Posts Tagged middle grade books

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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Finding Home Again: 5 MG Books About Moving and Identity

By on July 18, 2025   /   Book Lists, Fiction  
Two Black girls stand confidently on a beach with a purple-blue sky and knit-textured backdrop. One wears overalls and sneakers, the other wears a skirt and boots with sunglasses. The title is in bold white handwritten letters.

Unlike most kids I knew, my family moved almost every year. New town. New school. New hallways to navigate. And nearly every time, I was the only kid of color in the room. This not only left me feeling unsure about who I’d sit with at lunch, but unsure about who I would have to become in order to fit in.

Why it Matters: During the summer months, many kids are bracing for that intense kind of transition. Some are moving across town. Some across states. Some across oceans. They won’t just be starting over. They’ll be rebuilding their sense of identity and belonging from scratch. A process that can be uncomfortable, disorienting, and at times, deeply lonely.

Go Deeper: These five middle grade books are for readers going through that kind of change. Kids of color, kids from other countries, kids navigating new spaces that don’t quite feel like home yet. These stories reflect their journey and remind them that “home” is a place within themselves.

Read Time: 4 minutes

Manga-style illustrated cover of a smiling Japanese girl with a ponytail holding a basketball with a winking cartoon cat perched on top. The background is bright blue with the title in bold purple letters.

Bounce Back by Misako Rocks! (2021)

Lilico doesn’t want to leave Japan, but when her family moves to Brooklyn, she’s forced to start all over. New school, new language, new everything. Basketball becomes her anchor, and a magical guardian spirit cat named Nico helps her find strength when she’s overwhelmed by change.

Perfect for: readers navigating culture shock or who are adjusting to a brand new country or school. 

Two Black girls stand confidently on a beach with a purple-blue sky and knit-textured backdrop. One wears overalls and sneakers, the other wears a skirt and boots with sunglasses. The title is in bold white handwritten letters.

The Only Black Girls in Town by Brandy Colbert (2020)

Alberta has always been the only Black girl in her small California beach town, until Edie moves in. The two form a bond over their shared identity, but also uncover hidden secrets in old journals found in Edie’s attic. Together, they find their place in a town that rarely made space for them.

Perfect for: readers navigating the complexity of being “the only one” and wondering what it means to share space with someone who gets it.

Illustrated cover of a red-haired girl with glasses holding a beagle puppy, standing in front of a leafy green background. She looks off to the side with a thoughtful expression. The title is in whimsical teal lettering.

Hazel’s Theory of Evolution by Lisa Jenn Bigelow (2019)

Hazel’s family moves her to a new school district the same year her moms are expecting a baby after several heartbreaking losses. Hazel isn’t sure how to make new friends, how to support her family, or how to deal with the emotional swirl she’s carrying inside. Slowly, she learns that change doesn’t mean losing everything. It just means evolving.

Perfect for: introverted readers who feel overwhelmed by transitions, or for kids whose family lives are shifting too.

A cartoon-style cover featuring a Black boy in a hoodie and backpack, writing in a notebook. The title "New Kid" is in bold yellow on a black background, with multiple award seals at the bottom.

New Kid by Jerry Craft (2019)

Jordan Banks just wants to go to art school, but instead, his parents send him to a prestigious private academy where he’s one of the only kids of color. Through graphic novel panels, we follow Jordan’s inner world as he navigates code-switching, microaggressions, and the tension between two different worlds.

Perfect for: readers entering unfamiliar cultural territory and learning how to stay true to themselves.

Illustrated cover of a young Chinese American girl with long black hair, a teal beetle in her hair, and a gentle smile. The title is hand-lettered in white with rainbow brush strokes behind her head on a coral-red background.

The Many Meanings of Meilan by Andrea Wang (2021)

When Meilan’s family leaves Boston’s Chinatown for a mostly white town in Ohio, she loses more than her home. At her new school, her principal even changes her name to “Melanie” without asking. Meilan splits herself into pieces just to survive, but ultimately must decide which version of herself is true.

Perfect for: readers who’ve been renamed, mispronounced, or asked to shrink themselves to fit in.

In Closing

You know I love to highlight books that aren’t afraid of the hard stuff. And at the heart of every move is a kid asking tough questions like: Who will I be in this new space? Will anyone see me for me? Will I ever feel like myself here?

It can make kids feel like the ground is slipping beneath them. I hope these stories help them find home again, not in a specific place, but in who they are. 

