Female Speaker: From the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Female Speaker: We're very fortunate because we have a wonderful author to kind of conclude today's event, Gary Schmidt. Yay! [applause] Before we get started, I just wanted to let you know that we are being filmed, even as I'm up here talking and you're sitting in the audience, the cameras are rolling. So I just need to let you know that. I also want to let you know because we are at the end of the Festival for this year, that if you had a good time, make sure you let the volunteers know. You know them by their beautiful teal shirts -- stand up please, Maggie, and model the shirt. [applause] And without all these wonderful volunteers the Festival never would be able to happen. Again I want to remind people that we have mics on either side. If you have any questions for Gary at the end of his talk, there's time. There's a Q and A session. Please go to the mic. He's the kind of guy who welcomes questions. He is also the kind of writer that you want in the teen's tent. Gary Schmidt is the two time winner of a Newbery Honor Award for "Lizzie Bright and the Buckminster Boy" and "The Wednesday Wars." He's also a professor of English at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. And his new book, "Okay for Now," has come out to great acclaim and many starred reviews. And has anyone read "Okay for Now"? Raise your hands. Yay. Gary also has a wonderful ability to combine the historical with the poignant and the humorous. He is a huge hit with tween and teen readers. His child characters are unforgettable, but in "The Wednesday Wars" he has done something that's almost impossible. He has created two unforgettable rat characters. And so that's a difficult thing to do in children's literature, to make the reader care about two rats. But Gary has done that well. So if you'll join me in welcoming Gary Schmidt. [applause] Gary Schmidt: Thanks for coming, folks. I talked to my son on the phone yesterday when I was waiting on line for an hour and three quarters to get a signature from Dave Eggers, and he said, "Gary -- Dad, who's against you?" And I said, "Well, when I'm talking there will be Garrison Keillor, and there will be David McCullough." [laughter] And he said, "You know, I have to tell you, if I was there I wouldn't be in your tent." [laughter] So I'm glad that you folks are. Thanks for coming. I am a child of the 1960s in many ways. Perhaps some of you are as well. In my elementary school when I was growing up and in early junior high, our desks -- I am not making this up -- still had the holes in the front right. Does anyone remember those? And you would use those to put in inkwells, which was old even for us. We did not have lockers in my school. We had a cloak room. It was not a coat room; it was a cloak room. No kidding. In those days, we had chalkboards, gone now, right? And so one of the tasks that all of us had, we would rotate it, is to take the chalk erasers outside and just -- see, yes, see, people are already doing it with their hands -- you take erasers and you smash them against each other and chalk rises up like this, like this awful miasma and I know I'll die from that someday. We could actually say the words Christmas and Hanukkah and even celebrate them. It was quite amazing then. In order to do calculations, we had not computers, we had slide rules. How many of you still have your slide rules? Yes, see I still have mine. How many of you could use a slide rule here? All right, all right. We had slide rules. We had red Thorndike dictionaries. Remember those? We had red dodge balls. Remember those? And we had red tomato sauce on English muffins for our pizzas. We would gather together every so often in the dining hall, and there would be a black and white television wheeled in front and we would watch, all of us, this one small television as the Mercury astronauts fell from the sky into the sea. We could hardly believe it. You could hardly believe it. They had been in space. We were inspired by the idea that by the end of the decade, by the end of the decade, we would have people walk on the moon. Remember how inspiring that was? Remember how that charged us, the idea that people would actually walk on the moon? Wouldn't it be sweet if we could take off, say, I don't know, next January and take the $40 billion that we spend on wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and give it to NASA and let them use the $35 billion they need to send a man or a woman to walk on Mars. Wouldn't be bad [spelled phonetically]. [applause] We had atomic bomb drills. Anyone do those? We knew that we had to practice for when the atomic bomb would fall on our school because obviously, Hicksville [spelled phonetically] Junior High was a prime atomic target. And so we would go underneath our desks for several minutes, 20 minutes or so, and we would have our hands -- remember this, guys? -- we'd have our hands over our heads and the teacher would patrol up and down the aisles so we knew that when Leonid Brezhnev pushed the button, and the bomb would drop on Hicksville Junior High, we'd be fine. [laughter] You know, they'd call the buses, we'd get up. The walkers would go home after the buses were gone. I'd go, I'd get a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and watch "Speed Racer". It would be fine because we had practiced for atomic bombs coming down on top of us. Protests in those days were close companions. If you were in my seventh grade class or my sixth grade class for that matter, every guy and some of the girls, but every