Process Talk: Kathi Appelt on Once Upon a Camel

Once Upon a Camel by Kathi Appelt is all about joy. I sent Kathi a bunch of questions to consider talking to me about but I had to open with joy, because there are baby kestrels and a storytelling camel and there is wordplay for the ages.

[Uma] Tell me about tapping joy in this book. 

[Kathi] When you sent me those questions, I was so happy that was the first question you asked, because that’s what I was aiming for. I was really trying to tap into joy. Partly because I was finishing up with Angel Thieves, which was an intense book and I felt a heaviness while I was working on that story. So I started working on the camel story in October of 2019 and it quickly became my pandemic novel. There was so much heaviness surrounding me that I intentionally aimed for joy. It’s not like you can just cook up joy, right? It’s not like you can say, Today, I’m going to be joyful. But I came up with a motto for myself, for the story which was “Give joy a chance.”

Photo © Ken Appelt

Sometimes my writing tends to lean into darkness and I was consciously trying to reject that. Very early on in this process I had this image of two tiny, tiny birds, on a camel’s head. I don’t know what it was about that image that made me so incredibly happy. So I held onto that image of those baby birds right in the tuft of the camel. So then I had a guiding image and a guiding motto. 

It was hard, with the pandemic going on. Inadvertently, when I put them all in that scene in the cave, I suddenly realized it was like I’d put them in lockdown. 

[Uma] With a lion outside, prowling! Pacing, trying to get into his cave? Oh, Kathi! 

[Kathi] Yes, yes, this looming disaster! Susan Fletcher read an early chapter and she said, “I think you’re writing a sheltering in place novel.” That kind of made me happy in a way. I do think writing for a younger age lends a little more cheer. Not always, but certainly with this book.

[Uma] And the baby characters, right? The little chicks nestling into the camel’s head—that’s a very fuzzy image, really evokes small fluffy baby animals in an iconic way. And they’re such a pair, they zing off each other, complete each other’s sentences…

[Kathi] I love their feistiness. It did fill me with joy to write them. But I didn’t just fall into that. It was very much a conscious decision. Maybe I needed that, for myself. 

[Uma] Now, underneath it all there’s the power of story. Talk about that. 

[Kathi] I have this sense that stories save us. I’ve carried that governing theme with me for many, many years. It really arose forty years ago when I was attending Al-Anon meetings, because I had a member of my family who was addicted. I remember having a revelation after one of those meetings when I realized, it’s not the steps, it’s not anything other than the sitting in a circle and hearing stories—that’s what saves us. Just knowing there are other people going through the same thing. Being able to carry these stories with us. Being able to share them in a safe space. That was a transformational moment when I realized that. It was quite early in my writing life, before I’d even published anything. And then later when the boys came along, I wasn’t, you know, an artsy craftsy kind of mom. But I knew I couldn’t damage these boys if I read to them, so I had this experience of the stories I read to them and told them, orally. They were really like our little sacred circle, our own little familial circle. We could have a horrible day and if we sat down together and shared a story, that whole day just went away. We could start over by falling into the story. So I really understood that space that Sheherezade inhabited. I knew from the get-go that story, that power of story would be at the heart of my Zada’s being as well. Maybe that’s why I intentionally made her an older character as well, which is unusual in a children’s book, to have an old, wise—well, mostly wise. She has her moments—main character. 

[Uma] Able to look back, right? There are so many times when she’s reflecting on her life and what she knows. 

[Kathi] But also she was kind of a reflection of myself. I have days when I have the achy knees like she does. But the little birds gave her a renewed sense of self. It wasn’t all one-sided. She didn’t save the day all by herself. 

[Uma] I want you to talk about that scene in the cave, as it happens, when she’s trying to get past Pecos de Leon. It’s so clever—at one point she’s almost pandering to him. But it’s also, in a way, kind. 

[Kathi] I think it’s a fundamental need in all of us to be acknowledged, for whatever gifts we have. In Pecos’s case, he’s a loner and also aging and she acknowledged him. It may not have been necessarily truthful, right? 

[Uma] No, but that’s the beauty of it. It’s a lesson in adding frills to a story—artful exaggeration. 

[Kathi] Yes, and in a way, by acknowledging his qualities, she’s saying he’s capable of doing great things. In a way, that was a little on the sly side. And it’s also an example of a single event being seen from multiple perspectives. She didn’t change the event, just the angle. It’s like in families—when I’m with my sisters and we’re remembering something that happened. Some real event. One of us will talk about it and the others might look at her, you know—like Are we even talking about the same thing?

[Uma] POV is everything. Kathi, thanks so much.

Part II of this interview will follow soon.