Laurie Halse Anderson Discusses ‘Rebellion 1776’ –

A podcast interview with Laurie Halse Anderson discussing Rebellion 1776 on The Growing Readers Podcast, a production of The Children’s Book Review.

Acclaimed author Laurie Halse Anderson shares insights into her creative process, from her early morning writing habits to how she navigates the challenges of historical research.

Anderson, whose books have sold over eight million copies worldwide, discusses her latest novel, Rebellion 1776, set during the American Revolution’s Siege of Boston and the smallpox epidemic. She reveals how historical fiction can help young readers process current events by offering perspective through the experiences of relatable characters facing similar challenges in different times.

Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a history enthusiast, or a parent looking for meaningful books for young readers, this episode offers valuable insights into how great stories can bridge the gap between past and present. Anderson’s passion for making history accessible and exciting shines through as she discusses her mission to craft adventure stories grounded in careful research that honors young readers’ intelligence.

Press play to discover how Anderson transforms historical events into page-turning adventures that both educate and inspire young readers.

Subscribe to The Growing Readers Podcast to ensure you never miss an episode celebrating the creators shaping young readers’ lives.

Listen to the Episode

Read the Transcript

Bianca Schulze: Well, hello, Laurie. Welcome to the Growing Readers podcast.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Thank you so much.

Bianca Schulze: My gosh. I mean, I am so over the moon. I’ve been reading your books for a while and I’m so grateful that you’re here today. I am hoping just for fun, we could do some warm-up rapid-fire questions.

Laurie Halse Anderson: All right, let’s go.

Bianca Schulze: Okay, ready? Coffee or tea when writing?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Coffee.

Bianca Schulze: What’s your go-to snack during a writing session?

Laurie Halse Anderson: I don’t eat much. After writing, I inhale the refrigerator, but it makes the keyboard sticky to eat.

Bianca Schulze: True. Handwritten first drafts or straight to typing?

Laurie Halse Anderson: See, you can’t answer that one because there’s a ton of notes that I usually take and some of them are scribbled on the back of receipts and others are on phone apps and then I have to mash it all together.

Bianca Schulze: I love it. All right, so then plotter or pantser?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Yes.

Bianca Schulze: All right. Morning writer or Night Owl?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Morning. Obnoxiously early.

Bianca Schulze: Like how early?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Like if I wake up at three, I go to work.

Bianca Schulze: Wow. Does that mean you…

Laurie Halse Anderson: My brain fries pretty early in the day, so I have to get that magic that comes when you’re sleeping, that dream space that you can stay in. That’s what I like to use.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I love that. Does that mean you take a nap?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Never.

Bianca Schulze: Not me neither. All right, what grammar or spelling mistakes do you often make?

Laurie Halse Anderson: All of them. I suck at that, so bad. Still, spelling, not so good. And grammar, that’s just a theory as far as I’m concerned.

Bianca Schulze: Okay, I’m with you, I’m with you. What is the first thing you do after finishing a manuscript?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well, it’s never finished. That’s just it. I cringe sometimes when I look at my books that have been published for a while, because I’m like, shoot, I want to fix that, you know? It’s like raising your children. You’re never done raising your children either.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, it’s true. They’re never done raising us either.

Laurie Halse Anderson: No, thank goodness.

Bianca Schulze: All right, let’s see. The first one of these that comes to your mind, most memorable interaction with a young reader. And you can reserve the right to change on another day.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Wow, there’s so many. I think in the context of historical fiction though, there’s one young woman who stands out. I spoke at her school in New Jersey shortly after 9-11, maybe six months after. And she was in sixth grade and their class had read Fever 1793. And she stood up and wanted me to know that her father had been in the Twin Towers. Thankfully, he got out.

But what she most appreciated about the book was that it was the first time she had read about a character who was in a very scary circumstance, the way that the main character in Fever 1793 is. And she said it was kind of weird because the book was set so long ago, but what she felt in the book is what I was feeling about my dad. And she liked that a lot. I just, goosebumps just telling you that story. I mean, that story’s 20 years old, more than that.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah.

Laurie Halse Anderson: And now she’s all grown. Just really, that was the beginning of me waking up to the power of historical fiction to entertain our kids, of course, but also middle school kids, middle school readers, they’re beginning their journey towards adulthood. And historical fiction can help open up their minds to some larger things.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely. Well, I have just a couple more rapid fire questions.

Laurie Halse Anderson: I’m sorry, that was not rapid at all.

Bianca Schulze: No, I love that. Sometimes it’s like I’m like, that wasn’t really, I mean, that was more of a deeper question anyway. But on the historical note, if you could time travel to 1776 for just one day, what would you want to see?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Abigail Adams. Abigail and I used to milk cows. I worked in a farm when I was a kid. So would help her with the cows, whatever needs to be. And I have a lot of questions.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. You know what’s funny? I never say this word correctly talking about spelling and grammar. Can we also just throw in pronunciation? But onomatopoeia, the words that you used for the milk squirting into the bucket, I loved it. Like I could hear it because I’ve milked a cow once before in my life and I could hear that like psh psh.

Laurie Halse Anderson: How cool. That makes me happy.

