Posts Tagged Author Interview

Getting Inventive with Authors Dylan Thuras & Jen Swanson

By on July 31, 2025   /   Articles, Author Interviews  
Today, authors Dylan Thuras and Jen Swanson stop by to chat with Melissa Roske about their forthcoming collaboration, The Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide to Inventing the World (Workman Publishing, August 12, 2025), the highly anticipated follow-up to the New York Times bestselling Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid.
The book, illustrated by Ruby Fresson, is a STEM-oriented exploration of the planet’s 50 most interesting inventions and scientific discoveries, sending middle-grade readers on an unforgettable trip to 94 locations around the planet and across time.

About the Authors 

Dylan Thuras is a New York Times bestselling author and cofounder and creative director of Atlas Obscura, a travel database that gets over 8 million visits a month. Dylan’s Atlas Obscura podcast is the #1 travel podcast in the United States. 

Jennifer Swanson is a long-time contributor to the Mixed-Up Files blog and an award-winning author of nonfiction STEM books for children. She’s also a science communicator, podcaster, and lifelong explorer. 

Interview with Dylan Thuras and Jen Swanson

MR: Dylan and Jen: Welcome to the Mixed-Up Files! It’s a pleasure to meet you, Dylan—and, of course, to host you on the blog, Jen.

As stated in the into, Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide to Inventing the World is a follow-up to the wildly successful Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide for the World’s Most Adventurous Kid. What was the inspiration behind the original book, Dylan? I’m guessing you were a curious, STEM-loving kid?

Dylan: I was! Growing up I loved books like The Way Things Work by David Macaulay or the cutaway and exploded diagram series by Stephen Biesty. These books still hold up 30 years later! I still find them fascinating to look at, as do my kids. I also loved a BBC series called Connections, by James L. Burke that was a kind of mad trip through the history of science. This book is a nod to all of those influences, and for any kid (or adult) who wants to understand, how the modern world came to be.

In a similar vein, Jen: You have written and lectured widely on all things STEM. What sparked your interest in science, technology, engineering, and math? Also, what motivates you to share your passion for STEM with middle-grade readers? 

Jen: I was a very curious kid! As many people have heard me say before, I’ve loved science my whole life. I started a science club in my garage when I was seven years old. I am interested in everything and want to understand how things work, interact, and fit together. I think pretty much all kinds of technology are just cool. I hope to get kids (of all ages) to understand that science and STEM are all around them, all the time.

Picking and Choosing

MR: Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide to Inventing the World offers a thoughtfully curated collection of scientific inventions from the printing press and gun powder to video games and artificial intelligence. With so many exciting inventions to choose from, how did you narrow it down to just 50? What did the selection process look like? 

Dylan: Honestly you could do this book a thousand times, ha. (Jen you up for some sequels?) There are so many fun and surprising connections, it was painful not to be able to include them all. (The first pressure cooker was a precursor to the steam engine! Without ceramics you can’t make spark plugs!) Some of the main concerns in laying out the outline of connections was that it not get too obscure or technical and that the inventions be broad enough that people were familiar with them. It was also important that there were opportunities to reset the clock, so when we get to satellites we can go to maps, which effectively lets us jump back a few thousand years. Otherwise we get to the end too quickly! With all that in mind, this was the path that made the most sense and didn’t have any dead ends.

Jen: Ha! A sequel, DEFINITELY. Dylan is so right. There are tons of inventions that didn’t make it into the book. The brilliance of this book is how it is structured to take you down the pathway of some inventions but then backtracks to a different invention“path.”  The vast majority of the inventions came from Dylan’s brain. He has a fabulous way of understanding the connections these inventions make with each other.

Making Connections

MR: Of all the inventions featured in the book, which fascinated you the most and why? On the flip side, what in your opinion is the most overrated invention and/or modern convenience you’ve come across?

Dylan: One connection that Jen clued me into was the link between particle physics and neuroscience. PET scans, MRI’s all come out of the hard physics fields, very often out of universities with particle accelerator labs. Even today the radio tracers we use to help diagnose diseases are made in a particle accelerator. I loved learning about that.

Most overrated invention… well, I really want this not to be the case, but fusion has been around the corner for a very long time. I really want it to work out but it seems like one of those things that might elude us for much longer to come. It’s an awfully hard problem!

Jen: That’s a tough question. At the moment, I am totally blown away by particle physics and space telescopes, so for me the invention path that humans took to get to both of these inventions is just amazing.

Most overrated invention in the book?  Maybe the Hellbrunn Mechanical Theatre. The Archbishop of Salzburg commissioned an amazing clockwork display and also set up pranks with water to inconvenience his guests and make himself laugh. While the technology created was used for a frivolous purpose, it did allow humans to understand more about how objects can be automated, which eventually contributed to the building of robots farther down the invention path.

That’s Using Your Brain!

MR: There are SO many fascinating tidbits in your book, including the weight of the Da Vinci robot (1200 pounds), the size of the sundial at Jantar Mantah (over 88 feet), and the speed of the space shuttle Endeavour (17,400 mph or five times the speed of a bullet). I was particularly interested to learn about the Cushing Brain Center, in New Haven, Connecticut, where 2,200 human brains were donated to Dr. Harvey Cushing for his research. Can a person just walk in and check out the brains?

Dylan: You most certainly can! It’s not even the only brain collection in the U.S. Cornell has one, too! There really are brains in jars, but both collections and especially Dr. Cushing have been important to understanding the physical structures of the brain. We don’t get into this in the book, but that collection was mostly forgotten about and degrading in a hard to access part of the Yale basement. For years it was something the med students would dare each other to sneak into and look at. It’s much nicer now. 

Jen: I wish! Learning about brains is soooo cool. I did a book about ten years ago called Brain Games by National Geographic Kids. That book is still around and going strong. Neurologists often give it to their adult patients to learn about how their brain works. I would love to visit the Cushing Brain Center one day.

MR: Also: As a person who’s afraid of heights, you couldn’t pay me enough to walk across the Zhangjiajie Glass Bridge, in Zhangjiajie, China (it’s 1400 feet long, suspended above a 1300-foot chasm). Have either of you crossed the bridge or want to?

Dylan: I haven’t been to that particular bridge but have crossed some other glass bridges. I dunno, I kind of like the thrill 🙂 I did get a chance to cross the Keshwa Chaca, or the last Incan bridge (and earliest suspension bridge we know of), which is a 100-foot-long bridge woven from grass that only lasts a year, at which point it is rewoven. That one is in the first book!

Jen: While I appreciate the amazing engineering and technology that it took to create this bridge, I, too, am afraid of heights, Melissa. There is NO way I would walk across it, or even put a toe on it. However, it might be fun to just see it in person. You know, safely, from one side.

Let’s Work Together

MR: Collaborating on a book of this magnitude must have been incredibly challenging, particularly with so many moving parts in play (see what I did there? ☺). Can you tell MUF readers how the two of you worked together to pull it off so beautifully? What was the research process like? Also, was travel involved?

Dylan: Not a ton of travel, sadly. I have been to some of the places, and Jen has been to a few, but mostly it was all done via email and Zoom. I had gotten the outline mostly together when Jen came on, and Jen was very game to try this very challenging exercise. It’s tough to explain internal combustion engines, much less quantum computing, in 150 words but we did our dang best. I am so grateful to have been able to make this book with Jen as my co-creator!

Jen: Oh, I wish there had been more travel! Now THAT would be an amazing task—to visit all of the places in the book. But as Dylan said, we did this mostly over Zoom. He had already created a fabulous outline and I helped with the research of filling in the spaces. We worked really well together and had a lot of fun. I’m honored to have been chosen to collaborate with Dylan on this. It’s a wonderful book and I hope one that will inspire many kids (again, of ALL ages).

Traveling the Globe

MR: Speaking of travel, Dylan, you are the personification of the word “globetrotter,” having traveled to more than 30 countries all over the world. When did you first get bitten by the travel bug? Also, of all the places you’ve visited, which ones stood out the most and why? 

Dylan: Honestly, as a kid growing up in Minnesota it was all road trips around the Midwest. A trip up to Canada was very exotic! But those road trips made me fall in love with all the amazing and unusual roadside attractions. As I got older, I started saving my money and taking my own trips.

I did a big one all across Europe with a friend when I was 17 and then moved to Budapest when I was in my mid-twenties to teach English. Each trip made me realize how much more there was to see! It’s impossible to choose one favorite place, but I will say that on one of those road trips as a kid, we stopped by the House on the Rock, in Spring Green, Wisconsin. I was about 12 years old, and was the weirdest, most amazing  place I had ever seen. 🙂

AI: Help or Hindrance?

MR: Changing gears, in the introduction to the book, you state that technology is “capable of harm.” Can you speak more to this? Similarly, what about A1? Should people be worried?

Dylan: Without question, technology is capable of harm. This has always been the case. Often technology is dual use, which is to say a spear can get you dinner or kill your neighbor. It has also been the primary driving force bringing people into better living standards, driving down childhood mortality, reducing disease, spreading information, and making room for creative pursuit. I do think if you look at the industrial revolution you see both the start of rising prosperity and a lot of environmental and human degradation as well. People have to fight and demand change to mitigate the ill effects.

I think we are somewhere similar in our own computing and information revolution. I think we like aspects of it and very rightly hate other aspects.  I think AI, like the spear, is very much dual use. Possibly incredibly useful, especially in materials and biology research, and also potentially dangerous. But I am also a believer that these things are bit overhyped and diffuse a bit slower than people expect. It will change the world, but I don’t think things are going to change overnight. We are still undergoing the transition from a primary combustion world to a primary electrical world, and that will still be happening for our entire lifetimes. I also think the more you are worried about technology, the more having a deep understating of it helps you articulate what a positive vision of the future might look like! 

Jen: Excellent answer, Dylan. I look at it in a similar but slightly different way. To me, technology is all about perspective. If you are the first to, say, create a satellite that can move anywhere in space, on the one hand that’s awesome! But the question is, how will you use that technology? Will it be for good in that you can move dead satellites to a “graveyard“ to get rid of the debris? That is a positive. Or will you move your satellite next to another country’s satellite so that you can push that one out of its orbit or destroy it. That perspective is not as positive. Technology is a dual-edged sword and to me, it’s the way it’s used that makes the difference. But as Dylan said, we could debate this for a long time.

MR: What are you guys working on now? Do you have another Atlas Obscura project on the horizon?

Dylan: Atlas Obscura has an adult book coming out in summer of 2026 called America Obscura, which is a journey through the  places, people, and incredible road trips that make this country both beautiful, strange, and at times heartbreaking. Depending on how Inventing the World does, I am sure Jen and I would love to make a sequel, and Jen always has tons of exciting stuff in the works!

Jen: I’m totally game for a sequel, Dylan! My next book, Three Weeks in the Rainforest: A Rapid Inventory in the Amazon comes out this October. It follows the women-led team of scientists from the Field Museum in Chicago who work with Indigenous Peoples, local scientists, and non- governmental organizations to conduct a physical and social survey of certain areas of the Amazon rainforest. Readers get a firsthand account of real-life fieldwork in action and follow the scientists on their goal is to protect the Amazon rainforest from destruction.

Getting Inventive

MR: One last question: If you were to invent something in the future, what would it be? 

Dylan: There are so many things we know how to do but fail to make happen for disappointing political- and resource-allocation reasons. So, I would invent better ways to get people the vitamins they are deficient in! A huge number of people remain deficient in iodine, for instance, so getting iodine into salt worldwide has been a huge effort.  Getting people malaria nets! Stopping the advance of the screwworm fly! Vaccine access! All solved problems, except in actual application. It’s one thing to discover something and another to apply the good effects on the widest scale possible. 

Jen: Great suggestions, Dylan; I agree with them all. This is a tough one because as I see it, we will keep inventing new and amazing things because we are innovative and curious to solve problems. But what we really need is perspective to make sure inventions are used in the best and most helpful ways. So, I would ask that we just keep creating more STEM-focused people that are curious, inventive, and also are great critical thinkers and problem solvers so that they can really think about how their invention can help people positively.

Lightning Round!

MR: And finally, no MUF interview is complete without a lightning round, so…

Preferred writing snack?

Dylan: Tortilla chips!

Jen: A cup of tea and an oatmeal raisin cookie

Coffee or tea?

Dylan: COFFEEEEEE

Jen: TEA!!!

Best invention of all time? 

Dylan: Electricity generation. Insane. 

Jen: Fire. Without it, we wouldn’t have survived to this point.

Robot takeover: Yea or nay?

Dylan: Robots everywhere, yea. Take over as in terminator? Nay. 

Jen: Robots are COOL! But no takeover.

Superpower?

Dylan: General enthusiasm?

Jen: Flying! (which is funny, because I don’t like heights)

Favorite place on earth?

Dylan: In the heat of summer its my local swimming hole!

Jen: Edinburgh, Scotland. The view from the castle is one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

If you were stranded on a desert island with only three things, what would they be?

Dylan: A sailboat, a satellite phone, and a year’s supply of MRE (Meals Ready to Eat) haha. Be off that island in no time!  

Jen: MRE’s? Ugh. I’ve had them. I’ll pass. But yes, a way to get off: a boat, a satellite phone, and a telescope. Seeing the night sky from an island would be incredible!

MR: Thank you for chatting with me today, Dylan and Jen. And congrats again on the forthcoming publication of Atlas Obscura Explorer’s Guide to Inventing the World!

Author Melissa Roske smiling and signing a book at a bookstore event. She is seated at a wooden table in front of bookshelves, wearing a sleeveless purple dress.Melissa Roske is a writer of middle-grade fiction. Before spending her days with imaginary people, she interviewed real ones as a journalist in Europe. In London she landed a job as an advice columnist for Just Seventeen magazine. Upon returning to her native New York, Melissa contributed to several books and magazines, selected jokes for Reader’s Digest (just the funny ones), and received certification as a life coach. In addition to her debut novel Kat Greene Comes Clean (Charlesbridge), Melissa’s short story “Grandma Merle’s Last Wish” appears in the Jewish middle-grade anthology, Coming of Age: 13 B’Nai Mitzvah Stories (Albert Whitman). Learn more about Melissa on her Website and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.

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STEM Tuesday– Plants– Interview with Rebecca Hirsch

By on July 22, 2025   /   Plants, STEM Tuesday  

Welcome to STEM Tuesday: Author Interview, a repeating feature for the last Tuesday of every month. Go Science-Tech-Engineering-Math!

Today we’re learning with Rebecca E. Hirsch, a science writer, educator, and author of more than 90 books for young people. Her 2024 book A Deathly Compendium of Poisonous Plants: Wicked Weeds and Sinister Seeds is a delightful collection of science, folklore, true crime, quotes, and more, all about poisonous plants!

 

Andi Diehn: How did you get interested in poisonous plants? (Should we be worried?!)

Rebecca Hirsch: Great question! And there’s no need to worry, but now you’ve got me laughing! This book grew out of research I had done for a previous middle grade title, called When Plants Attack: Strange and Terrifying Plants. When I was researching that book and deciding what plants to feature in it,I came across a lot of poisonous plants. But poison wasn’t really the focus of that book, so I set most of those plants aside. Nevertheless, the seed had been planted. Several years later, I began to imagine writing a creepy, gothic book that looked at the science and history of poisonous plants.

 

AD: I love that you combine mythology, quotes, history, and science – why include all these elements?
RH: Poisonous plants have such fascinating back stories! People have long used these plants for medicine, as well as for darker acts like warfare and murder. As a science writer, I knew I wanted to share the science of these plants—facts about how and where they grow but also how they interact with and harm the human body.  But I made the decision to start each chapter with an intriguing historical quote and whatever dark and fascinating stories I could dig up. My goal was to entertain readers in addition to educating them. I wanted them to see how captivating and complex these plants are.
AD: Many poisonous plants are useful as well as deadly. Does this make botany even more interesting?

