Today I welcome Helen Frost to Best Dog Books, a blog that features interviews with authors who’ve written a canine story for kids or young adults. Helen will talk about Diamond Willow which is a middle grade novel published by Frances Foster Books, FSG for kids aged 8-12.
Best Dog Books: Who is your key dog character(s) and what kind of dog is he/she?
Roxy is a sled dog, the lead dog, in a dog team in rural Alaska.
Best Dog Books: Tell us about your story.
Willow, a 12-year-old girl, feels ordinary and unappreciated, especially at school. She’s more confident out on the trail with her family’s dog team, and thinks she should be trusted to mush the dogs out to her grandparents’ house, alone. When her parents finally trust her to do this, she and the dogs have an accident, and Roxy, the lead dog, is injured. In trying to make things right, Willow gets into serious trouble, taking Roxy and her best friend with her. With the help of the animals around her, and the affectionate concern of the ancestors those animals represent, Willow finds her way to safety, and saves herself and Roxy.
It’s an adventure story, a story of family secrets, and beneath it all, a story of a girl and a dog.
Best Dog Books: What inspired you to write this story?
Early in the story, Willow says, “I was named after a stick.” Something similar can be said about the story itself: it was inspired by a stick. I lived in a small community in Alaska for three years, and when I left, a friend gave me a Diamond Willow walking stick that he had found, peeled, sanded, and polished to a beautiful finish. The diamonds in diamond willow are formed when a tree is injured and a branch falls away, leaving a scar that is seen more clearly when the bark is peeled off. That is an extended metaphor throughout the story as Willow discovers something she has been missing all her life, and readers come to see how that is part of the beauty she has a hard time seeing in herself.
Best Dog Books: What was the biggest challenge you had writing your story? How did you overcome it?
I wrote the book in poems, following the form of diamond willow sticks: each poem is written in a diamond shape, with a smaller shape in bold print at the center. The poems are in first person, and as Willow tells her story, the bolded words say something she isn’t quite admitting to herself. That was a challenge I happily gave myself, and meeting it was a process of discovery as the language I needed rose to meet me.
Best Dog Books: What kind of story can we expect next from you? Is it about a dog? If so, what can you tell us about it?
I have written a number of books since Diamond Willow, and there are dogs in several of them. In Hidden, the dog, Bilbo, is not heroic, though he does unintentionally help solve a mystery. In my recent (2020) book, Blue Daisy, the dog is very much a central character, as a catalyst for friendship between four children.
Best Dog Books: What else would you like us to know about you or your story?
As I mentioned above, for three years I lived in a small Alaskan community of 25 people, not accessible by road, but rather by air, boat, snowmobile or dog sled. The landscape and feeling of those years has been important to my “inner landscape” ever since.
Best Dog Books: Can you remember the first book that made an impact on you? Why?
My father was a wonderful story-teller, and I grew up in the middle of a large family (fifth of ten children), so perhaps more than a first book, I remember those cozy times of crowding around my father in his big green chair as he invented outlandish adventures and brought us all into them by giving the characters our names.
Best Dog Books: What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Even if you are writing about something hard or sad, try to find a place of love at the center of your story, something strong in the telling of it. This may not be immediately apparent in the first draft, but it will come with patient attention.
If you’d like to learn more about Helen Frost, you can check out the author’s website or follow the author on facebook or instagram. You can find book reviews and awards for Helen’s books by following links on her website.
Thank you Helen for joining us at Best Dog Books. We look forward to reading your book!
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