My brother Billy passed on July 15th, 8:10 PM, at the VA Med Center in Northport, Long Island. He was only 75 years old, but those were some hard-lived years. I can picture him with a Marlboro in one hand, an inhaler in the other, huffing & puffing to the bitter end.
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Billy was one-of-a-kind, an Irish charmer, a weekend millionaire who might be late with the rent, a benign & glorious fuckup, and a sweet & loving soul. A handsome devil, as my mother would say. He never met a job he couldn’t quit.
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Bill, seated, Neal beside him; our sister Jean in the background. The early 70s?
Eleven years older than me, I especially remember him being very gentle & patient with me when I was a little boy. I’d enter his room and marvel at his milk bottle filled with nickels, his red-and-white box of old 45s, “Whiskey Man” and “Ringo” and “Love Potion #9.” He liked science fiction books, “Stranger in a Strange Land,” “The Illustrated Man.” For a while there, he drove a Charles Chips truck, delivering pretzels & potato chips door to door. Imagine that. He worked at Bohack and Citgo gas station. Drove ridiculously cool & unreliable cars: a corvette, a mustang.
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I remember when he went off to Vietnam & remember, like it was yesterday, leaping into his arms when he returned. He came back a pot smoker w/ a deadly long-range jumper on the basketball court. Billy was warm and funny. A good time guy. He told the same stories, over and over again. Girls liked him.
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Xmas & the ever-present cigarette. Barbara, seated. He loved that Clockwork Orange soundtrack.
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For a long stretch, he was my favorite big brother, the way a five-year-old kid idolizes a big brother. I guess that’s the version of Billy I’ll remember & miss most. I am 100% sure that he saved his best love, his truest & most steadfast heart, for his only son, Kevin. As it should be. I grew up with four older brothers and I’ve now watched three of them get up & go: Neal, John, Bill. Big sigh.
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Billy pedaling, his brother Neal hitching a ride, maybe 1951 in America, Wantagh, Long Island. All the world at their feet. Neal passed in 1993. And ever since, like a ship with the ballast unbalanced, not quite sitting right in the water, our family has never been as sea-worthy. The end comes for us all.
I don’t know Claire Hutton, a standout local soccer player, but I’ve long been aware of her ability on the field. I heard she was special. A kid to root for, a good family. I know some coaches and people involved in the sport, and they all have nothing but praise for her attitude, dedication, talent, kindness. A great kid. I heard that over and over.
I think every town, sooner or later, has some young athlete who breaks through. The shortstop who gets drafted in the 11th round by the Washington Nationals, the kid who is skating in the Olympics, a running back who signs with a D-1 powerhouse.
For me, here in Delmar, NY, one of those kids was Claire Hutton. She went to the same schools as my three children.
I met Claire briefly, just once. I was walking my dog near Bethlehem high school early one morning. It must have been a weekend or the summer; no one else was around, not even on the nearby tennis courts. I spied a young woman — she must have been 16 — setting out orange cones near the track. She looked strong-legged. I guessed that it might be Claire Hutton and, curious, I wandered over to say hello. We chatted for a bit. Claire was articulate and friendly, comfortable talking, happy to take a short break, and she liked my dog. Claire told me how she was going to play on the Boys Team that coming season (I later got to watch her play). She explained her drills after I asked what in the world was she doing. I shared with her how my very athletic daughter, Maggie, about five years older, suffered from three ACL surgeries and had to give up soccer (and basketball!) after 7th grade. She had already made JV soccer that season. Claire understood what that loss might feel like. I wished her luck and good health, told her I was rooting for her, and went on my way.
A couple of years later, when I wrote a book called Shaken about a 7th-grade athlete who suffers from a severe concussion, derailing her soccer activities, I was largely inspired by Maggie’s experience. Loving something and having it taken away. Kurt Vonnegut’s notion of making awful things happen to your characters in order to reveal what they are made of. And I thought about Claire, too. Or more accurately, I imagined what someone like Claire would think. The drive and the talent and the huge ambition. That’s the writer’s job, after all. We make things up out of life’s raw material. I wanted my character to be like that.
So I guess I put a little of Claire — the imaginary Claire — into the main character of my book, Kristy Barrett. But to be fully transparent, I don’t know anything about Claire and I doubt she would remember me. I know “of” her. I was just a benign dad type with a cool black-and-white rescue dog named Echo. We were alone on the edge of a football field, beside the track. And she was with her orange cones and workout gear, inching toward her big dreams.
Today it is so gratifying to see Claire, off in the distance, realizing those same dreams. Scoring a goal for USA soccer! And crazy as this sounds, it’s not the least bit surprising.
Great kid, I thought.
I used that inspiration for the first few pages of Shaken, introducing the character of Kristy Barrett.
