At the annual HubbsChildren’s Literature conference, author Mary Casanova bustles from keynote speech to book signing in the auditorium’s lobby to interview to impromptu photography shoot, all without missing a beat. Hectic? Casanova laughs it off. “This is a calm day for me,” she says, even as she signs a copy of One Dog Canoe with a graceful sprawl of ink. “The days I speak at schools are much worse.”
Born and raised in St. Paul, she spent her summers in the North Woods. Those summers led her to write her first book, Moose Tracks,featuring a boy trying to rescue a moose calf from poachers. After several years of following the old maxim “write what you know,” she began to branch out.
Despite a few newer novels set in more exotic locales, like historical France and the Mayan ruins of Belize, Casanova says that her roots and the North Woods are never far away. “It’s my touchstone,” she explains. As a child, she would go to her grandfather’s cabin and watch as the dragonfly nymphs crawled out of the water and dried their wings on the sun-warmed dock. Their iridescent wings, she said, taught her to appreciate miracles, to notice the tiny, beautiful details.
Casanova proudly unveils her latest book, the first in a series written with young, talented readers in mind. Dog Watch follows the adventures of a canine posse protecting their town, a revolutionary leash-free world based on Ranier, Minn. The series is lighthearted but not devoid of Casanova’s signature sense of adventure. “Stories are an opportunity to safely experience conflict,” she says. She leans forward in her chair to speak to a mother as she signs the first Dog Watch book, encouraging the woman to contact her after the event. “You can find my e-mail address easily,” she says, ignoring any convention about publicists or agents. “I would just love to know what your son thinks.”
