Book Divas

Interview with Jenny Han, author of The Summer I Turned Pretty.

Did you have a special place you spent your summers as growing up? What is your favorite summer beach location now?

Growing up, we spent a lot of time in Nags Head in North Carolina.  We’d go to the Wright Brothers museum every year and play on the dunes.  My favorite summer spot now is Cape Cod—love the general store and the drive-in and all the roadside seafood places.

I read on your website that your favorite book is I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith. (This is one of my favorites as well!) Were you influenced by this in any way when you were writing The Summer I Turned Pretty?  It is also about a young girl caught in the time between childhood and adulthood while negotiating first love and complicated family dynamics.

I don’t think I was influenced directly per se, but I think everything I’ve ever read or watched and loved comes out somewhere in my writing.  Good stories never leave you.  They change you.

The parents of both families in the book are divorced or separated and this brings an additional complexity to the whopping number of things that Belly, Jeremiah, Conrad, and Steven have to deal with during the summer. This is definitely almost the norm these days for many families so how do you think this shapes teens’ attitudes towards relationships and love?

I think that it teaches kids that love isn’t necessarily permanent, that over time, it can change.  I think it’s part of why Belly clings to this idea of first love, because it’s something steady in her life and it’s something she can count on.

Is there a specific time that this book takes place? I was curious as I was reading because there are references to Pearl Jam and Nirvana but then the kids use cell phones.

No specific time period, just contemporary—but certainly my coming of age in the 90s influenced the book.

You work part time in a school library. Are you inspired by the kids you work with?

You know, I get asked this a lot, and I always say the same thing.  Which is, not really.  I work at a progressive private school on the Upper West Side, and my kids are amazing and knowledgeable in the way that city kids are.  City kids are pretty hard to impress.  They can go to a Broadway matinee if they feel like it, they take the subway alone, they are secure in the knowledge that they live in one of the greatest cities in the world.  People dream of living in New York City, of escaping wherever they’re from—it’s a place to aspire to.

But the kind of kids I like to write about are the suburban kids, who rely on parents to give them rides to the mall and who have to make their own kind of fun.  It’s a different kind of knowledge, and I also think it’s a different way of looking at the world.  I saw my first Broadway show on my senior class trip to NYC.  The show was Rent, and it was amazing.  I didn’t fully understand everything, but I knew it was special and important, and it was a treat.  And now I live in New York, and I still get excited about going to a Broadway show. 

I love it that you have playlists for both the books you’ve written. Sometimes I feel like I can see the music that might go along with some books I read and this generally happens with the books that move me the most. Is this stuff that inspired you while you were writing or do you come up with the tracks later as a complement to the novels?

I based the playlist on music I listened to while writing the book—the songs that got me right in the gut, that helped bring emotions to the surface.  Like “Every time we touch” by Cascada, for instance.  It’s so cheesy, and I almost didn’t want to add it to the soundtrack for fear of being judged—but my gosh, I listened to that song on repeat while writing the book.  Every time I heard it, I could feel the urgency and the yearning and the “Oh-my-God-I-love-him-so-bad-I-could-die.”  I could just picture Belly listening to it on repeat.

Did you always know that you wanted to write? How did you end up writing for young readers specifically?  Do you have any advice for aspiring writers?

I always loved to write, but I didn’t always know that it was a possibility as a career.  It just seemed so out there, so far-off.  Writing for a living is basically a dream come true—a dream I didn’t even let myself have.  My advice for aspiring writers is not to rush it.  To really take your time and hone a thing and shine it before showing it to people.  Because, the moment someone has a question or a criticism that you’re not prepared to hear, it can really deflate you and take some of your joy in the work away.  And I think it’s important to hear critique and mull it over and see if you can’t make this story of yours better.

As a teen what were some of your favorite books? As an adult what are your current favorites?

As a teen, I loved Paula Danziger and Judy Blume but also the trashy stuff you’re not supposed to read—like V.C. Andrews.  Right now, I am loving The Hunger Games series, The Time Traveler’s Wife, Amy Hempel, the Sookie Stackhouse books, Kazuo Ishiguro, Curtis Sittenfeld.

I also just read on your blog that you just turned in a sequel to the book! Any hints of what’s to come with Belly?

Well, let’s see… I think Belly is going to grow up a little bit in Book 2.  She starts to see both Conrad and Jeremiah in new and different ways.

Finally, do you think we ever get over our 1st love?

Wow.  Amazing question!  That’s what the book is all about!  I think that if you truly loved a person, like more than anything, the answer is no.  I think you always reserve a tiny place in your heart for them because they were there first.  When I was in high school, I wrote in my diary that one day, I was going to look back and think I wasn’t in love, that none of it was real, that I was just a kid.  But I would know that it was real. 

I think that’s why I write books for teens.  Because when we are young, everything is so amplified and passionate and earnest, life and death.  And when we get older, we forget, and we diminish what we once felt because we have bigger things to compare it to now.  But it’s all relative, isn’t it?  In the end, I think there is nothing like first love, because it is pure and untainted by life and getting older and wiser.

Jenny’s The Summer I Turned Pretty Playlist:

Side A:

Stars: You’re Ex-lover Is Dead

Beck: Lost Cause

Manchester Orchestra: I Can Feel a Hot One

Cat Power: The Greatest

Dashboard Confessional: Stolen

The Smiths: Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want

Iron and Wine: Sea and the Rhythm

Cascada: Every Time We Touch

Leona Lewis: Bleeding love

Side B:

Seals and Croft: Summer Breeze

Vampire Weekend: Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa

The Avett Brothers: If It’s the Beaches

Band of Horses: The Funeral

Beach House: All the Years

Camera Obscura: Books Written for Girls

Cary Brothers: Blue Eyes

Jenny Smith: Godspeed

Yo La Tengo: The Summer

Cyndi Lauper: When you were mine

Jenny Han (Han like Han Solo, not Han like hand) was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. She went to college at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Go Heels!) and she went on to graduate school at the New School in New York City, where she received her MFA in Writing for Children. She lives in Brooklyn and works part-time at a school library on the Upper West Side.