Bianca Schulze: All right. Well, then let’s see. I said, would you want to see before? And I was going to ask you favorite historical figure. And now you’re from the revolutionary era and you’re saying Abigail Adams.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Yeah, Abigail has got to be right up there. I do think that it would be interesting if he would let his barriers down to have a conversation with George Washington, because of all the things that I’ve read, I think he’s the founding father who did the most emotional growth.

He was the one who was humble enough to admit that he was wrong about a number of things. After saying no, he changed his mind and allowed men of color to serve in the Continental Army. After saying no, he changed his mind and had his army inoculated against smallpox. And then later in his life, in his writing, although he could have done more to promote this, and it would have changed our nation’s history for himself, he changed his mind about the ethics of holding people in slavery. And so he, when you look at where he was as a younger man and where he was at the end of his life, he grew and changed as our new country was growing and changing. So that makes him a more interesting person to talk to, I think.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely. And can I just also say the power of children’s books is that, I mean, I grew up in Australia. And so for me, I didn’t really learn a lot about the revolutionary era. And so I love reading books like the ones that you write, because for me, it’s the most enjoyable way to get a history lesson. So I think I wish more adults would just pick up the kids books, especially historical fiction, you know.

Laurie Halse Anderson: I agree. I agree. I think that, you know, we, I don’t know how it’s done in Australia, but I think we could do a better job teaching history in the US. One of the things that we, the challenges we face is that schools across the country for the last two decades have had to cut back on the hours devoted to the study of history and social studies as they were required to meet testing standards for math and English. And so that means that our kids are exposed to even less. And I think when we teach history from the top-down perspective, that means looking at battles and the big leaders and it’s just when you’re 14 or nine or 20, it’s just so dull. But when you tell a story that’s well-researched and vetted, so we’re making sure our facts are correct, and you can talk about the ordinary people, the regular kids and moms and dads and teachers and seamstresses now, I connect with that person and you care about them. You’re not gonna memorize anything you don’t care about.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, that’s so true. That’s so true. Well, I wanna just, before we dive right into the new book, I wanna just get to know a little bit more about you as a writer. And there’s the common saying that to be a writer, you need to be a reader first. So was there a pivotal moment in which you considered yourself a reader?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well, I actually was not an early reader. I have dyslexia and I hated reading and it was just so embarrassing because I couldn’t, everybody else could. And thank goodness, I’m a proud public school product for the public school teachers in Syracuse, New York, who took me out of class. I had special instruction for reading, but I also have a little bit of a speech impediment. So I got special instruction for that. I was a… I loved it. I love my special teachers that got me out of class and they, you know, they really helped me so much. So I remember I read first of all, when I finally learned how to read, was like, this is kind of cool, right? And then I wanted to read bigger books. Everybody was reading the bigger books. And when I got to the end of the Laura Ingalls Wilder first book, the first one that I read was Little House on the Prairie. And I found out there was more, there were more books in the series. I was like, bam, I’m there. And then I read the whole series.

You know, we know that there’s problematic content in those books now. And we have great books like, Prairie Lotus by Linda Sue Park, which kind of imagines the same world, but told through the eyes of a different character with racial reality instead of racism, which is a significant difference. It’s fantastic book.

But when I finished reading those older books by Laura Ingalls Wilder, I felt so accomplished. And I’ve always loved history and social studies. I love stories. That was the one. I think for me, history and social studies was more interesting than English class, because they were real people. So that was Little Me as a reader.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I… Little you as a reader. All right, well…

Laurie Halse Anderson: I didn’t think I was going to be a writer that was never in the cards. Nope. Nope. Nope.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. I mean, I feel the same way as you on that. And so if we fast forward now from little you as a reader, you know, and how you came to be, now you have over, I think it’s eight million books sold. You’ve got numerous accolades. So now I’m curious, what still challenges you or excites you about writing for children today? Since you started, what still challenges or what keeps you motivated and excited?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well, everything is still challenging because it doesn’t matter how many books you write, at least this is my experience, your mileage may vary and you know, everyone’s got their own process, but it doesn’t matter how many books I’ve written. I’ve never written the book I’m working on.

And yeah, okay, I have a couple tools in my toolbox that maybe I didn’t have at the beginning, but it’s still quite daunting. You have to make up a world. And it’s a little bit harder, I have to say these days, given that there’s a lot going on in the world, to, for me at least, to block out that outside world and to nurture the imagination and to think about, you know, who am I writing for and where are they and what’s the best story that I can craft for them?

Laurie Halse Anderson: So yeah, that’s, and I think that’s why I’m still doing this. I don’t like being bored very much. And the fact that I still have to reinvent myself as a writer with every book, that’s interesting and that makes it a challenge, a good challenge.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. And I think you said to me the magic word for my next question was like the challenge of who are you writing for? Because your writing spans so many different age groups. You’ve written from young readers to teens and adults. So like, how does your creative process differ when you’re writing for the middle grade reader versus YA or adults? And since your books often feature young protagonists facing significant historical and social challenges…

Bianca Schulze: What do you, like, what responsibility do you feel toward your younger readers versus the older readers when you’re addressing these topics?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well, I actually feel the same level of responsibility to all of my readers, which is why you’ll never see a book written by me that doesn’t end in hope. I think it was immoral to write for children without including hope. And I think my responsibility is a little bit different for my older readers, my high school and older in the teens, because I can have more confidence in their understanding of narrative, the function of narrative and their ability to imagine a world. And, you know, I write contemporary books for them, which go out of date five seconds after they’re published, because technology keeps on changing. But I don’t, I can sketch a little bit more lightly when I’m describing scenes for them, because I know they have the life experience to picture some scenes.

