I wrote A BOY CALLED BAT for the same reason I write all my books: because I felt compelled to. He came to me one night as I was driving: a boy with autism, whose initials spell “Bat,” who loves animals and vanilla yogurt. I felt Bat as clearly as I felt my own babies […]
Tag Archives: @ElanaKArnold
Creature Comforts and A Boy Called Bat by Elana K. Arnold
posted by donalynm
I was seven years old when my heart was broken for the first time, by a girl named Nona who didn’t want to be my friend anymore because I was “weird.” It was my cat Sabrina who absorbed my tears in her thick black pelt, who purred and licked and butted me with her head […]
Origins by Elana K. Arnold
posted by CBethM
Every story comes from somewhere. Maybe it’s from deep inside, a fear or a hope the author can hardly name. Maybe it’s a memory—the smell of magnolia flowers and summer sun, or the nose-twitchy pepper of a family barbeque. With my last middle grade novel, THE QUESTION OF MIRACLES, I didn’t immediately recognize where […]
PONDS AND BRAMBLES by Elana K. Arnold
posted by CBethM
By the time I was eight years old, I’d moved half a dozen times. My parents bought and sold houses, fixing each up and flipping it for a profit, before deciding when I was six to move us from urban Long Beach, California to rural Atascadero, halfway up the California coast, and onto a two-acre […]