Author Ruth Ozeki had an understandable reaction when book editor Arthur Levine invited her to team up with nine other writers to create a new novel for young readers. She thought he was "nuts."
But she and the others on this literary tag team overcame their initial skepticism. The result is Click, a novel in 10 chapters, each by a different writer.
Newbery Medal winner Linda Sue Park starts the book with a girl called Maggie, who receives an unusual inheritance from her grandfather, a globe-trotting photojournalist known as Gee.
She receives a wooden box and inside she finds seven seashells, each from a different continent. This unusual gift sets off a story that winds around the world and across generations.
Chapter 8, titled "Jiro," about World War II, is written by Ozeki. It begins:
Ozeki says she connected with the character of Gee because her Japanese grandfather was also a photographer. "So I know what it was like to grow up with boxes of photographs and each one with a history that you might not understand," she tells Deborah Amos.
Click editor Arthur Levine says that "in many ways this book is a construction of a life. It's a life seen from many different angles and with many different people's perspectives, and that's just how anyone's life is."
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