Author Ann M. Martin participated in a conversation with Scholastic students and teachers. Martin’s books include A Corner of the Universe, Belle Teal and A Dog’s Life. You can also read her transcript from a later conversation or the transcript from a more recent chat from October 2005.

Scholastic's separate Online Reading Club — created for young readers who aren't afraid to dive into literature! We feature amazing books and provide teachers and students with the opportunity to talk about the novels with other kids all across the country. The actual author always joins in the discussion!

Ann M. Martin was a guest in Scholastic's Online Reading Club. With the guidance of thought questions, students and teachers discussed her books A Corner of the Universe and Belle Teal. Then Ann M. Martin herself joined in the conversation. In addition to A Corner of the Universe and Belle Teal, Ann is the beloved author of the Baby-sitters Club series, the co-author of P.S. Longer Letter Later and Snail Mail, No More, and the co-author of The Doll People books.

What does “lift the corners of the universe” mean to you?

• Student Response: In my opinion "lift the corners of the universe" means that the person can see beyond the surface and look under the exterior, just like you lift a cover to see what’s underneath. I thought it was a great book. It was a very touching story.
• Student Response: I think it means that when people are around you, you have that certain feeling of love and kindness everyone needs.

More Questions about A Corner of the Universe

Why did you put a carnival in the book?

My dad is a very fanciful person. He loved taking my sister and me to carnivals and circuses when we were growing up. When I began to think about the character of Adam and of Hattie growing up in this small town at the same time when I was growing up, something about carnivals came back to me and I wanted to use them in a book. I’m really not sure why they wound up specifically in A Corner of the Universe; I think it was something about that time period.

I liked your book a lot. I have a book club at my school, and this month we read A Corner Of A Universe. Did your friends make fun of Stephen?

I never met Stephen. I found out about Stephen when I was nine years old. Stephen was my mother’s younger brother.

I have a feeling that kids probably did tease Stephen and that this was hard on my mother and Rick, my mother’s older brother. But no one in my family really talked about Stephen a lot, so there was a lot of guessing on my part when I wrote the book. I was also thinking about the kids who went to my school and were in Special Ed and about the teasing they experienced. I was trying to figure out what Stephen’s life might have been like, but I didn’t know Stephen myself.

Dear Ann M. Martin,
Is this true, and if it is, did someone you know experience it, and if so, who?
How did you come up with this idea?
At what time was this published?
I would like to compliment you on your book because it really described how hard it is to be disabled.
From,
Paige

About four months before I began writing the book, for Christmas I had had all of our family’s old home movies transferred to videotape as a gift for my sister. I had spent hours and hours going through them all because I wanted to give my sister the tape annotated. It turned out that we had home movies going back to when my parents were little, and I saw tape of Stephen when he was a baby and growing up. I started wondering, “What was he like?”

The book was published in the fall of 2002.

What made you think of Hattie and all of her discoveries? Hattie was very brave, and if I was in her place I wouldn't have been able to handle the pressure. How did you think of making Hattie so brave? If you were in her place what would you have done? How did you think of Adam being "special" and yet so helpful, interesting, deep, and sweet? Did you base this on something that happened in your own life?

I ended up reading A Corner Of The Universe in a club at my school, and it made me think about how hard it must be to be in love and get hurt so badly. It also made me think about how brave you have to be to be able to handle someone like Adam. I loved the book!!!
From,
Michael

Although I never met Stephen, Adam was based on my mother’s younger brother and the little bits of information I did know about him. And he was based on some of the kids I knew when I was growing up who might have been differently abled. I saw kids who had a difficult time but were very brave.

Hattie was based on me, but I don’t know if I would have been as brave as Hattie. It may have been a bit of wishful thinking

How many books have you written in your life?
How did you get the names Miss Hagerty , Mr. Penny,and Angel Valentine?
I thought that the book was the best book I ever read. It was interesting to find out Hattie’s problems. I thought Adam was nice and sweet. I also felt bad for Hattie and her family.
Sincerely,
Aliya S.