And my challenge there is not to give too much information. There’s, I forget who, somebody else coined the, used the phrase, mind the gap from the tube stations to point out that there’s always a gap between the narrative and the reader. And that’s a good gap because you want the more, you have to leave a little bit of room for the reader to fill in with their imagination, right? So you don’t get every single detail. And this is where Show Don’t Tell helps out. I’m not gonna say, you know, she was very upset or I, the main character, I’m really upset right now. Because often when we’re young, we’re still working on articulating our emotions to us, our feelings to ourselves. So you write a scene where the character’s action, I’m thinking about my older readers here, the character’s action makes it clear, like somebody slamming the refrigerator door so all the magnets fall off and then turning and yelling at her annoying brother, my teen reader’s gonna go, yep, been there. That’s my life, you know? And that’s them crossing the gap. When they cross that gap between them and the narrative, now they’re in the story, right? Now it’s almost like inhabiting a movie or a television show. With my younger readers and my historical fiction, it’s a different kind of challenge because I’m describing a world that no longer exists.

Bianca Schulze: Yep.

Laurie Halse Anderson: And I have, because of the rules I set for myself, I try super hard not to have anything that’s anachronistic, meaning I’m not going to describe the color orange by saying it’s the color of a basketball or the color of a school bus, because those things didn’t exist then. So like the way you describe every sensory experience, right, there’s not going to be any jets flying overhead, but there is going to be the sound of horse poop hitting the road, right? So you have to think of, it’s very cool. It’s almost like writing a fantasy with world building elements. But then the gap’s a little wider, I think, for middle grade readers, because I can’t trust that they’ve had necessarily enough life experience. So I give more detail. I try to guide them a little bit more carefully through the story than I do with older readers. Does that make any sense at all?

Bianca Schulze: No, it does completely. I mean, the middle grade audience is typically described as between eight and 12. And as a mom of three children, the growth that kids have between eight and 12, yes. So what you said makes complete sense.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Well, your finished books that land in the hands of readers always make writing look like it comes really easy to you. But so I’m going to assume that that’s not true. And so do you ever have to give yourself pep talks?

Laurie Halse Anderson: All the time. My gosh, yeah. And it’s like that darn voice in your head. I was at a teacher’s conference the other day and I gave the teachers this tip I’m going to give you too. I think that if you’re being cruel to yourself or you’re really struggling to move beyond the voices in your head that say, you suck, because they don’t go away, right? What helps me at least is to take a picture of myself as a child or as a young teen. There’s a bunch of really lovely pictures of me as a dorky kid and either put it on the desktop of my computer or actually on where the desk is, a flat surface where I’m working so I can see again, little me. And here’s the guideline.

Laurie Halse Anderson: As a creative person, you should never criticize yourselves with words or a tone that you would not use to talk to a five-year-old. Because you would never tell a five-year-old who had handed you a drawing that they sucked, or that no one’s ever going to pay attention to their work, or that they’re wasting their time and they don’t have any talent. What would you say? You would say, oh my gosh, this is amazing. Look at how creative, you would tell them everything they did right. You would ask them if they need more paper, you would encourage them and let them go make their magic. That’s the mindset we have to have. And I’m going to be careful how I say this in the early part of the writing process, right? That’s when, because that’s when you want your brain to be open to that deep well of creativity that we are all carrying within us. And the stuff that the magic that’s in that well will not float to the surface if you’re being mean to yourself. You just want to go to that kind of woo-woo place. Now, when I get to full on editing and when I have an 800 page manuscript that needs to be boiled down quite a bit, then I shift into a different gear. And it’s not about criticizing myself at that point because I’ve done this early work, now it’s about being honest with myself about what’s actually on the page. Does each chapter, each page, each sentence contribute to the book? If it doesn’t give us insight into a character or move the plot along, I probably don’t need it. So it’s like writing and editing are two different worlds for me at least.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Yeah, but in that beginning stage, I love that. I’m going to call it the Laurie pep talk.

Laurie Halse Anderson: There you go. I like it.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I like it.

Laurie Halse Anderson: And eat more cookies.

Bianca Schulze: Well, I want to go into the new book right now and just to sort of segue into that. I firmly believe that we have to pay attention to history to understand what makes for a better now, today and the future.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: And your new book, Rebellion 1776 takes place during a really pivotal moment in American history. So what drew you to write about the Siege of Boston and the smallpox epidemic?

Laurie Halse Anderson: You know, I never really set out to write a book, to be honest with you. I always, I have a kind of a restless curiosity and it leaves me the most delightful places in the world. And not all of them turn into books, but this one did.

I was thinking about the John Adams HBO series in this is exactly five years ago, like right now. Actually March 20th.

Bianca Schulze: Hold on, was it with Paul Giamatti?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Paul Giamatti.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I watched that. Yeah.

