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| Nick Thomas | |
Nick Thomas is a Senior Editor with Levine Querido. Previously, he was Senior Editor at Arthur A. Levine Books, where he started as an Editorial Assistant. He has also held positions with Bloomsbury, Chicken House and David Fickling Books before returning to his AALB roots. He edits middle grade and young adult books and looks for stories that change something about you by the time you're finished.
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| Meghan McCullough | |
Meghan McCullough is an Assistant Editor at Levine Querido. Previously, she was an Editorial Assistant at Arthur A. Levine Books. Prior to joining Scholastic, she worked in marketing at Penguin Random House. She holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the New School.
Meghan McCullough: We have something in common. We were both booksellers! I worked briefly at Books of Wonder, where handselling is everything. How about you?
Nick Thomas: Yes! I worked at the amazing Books, Bytes, and Beyond in Glen Rock, N.J., and Little City Books in Hoboken, N.J.! I miss bookselling. I miss that moment where you have a few seconds to convince a reader to buy a book that you believe in, that you believe they'll love. So much of what we're doing at LQ is taking these stories we love and sharing our passion about them to the world.
McCullough: Agreed. There's something special about having that moment happen in real time, face-to-face.
Thomas: What's your favorite spread from the LQ launch list? It's an embarrassment of riches, to be honest.
McCullough: Our launch list is AWASH in gorgeous artwork. I'm partial to the spread in This Old Dog, where Old Dog and girl are asleep in her room, and a warm slat of golden light peeks out across them. I feel as if I'm in that room with them--on the edge of dreaming. What about you?
Thomas: I SWEAR I was about to pick that one too! I love the spread in Ginger & Chrysanthemum where they're walking with Grandma to her birthday party. There's this moment of anticipation, and you can see how much these two cousins love their Grandma--and each other.
McCullough: Yes, I love that one too!
Thomas: Also, any spread in The Wanderer. Like the one with all the deep sea "fish" looking at the boat.
McCullough: Do you have a favorite line from the LQ list?
Thomas: I love the opening line of Lupe Wong Won't Dance: "My gym shorts burrow into my butt crack like a frightened groundhog." I mean, how could you not? You could flip to any page in Eric Gansworth's Apple (Skin to the Core) and find yourself with any number of INCREDIBLE lines.
"When we are born outsiders, we sometimes
find bridges we can make with our own stories
embracing the ways they are connected, instead
of pointing out the gaps between the two sides."
McCullough: There's a paragraph in Everything Sad Is Untrue that makes me cry every time I read it. Here you have Daniel, the character, at his most vulnerable, saying some of the scariest things I can imagine saying. It both inspires and guts me to my core:
"I am ugly and I speak funny. I am poor. My clothes are used and my food smells bad. I pick my nose. I don't know the jokes and stories you like, or the rules to the games. I don't know what anybody wants from me.
But like you, I was made carefully, by a God who loved what He saw.
Like you, I want a friend."
Thomas: That's powerful.
McCullough: Last one. What makes a book an "LQ book?"
Thomas: In many ways we don't WANT there to be too obvious of a common thread, right? We hope when you pick up an LQ book, you feel how much love was put into it. First, from our authors and illustrators. They're creating books of the heart and pouring their love into their characters. After that, we hope that love and care come through in the jacket design, typography, paper, marketing, everything.
McCullough: "1000%." Our debut list could not be more diverse--and that remains true for the lists to come! There's an underlying ethos of passion and care that connects them, and that comes through not only when they are read but also when they are held.