Good morning! I’m so excited this week to introduce everyone to the amazing A. T. Balsara. She’s a children’s author and illustrator who hails from Ontario, Canada.
A few days ago I posted my review of her 5-star young adult fantasy novel: The Great & the Small. This story caught my attention immediately for its voice and a bit of nostalgia from my childhood. It had that same gritty feel The Secret of NIMH did when I read it as a child. And yet the characters are so gripping I fell in love with them immediately.
Will you tell us about your latest book release?
Thanks so much for having me on your blog! The Great & the Small was a real labour of love for me. It took me 15 years, on and off, to write. A project would come up and it would be put on the back burner to keep simmering. In hindsight, the delays helped me to write a better book. I needed time to grow into the story of Fin, Papa, and Ananda, and to learn how to express the elements of the story that were burning within me.
The Great & the Small is about a colony of rats who, led by their charismatic leader, the Beloved Chairman whom they call “Papa,” have decided that they’ve had enough of being experimented on, poisoned, and reviled. They declare war upon humanity. Death squads of rats infected with bubonic plague are deployed to infect the “ugly two-legs,” and as the deaths start to mount up, it seems that any hope for humankind is fading. The Beloved Chairman’s scrawny nephew, Fin, adores his uncle and hungers for his approval. Fin becomes Papa’s henchman in the fight against the two-legs until he gets caught in a rat trap and faces certain death. A girl named Ananda rescues him, and secretly nurses Fin back to health. In the weeks it takes Fin to heal, he learns to trust, and to his horror, love, Ananda. Now Fin must make a terrible decision: help his uncle destroy the two-legs until every last one of them is dead, including the one that he loves, or do the unthinkable: rebel.
What sparked the idea for The Great & the Small?
I had loved the book Watership Down when I was younger, a book about a warren of rabbits. I loved how it had felt like I’d stumbled upon a secret world. I wanted readers to have that same feeling about rats. And why rats? Because their weapon of choice was so deadly: the bubonic plague. The plague has been responsible for killing millions of people over the millennia, and in the 1300’s literally reshaped European society. What other weapon could animals conceivably use that would have such impact? I have also always been drawn to the “underdog,” and rats certainly get a bad rap. They are intelligent, resourceful, and affectionate, and would make a formidable enemy.
I took those elements of story that I wanted to explore, and combined them with a question: what would it be like to grow up in the orbit of a Stalin? Would you be able to find your own moral compass, or would the pull of that dark energy work on you like a moral black hole, crushing any sense of right and wrong. It’s easy for us to stand back and criticize the people who lived under a Hitler, or a Stalin, and condemn them for what they did. And they should be condemned. But what if WE were the ones who had to fight our way clear of the manipulation, the persuasive arguments, the family bond that we might share with them? Would we be able to stand up to a Stalin if he was our father? Or what if we were Germans living under Hitler? Would we be able to stand alone and resist (and there were those who did!) knowing that we and our families would face certain death? These uncomfortable questions are as relevant today as they have ever been, unfortunately.
Now, you’re an artist, too. Is it true you illustrated your own book?
Yes, I did illustrate The Great & the Small. It’s unusual nowadays for a young adult book to have illustrations, but I’d always loved illustrated books, like Little Women, and any book by Charles Dickens, and I couldn’t imagine why a young person of today wouldn’t like them, too! I drafted my youngest daughter into service, and she became “Ananda” in the book. As she was studying for university exams, or doing homework, she would pause, pose for me, and keep working (what a champ! Thanks, Mehra!) I also worked from figurines and photographs. For illustrating, I work digitally in Corel Painter. I also traditionally paint in watercolour and in oils, but that’s just for my own enjoyment.
Are there any literary pilgrimages you took to draw inspiration for this story? Or any that impacted this story?
I did take some pilgrimages to a certain wonderful farmer’s market which shall remain nameless….I have no desire to get sued for writing a story about how it gets infested with rats! I will say, though, that I must have looked like quite the eccentric, as I was snapping photos of the fish guts under the fish stalls, and of the dark, sketchy corners that no tourist usually sees, and old broken sewer openings. I wanted reference photos for how the market would look to a rat, which to me is a far more interesting perspective than the usual tourist photos.
Did you hide any secrets in your book intended for close friends and family to find?
What a great idea! I didn’t even think about doing that. Next time.
Are there any deleted scenes or short stories from Fin’s world where readers might get a taste of what’s to come?
No, every scene that I had wanted to write for Fin ended up in the book. If I could have, I would have expanded the scenes between Fin and Ananda. They were my favourites to write, but Fin and Ananda’s meeting, although pivotal to the story, was brief.
Can readers expect a sequel?
No—everything I wanted to write was in this book. It was all about Fin’s relationship to Papa, to Ananda, and finally, to himself.
Where can readers buy The Great & the Small, or any of your other books?
The Great & the Small can be bought through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Common Deer Press. A few weeks ago I found out that it is going to be distributed to actual bricks and mortar bookstores now, too (that sound you just heard was me cheering). Readers can also go to my website and click the “buy” button there and it will direct them to Amazon. It is available as a hard copy as well as digital.
My other books are also available through my website. I have a new picture book that is being released at the end of July called, The Nightingale’s Song. It’s about unity in diversity—the belief that far from our differences in skin colour and ethnicities needing to be “tolerated,” the diversity of the human family is a source of infinite strength and beauty. My hope is that every child reading that book will see him or herself in its pages, and will see themselves as beautiful. As I tell children in my presentations, “People come in all shapes, colours, and sizes!” And so does beauty.
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Connect with Andrea at: www.torreybalsara.com Amazon Goodreads |
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Thank you so much for hosting me on your blog! You are a champion supporter of indie authors (like me) and I really appreciate it!