A lot of times these books are read by a parent a chapter a night.
So you want to check that that experience has something for the kids and also something for the parents.
August citesTo Kill a Mockingbirdas a primary inspiration in this tactic.
Credit: Araya Diaz/WireImage; Roaring Brook Press
I grew up in Colorado.
My normal life and then the life I was leading out in the woods.
Rather than adapt his book, I think I want to write my own he recounts.
So that night I started writingArlo Finch.
I wrote the first chapter and its still the first chapter.
In third grade, August was asked to write a letter to a famous person for a school assignment.
While his classmates penned fan letters to Joe Namath and Farrah Fawcett, he wrote to Roald Dahl.
It was a form postcard, but I still have it to this day.
Screenplays are just ruthlessly efficient, he explains.
Its only what you see and what you hear and what the characters are saying.
This inevitably led to asking a lot of questions of himself and his family as well.
So I ended up talking with my mom and my brother, he says.
Their recollection of events was vastly different than my recollection.
In this case, it was a series of novels.
Arlo Finch and the Valley of Firehits shelves on Feb. 6.
