Kathi Appelt and Alison McGhee on Maybe a Fox

alison mcghee Alison McGhee


In our January/February 2016 issue, Mag editor Elissa Gershowitz asked Maybe a Fox coauthors Alison McGhee and Kathi Appelt about their collaboration process — and about that tearjerker ending. Read the full review of Maybe a Fox here.

Elissa Gershowitz: How did you work together on this book? (And did you intentionally set out to make each other cry?!)

Kathi Appelt Kathi Appelt


Alison McGhee: At first we wrote in separate voices — fox and girl — emailing chapters back and forth weekly. Later we worked on it simultaneously via Google Docs, and finally we took turns revising the entire thing solo (about a zillion times total). Intentional crying? Nope. (But if you want the truth, we both still cry whenever we read the ending.)

Kathi Appelt: What Alison said!

From the January/February 2016 issue of The Horn Book Magazine.

Elissa Gershowitz

Elissa Gershowitz is editor in chief of The Horn Book, Inc. She holds an MA from the Center for the Study of Children's Literature at Simmons University and a BA from Oberlin College.

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