guy would have a black armband on in my junior high to protest the Vietnamese war. We actually said the word -- it's hard for me even admit this -- we actually used and said the word "groovy". [laughter] We really did. That's unbelievable now, thinking back, that we actually used that word but we did. We really did. And in my school on Wednesday afternoons at 1:30, a lot of the students were dismissed for religious instruction. So at 1:30 every kid who was Catholic got up and left and then 10 minutes later or so, every kid who was Jewish got up and left and they went off to their classes. That meant that all the Protestant kids remained behind and in my school in sixth and seventh grade, it was me. I was the only one that was left behind. I was the entire Protestant Reformation -- [laughter] -- right here. Everything. Right there. When my teacher found out -- her name was Mrs. Baker, as in the book -- when my teacher found out about this and she knew that she would have me there and that she wouldn't have two hours off every Wednesday instead because I was sitting there, because I was a jerk and I wasn't Catholic, she hated my guts. She absolutely hated me, which was fine since I hated her, too. And she decided to punish me for not being -- for being Protestant, I suppose -- she decided to punish me by making me a janitor. And so when all of my friends left, at 1:30 and 1:45, I spent the rest of the school day in those early days, every Wednesday, cleaning the room. I would clean the cloak room where people had thrown all their awful lunches that didn't want to hear -- or eat, I should say. Egg salad that had been there for seven days or liverwurst, made up of I don't know what, that had been there for seven days that had evolved and was moving. I would clean out the chalkboard. I would smash the erasers together. Isn't it funny how we do this automatically? I would sweep. I would go to the rat cages and to clean up rat cages you reach down, of course, and you grab their naked tails and you move them to a small rat cage and then you clean out the cage and then you move them back. Rats are remarkably, unbelievably flexible creatures so that I had rat bites all around my wrists all the time. My parents thought I was doing drugs. That's what I would do every Wednesday afternoon. On the very first one, when I was all finished with that, Mrs. Baker called me up front. She said, "Are you finished?" And I said, "Yes." And she said, "Huh." And she opened her desk drawer and out her desk drawer she pulled out a razor blade. I'm not making this up. With one hand -- I was about to say talon -- but with one hand, with one finger, she pushed the razor blade across the desk and I picked it up. I was pretty sure she wanted me to commit suicide. [laughter] But I picked it up and it wasn't at all what I was supposed to do with it. As those of you who are my age know, there were never any rules against chewing gum. And you know, you don't really want to go and throw your gum away in a gar -- you know, you know. And so what are you going to do? You've got to get rid of it. And so your desk is so very convenient and the underside of your chair is so very easy -- yeah -- and so what I had to do on Wednesday afternoons, really -- I'm not making this up -- is to take my razor blade, my little pink razor blade, and to get the gum off the bottom of chairs and desks, which, when my friends found out I was doing, as you can imagine, they did not stop. In fact, they in fact added lots and lots. There were like wasps' nests of gum. And Ernie Hupfer [spelled phonetically] would smear his across to make it most difficult. And Danny Schmidt [spelled phonetically] -- no relation -- stuck it in corners deep where the screws were. It was awful. And that's what I was doing on the day that our principal, Mr. Jenett [spelled phonetically] came into the room and found me and saw me under Ernie Hupfer's desk and said to my teacher, "Mrs. Baker, what is he doing?" And she said, "Well, he's all by himself. It's not like I can teach him or anything." I can remember that -- jerk. "It's not like I can teach him or anything." And Mr. Jenett was angry and thought that she should and there ensued a rapid discussion between them ending in this lovely, lovely discourse of anger directed by the principal at my teacher. He yelled at her. It was fantastic. [laughter] I sat there and watch my teacher get yelled at by my -- it was lovely, lovely beyond description. Of all the discourse I've heard over these last two days in all these tents, nothing was as sweet as Mr. Jenett yelling at Mrs. Baker. It was fantastic. When that was over, of course, he left and he shut the door. And then Mrs. Baker looked at me. And in her eyes was, you know, homicide. But it was so cool. If you'd have been there you'd have gone, "Whoa, this is really cool." Because this is what happened: I walked up to the desk, I took my razor blade and with one finger I pushed it across the desk to Mrs. Baker and I think, I won. [laughter] This is great. And I went and sat back down at my desk. But Mrs. Baker was nefarious and evil, and she knew that this was not the end of the game. And so she went into her desk drawer and she picked up this book. It was snot green. She brought it to my desk; she had to use two hands, it was that heavy. And she brought the book and put it on my desk and opened it to the first few pages and said, "Read that." And I looked at it. It was the "Tragedy of Macbeth," by William Shakespeare. I was in sixth grade. The "Tragedy of Macbeth." For the rest of my sixth grade year and the beginning