Graduate of both Harvard and Columbia, celebrated author, screenwriter and director Soman Chainani brings us the irresistible fairy tale world of The School for Good and Evil, a place full of magical references and unexpected outcomes. With plans for a film adaptation already underway, the acclaimed first book in this series is making quite a splash in the literary YA world and beyond…
Sophie, blond, beautiful and devoted to doing good deeds, chooses to be best friends with Agatha, unattractive, disagreeable, and very unpopular. Sophie dreams of being kidnapped into the enchanted world of the School for Good and Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to become legendary fairy tale heroes and villains like Snow White and Prince Charming, and Captain Hook and Rumpelstiltskin. She is certain she’ll be a star student at the School for Good, graduate a princess and live happily ever after, and that her friend is a natural fit for the School for Evil. But when the two girls are swept into the Endless Woods, they find their fortunes reversed—Sophie’s dumped in the School for Evil to take Uglification, Death Curses, and Henchmen Training, while Agatha finds herself in the School for Good, thrust amongst handsome princes and fair maidens for Princess Etiquette and Animal Communication classes. Rivalries bloom, jealousy sets in, and the students begin to reveal their true colors, illustrating that the difference between good and evil isn’t as clear as it is in the storybooks.
With parallels not only to the Grimm brothers’ works, but also to J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, this remarkable universe is not to be missed. As one young reader cheered, “I’d eat a stapler to get into the School for Good and Evil!”
www.somanchainani.net // www.schoolforgoodandevil.com
YOUNG ADULT: What is your earliest memory involving writing?
Soman Chainani: I was 7 years-old, and I remember sitting in a car while my older brother told my mother about the book of poems he was writing for his independent study project in middle school. They spent the entire forty-five minute car ride home brainstorming a title for the book, but couldn’t come up with anything that stuck. “I have one,” I said. They looked at me with half-irritated, half-curious faces. “Dreams That Come to Life,’” I blurted. They ended up using it. It wasn’t long before I was writing my own books of (quite awful) poetry.
YA: Tell us a little bit about your latest work. What is different about THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL?
SC: As a diligent student of the Grimms’ tales, what I loved about them was how unsafe the characters were. You could very well end up with wedding bells and an Ever After – or you could lose your tongue or be baked into a pie. There was no ‘warmth’ built into the narrator, no expectations of a happy ending. The thrill came from vicariously trying to survive the gingerbread house, the hook-handed captain, or the apple-carrying crone at the door. In the same vein, when I wrote THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL, I wanted to tell a story where at no point could the reader grasp onto established conventions or expectations without the ground shifting under their feet. Perhaps even more than children, adults will enjoy the mischief (and scares) that come with seeing Good and Evil subverted.
YA: Take us through a typical writing day for you.
SC: My routine is pretty simple – I get up at about 7am, then either go to yoga or spinning or play tennis until 9. I start writing by 9:30 and write until 3:30 or 4, with a lunch break in there (during which I watch a bad episode of reality TV to calm down). Then I run errands before I teach at nights. There are two keys to my writing process, I’d say. One, that I stay super fit, because the stamina required to write, edit, and promote SGE, where I’m doing both the books and movies at the same time, is absolutely inhuman. And two, that I don’t work too late. I need time for my brain to solve the problems of the day so I can move forward the next morning clear-headed.
YA: Can you describe the path to getting this work published? What were the challenges? What was easy about it?
SC: It happened with alarming speed. I had been adapting the novel The Pushcart War into a film for legendary producer Jane Startz, who has adapted practically every major kids’ book of our time – Tuck Everlasting, The Indian in the Cupboard, The Babysitter’s Club, etc. I told her the idea for SGE and she immediately loved the idea of growing a series from the ground up as both novels and films. Once I had the proposal for the series ready and a few sample chapters, she sent it out to 16 publishers, but Harper preempted it and bought worldwide rights within 48 hours. The challenges all came after I sold it, rather than before, which is highly unusual. That said, you can imagine the pressure I felt to deliver once the series was sold. I wasn’t a particularly pleasant person for the better part of a year and a half. God bless Jane and my phenomenal editor, Phoebe Yeh, for their wisdom and calm. Now that I’m on Book 2, I’m more relaxed and secure in just spreading my wings.
YA: It would seem there is a sub-genre of young adult fiction, one which involves a special school or academy (following the HARRY POTTER or even X-MEN construct). Why do you think this setting is so ripe for storytelling?
SC: Surely it’s because kids gravitate towards these novels set in the place they spend the most time. What could be more universal than school?
But personally, I came to a school setting because I wanted to work in fairy tales without being harnessed to a mashup or retelling or revision of an old story. Instead, I had my sights set on something more primal: a new fairy tale, just as unleashed and unhinged as the old, that found the anxieties of today’s children. To acknowledge the past – the alumni of the genre, so to speak – and move on to a new class. As soon as I started thinking in those terms, I knew I wanted to do a school-based novel. I was walking in a park before an appointment when I had the first image… a girl in pink and a girl in black falling into the wrong schools… I got so caught up thinking about it that I missed my appointment entirely.
YA: What’s next for you?
SC: I’m adapting The School for Good & Evil into a screenplay with Malia Scotch Marmo (the writer of Hook), as well as drafting the second book, which should be out sometime in 2014.