Bringing Hickory Hollow to Life
It was an editor’s dream when the initial concept for the Hickory Hollow series landed on my desk. Create a six-book middle-grade series full of adventure in a quaint but quirky small town? I couldn’t sign up fast enough. But there was a lot of work to be done to bring the world of Hickory Hollow to life.
First and foremost, we needed characters. Each book in the series is narrated by a different Hickory Hollow fourth grader. I wanted to see strong characters with distinct personalities. We didn’t want six versions of the same kid. So, as I often do, I turned to personality tests, specifically the Enneagram. I needed a succinct and clear way to get the core personality of each character across to our team of authors. After all, they would be writing a story that incorporated not just their main character but all of the other characters in the series as well. Thus was born Natalie, the perceptive investigator; Skye, the willful challenger; Josh, the caring helper; Eva, the perfectionistic reformer; Mateo, the spontaneous enthusiast; and Ollie, the anxious loyalist.
Once our cast of main characters was clear, it was time to flesh out the rest of the world. I had to start developing the people and places that were the most likely to show up across books in the series. I created the all-important “Hickory Hollow World Map,” a living Google Doc that was shared with all of our authors as more places, people, and elements of the world started to come together. Consistency across the series was of the utmost importance as we had multiple authors writing simultaneously. But I’ll be honest. Getting to develop those additional world elements also allowed me to hide in a few personal Easter eggs. I’ll let you in on the secrets. Principal Flores is named in honor of my former boss, a fantastic public librarian in Missouri. The fourth-grade teacher, Mr. Reuter, is named in honor of my nephew. The public librarian is named after my dog, Mavis!
Still, even with all of that prep work, once the authors started writing, additional questions arose. I remember when I got a manuscript draft from one of our brilliant authors, Kelly J. Baptist. In it, the character of Eva was described as riding a bus to school. I panicked. How could I not have thought about how each character got to school in the morning? This seemingly small detail had big implications. How small was this small town? Where did each character live in relation to the important places in town? We knew there was going to be a map of Hickory Hollow in the front matter of the books. But it hadn’t been finalized yet. I had to figure out exactly where each of the kids would live and how they would arrive at school. And I had to disseminate that information to all of our authors. So, I updated the World Map.
Things really ramped up when we began adding in the illustrations. I had seen our team of authors take my bullet point lists of personality traits and turn them into real and lovable characters. Now I was getting to see our phenomenally talented illustrator, Shams Nelson, take a list of physical characteristics and turn them into the gorgeous illustrations that add so much to the series. But even then, communication was key in getting Shams the right information to illustrate from. At one point, I asked for an illustration of a squirrel (Shams draws particularly cute squirrels). And it was great when it was in black-and-white. But we ran into a small problem when a squirrel on a full-color book cover had brown fur. We already had a voice-over for an accompanying Hickory Hollow video on Kanopy talking about the gray squirrels. I hadn’t thought to specify the color of a squirrel’s fur when I sent out my art notes. I love my job editing children’s books because some days I get to tackle a flurry of emails debating the merits of different squirrel colors. If you’re curious, our team ultimately decided that both gray and brown squirrels could happily co-exist in the world of Hickory Hollow.
Seeing the world of Hickory Hollow all come together was like completing a gorgeously intricate 3-D puzzle. I can only hope that readers are as taken with the adventure of the stories as I was in the adventure of helping bring them to life.
Happy reading!
Listen to a Meet-the-Author Recording for Lost in Shellback Forest
Listen to a Meet-the-Author Recording for X Marks the Spot
Listen to a Meet-the-Author Recording for Secrets in the Shadows
Listen to a Meet-the-Illustrator Recording for the Hickory Hollow series
Explore the Hickory Hollow series page on TeachingBooks
Text and images are courtesy of Kelley Anne Barth and may not be used without express written consent.
Leave a Reply