Q and A with Kathleen Van Cleve, Author of Drizzle

First appeared in Chester County Dwell, June 22, 2010.

In yesterday’s post, I reviewed Drizzle, a new book for 3^rd-6^th graders, by Chestnut Hill author Kathleen Van Cleve. Kathy graciously found time to sit down and chat about Drizzle, the importance (and loss) of place and family, and how books, relatives, and teachers shape a writer.

How did your family’s farm influence Drizzle?

Well, like in the story, an Italian immigrant– my grandfather – really did buy a farm from an Italian prince. In 1941, he bought 6,000 acres in the Pine Barrens from a prince who was also an ambassador living in the States … we grew cranberries and blueberries. Even though the farm isn’t operational anymore, there are cranberries growing at your feet since cranberries grow naturally in the Pine Barrens; they’re one of the few crops indigenous to the States.

Cranberry harvest is in the fall, and I think it’s staggeringly beautiful … One of the reasons Drizzle is magical is that I thought of our farm as magical … You can’t see a cranberry harvest on a beautiful fall day and not be stunned if you have any appreciation for what our earth can do.

So why set Drizzle on a magic rhubarb farm? Why not a blueberry/cranberry farm?

My first novel, Cranberry Queen, is set on a cranberry farm … I didn’t want to do that again. Rhubarb – I like the word – it’s fun to say. I had asked one of my nephews what his favorite vegetable was, and he said rhubarb (he likes to be a contrarian).  So I tasted it and didn’t like it, which is why there’s chocolate rhubarb [in Drizzle]. Then I started to do research and realized rhubarb requires a lot of rain … it immediately makes it magical if a crop that needs a lot of rain grows in a place where there is no rain except what is guaranteed every Monday.

Even though the farm is magical, the kids in Drizzle are very real, and they carry burdens: Polly faces betrayal; her friend Basford has lost his mother to cancer; Polly’s brother Freddy becomes terribly ill. As an adult, how are you able to get back to a place where you’re able to evoke young people so well?

See, that question speaks highly of you because you’re so clearly a grown up. I’m 44 and writing a book about spelling dragonflies! I think like a child … I was the third of four kids born within five years and was allowed to just go off and read during my whole childhood – it meant I was safe and entertained and not fighting with my siblings. Plus I had thick glasses and braces – so I was allowed to stay a kid.

At the same time, I do think a lot of kids do have big things going on. I love the experience of reading things in the [children’s literature] genre and encountering something I haven’t thought about for 30 years, and then saying, I remember that. So I tap into that when I write.

You’re also very aware of the intricacies of human nature. For example, Aunt Edith is a wonderfully complex character – she was actually my favorite. What do you want young readers to take away from her?

She’s the antagonist, but I didn’t want her to be a villain … When she says, “I’ll destroy the farm if I don’t get what I want,” this is someone who has talked to presidents and changed the world because of her writing, and she refuses to be thwarted by the sale of a farm. Plus there’s the theory of benevolent dictatorship; she thinks the family will be taken care of financially.

But she has good reasons to sell the farm … she wants to write again. She gave up four years taking care of the farm; she’s desperate to be done. And she loves Polly, but she sees how much Polly loves the farm – like her grandmother, who believed she could “find all you need to find … in this rhubarb patch.” Aunt Edith can’t believe that somebody smart could make that choice. She also looks at Polly and knows that because she has the crooked finger, she’s the one [who can make it rain], and she doesn’t want to put that burden on her.

I hope people take away that [Edith] loves these kids – Polly, Patricia, and Freddy.  I like Aunt Edith. I’m fascinated by people like her. There’s that line from Emerson: “I shun father and mother and wife and brother, when my genius calls me.” Being the Italian, maternal person I am, part of me says, No, no, there’s no way, but then again, I’m a writer, and I understand … I don’t know where the dividing line is. It’s hard.

Polly applies the water cycle and Emerson’s Self Reliance to work through dilemmas, but without her teacher, Owen, and Aunt Edith to introduce her to those concepts, that wouldn’t have happened. Did you have any teachers who shaped the person and writer you’ve become?

My aunt and uncle were my first teachers for sure. They were so amazing, so quick, so smart. They took me to plays, gave me books; they didn’t approach the world in a “you have to wake up, you have to go to your job, you have to come home” kind of way – all the responsible things that I’ve never done.

