National Book Award-winning author M.T. Anderson discusses how quarantine helped shape his new middle grade fantasy novel, Elf Dog and Owl Head.
M.T. Anderson has written stories for adults, picture books for children, adventure novels for young readers, and several books for older readers (both teens and adults). His satirical modern classic Feed, which Wired called, “the century’s most relevant dystopia,” was a finalist for the National Book Award and was the winner of the L.A. Times Book Prize.
The first volume of his Octavian Nothing saga won the National Book Award and the Boston Globe / Horn Book Prize. Both the first and second volumes of that two-part series were Printz Honor Books. He also has published stories for adults in literary journals like The Northwest Review, The Colorado Review, and Conjunctions.
Photo by Sonya Sones
In this post, M.T. discusses how quarantine helped shape his new middle grade fantasy novel, Elf Dog and Owl Head, his hope for his young readers, and more!
Name: M.T. Anderson
Book title: Elf Dog and Owl Head
Publisher: Candlewick
Release date: April 11, 2023
Genre/category: Middle Grade Fantasy
Elevator pitch for the book: From the singular imagination of National Book Award winner M.T. Anderson comes a magical adventure about a boy and his dog—or a dog and her boy—and a forest of wonders hidden in plain sight.
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What prompted you to write this book?
Love for a dog! I spent the pandemic alone in my house in the middle of nowhere in the Vermont hills, with only my dog as a companion. In that kind of isolation, I became deeply aware of how symbiotically close we become with our animals; we develop a rapport that is outside of language. Every day we'd go on walks for four or five miles in the mountains, and I'd be so aware of all the cues I was picking up from her. She was teaching me to read the forest.
For years, I'd wanted to write about the connection between pets and people, and this was the opportunity. So, I started to write a fantasy novel about a boy and a magical dog who shows him a hidden world full of odd beauty and awful dangers.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
Elf Dog & Owl Head takes place against the background of the pandemic. I actually wrote it in exactly the period when it takes place: in spring and early summer of 2020. The book ends with a big, supernatural blow-out on Midsummer's Eve, and intentionally, that's the day when I finished writing the book.
Though I wrote it extremely quickly, my editor at Candlewick warned me it would take some extra time to be released because of supply chain questions and the whole slow-down of publication in 2020 and 2021. (The wonderful artist, Junyi Wu, also had time to do her illustrations!) Now it's coming out in 2023 and I couldn't be happier to see it in the world!
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
I was surprised the book was scheduled so far in the future; but the delays caused by the pandemic really changed the timeline of publication. Also, as anyone who had a book come out in 2020 or even 2021 knows, new titles just dropped into a pit. The publishing world, like many industries, is only slowly now climbing back up onto its legs—and looking around at a changed landscape.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I was thinking a lot about classic children's books I read and loved as a kid: Edward Eager, Mary Norton, and, especially Finnish author Tove Jansson (who deserves to be better known in this country). I realized that though these books I loved of course have strong plot elements, they're actually governed by something else: an overarching thematic movement, into which each chapter fits as a semi-independent short story, almost.
I decided that was exactly the kind of pacing I wanted for this book, and I was surprised and delighted how that kind of structure made writing fun and flexible. I'd walk with the dog in the morning, coming up with the details for the episode I was going to write in the afternoon. It let me work on a smaller scale of detail, as well as on the larger scale of plot.
In some ways, I felt it was appropriate for the experience of childhood, where short little spans of time are packed with huge meaning and big feelings, and the focus is on day-to-day life.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
Keeping in mind that my readers, in this case, are roughly 10 years old, I hope that this book reminds them of the close connections they have with animals—those moments where you feel the wisdom and love of a creature that can't speak. And for kids who don't have a pet, I hope this book gives them a glimpse of that experience of trust and pure adoration.
As well as being a rollicking, spooky adventure.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
With every new book, try to break something you know. Try to teach yourself a new way to write a book. And write about what truly matters. If writing the book doesn't change your life, how is reading it going to change anyone else's?
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