Claudia Mills: On Stories Helping Us Understand Each Other
Claudia Mills is the author of Nixie Ness, Cooking Star, 7 x 9 = Trouble!, Zero Tolerance, Write This Down, and many other books for children. She was born in New York City in 1954. She received her bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College, her master’s degree from Princeton University, and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. She also received an MLS degree from the University of Maryland, with a concentration in children’s literature.
She had a second career as a professor of philosophy at the Colorado at Boulder, until leaving that career in 2014 to write full time. She now teaches in the graduate program in children’s literature at Hollins University in Roanoke, Virginia. She has two sons, Christopher and Gregory, and one dog named Tanky. All of her books have been written between 5:00 and 7:00 in the morning while drinking Swiss Miss hot chocolate. Find her on Facebook.
Claudia Mills
Photo by Laura Roettiger
In this interview, Claudia discusses the inspiration behind her new middle-grade novel, The Last Apple Tree, her hope for readers, and more!
Name: Claudia Mills
Literary agent: Stephen Fraser, The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency
Book title: The Last Apple Tree
Publisher: Holiday House/Margaret Ferguson Books
Release date: June 18, 2024
Genre/category: Middle-grade realistic fiction
Previous titles: 62 previous books. Several of the most recent are: The Lost Language; Nixie Ness, Cooking Star; Vera Vance, Comics Star; Write This Down; Zero Tolerance
Elevator pitch: Starring an old apple tree, lone survivor of a vanished orchard, the story features two seventh graders (a girl and a boy) who uncover the tree’s secrets in the course of interviewing her grandfather for an oral history project, in the process healing ancient griefs and repairing frayed family relationships.
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What prompted you to write this book?
A few years ago, I read an article in a newsletter from the University of Colorado about the Boulder Apple Tree Project, created to preserve the genetic heritage of heirloom apple trees as well as the stories associated with them. Ooh! I have a weakness for people who are trying to save things, especially things most people don’t notice or care about. So, I started to grope toward how this could find its way to becoming a middle-grade novel.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I set the idea aside for a few years while working on other projects. When I returned to it, I realized I wanted the tree itself to have a voice in the story, via poems from the tree’s memories, inserted throughout chapters told in alternating viewpoints from Sonnet and Zeke. And I realized that the best way to uncover the tree’s stories would be through a school oral history project which would pair these two kids together in an unlikely partnership.
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
The biggest surprise was a completely lovely one! Usually everything in publishing takes forever. This time, though, my editor replied within four hours of receiving the manuscript from my agent to say she just meant to take a peek, but couldn’t stop reading and loved it, and would take it to an editorial meeting. Less than a week later, we had an offer—a record for me in my four decades in this business!
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
I am somewhere in between a plotter and a pantser. I always know where the story needs to go, but I’m often not sure how it is going to find its way there. My characters often figure this out faster than I do. So, I knew that Zeke and Sonnet would be paired together to interview Sonnet’s grandfather, to Sonnet’s dismay, but I did not realize that Zeke himself would take the initiative of signing up to do this, thus setting up good conflict between these two characters. I knew that Zeke would live in dread of his environmental activist father speaking at a school assembly, but I did not realize that Sonnet would be the agent of making this happen—conflict intensified! Both Zeke and Sonnet turned out, fortunately, to have minds of their own.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
I hope they will see the power of stories, even painful ones, to help us understand one another and ourselves. It would be lovely if young readers took an interest in interviewing their own aging family members to uncover meaningful details about their past lives. And of course, I would be delighted if they took an interest in trees, especially heirloom trees that offer a unique gift to the world.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
I guess my advice would be for them to find a process that works for them and trust that process. I always start a book a bit uncertain of where this story will take me, but I’ve learned that surprises along the way are part of my process, and one that thrills me every time one appears.
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