You know, ideas are fascinating because there are different threads and pieces that come together and with Grover G. Graham and Me there were different threads. And just looking back, several of them were living in the city in Washington D.C. but being from Tidewater, Virginia where that particular book is set and feeling a certain longing for that terrain of my childhood or that landscape of my childhood.
So wanting to work actively with it and describe it. Another thing I know that was big was that I was the oldest of seven kids but my sister that I’m very, very close to one of my sisters is ten years younger than me. So I was taking care of her much the way that Ben takes care of Grover. And I was also pregnant at the time I was writing that book so lots of memories from childhood were coming back and you know curiosity about little ones and those three threads I think came together to create those characters.
And a sense of that relationship between Ben and Grover where you have an older child who loves a young child, wants to take care of that child, but can’t in a way that an adult does and makes mistakes. But tries very hard.
There was a lot going on in the outside world as I was writing that book, too. Including the story in the newspaper of a little girl who was only two years old. Her name was Brianna, and I actually acknowledge her in the book. Who had been bumped around in different foster care situations and had been put back in a situation that turned out to be abusive and led to her death.
And you just think about all of the mistakes that are made along the line and how the kids must feel having to deal with that. So I thought about that little girl a lot as I thought about the character of Grover.
