Kathi appelt biography of michael

August 19, 2020

A Story Waiting to be Written

Every College of Liberal Arts student has a story waiting to be written, as proven by former English major Kathi Appelt.

Story by Alix Poth ’18
Photos by Michael Kellett
Article illustrations by Angelyn Wiley ’17

When you walk into the Appelt home, you’re met by five friendly felines and an aroma of freshly brewed coffee, flying ukuleles and purple walls, leopard print carpet and shelves upon shelves of books. In other words, you find the perfect abode for an award-winning children’s book author who discovered her passion for the humanities in the College of Liberal Arts at Texas A&M.

It’s fitting that Kathi Appelt ‘79 lives in such an inviting home, as she is well-known for her hospitality. After acquainting guests with the magical wonders of her living room, she invites them into her equally stimulating kitchen, complete with colorful tiles that line the walls and deep, twinkling blue countertops. This is exactly what she views as the heart of what makes us human: we are all storytellers.

Indeed, the story of Kathi Appelt, and her journey from the Texas A&M University College of Liberal Arts to children’s book author fame, is a captivating one.

Humble Beginnings

Kathi graduated from high school in 1972 and became a first- generation college student when she studied at Texas A&M. Kathi began with hopes to become a veterinarian but said she quickly found her mind was not wired for the hard sciences. However, she was enthralled by the freshman English course she was required to take, and was inspired by the dedication and clear love of the subject shown by the teacher assistant. She switched her major to English before her second semester of college.

“I didn’t have a clue what I would do with an English degree, but it felt right for me to be in the English department,” she s

By Kathi Appelt

This interview includes plot spoilers for Sisters of the Neversea by Cynthia Leitich Smith (Heartdrum, June 1, 2021). You may want to bookmark and return to it after reading the story.

Cover art by Floyd Cooper (Muscogee); from the promotional copy:

Lily and Wendy have been best friends since they became stepsisters. But with their feuding parents planning to spend the summer apart, what will become of their family—and their friendship?

Little do they know that a mysterious boy has been watching them from the oak tree outside their window. A boy who intends to take them away from home for good, to an island of wild animals, Merfolk, Fairies, and kidnapped children.

A boy who calls himself Peter Pan.

Cynthia, you started out in picture books with Jingle Dancer (Morrow, 2000, Heartdrum, 2021), then quickly moved to young adult, first with Rain Is Not My Indian Name (HarperCollins, 2001)(Heartdrum, 2021), then with your Tantalize series and its spinoff Feral trilogy (Candlewick, 2007-2018), and more recently with Hearts Unbroken (Candlewick, 2018, 2020). And squeezed in there, you did write the chapter book Indian Shoes (HarperCollins, 2002), too. But with that exception, you’ve been writing for either the very young or for teenagers.Which of course, leads me to my first question: What led you to visit middle grade?

As a library kid, I often gravitated to the Newbery shelf, and so my early go-to vision of a children’s book was the middle grade novel per se. However, I apparently have many inner children (and teens), so my protagonists have varied in age, which is one of the factors taken into consideration in deciding format and age-market categories.

That said, I have two middle grade books out this year—Sisters of the Neversea (Heartdrum, 2021) and Ancestor Approved: Intertribal Stories For Kids (Heartdrum, 2021), a powwow-centered collection for which I served as the anthologist and to which I contributed

Once Upon a Camel, Kathi Appelt’s newest novel for young readers, is ambitious, to say the least. It’s the story of Zada, a camel who lives in the foothills of West Texas in the year 1910. When a mighty dust storm strikes and Zada’s kestrel friends are whisked away, she lodges their chicks atop her head, sets out to find their parents, and pledges to keep them safe.

To distract them from the dangers that surround them, not the least of which is the violent storm, Zada tells the kestrels stories of her past. Her namesake, after all, is none other than Scheherazade, one of literature’s most legendary storytellers. And what a colorful past it is, one that begins in 1850 with her life as a racing camel in Smyrna, Turkey, living under the gentle instruction of a pasha named Teodor. How Zada and her constant companion, another camel named Asiye, made their way to the United States is just one of the many compelling stories Zada has to tell about her fascinating life.

Chapter 16 asked Appelt via email about the novel, which includes illustrations from Caldecott Medalist Eric Rohmann.

Chapter 16: You mention in the closing author’s note that your grandfather once told you, as a child, that there were wild camels in West Texas and that, as an adult, you decided to research that. Was that the initial spark for this story?

Kathi Appelt: Yes, as a youngster I just accepted that there were camels in West Texas, because if my grandfather said it was so, well, it must be so. Nevertheless, I never actually saw any out there, with the exception of a lone camel that grazed in a tiny pen next to one of those roadside attractions that featured “Beasts of the Bible.” Or something like that. I guess there was a donkey somewhere, but I only had eyes for that imposing dromedary. Obviously, that camel wasn’t wild. It also wasn’t in West Texas. It was in north Houston.

The other thing to note is that my father was a dedicated cigarette smoker, and his brand of choice was Ca