about the book
It is the 1950s, and the United States’ House committee on Un-American Activities has singled-out fourteen-year-old Janie Scott’s family for questionable allegiances. Her parents, television writers, move their family from Los Angeles to London in order to escape the public scrutiny.
Janie hates England. She hates her new school with its drab uniforms. She hates the way the other girls treat her. She hates having to learn Latin! In the height of the Cold War, she is also made to do duck-and-cover drills.
On one of these drills, under her desk she spies Benjamin, a crush-worthy boy who turns out to be the son of an apothecary from whom she and parents had bought hot water bottles for cold London nights. Janie and Benjamin strike up a friendship.
Quickly their relationship acquires higher stakes, as Janie and Benjamin find out that Ben’s father is actually a top-secret scientist who has helped discover amazing potions—truth serums, tonics of invisibility, and shape-shifting liquids.
When Ben’s father is kidnapped, likely by Soviets that want his secrets, it falls to Ben and Janie to find and rescue him. With the help of some of these potions, of course….
about the author
Maile Meloy’s name (pronounced MY-lee) is Hawaiian, although she grew up in Helena, Montana, and now lives in Los Angeles. Everyone in her family was a huge reader, but Maile’s writing experiences, at first, were restricted to twelve-page letters she penned to friends. She really didn’t get into writing until she was in college, when a professor suggested she might enjoy writing short stories.
Maile says that writing a novel is like a marriage and writing a short story is more like dating—she needs both to stay interested in writing, and she always has made time for one or the other. An acclaimed adult author, she also needs to write for younger readers. Whether the book she is working on is for an older or younger reader, she doesn’t outline her stories. She says she can’t. She just writes and figures out what happens as the chapters come to her. Then she has to rewrite. A lot.
Her advice to a writer who needs help focusing would be to set aside an hour or two each day, and say that this is your time for writing. It doesn’t much matter if you finish a chapter or a book in that time. Just showing up and giving your writing that whole hour is the key.
Sources:
Author website
Also by Maile Meloy:
The Apprentices (Apothecary, Book 2). Putnam Publishing. 2013.
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