Celebrity Corner

J.J. & CHRIS GRABENSTEIN are a husband-wife writing team. J.J. is an award-winning voice-over and stage performer. Chris is a New York Times bestselling author of many books, including the Mr. Lemoncello’s Library and Welcome to Wonderland series, as well as the coauthor of numerous page-turners with James Patterson, including Word of Mouse and the I Funny, House of Robots, and Treasure Hunters series. J.J. and Chris live in New York City.











“Who do you want to be?” asks Mr. Van Deusen. “And not when you grow up. Right here, right now.” 

Shine on! might be the catchphrase of twelve-year-old Piper’s hero—astronaut, astronomer, and television host Nellie Dumont Frissé—but Piper knows the truth: some people are born to shine, and she’s just not one of them. That fact has never been clearer than now; her dad's new job has landed them both at Chumley Prep, a posh private school where everyone seems to be the best at something and where Piper definitely doesn’t fit in. In a school full of stars, is there room for one more? 




Interview Chris and J.J. Grabenstein
Chris, when did you know you wanted to write as a career?
I think it was in 7th grade.  My English teacher wrote in the margins of one of my homework assignments these words of encouragement:  "You will make your living as a writer someday."  I was pretty focused on writing from that point on and had some excellent teachers to help me along the way.

You have a diverse background from acting with an improv troupe (with Bruce Willis!) to writing commercials under (now author) James Patterson, to writing for Jim Henson’s Muppets, to writing middle school novels. What do you enjoy the most and why?
I think what I have loved the most is all of it.  The improv I did in my 20s in that Greenwich Village basement theatre, learning  the trick of saying "Yes, and..." when creating a scene, has probably helped me more than anything else.  It was a great tool for writing advertising, Muppet scripts, made-for-TV-movies, and middle grade novels.  Somehow, what I am doing now, unleashing my inner 12 year old on a regular basis, feels like what I was meant to do and where everything else was leading.

How do you develop your writing voice? Does it stem from character development or is it derived from the content you choose to write about?
Each book that I work on will probably have a slightly different voice but I do think there is a Chris Grabenstein-voice underlying all of them. I am not sure where it came from or how it developed except "over time." I can see traces of it back in the gossip columns I used to write in the junior high school newspaper. I can hear it in the skits I wrote in high school and see it becoming more distinct in the humor pieces I wrote twice a week for my college's daily newspaper. It's in my reel of commercials, the Muppet scripts, and, finally, after doing a series of rejected manuscripts where I was probably imitating some other author's voice, in my first published novel. A voice is something every writer has. It just takes time for them to hear it.

Can you teach someone to be funny or is comedy innate?
You can probably teach someone the structure of a joke or the rule of threes or why words with a "K" sound are funny.   But I think doing comedy is developed as an attention-seeking or defense mechanism early in life.  That  part I don't think you can teach.

What inspired you both to write Shine?
Being married to a children's author (Chris) got J.J. thinking about the books she read as a kid.  She wished that someone had written a book like SHINE! so she could've read it.   She told Chris about her idea for a story about a girl named Piper Milly and he said, "Let's write this one together."

In creating the message of the book, what did you want your readers to take away from Shine?
That who you are is more important than what you accomplish.

JJ, what is your favorite quote?
"Knowledge not shared remains unknown."  -- Luigi L. Lemoncello from ESCAPE FROM MR. LEMONCELLO'S LIBRARY

Chris, what is the best advice you have for aspiring young writers?
Read, read, read.  Then write, write, write!