Posts Tagged children’s books

In today’s Author Spotlight, Sydney Dunlap chats with author McCall Hoyle about her highly acclaimed new middle-grade novel, Nando.

McCall Hoyle is a best-selling and award-winning author and a former teacher and librarian. She visits dozens of schools each year, championing students, reading, and writing, and speaks regularly at conferences such as ALA and NCTE. She has an English degree from Columbia College and a master’s degree in secondary English from Georgia State University. She lives in a cottage in the woods in North Georgia where she reads and writes every day.

All About the Book!

Perfect for fans of Because of Winn-Dixie and Homeward Bound—a moving adventure full of courage, resilience, and the unbreakable bond between dogs and their humans.

Nando may have started life as the runt of the litter, but he’s grown into a loyal, hardworking border collie that takes his job—and his family—seriously. He believes that the only way to keep his place on the farm and in the heart of his human, Esperanza, is to maintain perfection in all his responsibilities—and nothing less.

But when a tropical storm turns the creek by the farm into a raging river and scatters Cloe, Nando’s favorite young human; Stella, a friendly beagle; Oscar, the farm’s annoying cat; and Nando himself, Nando learns the hard truth: He can’t control everything.

Stranded far from home, Nando is rescued by Levi, a boy with a brave heart and a gift for seeing good in others, who was also displaced by the storm. Nando and Levi are both trying to get back home, but when Levi leashes Nando, he leaves the independent herding dog with little choice but to stick with him. As they face rising waters, dangerous terrain, and the uncertainty of finding their way back, Levi offers Nando courage, friendship, and love, teaching Nando that he doesn’t have to be perfect to be loved and accepted.

Interview with McCall Hoyle

Sydney: Welcome, McCall! Congratulations on the release of your beautiful new novel! Nando (8/4/26) is such a wonderful addition to your Best Friends Dog Tales series. Congratulations too that Nando has been selected as a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection. Can you tell us a little background about what inspired this and your other books?

McCall: If I’m being completely transparent, the original inspiration for Nando came from all of the students I have visited on school visits over the last several years. For anyone not familiar with The Best Friend Dog Tales, each book is completely stand alone and told from a new dog’s point of view. But some of the dogs make appearances in multiple books. Stella, the book that really kicked off my career as a middle grade author is about a scent detection beagle turned seizure alert dog. There are two other dogs in her book–Gus, a Great Pyrenees, and Nando, a border collie. Soon after Gus got a book of his own, young readers started asking when Nando would get his book.

I would always explain that my books are about flawed characters going on emotional journeys and growing and changing as a result of those journeys. I would then explain to kids that I would never write a book about Nando because in my mind he was already fully developed and completely evolved. He already had his human, Esperanza. He was already fast, healthy, well-behaved. He even had an important job, herding the sheep on the farm. In a nutshell, Nando was too perfect.

But one day on a long walk in the woods without any dogs or technology to distract me, I was contemplating the weather and a recent series of tropical storms and flash flooding, and it dawned on me that Nando and I weren’t all that different and that when we were in our comfort zones, we performed at very high levels. But if we were ripped out of those comfort zones and thrown into situations that we couldn’t control, all bets would be off.

That’s really where the emotion and the plot of Nando’s story were born—on a long walk in the woods while contemplating the weather. But the true inspiration for the book came from the kids who kept arguing that Nando “deserved” a book too.

Craft

Sydney: In your note to the reader, you state: “As a mom, teacher, and human who frequently exhausts herself trying to keep all her flocks safe and moving in the right direction, the themes of trust, control, and difficult choices resonate on a deep level.” You do such a great job of revealing these themes in the story.  Please share any thoughts you have on how you managed to incorporate these ideas so seamlessly. What was your biggest challenge in writing this story?

McCall: I can’t remember where I first heard the idea that readers read fiction because they want to feel something, but it’s always stuck with me. I believe that most of us want to laugh, cry, and sometimes, even gasp in fear when we lose ourselves in a good book. I think it’s those big emotions that keep us turning pages.

