Margaret Haddix Replied to our Email

Dear Mrs. Lloyd Thomas and her grade 5/6 students,

I am delighted to hear that you all enjoyed AMONG THE HIDDEN so much! I also agree that it would be interesting to see the book turned into a movie or TV series. There has been a lot of interest in that over the years, and it has been optioned repeatedly, but so far the plans always fall through at some point. Hopefully someday it will all work out!

Some of the answers to your questions can be found on my website, but I will answer the others for you. First, here is the website page to go to: http://haddixbooks.com/books/hidden_faq.html

And now here are the answers to your other questions:

Where did you get the ideas for the characters' names?

I wanted Luke and his brothers to be named after the first three books of the New Testament in the Bible, so it would subtly imply that the family really wanted another child. (How can you have a Matthew, Mark and Luke without a John as well?) For Jen, I thought her mother would give her a fairly girly name--Jennifer--and it would say something about Jen's personality that Jen had shortened it into something not quite so girly.

Was this book written from any of your personal experiences or do you have a very creative imagination?

There are some parallels to my personal experiences, since, like Luke, I grew up out in the country, on a hog farm. But fortunately for me, I was not an illegal third child, and my life was not in danger from the government, so obviously there was a lot that I had to imagine.

Have you considered writing a “back” story of the rally or a prequel?

People have asked me that before, but I don't expect to do that. I kind of prefer leaving that to readers' imaginations.

Is Jen really dead?  

Hmm. I should be mean and say that you have to read the other six books in the series to find out for sure. But that seems really, really cruel. There was an editor at my publishing company who wanted me to have it turn out that Jen didn't die after all. But I kind of felt like that would be cheating--almost like explaining away something difficult by ending, "Oh, it was only a dream..." Unfortunately, Jen is really dead.

That seems like a really grim note to end on! I do hope that you will all continue to read the rest of the series, and a lot more books in general!

Best wishes,

Margaret Peterson Haddix