If not guilt, then what? That’s when we gave her the unanswered question that Sylvie left behind. But that also meant re-imagining what was motivating Jules. But at some point, we decided that the guilt was getting in the way of the bigger story themes-hope, resilience, wishing-and we decided to switch those roles. Initially, she was the older sister and Sylvie was the younger, so the original Jules carried a lot of guilt around for not protecting her younger sister. I think that Alison had a very good grasp on small Senna from the get-go, but it took both of us a while to really figure out who Jules was. How did the individual characters of Jules and Senna develop? For a long time, what we really had were two stories that moved side-by-side, and it just took awhile to convince those two stories to overlap so that they made a single story. Of course, both of us were working on other projects too, but this story took its own sweet time. And I said “a lot,” I mean it was years of revising. Once we had a full draft, we spent a long summer weekend together trying to hammer out the details of the plot and the structure of it.

We would take turns with our chapters, tossing them back and forth to each other and eventually the story lines began to emerge. Initially, we each chose a character-Alison chose the fox and I chose Jules-from whose point of view we would write. Take me through the process of co-authoring. Plan? I never really intended to co-write a story, but Alison and I were so copacetic when it came to our views of the world and our notions of story that within the first week of our friendship we both agreed-maybe a co-authored story would be fun. Next thing we knew, the story began to take shape.ĭid you always plan on writing “Maybe a Fox” with Alison? She responded by saying something along the lines of “doesn’t it seem like there’s a story there?” Yes, I thought, there is a story there. One week she sent along the poem that we used as an epigraph and I sent her a quick note telling her how much I loved that poem.

Where did the idea for “Maybe a Fox” come from?įor several years Alison has maintained a listserv in which she sends out “Poem of the Week.” She chooses a poem and emails it to the folks who are on her list.

Kathi Appelt (Igor Kraguljak) Questions for Kathi Appelt: Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee are longtime friends and co-authors of the middle-grade novel, “Maybe a Fox.” The following is a complete transcript of their interviews with Cracking the Cover.

Maybe a Fox by Kathi Appelt