of my seventh grade year, I spent every Wednesday afternoon for two hours reading the plays of William Shakespeare. We never discussed it. We never talked about it. We never had a quiz. We never even acknowledged each other when we were in the room. We had nothing to do with each other about Shakespeare plays. And I never told her what I would not tell her right now if she came walking down the road. And was this: That I loved it. I absolutely loved it. Were there hard words that I didn't know? Of course. So, you know, you do what you have to do: You skip them. [laughter] Were there scenes that were boring? Sure there are. Polonius? He's boring. You turn the page. Were there passages that I didn't get? Yes, every clown [spelled phonetically] passage I never figured out. I skipped it. I read only for the story. I read just for the stories. And their meanings were so powerful to me, so amazing to me, that I remember them still in those grades because they were so surprising. They were saying things I wasn't hearing anyone else say. So, you read "Much Ado About Nothing." And there is Beatrice, the beloved Beatrice. And there's the prince, the prince, and the prince says to Beatrice, "Will you have me, Lady?" You know, Denzel Washington in the movie. The prince, "Will you have me, Lady?" And she says to him, "No, my lord. No." Everyone else in that play at the end is married. There is Benedict and Beatrice. There is stupid Claudio and stupid Hero. And they all go off to get married but at the end of the play, there's the prince. And the next day he will torture his brother to death and then he will be alone. And the play said to me: Marriage, love, the most amazing things in the world, but they are not promised. There's no promise that you'll get that. Or think about Romeo and Juliet, these two people who really do have a struggle to find their way around the block. And at the end of the play, it doesn't work out as you wish and you suddenly realize that this play is saying to us, everything seems to hinge on just one little thing; one little moment and everything changes. "We are stars bandied about by the universe. We are fortune's fool." And we all know this to be true. You're sitting at home. You get the phone call. It's from a doctor, "I'm sorry, the test results came through. I'm sorry for what I have to tell you." We all know, often it's that one moment that changes everything. I learned that from Romeo and Juliet. Or for middle school kid to read about Shylock, the merchant of Venice? What a scary play. What a frightener. The idea that others outside of you could define you, could tell you who you are and that you would come to believe it? Does that chime with a middle school kid? That other people can tell you who you are and you may come to believe it? I found them stunning. I was deeply moved by them. It was fantastic. So when the day comes years later, when I want to write a story and I am trying to think of ideas and of course nothing comes and I'm driving down Route 95 coming out of Maine. I have six kids in the car with me and suddenly an image -- this never happens to me -- this image comes into my head of a kid, a seventh grader, who is running behind a group of eighth graders in a cross race. He is afraid of them and so he won't go in front of them because he's afraid of them. And they round a bend and there's his teacher. And in my head it was Mrs. Baker. There's this teacher and she says to them -- says to him, "Get in front of those boys." And because he's afraid of his teacher, more afraid than of the eighth grade guys, he does. He doesn't have to win, but I knew that he went in front of those guys and that was the inspiration for the beginning of the plot. It doesn't occur until about midway through the book but it found its home there. Then I just had to find the characters and the beginning. How do I start? And the voice and all of that. I knew I wanted to write about a kid who loved Shakespeare. I knew I wanted to write about a kid who was growing up in a turbulent time, a time when there was war all the time kind of like right now. Our middle school kids are growing up in a time when we are engaged in three, three wars. Three wars. It's not as in our faces as it was for those of us back then. It doesn't appear on television quite so much and yet there it is. Maybe it should appear on the television more. I also knew it was about a kid who was in a difficult time just in terms of the country, a time that's violent. Those soldiers in 1968 who landed on the shores of Vietnam, in the next 30 days their chances of being alive, 30 days after that? One in three. On Saturday, on Saturday New York Times in 1968, early 1969 arraigned the names of those who had been killed on the Saturday issue, the second page. Two hundred fifty names every week. Two hundred fifty boys, shot, killed, dead. It was a time of terrible violence. In '68, in the spring of '68 Martin Luther King is shot and killed. On the day that his assassin is discovered, on the very day that his assassin is discovered and arrested, Bobby Kennedy is shot and killed. And America becomes a place where assassination, not so unusual. We could have it all the time, I guess. So how does someone grow up in such a time? And that's in fact my question. All of my books, everything I write, is really only about one question. Maybe it's boring. But my single question is this: How does a kiddo turn his face or her face from childhood to adulthood? How does that happen? How do we turn away from childhood with its securities, with its home, with its parents -- one