A Conversation with YA Novelist M. E. Kerr

Since the appearance of Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! in 1972, Marijane Meaker, writing under the pseudonym M. E. Kerr, has achieved both critical acclaim and commercial success as an author of young adult fiction. A progenitor of the "problem novel," she is often seen as having helped to create the styles of "new realism" or "contemporary realism" that have come to typify it. As Albert Spring has written, her pioneering work is "intent on tackling tough issues such as prejudice, sexuality, divorce, and death . . . in dynamic prose that combines realism with large doses of humor" (7, 9). Indeed, in the thirty-five years following the publication of Dinky Hocker, Meaker has released more than twenty YA narratives in this literary style and under this fictional moniker, from Gentlehands (1978) and Little Little (1981) to Night Kites (1987) and Linger (1993). These books have received multiple honors and numerous awards: School Library Journal has cited them as the best children's books, the New York Times has named them Outstanding Children's Books of the Year, and the American Library Association has placed them on its list of notable narratives. In honor of Meaker's long and prestigious career as YA novelist M. E. Kerr, she received the distinguished Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in 1993.

Marijane Meaker paid a visit to Hollins University in October 2006 to give a reading and lecture as well as to conduct a workshop on creative writing for our graduate and undergraduate students. While she was here, I had the opportunity to sit down with the critically acclaimed and commercially successful author and discuss her long and storied career.

Q: I thought I'd start by talking about your new book, Your Eyes in Stars. Could you tell us a little about it?

M.M.: Yes, I grew up in a prison town in upstate New York called Auburn, where they make the New York state license plates, and I was fascinated with the prison. And so I wrote a book starring the warden—along with his daughter—and lore and tales about the prison much like we told when we were young. For instance, I have a prisoner named "Rhubarb" Boxer who had given rhubarb leaves to his wife and murdered her that way. Rhubarb leaves are lethal. When you go into a store, you never see the leaves of rhubarb because they're very detrimental to the liver. Anyway, within the story, I also had a young boy who played the bugle. This was true in our town. The warden was very taken with having the prize prison band of the country, and he did obtain a wonderful bugler who was on a murder charge and he played "Taps" every night, beautiful "Taps" on the bugle. So that's the setting. And into this town moves a young girl from Germany. Her father is here to study hydroponics at Cornell, and he brings his family with him. And they're very intellectual Germans and they move into this small town, and she becomes best friends with the warden's daughter, and the two have a very unlikely but very compelling friendship. Then the German girl returns to Europe to bring her grandmother back and it's 1937, and it's right pre-Holocaust, and she begins to write letters home and you see what's about to happen to her. In a rough way that's the plot. "Your Eyes in Stars" comes from a thirties' song: "I see your face in every flower, your eyes in stars above, with the very thought of you." And just when I thought that I couldn't think of a good title, it finally came to me.

Q: It's a nice period title, too.

M.M.: Yes, yes. Though many people may not recognize the song.

Q: You've written more than twenty young adult novels to date; do you have a favorite? Do you have a book that you think is the most important or enduring?

M.M.: Well, I think Gentlehands will be the...