The Wanderer

by Sharon Creech

  My family is full of lively storytellers. From them I learned the importance of pace, details, and tone. I also learned the value of humor and that even the most serious story has its moments of levity.

  2. If you were along on The Wanderer’s voyage and were charged with Uncle Stew’s assignment on page 21, what would be the thing that you would choose to teach your shipmates?

  I’d have a hard time choosing, because each of the characters’ choices in this story (juggling, radio code, stories, etc.) is something that interests me, so as the writer I was able to choose them all!

  3. Tell us more about your dedication in The Wanderer: “For my daughter, Karin, who journeyed across the ocean and who inspired this story. From the mother who worried while you were gone.” How did this novel grow out of your daughter’s story?

  When my daughter graduated from college, she sailed across the ocean in a forty-five-foot sailboat with six males. Needless to say, as her mother, I worried about her while she was gone, knowing that I would not hear from her during the nearly month-long journey. I would not know if they had made it until they reached land. Along the way, they encountered a fierce storm and nearly did not survive, but I did not know that until my daughter phoned from Ireland at the end of the trip. Her first words were, “Mom! We almost died!”

  I was intrigued by every aspect of her journey, and it rolled around in my head for several years before I attempted a fictional encounter. Sophie and crew follow a similar route and they encounter a similar storm.

  4. How did you research the sailing trip? Are you a sailor yourself?

  While my daughter was on her trip, I took sailing lessons (on a very calm lake!) so that I would know a little about what she was undergoing. Several years later, when I was ready to write the fictional version of her trip, I immersed myself in sailing books and ocean charts, and I interviewed my daughter. Fortunately, she had kept a log during her trip, filled with drawings and wonderful details of what it felt like out on that vast ocean, so that helped me to imagine what it was like.

  5. Are there any characters in the novel that are based on real-life characters?

  Each character is probably drawn from many people I know, but I am not aware of that when I’m writing. I begin with a vague image of a person and then I write to “flesh out” that character, and as I write any “real life” similarities that might have inspired the character evolve and change as the character is put into different situations. In Sophie, for example, I can see bits of my daughter and myself, but I also see many differences, too.

  6. Many of your books feature strong intergenerational relationships. Were you close with any of your own grandparents?

  I was closest to my maternal grandmother (a version of her appears in Granny Torrelli Makes Soup), but I also had close relationships with many aunts and uncles, and I suppose all of these relationships inspire my older characters. I also like the balance of writing about young and old: the older characters guide the young but also learn from them; the younger characters not only learn from their elders, but also influence them.

  7. Was it challenging for you to alternate between a boy’s and a girl’s perspective?

  Two reasons I decided to use the alternating voices were to bring contrast and to explore the notion that any story is shaped by its teller. The challenge in alternating between a boy’s and a girl’s perspective was less one of gender than it was of personality: how to remain within this particular character’s point of view during his or her telling of the story. Sophie and Cody have very different personalities, and it was both interesting and fun to explore how each would view the trip.

  8. Sophie experiences some frustration being dismissed because she is a girl on board a ship of boys and men. Did you ever experience similar frustrations in your own childhood?

  Oddly, I experience more of those frustrations as an adult than I did as a child! But in this story, I was more interested in my daughter’s frustrations as the only girl on board that sailboat. Her frustrations were similar to Sophie’s.

  9. Did you decide on the structure of The Wanderer before you started writing the novel, or did the six-part, seventy-eight-chapter format evolve as you were writing it?

  It evolved as I wrote. I began with Sophie’s story and soon realized it would be both interesting and useful to have a second narrator with a different perspective. It seemed natural to alternate their points of view. The many small chapters seemed appropriate to what daily journal entries might resemble, and the journey seemed to logically present itself in six parts (preparations, shakedown, the island, etc.) One member of the Newbery committee pointed out to me the prevailing use of the number three and its multiples (six, for example) in this story, beginning with “The sea, the sea, the sea,” three-sided Sophie, the six-part format, etc. This was not conscious: it was a rhythm set up when I first heard Sophie’s voice in my head saying, “The sea, the sea, the sea.”

  10. Were you a reader when you were a child? What were your favorite books? And now?

  Alas, I don’t think I read much when I was a child. I was more interested in being outdoors. I catch up for that lapse now! I read every day, primarily fiction (for adults and for children). Some of my favorite authors for children include: Karen Hesse, Jerry Spinelli, Katherine Paterson, Lois Lowry, Kate DiCamillo, Sonya Sones, Karen Cushman, Richard Peck, Philip Pullman, David Almond … well, the list could go on and on and on!

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SHARON CREECH is the author of the Newbery Medal winner WALK TWO MOONS and the Newbery Honor Book THE WANDERER. Her other work includes the novels THE UNFINISHED ANGEL, HATE THAT CAT, THE CASTLE CORONA, REPLAY, HEARTBEAT, GRANNY TORRELLI MAKES SOUP, RUBY HOLLER, LOVE THAT DOG, BLOOMABILITY, ABSOLUTELY NORMAL CHAOS, CHASING REDBIRD, and PLEASING THE GHOST, as well as three picture books: A FINE, FINE SCHOOL; FISHING IN THE AIR; and WHO’S THAT BABY? Ms. Creech and her husband live in upstate New York. You can visit her online at www.sharoncreech.com.

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  OTHER WORKS

  ALSO BY

  SHARON CREECH

  Walk Two Moons

  Absolutely Normal Chaos

  Pleasing the Ghost

  Chasing Redbird

  Bloomability

  Fishing in the Air

  Love That Dog

  A Fine, Fine School

  Ruby Holler

  Granny Torrelli Makes Soup

  Heartbeat

  Who’s That Baby?

  Replay

  The Castle Corona

  Hate That Cat

  The Unfinished Angel

  CREDITS

  Cover art © 2012 by Zdenko Basic

  COPYRIGHT

  Thank you to Joanna Cotler and Justin Chanda for helping me decode the mystery and to arrive at “the end of all our exploring”

  The Wanderer

  Copyright © 2000 by Sharon Creech

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  www.harpercollinschildrens.com

  * * *

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Creech, Sharon.

  The Wanderer / by Sharon Creech.

  p. cm.

  “Joanna Cotler books.”

  Summary: Thirteen-year-old Sophie and her cousin Cody record their transatlantic crossing aboard the Wanderer, a forty-five-foot sailboat, which, along with uncles and another cousin, is en route to visit their grandfather in England.


  ISBN 978-0-06-441032-8

  EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN 9780061972522

  Version 07272012

  [1. Sailboats—Fiction. 2. Sailing—Fiction. 3. Ocean voyages—Fiction. 4. Family life—Fiction. 5. Grandfathers—Fiction. 6. Sea stories.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C86l5Wan 2000

  99-42699

  [Fic]—dc21

  CIP

  AC

  * * *

  Revised edition, 2012

  12 13 14 15 16 CG/CW 30 29 28 27 26 25 24

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