hopes -- with a school and all the structures around him, a child. How do you consciously and willingly to turn your face away from that towards all the responsibilities and scary things of growing up and becoming an adult? We all in this room know many people who don't make that change. But how does it happen, particularly in a culture where we really don't want our kids to grow up? Where we send all sorts of messages that we don't want anyone to grow up. Watch any football game. Watch the commercials of the guys. What are they doing in those commercials? I defy you to say that those are adults. Is it really the case that a good time is to be had, a group of guys eating things that have never seen the light of the sun watching a football game? Really? They look like they're having such a good time. I never had that. I can't even imagine it. Or you go to a fast food place and watch the people on the lines. Watch what happens when they have to wait for 45 seconds and how they get angry because it's a fast food place and they have to wait 45 seconds. Really? What an adolescent thing. And yet that's where we are. A new toy comes out, a new Play Station, a new X box. Wal Mart will sell it at 12:01 a.m., I guess, because we have to have it. A line starts to form that afternoon. By the time 12:00 comes, there's a line around Wal Mart several times. When the doors open, if the employees survive the initial onslaught, it's an incredible mayhem. And when they run out -- and this happens -- when they run out, people who don't get them, they're ticked. They're angry. The go out to the parking lot. They flip the cars over. They set them on fire because they didn't get their Play Station. And when they're interviewed by local news, they say, "It's the store's fault. They didn't order enough. Come on!" That's adolescent. And one can hardly not be on the Mall here and think about the adolescent arguments of a certain large political body around us. I wanted to find a story that focused on that, that focused on a kid growing up in that time, and that became "The Wednesday Wars." "Okay for Now" is the companion volume to that. It's not really a sequel to it, but it's a companion volume to it. I have to tell you, I've always sort of not done sequels consciously. I mean, I look at a fantasy. Is it really the case that you can't write a fantasy in under 16 volumes? [laughter] Really? Maybe so. I don't know. But I just never liked sequels too much. I've just not been good at them, which is probably the real reason. But I have to say, this one was almost forced on me. It really just seemed to work well. I was in Flint, Michigan for gig; I'm from Michigan. In Michigan, we are really struggling economically, really struggling economically. The stats are outrageous. If it's all true, if you add up the people who have not been able to find a job and people who have just given up, we are about a 25, 26 percent unemployment in my state. Flint is one of the most violent cities in all of America. The reason is because the unemployment is just extraordinary and the employment opportunities are hardly there at all. So I'm there for a gig at a library. This library is struggling in many different ways. Financially, there's no money; there's no money to buy new books. It's difficult to just keep the building up. And as I'm walking around, I come into this room, not a particularly nice room, but there's a glass case right here, flat, a large glass case. And so I walked over to a. In that glass case is an, Audubon, John James Audubon "Birds of America." It is not a first. It's an 1861 edition put out by his wife. John James "Audubon Birds of America." The book is probably a quarter million dollars, maybe a little bit more. I was stunned. I couldn't believe it. And I look at this beautiful, gorgeous, extraordinary book and I think, wow, are you tempted to sell it? A quarter million dollars is a lot of money. A quarter million dollars gets you lots of books. Are you tempted to sell it? And I asked them. And they said, "Yes. We really are, but we won't. But we won't." And I thought, nobility. That's nobility. On the way home from that gig I was listening to NPR and they talked about a school system in Pennsylvania that had given been given in the 1930s an N.C. Wyeth mural for its auditorium. Can you imagine? One of our greatest artists and you're a middle school kid and you walk into an auditorium every day and you see on the wall an N.C. Wyeth original mural that's almost too beautiful to even conceive. N.C. Wyeth, there it is, this original mural. The school was wondering if they should sell it. They thought they could get a million bucks for. And after all, you have to pay insurance. It's a middle school; things could happen -- spitballs. You know, it has to be cleaned occasionally. I mean, do we really need it? Couldn't we just put up a poster? And they sold it. They sold it. Put those two stories together and you can see what a heartbreaking pair it really is. So that was a story right there. I knew I wanted to write a story about someone who finds something valuable and extraordinary that's about to be sold off and who wants to keep it, who wants it to be whole. But that's not a story yet. Not at all. I figured out that it was going to be an Audubon book. I wanted it to be a first edition. If you've see one -- has anyone seen one? There are -- it's huge. You can go to the Library of Congress and see some individual sheets. They're huge. They came in four volumes. He printed about 600, 700, maybe 800 in total sets of that. In the globe today, in the entire