{"id":12762,"date":"2011-05-02T15:15:48","date_gmt":"2011-05-02T19:15:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookdragon.si.edu\/?p=12762"},"modified":"2015-08-17T09:57:10","modified_gmt":"2015-08-17T13:57:10","slug":"author-interview-jenny-han","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/apa.si.edu\/bookdragon\/author-interview-jenny-han\/","title":{"rendered":"Author Interview: Jenny Han [in Bookslut]"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Jenny<\/a>In case you were unsure, that\u2019s Jenny Han<\/a> as in \u201cHan Solo,\u201d not Han as in \u201chand.\u201d Befitting of the bestselling young adult author that she is, she can recite all the dialogue from the cult film Clueless<\/em>, and she gladly admits her adoration for Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/em>. She can eat sour gummy cherries nonstop, and likes her chocolate cake cold. If you\u2019re nice, she might just make you the perfect brownie. She wouldn\u2019t mind being Oprah\u2019s best friend, although she\u2019d also be great as Santa\u2019s helper. She might have liked to have had Atticus Finch for a father, although she\u2019s pretty content with the parents she got, not to mention the little sister: \u201cMy sister was born two days after Christmas, and I always say she was the best Christmas gift my parents ever gave me. I love her more than chocolate cake, gummies, anything!\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s Han\u2019s very special talent for nicknaming people and stuffed animals. That skill has definitely served her well while writing her novels, beginning with her first, Shug<\/em>, which debuted in 2006 for middle-grade readers. Han perfectly captures the changing, questioning voice of 12-year-old Annemarie Wilcox, better known as Shug, with her complex mother, her distant father, her difficult older sister \u2013 and, most importantly, her new feelings for her whole-life best friend.<\/p>\n

Three years later came the first of the Belly Trilogy, so named for about-to-turn-sweet-16 Isabel whose real life revolves around the summers at the beach, where two best friend mothers and their two children each spend idyllic months together. In 2009\u2019s The Summer I Turned Pretty<\/a><\/em>, Belly arrives transformed, and Jeremiah and Conrad, two brothers she\u2019s known her entire life, finally take notice. While Shug<\/em> was fluffy fun, Summer<\/em> was a sighing, dreamy pleasure. It\u2019s one of those books that we mothers passed around to each other, any guilt over depriving our children relieved by our own nostalgic enjoyment of reliving that impossibly carefree feeling of abandoned youth.<\/p>\n

Then came It\u2019s Not Summer without You<\/a>,<\/em> in 2010, when the death of Jeremiah and Conrad\u2019s mother turns the summer family upside down, and the grieving survivors must work their way back together again. This month, the third installment, We’ll Always Have Summer<\/a><\/em>, finally arrives.<\/p>\n

In between the Belly books, Han released another standalone title for MG readers, her first with a specifically ethnic protagonist. Like Han, the eponymous Clara Lee in Clara Lee and the Apple Pie Dream<\/em><\/a>, published earlier this year, is Korean American, \u201cwhich means I was born in America but my blood is Korean,\u201d as Clara Lee explains. Like Han, Clara Lee is also spunky, imaginative, and just naughty enough to be lots of fun. And like Han, Clara Lee also has quite the memorable little sister: \u201cEmmeline [the younger Lee] is based on [my sister]. In fact, I gave the illustrator Julia Kuo<\/a> pictures of us from when we were little!\u201d<\/p>\n

So, being of Asian background, did you grow up with a \u201cTiger Mother\u201d? A \u201cPanda Father\u201d?<\/strong>
\nHa! To a degree, yes. My mom forced both my little sister and me to take piano lessons, we did math flashcards at night, we went to Korean school every Saturday morning. But both of my parents have always been incredibly supportive of my writing and of creativity in general. My sister loved to swim, I loved to read \u2013\u00a0whatever we had a passion for, my parents supported. Besides, it became evident pretty quickly that I was never going to be a piano whiz or a mathlete. One other tigerish thing though\u00a0\u2013\u00a0we weren\u2019t allowed to go on sleepovers! That was the thing I longed for most of all \u2013 sleepovers. [… click here for more<\/a>]\n

Author interview<\/strong>: Feature: “An Interview with Jenny Han,” Bookslut.com, May 2011<\/a><\/p>\n

Readers<\/strong>: Middle Grade, Young Adult<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you were unsure, that\u2019s Jenny Han as in \u201cHan Solo,\u201d not Han as in \u201chand.\u201d Befitting of the bestselling young adult author that she is, she can recite all the dialogue from the cult film Clueless, and she gladly admits her adoration for…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28218,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,38,30,6535,31],"tags":[6608,33,75,10,11,123,1947,1852,13,129,39,42,1948,170,44,1949,1950],"class_list":["post-12762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-author-interview-profile","category-fiction","category-korean-american","category-middle-grade-readers","category-repost","category-young-adult-readers","tag-bookdragon","tag-bookslut","tag-death","tag-family","tag-friendship","tag-illness","tag-its-not-summer-without-you","tag-jenny-han","tag-love","tag-mother-daughter-relationship","tag-parent-child-relationship","tag-series","tag-series-belly-trilogy","tag-sibling-rivalry","tag-siblings","tag-summer-i-turned-pretty","tag-well-always-have-summer"],"yoast_head":"\nAuthor Interview: Jenny Han [in Bookslut] - 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