Q: So much of your work is historical fiction. What author of the genre do you admire most?
A: The ultimate model for all my historical fiction is Robert Louis Stevenson—he epitomizes a kind of storytelling that I dearly love and still read because it is true, it has validity, and, beyond all, it is an adventure.
Q: What special challenge of writing about a different time do you enjoy the most?
A: We don’t know fully what life was like, and you have to build a whole style and language to convey something. In other words, the whole thing is a stylistic construction, and you almost invent the language. I originally wrote the book in verse, but it would have been six hundred pages. [Laughs]. So I took the linguistic structure and recast it back into a traditional narrative.
Q: Crispin is set in fourteenth-century England. What attracted you to this place and time?
A: I write historical fiction the way I read history—there has to be something that engages my attention and that I find interesting to begin with. European culture is seeing the emergence of the ego at this time. It’s eighty years before the Reformation. I am attempting to write a story that focuses on the reformation of a culture that is struggling to change its fundamental religious beliefs. I want to show just how shocking and difficult that transformation is. There’s so much about nationalism emerging, there’s a burst of universities, and the seeds of modern culture begin sprouting.
Q: What sparked the idea that became Crispin: The Cross of Lead?
A: The impetus for this story was a wonderful series of lectures focused on the late Middle Ages, and Crispin is dedicated to Teofilo F. Ruiz, a lecturer in the series. I was enthralled by one of the things he said—that a peasant could achieve a kind of mobility if he escaped to a city with its own liberties for a year and a day.
Q: How do you connect the problems of a fourteenth century serf to a kid in the twenty-first century?
A: I think the problem of writing historical fiction for young people in particular is how to convey the strictures of that earlier society. The rules of life in the fourteenth century are so radically different from today that you have to create a context that is understandable. Music is something kids do relate to, and figuring out that there was music at that time is a way for them to connect.
Q: How did you communicate the complexities and ubiquity of medieval religion?
A: It was difficult to convey a sense of religion that is ultimately a way of life. It’s not open to question and is so absolutely a permanent part of every breath that you take.
Q: You actually have a real-life character in the story in the person of John Ball. What are the challenges of including a real person in a fictional story?
A: When I was a freshman in college—a long time ago—I read something about the Peasants’Rebellion. I had decided to become a writer, but I was writing plays, and so I wrote a blank-verse play about the Peasants’Rebellion. I chose John Ball for Crispin because Froissart’s Chronicles [a history of the fourteenth century] contained speeches I could paraphrase, and I felt on firmer ground to expostulate and express his notions.
Q: What do you think is valuable to the reader about historical fiction?
A: I’m a believer that if you know there was a past and that it differs from today, there is a built-in inference that change is part of the human experience, so there is change potentially for the future. If you live in a world where change is visible, embedded in that is a philosophy for change.
Q: This is your fiftieth book! What are your thoughts on reaching this milestone?
A: Almost all of my books are in print. That’s enormously gratifying. No doubt it helps that my work is very varied.
Q: What were your thoughts on learning Crispin was honored with the Newbery Medal?
A: I felt surprised, lucky, and very moved.