Honestly, it’s also those big emotions that make me want to write fiction, which is why when I sit down to write, I generally start with a character and a feeling then build the plot and everything else around the character’s emotional journey. As a creative and empathetic person who frequently wears her emotions on her sleeve, it’s pretty easy for me to channel those emotions into my writing as long as I’m willing to be honest and vulnerable and not hold back on my true feelings.

The tricky part for me is that most of my books are told from a dog’s point of view. As an amateur dog trainer and an avid dog enthusiast, it’s really important to me to anthropomorphize as little as possible. Thankfully, I have spent hundreds, maybe thousands, of hours in dog training classes and studying dog cognition and more. But it’s still always the hardest part of every dog book for me—finding the balance between writing in a dog’s point of view and navigating the story journey in a way that would be most believable for a dog. So for example, much of the imagery in my dog books is scent based.

Another tricky part is finding the dog’s voice. What helps me with that is really understanding the breed of the dog and the fictional dog’s backstory. Every dog is a unique individual, but there are often patterns of similar behaviors that apply to particular breeds. For Nando, I really leaned into the go-go-go, controlling, herding dog traits.

Voice

Sydney: You describe the natural world and Nando’s perspective so vividly through all the senses. Your writing is beautiful and lyrical. What advice do you have to new writers as they strive to find their voices?

McCall: Voice is tricky to define but easy to recognize, right? Obviously, reading a lot helps and reading in the genre and age range that you want to write is helpful. Spending time with and listening to people in the age range you intend to write is helpful.

But honestly, I think volume and experimentation are probably the two most important criteria. I started out writing young adult fiction and even published a couple of sweet, young adult romances. A lot of the early editorial feedback that I received on my young adult work was that my protagonists sounded a bit whiny. When I transitioned to middle grade, I had to be careful because my human protagonists frequently sounded more like fourteen or fifteen-year-olds, probably because I spent so many years teaching eighth grade language arts and high school English. Interestingly, the dog voice that came to me for Stella just poured out of me. It was definitely the most authentic and natural voice I’d ever tried.

I never would have recognized the difference if I hadn’t written a wide variety of manuscripts for a wide range of audiences in a wide variety of POVs.

Characters

Sydney: Along with Nando, the book includes many other memorable characters. Do you have a favorite secondary character? Who and why?

McCall: Oh that’s really hard, I’m torn between Oscar, the orange tabby cat, and Levi, the twelve-year-old boy. But I think it has to be Levi. I can so relate to his strong desire to do the right thing, follow the rules, please everyone, and most of all, his overwhelming desire for a dog of his own.

Story Arcs

Sydney: With its exciting, fast-paced content and emotional resonance, this book is sure to be a hit with young readers. Can you share thoughts on how you managed to balance the emotional and physical story arcs so effectively?

McCall: I’m a planner, which I know we’ll talk about later. And I don’t just plan the plot. I also plan the main character’s emotional arc—how he or she will evolve gradually throughout the story based on her interactions and encounters throughout the story. That way I hope I don’t end up with one of those unsatisfying endings where the main character comes to some surprisingly convenient or unbelievable realization.

I don’t know that planning is always the ideal way to draft. I have some genius writer friends, who write completely from the seats of their pants, but planning works for me. It keeps me from wandering down too many side roads that might not directly advance the plot or the character’s development and hopefully keeps things moving in the right direction.

Takeaways

Sydney: What do you hope readers take away from this story?

McCall: Mostly, I want young readers to get so wrapped up in Nando and Levi’s adventure to survive the tropical storm that threw them together in the first place that they lose track of time and keep turning pages. But on a deeper, more thematic level, I want kids to recognize that just like Nando they deserve to be loved unconditionally, that they deserve to be loved right where they are, right how they are, and that true love is not transactional, it’s unconditional.

