, and the truth is that I was having a hard time imagining writing another. The publishing business had sort of taken the creative spark out of things for me, and I realized that if I was going to write something new, I needed to get back to the way it felt to write when I was unpublished. So I stopped trying to produce, and instead just read a lot, and daydreamed a lot.

Then what happened was that I read two books back to back, with my kids at bedtime. The first was The Little Prince, and while my kids weren’t exactly sure what they thought about it, they couldn’t stop talking about it after we were done. They had so many questions! And I thought to myself, “I want to write a book that makes kids ask questions like that.” Then, the next book we read together was My Side of the Mountain, and they LOVED it, primarily because it had no adults in it to speak of. So then I thought, “I want to write a book with no adults!” Those thoughts swam around in my head for awhile, until I imagined the island. And so I began a draft longhand, in a notebook, and also began painting and drawing the characters and details from the island, as a way of keeping myself in a playful/creative mode, rather than shifting into professional/publishing mode.

I’ve been feeling the same way recently with the publishing industry! I loved all of the characters in this novel! They all felt so real with their own personalities, and I absolutely loved Ess! Was there a character that was particularly hard to write? Why or why not? Who’s your favorite character in this novel?

I love Ess too! She’s modeled on a little girl I knew named Lottie, who lived down the street. (I still know her, but she’s in high school now). And that’s a big part of how I often write characters, by sort of hanging them on real people I know. (though I often change lots of the physical details).

Did you have a favorite scene to write in this book? And if you could speak to any of your characters from Orphan Island, which character would you choose and what do you think they would say to you?

Oh, good question! I loved writing the flying scene, at the cliffs!  And I loved writing the scene where Jinny swims out into the ocean.  For me, those sorts of atmospheric moments are some of the most fun to write–when I get to DO things on the page that I’d like to do in real life.

And in response to the second part of your question, I’ve actually been spending a lot of time speaking with Jinny lately, in my imagination. 

Ohhh, I loved the flying scene, and I actually wished I could do that in real life as well! Did the final draft of the book turn out differently than your original idea for the book was? If so, how?

The final draft was considerably longer and denser than the initial manuscript, which felt more like a novella. I really wanted, when I set out to write Orphan Island, to make it a small book, a “gem” of a book. But the story needed more developing in the end.

I loved the world of this book! It felt so alive and it really did feel like it was a real place I was returning to each time I opened the book. How did you build the world of this book and how did you manage to craft all those little details that made it feel alive? Did any real places inspire the setting of this story?

Thank you! I spent a lot of time with this particular book, focused on the details. As I said above, I painted and drew a lot of them. The benefit to working in that way is that it slows you down. You draw a beach, and it can’t just be “the beach.” You have to add things to it, think about all sorts of physical aspects.  

And it’s not truly based on any actual island, but when I was a kid, my grandmother had a house on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, in Chestertown, on the Chester River. We’d go out in a little boat, to a sandbar in the middle of the river. It wasn’t much of an island, but it was definitely one of the seeds that this story grew from.  Being a little girl and getting to do that — take a boat out and explore on my own or with my cousins — was a big memory for me.

Do you have a secret pen name that no one knows anything about? 😀 (This is a sneaky question I ask all writers)

Lol! No, I don’t. Maybe I should get one!

You should!! And you have likely been asked this question many many times before, and if so, I do apologize! However, for those who haven’t read Orphan Island, the ending isn’t quite like the usual ending of a story (which, after re-reading the story multiple times, I have grown to really love, and especially now that life is changing quite a bit, I find quite a comforting ending). Could you tell us a little bit about that ending and how you decided upon that ending for the story?

I wish I had a better answer for you, but it just felt right. That was its natural ending. At one point, I got scared, and added a prologue and epilogue, that gave the book more of the backstory, and a more complete resolution. But I’m glad I had an editor wise enough to see that was a mistake.  As I said before, one of the goals of the book was to leave kids thinking/pondering/asking questions, and I’d have undermined that if I’d tied up the ending in a bow.

I agree with you on that, and I really do think that the ending is an incredibly important part of the story. And finally, what is your advice for young writers who are just starting out and would love to someday gets their books out into world?

This is a boring answer but my best advice on how to get published is to write a really great book. And my best advice on how to write a great book is to make time for daydreaming every day. Seriously, we are all living in a world full of distractions, and its my very honest belief that a lot of people just don’t make time anymore to let themselves get bored — to just sit with their thoughts and imagine. I highly recommend taking 5 or 10 minutes a day to just lay on the floor of your room with no distractions (no books, music, devices, other people) and think about things. It sounds like such a small thing, but it’s so important to the creative process.

~ ~ ~

Thank you so much to Laurel Snyder for joining us here today for this interview! And I think your advice for young writers may be one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard from an author. I love what you said about letting yourself getting bored and sit with your thoughts and imagine! Perhaps I should try doing it sometime! (Maybe that’ll help me sort out the million and one issues I have with my books, haha)

And thank you, dear reader, for stopping by and reading this interview! ^^ I hope y’all enjoyed hearing from Laurel and that you will check out Orphan Island, which is a fantastic middle-grade book filled with heartwarming worlds and characters that you shall no doubt fall in love with. I certainly did!

To find out more about Laurel and her books, you can find her at laurelsnyder.com. And her new picture book, A Book of Candles, was recently released and you can find more information on it here! (And a huge congratulations to Laurel on releasing this new picture book!!!!)

Oh yes, and here’s a random photo of Charlotte with Orphan Island, which in her words is, “One of the best books of this century!!!”

Till next time!

-Isabelle

About Laurel Snyder:

Laurel Snyder is the author of six children’s novels, “Orphan Island,” “Seven Stories Up,” “Bigger than a Bread Box,” “Penny Dreadful,” “Up and Down the Scratchy Mountains OR The Search for a Suitable Princess” and “Any Which Wall” (Random House) as well as many picture books, including “Charlie & Mouse,” “The Forever Garden,” “Swan, the life and dance of Anna Pavlova,” and “Baxter, the Pig Who Wanted to Be Kosher.”

A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a former Michener Fellow, she also writes books for grownups, and is the author of a book of poems, “The Myth of the Simple Machines” (No Tell Books) and a chapbook, “Daphne & Jim: a choose-your-own-adventure biography in verse (Burnside Review Press) and the editor of an anthology, “Half/Life: Jew-ish Tales from Interfaith Homes” (Soft Skull Press).

Though Baltimore will always be her home, she now lives happily in Atlanta