Julie Berry is the author of the 2020 NCTE Amelia Walden Award and SCBWI Golden Kite Award winner Lovely War, which received seven starred reviews, and has been called “Poignant” by The Horn Book, “Mesmerizing” by Booklist, and “Virtuoso” by the New York Times. She is also the author of the 2017 Printz Honor and Los Angeles Times Book Prize shortlisted The Passion of Dolssa, the Carnegie and Edgar shortlisted All the Truth That’s in Me, the Odyssey Honor The Scandalous Sisterhood of Prickwillow Place, and many others. Her first three picture books, Long Ago, on a Silent Night; Don’t Let the Beasties Escape This Book; and Happy Right Now were released in 2019, with more to follow.
Julie is a board member of the California School Library Foundation. She holds a BS from Rensselaer in communication and an MFA in creative writing for children and young adults from Vermont College. Originally from upstate New York, by way of suburban Boston, Julie now lives in Southern California with her husband, sons, and two cats. Julie enjoys quilting, cooking, piano, running, hot yoga, musical theater, goofy movies, and the hummingbirds that flock to her feeders.
1) Tell us about your most recent book. What do you love about it, and how is it different from what you’ve published before?
Wishes and Wellingtons is a fantasy adventure story packed with humor and hijinks. It tells the story of Maeve Merritt, a feisty, impulsive 13-year old boarding school girl in late Victorian London who is constantly getting herself into trouble. She can’t resist a challenge from a bully. When she finds a cantankerous djinni in, of all places, a sardine tin she finds in the rubbish pail, her world turns upside-down.
Her efforts to keep Mermeros hidden go spectacularly awry, and soon a chorus of rascals is hot on her heels, determined to steal the source of magical wish-granting power. These unscrupulous fiends will stop at nothing to secure Mermeros, including endangering Maeve’s family and friends. It will take all of Maeve’s daring, wit, and sass to carry the day. Wishes and Wellingtons is the first in a trilogy. The next, Crime and Carpetbags, should release next year.
I absolutely adore Maeve. I love all her relationships, but especially the one she forms with Mermeros, the arrogant, supercilious, chauvinistic djinni. Every time they spar, I’m laughing. I’ve loved every middle grade novel I’ve published, but I do feel that with Wishes, I’ve written the kind of nostalgic nod to the books I loved as a kid that I’ve always hoped to write. It’s a mad mashup of magic, adventure, danger, humor, friendship, and boarding school, seasoned with some of the pressing questions that usher us into greater maturity, such as, what am I allowed to want, and to fight for, for myself? And when is it better to yield what I want in favor of what someone else needs? All bundled up, I hope and pray, in a cracking good read. No sermons, thank you.
2) Have you ever gone on a literary pilgrimage? If so, where, and what was it like?
Alas, no. I would love to, though. I have visited the Poet’s Corner at Westminster Cathedral, and attended a couple of shows at the rebuilt Globe Theater, but I’m not sure that counts. And once, due to some absurd pre-GPS navigation, I tried to drive to Montpelier, VT and ended up instead at Robert Frost’s farm. So I guess I’m an accidental pilgrim. Someday, I hope. I need to put together the right posse of girlfriends who would enjoy just such a trip with me.
3) Sign me up! I’ll go with you.
Do you ever hide “Easter eggs” in your books that only a few people will notice?
Not really. I’m not that clever. I did have fun with the wordplay in Wishes, though. I suppose, maybe, those readers out there who’ve read certain beloved titles as much as I have might occasionally spot a little homage in a turn of phrase, here or there.
4) Are there any books that made you want to be a writer? What are they, and why?
In one way, all the books I read as a kid made me want to be a writer. I adored the Little House books, Anne of Green Gables, The Great Brain, The Chronicles of Narnia, Little Women, Alice in Wonderland, etc. These are, of course, classics, but one message they communicated to me was that stories were things created in, and belonging to, the past.
It seemed to me that all the stories that kids needed had already been created. It wasn’t until I was approaching middle school age that I began to realize that there were people still alive who were making stories now (or I guess I should say, then). I remember reading Harriet the Spy; Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of N.I.M.H.; A Wrinkle in Time; and It’s Like This, Cat – none of which were exactly hot off the presses when I was reading them – and thinking, whaddya know. People actually do this.
5) Why do you believe in the power of stories?
Wow, thanks for asking. I’m not sure that I’ve ever before thought about why I believe in the power of stories. I suspect it’s similar to why I believe in the power of gravity. I feel it pressing upon me. There’s never been a time when stories weren’t my happy place, my source of joy and illumination. The older I get, the more I see how we all, or at least nearly all, construct our lives around our stories. We string them together like beads.
They’re what we’ve got, what we take with us as time slips away. We frame everything we love best, everything that matters most – family and faith and friendship, struggle and loss and triumph and meaning – inside them. Whether you like fiction or nonfiction or film or TV, or even sports or politics or law or finance, you experience your life through the lens of, “And then what happened?”
Wonderful, Julie! Thanks so much!