world, on the planet, there are 118 perfect sets left. That's all. Why? Because when you take an Audubon and you open it to the American turkey first plate and you take a razor blade and slit the American turkey out and hold up, and you turn to someone who has big bucks and say, "Would you like it? Sixty thousand bucks, please." That person will give it to you. And you can cut up an Audubon, as has been done with most of the books and sell them plate by plate by plate and make much more money than you could if you tried to sell the whole book. Now, that's getting interesting. So I knew my kid was going to come upon an Audubon and that there'll be a set of plates gone, nine, and so I sat down to write it. I had no intention of writing a companion. I had no intention of this being Doug Swiatek [spelled phonetically] from the first book. I wanted to be completely different. And I usually laugh at writers who say, "Well, I just couldn't do it. I had to do it this way." I've always laughed at that metaphor. I think, no you can't. You do what you want. This one was almost irresistible. It began as third person. It stunk. Then it went to first person but I didn't have the kid. And finally I just kind of said, all right. All right. And it became Doug, who goes and finds this Audubon when he leaves his town, who sees that the nine plates are missing and who resolves that he will go on a quest to bring them back so that one thing, just one dang thing in his life can be whole. In fact, the quest that he goes on is much bigger, of course, much bigger than he even knows it is. It's more of an interior quest than not. And so off he goes. For me, it is always about voice. I am fascinated by voice. When I think about how stories start, it isn't a scene for me, it isn't a character for me, I have to hear the narrative voice. Who's talking? So here's Doug. And I'll just read you a couple pages to give you a sense of the voice. I hope there's a Yankee fan out here or two. Yes. I hope there's someone who remembers Joe Pepitone. Remember Joe Pepitone? Joe Pepitone once once gave me his New York Yankees baseball cap. I'm not lying. He gave it to me, to me, Doug Swiatek, to me. Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke came all the way out to the island to Camillo Junior High and I threw with them, me and Danny Hupfer [spelled phonetically] and Holling Hoodhood [spelled phonetically] who were good guys. We all threw with Joe Pepitone and Horace Clarke and we batted, too. They sang to us while we swung away, "He's a battah [spelled phonetically]. He's a battah. He's a battah battah." That was their song. And afterward Horace Clarke gave Danny his cap and Joe Pepitone gave Holling his jacket, probably because he felt so sorry for him on account of his stupid name and then Joe Pepitone handed me his cap. He reached out and took it off his head and handed it to me, just like that. It was signed on the inside so anyone could tell it was really his, Joe Pepitone's. It was the only thing I ever owned that hadn't belonged to some other Swiatek before me. I hid it for four and a half months then my stupid brother found out about it. He came in at night when I was asleep and whipped with my arm up behind my back so high I couldn't even scream, it hurt so bad. And he told me to decide if I wanted a broken arm or if I wanted to give him Joe Pepitone's baseball cap. I decided on the broken arm. Then he stuck his knee in the center of my spine and asked if I wanted a broken back along with a broken arm and so I told him Joe Pepitone's cap was in the basement behind the oil furnace. It wasn't. But he went downstairs anyway. That's what a chump he is. So I threw on a T shirt and shorts and Joe Pepitone's cap which was under my pillow the whole time -- the jerk -- and got outside. Except he caught me, dragged me behind the garage, took Joe Pepitone's baseball cap, pummeled me places where the bruises wouldn't show, a strategy that my -- that's none of your business. I think he kept a cap for 10 hours, just long enough for me to see him with it at school, then he traded to Link Vitale [spelled phonetically] for cigarettes. And Link Vitale kept it for a day, just long enough for me to see it at school, then Link traded it to Glen Dillard [spelled phonetically] for a comb -- a comb! And Glenn Dillard kept it for a day, just long enough for me to see him with it at school. Then Glenn lost it while driving his brother's Mustang without a license and with the top down -- the jerk. It blew away, somewhere on Jerusalem Avenue. I looked for it for a week. I guess now it's in a gutter getting rained on or something. Probably anyone who walks by looks down and thinks it's a piece of junk. They're right. That's all it is now. But once -- it was the only thing I ever owned that hadn't belonged to some other Swiatek before me. I know, that means a big fat zero to anyone else. That was the voice. That was the voice. [applause] Thanks. My process is a rather uninteresting one, sorry. I feel like I should have a really interesting process, but I think that writing is all about discipline. Gift is great; it's wonderful to talk about gift, but it really is, in the end, sitting down on your butt and getting the dang thing written. I write 500 words a day, every day, even if I'm in a hotel. Most of those words may not go, some of them will. At word 500, I stop. I don't care how fast the horses are going. I stop at word 500. Great American novels in general are written that way. "Grapes of Wrath," 500 words a day. Everything Steinbeck wrote, 500 words a day. Ernest Hemingway -- this