Keep reading for my interview with MICHAEL FERRARI, whose award-winning debut middle grade novel BORN TO FLY hits bookstores today, July 14, 2009!

BORN TO FLY
by Michael Ferrari
A Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers hardcover / On sale July 14, 2009
978-0-385-73715-9 / $15.99 / $17.99 CAN. / 224 pages / Ages 8-12

As promised, here's a special interview with my good friend and fellow writer pal MICHAEL FERRARI. I met Michael many years ago at an SCBWI (Society for Children Book Writers & Illustrators) event. At the time, we were both aspiring children's book writers as well as working screenwriters. Michael had a couple of his movie screenplays optioned and also worked at The WB's Standards & Practices department.

We clicked right away because we shared a lot of similar interests in pop culture, movies & TV, books, and writing!

Here's a picture of Michael and I from a few years ago at his family's beach party:

BFF! Best Friends Forever! Yoo & Ferrari

When we had first met, he had finished the first draft of his first middle grade novel called WARHAWKS. I loved his writing and encouraged him to send it out.

Well, lo and behold, Michael revised his draft several times before finally submitting it as BORN TO FLY to the prestigious annual Delacorte Yearling Contest for a First Middle Grade Novel.

AND HE WON!!!!!!!

For more information on that contest, check out this link below - all you aspiring middle grade novelists might consider entering it when you've finished your draft:

http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/pdf/DelacorteYearling08.pdf

For more info on Michael, check out his websites here:

http://www.mjferrari.com/Michael_Ferraris_site/Home_.html

http://michaelferrariborntofly.blogspot.com/

And here's the amazon link to his book:

http://www.amazon.com/Born-Fly-Michael-Ferrari/dp/0385737157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247244445&sr=8-1

Winner of the Delacorte Yearling Prize, BORN TO FLY is a unique adventure story with a girl action hero named Bird McGill. 

Here’s what some early reviewers are saying:??

“The winner of the Delacorte Yearling Prize for a First Middle-Grade Novel combines a sympathetic, unusual heroine with a spy drama set on the home front during World War II. (…) Ferrari’s fast-paced plot and well-developed characters will keep readers engaged until the last page.”?—BOOKLIST review??

“…Ferrari successfully recreates a time early in World War II, when anti-Japanese sentiment was high and fathers went to war and didn’t always return. Bird’s first-person voice is convincing, and the narrative moves briskly. With this debut, the author aims to provide the kind of adventure for girls that boys often enjoy in children’s books. Middle-grade readers of either gender looking for suspenseful historical fiction won’t notice that the combination of events adds up to an unlikely story, but they will enjoy Bird’s flight. (Historical fiction. 8-12)”?—  Kirkus Reviews

"Ferrari's novel, which won the Delacorte Yearling Prize for debut middle-grade authors, takes readers on a high-flying, nail-biting historical adventure that is uplifting and just good fun. Set during WWII in a sleepy Rhode Island town, Ferrari's story is narrated by an imaginative preteen girl whose nothing-can-stop-me attitude will appeal to readers of both sexes. Sixth-grader Bird McGill loves flying airplanes with her dad. But when he joins the war effort, Bird feels like she's lost her only ally. Then Kenji, a guarded Japanese boy, shows up in her class. As he becomes an even bigger outcast and bully-target than her (“Why don't you go home to Japland,” sneers a classmate), Bird reluctantly befriends him. Together, Bird and Kenji stumble upon suspicious activity in their hometown and vow to unravel the mystery. Ferrari weaves in period details, but wisely keeps the focus on the duo's antics and fragile, budding friendship. As danger grows, so does their trust in and reliance on each other. Readers will be anxious to learn the fate of these two daring kids and the spy they are determined to derail. Ages 8–12. (July) - Publisher's Weekly review

PAULA YOO'S Q & A WITH MICHAEL FERRARI

Below is my exclusive one-on-one interview with the amazing MICHAEL
FERRARI! Be sure to check out his book! It's AMAZING!!!!! Thanks 
Michael for stopping by to answer our questions!

QUESTION: How did you come up with the idea for your debut middle grade novel BORN TO FLY?

ANSWER: I was at a WWII airshow, rigging a camera on an airplane, the P-40 WARHAWK for a video series we were working, on when I overheard a boy teasing his sister.  The girl said the Warhawk was the best plane and one day she was gonna fly it.  The boy said she could never do that because she was a girl.  That was the seed.

QUESTION: Tell us how your book got published.  (Also: You won a contest - what was it like to get "The Call?") 

ANSWER: Short version I won a contest! The long version: I first wrote it as my masters thesis.  I placed in an SCBWI contest and got some agents to read it, none of whom wanted to publish it.  I sent it out to numerous publishers and agents over the course of several years.  Finally, I entered in the Delacorte Yearling contest for a first middle grade novel.  And I won.

At the time I got the call I was working in a cubicle proofreading thousands of pages of medical litigation for giant class-action lawsuits.  I got a call with a NY area code.  I left my desk.  Called them back and they asked "Is this M.J.?"  I didn't know what they were talking about at first.  I had forgot that I had left my name as genderless to avoid any prejudice conscious or unconscious a reader might have about the fact I was guy writing in a girl's first person voice.  So I said, "Yes, that's me."  Editor Stephanie Lane told me that my novel had been unanimously chosen as the Yearling Prize winner.  I was kind of speechless.  That was in November 2007.

QUESTION: You are also a screenwriter. How does your screenwriting background help with your book writing?

ANSWER: I feel like it's ingrained a discipline that I feel like I need a pretty structured plot before I start.  

QUESTION: If you could cast BORN TO FLY, the movie, what would be your dream cast? 

ANSWER: They'd have to do a cast search for Bird (the heroine) and Kenji (her co-hero)  I don't really know any 11 year old actresses and actors that come to mine.  A few years ago I thought Anna Sophia Robb (Winn Dixie/Bridge to Terabithia) would have been good but she's too old now. 

QUESTION: What are some of your favorite middle grade novels?

ANSWER: Blubber, A Wrinkle in Time, No Children No Pets, The Boxcar Children, Ramona the Pest

QUESTION: What are some of your favorite movies? 

ANSWER: Breaking Away, Ordinary People, Local Hero, Places in the Heart

QUESTION: Did you always want to be a writer? 

ANSWER: I think I was afraid to let myself think I could write.  My first dream was to work in the movie industry. 

QUESTION: You worked in Standards & Practices at The WB. Can you explain more about your job's duties? Any funny anecdotes from that time? 

ANSWER: Our job was to monitor shows from script to final cut and make sure things that could get the network in trouble didn't make it on the air. It could be a bizarre job.  Example: I'd be in a cubicle next to the accounting dept. and have to tell the producers on Smallville: "At 2 22 minutes 14 seconds into the episode, we need you to increase the effect of the furnace flame so that the left cleft of Clark Kent's butt cheek is more fully obscured."

QUESTION: What were you like as a teenager? Did you like to read?

ANSWER: I liked to read in elementary school, I read a lot of Beverly Cleary, Judy Blume and stuff.  I dont' remember there being YA books in Jr. High.  I read sci-fi like Robert Heinlein and I read a lot of Ray Bradbury.  In high school it seems I stopped reading for pleasure and only read what was assigned.  I don't think I really started reading for pleasure again until after I was done with college.

QUESTION: Did you draw upon your own life and your own teenage years for the book?

ANSWER: When I'm writing character details and place names, I often use places from my childhood.  When I was first writing this book I was teaching 6-8 grade and I think I drew on some of that. 

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FROM MICHAEL FERRARI'S OFFICIAL PRESS RELEASE:

     Contact Kelly Galvin: (212) 782-8827 (kgalvin at randomhouse dot com)

Delacorte Press Books for Young Readers is thrilled to present Michael
Ferrari’s debut novel, BORN TO FLY (on sale July 14, 2009 / $15.99).
Selected from more than 500 entries, this classic adventure is the
winner of the 2007 Delacorte Yearling Contest for a first middle grade
novel. As Senior Editor Stephanie Elliott states, “Michael Ferrari has
written a remarkably accomplished debut that combines adventure, humor,
real history, an extraordinary heroine, and a satisfying and nuanced
story of friendship.”

Michael
Ferrari crafted the idea for Born to Fly after attending a WW II air
show, where he overheard a boy tell his little sister as she climbed
inside a P-40 cockpit that girls can never be fighter pilots. He wrote
the story for her and for his daughters. He lives in Avon Lake, Ohio,
with his family.