RH: Definitely! Most people think of plants as boring, kind of like green statuary. But plants are actively struggling to survive, like all living things. Plants have very effective ways of fighting back against anything or anyone that tries to eat them. In the botanical world, the most common self-defense tactic is poison. Plants are master chemists. They are very good at concocting nasty chemicals, and some of these chemicals can make animals and people very sick.

 

AD: The chemical explanation of how different poisons work is fascinating. Do you think poison loses some of its fear factor when we learn about why it does what it does?
RH: For me, learning about these poisons made them even more terrifying. It’s alarming to discover how the deadliest of nightshades—belladonna, for instance—can unleash havoc on our brains and bodies. Or how ricin from castor beans can act like a wrecking ball to our vital organs. Or the way cocaine or opium can hijack our brains and produce crippling addiction.
I do think the fear factor can be a good thing, because it can protect us. At least, that’s my hope. I repeatedly encourage readers to steer clear of nearly all of the plants in the book.

 

AD: In a way, this book redefined my definition of poison when I read about peppers. I eat peppers all the time and never thought of the hot ones as poisonous. How does this show that even things we encounter every day can be harmful in large quantities or if used wrong?

RH: Oh yes, chilies are definitely poisonous. These plants manufacture their poison—a chemical called capsaicin—as a way to prevent mammals, including humans, from eating their fruits (the peppers).

Here’s a personal anecdote about chilies: A number of years ago, my garden produced a bumper crop of jalapeños, and I decided to dice and freeze my harvest. One evening, I pulled out a sharp knife and a cutting board, and went to work on a pile of shiny green jalapeños. Foolishly, I did not wear rubber gloves. When I was finished, I had a heap of diced jalapeños—and poison all over my hands. My skin burned, especially under my fingernails. Then I rubbed my eye. Now my eye was stinging and watering. I soaked my hands in milk and yogurt—dairy products are a remedy—but it didn’t help. I ended up staying awake half the night, unable to sleep because of the pain.
By the way, jalapeños measure about 5,000 on the Scoville scale, a measure of chili hotness. One of the chilies mentioned in my book, a variety called Pepper X, has a Scoville rating of 2.7 million! Jalapeños are quite mild in comparison, but even they can be painful in large quantities!

 

AD:What is your research process like? How do you find all the great stories included in your book?

RH: I love the research process. I can get lost in it! My process is to start general and then get more specific. I usually begin with general internet searches, and I also track down books that are written for a general audience. I use the public library to find nonfiction books on my topic, and I use my library’s online research tools to track down magazine articles. When I’m reading a book, I’m flipping to the back pages constantly, studying the source notes and bibliography. I want to see what sources that author used in their own research, so I can follow up with any promising sources.

As I go deeper on my research, I start moving into more scholarly works. For A Deathly Compendium of Poisonous Plants, those works included toxicology textbooks, scientific research on the action of poisons in the body, and scholarly books about the history of poisonous and medicinal plants. Google Scholar is my go-to place for tracking down scientific papers. My state university’s library system is where I find scholarly books. As I’m reading those scholarly papers and books, I’m also studying their bibliographies, and then I continue tracking down more sources.

 

AD: I love the artwork and design of the book. Did you have input or was that entirely up to Eugenia Nobati?

RH: I’m so glad you like it! The design was a part of the book concept from the beginning. When I pitched the idea to editor Shaina Olmainson, who was formerly at Zest Books at Lerner Publishing, she immediately got on board with my vision for the book having a creepy gothic vibe. Lerner’s design team also got behind the idea in a big way.

The Lerner team brought on Eugenia Nobati to illustrate. She had previously illustrated picture books for Lerner, but Eugenia also had experience creating darker, creepier art. Eugenia dove enthusiastically into the project. Her illustrations look like they had come out of an ancient laboratory notebook, with coffee rings and dark stains marking the pages.

 

AD:Do you have a favorite poison? (Not to use, but to learn about!) What is it and why?

