Elizabeth Bird

Chatting It Up with Jill Santoplo

Mystery and stolen gold.  Harper Collins editor Jill Santopolo has recently released her very first children's book Alec Flint: Super Sleuth, a tale of one boy detective and his quest to discover the location of a missing Christopher Columbus exhibit.  Called "a solid middle-grade series in the tradition of Encyclopedia Brown," by none other than Kirkus Jill (who is, I can attest, a sweetie) talks a little about what it's like to be an author/editor.

Fuse #8: Well, your first novel is coming out and I couldn't help but notice that it was a mystery.  More than that, it's an early chapter book mystery (particularly keen).  Can we assume that you were a mystery fan as a kid yourself, or were there other kinds of books that got to you?
 
Jill: I was a huge mystery fan as a kid.  Nate the Great started my love of mysteries--Nate the Great and the Sticky Case was a particular favorite.  Then I read my way through Encyclopedia Brown, The Boxcar Children, The Bobbsey Twins, the There's Something Queer books, Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys--and those joint Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys adventures, too.  But I loved other sorts of books, as well.  I still have my battered copies of Matilda, Harriet the Spy, Jacob Have I Loved and A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I've probably read each of those books at least twelve or thirteen times. I've always been a pretty equal-opportunity reader--and still am.  As long as I find the characters and the story interesting, genre doesn't matter quite as much to me.

Fuse #8: You are one of those children's book editors that manage to make the leap from behind the desk onto the page.  Was becoming an author always the dream or is it more a perk of the job?

Jill:  I always wrote--short stories, newspaper articles, opinion pieces, plays--but I never had "author" as my goal.  I just liked writing.  It wasn't until I became an editor that I thought about writing something book-length with the idea of possible publication in mind.

Fuse #8: For that matter, how has it felt to take the edits rather than dole them out?  It must feel a bit strange.  Do you ever find yourself editing your own work as you would edit somebody else?

Jill: I haven't minded taking edits at all--I'm grateful for them because I know they make my stories better.  To me, being edited is a bit like having a friend consult on your outfit before going to a party.  Sometimes she'll say, "Looks great except for the earrings."  And sometimes she'll say, "Oh, wow.  Might be time to give away that shirt...and those shoes...and that bracelet..." 

I definitely try to edit my own work (and critique my own party outfits!), but it's hard for me to get enough distance from my writing to do a really good and thorough editing job.  I've found that when I'm the one who has created the plot (or, you know, picked out the outfit), it's harder for me to find the holes in it.

Fuse #8: The back of Alec Flint contains quite a bit of information about Christopher Columbus.  He's a pretty controversial figure these days.  Why did you happen to choose his exhibit to be the one missing?

Jill:  When I was writing the first draft of this novel, Christopher Columbus kept popping up everywhere.  I lived on Columbus Avenue, I got off the train for work at the Columbus Circle subway stop, I went to Washington D.C. and saw a Columbus fountain.  Once I started looking for Columbus, I found him everywhere.  It seemed like he was just begging for me to write about him. 

But I also chose the figure because I think there's something inherently intriguing about a person who is a hero and a villain at the same time.

Fuse #8: Will we be seeing more of Alec in the future?

Posted by Elizabeth Bird on June 23, 2008 | Comments (0)