Laurie Halse Anderson: I watched that. Yes, that was, I it came out in 2008. I can give you the date that I got sick that year. I got sick on March 22nd, 2020 with COVID. So the pandemic had just started. Super, super scary. Got really sick, thank goodness didn’t have to go to a hospital. So a few weeks after that, I was, you know, the fever had broken, I wasn’t contagious, but I was just a mess. I was just like a limp, you know, dust rag on the couch. It got me, and we didn’t have a vaccine at that point. And so I was thinking about that HBO series because in that series, Abigail Adams made the decision to have herself and her children inoculated against smallpox, another super scary disease.

And inoculation was still new. And so the kinds of things, the kinds of very reasonable fears that people had about the disease of COVID and the vaccination process became a challenge for some families. I knew that this had happened before. And I knew that historians were unhappy with that scene because of inconsistencies. So I went back and I looked it up because I was bored and I couldn’t go leave my house. And I found out that Abigail, the way that they, yes, they were inoculated that summer against smallpox because there was a big scary epidemic in New England at that point. But the details were so much more interesting than they put in the HBO series. I was like, what is this? So then I just went down the rabbit hole because I was stuck at home and the Massachusetts Historical Society, oh, let’s sing their praises, has the entire body of letters and diaries of the extended Adams family digitized and available for free because they’re awesome. So I read everything and when I realized that you had this, it was a scary time and then because the book opens as the siege of Boston is ending in 1776 which was just the beginning of the war and the beginning for the people of Boston of some very difficult times. And the more I read, more, like I think I’ve said this before, history is never a flat mirror. It’s not a mirror you can look at, but it’s a shadowy mirror. And I felt like I was looking into a shadowy mirror that was reflecting our country today. And I thought it might be interesting.

Laurie Halse Anderson: And you know, the other thing that was happening, sorry, I’m getting carried away here.

Bianca Schulze: Please do get carried away.

Laurie Halse Anderson: At the same time. So now we’re months into the pandemic and we’re still, living in Philly, so we’re still not going outside. But a lot of us in children’s literature started to like do readings of our books on YouTube so that kids, you know, because kids were stuck at home too. And I did some chapters from Fever and I got the most delightful feedback from families who, much like that young girl I told you about earlier, the families were reading Fever 1793 because it offered the family a way to talk about the hard, scary world we lived in today. And I think that that is probably the greatest compliment anybody can give me is to tell me that one of my books has opened a conversation.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Because that’s the function of story in all cultures through all time periods is to connect us.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, absolutely. Well, let’s talk about your protagonist. Do you pronounce her name, Elsbeth?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Elsbeth.

Bianca Schulze: So she navigates both a literal war and a battle against the disease, smallpox, and she wishes for her own independence within a country seeking independence. So will you talk about Elsbeth and how you balance the gravity of all of those things that she experiences?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Yeah, when you’re writing about teens in the American Revolution, the metaphors write themselves. It’s gotten nice. You know, I’ve always been drawn to because think about anybody who was between let’s say nine years old to 25, nine to 25 in 1776. And then they, especially the younger kids, they literally come of age while their country is being birthed in blood. And so as they move into adulthood, they became our founding generation of Americans, right? But at the same time, they, like the world is doing crazy, hard to understand things.

And sometimes it was up close and personal and the war would move to a different region in the country. But they’re also still being like 13 and 9 and 15 and falling in love and getting in trouble with their parents and wishing that they didn’t have to do their chores. So the sense of humor and of fair play that all kids are born with, I think it’s one of their most important strengths.

And you know that everybody makes mistakes, everybody messes up. And I think that that allows us, and maybe especially adults, when we’re reading about young people and we see that in the middle of darkness, there’s still being sarcastic pains in the neck, because that’s who they are. So that’s what I really, this character came to me pretty early. I’ve written about children, enslaved children before.

And I wanted to write about a child who was not enslaved, a white kid, but who was still strongly fenced in by social structures and economic class. She’s a working class kid. Her father goes missing and her mother died the previous year. So that makes her vulnerable in many different ways. So I had to learn how to, how would this kid navigate the rules about kids have to have a parent. If they don’t, then the government steps in. But what happens if the government’s in shambles and everything is chaos?

And so that’s sort of part of her journey. And early on, you know, characters talk to us and the phrase ordinary people kept on coming up as she starts to rattle around in my brain pan. And that’s what she wants. She just wants her regular life. You know, this war is ridiculous. What’s, everybody, just please, like, I’m sure teenagers for the last, since the pandemic began have been like, my God, I just want to see my friends, right?