RH: Mandrake was a lot of fun to write about. I had to force myself to stop working on that chapter and move on because I was so enchanted by that plant. It has such a rich and twisted folklore. In ancient and medieval times, people thought mandrake root resembled a naked body. They associated the plant with sexual potency and imagined that it had all sorts of magical powers.

 

AD: Did you find yourself being more careful about what you ate while writing this book?

RH: Truthfully, I’ve long been careful about what I eat. When I was a kid, I played outside an awful lot, and my parents impressed upon me never to nibble anything unfamiliar outdoors. When I was a teenager, I developed terrible food allergies, so that made me even more cautious. Alas, the chapter on allergies was written with a lot of firsthand experience.
I tried to pass along a sense of caution to my readers. Just because a plant is pretty or its berries look inviting, that does not mean it is safe to eat.

Rebecca Hircsh is an award-winning author of more than 90 books for young readers. Her books have been honored with a Riverby Award for Excellence in Nature Writing, a Green Prize for Sustainable Literature, a Green Earth Book Honor, and spots on many state reading lists. She studied biochemistry at the University of Massachusetts and molecular & cellular biology at the University of Wisconsin. She’s a member of the National Association of Science Writers, SCBWI, and The Poet’s Garage, a collective of professional children’s poets. Rebecca lives in Pennsylvania, where she regularly visit schools, sharing my love of science and the craft of writing.

 

Andi Diehn has written over 20 children’s science books, plus a picture book on mental health called MAMA’S DAYS from Reycraft Books. She works as a children’s book editor and marketer at Nomad Press and visits schools and libraries around the country to talk about science, poetry, mental wellness, and anything else kids want to know! Andi also works as a bookseller at her local indie in Vermont – The Norwich Bookstore – and lives in rural New Hampshire with her husband, three sons, and too many pets.

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Interview with Jeanne Birdsall, award-winning author of The Library of Unruly Treasures!

By on July 21, 2025   /   Author Interviews  

Jeanne Birdsall’s THE PENDERWICKS is as highly acclaimed and beloved as a middle-grade series can be, earning the National Book Award and becoming New York Times bestsellers. With her newest novel, THE LIBRARY OF UNRULY TREASURES, she creates a new world: one of tiny, winged creatures called Lahdukan and the adventures a girl named Gwen has with them in a library outside Boston. It’s a wild, fun, and heartwarming ride that is sure to delight Penderwicks fans and new readers alike.

Read below to discover the inspiration for this new book, thoughts on Lahdukan pronunciation and (incredible!) art, and the real Pumpkin the dog(s) in Jeanne’s life!

Book cover of THE LIBRARY OF UNRULY TREASURES by Jeanne Birdsall

The opening of THE LIBRARY OF UNRULY TREASURES grabs readers with a series of diary entries that tease some of the magic to come. When did you decide to open the book like that, and what are you hoping readers will glean from it?

I knew I’d have to open the book in 1860s Edinburgh, if only to justify the research trip I took to Scotland. That’s only kind of a joke. Truly, once I’d wandered the neighborhood where my diarist lived, she became too real to be shoved aside as mere backstory.

I thought it would be fun for the readers to know more than Gwen does at the beginning of the story, to have them impatient for her to meet the Lahdukan. When she finally does, the reader already knows the Lahdukan are real and thus can enjoy watching Gwen become convinced. From that point on, the reader knows only what Gwen knows. They can be puzzled together, and I hope they are. I like a bit of a mystery.

Gwen is a character readers immediately pull for—what was the process like of creating her? Was she fully formed from the start, or was it a longer process, and how did Matt Phelan’s interpretation of her (and the other characters!) come to be?

I knew Gwen right away. It took me a while, though, to work out what made her who she was—both despite of and because of her rotten parents and lonely childhood. And even longer to figure out how to explain her past without a lot of exposition. I wanted the reader to understand how difficult it had been for Gwen, but without piling on too many gruesome details.

