ALAN Online

An Interview with Elizabeth Scott, author of Living Dead Girl
By Pam B. Cole

Cole: Can you talk about how the idea for Living Dead Girl originated?

Scott: Usually, when I get an idea for a story, it comes in bits and pieces. But once in a while—a great while, frankly—an idea will come to me fully formed, a story demanding to be told. Living Dead Girl was one of those stories. I woke up the night of April 5, 2007, from a disturbing dream. I write all my dreams down, and usually they’re pretty nonsensical, but this one was different. I wrote:

“Alice.” It is her name but it isn’t her name. She thinks of who she was as someone far away. Long ago. Kidnapped when she was ten. Five years, and she lives with kidnapper still. Now he wants someone else. New. She’ll do anything to get him off her. Knows no one sees her, staring at blue thing, plastic like water but not water, reflection strange. Blurred, featureless. Flash of teeth, grinning not grinning, hands and pain, HIM. Thinks, I am a living dead girl.

By the time I was done writing, I knew Alice’s story. I knew I had to tell it. But I had other projects I was working on, and I told myself to file it away. The night of April 6, 2007, I had the same dream again. By the night of April 8, 2007, I woke up from the now-familiar dream and wrote only one word: Alice. I wrote Living Dead Girl because it demanded to be told, and writing it was an intense experience.

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“ALAN’s Picks” is a recurring post on ALAN Online featuring book reviews of the newest titles in Young Adult Literature.  Reviews are compiled and posted monthly.  Be sure to visit ALAN Online often to read more about the newest titles from the best authors in the business.

Reviewed this month:

13 by Jason Robert Brown and Dan Elish
The Big Splash by Jack D. Ferraiolo
Bliss by Lauren Myracle
Caught Between the Pages by Marlene Carvell
The Floating Circus by Tracie Vaughn Zimmer
Hard Gold:  The Colorado Gold Rush of 1859 by Avi
The Inferior by Peadar O Guilin
The Lucky Place by Zu Vincent
The Midnight Twins by Jacquelyn Mitchard
Mousetraps by Pat Schmatz
The Otherworldlies by Jennifer Anne Kogler
The Runaway Dolls by Ann M. Martin
Suck It Up by Brian Meehl
Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson
Waggit’s Tale by Peter Howe
The Year My Sister Got Lucky by Aimee Friedman

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The July 30, 2008 Book Chat featured a lively conversation with author Cynthia Leitich Smith.  The discussion covered, among many other topics, Cynthia’s novel Tantalize.  If you were unable to visit the Chat, you can read the transcript by clicking on the link below.

Cynthia Leitich Smith Book Chat Transcript

Thank you, Cynthia, for participating in the ALAN Book Chat!

JUST THE BEGINNING
Dr. Lori Goodson

In my years of teaching language arts at the middle school and high school level, I’ve had an amazing array of students come through my classroom doors—with a just-as-amazing array of reading interests and issues.

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We have received several comments from those who are searching for more information about the 2008 NCTE Convention and ALAN Workshop in San Antonio.  To help readers access what they need to know about this year’s convention, I have created a new page on the left sidebar that will be updated as new information becomes available.  If you have any questions, please send me an email and I will do my best to find an answer for you.

See you in San Antonio!