Heists and Hijinks! Scams and Scoundrels! It’s a Diamond Fever Q&A with Steve Sheinkin and Jon Chad

It’s hard to resist a heist.

You know, we’ve had a lot of discussions in the children’s literary sphere lately about gatekeeping and quality children’s literature, and so on, and such. But these discussions, forgive me, are pretty dang limited. Face it. They’re all about fiction. There’s nothing wrong with fictional stories, of course, but if you want to see where some of the most exciting writing for kids lies these days, then you need to break out the informational titles. They’re kicking ass, taking names, and the guy who’s doing some of the most interesting stuff? That would be one Mr. Steve Sheinkin, naturally.

Sheinkin has a couple books out in 2026, as it happens, but today we’re gonna focus on the one that mixes graphic novel elements with good old-fashioned history. Just so long as that history involves the occasional train robbery, of course. Diamond Fever! is out now and its publisher describes it in this fashion:

“Late one night two travel-weary miners, Philip Arnold and John Slack, show up at a businessman’s office in San Francisco. The miners seem nervous. They’ve got something that needs to be locked in a safe overnight. What is it? Well, that really has to stay secret, but it’s…

DIAMONDS! And lots of them.

Had these two miners just discovered America’s first diamond mine? Well, this is the Gold Rush era after all. Plenty of people are striking it rich. Anything is possible.

When word of the find hits the streets, diamond fever sweeps the country. Wealthy investors are desperate to elbow Arnold and Slack aside and seize control—but can they persuade the miners to reveal the location of their bonanza? At the same time, thousands of prospectors fan out across the mountains and deserts of the West—will one of them find the site before greedy bankers grab everything for themselves?

In this page-turning, high-stakes western adventure, New York Times bestselling and award-winning author Steve Sheinkin tells the true story of the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872, a rollicking tale of heists and hijinks, scams and scoundrels—and the last-minute triumph of a most unlikely hero.“

I wanna give a commission to whoever it was that came up with that “heists and hijinks, scams and scoundrels” line, by the way. It’s well done.

Until I figure out who they are, though, let’s talk to creator Steve Sheinkin and his partner-in-crime Jon Chad about what making this book entailed:

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Betsy Bird: Steve! Such a delight to talk to you about your latest. You know, usually I kick off one of these talks with a question about how you discovered the story behind your book. In the case of this one, however, it seems to have an interesting after-you-pitched-it-to-your-publisher life of its own. Can you give us the rundown of how this book came to be (and why it’s coming out in 2026 and not 2011?). 

Steve Sheinkin: It’s always awesome to talk strange stories with you, Betsy! It’s true that I pitched this Western crime caper about fifteen years ago. Macmillan bought it. But then I dove into the research and simply couldn’t find enough details to bring the action to life. I set the idea aside, but never forgot it. For years, when kids at school visits asked about books I’ve had to abandon, I’d tell the diamond story. And every time, I’d think, damn, I’ve gotta do that one!

Over time, my nerdy detective skills improved. I found stuff (mostly thanks to librarians, of course) that I didn’t even know how to look for fifteen years ago. And in the summer of 2024, my son David and I flew to Denver, rented a pick-up truck, and set out in search of this once-famous diamond mine. If I could find the mine, I figured, I could tell the story. And we found it!

BB: Well, shoot! I kinda want to start talk about that adventure now, but we can’t neglect Jon. Jon! Such a delight to get to lob questions at you today too! So tell us a little bit about getting involved with this project. What appealed to you about Steve’s text? 

Jon Chad: I’m always happy to chat about drawing nonfiction comics! This story, and by extension Steve’s masterful text on it, immediately appealed to me because it hit a very specific Venn diagram of my interests. I’ve had a long interest in mining (both contemporary and historic mining practices and technologies), but also in financial crimes and grifts. To have both set against the backdrop of the wild west, and with a cast of such larger-than-life characters, was irresistible. 