Matt illustrated a picture book of mine, Flora’s Very Windy Day, so I knew that our instincts and visual aesthetics were in sync. He got Gwen right away. (And gave her freckles. I pretend this was in honor of my freckles, but it may have been a coincidence.) We had to go back and forth for a while with Pumpkin, but that was my fault. My original text made her sound like a mythic monster, a tiny griffin with impossibly mismatched parts. Matt’s Lahdukan are masterpieces. Their combination of goofiness and dignity is right there in every painting. And the Lahdukan in flight! There’s one spread of them aloft inside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum that makes me catch my breath every time I see it.

The detailed worldbuilding of the Lahdukan is such a joy to uncover in the book. You mention Mary Norton’s delightful The Borrowers as an inspiration for these tiny, wondrous creatures, but did you have any other influences on this world?

The Borrowers are an obvious reference point. Not only were the books written during my childhood—we were allreading them—but Beth and Jo Krush, the illustrators, lived in my neighborhood, a mile down the road. But the Lahdukan were woven from dozens of myths and stories, enriched by my fascination with Scotland, particularly the Highlands. Some of this came because of my Scottish blood, but lately I’ve been re-reading T. H. White’s The Once and Future King. He goes deeply into the Scottish Gaels (Gawaine and his peculiar brothers) and their resentment of the English. This must have lodged in my brain years ago, to come out now.

Plus, I’ve always wanted to be able to fly, haven’t you? The closest I could get was bestowing eagle wings on my Lahdukan.

Pumpkin the dog is a force throughout the book, and you mention in the introduction that you can’t write without a canine companion. Was Pumpkin always such an integral character, or did her role change through the drafting process?

Pumpkin was always going to be important to the story, but not being satisfied with mere importance, she upped her own role until she was vital. Just like my real dogs.

[Editor’s note: to see pictures of Jeanne’s own dogs, visit her website!]

I appreciated the pronunciation guide at the end of the book and had so much fun with the Lahdukan names and background. Is that something you had thought through while writing and sounding out these splendid details?

No, but I should have! Because I don’t like reading my own writing out loud and I don’t listen to audiobooks, I didn’t think about it along the way, just merrily dreaming up names and words. It was only toward the end, when my own husband still couldn’t remember how to say Abarisruk or Zarakir, that I realized I’d need a pronunciation guide.

Although I don’t listen to audiobooks, I hope people will listen to this one. By an incredible stroke of luck—or maybe magic—we found the perfect narrator. Sorcha Groundsell grew up on the Isle of Lewis, one of the Outer Hebrides, west of Scotland and close to the Isle of Rùm, where the Lahdukan lived a thousand and more years ago. (See? Magic!) Her voice is gorgeous—light, quick, musical—exactly what the story calls for. Just wait until you hear her as the Lahdukan.

Do you have any other adventures in mind for Gwen, Pumpkin, and the Lahdukan, or are you returning to other book worlds (or elsewhere!) next?

I have dozens of other adventures in mind, going forward and backward in time. But speaking of time, alas, I don’t have enough of it. The Penderwicks took twenty years of my life, and almost certainly I don’t have twenty more to spend on another series. Where I’m headed next is still a bit fuzzy, but there will be pie and a dog, and I’ll have to learn some Italian.

Author photo of Jeanne Birdsall

Jeanne Birdsall is the National Book Award–winning author of the children’s book The Penderwicks and its sequel, The Penderwicks on Gardam Street, both of which were also New York Times bestsellers. She grew up in the suburbs west of Philadelphia, where she attended wonderful public schools. Although Birdsall first decided to become a writer when she was 10 years old, it took her until she was 41 to get started. In the years in between, Birdsall had many strange jobs to support herself while working hard as a photographer. Birdsall’s photographs are included in the permanent collections of museums, including the Smithsonian and the Philadelphia Art Museum. She lives with her husband in Northampton, Massachusetts. Their house is old and comfortable, full of unruly animals, and surrounded by gardens.

THE LIBRARY OF UNRULY TREASURES is available for pre-order until August 5th, 2025 and then wherever books are sold. Visit Penguin Random House for more information and to order!

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