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The Teaching Librarian volume 18, no. 3 41 yeah, lots of things. SN: And I like a good fart joke. P: And you wore inside-out pants and penny loafers like Ambrose. SN: Yes, yes, I did. I was so proud of those pants, they were corduroy. Until a very cute boy I liked said "heh heh your pants are on inside out," and I never wore them again. J: Do you use like a special pen or pencil or a typewriter when you write? SN: I use my laptop. When I started writing, before there were computers, I used a typewriter, and I remember when we got the first computers at the Degrassi office. I was, like, "Oh my God! This is horrifying; I'm never gonna learn how to use this thing. This is crazy!" I"ll make notes to myself in pen now, but I really do almost all my writing at the keyboard. P: Is there anything that's happened in your life similar to what's happened in the book? SN: Umm…just trying to think. You know it's funny. I was at a school on Tuesday and one of the kids asked "were you bullied in school?" And it was funny because it brought back a couple of memories…I never got beat up, although I did have a girl in high school tell me she was going to beat me up. She was terrifying. I didn't know what I'd done, and she told me, "You. me. After school. I'm taking you down." And I was thinking, "What? What did I do?" And another girl, who was friends with her but also liked me, called her off, so she didn't beat me up. But I remember the girls at school being quite mean, and I remember my best friends showing up at school and they were skipping in the school yard. Part of their little song was "five, six, seven, eight, we hate Susin by the garden gate" (in a sing-songy voice). I still remember that. And I definitely grew up with a single parent mom. J: Just like me. P: Me too. SN: My mom wasn't really like Irene too much, but we moved at some key points in my life like Ambrose and I had a terrible sense of fashion like Ambrose. So I think that there were quite a few little similarities in there. Did your moms read Word Nerd? J & P: No. J: I never showed her that. Page 42. P: Yeah, I love page 42. So, um, are you going to make a movie out of this book? SN: Well interestingly, just before I came here I signed a contract with a company here in Canada. They've just optioned the book so all that means now is that they're going to shop it around and see if there's any interest in turning it into a movie. I think it would make a great family movie…a great family movie. P: So can I be Ambrose? SN: You'll have to get an agent and audition with all the other wannabe Ambroses. <laughs> Meet the Author Susin Nielsen Intrepid interviewers Parth Shah and Jesegan Jegananthan Photo by: Katherine Farquhar-Lalonde ...continued on page 42