Process

Sydney: Will you tell us a little about your writing process? Are you a plotter or pantser? Where/when do you prefer to write?

McCall: My writing process continues to evolve. I started writing with the goal of publication about fifteen years ago as a pantser. That resulted in a bunch of incomplete manuscripts.

Then like so many published authors, I discovered Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, which helped me understand plot structure beyond what I already knew as an English teacher. I started attending conferences, taking classes, and reading everything that was recommended to me on the craft of writing. That learning led to my first finished manuscript. Then for several years and several published books, I didn’t start writing the first word until I had fully planned the most important plot and emotional beats of my story.

Since then, I’ve learned to trust the process a bit more. I will start writing now once I have a grasp on the main character, the emotional growth I want her to experience, and a rough idea of where she will start and end. I can do a lot more of the planning in my head now that I have internalized a lot of the learning of the past fifteen years.

Now, I frequently pause to plan along the way. And I continue to read craft books and learn as I go. One of the things that I tell students on school visits that I love most about writing is that I can continue to learn and grow and write for the rest of my life. There is no expiration date on reading and writing, like there would be if I wanted to play soccer at a high level after the age of forty. Don’t worry. I have no aspirations of playing any sport for anything more than fun right now.

Influences

Sydney: What are some current books that have influenced you as a kidlit writer?

McCall: Again, it’s so hard to pick just one. But I vividly remember calling my agent, who represented my young adult work at the time, when I turned the last page of Wish by Barbara O’Connor and saying, “This! I want to write something like this.” I may have had the book clutched to my chest as I spoke. To me that book has the perfect combination of heart, friendship, meaty themes, and of course, a beagle! As I transitioned from writing for teens, I found myself repeatedly drawn to nonhuman POV books like The One and Only Ivan, Pax, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Stay, and so many others. I just read and loved The Unlikely Tale of Chase and Finnegan by Jasmine Warga and loved it. Nonhuman POVs engage me on a different level somehow. Maybe it’s because many of my best friends have been animals.

Other Works

Sydney: Can you give us some insights into what you’ll be working on next?

McCall: Absolutely! I’m very excited about my first picture book, Oscar the Cat Finds a Home, which releases March 2, 2027. Young readers and their librarians and parents frequently ask me if I’m strictly a dog person, and I’m not! I’m an animal person with a special affinity for dogs, cats, and horses.

Oscar’s comical but heartfelt story about a cat searching for a home and finally finding it in the one place he never thought to look will be my physical proof that I love cats too. And Kristen Humphrey’s illustrations are divine. I cannot wait to share this book with younger readers.

I’m also super excited about my first dual POV middle grade title: Monty, the Marvelous Mule of Jot ‘Em Down, coming fall 2027. It’s told in the alternating points of view of a girl, who finds her horse-show dreams out of reach when her family loses everything and ends up living in a rundown pet motel, and a down-on-its-luck mule that refuses to give up on her. This book is a return to the horse-girl roots of my youth. Writing it is bringing me great joy. I think readers are going to love Monty. Apologies in advance to the parents whose children start asking for riding lessons or for a mule of their own.

And for the lightning round:

Coffee or tea? Royal English Breakfast or Earl Grey, all the way!

Sunrise or sunset? Sunset.

Favorite place to travel: So hard! I think I’ll stick with the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Favorite dessert: Does a Butterfinger Blizzard count? Let’s say, yes—a Butterfinger Blizzard with extra Butterfinger pieces.

Superpower: Sentence diagramming! I’m a super proud, super nerdy former high school English teacher…

Favorite music: Birds singing outside my window or 80’s and 90’s classic rock.

Favorite book from childhood:  Just one? Anything with a horse, a dog, or a mystery, but if you’re really going to press me Charlotte’s Web.

Thanks again, McCall! It was so much fun to learn about you, your writing journey, and your amazing novel! Learn more about McCall on her website and follow her on Instagram, Threads, and Bluesky.