I've lost count of how many books I've written. I think there are 17 books that are not part of any of the series. A good guess is 150 of the series books.

I have no idea where those names came from! I wanted Angel Valentine to have kind of an interesting, sort of alluring name, so I did make up her name on purpose. I don't know where Miss Hagerty and Mr. Penny came from. They weren’t named after anybody. Sometimes you just don’t know where names come from.

I am reading your book at my book club at my school. I just finished chapter 19 in A Corner of the Universe. I love your story, and I think it is very well written. Here are some questions:
Is the part where Adam had a fit on the Ferris wheel and the police take him away TRUE?
Is Adam a real person, and does he really love Angel Valentine?
Did Adam Really die by hanging himself?
Did Hattie really have a friend named Betsy?
In the story, are you Hattie Owen?
Do you really live in Philadelphia at the time?
Did any publishers turn you down when you turned in A Corner of the Universe? If so, how many?
I love your book,
Meg

To learn more about how close the book is to real life, you can read my Author's Note on the Scholastic web site:

The Ferris wheel scene is all made up. I don't really know many incidents from Stephen’s life. I was trying to put Adam in a situation that would be scary for him but absolutely normal for most people — maybe even a little bit exciting. But for Adam, it was very frightening. I wanted to show his differences and to point out how complicated his friendship with Hattie is. It seems on the one hand that they should be able to just go off and be uncle and niece, but on the other hand, it really isn't that way. He is a very complicated and troubled grown-up, and she's just a little girl.

Stephen really did die by hanging himself. Angel Valentine was made up.

Betsy was not based on a real person, but my life may have influenced the way I imagined her character. Instead of having a whole lot of friends when I was a kid, I had one really good close friend, and it's the same way with Hattie and Betsy.

Scholastic has been publishing my books for a long time, and when I first got the idea for A Corner of the Universe, I talked to my editor. It was not a question of whether Scholastic would publish it, and I’m very lucky in that sense. It was a wonderful experience working with my editor to make the story as good as it could be.

Dear Ann Martin,
My name is Sloan P., and I’m in the fourth-grade book club for my school. We are reading your book (A Corner of the Universe). We all think it is great! I am wondering how you put all those characters` personalities into one big personality of your own?

Thank you for the compliment. Maybe what you’re asking is how a character is created. Every author does this differently. It depends on where the character is coming from — if the character is based on someone you know, that’s one thing; if you’re creating a character to tell a specific story, that’s something else. Paula Danziger says if you’re creating a character from scratch, you start off with the name, try to describe the character’s room (what posters are hanging on the wall, how is the room decorated). You need to create a character that’s as complete and believable as you can, so it’s important to come up with details for the character. What are your character's emotions? What kind of things delight and terrify your character? Your characters will come more to life.

One thing I like is creating lots of different characters. I had fun with the boarding house because it gave me the opportunity to come up with lots of people. I also got to do that with my new book, Here Today, because all of the people on one street figure into the book. I got to write about five different households.

Hi, I have always wanted to meet you. How are you doing? I am fine. So, are you writing a new book Iike that one?

I’ve just finished Here Today. It will be out this fall. It takes place in 1963, and it’s the story of a young girl whose name is Eleanor Roosevelt Dingman. Eleanor feels that she’s a misfit, and the book is about what happens in one year of her life, the year she is 11.

Discussion Question:

What do you think is the most important thing Belle Teal learned during the school year?

• Student Response: She learned that she shouldn't judge people "by their cover." Some of her friends were really mean. She should have picked her friends better.

Discussion Question:

How do you think if felt to be Darryl on the first day of school?

• Student Response: I would feel sad because everyone picks on him. The people at the school didn't like him. Most people don't want him to go to the school, and that would make me feel mad. As he walked to school and all the parents were in front, yelling things, I would have been nervous.

