The Great Big Beautiful Podcast, Episode 72: James Howe
You can listen on iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, and YouTube; you can follow the RSS feed; or you can listen right here!
This week, the 8-year-old in me freaks out as we welcome James Howe to the show. Howe wrote my favorite series of books as a kid, which also happens to be the world’s best series about a vampire bunny and his fellow housepets: Bunnicula!
Seriously, Bunnicula, Howliday Inn, The Celery Stalks at Midnight, and Nighty Nightmare were right up there with Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby books and Choose Your Own Adventure as my reliable go-to books. And I’m reading them to my kids now. We’re in the middle of Howliday Inn, and they’re loving the books just as much as I did. The books haven’t aged at all, and they’re just as entertaining and fun in 2016 as they were in 1986.
But James Howe is so much more than Bunnicula. He’s written close to 100 books, which is simply astonishing, and his books cover a spectrum of styles and genres: picture books, children’s nonfiction, beginning reader chapter books, kids novels, YA fiction, and screenplays.
Aside from the Bunnicula books, he’s probably most well known for The Misfits series of YA novels, which deal with issues of bullying, peer pressure, sexual identity. and breaking out of the boxes that society puts around us.
On this episode, we chat about the responsibilities inherent in being a writer for young people, coming out as a children’s book author, how to break free of “write what you know,” the pros and cons of “work for hire,” and his self-proclaimed “worst book ever.” I’ll give you a hint about that last one:
Connect:
- The show is on Twitter here and Facebook here.
- Jamie is on Twitter and Instagram as @theroarbots.
- Justin is on Twitter and Instagram as @140JustinC.
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Mr. Howe, if you’re checking back on the comments here at all, I just have to say how OBSESSED my kids have been with Bunnicula and fam over the past few months. We’ve finally started reading different books this past week, only because we finally ran out. 😉