Laurie Halse Anderson: And that’s important for all of us to remember how critical and how funny sometimes those aspects of growing up can be. Not sure I answered your question there, but try again.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, no, I mean, it was kind of a vague question. It was just more of an exploration of her. You actually, you said more about how when families reach out to you and they’ve read a historical novel and how it becomes a gateway to speak about things that are happening now, whether it was during the pandemic or we’ve got some topsy-turvy politics where people are not on the same page right now. And so, and I think historical fiction really can lend itself well to having conversations about all of that. So I guess when creating a character like Elsbeth who does live in 1776, like what goes through your mind when you’re writing her to help modern young readers connect with her experiences while still remaining true to that historical period?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well, it’s actually a super fun game to play as a writer. You know, there’s a couple of scenes earlier in the book where she’s with her father and like there’s something that she thinks is really wonderful happens. And so she runs to where her father’s working to tell him this great news. And she really gets yelled at by her dad. I remember an argument with my dad that was just like, we were nose to nose, screaming at each other. And he was still bigger than me. And I was really upset about that, because I wanted to be the same height, but I still had to look up. And so it is…

So that’s how you show who your characters are, right? You show your characters by putting them under pressure. Everybody can be nice when life is great, but when life is the challenge, that’s when you find out what some people are really great at. You know what this kid is not good at? She’s not good at patience. She just has an idea and she runs with it and it bites her in the butt every single time. But you also see her concern for her father. She loves him. One of the reasons she wants to go and tell him about this thing is that she knows how sad he’s been and how scared he’s been, you know, he’s been very worried and she wants to make him, you know, so by watching her mess up and do dumb things and do lovely things, that’s how we find out what makes her tick. And that’s super important to set that up in the beginning of the book, at least for the kind of books that I write because then now you develop a character, make an interesting setting, put some things in motion. And now the tricky part is always the middle of the book where you wanna layer in external conflicts, meaning internal conflicts, because that’s the only way anybody can have any growth.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. And it’s probably that human nature. So if you take away the clothing or the setting or the fact that there aren’t cars, the thing that we always come back to is that human nature. And so that’s the part that is always relatable and that we can take away and connect with no matter the setting.

Laurie Halse Anderson: And you know, I’ve worked with historians who read my manuscripts and make sure I didn’t mess anything up. And early on, a couple of books ago, I had some conversations with a few of them who I’ve really grown to respect and trust about exactly that. You know, they were much more, I’ve read a lot more since then, but everything I’ve read since then kind of validated what these conversations in which they said that. They said, you know, the details were different, the roles that, for example, girls could feel that that lay in their future, that stuff has changed. And as a historical writer, you have to learn what were the rules, what was the culture, what were the boundaries of life. But the heart doesn’t change, you know, just in exactly the same way that learning the details of the food that was available to them and how it was prepared, you know, because we all want to taste something yummy. And sometimes food is disgusting and you still have to eat it because your mother’s looking at you. So that’s been… That’s super fun. I love doing that. It’s part of bringing a character to life.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Well, there’s a scene since you talked about food and everybody wants to taste something yummy where the food is slim pickings for the Pike family in the specific moment and they’re being served baked beans again and again. And there’s a little bit of a protest from the children about not wanting to eat any more baked beans. And I’m like, I love baked beans. I’m like, I’ll eat them. Give them to me. Well, I’m going to read a quote from Elsbeth in the book. So I’d love for you after I read this quote to share with us the meaningfulness to you of her perspective. So she said, “I wished that the mothers of every soldier on both sides would magically appear, grab their sons by the ear and drag them home for a well earned thrashing.” So tell me about that moment.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well, you know. One of the things, we have the 250th anniversary of America is about to gear up, right? Next year, in 2026, is 250 years from 1776, which is when my book is set. Sometimes people can make it, I don’t want kids to get the impression that like everybody in the revolution was a patriot and everybody was on board from, you know, like that’s not the truth.

We now know we have access to incredible primary sources that show us that it took time for this concept of making a new country to catch on. And there were some people who never bought into it, a lot of them left. And for some people, life was hard then, hard in a way that very few people living today can imagine.

The concept of death, especially by disease, was always at the door. And that area had already gone through several very challenging years because the British were being horrible to them. And so instead of kids like Elsbeth going, yay, war, let’s go do a war, that sounds like fun, it was like, no, no, I just wanna have my life back. And this war is really dumb.

So if all the moms could come out and just get their boys off that battlefield and silence those cannons, maybe I could get some work done here. Maybe I could bake a pie. This, you know, which is a perfect thing to think about. And when she’s thinking, having this thought, she’s has a wooden bowl over her head and she’s hiding under a table because cannons are being blasted across the area where she lives. So I think that’s a very reasonable thought to have in the time.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, well, and then talking about like cannons and the action that happens. And I mean, I was so hooked from the first like three chapters. It was so exciting. Everything that was going on and the judge character at the beginning. I mean, I just like I hated him and I just was like, yes, this is so good. I love that Laurie has made me hate a character so badly right from chapter one. But we exchanged some written words ahead of our conversation. And you wrote that a well-researched historical novel can and should be an adventure novel. So talk to me about the behind the scenes of, you know, again, maintaining that historical accuracy, but creating that page turning excitement that kids crave.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well, you know, it’s, and I think about like the other historical novels that have been written in the last 20, 30 years. Very few of them are written about ordinary events. They tend to be big deals. You pick moments of history where stuff is happening. And if you can’t turn that into an adventure novel, then you should rethink your approach or what you’re writing about. I guess there are some quieter historical novels, but I don’t write those.

