In the Midst of the Swirl: A Cover Reveal and Chris Raschka Interview for Peachaloo In Bloom!
They sez to me, “Betsy! Howzabout a Chris Raschka interview?” To which I sez right back, “You betcha!” That’s paraphrased, by the way, but you get the idea.
Yes, were you aware that the multi-Caldecott Award winning author/illustrator Chris Raschka has been dabbling in novels as of late? He’s acquired quite a taste for middle grade chapter book titles, and today’s newest book is no exception. Peachaloo in Bloom is slated for our library and bookstore shelves on July 1, 2025, but it’s never too early to talk about a fun book, folks. Here’s the plot (and please take a moment to appreciate the staff member at Neal Porter Books who came up with this opening):
“Waiting for Guffman meets Parks and Recreation for middle grade readers, in this one-of-a-kind illustrated novel from Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka, where a wasp sting grants Peachaloo a useful new superpower.
Two very large things have just happened to Peachaloo Piccolozampa. First, she’s discovered a plot to ruin her favorite swimming hole and replace it with a golf course. Second, a wasp sting has given her the superpower to understand the truth behind what people say.
Peachaloo knows a golf course is not the destiny for the grounds of the Ajax Mansion, a former monastery whose jump-roping denizens proclaimed it freely open to all. But the mansion’s new owner has other ideas—and has managed to bury the evidence of the Brothers and Sisters’ wishes. Now it’s up to Peachaloo to use her superpower to prove this villain a liar, star in the annual pageant, and somehow get her town back the way it’s supposed to be.
Caldecott Medalist Chris Raschka proves as deft with pen as paintbrush in this sizzlingly witty tale of Extraordinary Wasp Perception, oyster-slinging bank robbers, and a community standing strong against the forces of greed and real estate. Illustrations sprinkled throughout paint a small town entirely unique and yet all too familiar to readers across the U.S. Readers of all ages won’t want to miss the next train to the big-hearted, peculiar, one-of-a-kind town of Fourwords.”
Is not that description a thing of beauty?
Naturally, I have a LOT of questions. Chris Raschka? He has a LOT of answers. We pair well:
Betsy Bird: Chris! I do appreciate you answering a question or two about PEACHALOO IN BLOOM with me today. This is your first novel with Neal Porter Books/Holiday House, and that strikes me as particularly interesting. Where did this book come from and how did it end up with Neal Porter Books at the end of the day?
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Chris Raschka: Yes, it’s interesting to me and comforting to be working with Neal Porter again, who published my very first book, Charlie Parker Played Be Bop, over thirty years ago. We’ve done many books together since then, with a variety of publishers, but then not for a few years. So when Neal asked me if I would illustrate Nicholas Day’s book about John Cage, called Nothing, I immediately agreed. Always happy to work for Neal for Nothing, ha ha etc etc. While we were finishing the book, Neal asked if I had anything for older readers. I did. Peachaloo in Bloom had been sitting on my shelf since the fall of 2020.
BB: This is by no means your first novel for kids. There was THAT CURIOUS THING with Michael di Capua and THE DOORMAN’S REPOSE with New York Review Books. David Small once told me that he cannot work on several projects simultaneously. Are you the type of writer who has a number of different novel projects happening at once or are you someone who goes one at a time?
Chris: This is how it works for me. I have an idea and I mull. I mull over this idea for a couple of months, or a couple of years, or sometimes just for one evening in the bath. Then I pick a day when I’ll begin to write it. The last two times this has been in April. I always walk a bit before I sit down at my table to work, and if I start in April I can watch the leaves come out and the trees and flowers bloom and the sun rise a bit earlier each day.
When I do sit down, I write from 9:30 to 11:00, and not more than this, but pretty strictly, six days a week. The writing should last about ten to twelve weeks.
So, in answer to your question, I only work on that novel during those weeks. However, this schedule allows me time to illustrate in the afternoons, which means I can still work on illustrating other things, or shepherding older books along to publication.
After the writing of a novel is complete, which I do in long hand in notebooks, I spend another several weeks typing the manuscript up. I then edit this and rewrite passages that call for it.
What I do like about the time I’m writing, although there is plenty of trepidation accompanying it—what if I don’t have anything to say?—is that I become very absorbed in the lives of the characters, the story they tell, and the world they inhabit. And this does swirl about me all day, which is what David is talking about, I think.
I’m okay with doing other things, even painting or drawing, in the midst of the swirl.
And I really can’t stop the rest of my life even if I wanted to. Michael and I have been working on That Curious Thing for a dozen years—more than a dozen years. Twelve years ago we had a contract for a completed manuscript. Things come up.
