Plenty of Seattle-area authors create dynamic, likable characters for readers to enjoy. But there's a hidden sort of character we're focusing on with this year's books issue – the uniquely Northwest flavor we get when authors place their fictional stories in our real backyards.
The Twilight books, by Stephenie Meyer, are the current poster children for kids' and teen fiction set in the Northwest. (Meyer lives in Arizona, but placed her vampire tales in Forks, creating a tourist industry in the former logging town.) Decorated author Peg Kehret, author of more than three dozen books, lives in Pierce County and has used local settings from Mount Baker to Mount Saint Helens. (Her latest, Runaway Twin, is based in Enumclaw.) Issaquah author Deb Caletti placed her latest, The Nature of Jade, in Seattle, while her National Book Award finalist, Honey, Baby, Sweetheart, is in a fictional town based heavily on Issaquah. The list could go on and on, from picture books to teen novels.
Setting "is crucial" to a story, said Jeanette Ingold of Montana, a former local whose newest book, Paper Daughter, is set in Seattle.
"I don't think of a book's setting as a backdrop that you throw a story against, but rather, as something almost alive, that uniquely influences a character's attitudes and choices and that can be changed by what the characters do," Ingold said in an e-mail. "To write such a place, I have to know it, and because I want my readers to understand what's going on, I have to make sure they know it, too."
Linda Johns, author of the Seattle-based Hannah West mysteries, was inspired by Gayle Richardson, a legendary librarian in the Seattle Public Library system, where Johns also works. Richardson talked about how important a sense of place was in adult mysteries, but how people writing for children made the mistake of making everything generic – and, hence, weaker.
And, Johns remembered how Stephanie Kallos, author of the adult book Broken for You, called that novel her valentine to Seattle.
"Places that have setting as a character are kind of honoring your city, your town, the neighborhood where it's set.
"I like books like that."
We do, too. Here is a selection of picks from recent years, guided by the generous recommendations of librarians in the King County and Seattle library systems, booksellers at Mockingbird Books and Secret Garden Books, and children's book reviewer Cecelia Goodnow.
Picture Books and Beginning Readers
Larry Gets Lost in Seattle and Seattle ABC, by John Skewes (Sasquatch Books, both $16.95).
It took leaving Seattle to make John Skewes see it with fresh eyes.
The author/illustrator grew up in the area, mostly on Vashon Island, but moved to Los Angeles 12 years ago for a job at Disney. He came back a few years ago, settling in Green Lake.
"When you live on Vashon, the ferry is like riding the Metro bus. You just read your paper. It's the source of a lot of grief and aggravation, basically." But after his return from L.A., "I was on the ferry, reading my paper like an islander would, and then I looked up." He saw a freighter towering above him, and realized, "That's something most people don't see on their commute."
That, combined with the death of his dog Sammy, germinated the idea for Larry Gets Lost in Seattle, the simple, likable, city-steeped adventure of a boy chasing his lost pet.
"This is Larry. This is Pete. They ride together in the back seat," it begins. "Because their car wouldn't float, they drove their car onto a boat." The journey takes them past the Fremont Troll and the Experience Music Project, Pioneer Square, Alki Beach and other landmarks.
"Here's the embarrassing thing. Believe it or not, I had never been on the Underground Tour until I was researching the book," Skewes said.
Skewes thought of the Seattle settings in part as souvenirs for visitors, but he was also inspired by remembering his own childhood. He grew up reading a Seattle-based book called Wheedle on the Needle (newly reprinted, see below), and "I remember how exciting it was at that age," he said.
"Seattle isn't the most famous city in the country," Skewes added. It's far more common for readers to see, say, New York or Los Angeles or other big-time settings when they read.
"Just to be able to see your city represented in illustration is kind of thrilling for a kid."
Also consider:
Wheedle on the Needle, by Stephen Cosgrove (Sasquatch Books, $16.95).
Longtime Seattleites will remember the Wheedle as the former mascot of both the Sonics and the Space Needle. The story was first published 35 years ago, telling how the furry, Seussian creature, irritated by the whistling workers of Seattle, tossed rainclouds from the top of the Space Needle until he was mollified by a pair of giant earmuffs. (The red light on the Needle, we're told, is the blinking red nose of the now satisfied, sleeping giant.) The hardcover anniversary reprint restores some of the more Seattle-centric content that was removed from interim editions, and introduces Wheedle to a new generation of readers.
