Galiah: Hi, Refe, and welcome to MG Book Village. It’s great to chat with you about your upcoming middle-grade novel, Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest, sequel to Frances and the Monster. Can you tell us a bit about your new book coming out August 22nd?
Refe: Hi Galiah! Thanks so much for having me and for all the great work you do at MG Book Village.
Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest is a story of adventure and peril, of friendship and found families, of truth and lies, and of the difficult choices even the youngest among us are sometimes forced to make to survive.
In Frances and the Monster, Frances saw her world blown wide open by the consequences of her actions and the shocking revelations that followed. Revelations she is still processing eight months later, and consequences she is only just beginning to fully understand.
She tries to set all that aside when she receives a personal invitation to a meeting of the esteemed European Society of Science and Invention. She’s finally going to travel with her parents, which is the very thing she has wanted from the start.
When her train is hijacked by men with unknown motives, she’s forced to flee with her friend Luca into the Black Forest, a vast and wild expanse of trees and shadows and beasts. She quickly learns there are forces at work more terrifying than she could have imagined…and that in order to defeat them, she may have to confront her own difficult truths head on.
Galiah: Your first Frances book has been hailed as a “Mary Shelley book for young readers.” What inspired you to create Frances?
Refe: First of all, what an honor to have my book mentioned with the matriarch of modern science fiction and horror! Shelley’s Frankenstein is of course a major source of inspiration for Frances and the Monster and Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest, and both my books contain a bevy of subtle and occasionally not-so-subtle easter eggs and homages to her life and work.
Perhaps the biggest inspiration for Frances herself, however, is found in a work that I believe may have also inspired Shelley. The Magician’s Apprentice is an ancient story made famous more recently by Disney’s Fantasia. Like Frankenstein, it deals with hubris, ambition, and impatience with established processes and systems. Why should the apprentice mop floors when he could be learning actual spells? If only his master wasn’t holding him back!
I remember what it felt like to be in such a hurry to skip past all the inconveniences of youth—the waiting, the learning, the reliance on teachers and parents—and to just grow up already. In some ways, this impatience defined my childhood, so it’s one of the things that has made Frances such a compelling character to write.
Galiah: This story is set in 1939. What kind of research did you have to do, to create an authentic, believable setting?
Refe: The events of Frances and the Monster coincide with the start of WW2 in Europe, adding an undercurrent of tension to the story and perhaps hinting at wider stakes involved with the secret procedure Frances uncovers and the monster she creates. It was important to me to get the facts of WW2 as correct as possible. I did a ton of research into the timeline of events during that period, and particularly how those events were perceived by the people of Switzerland. Any newspaper headlines mentioned are actual headlines from the actual dates they appear in the story. My favorite bit is the radio broadcast from chapter four. It is a word-for-word transcript of the program Switzerland Calling that aired at the exact date and time Frances hears it in the book.
Despite the sequel taking place only a few months later in the wilderness of Germany, the war drops a bit further into the background in Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest. This was a conscious decision to keep Frances and her quest in sharp focus, and so that when the story does intersect with history, it’s more impactful—maybe even surprising.
Galiah: If Frances could ask her great-grandfather Albrecht Grimme one question, what would it be?
Refe: What an excellent question.
I wonder if Frances would ask if he was happy? If he was fulfilled. If his brilliance and his accomplishments—his greatness—was enough.
I think, deep down, she already knows the answer.
As Frances learns more about her great-grandfather, and as she approaches and in some ways even surpasses his scientific feats, seeds of doubt are planted that grow throughout these stories. She has wound her identity up so tightly with her aspiration to be a great scientist that the tragedy of Albrecht Grimme really shakes her. She always saw science as her birthright. When even that birthright is challenged, she finds herself unmoored in a way she never expected to be.
Galiah: What made you decide to combine old-time science fiction with technology in your story?
Refe: One of my ambitions for these stories has always been to build a world that felt grounded and historically authentic, then shake up expectations with technology and themes that feel timely and relatable to readers today. Things we might recognize as anachronisms, but that nevertheless feel right in the context of the story.
Sometimes, those anachronisms are there to provide tension or heighten stakes. Science was exploding with progress in the years between the end of WWI and the start of WWII. What if a few scientists got even further than we knew? How might the course of history have changed if those developments fell into the wrong hands?
Other times, they’re there to make us laugh. Ms. Frick, Luca’s mother, is a mess of cultural anachronisms, blending a sort of gross misappropriation of early feminist concepts with some deeply regressive ideals and a heaping helping of selfishness. That’s what makes her so fun, and (I hope) keeps her from feeling one dimensional. And Frances’s mechanical tutor, Hobbes, is so fun in part because his very existence is ridiculous. The fact that he’s so arrogant about it is just icing on the cake.
Galiah: What is something introspective you want your readers to consider about life as they read your story?
Refe: Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest is jam-packed with action and excitement, but I hope readers will see beyond the adventure itself to the characters that inhabit it.
Throughout her time in the Black Forest, Frances meets a colorful cast of new characters. I worked hard to make sure each of them had their own story to tell that shined a light on a different aspect of Frances’s journey. Stories that touch on the power of honesty and truth, the meaning of family in its many forms, the contributions of people with disabilities, courage, peace in the face of violence, and maybe even young love.
Galiah: What do you wish an interviewer would ask you?
Refe: It’s always fun to get to talk about what doesn’t make it into a book. I tend to cut a lot in revision, and Frances and the Werewolves of the Black Forest was no exception.
One draft kicked off with a robbery, with shadowy figures stealing Hobbes from Grimme-Stenzel Manor, forcing Frances to rely on a rudimentary Hobbes prototype named Phebus that could only say its own name. The moment Hobbes and Phebus finally meet is probably one of the funniest scenes I’ve ever written.
In the end, though, this version was simply too long. It also made the book feel too plot driven as opposed to character driven. But it was a blast to write. Maybe someday I’ll clean it up and share it on my blog…
Galiah: Where can our readers go to find out more about you and your writing?
Refe: The best place to learn more about me and my work is at my website https://www.refetuma.com, where you’ll find information about events and author visits, and a contact form. I hope you’ll reach out!
I’ve also recently started a newsletter on Substack called Refe Tuma’s Head in a Birdcage which you can read and subscribe to at https://refe.substack.com. And, of course, you can still find me on what’s left of Twitter at twitter.com/refeup, on Instagram at instagram.com/refetuma, and on Facebook at facebook.com/refetumaauthor.
Refe Tuma is the award winning and bestselling author of FRANCES AND THE MONSTER and the WHAT THE DINOSAURS DID picture book series. His latest novel for middle grade readers, FRANCES AND THE WEREWOLVES OF THE BLACK FOREST, hits shelves August 22 and is already being called “a rollicking adventure” by Kirkus Reviews. Refe lives in the Northwest suburbs of Chicago, IL with his wife and frequent co-author Susan Tuma, their four kids, two brand new kittens, and their dog Boris. (Oh, and it’s pronounced ‘reef.’)
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