Amy Timberlake's 'Skunk and Badger' an Immediate Classic

Newbery Honor-winner Amy Timberlake's new read aloud is part Frog and Toad, part Odd Couple, and all kinds of wonderful. Skunk and Badger, publishing tomorrow with Algonquin Young Readers and illustrated by Caldecott-winner Jon Klassen, has already chalked up multiple starred reviews and was called "exceptionally sweet" by Kirkus. 

Amy's story is perhaps the book for our tumultuous time, as Badger and Skunk, in the classic opposites-attract dynamic, demonstrate how we must look for the things we share rather than focus on all the ways we're different. Badger keeps busy with his Important Rock Work while the more spirited, free-form Skunk tends to disrupt treasured routines. (An improvisational chef, I'd love to eat one of this guy's meals. )

Enter here for a chance to win a copy of Skunk and Badger!

Throw in some curious chickens, and Skunk and Badger is utterly irresistible. Filled with delightful sound effects, hilarious dialogue, and satisfying "mouth words," this read aloud will bring down the house—be it a classroom, library gathering, or bedtime. Thank goodness this is a series, and there will be more adventures to come. 

Amy, another treasured member of the Chicago children's book community, was nice enough to talk a little shop. Here's what she had to say:

QUESTION: So are you Skunk or are you Badger?

AMY TIMBERLAKE: I’m both. Like Badger, I struggle for focus, focus, focus for my Important Rock Work. AND I have many of Skunk’s qualities too — enthusiasm, earnestness, a wide-eyed sense of wonder (at times). My inner-Badger and inner-Skunk are at odds on a regular basis.

Q: There are so many delightfully funny scenes and lines throughout the book. What made you laugh the hardest as you wrote this?

AT: Thank you! I am so glad you enjoyed it. That is very good news! 

Right now, the line that most amuses me about Skunk and Badger is a sentence about the "chicken biome of the Tropical Chicken Forest sort." But that’s only because that was the last thing I wrote for Skunk and Badger. The truth is that almost everything amused me at some point. I chuckle as I write. I do! It’s been one of the great gifts of this project.  

Q: Where did the spark for Skunk and Badger come from? Did you grow up watching The Odd Couple? Were you and your siblings opposites? Do you live it already with your husband?

AT: I don’t know! Isn’t that awful? The roots of this one go WAY back! I wrote a story with a skunk in it a long, long time ago. This was in a period when I was trying to write a Nate the Great type story. (That story did NOT work.) Also, I like the word "skunk" because it sounds like someone whose nose is stuffed up. "Skunk" — those two K’s are funny!   

Doing research for another book project, I was reading all these bear stories — bear fairy tales, bear mythology, stories about toy bears — and so, I re-read A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories. I liked the voice Milne chose for those stories. I admired the crafting. How did he manage to maintain lightness with all this emotional life? I also liked that these were stories that were read aloud to kids. I thought, "I want to write a read aloud." I think wanting to write a read aloud was the seed that started Skunk and Badger. 

Okay, now I’ve got a question for you, Kate! Ha! Since you’ve written several series, are celebrating the publication of Cape right now (Book 2 of The League of Secret Heroes), and finishing up Book 3 in the same series, I’m wondering what advice you’d give someone like me who is new to writing a series. Anything? I’m all ears! 

Thanks for having me on your blog, Kate! This was fun!

Kate answers: I'm hardly one to give YOU advice! But here's what I found helpful: Don't ever stop talking to the characters, even when you're in between writing! This way when you sit down again to work on the next book, you've got everyone still chatting and fresh in your mind!

Amy Timberlake Hits the Target With 'One Came Home'

Author Amy Timberlake's interest in birding comes through in her latest middle-grade novel, One Came Home, out this month from Knopf. Set in the town of Placid, Wisconsin, in the 1870s, 13-year-old Georgie is a straight-shooting girl – both with her rifle and her mouth. And that mouth is the reason her big sister, Agatha, takes off with "pigeoners" tracking the massive passenger pigeon migration. When the sheriff turns up with an unidentifiable body that's wearing Agatha's teal ball gown, the town assumes the worst. Everyone, that is, except Georgie.

This is not Amy's first rodeo – she's the author of the middle-grade That Girl Lucy Moon (Hyperion, 2006), which was a 2007 Amelia Bloomer Book, and the picture book The Dirty Cowboy (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), winner of a Golden Kite Award and Parents Choice Gold Medal.

