I had the privilege of chatting with Tony DiTerlizzi, who’s been writing enchanting and award-winning tales for over twenty-five years. Today, we’re taking a special look at his latest book, The Wump.
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Thank you so much for joining us here at the Mixed-Up Files, Tony! As a reader of the Spiderwick Chronicles and many of your other works, I was so excited to hear about your new book, The Wump, and thrilled to have the chance to read it early. This story shows us a boy who lets a monster eat his darkest thoughts and feelings so he can stand up to the bullies in his life before he realizes the protection and revenge the wump gives him come at a cost. Though this dark supernatural coming-of-age story leans into the scary side of our emotions and the steep consequences of our choices, it offers a bright contrast with hard-won friendship and the power of forgiveness. This exploration of light and dark makes for an engrossing read that blends illustrations and prose in a perfectly creepy way.
Your illustrations always add such richness and depth to the stories they help build, and that was certainly true for this book. The two-color illustrations are fabulous.
Tony DiTerlizzi: Thank you for noticing! Whether I am illustrating my own words or working with another author, I consider all aspects of bookmaking when bringing a story to life: how does the trim size attract a reader? Typeface? Art style? Color palette, etc.
I strive for a visceral feeling that entices the reader to pick the book up from the shelf (or select it from an endless stream of online images). Once I get them intrigued, how do I delight the reader when they crack open that cover? It’s a lot of trial and error, discussion with my team and the publisher to arrive at the best visual presentation of the story.
Could you tell us about the spark for this book? Did you think of the creature first or a character like Timothy?
Tony DiTerlizzi: “Timothy B. Tibblesworth was a strange lad. He had no friends for everyone thought he was strange indeed.”
I wrote that in January of 2001 when a rush of inspiration for a story flooded my imagination. Scribbled on several spreads of my sketchbook are notes about an oddball outcast and his shadowy monster companion, the wump.
Over the next year I developed the plot, characters and the rules of the monster but I was not satisfied. Regardless, I was obsessed with the idea of a middle grade story about a shadowy beast. I knew there was something special, something honest, there…but I believed then that I did not possess the technical skills to write the story I saw in my mind.
Over the years, I would tinker on the manuscript but still felt it wasn’t up to snuff. It wasn’t until I finished working on the WondLatelevision series that I felt confident enough to tell Timothy’s story at last.
The wump is so powerful, both as a character in its own right and as a concept. In many ways, the wump gets even scarier the more we see how it represents the very real anxieties and challenges of being a kid (and even an adult). Did you have a good sense of how Timothy was going to overcome it when you started writing the book? As a reader, I started having serious doubts that he was going to be able to do it!
Tony DiTerlizzi: Sometimes you get lucky and you just know how a story is going to end. It doesn’t always work out so easy with other books I’ve written.
I’ve been intrigued with the idea of monsters eating children since I first cracked open Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Further, the concept of hate and anger consuming a person goes back centuries in storytelling, from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde to Star Wars.
As you’ve pointed out, the wump is Tim’s manifestation of suppressed anger and anxiety. In the wump’s final, most volatile phase, I wondered if I could show it literally eat our hero—when Tim is at his weakest, most vulnerable state.
In this story, devouring a victim is a symbol for control: Tim’s pet praying mantis eats beef, Tim and Logan have a pepper eating contest, the wump eats Tim…so Tim has to eat the wump to gain control of it. I’m simply using the symbology I’ve established to arrive at the only conclusion there is.
The wump isn’t destroyed because you can destroy your shadow self. You cannot fully repress anger or anxiety. All Tim can do is reign it in and control it. Which he acknowledges in the epilogue.
You mentioned that you often read for inspiration when it comes to tone while you’re working on a book as well as listen to music. Were there specific influences for The Wump? I might guess there were some threads of a few of your favorite authors, like Stephen King and Roald Dahl.
Tony DiTerlizzi: I do like to read certain authors or books to help inspire tonally what I am working on. As you guessed, Roald Dahl’s stories, like Matilda, with its unreliable adults, was super exciting to me.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the page turners I ripped through in middle school. In the mid-1980s Stephen King was everywhere. I enjoyed his short story collections with Cycle of the Werewolf as one of my favorites. In preparation for this story, I returned to King to see how he conveyed the feeling of creepiness. All the primal sensations Tim experiences throughout the story—cold, heat, shivers, trembling—comes from reading King.
And do Timothy and Alberto have their own theme songs?
