Interview with Lauren Baratz-Logsted!

Today we have the love Lauren Baratz-Logsted, author of books including The Education of Bet and Crazy Beautiful. You can find my review of The Education of Bet (which I adored) here.

You write books for kids, teens, and adults! Do you find it at all difficult to transition from one to another in your writing process?
No. In fact, I think it's what keeps me fresh. I'm an eclectic reader who enjoys reading books in many different genres and for all age groups, and I'm the same with my writing. By the end of this year I will have had 19 books published and I've sold a total of 23. If they were all in one genre or just for one age group, I'd probably be burnt out and done by now. As it is, I feel like I'm just getting started.

How much and what kind of research was required for The Education of Bet?
Less than you might think. I've always loved books set in Victorian England and I find it's a period that's very accessible to me when I'm writing. Since The Education of Bet is inspired in large part by a book I read when I was younger - Tom Brown's Schooldays, by Thomas Hughes - I re-read that before starting and then I was pretty much good to go.


Who would ideally play Bet and James in the movie version of The Education of Bet?
I'd cast Emma Watson who's done such a wonderful job as Hermione in the Harry Potter films as Bet. For James, I'd like someone who'd be new to audiences so I looked over at the New Faces Models & Actors website, coming up with this guy, Adam Barnes.

What is one book that you would recommend to young adult readers, and why?
Talk about a difficult question! Just one??? The temptation is to pick the one book that would provide the best life lesson, but of course there isn't such a book. So I think I'll simply say my favorite YA book that I read in 2009: Freeze Frame, by Heidi Ayarbe.

Your next book for teens, The Twin’s Daughter, is due out this month. (It looks fantastic, by the way!) What were your first thoughts upon seeing the incredibly gorgeous cover?
The interesting thing is that the cover you see now isn't the cover we started with. I liked the first cover very much - it had an old-fashioned look to it and a very dark feel - but the publisher decided liking wasn't enough. They wanted me to be in love with the cover and they wanted to be in love with it themselves. Between the first cover and the final they must have gone through over 20 versions before this one finally leaped out at us all. I think it's safe to say that now we are all in love.

And, for the record, how do you pronounce your last name? ;)
Lauren is exactly as it looks. Logsted is exactly as it looks too, even if people are always trying to insert an 'a' into it to make it Logstead. It's the Baratz part that people always stumble over. Just take the Barrett in Elizabeth Barrett Browning and make it sound plural, like Barretts, and you'll have it.

Thanks so much for stopping by!
<3 Cate