Caroline B. Cooney

BIO

Award-winning author Caroline B. Cooney knows what young adults like to read. In fact, Cooney's all-time favorite fan letter came from a 12-year-old girl who hated reading. But after being forced to read one of Cooney's books, the girl admitted it had not been a waste of time and had even been enjoyable. "And so," wrote the girl, "I have come to an important decision. I am writing to tell you that I have decided to read a second book."

Caroline Cooney was born in 1947 and grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. This prolific author was always ambitious, and as a youth, loved school and was involved in many different activities. Cooney was also an avid reader and recalls that series books such as The Hardy Boys and Cherry Ames were her favorites. These characters had a big influence on her life, and in fact, she says that "Cherry Ames, Student Nurse was my reason to go to nursing school in Boston later in life."

Cooney began writing in college. She professes,"I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings."

Cooney is a master of mixing spellbinding suspense with thought-provoking insight into teenagers' lives. One of her most popular books is THE FACE ON THE MILK CARTON --- the gripping story of a young girl who discovers that the picture of a missing child on a milk carton is actually a picture of herself. After writing this book, Cooney received hundreds of letters from readers who were bothered by the ending. "It wasn't that they didn't like the ending, it was that they wanted some kind of resolution. Some said I should have written another chapter." However, Cooney says she liked leaving the reader worrying about the character just as they would a real person. But one day, her daughter, Sayre, had an idea for a sequel that was so good, Cooney had to write it. The book that evolved was called WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JANIE? Continuing where that novel leaves off, Cooney explores the themes of betrayal and peer pressure in THE VOICE ON THE RADIO. Concluding the Janie Quartet is WHAT JANIE FOUND, in which Cooney masterfully spins a suspenseful story of family secrets that will have readers captivated until the very last word.

Cooney's novel BURNING UP explores the destructive nature of hatred, the crime of indifference, and the power of accepting love and responsibility.

In THE RANSOM OF MERCY CARTER, Cooney looks at an actual historic event that had been virtually unexplored in literature for young people. During a 1704 Indian attack on the Deerfield, Massachusetts, settlement, Mercy Carter is separated from her family and taken to a Kahnawake Indian village in Canada. As she awaits ransom, she discovers that the "savages" have traditions and family life that in time become her own.

Cooney completed her Time Travel Quartet with FOR ALL TIME. In her novel GODDESS OF YESTERDAY, Cooney brings ancient Greece to life through careful research and master storytelling.

Back to top.   

PAST INTERVIEW

April 24, 2001

Teenreads: THE RANSOM OF MERCY CARTER is your first historical novel. Did you find it more or less difficult to write about real people? Which do you prefer?

CC: Actually my first eight books were historical novels, but they were never published. I wrote another 69 books before I went back to historicals! I loved writing Mercy Carter. It was exciting to write about real people and very challenging, because in this case, I knew the name, age, family, religion, fate, and choice of nearly every character. There was little room for maneuvering and no option about the ending.

Teenreads: What inspired you to write about this particular topic?

CC:When I was in Elementary School, I loved three books about Indian captives: SWORD OF THE WILDERNESS by Elizabeth Coatsworth, INDIAN CAPTIVE by Lois Lenski, and BLACK RIVER CAPTIVE by West Lathrop. I loved reading about the frontier, the settlers, and the Indians. My children have a far-back grandmother from Massachusetts, an Indian named Welcome Mason. My nephew Ransom is descended from John Gillett, who is mentioned briefly in this book. He is named according to a family tradition in honor of the ransom paid to get John Gillett home. Once, when I was driving through Deerfield, I decided to research John Gillett. I got swept up in the story of 1704 instead.

I chose Mercy Carter to write about because I wanted to make Mercy up, and we don't know much except the names and birth dates of her family. I wanted to write about somebody who refused to be ransomed home.

Teenreads: Many of Mercy's observations and thoughts show her sympathy towards the Indians. During the march away from Deerfield she thinks, "The smallpox that had ravaged Boston last year had probably done worse to the Indians; it always did. So…were the Indians in need of children?" She seems to be trying to justify their capture. In addition, she makes an effort to learn the Indian language right from the beginning. In another instance, she thinks with sympathy about how the settlers had taken the Indian's land. Do you feel that Mercy's viewpoint is a true representation of the sympathy shown to the Indians by some of the settlers?