I like the stakes to be high. You know why? Because that’s what I am as a reader. I’m not a very highbrow reader. I like action. I like mysteries. I like big, I like big scary things. And I often feel like a kid when I’m reading and I’m like, no, here comes a big thing. And I think that sometimes I really encourage educators and families think hard about using that term historical fiction because sometimes in kids’ minds, if they’ve read a book that wasn’t a fast paced book. Historical fiction in their minds equals boring. And then they just like walk away from an entire body of work, an entire genre, subgenre that could be thrilling for them. So yeah, I try to write adventure books grounded in history.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, I love it. I have been reading between two different craft books. One is The Anatomy of Story by John Truby. He’s a screenwriter background. And gosh, the second one is incredible. And I’m totally blinking. It’s got the word pond in it. It was recommended by Kate DiCamillo. And it’s this exploration of Russian writers like Tolstoy. Anyway, I’ve been listening to the audio version of that and it’s outstanding. I’ll drop the link to that one in our show notes when I’m done because I’m totally blanking and I want people to experience this book, the audio version’s fantastic. But John Truby describes the anatomy of story of having to have like a battle that takes place like a punch and then a counter punch. And so I see the world giving Elsbeth a punch and then she has this moment of a punch back where you think she’s gonna get her independence and you’ve got this beautiful punch, counterpunch the whole way through. And then this second craft book that I’ve been reading that’s wonderful, he talks about how when you’re reading and the reader doesn’t necessarily realize it, but there’s a beautiful pattern that takes place within a story. And I connect that to John Truby’s punch, counterpunch, where like this pattern is occurring and what makes the beautiful ending of a book is that finally that pattern gets broken. And John Truby describes that as the final showdown, right? So you’ve had this battle and this, the final showdown and your final showdown, which I’m not going to reveal, but it was so moving. And I’ve made it sound like there is so much like action and excitement within the story. And I would say that your final showdown was such a profound move moment and I was crying as I was reading it and it was so beautiful. But yeah, I don’t know. What are your thoughts on everything I just said then? Because I’m just flying off the cuff here because as you’re talking, I’m thinking about the battle and the punches and the final showdown and…

Laurie Halse Anderson: Well, it’s interesting because I, for my own purposes, very, very early in the writing process, I had many, many, many more chapters in the early part of the book, mostly written for myself so that could really understand what her, A, what her day-to-day life was, and B, kind of, I had to understand Boston, because Boston is a character in this book as well. And then when it came time to really start to think about the rest of the book, I knew I was going to cut two-thirds of those out and I did. So now you’re not what you’re seeing as the punch counter punch makes me sound super smart but it was really messy in the beginning I want to point that out but what you’re also talking about pacing right you’re talking about that that difference between internal and external conflicts and then you’ve got you know a kid who has to make some new relationships has one old relationship has to make new relationships and all the kinds of things that are fraught with that. And for me, what I was, and I, you know, I guess when you asked me earlier, pants or a plotter, and I said, yes, I was a little facetious. Because, but not really, because like I, I know going into a historical novel, the time period and the place, and as I’m doing my research, I go, ooh, that’s a plot point, ooh, that’s a plot point.

But what has to come up organically as I’m navigating these factual plot points is I have to leave space for my character to drive their, the counter punching, right? And, and to mess up and to do unexpected things. And characters do that all the time. I think, okay, and this is where she’s going to do this and you’re writing and it’s like, nope. And then I tried, I follow my, my, my instinct there and she does something interesting. That scene that you’re talking about, which we shall not put a label on yet, or if at all, she wound up becoming so much more mature in this book than I thought she could be early on. Because I, when that secondary character who goes through, who’s also in that scene, showed up, she changed everything. She offered unbelievable opportunity to Elsbeth. An opportunity always comes at a cost. And Elsbeth being able to take advantage of those opportunities and then we see the cost that she pays, which is very appropriate for the time period and reflected in so much of what I read that I was, there are moments when I’m writing, I’m sure all writers have this where you’re like, dang, something magical just happened and I had absolutely nothing to do with it. Like the stars aligned and voices from the past spoke and I was just scribbling down what they said. That scene made me cry every single time I worked on it.

Bianca Schulze: Well, that came across to the reader.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Yeah.

Bianca Schulze: I think what you just said is so important is, yes, if you plot and you try to create this punch, count, punch moment, that story becomes formulaic. But what makes a really good novel really good, and it’s that the story becomes smarter than the person writing it.

Laurie Halse Anderson: And that’s what you just described to me. It’s like the story takes on a life of its own and you start writing from that place of instinct.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Yeah. Exactly. I love the way you just described it. That was perfect.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, yeah, you know, it’s probably related to what I was listening on that fabulous audio book. But yeah, well, I know that you mentioned before, like, Fever 1793, which if like, it’s crazy to think that came out in the 1990s.

Laurie Halse Anderson: It came out in, okay. It came out in 2000.

Bianca Schulze: So, so, so 25 years ago, what, what is like the, like, what is different now when you’re doing your research? I have to imagine that the access to what you can find now, even 20, like 25 years later has been phenomenal.

Laurie Halse Anderson: It’s just, it’s, it is actually its own kind of time walking in his, through history. When I was researching Fever 1793, I didn’t, I had a, I had like kind of a computer I could do word processing on, but we didn’t have the internet. Um, and I didn’t have a laptop. So I would put my kids on the bus, grab my spiral notebook, take a train to downtown Philly, go to the Philadelphia Historical Society, fill out strips of paper, eat granola bars in the bathroom, because I couldn’t take time off for lunch, and take notes from the primary sources that they would pull out for me from the archives, and then get home by the time the kids’ bus came home. And with this book, now 25 years later, 20 years later when I started to work on this, you always have to make sure that the organization that has digitized primary sources is an ethical one. All right, so that’s an important thing to learn, but the National Archives, Mount Vernon, universities, organizations like the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Gilder Lairdman Society in New York City, part of the New York Historical Group, what they have done, it’s also a really important question about access, right?

