>> Stephanie Handy:
Hello, everyone. I hope you're
having a wonderful time here
today at the "National Book
Festival," and especially for
this talk with a wonderful
author.
We're so glad you could make
it.
My name is Stephanie Handy.
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm not used to
the mic.
My name is Stephanie Handy.
I'm a collection development
librarian at the Library of
Congress with the National
Library Service for the Blind
and Print Disabled.
Before we get started, I just
want to give a general thanks to
our sponsors, without whom we
couldn't have put on this
wonderful event today.
I'm so pleased to be here today
with Gary D. Schmidt.
In addition to his work as a
professor of English at Calvin
University, he's the best
selling author of many books for
young readers, including "Just
Like That,"
the National Book Award
Finalist,
"Okay For Now," "Pay Attention,
Carter Jones,"
"Orbiting Jupiter," The Newbery 
Honor and Printz
Honor Book, "Lizzie Bright and
the Buckminster Boy,"
the Newbery Honor Book, 
"The Wednesday Wars,"
and of course, his latest
release, "The Labors of Hercules
Beal," which he'll be telling
you more about in a moment.
[Applause]
In "The Labors of Hercules Beal"
seventh grade can feel like
performing in the Olympics,
especially at a new school with
teachers and assignments that
challenge you to live up to your
name, Hercules. "The Labors of
Hercules Beal" follows the
smallest kid in class, Herc
Beal, as he attempts to
duplicate the 12 feats
performed by the mythical
demigod, Hercules.
Before I turn it over to Gary,
I want to let you all know that
we're going to have some time
for questions at the end.
So I especially want to
encourage the young folks here
today that if you have any
questions you want to ask, we
have microphones here and here,
so feel free to come up when the
time is called for that.
So without any further ado,
please join me in giving a warm
welcome to Gary D. Schmidt.
>> Gary D. Schmidt: Thank you. 
Thank you, Stephanie. Thanks.
[Applause]
Thanks and thanks so much for
coming. It's an amazing crowd.
I hope you had an amazing day
so far.
I should tell you that whenever
I'm doing something like this, I
like to look out on the crowd
to see if my first grade teacher
was here, her name 
was Ms. Hanrahan.
And if she was here
today, I would say to her,
"Look, I'm with the National 
Book Festival."
And I wouldn't say it with love.
[Laughing]
And I know I'm a
creep.
I get it. But I wouldn't say it
with love.
In first grade, we were
tracked.
I don't know if anyone went
through that. But in tracking,
it's decided what kind of a
person you are in terms of
your studies. Are you smart or
are you not?
And it's done very early in
first grade.
And so in my school we were
also classed with vegetables,
I am not making this up. So
that, for example, if you are a
really smart kid, you were in
the corn group and the corn kids
had at the corner of their
desks little, you know, corn
sort of corn on the cob.
If you kind of average kid, you
were just kind of okay, right,
then you were again, I'm not
making this up,
you were a green bean.
And there was a collection of
little green beans at the corner
of your desk and you were okay
and you'd graduate probably, and
you'd do fine. You may go to
college, but maybe not like the
corn kids, but the green beans.
And if you were a stupid kid,
you got a pumpkin and you had an
orange pumpkin at the corner of
your desk.
And everyone knew then that you
were probably going to serve at
McDonald's for the rest of your
life or whatever, but you
wouldn't go to college
most certainly. And I was a
pumpkin, I was a stupid kid.
And what that meant in terms of
reading was that early on in
your first grade life, the corn
kids got the workbooks and they
got the early reading books,
and so they learned how to read.
When the corn kids were done
with those books,
those were then given to the
green beans, and the corn
kids got the new books.
They got the new workbooks as
the green beans started to work
on theirs. The thing is,
usually the workbook, the work
that had been done by the corn
kids wasn't erased, so it was
still in the workbook.
And when all that was done,
then they were moved again and
after two groups in the class
had finished, then it went to
the pumpkins, to the
stupid kids.
And so as a stupid kid, I got
my workbooks sometime
around December or so,
something like that.
But the other kids were, of
course, already well ahead of
me. And after all, we weren't,
you know, we were pumpkins.
And so there was no real need
to teach us to read, I guess,
because apparently we weren't
going to get it anyway.
And so by the time first grade
was over for me, when everyone
else was starting to learn how
to read,
I wasn't on the other pumpkins
weren't as either.
And so we went into second
grade and then third grade and
then into fourth grade.
And in fourth grade, we were
divided so that now all the
stupid kids could be in the
same stupid classroom and all
the really smart kids could be
in their smart classroom and all
the average kids would be in
their classrooms.
But that meant in fourth grade
that I could not read at all.
And reading was a dangerous
thing for me.
So that if someone finds
out, I mean, that's what you
don't want to do.
So in my Sunday school
classes, for example, when the
Bible was passed around and you
were each asked to read a single
verse, I couldn't do that.
And it only takes one
attempt or one moment of
revelation when someone
realizes, "Oh, he can't read."
It only takes one moment for
you to discover super great
coping mechanisms.
I mean, really good coping
mechanisms so that no one ever
finds out about it again.
So in fourth grade, we are now
learning how to be stupid
together, no one is reading in
my classroom, and the most
amazing, wonderful thing
happened to me.
There was a teacher named Miss
Kabakov.
She was the daughter of a
rabbi, and Miss Kabakov was out
on the playground. She taught
the smart kids and so I knew I
would never have her, but I
just kind of liked her and she
kind of liked me.
And the day came when Miss
Kabakov walks into my classroom
when we're being stupid
together, and she says to me,
"Gary, get your stuff."
And I had no idea what was
happening.
I thought I was being expelled,
except there's no place to go
after you're a pumpkin.
There's just no place to go.
And so I got all my stuff.
No one told me anything,
no one told my parents either.
And I went outside and Miss
Kabakov was waiting, and she
took my hand, no kidding.
When you're in fourth grade,
you don't want to walk down the
hall with a teacher holding
your hand, but there I was.
And she walked down the hall
with me, holding my hand.
I had all the rest of my stuff
in my other arm, and she brought
me into her classroom.
Well, everyone in that
classroom was a smart kid, and
they all knew that I was one of
the stupid kids.
They knew I didn't belong
there.
But she had taken a desk and
she had stuffed it up against
her desk and she had filled it
with books, none of which I
could read. There were books
that were way below my grade
level, Dr. Seuss, none of 
which I could read.
And Miss Kabakov decided that
she would spend uncounted hours
with me just helping me get up
to grade level and helping me
get to the point where I was
not only a fourth grade reader,
but maybe even better than
that.
The only reason I'm here in
front of you with these bright
lights and sitting here with
Stephanie is because
Miss Kabakov was in my life.
And I hope you all have a
teacher like that, someone that
you will always remember who
has done something, done amazing
with you. I suspect that no one
back here keeps in touch
with their fourth grade
teacher. But I'm 66 years old.
I write to her every month.
She teaches in Israel.
She lived in a kibbutz for a
long, long time
and she has just retired.
She is now Mrs. Bloch, and I
still call her Mrs. Bloch.
I'll never forget her
because that's really the reason
I'm here. In terms of writing,
perhaps because of those early
days, I never thought, oh my
gosh, I never imagined that I
would ever write a book.
Oh, my gosh. I mean, that was
just impossible.
And so if you had known me in
middle school or when you guys
are, probably some of you are,
I would only be talking 
about the Navy.
And I was absolutely sure that
I would be heading into the U.S.
Navy, I would go to Annapolis,
I would graduate second
lieutenant, I'd spend my
career,
I don't know, in the Pacific or
whatever, but I would be in the
U.S. Navy. I would have driven
you crazy talking to me simply
because that's all I really
talked about.
And so the day comes, I'm a, I
guess, a junior in high school,
and that's when you begin to
think about applying to the
academies. To apply to a naval
academy or any of the academies,
you need to go meet a
congressman and that meant to
set up that interview.
It also meant there was a ton
of paperwork.
I thought I had gotten all of
that done, and we went to see
the interview with my folks.
At that interview, there's a
pre interview with some aide who
asked you to make sure that
you've gotten through 
all of these steps.
And one of the steps was to
have an eye exam, which I had
not done. And I thought,
"Oh dang, this is going 
to not work."
And he said, "It happens all the
time, happens all the time."
And it goes, "We just have a
relationship with this guy in
town, just run down there.
I'll make the phone call,
they'll go through it," blah,
blah, blah. So I did with my
parents and we went down to
the optometrist and there he
found out what I think I had
known all my life, but I had
never really talked about, and
that is I'm as colorblind as a
dog.
I can't see any colors at all.
And so I suddenly realized that
the U.S. Navy,
which had just been
thinking about for the rest of
my life, you know, that ain't
going to happen. And we never
even went to see the congressman
because I knew that I would
never get into Annapolis or into
any of the academies.
And so, of course, what do you
do when you have like nothing
left to do? What's the last
profession you would ever want
to go into?
I decided I'd be a lawyer.
[Laughing]
Went to school for 
that and it was
okay, I guess. Decided that I
would go to the University of
Alaska for law school, mostly
because I wanted to go to Alaska
and then did really the bad
thing to do.
When you're a senior in
college, you take a course in a
completely different major with
a great professor and you
decide, "Oh my gosh, I've been
wrong for three years."
And I took a course in English
and literature with a great
professor and then decided in
my last semester of college, I
think I want to be an English
major.
I think you can imagine what my
father said when I came home at
Christmas and said, "You know,
that whole law thing, no, I'm
not going to do that. I
decided to do that instead."
So I went that and went into
graduate school
and I'm writing the final thing.
It's called a dissertation and
decide at the very end as this
dissertation, you know, I am
just getting tired of writing
this dissertation because
they're often very boring and
mine felt boring.
And then the greatest thing
that ever could have happened
happened. Early days of word
processing have the whole thing
getting almost done.
I'd just typed in 100 and some
odd Latin prayers a medievalist
and I hit whatever button,
I don't know. They're just
random, right?
You can just do any button
and it'll happen
and the whole thing was gone.
The whole thing was gone.
Now, that's the moment in your
life when you sit down and you
go, "Okay, right now I'm going
to just start again.
Just type all this in, get
it all started."
And instead I said, "Oh, dang, I
think I'll just write a story."
And I did.
I spent the next few weeks
starting a novel written for a
young audience. It was 
terrible, but it was fun.
And there's no
Latin when you're writing for
kids these days and there are
no footnotes.
Oh, my gosh. There's no
footnotes. It was great.
It was fantastic.
And when I finally was all done
with that, I really enjoyed the
process and sent it in even to
see if it could get published.
And it was a great editor at
the time
and she wrote back and said,
"Nope."
Which was a little
disappointing, but then ended up
with something that was a
really nice note in the end that
said, "Send me the next thing,"
and that's a good thing.
When you hear that, 
"Send me the next thing."
So since then I've written not
a few books with this kind of
world, I still do the academic
books.
I find them interesting.
They take a long time and they
are completely not going to earn
you a single dime.
But the others have been
really, really fun and just a
great pleasure, I guess.
So this is the latest one or
the latest one that's been
published. It's called "The
Labors of Hercules Beal."
It began actually in graduate
school long ago, even though I
didn't know it at the time
and I had gone to 
a rare book shop.
And when you go to a rare book
shop, a lot of you have done
this, you find something that
you've never anticipated, some
book that's just intriguing.
And I found this huge, like £17
book about the classical
dictionary. It was called
Anthon's Classical Dictionary.
And I thought it was
interesting because why is it
Anthony? It was Anthon's.
It was like they didn't get the
Y on and so I bought it.
It was 1843.
It was fantastic.
It's this old leather that as
soon as you touch it, even if
you touched it right now, it
just gets all over you and
you're so dirty after you've
read a few pages of it.
But the things that were in it
were amazing.
The connections, the stories of
the myths, how they started.
And at the time, I went to one
that I thought I would 
know pretty easily.
So I went to Hercules and it
was kind of a stunner.
Hercules is this one that we
all know.
We all know this the name of
Hercules.
But he's a really complicated
person who makes terrible
mistakes and who often is just
dumb in what he does.
And I was just amazed by that
story.
That was probably 30 or 40
years ago when I read that.
And it still has stuck with me
for a long time.
This character who makes
terrible mistakes and then has
to atone for them and then has
to figure out what that all
means for him.
So in this one, this is
obviously not from 30 or 40
years ago, I finally wrote the
story that I wanted to write
about Hercules. It took that
long, really.
And in this one there's a kid
who's rather small in his class.
My second son was the smallest
kid in his fifth grade and
fourth grade, the two grades
together.
So every fourth grader was
bigger than David, and David
became this super competitive
person, I think because of this.
And I thought of him for this
and thought of this kiddo who's
Hercules whom I suppose it's
funny.
Suppose it's about a kid who's
really, really not Hercules, but
that's his name. What would
that do to him?
And that was a start.
But it wasn't really where the
book ended up at all.
Hercules has the famous 12
labors where he's got to do all
of these things and then
present them to this one
king. And in the story, he's
doing that because of some
terrible grief, he's lost his
family. This terrible grief,
which is overwhelming him.
And he decides that he's going
to show that he's 
going to recover or
the gods think he'll recover
if, in fact, he goes through
these 12 labors, that somehow
that will help him pass 
this terrible grief.
And I've began to think then,
well, suppose there's a kiddo
who is dealing with this
terrible grief, and he is then
given the chance, he has to
figure out a modern equivalent,
the same kind of thing for each
of those 12 labors.
What would that look like and
how would that be?
What would it be? Like
what would each one look like
for him as he goes along?
So that became this book.
It's the whole idea of this kid
who's assigned a task and the
task is recreate every single
one of the labors through the
course of the school year.
What he doesn't know, what
Hercules doesn't know, is that
the teacher who gives him that
task has himself gone through
some terrible stuff.
And if anyone here has read
"Wednesday Wars,"
this is Danny Hupfer, 
who is now a marine,
has finished being a marine and
has seen some awful things and
is now going to recognize grief
when he sees it in one of his
kids.
So it's the story of Hercules
Beal, who tries to recover from
a long time of grief and
tries to do that by recreating
all those mythic tasks.
The hardest thing about this
and the most fun thing was
trying to figure out what would
a modern equivalent be 
of one of those labors.
So, for example, he has to
fight the Hydra, which has nine
heads, one of which is
immortal.
What would you do to make that
work today?
And another, he has to take the
Mares of Diomedes, who are
cannibal meat eating horses,
and he has to bring those all
the way back. Another means
that he's got the Nemean
Lion, and he has to capture
this lion that cannot be
captured. And the last one is
to go to hell and back where
he's able to... where he meets
Cerberus and has to get that
dog, the dog of hell, and bring
him back and then show him and
then bring him back to hell.
For those Harry Potter fans,
it's the same dog that you see
in the first book.
Yeah, so that became the book.
And it was a delight and it was
incredibly frustrating.
But that's how it 
all came to be.
>> Stephanie Handy: All right. 
Well, thank you so much, Gary.
[Applause]
>> Gary D. Schmidt: I think 
we've got like five minutes.
>> Stephanie Handy: We've got
five minutes left for questions.
So if there's any kids that
have questions, line up at the
mics, right up at the front and
we'll call on you.
Would you like to go first?
>> Why not?
So when you were writing
this book, where did you sort of
see yourself in the book?
Like, did you have anything
like, really, really, like,
similar... That's not 
the correct grammar.
Like, anything like, 
really, really like...
Anything that you can
just really relate to with
Hercules. And how did...
how did this like... I know how
this story sort of came to be,
but what sort... how did you
sort of work through it when
you were like a pumpkin and
like, what sort of stuff
did you learn?
>> Gary D. Schmidt:
You know, I heard you ask a
similar question to Daniel
Neary, and when you asked that,
I thought, "Oh, my gosh, that's 
a really hard question. I'm glad
he's not asking it to me."
[Laughing]
And so but I thought of that
too fast.
Yeah, the last couple of books
have been similar and that I'm
trying to answer that
question for myself.
What is it like when you've got
some terrible grief that comes
into your life and how does
that change you?
How does that affect you?
So you're right at when I'm
writing about Hercules and he's
really, really sad about these
things, I'm thinking to myself
at times and how is it that I'm
surviving and moving past being
sad about something?
That is a great question.
How does a writer put himself 
or herself into the character?
>> Stephanie Handy: Yeah.
Would you like to go ahead?
>> Do you have anyone 
besides your
teacher that you had mentioned
that you really have looked up
to?
>> Gary D. Schmidt: Oh, that's 
another great question.
Do I have someone that
I've looked up to?
And the answer is, yeah.
I have been blessed with a few
really, really, really great
teachers. You know, the kind of
teacher that isn't just in the
classroom but also affects you
afterwards or even 
in some outside way.
I had a college professor that
decided that his course would be
held at his house on Thursday
evenings and he would serve us
dinner. No kidding.
And when you're a college kid
and someone serves you a real
meal as opposed to a dorm meal,
it is an amazing gift.
And we just sit and talk around
about John Steinbeck every
Thursday for a semester.
It was fabulous.
And I think about him,
his name was Dr. Covey.
I think about him a lot, even
not only as I write, but I think
about him as I teach myself
from my students.
Like, what can I do to be like
that thing?
Yeah, if you have teachers like
that in your life, that's just a
really, really great blessing.
>> All right. What is 
your favorite
book that you've ever read?
>> Gary D. Schmidt:
Oh, I could tell that's a really
easy one for me.
It's a book called "The Little
World of Don Camillo."
If you can find that or do you
know that really? If you can
find that book, it's out of
print in the United States.
But if you go to like a used
book shop or something and find
that book, it is, oh my
goodness.
It is probably the best book
I've ever read.
So if you were at my study
right now at home and right in
the middle of the desk, there
is a dictionary,
of course. There's the greatest
writer of the 19th century,
Charles Darwin.
And so that book is the
"Origin of the Species," 
right on the
front of my desk. And then
right next to it is
"The Little World 
of Don Camillo."
If you ever get a chance and
don't do this, but at the very
end, don't read the end first.
But when you get to the end,
it's probably the best
conclusion of any book I've
ever read,
"Little World of Don Camillo."
>> Why did you put Hercules in
seventh grade as opposed to
fourth or fifth, like your son?
>> Gary D. Schmidt: Dang, these
are really good questions.
[Laughing]
Seventh grade is in the middle,
right. Like you're kind of done
up until sixth grade.
You're kind of done being in
elementary school, but you're
not yet in high school
and so it truly is middle.
It's the middle of things.
And so there's a lot that's
going on in your life that's
still connected to being a
young kid.
But now there's also a lot
going on in your life that's
being connected to the day
you'll become an adult.
And those to be in the middle
of those two things 
means that you're in both.
And as soon as you're there and
I remember this really vividly,
as soon as that's where you
are, there's a whole lot of
tension that can build up in a
story.
So a writer has to have tension
in a story, right?
Something has to happen that
makes some you nervous or
anxious or whatever it is
you're growing
and something. For middle
school,
seventh grade is when it's
already built in, and I can use
that in the story.
Great question.
>> Why did you choose 
to be an author?
>> Gary D. Schmidt: Wow, what 
an interesting question.
Why did I choose to be an
author?
I like to tell stories.
I really love to tell stories.
My parents told me I told
stories all the time.
They did not mean that kindly.
But I love doing that and I
still like doing that.
So I think that's really the
answer to that.
>> Stephanie Handy: All right. 
We can take one last question.
>> What's your favorite
book that you've made?
>> Gary D. Schmidt:
A favorite book that I've made
is probably one called "Mara's
Stories." It's a collection of
Holocaust stories, which is not
what you should be reading yet,
but soon.
And they are stories that were
told by storytellers who lived
in the Holocaust, who told them
in the camps.
And when I was growing up, I
heard one of those and I was
absolutely blown away by it.
So I spent a few years
collecting those stories and
then putting them together with
some notes.
If I only had one book that was
sort of left, that might be the
one I would choose.
>> Stephanie Handy:
All right. Well, thank you all
for such wonderful questions.
And thank you, Gary, for coming
to the "National Book Festival."
>> Gary D. Schmidt:
Great questions.
[Applause]
[Upbeat music]