We’re returning to the original graphic novel format with some extra surprises! Q: If you don’t mind saying, what are you working on now? What’s coming up next from you?Ī: The fourth book in the Sunny series, Sunny Makes a Splash, is coming out in September! And my brother, Matt, and I are working on two new top-secret Babymouse books. Honestly, she did almost all of the work. Q: What was the process of creating the graphic novel like? Were you surprised by anything in the look of the book?Ī: Savanna just took it and ran with it. It makes historic fiction more approachable.

I think that the graphic novel really helps readers-kids and grown-ups-visualize what Key West looked like during the Great Depression. I was one of her biggest fans-she illustrated an incredible graphic novel called Bloom, that I absolutely loved. Q: How did it come to be graphic novel? What do you feel the graphic novel format brings to the story?Ī: Fans of Turtle in Paradise had been begging me for years to make it into a graphic novel! I was so fortunate to have Savanna agree to adapt it. I’d always been interested in that side of my family, so it seemed natural to write a book that takes place in Key West. Which is to say, she and her family emigrated from the Bahamas and settled in Key West in the late 1800s. Q: Please tell us a little about how you came to write Turtle in Paradise?Ī: My great-grandmother, Jennie Lewin, was a Key West “conch”. Store co-founder Judy Blume (left) and Jenni Holm

Turtle in Paradise by Jennifer L. Holm