The final poem in the book gives the reader some information about the nature of what happened, but it isn’t Maddie’s primary focus, so it can’t be the reader’s either.īB: I was in awe of how resourceful and resilient Maddie was surviving on her own. By the time she’s finally reunited with her parents (spoiler alert!), she’s been alone for so long and she’s so relieved, that the cause of the evacuation is secondary to being with the people she loves and has been craving for three and a half years. When she’s left alone, she becomes concerned about possible threats to her safety, but she doesn’t have much information so she can only imagine what might be safe or dangerous. As a seventh grader in the beginning of the book, she’s not paying much attention to events happening beyond her friendships and her life in school.
MF: The entire story is told through Maddie’s point of view, and so the reader can only ever know what Maddie knows. Is there a reason you kept the evacuation a mystery? The prose had served the plot, but the poetry freed the story.īB: In ALONE, Maddie’s town is evacuated but it is never explained why. This allowed me to get inside Maddie’s head and explore the solitary and sensory nature of her experience. I rewrote the story in verse, using first person voice and present tense. After many rounds of revisions, submissions, and feedback from multiple sources, I began again, this time tapping into my experience and skill as a poet. I first wrote the book in prose, third person voice, and past tense. MF: The writing of the book went through many iterations and took many years. What if they couldn’t reach anyone for help? What if no one came back? What would they do? How would they survive? I couldn’t get the idea out of my head and it became the seed of the story.īB: Did you plan to write ALONE in verse or did that evolve as you were in the writing process? I asked them to imagine what it would be like for them to come home after school to find everyone in the entire town gone. The greater challenge was being alone for eighteen years. I pointed out that the island was her home, and she was already comfortable there. We read Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell and the girls were fascinated by how Karana could survive alone on an island. MF: The genesis for the story came from a mother-daughter book club gathering when my daughter and her friends were in fifth grade.
I am so thrilled to have had the opportunity to talk with author Megan Freeman about ALONE, her debut middle grade novel in verse which celebrates its book birthday today! I was blessed to read an ARC of ALONE and am so excited that Maddie’s story is published and available for all to read.īB: Hi Megan! Welcome to Beagles and Books! Congratulations on ALONE! How did you get the idea to write this compelling novel?
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