CC: Are you curious about "sympathy" on my part or on the part of English settlers toward the native population? English settlers had little if any sympathy. Since they believed that the New World was a gift from God, that diseases were sent by God, and that therefore the death of natives by smallpox was God's choice --- and that the natives were in any case hell-bound because they were pagan --- how could they have sympathy? The character Ruth displays the typical English attitude --- the Indians were savages and murderers. Mercy however ceases to be an English settler within days of her capture. This is fiction. We have no idea what she really thought ---- only what she really decided.

Teenreads: As you were writing/researching the book, did you find yourself sympathizing with or getting angry over the plight of the American Indian and the misconceptions about the Native Americans in the Colonial Era? Do you think this affected your writing?

CC: With whom am I sympathetic? I generally love all my characters. I feel intensely about every person in this book: wilderness Indians, toddler captives, Jesuit priests, praying Indians, angry ministers, and especially, Mercy Carter.

Teenreads: There is a very fine line between truth and fiction, or so "they" say. Did you find this true while you were writing THE RANSOM OF MERCY CARTER? Did the line ever become blurred?

CC:Although this is a story of 1704 and three cultures now vanished, it is the same story around the globe today. Consider the conflicts, wars, and religious hatreds raging in 2001. People do not understand each other, whatever the century. People nearly always believe, and are willing to back it up with weapons and cruelty, that their religion and way of life is better than the other person's.

Teenreads: You are an amazingly prolific author. Out of all the books you have written, do you have a favorite character or a favorite book?

CC: My favorite book is always the one I'm working on at the moment.

Teenreads: Are you working on another novel at this time?

CC: Yes, another historical, set in the Bronze Age just before the Trojan War begins. This too, by the way, is an age that believes disease is sent intentionally by God. The Homeric kings and heroes are endlessly trying to placate gods who deliver suffering and sickness --- not a lot different from the ministers in Massachusetts in 1704.

   --- Interviewed by Audrey Marie Danielson

PAST INTERVIEW

July 28, 2000

Teenreads Writer Audrey Marie Danielson had a chance to speak with the very prolific and talented YA mystery writer, Caroline B. Cooney. If you haven't already discovered Cooney's nail biting suspense tales, now is the time. She's made quite an impression on the YA world with her four book "Janie" series starting with FACE ON THE MILK CARTON, an intense story that starts when Janie sees her face on the carton. But this is not the whole of Cooney's work --- she has written 75 books! Find out what Cooney's predictions are for the future of YA books, learn about her other mystery novels, discover what she reads in her spare time, and much more in this interview.

Teenreads: Your Janie series --- THE FACE ON THE MILK CARTON, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JANIE?, THE VOICE ON THE RADIO, and WHAT JANIE FOUND --- is very popular. How do you decide which stories to make into series, and which ones to begin and end with one book?

CC: Sometimes when I've written a book, it's finished in my heart as well. Those books I don't really think about again. Others remain in my heart and I feel very intimate with the characters, such as Janie. Sometimes I can't tell at first if a single book should become a series. My editors, one at Random House and one at Scholastic, have helped me decide that for twenty years.

THE FACE ON THE MILK CARTON was written as a stand-alone book. I wanted the reader to reach that last page and have to go on worrying about Janie, just as parents have to go on worrying about their children. My readers wrote to me continually asking for a sequel. Our minister gave a sermon based on the Old Testament story of King Solomon facing two women, each insisting she is the mother of the baby. The real mother is the one who loves her child enough to give the baby up. Right away, I knew that that was the story for the sequel, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO JANIE?  

I didn't plan to write a third, but when my son went to college and became involved with his college radio station, I was amazed by the amorality of talk shows; the constant betrayal of those you formerly loved. That became THE VOICE ON THE RADIO.

Teenreads: How emotionally involved do you get with your characters, especially in the Janie series?

CC: In the Janie books, I was very close to every character and loved them.

Teenreads: Are any of your characters based on real people? Have you used experiences from your own life in your novels?

CC: Almost never. If you write a story based on a real person, you're trapped by the details of the real person and his life. It gets in the way of writing your own story. I just finished writing my first historical novel, THE RANSOM OF MERCY CARTER (not available yet) and it's the first time I wrote something where the ending was completed for me. I had no choice about what actually happened to Mercy.

I have used experiences from my life. My daughter became an EMT volunteer while she was in high school and stayed in ambulance work for years. I wrote a book about teenage rescue workers called FLIGHT # 116 IS DOWN.  

Teenreads: How do you get your ideas for your plots and characters, such as Emlyn in MUMMY? She's an unusual girl with her library of "wrong things to do, and how to do them." Moreover, she outwits everyone with her very creative solution to the problem of what to do with the mummy. What inspired Emlyn?