Discussion Question:

Did your feelings about Little Boss change from the beginning to the end of the story? What about Vanessa?

• Student Response: I felt all right about Little Boss at the beginning of the story because he was like other students. In the middle of the story, I felt mad because he was really, really mean to Belle Teal and Darryl. At the end of the story he started to be nice but I started to feel sad because his dad beat him.
  
  First Vanessa was mean and snotty. Then she became nice. I didn't like her at first. At the end I felt pretty happy because I didn't know she would start to get nice. I thought she would get meaner. I felt sad when I found out that her mother had died.

Discussion Question:

What role did Mom and Gran play in Belle Teal’s life? How did Gran’s aging affect Belle Teal?

• Student Response: She probably felt sad because her Gran says stuff over and over. She loved her mom and Gran very much. She had to remind Gran about what to wear. She had to be both a kid and a grown-up. She still loved Gran but she got mad sometimes.
  Kristine B..

Does the grandmother have Alzheimer's or something because you never said, or was grandma just old? Also I would like to know where you got your characters from. Do you base your characters on personal experiences or what?

In my mind, she did have Alzheimer's or was in the beginning stages of Alzheimer's, but it was in the 1960s and people weren’t diagnosed with Alzheimer's at that time. Back then, it probably would have been said that someone was senile. That’s why the word Alzheimer's was never used in the book — because it wasn’t categorized that way then. The grandmother was based on my mother and how she was in the beginning stages of her illness.

Did you write Belle Teal off a live story? I am in the middle of the book and I cannot put it down.

It’s not true technically, but the very beginning of the story was my recollection of when the first African-American kid came to our school and he was going to be in my classroom. This was when I was in fourth grade; this was 1964. I remember how the teacher was going to introduce him. She said she hoped we would be nice to him, and I remember thinking back then, “Why wouldn’t we be nice to the new kid?”

There are other little bits and pieces of my life in the book. For example, my mother and I used to make fruitcake every year right after Thanksgiving. The basis of the story is fictional.

How old where you when you started writing?

I’ve always enjoyed writing, even when I was a kid. But I guess I started writing more seriously when I was in college. My first book was published when I was 28, and I’d been working on it for about three years, so I started working on my first serious book when I was 25.

Dear Ann M. Martin,
I read the Baby-sitters Club books. I got a lot of your books. You should keep write more books. You should write a book about you. That’s what I am thinking of doing: writing a book about me because my teacher doesn’t know a whole lot about me and about my family. You should write a book about you and your family. That is I am going to do. I want meet you sometimes.
Tiffany Ann D.

I think that writing a book about yourself is a great. It's always a good idea to write about what you know.

Although I haven't written a book about myself or my family specifically, I do put a lot of myself and pieces of people I know — family members or friends -- into the characters I write about. Scholastic did publish a biography of me, but it was a long time ago, so it's a little out of date.

My daughter has read most of the books in this series and at one time had over 35 of the books memorized, by title and events. This was her first true experience with reading and she is now a second year law student at Pepperdine University. Thanks for writing these wonderful books and starting her out on a great adventure in reading. Do you think these books will always hold a special place in the hearts of young girls and what do you think the attraction might be? Thanks

I'm now a Reading Specialist, and I also read the Baby-sitters Club when I was younger. I love to see that girls at our school still love this series. I think it's because they can really relate to Kristy and the girls. I also loved reading Belle Teal. I'm getting students to branch out and read different genres. It's great for teaching reading strategies. Thanks, Ann!

It’s hard to predict those kinds of things. Certainly, other series with continuing characters targeted towards girls have lasted (Nancy Drew in particular). What I’m beginning to see now because the series books covered such a long span of time — from when the first book was published to when the last one was published — is that I’m beginning to meet a lot of people in their 20s who read the books and remember them fondly. It’s great to hear from a reading specialist who is using the books in the classroom or from a mom who is excited to have her kids read the books when they’re ready. For me, it’s great. It’s really touching.

