Author Holly Black at the premiere of "The Spiderwick Chronicles" held at the Paramount Studios Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. on January 31, 2008.

A best-selling author of contemporary fantasy novels for teens and children, Holly Black (www.blackholly.com) has recently had the joy of seeing one of her creations, the five-book The Spiderwick Chronicles series that she co-wrote with illustrator Tony DiTerlizzi, turned into a big screen movie from Paramount Pictures/Nickelodeon Movies. With over 6 million copies of the Spiderwick books sold, and translations in over 30 languages, Black is also the recipient of the Andre Norton Award for Excellence in Young Adult Literature for Valiant, the second book in a darker, edgier series of fairy books, that is also comprised of Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale and it’s 2007 sequel Ironside.

Black recently spoke with MediaBlvd Magazine about seeing her work come to life on the big screen.

MediaBlvd Magazine> How long have you been writing, and have you had any actual formal training?

Holly Black> I grew up in New Jersey, by the Jersey shore, in a weird old house there, which has shown up in many of my books. I went to college, as an English literature major, and graduated from Trenton State College, which is now the College of New Jersey. But, they didn’t have a lot of writing classes. I only took maybe one or two writing classes. I don’t have an MFA, or anything, so I don’t have any formal training. I never thought that there was much formal training available. But, there has been more, especially of late.

MediaBlvd> When did you know that you wanted to have a career as a writer? And, what was it about writing that made it so appealing to you?

Holly> When I was in 4^th grade, my best friend, who is an artist -- and I was also an artist then -- did better than me at art. There was an art contest, and she won. And, I won the writing contest. Therefore, I decided that there would be no more art for me, and that I would stick to what I was good at, in the 4^th grade. And, based on this arbitrary decision, for many years, I pursued writing. I suppose I had other motivations after that, but for many years, it was the petty motivation of distancing myself from all the painters that I knew. I wanted to be a writer for a very long time, but I just sort of let it go for awhile. Then, I came back to it after college. As a kid, I always really loved making up stories. I was one of the kids who was very loathe to give up dolls. And then, I was happy to find Dungeons & Dragons, where you could co-create a story, if it was within the constraints of this weird system. I’ve always really just enjoyed the process of making up stories, and talking about stories. One of the best things about being a writer is not just making up the stories, but being able to talk about them with other people, and talk about their stories.

MediaBlvd> Where did the confidence come from that enabled you to sit down and write your first novel?

Holly> I’ve never thought of it as particularly being about confidence. And, certainly, over the years, I have complained greatly about why I suck so much. Unlike going on stage and performing, you can make up stories and tell yourself, while you’re doing it, that you’re just doing it for yourself. In fact, that might even be a good thing to do because then you’re making up a story that’s for you, and you’re hitting the things that you really love, which are the things that you know best. I came from this place where, at first, I was writing this thing that was something I really liked, and was coming out of the things that I really liked. And, somewhere along the way, I realized that I was also writing because I wanted to write and sell a book, and I wanted my books to be out there in the world. But, it seems like such a distant and impossible goal that I never really thought about it very much, until my book was actually out there. It was a very different experience writing a second book because I realized the possibility of it actually being sold was much greater. It was a very different experience. Writing my first book, while I thought I cared about that and thought I was thinking about that, I wasn’t really thinking about it.

MediaBlvd> What was it about writing for children and the Young Adult audience that appealed to you? Do you want to write for a more adult audience as well, or do you just want to continue writing for that audience?

