About Rebecca Coleman: A New Yorker by birth, Rebecca Coleman grew up in the close suburbs of Washington, D.C., in an academic family. A year spent in Germany, at the age of eight, would later provide the basis for the protagonist’s background in The Kingdom of Childhood. She first learned about the Waldorf School movement at age 14 and quickly developed a fascination with its culture and philosophies. After studying elementary education for several years at the University of Maryland, she graduated with a degree in English, awarded with honors. She lives in suburban Maryland with her husband and their four young children.

Q: As a child, you spent a year in Germany – how did your experience influence Judy’s experience?

Rebecca: I was eight years old that year, which was in the mid-1980s. I had a very good memory, though, and a sense that this was an extraordinary time and I needed to remember it. When writing the book, I had this character who needed to have certain events unfold– her exposure to the dynamic between her father and the housekeeper, her love for the neighbor boy– which were not part of my own experience at all. But I gave her all of my sensory impressions of that region, so in a way she sees her fictional experience through the lens of my real one.

Q: How does the controversial storyline fit into our own cultural narrative about sexuality?

Rebecca: I think as a culture we have a well-established belief now that older men pursuing teenage girls is very creepy. But the same doesn’t apply to boys. Every time a new “Twilight Saga” movie comes out, forty-year-old women are making fools of themselves gushing about Taylor Lautner’s abs– and he was 16 or 17 when the first film was made. Just this past spring, the Houston Press published a list of the “10 Hottest Female Sex Offenders,” most of whose victims were teenage boys. Popular culture seems to find this whole thing hilarious. I have three sons, so I don’t think it’s very funny at all. It’s very objectionable, this idea that because teenage boys are hormonal, it’s all right for grown women to take advantage of them and that they should be considered lucky for it.

So within the novel, what I was trying to show was a teenage boy who does approach the situation as if it’s a fun little adventure, but then show everything else he ends up dealing with as well– the weight of hiding a punishable crime, the guilt at being part of an adulterous relationship, the way it estranges him from a girl his own age who is interested in him. He doesn’t have the experience or the sense of authority to extract himself from a relationship with someone much more mature than himself. I think that’s realistic, and I think it’s something we ought to consider as a society. Because the statistics show that the majority of people don’t even believe such a relationship is a crime at all, and in most of these cases, women receive probation for the same offenses that men go to prison for.

Q: Some authors are very habitual in the way that they write – do you have any idiosyncrasies you’d like to share?

Rebecca: I can tell you what they aren’t– I don’t write at coffee shops, for one thing. Writers always talk about doing that, and I have no idea how they manage it. It’s noisy, there are people around, you’re on display. I write on my MacBook in my rocking chair, usually between 10 pm and 2 am. My son recently pointed out to me that the upholstery where I rest my elbows has worn completely through. That’s the casualty of The Kingdom of Childhood.

THE KINGDOM OF CHILDHOOD is the story of a boy and a woman: sixteen-year-old Zach Patterson, uprooted and struggling to reconcile his knowledge of his mother’s extramarital affair, and Judy McFarland, a kindergarten teacher watching her family unravel before her eyes. Thrown together to organize a fundraiser for their failing private school and bonded by loneliness, they begin an affair that at first thrills, then corrupts, each of them. Judy sees in Zach the elements of a young man she loved when she was only a child. But what Zach does not realize is that– for Judy– their relationship is only the latest in a lifetime of disturbing secrets.

Rebecca Coleman’s manuscript for The Kingdom of Childhoodwas a semifinalist in the 2010 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Competition. An emotionally tense, increasingly chilling work of fiction set in the controversial Waldorf school community, it is equal parts enchanting and unsettling and is sure to be a much discussed and much-debated novel.

Excerpt
About the Novel (The impetus for The Kingdom of Childhood
Purchase Links: Publisher, Author’s Website, Goodreads, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Powells, Chapters, Kindle, Nook

Where To Find Rebecca Coleman:
Website
Meryl L. Moss Media Relations, Inc.

~*~*Giveaway*~*~

 

Meryl L. Moss Media Relations has generously offered a paperback copy of The Kingdom of Childhood to one lucky commenter! 🙂

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Giveaway ends on Saturday, October 22, 2011; and we will announce the winner on Sunday.

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About Lea

Lea is an animal loving, tree hugging vegetarian who lives in Toronto, Canada with her family, which includes three dogs. She is a prolific reader and has been blogging and reviewing since 2008. Lea is a contributor at the USA Today HEA Blog and an active member at Goodreads.

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