Funds for bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation

You are a human animal

You are a very special breed,

for you are the only animal.

Who can think, who can reason, who can read?

Hello and welcome to Bookworm.

Today my guest is Peter Hedges.

He's the author most recently of an ocean in Iowa, published by Hyperion Books.

He's the author as well of What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

Now, both of these books are about children, and I began to wonder what it is.

Do you have certain rules

about approaching childhood

that make your books genuine

rather than the potentially treacley thing

that books about coming of age can sometimes become?

I think the rule needs to be that if they're not rendered as people,

then I've done, I've failed.

So the goal becomes to breathe as much fullness into them.

And in doing that, then I avoid the shortcuts that are often taken through children.

They don't become what we want them to be,

but they actually are far more complicated and wonderful

and times frightening than we might like to believe.

...