Q&A with Sharon Creech
Granny Torrelli Makes Soup is about an Italian grandmother and her granddaughter. What was the inspiration for this story?
This is a hard question to answer because a book contains not one, but hundreds, maybe thousands, of little ideas. Often it seems as if the main character and the place just arrive in my head one day, but later I can see that perhaps they arrived there because I’d been thinking about my family or someone I’d seen at a bus stop. I wrote most of Granny Torrelli Makes Soup while my daughter was expecting her first child, and while I was anticipating becoming a grandmother. It was a chance to remember my own Italian grandmother, and to speculate about having my own grandchild. Just about the time I finished the first draft of this book, my grandchild was born—a little girl named Pearl!
Now that you are a grandmother, what life lessons do you hope to pass on to your own granddaughter?
Perhaps I am hoping to emulate Granny Torrelli—to be able to listen, to commiserate, and to laugh with my granddaughter. Maybe the lessons I can pass on are similar: appreciate one’s friends, take time for family and simple pleasures, be able to laugh at oneself, and be able to step outside oneself—to see the larger world. I also hope to pass on my love of reading to her! I’ve been reading to Pearl since she was born, and she has become a little bookworm.
Cooking plays an important role in Granny Torrelli Makes Soup. Do you enjoy cooking for your family? What’s your favorite food to make?
I used to love to cook when I had more time to do it, but now I am a little impatient with the process. However, when I’m visiting my daughter, we make zuppa together, and my granddaughter loves to help me make scrambled eggs. Someday I will teach her how to make those little cavatelli. There is fun in cooking with someone, in the banter that goes on while the food is being prepared.
How did you become a writer? What inspired you?
This is another difficult question, and I don’t have an easy answer for it. I think that what inspired me is a love of good stories—wanting to read led naturally (it seemed) to wanting to write. I studied writing in college and in graduate school, but I also learned a lot about writing from teaching both literature and writing, when I had a chance to examine what makes a story good.
What were some of your favorite books when you were growing up?
At home, we five siblings were usually urged to “go outside and play!” This was fine with me. The only books I remember being in our house were a set of the Great Books. These included the works of Sophocles, Plato, etc.—not exactly light reading. I remember pulling one of the volumes out one day, determined to read Plato, and as I did so, a centipede scurried across the cover and onto my leg. I didn’t go anywhere near those Great Books for a long, long time. The only book I have a distinct fond memory of is The Timbertoes, probably my first chapter book, which I read at school. I was hypnotized by it and by the colorful illustrations that accompanied it. I think this was my first sense of being immersed in a story that I could read by myself.
What’s your recipe for success as a writer?
Read a lot, live your life, and listen and watch, so that your mind fills up with millions of images. Shake it. See what floats to the top. Transfer floating images to page, word by word. Repeat. When it is all done, remove clunky bits. Sounds simple, yes? And it is, if you stay loose and open, and if you have the patience to transfer those images, word by word, from your mind to the paper.
What other great stories have you cooked up?
When I finished Granny Torrelli Makes Soup, and my granddaughter was a visible miracle in my arms, I wrote Heartbeat, a novel in verse. It’s the story of thirteen-year-old Annie, and is another study of relationships: between Annie and her grandfather, between Annie and her friend Max, and between Annie and her about-to-be-born sibling. Although grandparents have appeared in most of my stories, I seemed to need to write these two books (Granny Torrelli Makes Soup and Heartbeat) now, from this perspective of actually being a grandparent.
PROLOGUE
My name is Naomi Deane and I grew up in Blackbird Tree, in the home of my guardians, Joe and Nula. Among the tales that Joe often told was that of a poor man who, while gambling, lost his house but won a donkey.
“A donkey?” the poor man wailed. “What do I want with a donkey? I cannot even feed a donkey.”
“No matter,” replied the donkey. “Reach into my left ear.”
The poor man, though shocked that the donkey could talk, nonetheless reached into the donkey’s ear and pulled out a sack of feed.
“Well, now,” the poor man said. “That’s a mighty handy ear. I wish it had food for me as well.”
“Reach into my right ear,” the donkey said.
And so the poor man reached into the donkey’s right ear and pulled out a loaf of bread, a pot of butter, and a meat pie.
Joe went on like this, spinning out the tale, with the poor man pulling all sorts of things out of the donkey’s ears: a stool, a pillow, a blanket, and, finally, a sack of gold.