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Kristy alone on a soccer field. The sun barely up above the trees. The turf damp from yesterday’s rain. It was cold. She went through her warm-up routine.
High knees, side shuffles, Frankensteins, butt kicks, hip flexors, etc. No ball. Not yet. Fitness first, always.
Today was a game day; she wouldn’t overdo it.
Kristy walked off the paces, set out small orange cones in different configurations. Soccer was a game of changing speeds, spurts, sharp cuts, quick accelerations, and periods of rest. This morning’s plan was designed to replicate a game situation. If it does not challenge you, it doesn’t change you. Kristy heard her mother say those words so many times she now thought of it as her own original idea. She jogged the shape once, then began working in a pattern of slow jogs and sprints. At the end of the first set, Kristy waited, winded, shook out her legs, counted to thirty. She began a second set. And so on. Fitness wasn’t the fun part of soccer. But it helped win games. It made her a better player. And, at thirteen, Kristy was determined to become the best in the state.
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This was her happy place. No matter what else was going on in the world, Kristy found peace and pleasure alone on the field. Even during a game, surrounded by teammates, crowded by opponents — pushed, knocked down, high-fived and cheered — Kristy felt gloriously alone. Bubbled, sheltered, secure.
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Here’s a quick one-minute interview with Claire.
But be warned: if you watch it, you’ll be rooting for her, too. It’s an affliction!
Addendum: Maybe Claire will see this someday. If she does, I hope she doesn’t mind that, in a circuitous way, I put something of her in a book. Or that I wrote this post.
A great kid, yeah. And an inspiring one, too.
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SHAKEN was listed by Bank Street Center of Children’s Literature as one of the “Best Children’s Books for 2025.” Ages 10-up.
She’d ask where they were going and he’d look at her as if it was the most preposterous question on earth. “That would ruin the surprise,” he’d say. This was an entirely new way of thinking for Kristy, whose life up to that point had been measured out in teaspoons. She had learned a word recently, petrichor. It described the smell that came with the first rain after a period of dry weather. Or, more simply, petrichor was the smell of rain. But not really. It was more complicated than that. One sleepless night Kristy went down the rabbit hole on her phone, hunting down the science. How do we smell rain? she wondered. She learned there was a bacteria in the earth called geosmin that gets released into the air when it rains—and for some reason humans are really, really good at smelling this particular odor. People smell it and smile and don’t even know why they are smiling. That’s how Kristy thought about Jimbo. He was her petrichor. And it smelled, to her, like the rarest of all things: freedom.
It was the fragrance of a window opening. Of a path untrampled.
Of climbing out into the dark unknown.
SHAKEN was listed by Bank Street Center of Children’s Literature as one of the “Best Children’s Books for 2025.” Ages 10-up.
As the sole proprietor of James Preller Dot Com since May of 2008, possibly the longest continuously operated blog within spitting distance, I’ve learned that readership quiets down during the summer.
This aligns with schools and the lives of teachers and librarians.
So I kind of back off on content. You are out getting a tan anyway.
But I actually keep working through the summer.
Here’s two pieces of news from Publishers Weekly:
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And also this, from further back:
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Exciting, right?
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I’ve got a 3rd “. . . And a Moose!” book coming out for early readers, Two Astronauts . . . and a Moose! And I believe I’ll be seeing copies of Two Ballerinas . . . and a Moose! any day now.
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I’m going to write another Choose-Your-Own-Adventure, and those books are just pure entertainment.
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And there are two more even bigger projects in the works (a graphic novel series and something else that’s super exciting in the very, very early stages of development — so hush that mouth, Jimmy).
And all I can say is that I am grateful and proud to be survivor in this bunny-eat-bunny business.
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Summer hours, indeed!
SCHOOL VISITS
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Yes, this is a great time for librarians and PTA members to start thinking about next year’s author visits. Calendars fill up, time flies. For me, I love beginning with a query and a phone call. I mean, there’s written information to find on the site. But it’s just warmer and easier if we can chat briefly and see if there’s a match. Or send an email to jamespreller@aol.com and I’m happy to answer any questions. From there, we can go amiably forth!
I am fairly unique in the business because I have recently published, age-appropriate titles from PreK-8. Almost all of them in paperback at affordable prices.
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While I do a majority of my visits in elementary schools (this past year brought me happily to Tulsa, OK!), I also get to a number of middle schools. During a June visit, we enjoyed “Cupcakes and Conversation” with a small group of students. The fabulous librarian, Rebecca Ekstrom, served these . . .
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I think that’ s more than enough for today. Sorry for all the me, me, me context. Sometimes it has to be done.
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Oh, wait.
I’m excited to see the paperback of Shaken, due sometime next year (hardcover available now). Bank Street named it one of the best books of 2025.