A Day at the Market, by Sara Anderson (Sara Anderson Children's Books, $14.95).
Sara Anderson, whose vibrant colors and bold images leap off the pages of books like Noisy City Night, turns her palette here toward Pike Place Market, where she has lived for many years. Both kids and adults can appreciate the vividly accurate depictions of the market's vendors and businesses. The rhythmic text is brief but the preschool crowd will need help with the vocabulary, as with this lively line: "Hamma Hamma/I'm an oyster/Let me out/I'm feeling cloistered."
Mama, Is It Summer Yet?, by Nikki McClure (Abrams Books For Young Readers, $17.95).
McClure's papercuts accompany her simple story of a young boy asking his mother, in the chilly Northwest springtime, whether summer is finally here. (It arrives, at last, with the ripe strawberries.) The book never explicitly names its setting, but booksellers at Powell's in Portland called out the illustrations as being unmistakably Northwest. McClure confirmed for us that it's set in her own Olympia home. "I'm touring with the book to L.A. It will be interesting reading the book to kids who can have strawberries whenever they want." McClure's also staying local for her next book, To Market, set at the Olympia Farmers Market and due out in 2011.
JIMI: Sounds Like a Rainbow by Gary Golio and illustrated by Javaka Steptoe (Clarion Books, $16.99).
This new book, about rock legend Jimi Hendrix, takes us to the Seattle of Hendrix's youth, offering glimpses of the radio shows, record stores, and front stoops that formed the background for Hendrix's growing love of music. Through Steptoe's multi-media illustrations and Golio's words, the book tells of the story of how young Hendrix tried to make any instrument at hand sound like raindrops or a child's laughter, crashing waves or the buzz of swarming bees. It's the story of how Hendrix tried to paint pictures with sound. The author and illustrator are both from New York, but the story is pure Seattle – an homage to a local hero.
Middle Readers
The Hannah West series, by Linda Johns (Puffin Books, $5.99 apiece).
Move over, Nancy Drew. Twelve-year-old Hannah West's bright, breezy mysteries are more fun for modern kids, especially those who know the Seattle neighborhoods that Hannah calls home – a different one in each book. The handy plot element is that Hannah's mom becomes a professional housesitter, which, Hannah says in the Belltown-based introductory book, "is a lot better than being amateur homeless people."
Librarian Linda Johns, who works at downtown Central Library and lives in Maple Leaf, picked the locations of the four-book series "based on where I thought I wanted to live, and where I was hanging out at that time."
The books are laced with natural references to the neighborhoods they're in, from restaurants to bus routes.
The four-book series is over for now, but if Hannah ever came out of retirement, Johns would like to see her explore Columbia City or West Seattle.
Although she doesn't work with children in her job as a full-time librarian, Johns didn't find it hard to put herself in the place of a smart, artistic, dog-walking sixth-grader. It was actually fun to pretend to be someone else, she said, and to imagine how someone in that situation would act and feel. Besides, all adults were twelve at one time.
"I remember so much," she says. "I think a lot of writers (have) been observers our whole lives."
Also consider:
Ruby Lu, Brave and True, and Ruby Lu, Empress of Everything (Aladdin, $4.99 apiece).
Ruby Lu is strewn with South Seattle landmarks. In just the first few pages we come across 20th Avenue South, the Beacon Hill Library, the Jefferson Park Golf Course, and Ruby Lu's school, Kimball Elementary. These easy chapter books follow Ruby Lu's impish adventures as she deals with a baby brother, her fear of starting Chinese language school, the arrival from China of her cousin, Flying Duck, and her mishaps while being her cousin's "Smile Buddy" at school. Ruby has been compared to both Judy Moody and the immortal Ramona Quimby, and first- and second-graders will especially enjoy relating to her adventures (though they won't want to follow her example of driving the family car to school).
Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It, by Sundee Frazier (Yearling, $6.50).
