| Tara Dairman writes middle-grade novels and picture books about kids with strong passions and big questions about the world. Tara’s books include The Girl from Earth’s End, the All Four Stars series, The Great Hibernation, and Desert Girl, Monsoon Boy (illustrated by Archana Sreenivasan). These titles have been named to best-of-the-year lists by A Mighty Girl, School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and more. Tara holds a BA in creative writing from Dartmouth College and has traveled to more than 90 countries. After a few years of adventuring around North America in an RV, Tara and her family now live in Colorado. Learn more about Tara on their website! Rapunzel Reads: Every character in TGFEE is multilayered and unique; Henna, P, and Lora were immediate standouts, but honestly I can’t think of a character who I didn’t understand, even if I hated them. Who is your favorite character in TGFEE, and how did you created such a complex, layered cast? Tara Dairman: Thank you so much for this kind assessment of the cast of The Girl from Earth’s End! I worked hard to make sure that this book would have multiple worthy antagonists—people whose purposes were at odds with the main character’s and got in the way of her reaching her goals—but no, like, evil villains. I tried to draw from life here: Most people’s motivations for making the decisions they do, and for holding the beliefs they do, are complex. When they |   Author photo credit: Tina Wood Photography |
end up hurting others, it’s often because they were trying to protect themselves or someone important to them from something they believed was a threat. So when I developed the characters who stand in Henna’s way, I thought hard about why they would take the actions they do, about what would be more important to them than anything else. And about how they might be hurting, themselves, in ways we wouldn’t immediately see.
As for Henna’s friends P and Lora, I loved writing them. There’s a good piece of writing advice that every character in a story should feel like they could be the star of their own novel, and I really leaned into that with these supporting characters. As with the antagonists, I thought hard about what these characters’ wounds were, what their goals were, why they would behave the way they do, how their friendships would change them. In fact, at different points in the book, P and Lora both act as antagonists to Henna before they become her friends.
My favorite character to write was P, because it’s such fun to write someone who has almost no filter, in their words and their actions. A truth-teller and an agent of chaos. It was always a delight to put them in a scene.
Rapunzel Reads: Many MG fantasy books have large-scale consequences that will affect the entire world/universe, but TGFEE focuses on the individual concerns and desires of the characters. How did you go about crafting this type of story?
Tara Dairman: Well, I knew going in that I wanted to write a story about mortality that was also joyful—that celebrated all the beauty there is in life, even as we face the fact that death is on the horizon. So while the stakes may not have been end-of-the-world huge, they feel huge for the individual characters who love someone who is coming to the end of their lifetime. I chose to write a lot about nature, and making art, and finding and following your passions, and making friends/creating family, because those the things that, for me, make being alive wonderful. And in a story about accepting that lives come to an end, I really tried to balance that fact with examples of these many small joys of living.
Rapunzel Reads: One of my favorite parts of TGFEE was the world itself – it has a gentle, comforting feel and so much complexity, a combination that I truly adored. How did you go about creating it, and what’s your favorite part of this world?
Tara Dairman: Thank you! The world of the Gardenia Isles was inspired by a real place: the Azores, which are Portuguese islands in the mid-Atlantic. They are very isolated from mainland Portugal, and are famous in part for their beautiful gardens. I was planning a family vacation there in 2018 and read about how oranges grew widely in the Azores in the 1800s; there had even been fast boats whose job was to whisk the orange harvest off to mainland Europe, racing to be the first of the season and get the highest prices. But then, a blight came through and destroyed the orange industry in the late 1800s. Reading about this got me wondering what had happened to those fast boats, and led me to write the first line of the story: The orange boat doesn’t carry oranges anymore.
I was already working on the story by the time I visited the Azores, but when I did go I took notes and pictures and let myself be inspired by what I saw, especially in the cities there as I started to develop Santa Vita and St. Basil’s. Of course, I took liberties, too, with distances and geographical features and what types of plants would be able to grow at what latitudes. But it was nice to have a real place to draw details and inspiration from. I’ve been lucky to travel to more than 90 countries, and I’m always drawing inspiration for the settings of my books from places I’ve been around the world.
As for Henna’s friends P and Lora, I loved writing them. There’s a good piece of writing advice that every character in a story should feel like they could be the star of their own novel, and I really leaned into that with these supporting characters. As with the antagonists, I thought hard about what these characters’ wounds were, what their goals were, why they would behave the way they do, how their friendships would change them. In fact, at different points in the book, P and Lora both act as antagonists to Henna before they become her friends.
My favorite character to write was P, because it’s such fun to write someone who has almost no filter, in their words and their actions. A truth-teller and an agent of chaos. It was always a delight to put them in a scene.
Rapunzel Reads: Many MG fantasy books have large-scale consequences that will affect the entire world/universe, but TGFEE focuses on the individual concerns and desires of the characters. How did you go about crafting this type of story?
Tara Dairman: Well, I knew going in that I wanted to write a story about mortality that was also joyful—that celebrated all the beauty there is in life, even as we face the fact that death is on the horizon. So while the stakes may not have been end-of-the-world huge, they feel huge for the individual characters who love someone who is coming to the end of their lifetime. I chose to write a lot about nature, and making art, and finding and following your passions, and making friends/creating family, because those the things that, for me, make being alive wonderful. And in a story about accepting that lives come to an end, I really tried to balance that fact with examples of these many small joys of living.
Rapunzel Reads: One of my favorite parts of TGFEE was the world itself – it has a gentle, comforting feel and so much complexity, a combination that I truly adored. How did you go about creating it, and what’s your favorite part of this world?
Tara Dairman: Thank you! The world of the Gardenia Isles was inspired by a real place: the Azores, which are Portuguese islands in the mid-Atlantic. They are very isolated from mainland Portugal, and are famous in part for their beautiful gardens. I was planning a family vacation there in 2018 and read about how oranges grew widely in the Azores in the 1800s; there had even been fast boats whose job was to whisk the orange harvest off to mainland Europe, racing to be the first of the season and get the highest prices. But then, a blight came through and destroyed the orange industry in the late 1800s. Reading about this got me wondering what had happened to those fast boats, and led me to write the first line of the story: The orange boat doesn’t carry oranges anymore.
I was already working on the story by the time I visited the Azores, but when I did go I took notes and pictures and let myself be inspired by what I saw, especially in the cities there as I started to develop Santa Vita and St. Basil’s. Of course, I took liberties, too, with distances and geographical features and what types of plants would be able to grow at what latitudes. But it was nice to have a real place to draw details and inspiration from. I’ve been lucky to travel to more than 90 countries, and I’m always drawing inspiration for the settings of my books from places I’ve been around the world.
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