As far as teachers in school, mostly my English professor at St Andrews in Middletown, DE, who’s now headmaster – Mr. Tad Roach …  he would assign a pretty standard paper, but I’d write a movie script or play. With Hamlet, I made up characters – Gertrude and Ramona – who see and talk about the play – and he wrote comments like,” I can’t give you more than hundred, but this is so great and fun.” He gave me confidence, showed me that it was okay to think that way.

From Penn, Al Filreis … he made us write an opinion paper every week … and he would read mine out loud to the lecture hall of 200 students. He forged a friendship with me that I didn’t have with any other teacher at Penn.

And then my screenwriting teacher, Shelley Evans, who told me, “You have a gift for this,” which was huge since writing’s never been the problem, it’s feeling like it’s okay, being confident … And my mom never stopped me from reading.

Drizzle’s acknowledgements give the impression that writing the book wasn’t easy. How long did it take you to write, and what challenges did you face?

It took three and a half years. I always knew it was about a farm where it didn’t rain, where a girl inherits the genetic ability to make it rain. And I always knew the last line: My name is Polly Peabody, and I can make it drizzle.

But the main issue between Polly and her Aunt Edith … that’s what I really struggled with. I wanted [the book] to be about what you do when you’re eleven and you love your parents, but your aunt, or this other person in your life, is everything – and suddenly this person shows their flaws.

When my grandfather died, the farm was left to my dad and his brother and sister. My aunt and uncle wanted to sell the farm, and my dad didn’t, but ultimately in 2003 it was sold. It’s really hard for me to accept still. People assume I wrote Drizzle because I have kids now, but it’s not. It’s this new phase of my life where this major part of my childhood has been lopped off, completely obliterated.

What makes it more difficult is that … my aunt, even than my uncle, is the reason I write, and with the lawsuit we didn’t speak for a long time … she passed away from colon cancer in 2008 – I didn’t even know she was sick. The book is dedicated to her. When Polly says about Aunt Edith, “How can I grow up without being able to tell her what I’m doing, what I’m learning, what my life is like? Sometimes, in the dark of night, I have an awful feeling that I really won’t see her again,” that’s informed by my aunt.

Are there any particular books that influenced you?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. The Witch of Blackbird Pond. Agatha Christie and Stephen King. Evelyn Waugh. And plays! Death of a Salesman. Tom Stoppard’s play, The Real Thing. And Angels in America by Tony Kushner  – it’s the reason I went to New York; I used to be able to recite it.

Literature changes everything. I remember saying once to John Leguizamo, “What are we doing? Who are we helping? What difference are we making?” And he said, “We are, Kathy, we are.”

You currently teach screenwriting at Penn, and some of the scenes in Drizzle are so vivid that they beg to lift off the page. Is there a chance that Drizzle will be adapted for film?

I hope to adapt it myself this summer. Everything I write is very visual; it’s how I was trained. I just read and read scripts -hundreds and hundreds of scripts. So the farm, I can see it. I’ve been teaching screenwriting long enough; it’s time I bite the bullet.

Your sons, Jackson and Emerson, are 6 and 4. What are you reading with them these days?

Emily Jenkins’ Toys Go Out; The Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney; William’s Stieg’s Dominic and Doctor De Soto; the Magic Schoolbus. Jackson’s really into myths right now, like who is the Hydra, and who is Medusa. We also love Jon Scieszka – he remakes fairy tales – really funny! The book we read is The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.

And Emerson, we’ve been into Tiger and Turtle, by James Rumsford.  I encourage Too Many Toys, by David Shannon, since in our house, that’s so true. We do a lot of SpongeBob, too. We’re definitely a SpongeBob family.

Any new books in the works?

Yes! I think it might be called Small Town Gods. It’s about a boy, Ike, who wants to quit piano lessons so he can have more time to practice basketball. Ike’s piano teacher, who has special powers, offers to give Ike the perfect outside shot he wants, but in return, he can’t quit piano.

It’s like Drizzle, fantasy, but based in reality. I’m not a full fantasy person, but I’m not interested in the real, either. That’s why I love Charlotte’s Web.  And I love the fantastic in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, but at the same time I love those mundane details, like how Charlie’s dad works at a toothpaste factory. Writing this way is so much fun – I can’t imagine going back to writing adult novels. It feels like this is where I’m going to stay.