is where I learned it from -- stop at word 500 every day. Jack London, our most prolific novelist, 500 words a day and that's it. I employ whatever means is going to slow me down; anything that will make me go slower, I use. I type everything on a 1953 Royal typewriter. You cannot believe how hard it is to find ribbons for a 1953 Royal typewriter. But that's what I do. I retype and retype and retype and retype many, many times each page. I start with revising all that's been written in a novel before up to the last chapter and then go from there to do my 500 words. If it stinks, I don't put it in some sort of file somewhere and hope that I can just pull it up later. I take the pages, I go to the wood stove where I used to heat -- that I use to heat my study, I open door and it's gone. This is not happy news to Karin, yes [spelled phonetically], I know, [laughs] to any place that likes to collect these manuscripts, but in fact it's something that's part of the process. I just need to destroy it. And it's completely gone. And we start over again. Why do this? I'm a teacher. I teach full time. I teach in the summer as well. Why do all this agony? There was a school I went to visit once about a year and a half ago now up in northern Michigan. I went up in a bad, crummy mood because I had a pile of papers to grade. I had to get up there on time and there was an ice storm. There was an ice storm going into northern Michigan. It was April. It was an ice storm. And I knew I was tired. I had taught all day. I had all these papers to grade and I had to just get to the hotel and just go to -- just get the papers graded and then go to sleep because a long day the next day. So I met the librarians. We went out to dinner. And I'm thinking, hurry, hurry, let's go, let's go. I need to be done. I need to grade papers. Let's go, let's go. And at the end, they turned me and said, "You know, we're doing this reading group and it's for a group of boys who are reluctant readers. They're reading one of your books, "Trouble." Would you like to come with us tonight and see this with us? And I'm thinking in my heart, no. No, I really, really don't. I really don't want to come. I've got papers -- no, I don't. And I said to them, "I'd love to." [laughter] And so we got in the car after dessert and we drove out of town. This is way northern Michigan -- and it wasn't very long until there is exactly no street lights. There are no buildings. It's completely black. And I'm thinking, really? And we're going on and on and we turn down a dirt road. And I'm thinking, there's a Stephen King novel like this -- [laughter] -- and it really doesn't have a good ending. And finally, way off in the distance, there is, unbelievably, a set of lights. And when we got there, I saw that it was a cinder block building with no windows and no sign. And we drove in and got out of the car and I said, "Where are we?" And they said, "This is a medium security prison for boys." It was a prison. We arrived at the door. It was metal. There was no window. We buzzed. An intercom came on. They explained who we were. The door opened. We walked in. The door closed behind us. I'd never been in a prison before. I did not think I was claustrophobic but geez, six feet in front of us was another door. This one had a window in it with wires through it, you know, that kind of glass? And there's someone with a walkie talkie at her face and she buzzes us in. And we go about 10 yards and we go through another door and I see the first kid of the night. His head, his face is being held into a garbage pail and he's throwing up and a guard has grabbed him and just shoved him down here. And I'm thinking, geez, we're not in Kansas anymore, Toto. There were six doors before we got the room we were going to meet in, six doors. Six doors, all shut behind us, metal. When we got to this room there were six boys here. They were from the medium security prison, orange jumpsuits. There were six boys on this side. They were from the maximum security prison 49 miles away. They had been waiting for us to come. They had all read "Trouble," this book. And I'm thinking, what am I doing here? What can I say to these kids? What will I say to them? The librarian decided that she would ask the first question and she said, "Why don't you tell Gary, he's the author, tell Gary what character you identified with?" And I'm thinking, what worse question could we possibly come up with? What greater disaster do you want to try for? But in fact, many of the hands went up and one kids says, "Henry." And I said, "Why?" And he says, "He's athletic, and I am, too." And I thought, no, he isn't. He's not athletic. The next kid raises his hand. He says, "Black Dog." And I go, "Really, Black Dog?" Black Dog in the book is not, though it sounds like a pirate, is in fact a black lab. He's a dog. He really is a dog. I said, "Black Dog? He's a dog." And he says, "I'll never have a dog." And I think, probably you won't. A dog. And another kid raises his hand and he says, "Che [spelled phonetically]." And I go, "Why Che?" And he says, "Che's father hates his guts because every time he looks at him he remembers that this is the son that was born after his wife was raped. Like my father." And my heart broke. It was the best two hour gig I have ever had. We just talked and talked and talked. And this one kid finally says to me, "I'm a writer, too." And I think, really. I say to him, "What do you write?" And he says, "I write about the planets." And I said, "What's your favorite planet?" And he says, "Jupiter. Jupiter is my favorite planet." This