It’s also worth noting that when I was contacted about working on this with Steve, I was living in Sacramento, California, less than half a mile from Sutter’s Fort, and 30 miles from Sutter’s Mill (considered the origin of the California Gold Rush).  Living in Sacramento exposed me to a lot of Gold Rush history and I had come across some stories of various grifts enacted on hopeful miners. Though not a part of the Gold Rush proper, I was surprised to have not heard anything about this story, and was excited to learn more!

BB: Sounds like your pairing was meant to be. Now Steve, my library not too long ago got funding to digitize our local newspapers entirely. You’ve mentioned in some of your writings how digitized newspapers has changed the game when it comes to researching your books. Why has this been so key and what else has changed that makes your job (and, subsequently, just how good our children’s nonfiction is) a bit easier? 

Steve: So true, about online newspaper archives! I never could have researched this book without access to obscure papers from the early 1870s—the Laramie Daily Sentinel, The Alta California. The story unfolds day-by-day, in tremendous detail, on the pages of these papers. Voices that were recorded nowhere else come to life in reporters’ interviews.

The Internet also makes it much easier to find people. In this case, I tracked down a retired Wyoming detective who studies this story as a hobby, and he put me in touch with a rancher who lives near the diamond field. The rancher, Don, offered to take me out there. I’ve got the coordinates in my phone now—but I ain’t sharing.

BB: Mmm. Intriguing. So Jon, tell us a little bit about your research process. Certainly, Steve would have come up with a fair number of photographs and original sources for this title, but that’s not going to help necessarily when it comes to backgrounds, props, etc. What did your own research look like for DIAMOND FEVER?

Jon: The photos that Steve took from the actual location of the diamond mine were the best resources that I had for drawing this book by a far margin. The location of the diamond mine, and its subsequent discovery based on geological and topographical clues, is a central part of the story.  It was imperative that I relayed that specific setting accurately.  For other elements of the drawings like the outfits, interiors, and props, I tried to look online via various University collections (like the California State University).  Also, because I was living in Sacramento, I was able to go in person to the main Sacramento Public Library branch, which had a lot of great resources on the gold rush, which this story is chronologically adjacent to.

Sometimes I was able to find direct references for a given locale/prop/outfit, and other times I had to approximate based on contemporary examples. I didn’t know exactly in which café Samual Emmons and James Gardner spoke in chapter 5, but I can amalgamate something fairly accurate from different sources.  One of the traps in all of this, though, is that I don’t want to weigh down the drawings with too much unneeded detail.  I bring up the café scene in particular because you can really lose yourself in the details of the fixtures, decorations, and materials in the photos I found of 1870’s Western US cafés. It’s a balancing act in drawing something that is accurate and evocative of the setting, but not distracting from the narrative being relayed.

BB: Plus who knows how long this would take you if you included every last spitoon! Going back to Steve, your own love of historical crime knows no bounds, it would seem. You seem to be able to pluck out of thin air these narratives about historical slicksters and tricksters. Do you just have a permanent radar in your head out at all times just in case you get a whiff of a story like this? Do you keep a file of possible future books? Where do you find these things? 

Steve: Slicksters and tricksters! I wish I’d said that. And yes, I’m always on the lookout for stories. The thing is, I’ve never found a book idea on purpose. If I say to myself okay, today I’m going to decide on a book idea—it never works. For me, the only thing that works is curiosity. Just being curious. Reading stuff because it sounds weird or funny. I say this to kids at school visits and they think I’m just saying it cause their teachers are listening. But it’s true. There are stories everywhere!

BB: And Jon, thanks to all your work on books like the Science Comics series, you’ve a great deal of experience putting nonfiction into graphic novels. I was particularly intrigued by the fact that with this book you had to make all these real men with similar facial hair (beards, mustaches, etc.) look distinct from one another. Can you tell us a little bit about how one goes about doing that? 