I loved this story, but I always listened uneasily, fearing that something bad would be pulled from the donkey’s ears. Even after I’d heard the tale many times, always the same, I still worried that the poor man might reach in and pull out a snapping turtle or an alligator or something equally unpleasant and unexpected.
Sensing my fear, Joe would say, “It’s only a story, Naomi, only a story.” He suggested that I say to myself, “I’m not in the story, I’m not in the story”—a refrain I could repeat so that I would feel less anxious.
And so each time the poor man would reach into the donkey’s ears, I would tell myself, I’m not in the story, I’m not in the story, but it didn’t help because a story was only interesting if I was in the story.
CHAPTER 1
A BODY FALLS FROM A TREE
If you have never had a body fall out of a tree and knock you over, let me tell you what a surprising thing that is. I have had nuts fall out of a tree and conk my head. Leaves have fallen on me, and twigs, and a branch during a storm. Bird slop, of course, everyone gets that. But a body? That is not your usual thing dropping out of a tree.
Didn’t recognize him. My first thought was, Is this my fault? I bet this is my fault. Nula once said I had a knack for being around when trouble happened. She had not been around other kids much, though, and maybe did not know that most kids had a knack for being around when trouble happened.
All I really wanted to do that hot day was go on down to the creek and hunt for clay in the cool, cool water. I was wondering if maybe I could deal with the body later, when the body said, “Am I dead?”
I looked at the body’s head. Its eyes were closed.
“If you can talk, I guess you’re not dead.”
The body said, “When I open my eyes, how will I know if I’m dead or alive?”
“Well, now, you’ll see me, you’ll see the meadow, you’ll see the tree you fell out of, so I guess you’ll know you’re alive.”
“But how will I know if I’m here or if I’m at Rooks Orchard?”
“I don’t know anything about any rook or any orchard, so I can pretty much guarantee that you are here and not there. Why don’t you open your eyes and have a look around?”
And so the body opened his eyes and slowly sat up and looked all around—at the green meadow, at the cows in the distance, at the tree out of which he had fallen, and at me, and then he yelled, “Oh no!” and fell back on the ground and his eyes closed and he was dead again.
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About the Author
Lyle Rigg
SHARON CREECH is the author of the Newbery Medal winner WALK TWO MOONS and the Newbery Honor Book THE WANDERER. Her other work includes the novels THE GREAT UNEXPECTED, THE UNFINISHED ANGEL, HATE THAT CAT, THE CASTLE CORONA, REPLAY, HEARTBEAT, RUBY HOLLER, LOVE THAT DOG, BLOOMABILIT
Y, ABSOLUTELY NORMAL CHAOS, CHASING REDBIRD, and PLEASING THE GHOST, as well as three picture books: A FINE, FINE SCHOOL; FISHING IN THE AIR; and WHO’S THAT BABY? Ms. Creech and her husband live in upstate New York. You can visit her online at www.sharoncreech.com.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors.
Other Books by
SHARON CREECH
Walk Two Moons
Absolutely Normal Chaos
Pleasing the Ghost
Chasing Redbird
Bloomability
The Wanderer
Fishing in the Air
Love That Dog
A Fine, Fine School
Ruby Holler
Heartbeat
Who’s That Baby?
Replay
The Castle Corona
Hate That Cat
The Unfinished Angel
The Great Unexpected
Credits
Cover art © 2013 by Zdenko Basic
Copyright
GRANNY TORRELLI MAKES SOUP
Copyright © 2003 by Sharon Creech
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Creech, Sharon.
Granny Torrelli makes soup / by Sharon Creech. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: With the help of her wise old grandmother, twelve-year-old Rosie manages to work out some problems in her relationship with her best friend, Bailey, the boy next door.
ISBN 978-0-06-440960-5
[1. Grandmothers—Fiction. 2. Italian Americans—Fiction. 3. Best friends—Fiction. 4. Blind—Fiction. 5. People with disabilities—Fiction. 6. Cookery—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.C8615Gr 2003
2002152662
[Fic]—dc21
CIP
AC
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EPub Edition © FEBRUARY 2013 ISBN: 9780061972461
Version 03272013
12 13 14 15 16 LP/BR 27 26 25 24 23 22 21
Revised paperback edition, 2012
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