Question: One Came Home is set in Wisconsin in 1871. How did you come to settle on this place and time period?

Amy Timberlake: 1871 Wisconsin found me more than I found it. See, I'm a birder. I was reading A.W. Schorger's The Passenger Pigeon – minding my own business so to speak. This was a scholarly tome written in the '50s, and I wasn't expecting to find a novel in it. But then I turned a page, saw a map of Wisconsin, and covering a large swath of the map was this "nesting" in 1871. The historian said it was one of the largest passenger pigeon nestings in recorded history. I'm from Wisconsin, and this was news to me. I was stunned – absolutely stunned. Why didn't I know about this? That's when I knew I had to write about this. And when you add in the tumult of a billion crow-sized birds whizzing around at 60 mph – well, that seemed like a perfect setting for a story. Doesn't it sound good to you? I mean, it's like something out of science fiction, except it actually happened.

Q: The protagonist, Georgie, is deeply devoted to her sister, Agatha. Can you speak to sibling relationships and what you wanted to convey in the telling of their story? What did you draw from in your own life?

AT: I do have a younger brother, and I do love him. In kindergarten I brought him as my "show and tell" item. Yes, he was my favorite possession, as only a younger brother can be to an older sister. Man, he was a good sport!

In the book, I did want to explore the transition sibling relationships make as the siblings grow up. There comes a point where you've got to let your sibling be themselves and accept them for who they are.

Q: A memorable part of One Came Home involves passenger-pigeon migration and the massive scope of these birds' flight – sometimes spanning 10 miles at a time and blackening the sky. How does this play in the story and why?

AT: It's a setting – a living, breathing setting. Once you've got such a dynamic setting, suddenly there's a lot of material to comment on. It helps develop the characters too. Both Agatha and Georgie take a keen interest in the natural world, but in opposing directions: Georgie takes to hunting, and Agatha is a self-taught naturalist. In addition, the nesting draws all those "pigeoners" (pigeon hunters)  too. And then there's the compromises that the nesting forces on all of those that live near it – the noise, the pigeon dung, etc.

Q: Does One Came Home have an environmental message? Is Georgie at heart an environmentalist? Agatha too?

AT: If you write a historical story where an extinct species plays a prominent role, the absence of that species in the 21st century echoes – there's nothing that can be done to avoid it. What I mean is that as a 21st century reader, you're reading One Came Home knowing the birds are never coming back.

Depiction of passenger pigeon hunt, 1875. Wikimedia Commons.

But as the author, I did not want to write a "message" book, or an "environmental" book. One Came Home is first and foremost a Western, an adventure, and it's also got a mystery tucked in there for fun. It is enough – I think – to write the passenger pigeons into the book and let that speak for itself.

I also tried to be careful to not put 21st century thoughts in my characters. (I may not have always succeeded, but I did try.) Agatha's interest in the natural world is based on people from the 19c. In addition, all of my characters would be well-versed (literally) in biblical teachings about respecting life from the Christian tradition, so I let that guide me. Neither Georgie nor Agatha would call themselves an "environmentalist."

Am I an environmentalist? Sure. On a personal level, one of the questions I am grappling with is how we deal with animals that impact our human lifestyles. For instance, what do we do about grizzly bears, polar bears, cougars, and other large animals that need huge swaths of land to roam in? Are we ready to give up land? In the case of climate change (which impacts lots of animals) are we willing to make changes? These are changes that are uncomfortable at a personal level. They require sacrifice.

No one (and I'm including myself here) likes sacrifice . . .  I don't have any answers here, just that I'm not seeing anything in 21st century American life that suggests we'd be ready to welcome back something as tumultuous as the passenger pigeon. It's like we no longer possess the flexibility and tolerance for wild-ness – we need the natural world to be exactly as we want it to be. (On second thought, maybe we never possessed this tolerance. We've spent significant chunks of our history trying to tame Wilderness.) Still, I want to hope that I can change myself and that I can learn to take all the inhabitants of this world into consideration as I make choices. Legislation is part of this too, but it seems like it's gotta happen on the ground before it'll happen in Congress.

Q: What themes and messages do you like to explore in your writing? What ideas do you want to bring up for young readers to consider in their own lives?

AT: Readers are the ones that get to decide about themes and messages (I think). But I'd like it if kids read One Came Home and, as a result, started thinking and talking about extinct species. This'll lead them to thinking about animals that are threatened with extinction, which will lead to questions, and questions will lead (I hope) to good things.