Sunday Brunch: A Chat with 3 Amazing Authors

Aurora: What was your inspiration behind Ground Zero?

Alan Gratz: My middle school readers often ask me to write books about different topics they’re interested in, and the number one request I’ve gotten over the years is to write a book about the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. 2021 will mark the twenty year anniversary of 9/11, which is kind of a stunner if you haven’t thought about it already. To me it feels like it was both forever ago and like it happened only yesterday. But the thing those of us who lived through that day have to remember is that September 11^th happened before middle schoolers were born, and for most kids, anything that happened before they were born is ancient history. My own daughter is eighteen years old this year, and going off to her first year of college, and she was born the year after 9/11. If ever there was a time for me to tackle a book about 9/11, 2021 seemed to be the year to do it.

I tried once, perhaps six or seven years after 9/11, to write a story about that day for what became my 2009 novel The Brooklyn Nine. What I quickly realized was that the wound was still too raw for me and for my editor at the time, who had been in New York City when it happened. What I ended up writing was a story not about that day, but about a kid trying to find purpose in his life again after a house fire and a debilitating leg injury—a metaphor, of course, for the way I and so many other Americans had trouble finding motivation and joy after the heartbreak and devastation of 9/11. I was ready to write about recovery then, but not about the trauma itself.

I’m ready now. Not just to write about that day, but what’s happened in the twenty years since. And young readers are ready to read about it. Too often, the adults in their lives are still living with the scars of that day, just as I couldn’t write about it ten years ago. I also think there’s a widespread but often unspoken understanding that we screwed up our response to 9/11, both in the days and months that followed, and in the two decades since. The end result is that a lot of American adults just don’t talk about 9/11. So kids have heard about the attacks, they know the basic facts about that day, but they haven’t been able to dig any deeper. They don’t know what it felt like to watch the Twin Towers come down that day, or what life in America was like before 9/11, and how that day changed us. This year I was finally ready to write that book.

Please describe the content of Ground Zero. 

Ground Zero is the story of two different kids, one nine, one eleven. Brandon, the nine-year-old, is an American boy who is in the north tower of the World Trade Center when the first plane hits on the morning of September 11, 2001. Reshmina, the eleven-year-old, is an Afghan girl whose village becomes a battleground between the United States Army and the Taliban on September 11, 2019—part of a war we’re still fighting, nearly twenty years later, because of the events of 9/11. Told in alternating chapters, the novel follows both young people as they try to survive.

Tell us what to expect from this book.

I hope Ground Zero will show young readers the realities of 9/11 and the resulting War in Afghanistan, and lead them to question the origins and legacies of both. That was an important part of it for me—to not just write about that day, but about the twenty years since.

Why do you feel books with powerful and unique themes are so popular and have such a voice right now? 

More and more, middle grade readers are choosing to read books like mine that tackle social issues because the social issues have come to them. They’ve been going through Active Shooter drills since they were in elementary school. They have refugees and immigrants as classmates. They hear racist and intolerant rhetoric from political leaders on the news. They see police in communities across the United States killing Black people and attacking protestors. Middle grade readers don’t have the luxury of thinking about home and school and the neighborhood anymore. They are shaping their views of the larger world right now, in grade school, because the world is forcing them to. I think that’s why middle schoolers in particular have responded so enthusiastically to my books. Because beyond writing a story they can’t put down, I’m also tackling questions they themselves have about the larger world.

What’s next for you in the bookish world? 

I’m currently writing the script for what will be a graphic novel version of my novel Refugee. After that, I’m going to write a novel about climate change for middle grade readers.

Who is your current favorite writer? Why? 

Jason Reynolds has been an insta-buy for me for a few years now. I love everything he writes. His middle grade track series, including the books Ghost, Patina, Sunny, and Lu, are great. The book he wrote five years ago with Brendan Kiely about the effects of police brutality on a community, All American Boys, is unfortunately as important and relevant today as it was then. And Long Way Down, a novel that spans just sixty seconds of a boy’s life as he tries to decide if he’s going to murder the guy who killed his older brother, is simply brilliant.

Any writing advice for aspiring writers?  

Read a lot and write a lot! That’s really the only way you get better—but studying what others have done, and by practicing doing it yourself over and over again.

Last but not least, Safia Elhillo!