kiddo, he lives in a building that has no windows. When I think of those kids, I think of what their day is like. At 4:30, they go into their solitary cells, solitary cells. I sent them a poster and a book about the planets. I sent Jake a poster and a book about the planets. They were confiscated. He's not allowed to have any private things at all. He stays in his cell with the rest until 6:30 in the morning and then they come out. There have no classes. They eat, they play ping pong. They watch the dreadful mess [spelled phonetically] of our televisions until 4:30. And that's their day. Those kids had all been there, those dozen kids had all been there for a year and a half. None of them had seen any relative at all. None of them. We do throw kids away, we do. When I think about writing, I think about those 12 kids. I think about how books for them are their only companions and these books, they go anywhere. And they are in a place that's built of cinder block with no windows with six doors between them and the outside. But they have books. How many others of our kids need these as their companions? We do not know, we cannot even imagine, though I suspect a lot of folks here know what means to have a book that's a friend, a book that's important to you. And that is why I write. So I'm going to stop yammering now and if we have some questions, we can certainly go ahead and do that. [applause] Go ahead. Female Speaker: How does your faith affect what and how you write? Gary Schmidt: Hugely. I think everyone comes to any writing task thinking deeply about what it is that they believe in our most deep parts. I do not believe, for example, that there is such a thing as complete hopelessness. I do not believe that we throw people away. I believe that grace is given to everyone, everyone, as much as possible and anything that prevents that and hurts that I think this damnable. Those things are going to, I hope, come out of my books. I hope they do. There have been some reviews -- it's really interesting to me at the end of this book -- sorry, this is going to be a little give away -- there's a father who's a creep. He is really difficult and he's a drunk. He has done things that seem unredeemable. At the end of the book, I could've done something horrible to him, easy. But I'm not going to do that because so deeply do I believe that grace is so important. I'm a Calvinist; that's who we are. And that seems to me then, that at the end of the book, he has a small moment when it seems that things are going to turn around. You cannot believe the anger I've gotten at that, where people want this guy screwed and pinned to the wall. I'm not going to do that. Absolutely, it's huge. [applause] Female Speaker: Were Sycorax and Caliban from "The Wednesday Wars" based on actual horrible rats? Or were they just part of the story? Gary Schmidt: Yes, Sycorax and Caliban are horrible rats. The back story is that Mrs. Baker only has them because her husband, Tybalt [spelled phonetically], gave them to her. But that's not in the book. That's the only reason that she keeps them. I know that but the readers don't know that. In my school, they weren't rats. Except for one year. The ones I was actually thinking about that escaped, I think there were even -- I don't know what they were, gerbilly [spelled phonetically] sorts of things. Other than that one year where I had to take care of them, they were really these animals that escaped and we heard them throughout the school year. I thought that was fabulous. I'd be in the middle of like, I don't know, algebra problems and you hear gerbils running across the -- isn't that fantastic? Running across the ceiling? That'll do. I loved that. Everything "Wednesday Wars" is true but heightened. So the next time, if you ever get a chance to see a silent film and they do what's called "topping the gag", that's what I try and do with that. You say a joke and then you make it funnier with another joke about the first joke and then you make that funnier and you see how far you can go until the whole thing collapses down. That's what I was trying to do with "The Wednesday Wars." There's a whole bunch of true things that keep getting funnier and funnier, at least I hope they keep getting funnier and funnier. If you ever get a chance, here's a movie for you someday: "The Pawnbroker." Charlie Chaplin, watch the clock scene and you'll know exactly what I mean. "The Pawnbroker" by Charlie Chaplin, the clock scene. Female Speaker: Thank you. Male Speaker: Did you base Doug Swiatek's brother on someone you had in school? Gary Schmidt: Oh yes, absolutely. Doug Swiatek was a kid in my school, Doug was, whose real name was Glenn [spelled phonetically]. He was the kind of kid we were all a little bit afraid of. He was the guy who first introduced me to the notion that art can have a powerful effect on you. I was in kindergarten with him. He sat next to me at my table and he drew the most awful spider on this construction paper and it was pinned over our table. And in those days, you had to take nap time in kindergarten. And I would put my head down underneath this horrific spider, fangs, hairy -- I mean, it was just horrible. And I hated him. I hated this guy. He had an older brother. I didn't even know his name. I really, literally did not know his name. I just knew that he was Glenn Swiatek's brother. So I changed the name just a tad to Doug Swiatek's brother but didn't give him a name because there's no connection. That's also why Heather's name is held back until you finally get a connection with Heather when she's in Minneapolis and she needs some help and Holling responds. Suddenly they have a connection and for the first time you hear her name is Heather. Plus, the bus station in Minneapolis is on Heather Avenue. So that is also important for it, too. Names are powerful. They tell -- they make connections between us an so yes, when someone doesn't get one, that's a big deal for me. In "Okay for Now" you'll find out what the brother's name is. Female Speaker: What are you working on now? Gary Schmidt: There's a picture book coming out in April I've done with David Diaz which I really -- I mean, David Diaz. I'm really excited about that. It's about the first African -- the first Catholic saint of African descent, which I think is fantastic, the great story about St. Martin. I mean, the stories that are told about him are wonderful. There's a fantasy -- I don't write fantasy and I had someone dare me and I said okay. I mean fantasies, come on. The guy with a beard. You know the swords. One quest after the next quest. The mountains, the tunnels, the scary monsters, the jewels. Why do they have swords? Why don't they have pistols? Why is it always swords? That sort of stuff. And so I gave her a hard time about it and finally she just looked at me with disdain and she said, "Well, you do it." And I said, "All right, I will. And I won't have any of that stuff." "All right, then. Do it." And I said, "All right then." And so that's the next book. That will be out next fall. And it's called -- right now it's called, "What Came from the Stars." And then the next will be the third one in this trilogy and it will be a primarily -- it will be an epistolary novel, just a set of letters from Merrily [spelled phonetically] back home on the concept of becoming accomplished. Her parents want her to become accomplished but I want to explore what that means. Yes. Male Speaker: How hot was it inside the cells? Gary Schmidt: Inside the house? Male Speaker: The cells. Gary Schmidt: The cells? Male Speaker: The jail. Gary Schmidt: Oh, it wasn't hot. Michigan, nothing is hot in Michigan. It wasn't really hot in there. It was just close. And if you know that you can't get out of some place, I never thought that would bother me but it really did, that you can't get out of something. That you have people stopping you, that really did but me. And imagine if you are a kiddo and you're living in that for 14 hours a day, what do we do to those kids? Yes. Male Speaker: Okay, I have, like a couple questions. With the scene in "The Wednesday Wars" when the rats fell from the ceiling on to the principal's head, was that based on real life event? And -- Gary Schmidt: It was, but it wasn't rats. It was -- the house that we live in was built in 1830 and that means some of the places are built out of very, very old construction materials. And there was a winter when we were sitting around the dining room and the ceiling was made of horsehair plaster, I mean, horsehair plaster from the 1830s. And there was some drip that we didn't know about from the outside. And as we got up and left from dinner, the entire ceiling fell down. It was a February. The entire plaster ceiling just went whomp [spelled phonetically], crunch. You can imagine what it did to the dishes, if nothing else. The dogs were really kind of spooked. They haven't been back in that room since, actually. So that was the scene that I thought of when I have the rats come down. Male Speaker: And the part with -- were you actually in a play like Hal [spelled phonetically] Holling was when he had to play the fairy? Gary Schmidt: I was in a play early in my -- third or fourth grade. I was forced to be in a play. I was forced -- I want you to remember that, forced. In this play -- please understand what this is like -- third or fourth grade, whatever it was, I was put into white -- a white plastic suit and a white helmet and I'm the space man and I have landed on Mars from America. Next to me is a young girl named Jennifer Worm -- Worm -- Jennifer Worm, Worm and she is the Martian with her blue outfit. She has antennae with marshmallows up here. And I'm in third grade and I have to -- I am forced to sing a love song to Jennifer Worm as an American space man to the Martian. I was humiliated beyond measure. And when it was over, I went and I changed and I came back and my mother and grandmother were there and they said, "Oh, Gary. You're so cute! He was so cute. He was just adorable!" And I said to them, so vividly in my memory, "I will never, ever, ever, never ever, never ever ever, never ever ever, never be in another play the rest of my life." And they said, "Oh, no, you'll -- " and I said, "No, I won't. I won't." And it's true. I haven't. Since third grade I have never once been in a play and I never will be in a play -- [laughter] -- all because of Jennifer Worm. [laughter] Last. Female Speaker: Well, I just want to thank you very much. I'm so privileged to be able to be here. I'm a public librarian from Ohio and we just discussed "Okay for Now" with a book group from our middle school. And the kids had all kinds of questions because I told them that I was possibly going to get a chance to ask you, and you've answered all of them except for, does Gary D. Schmidt stand for Doug? And also, would you come to Bowling Green, Ohio? [laughter] Gary Schmidt: [laughs] I'd love to come to Bowling Green, Ohio. It's David, actually. David, sorry. Folks, thank you. You honor me by coming here. I really appreciate that. Thank you so much. [applause] Female Speaker: This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov. [end of transcript]