Kenneth Oppel wrote his first novel at age 14 and is now a multi-award-winning bestselling author. His books include the Silverwing trilogy, which has sold over a million copies around the world, and Airborn, winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award and a Michael L. Printz Honor Book. His newest book is the YA novel Best of All Worlds. Oppel lives with his family in Toronto.
Xavier Oaks doesn’t particularly want to go to the cabin with his dad and his dad’s pregnant new wife, Nia, but it’s a family obligation. Only . . . one morning he wakes up and the house isn’t where it was before. When Xavier, his dad, and Nia go explore, they find they are inside a dome, trapped. And there’s no one else around . . . Until, three years later, another family arrives.
Interviewed by Angus Gregor McLean
Angus Gregor McLean (AGM): If you woke up and realized your house had been moved to a farm in the middle of nowhere, like Xavier’s family’s cabin was, what would you do first?
Kenneth Oppel (KO): Honestly, I think I’d do pretty much what Zay does. I’d look around for other people, look for roads, look for signs of habitation, try to get to a high spot for a better view.
AGM: What inspired you to write this book? Did you think of the characters or the setting first? Or maybe the conflict?
KO: When I first started work on Best of All Worlds I thought I was going to write a story about a teenager and his family abducted by aliens and put in a zoo. I got excited wondering what creatures might be in the other enclosures — and how secure they might be. Maybe there’d be lots of running and screaming and monster fighting, like an alien Jurassic Park. This was a fun idea, but I felt like I’d seen it before. I decided it would be more interesting if neither my hero Xavier Oak (nor the readers) ever saw aliens. Aliens are often such a let down anyway — so hard to create an original one! The idea of unseen captors struck me as much more interesting. And for that matter, were they aliens at all?
AGM: I play a Bard and a Barbarian in DnD. Because Xavier is into DnD, it made me wonder if you have played DnD also. Does making up creative stories in DnD help with your storytelling in books?
KO: I was a huge fan of D&D when I was 12-15 and quickly decided I liked being the Dungeon Master because I could plan the game, and make up the maps, and fill all those chambers with whatever I wanted! I learned a great deal about the basics of storytelling (plot, pacing, structure) by being a Dungeon Master. The game was really just an exercise in communal storytelling.
AGM: How did you come up with the idea for the hot air balloon? Did you know what would happen to it, and to Mr. Jackson, from the beginning of the book, or did the idea come to you later?
KO: Ah, the hot air balloon. A very good friend who flies small planes came up with that! I was telling him about being trapped in a dome and asked if you could build an ultralight plane from materials at hand. He said no, but what about a hot air balloon! And no, I didn’t know exactly what would happen to Riley from the beginning – I figured that out later as I was writing.
AGM: You’ll be the Writer in Residence for a workshop with teens during the festival. When you were a teen, were there other writers who inspired you?
KO: Roald Dahl, cartoonist Gary Trudeau, Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, JD Salinger. As a teen your reading goes all over the place, so there were so many different influences.
AGM: Your book Half Brother was set in Victoria. Do you plan on setting another book in Victoria some time? (I hope so!)
KO: In general, I’m trying to put more Canada in my books. My Airborn series is set partly in a fictionalized Vancouver called Lionsgate City – and in the third, Starclimber, my characters take a side trip to Victoria to visit the famous artist Evelyn Karr (based on Emily Carr, right down to the pet monkey). And there’s a Half Brother graphic novel in the words, so you’ll get more Victoria in a year or so!