Process Talk: Kathi Appelt on Once Upon a Camel, Part 2

Last week, I asked Kathi about joy, baby birds, and the power of story. This week I start with a reminder. We’d been talking about the kindness of the camel, Zada:

[Uma] You said there was another source of kindness in the book.

[Kathi] Yes, it’s the cameleer. He’s based on one of the real cameleers who traveled with the camels from Turkey. He was a Greek man.

No one knows his true name. The sailors called him Hi Jolly, which is a corruption of  Hadji Ali. Anyway, he was a real person and he was like a Camel Whisperer. If you go back to the early source material, you find lots of incidents where he really saved the day with those camels. And there’s a monument to him in Arizona. I think it was his brother that went on to marry the daughter of a president of Mexico. They don’t think he was the first Muslim person in Texas but he was probably among the most significant at the time. 

[Uma] I was really delighted to see him come back into the story. When he left, it seemed so final. 

[Kathi] It was such a hard parting, wasn’t it? But you find so many things when you’re researching and they all find a place. Like those figs. They are originally Turkish fruit. And the mission figs you see—those were brought from Turkey and planted around the missions and now everyone thinks they’re Californian but they’re not. 

Larry D. Moore, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

[Uma] And that brings us to setting, Kathi. There were so many wonderful settings in this story—Texas, of course, but also California, Smyrna, Ephesus….where did all that come from and how did it all come together for you? 

[Kathi] Well, as you know, I’m famous for setting my books in the swamp, and honestly, Uma, I had to get out of the swamp! So what’s the polar opposite of the swamp? It’s the desert! And luckily, Texas has both swamps and deserts. I had heard about these camels, about the experiment, using camels to cross from Texas to California and back. They actually surveyed the route from west Texas to California and it was what became Route 66. But the truth is, I didn’t know too much about that landscape, so Ken and I took a trip to Big Bend. We spent some time, driving and hiking and being in awe at the vastness. All of that helped. 

And research—one of the leaders of the camel expedition, a man named Beale, kept a diary. It turns out that a Pasha in Smyrna, on the Aegean coast, did gift nine camels to the experiment. And the thing is, they were the best camels in the group. They were in better shape, had better endurance, than any of the other camels. Smyrna defied me for a while because I didn’t realize it had changed names and was now called Izmir. Luckily, here at Texas A & M, there’s a Turkish Student Association. I contacted them when I got to a point when I really needed a reader. The young woman who agreed to read for me—she’s a Ph. D. student in Nuclear Engineering—and she was so thorough and paid attention to everything, from food to palm trees to language. I had a saying in there that originally read “Become a shooting star.” She thought that didn’t sound positive—a falling or shooting star, so I changed it to “Become a star.” She was fantastic and so fun to work with too. I owe her a debt of gratitude. 

[Uma] Was it hard to do all this in the pandemic? I imagine in a different time you might have gone to Turkey! 

[Kathi] I might have. I did go for a camel ride, in California. That was before I started working on the book. My daughter-in-law found a camel dairy, and they did rides, so we all went out there and took a ride on a camel called Camelot, if you can believe that. 

But landscape is really important to me. I really love what landscape has to offer to a story and the desert has its own charms and possibilities. 

[Uma] It does. The landscapes this book are really beautiful and meaningful, Kathi, whether they come from Zada’s memory or from her time with the little kestrels. 

Photo by Greg Hume (Greg5030), CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

[Kathi] You do have to be careful. I originally had the birds as elf owls.  Do you know them? They’re these little tiny owls. Then I found out that elf owls do come to Big Bend but they’re migratory, and I wanted a bird that was there year-round. Also in some Native lore, owls have negative connotations. I mean, I’m very aware that this land has been lived on by so many different people for so long, and I wanted not to be, you know, implying anything like that. 

[Uma] And kestrels are beautiful birds. So small and yet they’re powerful raptors. I love the kestrels in the art, by the way.

[Kathi] Yes, Eric (Rohmann) did such a good job with the art. I was so pleased he was able to do the art for this book. He did Philip Pullman’s covers for The Golden Compass—for the trilogy—I don’t think very many people know that. He had an exhibit here in Texas at the NICL (National Children’s Illustrated Literature) Museum,. Ken and I had gone up. I was talking to Eric about the covers, and I asked him, “Why don’t you do more covers?”And he said, “Nobody asks me. So you’d better believe I remembered that.”

[Uma] What’s memorable to you about your journey through this book, and how it turned out? 

[Kathi] I’m pleased with it. I think it started out a little heavy because I was in research mode. When I do research, I love all the facts and the details and the fun discoveries I make. I did a lot of info-dumping in early drafts, so it took me a while to find the characters in the middle of all the history. It was a tough slog during the pandemic. I’ll confess I had moments of “Why am I doing this? Does anything really matter any more?” I think all of us probably had those dark moments. As joyful as it was, it was still hard work. But Caitlyn is such a great editor. She always seemed to ask just the right questions. She’s the Author Whisperer.  

[Uma] Every writer needs one. Thank you, Kathi, for sharing your time and insights so generously. Readers can be assured of a wondrous camel ride.