Because if the only way any person can have access to an important historical document is to do what I did back in the day, then you’re cutting people off from their history. And so now, and the Massachusetts Historical Society had some things that I could see in their online catalog I really wanted to read, like some of the letters written by one of Abigail Adams’ uncles. But they hadn’t digitized it yet because they were under lockdown and I couldn’t travel to it. I just sent the historians there on the archivist what I wanted and they made it available to me and sent me screenshots from the microfilms. But mostly I was able to do everything online. All the government records, all of the government records from the time period are available online. And then I found…

Bianca Schulze: Wow.

Laurie Halse Anderson: There’s one scene where there’s the committee of, it’s a long boring name, the committee of inspection safety and correspondence, right? Those are the guys in charge of rooting out British spies. And I found Harvard’s got a lot of primary sources that are not transcribed, but have been photographed and are, you can look at them online, right? Like the original handwriting, my God, it’s so amazing.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah.

Laurie Halse Anderson: And I found a scrap, like some notes that had been taken during that committee’s meeting. And there’s a scrap that was a 13 year old kitchen maid that they interviewed because they suspected the guy she worked for as being a British spy. And I’m like, there’s Elsbeth right there. I’m sorry, I can really go on for days about this stuff.

Bianca Schulze: I love it.

Laurie Halse Anderson: You know, the passion and the enthusiasm you have is exactly why you write such amazing novels.

Bianca Schulze: So a second note on that question would be, because now you have extra access, does that become overwhelming in terms of, well, now I’ve got like too many ideas or what do I want to use?

Laurie Halse Anderson: I like, I suspect my publisher would have been happier if I hadn’t had quite so much access because of, you know, but then you think it’s like, wow, what would this book have been if I hadn’t found that scrap of paper? You know, some of the stuff that I think really opened up the experience of that time and place for me were these very obscure little scraps of paper that you wouldn’t necessarily find if you had to do it the old fashioned way. My books take time. And that’s just how I write. For me to have written this book faster and not consulted all of those sources, like I said, I know how to milk cows. I would rather go back and work on a farm than to do this kind of work without integrity. And if the sources are there, and especially, you know, because history can be…

Bianca Schulze: Yeah.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Manipulated. And the most important audience for books about history is children because they’re going to be in charge way too soon, right? So I just feel such a moral obligation to our children and the future of our country to do the best job I can to ground myself in the facts that we know, the facts that we can have access to and try to create something that will echo the truth of the past.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah, you know, I feel like you already just answered my next question too, but I’m going to ask it anyway, just in case you want to add anything. But it’s that as an award-winning author and an advocate against censorship and with America’s 250th birthday approaching in 2026, as you said, so why do you think it’s particularly important for young readers to engage with stories about our nation’s founding right now?

Laurie Halse Anderson: Yeah. I mean, yeah, it’s interesting because I can remember, you know, when you’re a kid, you grow up and if you have, if you’re a member of an immigrant family, your experience is different because you’ve come from place A or your family can’t come from place A and gone to place B. So you know that there are differences. But like I’m thinking to myself as a child, my own children, growing up in the world, you think, this is just what it is. It’s what it’s always been. And you have to get a little older to be able to see, well, there’s been quite a lot of changes and to understand that the United States of America at 250 years old next year, not very long. It’s not very long at all. And I was telling, I had talked to my aunt earlier today, my aunt Barbara in Oklahoma, and I told her that Paul Revere, everybody knows who Paul Revere is, right? Paul Revere had three grandsons who were soldiers in the Civil War. American Revolution 1776, Civil War 1861. That’s just those two genera- that’s like boom, boom, boom. That’s how quick history unfolds. So, we can’t even begin to imagine the demands that our children will be facing. But what we can do is to help them learn how we got here. If they would let me design America’s history curriculum, K through 12, I would start every class with an event that had happened within the last three years. There’s a, thematically, then you would trace backwards to the founding or whatever era you really were concerned with. The challenge for kids is that when they see pictures of people from different time periods, like, you know, especially like Ben Franklin and all those guys, they all look so strange, because, you know, their hair is weird and they’re not wearing the clothes that we wear.

And it’s hard for them to identify. So I try to tell stories that are accurate, that will ground kids in the history, keep them reading, keep them turning the pages, but most importantly, make them curious. Right? Make them curious because if we can spark their curiosity about, well, why did we have that war? And wait, you mean we had a war, we declared ourselves independents and then they had to make the government? How do you make a government? Somebody had to sit down, Alexander Hamilton for the most part, and make up the rules. And now you got a kid who’s curious, right? And now you can start talking about things like the Constitution and amendments to the Constitution and how laws get passed. And there is a way that we could talk about this without getting into today’s current…

Bianca Schulze: Right. Right.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Slightly fraught political environment, but just say, okay, let’s have a national conversation about what is the Constitution. I just want to put a shout out, by the way, to the book called The Fault Lines in our Constitution written by Cynthia, I think it’s Levinson. You’ll have to check this, please, and put it in the show notes. They’ve done a graphic novel version of it, and frankly, it’s one of the most brilliant books that have ever been written in the United States.