Brendan Buckley is an amateur geologist, a student of Tae Kwon Do, and the sort of nice, deep-thinking kid most parents would be happy to have their own middle-school child bring home. The plot centers on Brendan's biracial identity and his curiosity about his grandfather, who cut off contact with the family after his mother's mixed marriage. The plot summary makes the book sound as though it's designed to deliver a message, but it certainly doesn't read that way: It's interesting, touching, and feels real through and through. If it sparks thought and discussion among kids Brendan's age, so much the better. Local rock hounds will especially enjoy following Brendan from Seattle to seek out his grandfather in Milton, to a rock show in Puyallup, and digging for "thunder eggs" in Ellensburg.
Seaglass Summer, by Anjali Banerjee ($15.99, Random House).
Poppy Ray, 11 years old, is off to spend a summer month on fictional Nisqually Island helping her veterinarian uncle at the Furry Friends Animal Clinic. Uncle Sanjay turns out to be a somewhat eccentric vet who years earlier found a refuge on Nisqually Island from the prejudice he faced as an immigrant from India; here, the people appreciate him as much as the animals do. Poppy learns that being a vet is about more than taking care of animals; it means taking care of their human owners, too. Poppy's walks on the beach, trip to the lavender festival and search for J-pod Orcas are all infused with Northwest island atmosphere. Aimed at 8 to 12-year-olds. Banerjee lives in Washington.
Young Adult
Paper Daughter by Jeanette Ingold (Harcourt, $17).
The first spark of Paper Daughter struck Jeanette Ingold on a research trip to Seattle for a previous novel, Hitch. Visiting the National Archives and Records Administration at Sand Point, an archivist showed Ingold files from the Exclusion Era, the years when most Chinese immigrants were barred from entering the U.S.
"It was a double hit," she said.
"First, there was the impact of just seeing the mass of material accumulated during the Exclusion Era – long , tall rows of shelving packed with document boxes holding multiple files. And then there was looking inside a file, and seeing the face of one particular individual. It's an experience that makes the facts of history very personal.
"You see a photo taken eighty years ago, the face of a young man staring into a camera, and you wonder what he was thinking, what his story was, what awaited him. You start asking ‘what if,' imagining the possibilities, and you go from there."
Where it took Ingold was into a multi-strand story. Paper Daughter introduces high-school student Maggie Chen, an aspiring journalist reeling from her father's sudden death … and then stunned by the discovery of her father's secret life. Through flashbacks, we see Maggie's history intertwining with that of Fai-yi Li, a boy who found his way from China to Seattle in 1932.
It's an engaging mystery, laced with a history that's too little known even to those who live here. It's also a love letter to journalism, as Maggie's summer internship takes her through the grunt work, the excitement of discovery, the ethical conundrums, and, ultimately, the satisfaction of uncovering and sharing hidden truths. Ingold, a former reporter for the Missoulian, drew on her own experiences for Maggie's job – and returned to the paper to see how modern technology had changed the reporter's life.
"I wanted to get down the feel of a newsroom – how alive it is, and how exciting, and, also, how it's work that's sometimes repetitive, sometimes frustrating. And, now, when the industry is changing so rapidly, I wanted to write a story that might get readers thinking about what good journalism is, and why it's crucial to a democracy."
Also consider:
Oliver Nocturne series, by Kevin Emerson (Scholastic, $5.99 apiece).
This is "the other vampire series set in Washington," as one librarian told us. Author Kevin Emerson wrote on his blog that Scholastic calls the series "Books for Boys, which doesn't mean that girls won't like them, but just that boys actually will. That also makes them different than the many vampire titles out there these days." The five-book series by Emerson (a former teacher who also sings in the band Central Services), about a vampire boy who is "a little more human" than his peers, is set in Seattle, with place-setters like Glazer's Cameras and the Vera Project. And as it turns out, vampires have their own extra-creepy way of taking the Underground Tour.
The Treasure Map of Boys, by E. Lockhart (Delacorte, $15.99, with $8.99 paperback coming in July).
This is the third book in the Ruby Oliver series, set in a fictional Seattle prep school. It's chick lit for teens, a funny if sometimes agonizing account of high school life. Think The Princess Diaries, minus the fantasy and meant for a slightly older set.
Rebekah Denn is a Seattle-area writer, reader and mother.