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Author Spotlight: Barbara Carroll Roberts + a GIVEAWAY

By on July 17, 2025   /   Author Interviews  

In today’s Author Spotlight, Landra Jennings chats with author Barbara Carroll Roberts about her new middle-grade novel, The Metamorphosis of Bunny Baxter (Holiday House, July 22). She’ll share her inspiration behind writing it, the passion for gardening and wildlife that informed it, and the lovely inspiration for the dog character. Plus, there’s a chance to win an ARC of The Metamorphosis of Bunny Baxter if you enter the giveaway!

 

Book Summary:

Bunny Baxter thinks nothing could be worse than starting seventh grade at a school where she knows no one. But after her first day, she realizes things can actually get much worse.

If Bunny Baxter were an insect, she’d have so many ways to slip through seventh grade unnoticed. But she’s tall instead of tiny, has flaming red Medusa hair instead of camouflage, and she suffers from social anxiety, which makes it hard to be part of a swarm. Worst of all, she’s been redistricted to a new middle school away from her best friend who she could always hide behind when her anxiety got the best of her.

The first day at E.D. Britt Middle School does not go well. Bunny trips on the steps, falls into the cutest boy in the school, and causes a kid domino pile-up. At lunch, she unintentionally causes an uproar in the cafeteria, which lands her and another girl in the principal’s office. Bunny decides there is only one option: to get expelled so she can transfer to the school her best friend attends.

She soon discovers that it isn’t that hard to get in trouble — don’t turn in your homework, walk around the track instead of run in P.E., pretend you deliberately hit someone with a badminton birdie. What isn’t so easy for Bunny is realizing she now has a reputation as a troublemaker. And even more confusing, when it looks like her plan to get expelled might work, she’s no longer sure what to do.

The Metamorphosis of Bunny Baxter is a heartfelt coming of age story about an insect-loving girl who is learning to grow into herself — quirks and all.

Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection. Publishers Weekly Starred Review. Booklist Starred Review.

Interview with Barbara Carroll Roberts

LJ: Welcome to the Mixed-Up Files, Barbara! Thanks for joining us today.

BR: Thank you so much for having me.

LJ:  First, I have to tell you how much I loved this book. I couldn’t put it down. Bunny’s journey is so beautifully layered and nuanced. “Metamorphosis” is the perfect descriptor. Can you please tell us about your inspiration to write it?

BR: Thanks so much! I actually began this book with what it wouldn’t be about. While I was working on my MFA at Hamline University, one of the other students wrote her critical thesis about how few children’s books she’d found in which the main character had been adopted into their family. And of the books she did find, almost all of them focused on the character searching for a birth parent, or on another issue directly linked to the child’s adoption. The woman who wrote this essay had been adopted into her family, and she also adopted her own children. She felt that children who’d been adopted needed more books about kids like them, but more than that, they needed books in which the main character just happened to have been adopted, but that’s not what their story was about. Since my husband and I had adopted one of our children, I decided to write a book like that.

This isn’t a craft technique I’d recommend, though – starting a novel with what it won’t be about. I struggled through several really awful attempts to come up with a story before the main character and the vaguest idea of a plot began to take shape.

Gardens and Pollinators

LJ: You’re a gardener. How did your passion for gardening and pollinators influence the story? Did you have to do any additional research on that?

BR: This story actually came to me through research, though I initially didn’t realize I was doing research – I was just reading the magazines and websites of the gardening and wildlife organizations I belong to and seeing more and more articles about the need to protect insects, especially pollinators. Then I read two books by Douglas Tallamy, Bringing Nature Home and Nature’s Best Hope, which also discuss the importance of insects in the natural world, as well as the difference individuals can make by planting native plants in their yards.

So, then I tore out a big planting bed in my yard that was filled with boring nonnative shrubs and replanted it with native flowering plants. And somewhere in all of that the story of a very shy girl who’s fascinated by insects began to take shape. I had to do a lot of research on insects and social anxiety, which Bunny experiences. There was much more research done than what ended up in the story!

Favorite Scene

LJ: The writing was so beautiful. My favorite scene to read was the lovely “hammock” scene. What was your favorite scene to write?

BR: Wow, this is a difficult question. It was really important to me to dig into the deep emotions of the characters in that scene. This was also true of the scene in which Bunny asks her sister, Bella, if she thinks it feels different to have been born into their family instead of having been adopted into the family, as Bunny was. But these scenes were also very difficult to write, because I had to dig deep into my own emotions, too. I’m sure I revised these scenes more than any others, trying to get them “right.” Scenes with broader humor, like the pandemonium in the cafeteria caused by Bunny’s emotional-support cicada, were definitely more enjoyable to work on.

Favorite Character

LJ: Your side characters were so well drawn out. Ralph was a personal favorite. Do you have a favorite secondary character?

Riley

BR: It’s funny you mention Ralph. My dog Riley was a real life inspiration!

