Rosanne Parry is the author of nine novels for young readers, which have been translated into more than 14 languages, as well as a bookseller at Annie Bloom’s. She lives with her family in an old farmhouse in Portland, Oregon, and writes in a treehouse in her backyard.
In A Wolf Called Wander, Swift, a young wolf cub, lives with his pack in the mountains, learning to hunt, competing with his brothers and sisters for hierarchy, and watching over a new litter of cubs. Then a rival pack attacks, and Swift and his family scatter. Alone and scared, Swift must flee and find a new home. His journey takes him a remarkable 1,000 miles across the Pacific Northwest.
When asked what contributed to the book landing on the USA Today bestseller list, Parry said: “As both a traditionally published children’s author and an indie bookseller at Portland’s famous Annie Bloom’s Books, I can say for certain that there’s always a bit of mystery to which books hit bestseller lists.” She was sure of two things that made no difference: her social media platform and engagement on Amazon, both of which are minimal. However, she did write a New York Times article, published on April 17, recommending kids’ books that celebrate the great outdoors.
Since the Voice of the Wilderness series is for middle-grade readers, Parry’s background in education (with a specialization in reading) was invaluable. “I know what a middle-grade reader likes. I know what they need emotionally and developmentally. And I know what makes a sentence easy or hard to read,” she said. “I take many extra revision passes to make sure I’ve built in the context that my readers need. … I go through sentence by sentence, making sure each one is as grammatically straightforward as I can make it.”
Parry also considered her secondary audience of teachers, librarians, and parents—the buyers. “My books are read aloud often, so at every stage of the process I read the text aloud, making word and pacing choices to ease the fluidity as I go,” she said. “A children’s book needs to be put-down-able … so that the parent or teacher reading the book can say, ‘What do you think about that?’” When revising, she thinks of paragraph and chapter breaks as invitations to pause and discuss.
Parry also cited her publisher as an important partner in the book’s bestseller success. “I knew I wanted a traditional publisher for A Wolf Called Wander. The UK publisher, Andersen Press, loved the text but found the wilderness of eastern Oregon ‘too exotic’ for her British audience. Her solution: illustrations—more than 100 of them. It was a huge investment for a small publisher … [but] the book sold five translations before it was in print and then they sold American rights to HarperCollins for five times what Andersen Press paid me.”
E. J. Wenstrom believes in complicated heroes, horrifying monsters, purple hair dye and standing to the right on escalators so the left side can walk. She writes dark speculative fiction for adults and teens, including her new release, a young adult dystopian novel titled Departures (August 10, 2021). When she isn’t writing fiction, E. J. Wenstrom is a regular contributor to DIY MFA and BookRiot, and co-hosts the Fantasy+Girl Podcast. Learn more at her website.