CC: I'm one of the lucky writers: plots come easily to me. My editors help me narrow down the selection and decide what to write. I'd always wanted to write about somebody with a streak of larceny in her and that book became MUMMY.

Teenreads: Some readers feel that a few of your graver novels such as BURNING UP and THE TERRORIST are not written with enough seriousness. What do you think of that statement? Do you deliberately keep things more lighthearted or do you feel they are serious enough?

CC: I don't know that anybody ever said that to me. I approach serious subjects, and I like to have the good guys win and have the parents among the good guys. I like a family story where the family does the right thing in the end. The Janie books feature two good families. I believe my readers are crazy about their parents and want to be just like them when they grow up.

Teenreads You studied to be a nurse. When did writing become your main pursuit?

CC: I went to nursing school for a year and didn't finish; studied music and didn't finish; in fact, I never finished college. I'm sort of thinking of going back one of these days and getting a degree.

I wrote eight full-length adult novels in my twenties. None of them were published. I decided to write short stories because they got rejected quicker. I found that I had a voice for children's writing, and I never looked back.

Teenreads: How did you establish your writing style? Has it changed much over the years?

CC: I believe my voice is pretty much the same. I've written 75 books, so I'm better at it now than I was earlier in my career.

Teenreads: Tell us how you got your first book published.

CC: I had a short story published in Seventeen Magazine. An editor from Scholastic called me and asked me to expand the story into a Young Adult paperback romance. It was called AN APRIL LOVE STORY.

Teenreads: Do you feel that your books have helped young people who were reluctant to become avid readers?

CC: Yes, definitely. I'm very proud of this. I get letters from readers who say that they have always hated reading, but somebody suggested one of my books, they actually finished the book and enjoyed it, and they're going on to read another book. I'm thrilled that they have figured out that reading is fun.

Teenreads: Who was your favorite author when you were young? Which author do you feel influenced you the most in your decision to become a writer?

CC: I had no favorites because I read books by the armload. I had favorite libraries. I had teachers who influenced me to become a writer, but no specific author.

Teenreads: What are you currently reading?

CC: When I read fiction, it's usually mysteries. But mostly I read nonfiction. I read lots of history. I love ancient history. Rome, Greece, Egypt.

Teenreads: Is there a contemporary Young Adult author that you especially admire?  Which current YA or adult writers would you recommend to teens?

CC: I admire most YA authors. I go to a lot of conventions and meet lots of my fellow authors. People who care whether or not kids read are always worth meeting.

Teenreads: Do you think young adults read more or less, than they used to?  Do they read differently than when you were young?

CC: I think they're reading more. Reading often follows a fad. For a while the fad was horror novels; recently it took a swing toward diary format; I think now we'll see an upsurge in fantasy.

Teenreads: How much research do you do for your books?  Do you have people help you, or do you prefer to research yourself?

CC: I write three books a year. Most of my books are fiction and require no research.  However, for THE RANSOM OF MERCY CARTER, I became caught up in the incident. I did two years research some of which was the Colonial Period in America, the Jesuits in French Canada and other facts. Finally one day I said, "Maybe I should actually write the book."

Teenreads: Out of all your books, who is the character you feel closest to?

CC: My favorite characters are always the ones I'm writing about at the moment.

Teenreads: What is your writing day like and do you have any specific process for writing?

CC: My writing day was always based on my children's school bus schedule. I started writing at 7:15 AM when the bus picked up the kids, and finished at 2:15 PM when the bus dropped them off. I still follow that schedule.

Teenreads: How do you keep your writing fresh? Is there an aspect of writing that is difficult for you?

CC: Luckily, I love writing and it comes easily. I don't worry about what kids are wearing right now, or what the slang is. It dates the story. Everything that really matters in a story (or in life) is just the same: do I honor my parents, am I popular, what will I do with my life, am I doing the right thing?

Teenreads: Do you work on more than one book at a time, and how long does it take you to finish a novel?

CC: I work on two or three books at a time. I write three books a year, so it takes me approximately three to four months to finish a book.

Teenreads: What do your children think of your books? Do any of them have writing aspirations?

CC: My children have always gotten the biggest charge out of the whole thing. None of them write.

Teenreads: Are you currently working on a new book?

CC: I'm starting a new book on Monday. It isn't sufficiently formed in my mind to have anything to say about it.

Teenreads: What advice would you give to young people who want to be writers?

CC: Learning to write is exactly like learning a musical instrument or a sport. You have to practice every day if you want to become good at it. There are no short cuts.

© Copyright 1997-2008, Teenreads.com. All rights reserved.

Back to top.