Episode #65: Who is your favorite author of all time and why? with author Ali Benjamin

Welcome back! We are excited to have author Ali Benjamin join us today to answer this kid question, “Who is your favorite author of all time and why?”

TRANSCRIPTS:

Grace Lin: Hi, I'm Grace Lin, the author and illustrator of many picture books, including the middle grade novel, Where The Mountain Meets The Moon, and the picture book, A Big Mooncake For Little Star. Today, I'm here with Ali Benjamin, the author of, The Thing About Jellyfish and The Next Great Paulie Fink. Hi, Ali.

Ali Benjamin: Hi. Thanks for having me.

Grace Lin: Are you ready for today's question?

Ali Benjamin: I am.

Grace Lin: All right. Today's question is from a young girl named Maisie, and her question is, who is your favorite author of all times and why?

Ali Benjamin: Hi, Maisie. Thank you for the question. It's a really good question. I want to say that the books that I read as a child are the books that I feel the most connection to. As an adult, I've read a lot of amazing books, but there's something about falling in love with a book when you're a kid that just stays with you for the rest of your life. So I'm going to go back to one of the books that I read as a child, one of the authors that I read as a child, and that is E.B. White, who wrote Charlotte's Web, Trumpet of the Swan, Stuart Little. He's written a lot of essays and stuff for adults as well, and they're really terrific as an adult. But it was a great joy of mine to share the books of his that I loved as a child with my own kids.

Ali Benjamin: And I think one of the reasons that I love E.B. White still is I think he makes some really brave choices as a writer. For example, in Charlotte's Web, there is a chapter where one season is giving way to another season and he spends a page and a half talking about late summer crickets, and he just describes the sounds of the crickets and he describes what they sound like and he explores what they might be saying and the way different animals hear those crickets. And I think it's a really brave choice. And as a writer, I can see being tempted to cut those lines and just say, "I just need to get on with the story." And I love that he didn't, and it really made the book feel like something to me as a kid that I got to re-experience as an adult. So I guess I'll say E.B. White.

Grace Lin: Aw. I love what you said about loving the books when you were younger, because I feel the same way. I feel like I've read a lot of books as an adult, but it's those books that I loved when I was younger that have really stayed with me. I really love those books.

Ali Benjamin: Yeah.

Grace Lin: They're like a part of me, and I think that's why I decided I wanted to be a children's book author, is because I want to create books that are like that, those books that stay with you your whole life. So the books that stay with me my whole life, the one that I think I'm going to say is my favorite author of all time is probably L.M. Montgomery, who wrote the Anne of Green Gables books.

Ali Benjamin: Yes.

Grace Lin: And I guess it's because those books meant so much to me when I was younger, I felt like Anne was my best friend and I would read those books and I just felt like I had such a great friend. And I still feel like that when I read those books now. When I read it, it's just like getting back together and having tea with an old friend.

Ali Benjamin: That's exactly what it feels like.

Grace Lin: Yeah, and I think that's why she's my favorite author, because she created that for me. And also, as a writer, I just think she's a lovely writer. I love how she writes description. She places most of her books in Prince Edward Island and she makes it sound so beautiful, and she can really write descriptions so beautifully that I went to Prince Edward Island a couple of years ago and I remember looking around, I'm like, "It's just like how she wrote it." It was so magical. So I'm going to say L.M. Montgomery, but E.B. White is actually one of my favorites as well. All right. So thanks so much Maisie for your great question.

Ali Benjamin: Thank you, Maisie.

Grace Lin: And thank you, Ali.

Today’s BOOK REVIEW comes from Zoe! She reviewed “El Deafo” by Cece Bell.

The book I would like to talk about is El Deafo, by Cece Bell. This book is about a deaf kid going to a new school, wearing hearing aids. People don't treat her normally, but she finds friends that can understand her. I liked this book because I learned how it might be like to be deaf.

Thank you so much Zoe!

More about today’s authors:

Ali Benjamin is an author and National Book Award finalist. Her latest book is an adult novel, THE SMASH-UP, which will be published by Random House in spring 2021. She is best known for children’s novels. Her 2015 novel, THE THING ABOUT JELLYFISH  was an international bestseller and a National Book Award finalist. THE NEXT GREAT PAULIE FINK is about an oddball school in the middle of the woods and a group of misfit kids who decide to hold their own reality TV-style competition. The book earned multiple starred reviews and made many year-end “Best of 2019 lists.” Prior to these, she co-wrote several books, including Tim Howard’s bestselling THE KEEPER, and Paige Rawl’s POSITIVE , a coming-of-age memoir which was a Junior Library Guild selection and the first-ever nonfiction selection for The Today Show book club.

Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.

Special thanks to the High Five Books & Art Always Bookstore, Ms. Carleton’s 2nd grade class at Jackson Street School for their help with our kid questions and reviews.