Peachaloo in Bloom has whizzed by. For a variety of reasons I had to do all the illustrations in a very short period of time, much quicker than I anticipated. When I heard when everything was due I’m sure I “paled beneath my tan” as the Edwardians say. But in the end, it was a good thing, teaching me how to be as strict and focused with my illustrating as I am with my writing. Maybe it’s what David is alluding to, and insists upon. You could learn a thing or two from David Small.
BB: Well, I always thought so. I also adore the phrase “in the midst of the swirl”, as you put it. So how did working with Neal compare to other editors you’ve worked with in the past?
Chris: Though Neal asked for the manuscript, it was Taylor Norman, Neal’s executive editor, with whom I worked. Was working with Taylor different from working with past editors? When it comes to writing novels, Michael di Capua has been my editor. Let me say this. If you happened to find yourself in a room, say a literary salon of the mind, with Taylor and Michael, you could not picture two more different people. You would think they were on opposite poles of life. However, you would be wrong. Actually they are quite similar. In regards to book-making, they both see what is essential, they see where the essential is obscured, and they possess a razor’s sharpness for any incoherence in character or the story itself. Also, they appreciate writing for itself, and humor for itself and tone for itself.
Taylor also has some very good ideas. I will relate one. In Peachaloo in Bloom there is a story within a story, in this case, the story eventually is told as a three-act play. Originally, we see act one in rehearsal, then acts two and three as they are performed. Taylor suggested that I rework Act Two to present it as the script itself. By this point, we’ve been given most of the details of the story, so following it in script form should not be difficult. This was an excellent idea. It was intriguing to do and pumped welcome air into the storytelling which, because of all the plots and sub-plots might otherwise have gotten a bit weedy and overgrown.
In other words, I’m very happy to have been taken up by Neal and Taylor.
BB: Marvelous! And Peachaloo’s personality is crystal clear from the first moment we meet her onward. Did she come to you fully formed as a character or did she emerge in the process of your writing?
Chris: I’m glad Peachaloo struck you this way. I’ll say this. I had an idea which I mulled: What if being stung by a wasp could bring, along with the pain and danger, something good? The first chapter starts in the hospital where Peachaloo wakes from unconsciousness, having been stung by a wasp and fainted.
How Peachaloo reacts—as I wrote it—to waking up in a hospital bed, what she thinks and remembers in doing so, how she speaks with the doctors and nurses, all of this basically told me everything I needed to know about her. The rest of the story followed from there. Especially her thinking. It all came out in the first chapter.
I had a teacher of English in college, Professor Haldor Hove, a very imposing and unsmiling, but kind, man, in his last year of professoring, who impressed on us that in a short story everything important must be found in the first paragraph, that the whole story must coherently flow from there. So it must be true as well of the first chapter of a novel, I should think.
Maybe it also helped that Peachaloo was named after a favorite cactus of mine
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BB: I’m now feeling a bit put out that I don’t have a favorite cactus of my own. Seems like an oversight on my part. In any case, finally, what can we look for from you next?
Chris: Well, as far as novels go, Michael has a book about an old New York City apartment building taken over by demons in the penthouse. Fortunately, the building’s super and her twelve-year-old son, Corky, who live in the basement, happen to be angels.
And Taylor has a novel that concerns a family of three people—mother, father, and daughter—who adopt a family of three kittens—brother, sister, and sister. Unfortunately one sister kitten gets lost and then found by another family of three, in this case, robbers—sister, sister, and sister—and taken to their hideout, a musty stone cottage one hundred miles up the Hudson River. How our kitten gets home again is what we have to find out.
That’s it—Thanks for asking!
And thanks to Chris for telling!
As I mentioned before, you won’t be able to find Peachaloo in Bloom until July 1, 2025, but this interview makes it clear that it’s worth the wait. In the meantime, please raise a cactus in honor of Chris Raschka for taking so much time to answer my questions today. A second cactus must also be raised to Sara DiSalvo and the team at Holiday House for being so kind as to help me with this interview.
Filed under: Cover Reveal, Interviews
About Betsy Bird
Betsy Bird is currently the Collection Development Manager of the Evanston Public Library system and a former Materials Specialist for New York Public Library. She has served on Newbery, written for Horn Book, and has done other lovely little things that she'd love to tell you about but that she's sure you'd find more interesting to hear of in person. Her opinions are her own and do not reflect those of EPL, SLJ, or any of the other acronyms you might be able to name. Follow her on Twitter: @fuseeight.
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