This interview originally appeared in the September/October 2024 Horn Book Magazine as part of the Publishers’ Previews: Fall 2024, an advertising supplement that allows participating publishers a chance to each highlight a book from its current list. They choose the books; we ask the questions.

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A Strange Thing Happened in Cherry Hall, and the ghost in the town art museum is only the beginning.

Photo: Lillian Warga.

1. What painting could you look at forever?

Dalí’s The Persistence of Memory. What’s beyond the horizon line, what is in that lake? Is this world deserted or is that a human on the beach? Most importantly, why do the clocks look as though they have melted? My favorite paintings are filled with questions that build on one another to form intriguing stories.

2. “Art, she understood, was a wish that you made with your hands.” From whence sprang this wonderful sentence?

While working on this book, I visited a Maurice Sendak exhibit at the Columbus (OH) Museum of Art and learned that through his art he was attempting to share his deep interior dream life. I also visited the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe. She wanted to share the way she saw shapes and compositions through her art. That’s what art really is, right? A sharing. And in that sharing, you hope or wish that someone else will dream alongside you.

3. How much of your own mom can we see in Rami’s?

I didn’t think of them as similar while I was writing, but now I’m puzzling over this. Both share a quirkiness and an aloofness, but still have a warm presence. My mom frequents the library more than anyone I know. She isn’t an artist but is a voracious reader and appreciator of art. I certainly think she’d be friends with Rami’s mother.

4. What is one middle-grade novel you hold as a role model for your own writing?

I’m choosing two: The Giver by Lois Lowry and Louis Sachar’s Holes. I read both as a kid; I remember not only how they made me feel, but also how they made me wonder. Wonder, to me, is the x-factor.

5. Do you think you could send Rami and Veda to Boston to solve our mystery of the Gardner Museum heist?

That’s the dream! The book was heavily influenced by my own obsession with that heist. I would love to get Rami and Veda’s take on all the theories.

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