Q&A with Steven Joseph

 

 

 

Steven Joseph is the author of Snoodles in Space: The Zoodles Strike Back!, a new graphic novel for kids. It's the latest in his Snoodles series. 

 

Q: Snoodles in Space: The Zoodles Strike Back! is the third in your series--did you know from the beginning that you’d be writing a series?

 

A: I actually did not.  The first Snoodles book could have easily been a stand-alone book. However, my illustrator bothered me to keep going, and I was writing stories for my Cranky Superpowers adult book, and it became easy to start pulling concepts from those stories into what became the first Snoodles in Space book.

 

Q: What do you think Andy Case’s illustrations add to the book?

 

A: We work closely together so he has always come up with ideas that just make the story better, and most importantly, more ridiculous.

Q: Did you know how the story would end before you started writing it, or did you make many changes along the way?

 

A: I write while I run, and it becomes a compilation of ideas that get developed, and once I am done, I start to write. We may make small changes along the way but they do not change the story.

 

Q: What inspired this plot of this third book?

 

A: I was watching Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I noted how there was a media frenzy surrounding the event when the kids with the golden tickets went to the Chocolate Factory, and I thought that the misbehaving kids probably did not get good press and may have ended up as the laughing stocks at school. 

 

So, I had the idea of making the misbehaving kids the heroes in the end.  It then became an easy story to write.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: The fourth Snoodle book, which will be titled Snoodles in Space: Escape from Zoodletraz.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb