Geoff Rodkey does not live on Manhattan's Upper West Side, where the Tapper twins reside. He, his wife and their three children (ages 14, 12 and 9) live downtown, in Greenwich Village. Rodkey grew up in Illinois, and credits his Midwestern childhood with his ability to "still have a bit of the outsider sense" of the city. "My kids, who have grown up here, have no idea how weird [New York] is, compared to the rest of the world," he adds. "The fundamental thing is the pedestrian lifestyle, walking everywhere." That's what gives Claudia and Reese, the 12-year-old Tapper twins, such relative independence. Here he discusses the seeds of his planned four-book series.
How did this idea evolve? Did the story begin with the idea of twins?
They started out as twins, mostly because I knew I wanted to appeal equally to boys and girls. I wanted them to be equals. When one sibling is older than the other, you get into power dynamics. I wanted them to be very much peer to peer, and also all their friends are the same age.
Despite their conflicts, there's an underlying affection between the twins.
With humor, it's a dangerous line you walk. A lot of humor is based on negativity and conflict. You want to make sure there's an underlying heart or affection. I think almost any pair of twins in the real world are going to have affection for each other even though outwardly they appear to be at each other's throats.
Would you say that your work in television and film helped you shape this book?
There are probably two things that were helpful. One that's applicable to any book: as a screenwriter you're trained to think entirely in terms of story structure. When you have that experience, it's easier to write a story that has an underlying plot structure and doesn't wander down blind alleys.
What's great about the oral history conceit is it allows you to tell a story that's almost entirely dialogue. That's the other fun thing about it--the Rashomon effect, the idea of people remembering different things differently, which is a great source of jokes.
How did you develop the text exchanges between the parents?
That was something I had in mind from the get-go. I wanted it to be culturally specific. These are kids who are growing up in Manhattan. In that Upper West Side-Upper East Side environment, the parents are working incredibly long hours. I wanted the parents to be around but realistically so. It's funnier if they're two steps behind, learning second-hand by what they're hearing from their kids and the after-school sitter.
Did you come up with the layout--photos, screenshots, text messages?
I'd come up with the idea of doing this as an oral history, almost a documentary style, along the lines of Where'd You Go, Bernadette? It's the funniest book I've read in 10-20 years, told through e-mails and journals and shifting perspectives. I thought, that's a great way to do a kids' book. I have a longstanding love of trashy oral histories of '70s and '80s rock bands. They have to be oral because none of them are literate.
I knew it needed a huge visual component. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out how to do that. I was joking with my wife that I never thought that what would hold me back as a writer is I can't draw. At 4 a.m. one day, I realized: this is a 12-year-old girl taking pictures with her phone.
You must have had to coordinate those elements closely with the design team.
Liz Casal, the art director for the book, and Andrea Spooner, the editor, got exactly what was in my head, almost immediately. All three of us were on the same page. The only thing we had to put a lot of thought into was what would Claudia's handwriting look like. It was a way of adding more jokes without slowing down the narrative.
What about the real-world references?
For New York City landmarks, like Zabar's, I wanted to use the real thing. I wanted it to be culturally specific. MetaWorld is loosely inspired by Minecraft. I wanted to make it an invented video game, MetaWorld, because the climactic battle takes place there, and I wanted to be able to create my own rules in the video game. I didn't want to peg a cultural reference that might be obsolete to kids a few years from now. They will always be playing video games and there will always be social networks.
It's such a great moment, when InvisibleDeath reveals herself to be this blonde manga-style character.
I thought: What's the least likely character to be holding a weapon?
Claudia doesn't really hate her brother, she often feels sorry after pulling a prank on him. And Reese isn't mean, he's just a bit clueless. This comes out with Claudia's "remorse" when he loses his backpack, and she likens it to leaving her favorite purse on the M79 bus.
There's not a mean bone in Reese's body. Reese is much less self-conscious. He's not thinking deeply about a whole lot, but he's a sweet kid. Some kids are intellectually interested in things, and some kids aren't. It's not about native intelligence. It's just about what they're interested in. In five years, he could be a Shakespeare aficionado.
It's a cautionary tale about social media, too, isn't it? Fish can be tossed, Reese can get a new backpack, but the "Vest Song" will live on.
If kids take away a lesson from that, that's fantastic. That's something I'm going to end up exploring in the fourth book. It's also something I see my kids struggling with a lot. We monitor their presence on social media, and there are points when we say, you really can't share that.
It wasn't an issue for any of us growing up. Even five years ago, it wasn't an issue. That's one of the things that makes being a kid in 2015 both interesting and scary. These are issues that are going to be important in their lives that no one's had to deal with before. With kids you have to deal with the fact that they're kids and even more prone to misjudgment. --Jennifer M. Brown