Hi Susan,
I understand you have lots of sons and are interested in how my young son and I collaborated on the Night Buddies stories. To put it somewhat loosely, he was the writer and I was the editor.
But let me start at the top:
I raised John as a single parent from the age of six. Bedtime stories were an essential to us, like food, air and shelter. It may be that we never missed a night for six or seven years, even on trips. I read him everything from Aesop to Tolkien and Dahl. (Harry Potter hadn’t come along yet.) By the time John was twelve we had gone through most of Dickens and Victor Hugo. So he was always immersed in stories. He’s a linguist now, and thirty-two and still likes hobbit movies.
The Night Buddies series features John and Crosley. John is a young kid pretty much like mine was, and Crosley is a bright-red crocodile. He sneaks John out of the house for adventures on nights when John isn’t ready to go to sleep.
John invented red Crosley from whole cloth. One night when I was done reading, I may have suggested he make up a night companion to go off to sleep with. Maybe I didn’t. He may have done it by himself. But in any case, before long, there was Crosley, goofy name and all. I couldn’t have come up with something like that.
So at bedtime we started batting Crosley stuff around. I encouraged John to make up episodes. I mostly listened. If he did come up with something, I told him how super it was and when could I hear the next installment? I think he was still six. He got pretty facile, and I had visions of him becoming a writer. After a year or so, John tired of the game and went back to listening mode. But by then Crosley had become such a family member that he would pop up in conversation for years. Our friends even knew about him and asked about him. He was too real to fade away.
With me anyway. I started wondering about how I might write him and John up. The puzzle was Crosley. A kid with a talking animal buddy is fairly standard stuff, but why on earth was Crosley red? If you put something that bizarre into a story, you need to explain. I could have simply dropped the red part, but then why even use a crocodile? Besides, Crosley was a family pet now, and I didn’t want to change a single knot on him.
It was a eureka moment. Everybody has them. You just keep the problem in the back of your mind, sometimes for days or weeks but never letting go, and, often as not, the answer bubbles up as it were unbidden. Taking walks helps me.
But enough of that. Crosley was red because he was allergic to water, of course! Kind of. If he got any water on him, he broke out doing the Black Bottom dance and had to go on for hours unless he took his antidote pills. The pills had this side-effect, though. They turned him red! Plenty goofy, just like Crosley, who I decided had to be as goofy as his color.
So it fell into place: Crosley began as a lights-out buddy, so let’s take it from there: make him part of Night Buddies Amalgamated, whose members sneak kids out on adventures when the kids aren’t ready for bed yet.
The plot had to be as goofy as everything else. So Crosley becomes a pineapple cheesecake fanatic, okay? And it happens that all of the pineapple cheesecakes are disappearing at the world’s only pineapple cheesecake factory. Our two Night Buddies need to take care of this right now!
Susan, you asked about methods for getting little ones to read. The only one I know is immersion. From the age of a few months or even a few days. Read to them every day without fail, so that by the time they are two or three, they will expect it and know literature as a pleasure. Because it is a pleasure except to some who come to it later as a foreign language. Then, when they learn to read, they will want to read. It’s so simple. Look at otherwise educated people who don’t read. Odds are the first book they ever read or heard was in junior high school. The ardent readers get their enthusiasm in their mothers’ milk, and I’ll bet some of them get in on the process just like John did.
John and I hope you like our little book, and thanks for having us.
Sands Hetherington
Learn more about Sands Hetherington and the Night Buddies series at www.nightbuddiesadventures.com. And be sure to like the Night Buddies Facebook page at www.facebook.com/nightbuddies. Read on to find out how you can win a copy of Night Buddies and the Pineapple Cheesecake Scare!
GIVEAWAY
One lucky winner will receive a paperback copy of Night Buddies and the Pineapple Cheesecake Scare, by Sands Hetherington. This giveaway is open to U.S. residents only and ends on Wednesday, June 20, 2012 at 11:59 PM EST.
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Jessica Love grew up in California, with two artist parents. She studied printmaking and drawing at UC Santa Cruz, then went on to study acting at The Juilliard School in NYC.
ReplyDeleteSands majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and has an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro.
ReplyDeleteLove the MEET THE CHARACTERS page. It's always nice to have a cute little cameo of each character. Especially for childrens character books. :)
ReplyDeletei like the red crocodile chosley crystletellerday@yahoo.com
ReplyDeleteThey introduce you to the books characters.
ReplyDeletemarypopmom@yahoo.com
Its a series of books that revolve aroung evening adventures of John.
ReplyDeleteWhat a wonderful Story, I would very much enjoy reading this to my boys.. Thank you missiekay1980@aol.com
ReplyDeleteI learned that the author's favorite children's book are the Oz books
ReplyDeleteI learned that the Illustrator Jessica Love
ReplyDeleteis also known as Miss Jess- emscout9 at Hotmail dot com
Like that the book is about a boy who does not want to go to sleep, hope it is not too scary.
ReplyDeleteseyma_bennett@hotmail.com
The first book in the series is Night Buddies and The Pineapple Cheesecake Scare. The Program for the night is to find out why all of the pineapple cheesecakes in the world’s only pineapple cheesecake factory are disappearing.
ReplyDeleteI like that the "creature under the bed" is his traveling companion... it takes some of the scary out.
ReplyDeleteLisa Hackney
yankssssrule08@yahoo.com
the red crocodile is cute
ReplyDeleteThey have a lot of applause from 2nd-4th graders!
ReplyDeleteTam Sweeps RC/FB
I liked Crosley!!
ReplyDeleteptavernie at yahoo dot com
You can schedule the author to visit your school.
ReplyDeleteSands majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill).
ReplyDeleteI like the crocodile facts like this one: The eggs of a crocodile are almost the same size as that of a goose.
ReplyDeleteAs a lover of books especially Children's Literature I am so excited about this book as I love the author. I know my son, Tobias is looking forward to reading it! :)
ReplyDeleteI love that you can request Sands to come visit your school....and the section on meet the characters is awesome!
ReplyDeleteSands favorite authors include Dickins, Twain, Faulkner, Hemingway, and Roald Dahl.
ReplyDeleteI like the meet the characters page. they introduce you to all the characters
ReplyDeletesecond book in the Night Buddies series. It’s called Night Buddies, Imposters, and One Far-Out Flying Machine.
ReplyDeletevmkids3 at msn dot com
I learned that Crosley is "...bright red all over—the only crocodile in the world like that."
ReplyDeletekimbuckjr
i learned about jessica love the author of the book who grew up in california
ReplyDeleteI like that it's an adventure/fantasy for kids
ReplyDeleteI learned that Sands majored in history at the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and has an M.F.A. in creative writing and an M.A. in English from UNC-Greensboro.
ReplyDeleteginaferrell3 at yahoo dot com
I learned the author liked the oz books.
ReplyDeleteemail/ daveshir2005@yahoo.com
fb/ shirley greenawalt zolenski
I learned that the author is working on his second book of the series: Night Buddies, Imposters, and One Far-Out Flying Machine.
ReplyDeletecinderwhims at gmail dot com
The story is filled with well-drawn fascinating characters embellished with some excellent illustrations by Jessica Love.
ReplyDelete