Jon: The most important thing that I am doing when I am designing characters for a comic is to make them distinct from one another.  The truth of the matter is that people read comics VERY quickly, and anything I can do to make a character easy to read at a quick glance benefits the reading experience.  As you pointed out, there was a LOT of very similarly-styled facial hair in this book.  To make the characters stand out, I made different character’s facial hair more pronounced than it really was.  Between 3 characters that have the same shaped mustaches, one might have a larger mustache, another’s might be smaller, and the third might have a “normal” sized mustache, but I would vary the tone from the other two.  

The facial hair was also an important component of the characters’ head silhouettes.  I tried to make these silhouettes different from one another, and sometimes I would use the facial hair as an extension of that.  Asbury Harpending, for example, had an unremarkable beard/head shape similar to a bean. By making his beard a little longer and making the sides of his hair more pronounced, his head shape became more of an upside-down triangle, which helped him stand out! 

BB: Speaking of visuals, Steve, this isn’t strictly a graphic novel, but the art is very key to the whole production. Was it your intention for the book to be highly illustrated from the start? And were you familiar with Jon’s work? 

Steve: Yes, I knew from the start I wanted lots of art in Diamond Fever! It’s a fun story, and I wanted it to look fun. I thought it would be cool to create a sort of hybrid format, with chapters of comics in between the chapters of narrative. My longtime and awesome editor Connie Hsu agreed, and we worked out the design together.

And you have the temerity, my good woman, to ask if I was familiar with Jon Chad! Do the words Leo Geo mean nothing to you? My kids and I loved that picture book. Man can that dude draw rocks! I mentioned to Connie how perfect he’d be for our book, and we were very lucky to get him on board.

BB: Temeritous query rescinded, sir! However, that reminds me that I do have a Tricky Question (all caps) for Jon: How hard are horses to draw? And why?

Jon: Ha ha!  I find horses pretty hard to draw for a couple of reasons, all of which are based on their unique anatomy.  Horse legs are structured differently than human legs and even other quadruped legs like dogs or cats.  Getting the placement of the joints right has always been hard for me.  Also, I find it hard to nail down the proportion of a horse’s mouth in relation to its head. Lastly, I’ve always had trouble drawing animals that have their eye on the sides of their heads, like horses, sheep, or cows.  All that being said, I am grateful that my 3-year old daughter let me borrow some of her plastic horses so that I could rotate them around in my hand and get an idea of how to draw horses at different angles!

BB: Smart man. Okay, finally, a question for the both of you. What else are you working on these days? What’s next for you? 

Steve: Next will be a middle grade graphic novel, Mind vs. Machine. It’s about the world-changing 1997 showdown between world chess champion Garry Kaspoarov and the supercomputer Deep Blue. The story feels so current, as we wrestle with our fears of what computers may do next. I co-wrote the script with Maurice Ashley, a grandmaster who did play-by-play commentary at the match, and the art is by the amazing Thien Pham. Can’t wait for people to see this one!

Jon: I am working on another entry in the Science Comics series, a book about veterinarian medicine. The book is written by Greg Bishop, who did a wonderful job!  Working on the horses of Diamond Fever! definitely got me warmed up for drawing all these different types of animals. It’s been great to learn new things as I work on this book.

I’m also working on a book about the Voyager spacecrafts; written by Katie Venit. It’s an interesting mix of science and sibling relations, casting the two Voyagers as twins that have big feelings as they soar through the cosmos, exploring our solar system.

Thank you so much for your wonderful questions!

BB: Thank YOU both for you remarkable answers!

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Ain’t they great, folks? A class act all around. I’d also like to thank Nicole Banholzer and Mary Van Akin, as well as the whole Macmillan team for helping to pull this together. Diamond Fever! is, as I mentioned, out right now for one and all to see. Remind yourself why nonfiction for kids is without compare. Find this book today.

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2026, Interviews