In general this question is sort of like asking “Who’s your favorite child?” I grew very attached to all of the characters in this book, but the two I had the most fun with are Bunny’s dad – because he’s so talented and creative at garden design, but so absent-minded about all kinds of mundane things – and Sylvia Lester-Hewitt-Abruzzo-Fung – because she has no filter and says whatever comes into her head. Plus, I had a lot of fun thinking about all the goofy things she wears in her hair.

 

Cover Art

LJ: The cover by Erin McGuire is absolutely gorgeous. What was your reaction on seeing Bunny and her faithful counselor Ralph depicted for the first time?

BR: When my editor at Holiday House, Margaret Ferguson, told me they were considering Erin McGuire for the cover illustration, I went to Erin’s website to see her work. And I was thrilled to discover that she’d illustrated book covers that I’ve always loved, including the cover of The Real Boy, by Anne Ursu, and the cover of your book, Wand. I’m absolutely delighted with the cover Erin created for my book. She perfectly captured Bunny’s fascination with insects and the natural world, as well as the love and friendship she shares with Ralph.

To the Heart of Bunny

LJ: I was really touched by Kyle’s articulation of what seemed to be a major theme for the story—”You get to be who you are.” Can you tell us a little bit about that?

BR: I wish I could tell you that I had that scene all planned out from the beginning, but pretty much the opposite is true. Instead, it was one of those magical moments when your characters just start talking to you. I was probably on my fifth or sixth full revision of the manuscript when Kyle suddenly “said” those words to Bunny, and I realized I’d finally found the heart of the book.

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

BR: You know, every reader sees a book through the lens of their own life experiences. So, I suspect readers will find a variety of take-aways. My main hope is that readers enjoy the book. And if they happen to be inspired to plant a pollinator garden at their own school or home – even just a small pot of native plants on their apartment balcony or windowsill – that would be lovely.

On Writing

LJ: What do you like best about being a writer?

BR: Oh boy, another difficult question. I very rarely find writing to be fun. More often it’s hard work. Trying to get a sentence to flow smoothly. Figuring out the logical steps of a conversation or a sequence of action. Developing an idea without smacking the reader over the head; finding the most evocative sensory details to bring a scene to life. I started writing Bunny in 2019 after my first book came out. It took some time to develop. But I’ve always enjoyed being alone with my thoughts – what my mother called daydreaming and my children call spacing-out-staring-at-nothing. I think it was E. L. Doctorow who said writers have to “re-dream the scene.” And I think this is what I like best about writing – the dreaming-it-up part.

Lightning Round

No MUF interview is complete without a lightning round, so. . . .

Coffee or tea?

Coffee.

Sunrise or sunset?

I do love seeing the sunrise. But since I’m a bit of a night owl and not at all a morning person, I don’t see too many sunrises. I’ve always loved the hour or so around sunset, when things start to go quiet and still. I also love the word that describes that hour – the gloaming.

Favorite city (besides the one you live in):

I’m not really a city person – I like being outside in nature too much. But I visited Paris for the first time last year, and it was fabulous.

Favorite childhood television show:

The Wonderful World of Disney. During the summer, Sunday evenings always presented a difficult choice: stay outside playing after dinner or come inside to watch Disney. No streaming shows in those days.

Favorite ice cream:

Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia

If you could choose a superpower, what would it be?

I’d love to be able to talk with animals.

Favorite book from childhood:

I always loved animal books – Charlotte’s Web, Misty of Chincoteague, Black Beauty, My Friend Flicka. I particularly loved Rascal, by Sterling North.

LJ: How can readers obtain a copy of the book?

BR: The book can be preordered at your local independent bookstores, Bookshop.org, Barnes and Noble, or Amazon, or any place books are sold. Personalized copies can be shipped from Politics and Prose.

How to win!

For a chance to win an ARC of The Metamorphosis of Bunny Baxter, comment below! (Giveaway ends July 31, 2025, MIDNIGHT EST.) U.S. only, please. ARC will be mailed.

About the Author 

Barbara Carroll Roberts is a children’s author whose debut middle-grade novel, Nikki on the Line, was a finalist for two state children’s book awards and made numerous best-of-the-year lists. Her nonfiction picture book, A Rose Named Peace, illustrated by Bagram Ibatoulline, is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection and received a starred review from School Library Journal.

Barbara has had many careers: farm worker, video producer, freelance writer, mom. All of which she draws on in her work writing for children. She grew up in northern California and holds a BA in English from Occidental College in Los Angeles and an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. She has two grown children and now lives in Virginia with her husband, two cats, and one very goofy springer spaniel.

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