From Ben Guterson, the bestselling author of the “Winterhouse Trilogy,” his new captivating novel is a middle-grade book with emotional depth, an unforgettable setting and a winning cast of characters. Featuring a larger-than-life cast of diverse characters, “The World-Famous Nine” is a spellbinding mystery involving puzzles, art and high-stakes adventure.
Zander Olinga’s grandmother is the owner of the fabled Number Nine Plaza, the spectacular and infamous nineteen-story skyscraper. The Nine, as it’s called, has everything imaginable, including a massive Ferris wheel on its rooftop, monorail tracks suspended from its ceiling and twenty-five glass elevators. But there’s something evil looming in the shadows and strange accidents soon start befalling the guests. When Zander and his friend Natasha come across a series of inscriptions hidden throughout the walls of The Nine, they discover that the clues will lead them to a magical object that protects the store’s very existence. With the future of The Nine on the line, the pair are determined to recover the mysterious object before the luxury plaza and its many guests are destroyed.
In this thrilling mystery, Zander is determined to do whatever it takes to save his grandmother’s nineteen-story out-of-this-world department store. It’s a perfect novel for fans of “The Swifts” and “The Mysterious Benedict Society.”
Ben Guterson is the award-winning author of “The Einsteins of Vista Point,” which has sold into eight languages, as well as “Winterhouse,” an Edgar Award and Agatha Award finalist and an Indie Next List Pick, and its sequels, “The Secrets of Winterhouse”and “The Winterhouse Mysteries.”The Winterhouse trilogy is available in eleven languages worldwide. Ben created all the intricate mandala art for “The World-Famous Nine.”He lives near Seattle, and you can visit him online at benguterson.com.
For this interview, I wanted to ask Guterson about how he incorporated his more recent drawing talent into “The World-Famous Nine” along with his own experience as a teacher and how that drew him towards middle-grade books.
What inspired you to use sketching as artwork in this book? What do you think this art style accomplishes for a younger audience?
Kristina Kister did the fabulous interior illustrations for “The World-Famous Nine,” and Chloe Bristol did the beautiful cover; but I feel really fortunate to have some of my mandalas appear above each chapter heading in the book and also at a few other points throughout the story. I began drawing mandalas (freehand, with a pen, in a large notebook–the lines are kind of shaky when you look close!) over a year-and-a-half ago and quickly became sort of fascinated and obsessed with them. I just started drawing them as kind of a hobby, I suppose you could say—I found it very relaxing to work on mandalas, and I think they helped focus me a little bit and maybe even improved my writing.
My editor Christy at Little Brown Books for Young Readers made the brilliant suggestion that I ought to consider working them into my story as an aspect of the plot—and, ultimately, she ended up incorporating several of my drawings as actual illustrations in the book. I think the mandalas enhance the story, because they look sort of like little puzzles themselves, and in my book there are a lot of puzzling situations to solve, so I think the mandalas really fit the story. Truly, I’m amazed, because I never thought I would see my own artwork in one of my novels!
If you were spending a day at The Nine, which rooms would you want to explore and why?
If I were to spend a day at The Nine, I’d start by visiting the Sweets of The Nine candy shop and pick up a bag of Nine-Mint Meltaways. I love chocolate, and the Meltaways are the signature candy of The Nine. Next, I’d have a pot of vanilla black tea at Tatiana Trotsky’s Tea Retreat, because I’m a huge tea fan, and the Tea Retreat is an extremely cozy place to sit for an hour or two. After I enjoyed some tea, I’d head to the Magic Emporium because there are all sorts of interesting boxes there with hidden compartments in them, and I’d like to figure out how to open them. From there I’d go to the Hideaway Room and learn a little bit about card games and how to bluff an opponent at poker, because that seems like an interesting skill to learn. Following that, I’d go to The 360 restaurant on the eighteenth floor so I could take in the views of the city of Novatrosk while the floor rotated slowly in a full circle. And finally, I’d end on the rooftop, where I could ride the huge Winebee Wheel Ferris wheel and admire the mountains in the distance.
What about the middle-grade genre and reading audience inspires you to write for this grade range?
I’m drawn to write for a middle-grade audience in large part because I recall the thrill of losing myself in a good book when I was in the middle-grade period of my life. That love of books has always stayed with me, and so I found myself, as I grew older, wanting to write the sorts of books I enjoyed when I was young. Also, I feel middle-grade readers are old enough to have a mature understanding of the world without being too jaded. A few years down the line, their positions might become more rigid or zealous; but in the 8–12 age-range, I like to think kids are more open to a type of enchantment they might outgrow over their next half-decade. I’ve discovered I’m definitely more suited to write books that fit in that zone—pre-teen—and I enjoy creating stories that focus on young people and their adventures, whether mysterious, magical, or thrilling. I also like depicting some of the challenges people at that age might go through. All of which is to say: middle grade is where I feel most comfortable as an author—and I’m glad to have written “The World-Famous Nine” for this particular audience. I hope readers enjoy the story!
What do you think sets this book apart from your other books?
There are some hints of enchanted objects and some lurking supernatural elements in “The World-Famous Nine,” but this story relies less on straightforward magic than my previous books and is more grounded in realism. Also, unlike in my other books, my main character, Zander, is a little less bold than his new friend, Natasha Novikov, and so he has to find his way toward discovering a degree of courage that matches Natasha’s. In my previous stories, I think my main character was the more resolute or driven one in the friendship pairs I created. It was a challenge for me to come with a different sort of hero in this book, someone readers can root for—I hope—even though he might not seem the typical sort of hero, at least at the start of the story. I wanted to show Zander learning how to be brave, but that was a difficult thing for me to do, because I didn’t want him to be too timid early on or he might not be a very interesting character.
You used to teach high school as an English teacher. How do you think your previous career in education helped you as an author?
I think teachers have to have some skill at “reading” their students and understanding where their interests lie and what sorts of challenges they are facing. I like to think I gained some facility in these areas. In turn, I hope I’ve brought some measure of that understanding to my stories by writing about things young readers find engaging and that speak to their stage of life. Also, because I taught English, I was able to expose my students to all sorts of literature, and I think I was able to glean what sorts of stories “worked” and which ones didn’t. I liked to read aloud to some of my classes, as well, and I think by doing that I learned a bit about how to write sentences that flowed and had variety. I don’t know if I’ve been completely successful at bringing those learnings to my own writing, but I definitely feel they helped me along the way!
Many thanks to Ben Guterson for answering my questions! It was so beautiful to see your own art accompanied by your writing in this adventure-filled book.
I’d also like to thank Cheryl Lew from Little Brown of the Hachette Book Group for sending me this interview opportunity and a copy of “The World-Famous Nine” so I could enjoy it. Looking forward to working with you and HBG more this year.