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Behind the Book

Behind the Book: The Search for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi

As a kid who loved classics like The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, Peter Pan and Wendy, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, I wondered why it was that I returned to these timeless tales again and again throughout my life. The answer is easy: There lies magic between those pages, places I loved visiting when I was ten years-old that I still love returning to today.

What if I could conjure up a story in the same spirit? A story that the ten-year-old Tony would have loved and that the forty-year-old Tony has the ability to create?

First, I’d make the hero a heroine—a strong and clever spirit drawn from some of my favorite protagonists like Dorothy Gale, Wendy Darling, and Alice. And, like those characters, I’d have her cope with problems children can relate to: Some are timeless, such as dealing with parents and finding one’s place in the world; others more timely such as society’s growing reliance on technology to help us.

Next, I’d create a wonderworld for my heroine to have her adventures in. A setting both familiar and strange that I’d hope readers would enjoy exploring. I’d populate it with characters whose personalities may seem familiar but who are housed in a more science-fiction cast, such as robots, aliens, and an array of bizarre otherworldly life-forms. This was how I began to imagine the world of Eva Nine and her journey in The Search for WondLa.

Though Eva utilizes futuristic technology as she interacts with all manner of aliens, her story is still a fairy tale at its heart. A fairy tale of compassion and family. A fairy tale of danger and adventure. A fairy tale for the twenty-first century.