Bianca Schulze: I will.

Laurie Halse Anderson: And it’s written at a level for middle school and high school students. It’s been out for a while. There’s a graphic novel version, like I said, and it explains, yep, nobody was perfect. There are parts about our constitution that should probably be changed a little bit. We have ways to do that. So all of these different functions of government, trying to help kids understand how government, big G government, small G government affects their lives today has affected the entire past year. That’s bringing them, that’s bringing the kids to the table. They need to be at the table. Cause it’s not like somebody throws a switch when they turn 18 or 21 and all of a sudden they’re going to be well-educated, informed citizens. No, we have to start with saying, did you know that people used to puke on purpose when they got smallpox? You know, that’s that, you’re like, what? What is smallpox? And…

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. Yeah.

Laurie Halse Anderson: What do mean they puked on purpose? And now, okay, let’s explore this. We have, this country is an experiment. It is an experiment. And if we wanted to continue, I think that learning our history would be a good starting point.

Bianca Schulze: Absolutely. You said that so well. And so, you know, a metaphor that’s been coming up in my household is the pendulum swing. Life just feels like there’s giant pendulum swings. So I’m going to have a pendulum moment in our podcast, Laurie, and I’m going to switch us from the long answers to the short ones. And we’re going to end with some rapid fire just for fun. So pendulum swinging.

Laurie Halse Anderson: Okay. I’ll try really hard.

Bianca Schulze: Yeah. What’s the most surprising fact you discovered while researching Rebellion 1776?

Laurie Halse Anderson: How much local communities in Massachusetts could affect the lives of poor families by bringing in food and firewood and stuff, and that they would take kids out of homes if the kid couldn’t be cared for properly, and that child would then be legally bound out to a different family, often many miles away.

Bianca Schulze: Who would you choose if you could have lunch with any of the characters besides Elsbeth?

Laurie Halse Anderson: My gosh. Besides Elsbeth. I think her buddy, Schubel. Schubel Kent, who was a shoemaker’s apprentice and reminds me about several of my grandsons. Yeah. Also my husband.

Bianca Schulze: Their relationship, Schubel and Elsbeth, is so funny to me. The names that they call each other. I mean, yeah, funny. The hardest scene to write in Rebellion 1776 was…

Laurie Halse Anderson: There’s a death scene in this book that is very moving, very deep. I looked at a number of portraits that were painted, one of them in Philadelphia that shows grief because you have to understand that grief is always grief. It doesn’t matter how many of your children have died in an epidemic, that next one dies and that grief is just as raw. And I tried to honor that in that scene.

Bianca Schulze: You honored it beautifully. Well, finally, and take as long as you want to answer this question. If there’s one thing you hope young readers take away from Elsbeth’s journey through the American Revolution era, what would it be?

Laurie Halse Anderson: With a good friend by your side, you can get through anything.

Bianca Schulze: That was good. And look, was such a, got, there was like so on point with your answer. It was amazing. Well, Laurie, I cannot thank you enough for this conversation from your, how you write to your grammar and spelling confessions to, you know, your pep, self pep talks. I think you’ve given us such an authentic glimpse into your creative life and just thank you for your honesty about your writing process and also for tackling complex topics with such care and for creating books that honor the intelligence of young readers. So I think what resonates most with me is your dedication to making history come alive. And you’re not just teaching history, you’re inviting young readers to see themselves in it and to understand that our country’s story is made of individual people facing challenges not so much unlike their own. So I’m deeply grateful for your time today. And I know our listeners will be rushing to bookstores for Rebellion 1776. So thank you, Laurie Halse Anderson, for being with us today on The Growing Readers podcast.

Laurie Halse Anderson: My pleasure. Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Show Notes

Publisher’s Book Summary: From New York Times bestselling author Laurie Halse Anderson comes an “thoroughly researched, emotionally resonant” (Booklist, starred review) historical fiction middle grade adventure about a girl struggling to survive amid a smallpox epidemic, the public’s fear of inoculation, and the seething Revolutionary War.

In the spring of 1776, thirteen-year-old Elsbeth Culpepper wakes to the sound of cannons. It’s the Siege of Boston, the Patriots’ massive drive to push the Loyalists out that turns the city into a chaotic war zone. Elsbeth’s father—her only living relative—has gone missing, leaving her alone and adrift in a broken town while desperately seeking employment to avoid the orphanage.

Just when things couldn’t feel worse, the smallpox epidemic sweeps across Boston. Now, Bostonians must fight for their lives against an invisible enemy in addition to the visible one. While a treatment is being frantically fine-tuned, thousands of people rush in from the countryside begging for inoculation. At the same time, others refuse protection, for the treatment is crude at best and at times more dangerous than the disease itself.

Elsbeth, who had smallpox as a small child and is now immune, finds work taking care of a large, wealthy family with discord of their own as they await a turn at inoculation, but as the epidemic and the revolution rage on, will she find her father?

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