CPC: I think so. Actually I think working from the older point of view is easier. A lot of times people say to me that they think writing for children must be easy, but I think the opposite is true. I think the younger the protagonist, the more difficult it is to keep the story going. A younger person doesn’t have the vocabulary or the insights that an older one would, so you have to find other ways of doing it. I had a great time working with Luther T. Farrell, who is 15 years old, because I think I could have him say a lot of things that neither Kenny Watson nor Bud Caldwell could say.

Q: Was there a reason for the shift in Bucking The Sarge to an older age group?

CPC: I have no idea. Once I sit down and start to write, I get the voice of the character. And what I write first, I have no idea where that will fit in the story. It might be the beginning, it might be the middle, and it might be the end. But whatever it is, it just gives me some insights into the character. And I know I’ve really got the character, and I’m really on a roll, when I sit down and the voice is there right away, I don’t have to do a lot of things that take me off to side tracks and things I won’t be able to use in the story.

Q: All of your books are set in different time periods: Bud, 1930s Depression era; Watsons, 1963; and Sarge in the present. Do you find any particular time periods more difficult to write about or more interesting for you as writer?

CPC: To answer the first question, I think the contemporary was probably the most difficult for me to write about. And I think that’s because I was not really familiar with the language of younger people at this time. My son is 25, and my daughter is 12. They’re kind of in the middle, or on either end of Bucking the Sarge. I really do enjoy writing historical fiction, I found out. I like the fact that you can go back and pick up the language from reading books of the time, watching movies of the time. There are lots of different things you can do. But I definitely think I enjoy writing historical fiction.

Q: Bucking The Sarge is different than your previous two books. How is it different and why?

CPC: Well, because of the fact that it is contemporary, I’m not dealing with something that happened in the past. It gives you more freedom in some ways, I think. With history you’re kind of constrained, constrained in what you can write about. If it’s something that is contemporary, you can really go anywhere you want with it. And as I said earlier, it was easier in many ways with the older narrator.

Q: The role of family, which is such a strong identifier in your previous two books, is very different in Bucking The Sarge. Could you tell us a little more about that?

CPC: One of my favorite writers, Kurt Vonnegut, once said that every human endeavor is the search for family, and I really do believe that. And all three of the books are about family in different ways: in The Watsons Go To Birmingham—1963 it is about a very strong family; in Bud, Not Buddy, it’s about a boy searching for a family; and in Bucking The Sarge, what we have is a boy trying to get out of the family that he’s in and go to some different kind of a family. So I think I’m naturally drawn to families. There must be some reason. My family life, when I was a child, was very good; I had very loving parents. They made things very easy for us. So I’m not exactly sure why I’m stuck with families. I seem to be stuck with families and Flint.