On October 31, 1979, Carole Marsh published her first children’s book—a chapter book mystery on Blackbeard the Pirate. More than forty years later, young readers still clamor for her more than 100 mystery books—all still in print, and more coming all the time!
Meet Carole Marsh
Interview by Lee Barrow
August 24, 2024
QUESTION: Who IS Carole Marsh?
ANSWER: That’s a great question! I have always said that I am a “fourth grader forever,” meaning full of curiosity, imagination, derring-do, how to, and show me/prove it!
QUESTION: How do you feel about kids, since you have been writing for them for 50 years?
ANSWER: I’m out to save their lives! I almost never learned to read, due to a sight problem, and so I understand how essential it is to learn to read, starting young, and forever continuing to increase your skill, vocabulary, and comprehension. Nothing helps a budding young reader more than having something to read that really interests them. REALLY INTERESTS THEM, like pirates and dinosaurs, wild weather, wild animals, and, especially, MYSTERIES!
QUESTION: How many kid mystery books have you written?
ANSWER: More than 100. But I learned the magical formula for a great mystery when I struggled to write my first one. Pick an exciting place, create real kid characters that readers can identify with, start smack in the middle of the mystery, keep the adventure and action always rising, build to a dramatic climax, and a sweet ending. More than making kids love the book and finish it—a big deal!—it will make them want to read another book just as fast as they can get their hands on one. I know!
QUESTION: How so?
ANSWER: Because I never especially expected success. But when my first book came out, within the week, kids were calling me, or stores, or libraries and asking for the NEW Carole Marsh Mystery! I thought I was one and done. Boy, was I wrong. And thank goodness!
QUESTION: But for your books to have stayed in print all these years, there must be more to your formula?
ANSWER: Indeed. Respect for the reader, authenticity (as if the story had happened or could), no mystery stone unturned, a kind of wholesomeness where characters actually respect adults, help one another, and lots of facts so flabbergasting that kids write and ask, “Is that really true?” There’s humor of course, and lots of dialogue, and more. I’m not just courting readers, I’m building lifelong learners. The things that interest and inspire us when we are young often turn out to be our life’s work.
QUESTION: Like you reading all those Nancy Drew and Hardy Boy mysteries when you were a kid?
ANSWER: Absolutely!
QUESTION: In this day and time do you follow trends or avoid controversies that might get your books banned?
ANSWER: No. I just ignore adults and adult concerns. I write to and for the kids. We are a team. I serve them and their interests and needs. I just want to tickle their gray cells pink!
QUESTION: That’s a good phrase. And how do you do that?
ANSWER: By writing the book I’d want to read, learn the flabbergasting facts I can hardly believe, have fun, get a little bit scared, and try to solve a mystery. As an author, that’s hard! I don’t know what’s going to happen next. I know how my readers feel. But I have to come up with that satisfying, often surprising, ending. I can’t go to sleep until I do! But I know how it feels to read any book and feel my own gray matter light up with joy—that’s the reward I want my readers to enjoy, the pure thrill of reading and a great story. It’s hard work, but it’s worth it.
QUESTION: And what are you writing now?
ANSWER: Cinematic graphic novels for kids…much fun, very hard, especially since it seems essential to incorporate all needed to make the audiobook super cool. Cinematic audiobooks that make kids “See with Your Ears” (my new brand), and more. My new The Mystery of the Haunted Library mystery series has one book where the characters perform a funky Shakespeare-type play in the middle of the book. And super cool “Narrated Non-Fiction” (another new brand, where facts and tales are each told by a narrator, such as Maud the Mummy, Historian Hattie, or Ms. Bogus, a librarian with spiders and cobwebs in her hair.) AND a new Embassy Sweets series where the mom is the diplomat, the dad a baker and a spy, and the kids solve real-world dramatic problems; the pages are more like movie scripts. Writing is getting more exciting by the minute…many new things to tickle gray cells pink!
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