Hi! Ann, I wanted to know something. Are you planning on continuing the Baby-sitters Club? Please do! I love that series!

We don’t have any plans to continue it at all. I had a great time working on the series, but at this time we don’t have any more plans to continue it.

What is your favorite book that you wrote? Which of your books do you recommend to kids of all ages? Do you think Belle Teal will win the Black-Eyed Susan Book Award?

Right now, A Corner of the Universe is my favorite. It was really important to me to be able to write abut Stephen and my family and be able to work out some of our issues. It was an important book to me.

I like Belle Teal and A Corner of the Universe a lot. If kids are looking for something a little more fanciful, I think a lot of kids have liked The Doll People and The Meanest Doll in the World. Those are fun and a little bit different.

It’s always nice to find out that a title is on a state reading list, but I have no idea if it’s going to win.

What is your first book you wrote?
How did you get interested in writing books?
What else did you write?
Are all the books about your life?
Please answer my questions!
I really like reading Belle Teal.
Thank you for reading this!
Yunji

I had always enjoyed writing. I had enjoyed telling stories and making up stories. I loved children’s books. When I was in college, I had a strong interest in children’s literature, and when I was preparing to be a teacher, I used children’s books a lot. Using them in the classroom really made me more interested in publishing and writing books of my own.

Ms. Martin,
I love your books! Were the baby-sitters out of your books really your friends?
Kristine B.

I did do a lot of baby-sitting when I was young, but my friends and I didn’t have a club. The character of Mary Anne was based on me in terms of her personality, and the character of Kristy was based on my best friend Beth. Claudia was named after a friend of mine, but she was a friend I didn’t even have until I was an adult. My sister and I were each friends with a member of a family named Pike — I don’t think they had eight kids; I think they had six kids. But mostly the characters were just made up.

I read that it took you three years to write your first book. Did you want to get it just right?

Yes, and I also didn’t really know what I was doing. I was really feeling my way along. I knew a lot less about creating characters, about plotting a story. When I finally found an editor for the book, it needed a lot more editorial work and revision than my books do now. I felt like I was in very new territory.

Now that you’re done with Here Today, are you working on anything else? Even if you haven’t started writing it yet, do you know what your next book is going to be about?

It’s going to be either one of two things. I’ve started on two projects, and by the end of May I need to figure out which one of them I’m going to pursue. It’s either gong to be a third book with Laura Godwin about the Doll People or it’s going to be a novel about a dog.

How come you keep setting your books in the 1960s?

I’m not really sure. There’s been a whole string of them, and Here Today (my upcoming novel) is also set in the 1960s. For whatever reason, I’ve felt drawn to that period of time, which was my childhood. I was 5-15 years old during the 1960s, and it was such an important time in my life.

Do you have any advice for kids who want to be authors?

If you want to be a writer, you need to be a reader. It’s very helpful to become familiar with all kinds of writing — journalism, poetry, fiction, nonfiction. It’s important to become familiar with lots of different genres. Also, when you are reading, see what kind of writing by other people appeals to you. That might give you a feel for the kind of writing that you’re interested in doing.

Keep a journal, not even so much for writing practice. Just write in it sometimes; you don’t have to write in it every day. The most important thing about a journal — at least for me — is that it’s a source of material. The most frequent complaint I hear from kids about writing is that they don’t know what to write about. If you’re keeping a journal, things that are happening to you are going to be the best things to write about.

Besides you, who are some authors you really like?

Kimberly Willis Holt; she wrote When Zachary Beaver Came to Town. I love Karen Hesse’s writing. I love Pam Ryan’s books. I loved writing with Paula Danziger; I think her books are great.

There are also so many from my childhood. I loved the Wizard of Oz books by L. Frank Baum. I loved the Dr. Doolittle books by Hugh Lofting. I loved the books by P.L. Travers.

There are so many books I’ve really enjoyed and so many writers I respect, but that’s a little sample.