Tony DiTerlizzi: As for theme songs, Tim’s is right there in the story. He is a fan of his dad’s old cassette tapes from the 1970s-80s. But it’s The Beatles’ medley on side 2 of Abbey Road that is his favorite. Alberto likes dramatic epic soundtracks because that is what plays in his mind when he’s reading his comics or pretending to be a superhero.
Timothy’s love and knowledge of bugs are tremendous and make him such a relatable kid for this age of reader. Did you have to do a lot of research into entomology to ground his passion, or did you already have knowledge of cicadas, Hercules beetles, and other Things Small but Important?
Tony DiTerlizzi: Tim is an exaggerated mirror of me during middle school with many similar traits: anxious, a bullied victim with dark revenge fantasies, bookish and a deep abiding love of insects.
I grew up in Florida and enjoyed exploring my backyard, scrubby woods or the local beach. I caught lizards, snakes, tropical fish and loads and loads of insects. I even made a little field guide out of a spiral-bound notebook (a few images are used for Tim’s journal in The Wump). Looking back on it now, I think I was drawn to our six-legged friends because so many consider insects weird, ugly and gross…which is how I saw myself in middle school. I could relate to them.
In middle grade, we don’t often get to see as far into the future as we do with the epilogue to this story, but it seems like this one needed the jump forward to see how things resolved—and maybe even hint that the wump might reappear. Can you talk about why you decided to give readers a glimpse into Timothy’s adult years?
Tony DiTerlizzi: The epilogue is an aspect of this story that I could only understand from my experiences being a parent. Helping my daughter go through the ups and downs of middle and high school, I was reminded how immediate, how life encompassing, the day-to-day drama of our tween and teen years are.
At that age, we have limited real-life experiences. There’s no wisdom. No perspective. So, I wanted to offer some of that to my readers. I wanted them to know that, regardless of whatever they were going through, “this, too, shall pass.”
Life is nothing but change and adaptation. Sometimes it’s for the better, sometimes for the worse, but we learn and grow from these chapters on our journey through this world. Hopefully it’s to become better versions of ourselves. That’s really what this story is about.
What do you hope readers will take away from this book?
Tony DiTerlizzi: All of us cope with anger, frustration and anxiety. None of us have a perfect life. You are not alone in those struggles, dear reader. I see you. I’ve been there.
“Never abandon imagination” is a striking call to action for readers and writers alike. What advice would you give to someone who might be struggling to be imaginative, either as part of growing up or as a result of reading too much news?
Tony DiTerlizzi: I feel like imagination is more endangered now than ever: with addictive, attention-sucking technology and unregulated AI expanding at an alarming rate.
When I adopted “Never abandon imagination” as my mantra decades ago, I was thinking of the playful imagination that I tapped into as an adult so that I could remain youthful, hopeful and optimistic for the future. Those was the halcyon days of the 1980s and ‘90s—before social media took over. Before devices were in every hand and the internet was not something we felt compelled to access multiple times throughout a single day.
As a child, I often escaped into fantasy worlds to cope with reality. Books were my silent teachers. For example, “The Hobbit” wasn’t a story about defeating dragons and outwitting Gollum, it was a story that showed me the smallest of us can make a difference. It meant something bigger inside me than just enjoying Tolkien’s exquisite words on a page.
That’s the type of stories I want to put out in the world. That’s what I want to tell the next generation. Imagination, fantasy, daydreams…sometimes it’s not just escapism. It’s another way of seeing and coping with the difficult world we live in and we need it now, more than ever.
Because no MUF interview is complete without one, here is the
Lightning Round:
- Coffee or tea?
- Coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon.
- Sunrise or sunset?
- Depends on where I am. Sunrise in Florida over the Atlantic is something you won’t soon forget, especially if the sea turtles are hatching. Sunset over the hills of western Massachusetts reminds me daily of why we chose to live here.
- What is your trademark look?
- Glasses and nerd wear, with vintage sneakers. I have more pairs of ‘80s-style Nikes than I care to admit.
- Favorite city (besides the one you live in)?
- I heart NY
- Favorite insect?
- I’m still fascinated by mantids. Devil’s Flower Mantis, Ghost Mantis, European Mantis, Malaysian Orchid Mantis, Unicorn mantis…I love’em all!
- If you could have any superpower, what would it be?
- Innocuous time travel.
Intrigued by what we’ve talked about here? You can grab your own copy of The Whump today!