Holly> When I wrote my first book, I didn’t know it was a Young Adult book. I wrote Tithe in the tradition that fairly young protagonists are not uncommon in fantasy fiction. I made the main character 16 because I thought that, if she was any older, it would seem like she was really stupid that she hadn’t figured out that she was a fairy. There’s a statute of limitations on when you’re an idiot, if you haven’t figured it out. Also, coming of age and finding yourself and thinking about identity are concerns that fit more in becoming an adult. And, because I was in my early 20's, it was easier for me to have enough distance to write about that age than if I was writing about someone my own age, at the time. I had a friend who was a children’s librarian who said, “You’re writing a teen book.” I was like, “Surely not.” And, she said, “You have not read teen books in years. You have no idea.” And, she gave me all these really great books. What I had been thinking, and what I often tell people who ask me about teen books, is that, if you’re around my age, you think of YA books as being what is middle-grade now. There wasn’t a book category that you read into high school. You moved into adult books by then. So, I was really excited to learn that existed. After that, I really felt like, “Wow, this is something that I really want to do.” I remembered being that age and how much books had meant to me, so those are the reasons why I really like writing for that age. In many ways, Young Adult shares many of the characteristics of adult books, with the difference being that they address the concerns of being a teenager and they talk about things that are relevant to being a teenager. Otherwise, it’s not necessarily significantly different.

MediaBlvd> How did you start working with Tony DiTerlizzi on The Spiderwick Chronicles? And, how does that collaborative relationship work?

Holly> I was working on Tithe, and we were good friends. He had been talking about a Field Guide to fairies that he wanted to work on, and I really wanted him to work on it. I just really wanted to see him paint a lot of fairies. And so, I volunteered to do some of the research. I said, “I’ve been writing this fairy book for the last six years, and I have a lot of books laying around. If you want, I’ll put together some stuff for you.” And, he said, “Sure.” And then, I sold Tithe to his editor, so we were in the same place. He said, “I don’t really have time, so why don’t you write the little things for me,” and I said, “Sure, no problem.” And then, when we were talking more, our editor talked about writing the chapter books. I said, “Well, I’ve never written anything this young before,” so Tony said, “I will help.” So, I read a lot of books for that age group, and we sat down and just talked about what had to happen in the books. The process is different, and it’s this weird collaborative thing, so we wound up having a co-credit. We just do what we can to make it work. We push each other and give each other tons of feedback and ideas.                                          

MediaBlvd> How did you know that you and Tony would be able to have such a successful collaboration?

Freddie Highmore (center) with co-authors Tony DiTerlizzi & Holly Black at the premiere of "The Spiderwick Chronicles" held at the Paramount Studios Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. on January 31, 2008.

MediaBlvd> How did you determine the story you were going to tell?

Holly> From the perspective of the chapter books, I wanted to have the story feel really real, and have these kids have real problems. Jared’s brother, sister and mom are going through a divorce. Jared’s got a lot of anger that he doesn’t really know what to do with. And, it being really realistic makes the fantasy aspects seem even more real. This seems like something where, maybe if this is happening to him, it could happen to you. He’s not a kid with any special powers. Maybe if you look out of the corner of your eye, or you go wandering too deep into the woods, and you’re really unlucky, you could get into the same kind of trouble.

MediaBlvd> Because all five books from the first series were condensed into 90 minutes, is there anything you wish was in there that was cut out, or do you feel like the spirit of it was captured?

Holly> They’re little books, so it wasn’t so bad. But, I do think that they really captured the spirit. They really got the family and the character dynamics. When Jared comes on screen, it just gave me chills. I was like, “That’s Jared! That’s my boy!” And, if you walked through Arthur Spiderwick’s studio, you could open the drawers. Things that are never touched by any of the actors, you could open and there would be things inside of them, and things inside those things. It was insane. I wanted to live there forever.

MediaBlvd> What do you think of how the film looks? Is it anything like what you thought it would be? Does it live up to what you had envisioned for the story when you wrote it?

Holly> I don’t know if it’s the way I thought it would be. Having seen it through so many stages, I knew what it would be, by the time I saw it. But, it’s still just really surreal and amazing. It’s so weird to see something, that was once in your head, move around, especially seeing the creatures come to life. It’s really surreal, weird and wonderful. I think it looks great. Kids will really love it. It’s really fun. But, for me, the central experience is the strangeness of seeing something that I wrote about, seemingly, actually really be happening. It’s really weird.

MediaBlvd> Which creature is your favorite, either in the books or in the film?

Holly> This is an ongoing debate for me, but I would have to say that Thimbletack is my favorite. I love Thimbletack. His relationship with Jared is so great because he also has some anger issues that he’s working through. And, he could clean my house.

MediaBlvd> Why was Mark Waters, the director of Mean Girls, the appropriate choice to make this movie?

Holly> You wouldn’t think that Mark was an obvious choice, but he was involved in the process really early on. He really got that this was about folklore, and that this was about a world that isn’t good versus evil, but that is alien and strange, and right beside our world. He was so passionate about that, that he was absolutely the right director.

MediaBlvd> What was your first reaction, when you found out that Freddie Highmore would be playing both Jared and Simon? How did you feel about it, compared to what you think about it, now that you’ve seen his performance?

Holly> I was really happy, from the beginning. We had thought, for awhile, that they were going to get twins because they had initially talked about getting twins. And so, I was really excited about the idea of Freddie playing both roles because it meant that we were still going to get twins, and there’s also something really funny about it. And, he’s just a great actor. I had seen him in Finding Neverland and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and I think he’s really great. So, I was really pleased. It’s great to see him being Jared and Simon. He really does seem different, as both kids. When we were on the set, he said that he preferred Simon to Jared. I was like, “But, Jared’s the hero,” and he said, “Jared is mean.”

Media Blvd> What are the new Spiderwick Chronicles books are about, and what fans of the first series expect from it?

Holly> The Nixie’s Song is the first book. There’s three more books that are going to be Beyond the Spiderwick Chronicles books. In The Nixie’s Song, there are two different kids. They’re in Florida. It’s Nick and his stepsister, Laurie, and unlike in the first five books, where we have a family splitting up, this is about a family that’s coming together. Nick’s dad married Laurie’s mom recently, and they’re all trying to live together as a new family now. Nick has a much older brother, Jules, who is mostly out of the picture. Nick doesn’t believe in fairies, and has no particular interest in fairies, but Laurie is obsessed with them and she has purchased Arthur Spiderwick’s Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You at the bookstore because she’s determined to go out and find fairies. Basically, what Tony and I wanted to do was undermine some of the ideas about what a Spiderwick book is because as much as we said, “The Field Guide is not a magical book,” it seems like a magical book. It’s old, and it was discovered in this old house. We wanted to say, “It’s the knowledge that’s magical,” so a purchased Field Guide should get you into absolutely as much trouble as the original. Fairies in New England, in an old Victorian house, seems possible. But, fairies are everywhere, so there should also be fairies in a Florida development. That’s just as likely. And so, we went into it thinking that the fun of it would be exploring a different group of characters, and also transgressing some of the assumptions of the original books.

MediaBlvd> What was it about fairies that made you want to write about them? Was it something specific that interested you? Or, was there something specific that you wanted to say about them?

Holly> The thing I most wanted to say about them was that they’re not little girls with wings. That’s not the breadth and depth of what fairy is. There are many, many different creatures that fall under fairies. There are goblins, trolls, nixies and pixies, and every sort of different creature. In the folklore, they’re quite frightening. They would ruin crops, steal away children and adults, and curse people. They would do things that people often do not associate with them. And, the folklore is so interesting and so engaging that I hope people will become more familiar with it and enjoy it in the way that people have enjoyed werewolf folklore and vampire folklore. Specifically, I think boys would enjoy it a lot more than they think they would. I think there’s been a lot of pastel associated with fairies. I hope that, in some small way, Spiderwick can interest people more in it, as a diverse and dangerous folklore.

MediaBlvd> Your other fairy books are quite dark and edgy. Was there ever any concern with the subject matter, since they are categorized as Young Adult?

Holly> Surprisingly, I have never had to take anything out of those books, nor has anyone ever mentioned anything about it to me. It’s disturbing. But, they were like, “Okay. You and your crazy book. Go for it.” There’s quite a lot of edgy material in Young Adult. Robert Cormier’s Tenderness, which was published many years ago, is told from the point of view of a young serial killer, who kills people throughout the book. It’s a really tragic and beautiful book, but in terms of pushing the envelope, it’s certainly further out there than my work, which has some cursing. The middle book, Valiant, has drug related issues that it talks about, but that’s hardly surprising, in the field.

MediaBlvd> When your first book was so successful, did that make it more difficult for you to have the second book live up to that? Did you feel extra pressure about that, or are you able to block that sort of thing out?

Holly> I was really lucky, in that I had Tithe and then I had Spiderwick. I got to make my second book anxieties slightly more diffuse, by going over and doing something really different, and then coming back and doing another YA book. But, it didn’t help all that much. I was completely melting down when I was writing Valiant, and I think it was because Tithe had taken me six years. At that time, I was struggling to figure out how to make a book-shaped book. What is it that makes a book, a book? It’s a bunch of characters running around, yes, but there’s also this plot thing, and it all has to come together, in some way. Although, I figured that, by the end, I had hit on it, and it seemed that I had been like a monkey in front of a typewriter, who eventually typed out Shakespeare, except that it obviously wasn’t Shakespeare. If you do something long enough, eventually you’ll hit the right combination, but it didn’t necessarily mean that I could do it again. Because the Spiderwick books are so short, they’re quite rigorous, in terms of plotting. They really helped me clarify what I was doing. But, it still gave me a great deal of anxiety.

MediaBlvd> Do you also hope to see your YA books make it to the big screen as well?

Holly> I would love to see that. My fingers are crossed. We’re seeing more fantasy, especially contemporary fantasy, make it into movies, and that’s really exciting. I would love to see something that was urban fantasy come out as a film. There have been some things that sort of approach that, but I can’t think of too much with fairies. But, the success of Pan’s Labyrinth has made people more interested in fairies. Sure, I’d love it to be me, but I’d also just love to see a really great urban fantasy film. I’m encouraged by the fact that less traditional fantasies, like Stardust, are being translated. And, Spiderwick is contemporary fantasy. The kind of imagery in Pan’s Labyrinth, and having that be successful, suggests to me that people would like that type of film. With all the vampire and werewolf movies that have come out, I suppose I shouldn’t even say urban fantasy because that stuff has become urban fantasy. I still just think of urban fantasy largely as fairies, but it’s not really anymore.

MediaBlvd> Even though you write for children and young adults, you tend to work with very serious themes in your books. Has that been intentional? Are those issues that you wanted to address, or did they develop just out of you telling the story?

Holly> A lot of children’s literature addresses serious themes. One of the pleasures of being in this field is reading some of the really great books. With the drugs in Valiant, I definitely intended to write that. I had written a very short story, years ago, that was actually only published recently, that combined the fairy motif with drugs, and I knew I wanted to write that story. One of the things that was hardest about writing Valiant was that I wanted it to work, and I wanted it to feel right and real. It was challenging to do. I knew that that was what that book was about, and it was just trying to make it work. I didn’t want people to read the book and think, “Oh, don’t do fairy drugs. Okay.” It had to be more real than that.

MediaBlvd> When you’re writing fantasy, how important is it for you to make all of the non-fantasy aspects of your book as real as possible?

Holly> It’s really important because, if everything else feels real, then the magic seems possible. If nothing else feels real, then we’re in a fantasy and the magic is just part of the fantasy. In Spiderwick, dealing with the siblings not always being nice to each other, and having that real sibling relationship, where there’s a great deal of affection with a great deal of meanness, lets us believe that this could happen.

MediaBlvd> What are you working on now? And, do you have something that you’d like to do in the future, if given the chance?

Holly> The book that is the next book is always the most exciting book. It’s the book that will be the finest book I’ve ever written, just as soon as I get to it. It’s going to be great, until I actually get to it. I always think ahead to the books I just have little pieces of now and go, “Oh, that book’s going to be so easy. It’s going to be so great. It’s going to come together perfectly.” But, right now, I’m working on the next two Spiderwick books, which is a lot of fun. And, I finished a graphic novel. I have three graphic novels coming out from Scholastic, called The Good Neighbors. The first one comes out this year. The second of these next Spiderwick books comes out this September, and the third one comes out the September after that. After that, I have a book that I’m tentatively calling The White Cat, which is not about fairies at all. It’s about grifters, curse magic, private school and a cat in a dress.