I also learned, and this was a surprise, that she did have some desire to be popular and be cool.” “And I learned more about where her outside voice came from, and how connected it is to her own insecurities. “I learned that she’s much more tender than I thought she was,” Howe says. What did Howe end up learning about Addie, who was, as he puts it, “such a tough nut to crack?” Addie on the Inside is immensely readable, with an active and conversational tone. The result was certainly worth waiting for. I like taking pieces and making something out of them.” I think there are connections in all of these things. “I like to draw, and I love to do collage,” he says. If all of this sounds like a giant puzzle, Howe isn’t fazed. So it took a good two years to get the shape of the book.” “I was rearranging and physically trying to find where the story was. “At one point my dining room table was covered with all of these printed-out poems,” Howe remembers. He enjoyed the writing, but soon realized that all of his new poems needed to form a narrative whole.Ī letter from a young fan helped Howe discover the softer side of an outspoken character. This presented yet another hurdle, since Howe had never written a book in poetry. Howe realized he had been ignoring Addie’s soft side, and decided to explore what he calls her “inside voice.” He also decided that the best way to explore this part of Addie’s personality would be to write his novel in poetry. The girl wrote: “Addie’s got such a strong personality, but sometimes I think readers don’t actually know what her soft side is.” “I had tried so many different approaches, and nothing was working.”įinally, a letter from an eighth-grade fan put Howe on the right path. “Her voice can be kind of off-putting,” Howe admits during a call to his home in Yonkers, New York. But he had spent two unsuccessful years trying to capture the voice of the strong-willed and extremely outspoken Addie. He had already written one sequel, Totally Joe, about a gay seventh-grader in the group. Howe was determined to write a book about Addie Carle, one of the main characters in The Misfits, his 2001 novel about four middle school friends. Best-selling children’s author James Howe had written many books, but suddenly he was stuck.

Totally joe by james howe