THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM by Holly Goldberg Sloan

I have been a long-time fan of Holly Goldberg Sloan’s books, including Counting by 7s and To Night Owl From Dogfish. When I heard the premise of her newest Middle Grade book, THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM, I had to feature it. Have a look:

It’s been almost a year since Sila’s mother traveled halfway around the world to Turkey, hoping to secure the immigration paperwork that would allow her to return to her family in the United States.

The long separation is almost impossible for Sila to withstand. But things change when Sila accompanies her father (who is a mechanic) outside their Oregon town to fix a truck. There, behind an enormous stone wall, she meets a grandfatherly man who only months before won the state lottery. Their new alliance leads to the rescue of a circus elephant named Veda, and then to a friendship with an unusual boy named Mateo, proving that comfort and hope come in the most unlikely of places.

As a fan of the novel you wrote with Meg Wolizer, TO NIGHT OWL FROM DOGFISH, I’m curious: Did you write the Night Owl sections? The Dogfish ones? Both? And what did you like most about collaborating on a novel with someone else?

We started by writing back and forth to get our first draft. It was very improvisational. We didn’t have an outline and we would each react to what the other had written. I live in California and Meg is in NYC, so initially we took the roles of those girls. But then we rewrote each other and now we have trouble remembering who wrote what! It was all tremendous fun.

It’s a tremendously fun read too. THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM deals with finding compassion amid family separation. How did you know this was a story you needed to write?

I’m very interested in immigration and the role it plays in American culture. I believe that we are who we are because of immigrants. They are the best of us. I lived in Turkey in high school and I love the Turkish people. I wanted to write something that expressed my feelings for the people I knew back then.

Wonderful. I saw that another of your novels, COUNTING BY 7s, has been optioned for film. Since you’ve also been a screenwriter, does the possibility of seeing this book come to screen feel like you’ve come full circle in a way?

Yes. It’s so ironic that I stopped writing screenplays in order to write novels, and now I’m back where I started, working to adapt my books to film and television. But it’s all storytelling, so in that way I’m still doing the same thing. I’m very hopeful about Counting By 7s becoming a movie. Disney+ optioned and is developing To Night Owl From Dogfish.

Sounds amazing! What are some of your current projects?

I have my first novel for an adult audience publishing in 2023. It’s titled Pieces of Blue. I’m excited and anxious about that. I’m currently writing another book for young people–and I’m guess that might publish late in 2023, or else in the first quarter of 2024. I write every day, seven days a week, and I usually have more than one thing I’m working on at the same time.

Order THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM