Same Sun Here

A few weeks ago, the author of the book Same Sun Here visited our campus. Neela Vaswani, co-author of the book, came to talk about the book and her process of writing it. What was fascinating about Neela is that much like her character in the book, she is of Indian descent.
        
           In making the book, she talked about how organically it was made with her co-author Silas House. They each took their own characters that they came up with, and sent each other real letters in the mail as if they were real pen pals. This created the basis for the book, give or take some editing. Neela told us that when her publisher first read it she was surprised that there was no conflict between the two main characters Meena and River. They tried to stir things up a little, but overall the two characters were perfect friends.
  
         This book was overall a great book and I really enjoyed it. One thing I really enjoyed about meeting the author was being able to hear her perspective on how the book was made and how they integrate the book into schools, by doing various lessons and school wide activities centered around themes of the book. Overall this was a really great experience.