Author Interview: Ingrid Law

Savvy published May 2008 is the debut novel of Ingrid Law, our review is here.  We really enjoyed this book here at Book Dads and when offered the opportunity to do our very first author interview we jumped at the chance.

What drew you towards writing Young Adult fiction?

With one foot firmly on the path toward the teen years and the other foot still rooted in the playground, kids are open to a wide range of experiences, emotions, and dreams. They can imagine themselves becoming the characters they read about, or pretend their way right into the stories. Young people are on a journey toward becoming adults and the books they read can help them take on that journey, inspiring them to ask questions about themselves and the world around them, helping them imagine who and what they will someday become. I think this is one of the richest, most important times of life. It is a time filled with wonder and fear and excitement—all of which are elements of a great story!

From the reviews, Savvy seems to resonate with an audience wider than just Young Adults.  What characteristics of the book would you attribute that response to?

I think everyone can relate to the challenges involved in growing up as well as the challenges that come with learning to deal with whatever it is that life throws at you. Even with savvy powers, one doesn’t always get the gifts that one wants or expects. Just as in Savvy, life is full of unexpected changes in direction.

These days, when asked what age group the book is for, I’ll simply say that I’ve received fan mail from eight-year-olds, eighteen-year-olds, sixty-eight-year-olds, and everything in between. I find that I get nearly the same number of messages from adult fans as I do from kids. This surprised me at first, but it has also been quite touching as many of the adults have chosen to tell me stories from their own lives and shared how or why the book affected them the way it did. From adults who struggled through the loss or the illness of a parent as children, to those who say they wished that they’d had a book like Savvy when they were growing up, there have been many different reactions. I even had one man tell me that, after reading the book, he let go of his resistance to getting hearing aids. He couldn’t put his finger on what about the book made him feel differently, just that it had. Ultimately, I believe that all of us want to be reassured that there is something unique and special about us despite—or even because of—those things that make us feel vulnerable.

Much of the setting of Savvy felt quite timeless, as if the book could have been set during any time as far back as the 1950s or even earlier.  Was this deliberate on your part or just a function of the book being set in the rural Midwest?

I wanted to give the book a bit of the feel of a modern tall tale, which may have added to its sense of timelessness. Traditional American tall tales celebrate the strength of the individual and even, in cases like the story of John Henry, the strength of the individual over the power of technology. I intentionally minimized the focus on technology in the Savvy because I wanted the characters to focus on their own inner strengths. I’ve had people tell me before that the story felt set in the 1980s, the 1950s, and so on. Sometimes I wonder if the lack of focus on technology allows readers of any age to transport the story into the decade in which they were twelve-going-on-thirteen. Aside from one or two references to cell phones there is not much in the book that pins it to a specific decade. I like that.

In other interviews you’ve listed a number of fantasy titles among your favorite books, including the Pern and Earthsea books. How has being a fantasy fan informed your writing?

Fantasy allows us to explore ideas through the safety of the imagination. Savvy is really just a story about growing up. About changing and learning to deal with those changes and challenges as they come. When you’re young, everything can feel big and out of control—just like a new savvy power. By exploring changes or fears or challenges through metaphor and fantasy, it can provide us a way to face those issues with more courage than we might be able to manage in the “real world.”

Much has been made of the sly Wizard of Oz references in Savvy but we found at least one other homage as well, to the fairytale of Hansel and Gretel.  Are there any other references hidden in the book that you can give us some clues to?

There are a couple of Sleeping Beauty and Prince Charming references. There is also an Ugly Duckling aura around the bus driver, Lester Swan. “Lester ran his right hand through his thin hair, scratching at the bald head underneath and making the bit of tuft he had left stick up like the feathers of an ugly duckling…” I do like to salt and pepper things with tidbits from here and there. I believe there are a couple of lumberjack references as well (thinking of Paul Bunyan and tall tales again), and probably even more that I’m forgetting now.

Here at Book Dads, we were struck by how Mibs’ relationship with her father was transformed by the events of the story.  Were you intending to address this specifically, or did you just view it as a part of Mibs’ growing up over the course of the story?

In Savvy, Poppa is the only member of the family without the savvy “gene”—the element that gives the rest of the family their larger-than-life talents. Yet, through the course of the story, Mibs discovers that anyone can have a savvy and she begins to recognize that even her good, sweet Poppa “with no savvy, and no hair on his head” has a special talent of his own. Part of this recognition does come along with growing up. As young people start to assert their independence they begin to view their parents differently. They begin to see their parents as human being with gifts and faults all their own. This was not something I thought of consciously as I wrote the book. Rather, I think that being a character-driven writer, I simply allowed Mibs to follow her own natural process through the story to discover what she needed to discover about herself and her father.

Thank you Ingrid for the interview!

Other Author Interviews:

• School Library Journal
• Look Books
• Little Willow
• Kids Reads

Related posts:

1. Savvy
2. Book Giveaway: Savvy by Ingrid Law
3. Author Interview: William Elliott Hazelgrove
4. Nominations for the 2008 Cybils Awards
5. Choose Children’s Books and Reading Activities That Will Make Reading Fun For Your Child