Q&A with Lisa Rogers

 

 

Lisa Rogers is the author of the new children's picture book biography Woody's Words: Woodrow Wilson Rawls and Where the Red Fern Grows. Her other books include Beautiful Noise. She lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.

 

Q: What inspired you to write a picture book biography of author Woodrow Wilson Rawls (1913-1984)?

 

A: As an elementary school librarian, I diligently (and joyfully!) read as many books in that 11,000-book collection as possible in order to recommend them to students and teachers and use them for my own lessons. But though my daughter read Where the Red Fern Grows, I never had.

 

After one of my avid readers told me how much the book moved him, I brought it home and read it that afternoon. I was amazed to discover, in a slim note at the end, that Rawls had no access to books until he was a teen. That he achieved what he did struck me, a librarian with a seemingly hopeless dream of becoming an author, to the depths of my soul.

 

That was the spark, and that kind of visceral reaction is necessary for to me to create a spark in readers, too.

 

Little did I know what challenges he faced, until I did my research.

 

Q: What do you think Susan Reagan’s illustrations add to the book?

 

A: Susan’s illustrations are stunning! They are tender, heartfelt, and glowing, and create an emotional setting for the story that could not be more perfect. I am in awe of what she’s created.

 

And those hounds! I have rescued two hunting hounds, and just as Rawls captures hounds in words, Susan captures their essence in her beautiful art.

 

Q: How did you research Rawls’s life, and did you learn anything that especially surprised you?

 

A: Well, Woody was a true storyteller. There exists online fabulous audio of him sharing his life story, and as I listened, his kindly, folksy voice and manner totally drew me in.

 

After researching, I was stunned to learn that he had been jailed several times during his life. Through public records, I found that he gave false names during some of his several arrests and false data in other instances, such as his marriage certificate, where he made himself a bit younger!

 

But prison records also show that he often pled guilty, and once, when he escaped while working in the prison gardens, returned on his own.

 

I have no doubt that Woody had a good heart, and that without Sophie, he might never have realized his lifelong dream of becoming an author.

 

Other research methods included newspaper accounts, interviews with family members and historians, and even speaking with a teacher who hosted Woody in her home and classroom.

 

Q: The Booklist review of the book says, “If one book should come with a hanky, it’s Where the Red Fern Grows, but this profile of its author packs an emotional punch, too...” What do you think of that description?

 

A: It's spot on!! My daughter cried when she read Red Fern in third grade, tearfully asking how Rawls could make readers love those dogs so much and then write that heartbreaking ending.

 

She is far from alone. One week after the Saturday Evening Post serial ended, the magazine received 129 letters praising the excerpt of Woody's story. Of those, 27 writers confessed that they cried at the end.

 

“The last part was so sad that most of us cried,” wrote one fourth-grader, whose teacher read it aloud. “I like the last part best.”

Even today, social media posters commonly refer to the tears they shed after reading the book. A dear friend recently read it to her grandchildren, and they had the same reaction as that fourth-grader back in 1961.

 

I’m honored that Woody’s Words has an emotional impact, too. I get choked up just thinking about what he would have lost, and what we readers would have lost, had he never been published. And by extension, thinking about possibilities that need to be nurtured within the lives of others.

 

Q: What are you working on now?

 

A: I'm revising a picture book biography about which I’m very excited, and there is one nonfiction story dear to my own heart that I must tell when I am ready to do it justice.

 

Q: Anything else we should know?

 

A: I am grateful to Woody and Sophie’s family members for trusting me. They were generous in sharing their memories. Their love of Woody and Sophie shone through as they did so.

 

Their own words about Woody and Sophie are printed on the back of the book and also are on my website, lisarogerswrites.com. It is a privilege to tell this story, and I hope that readers love it and take it into their own hearts.

 

--Interview with Deborah Kalb. Here's a previous Q&A with Lisa Rogers.