Today we are very excited to share an interview with Author Ben Guterson (The World-Famous Nine)!
Meet the Author: Ben Guterson
Ben Guterson is the award-winning author of The Einsteins of Vista Point, which has sold into eight languages, as well as Winterhouse, an Edgar Award and Agatha Award finalist and an Indie Next List Pick, and its sequels, The Secrets of Winterhouse and The Winterhouse Mysteries. The Winterhouse trilogy is available in eleven languages worldwide. Ben created all the intricate mandala art for The World-Famous Nine. He lives near Seattle, and he invites you to visit him online at benguterson.com.
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About the Book: The World-Famous Nine
In this thrilling mystery from an award-winning author, Zander is determined to do whatever it takes to save his grandmother’s nineteen-story out-of-this-world department store—perfect for fans of The Swifts and The Mysterious Benedict Society.
Zander Olinga’s grandmother is the owner of the fabled Number Nine Plaza, the spectacular nineteen-story skyscraper. The Nine, as it’s called, has everything imaginable, including a massive Ferris wheel on its rooftop, monorail tracks suspended from its ceiling, and twenty-five glass elevators. But there’s something evil looming in the shadows, and strange accidents start befalling the guests. When Zander and his friend Natasha come across a series of inscriptions hidden throughout the walls of The Nine, they discover that the clues will lead them to a magical object which protects the store’s very existence. With the future of The Nine on the line, the pair are determined to recover the mysterious object before the luxury plaza and its many guests are destroyed.
Featuring an unforgettable setting and a larger-than-life cast of characters, here’s a spellbinding mystery involving puzzles, art, and high-stakes adventure.
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
I was inspired to write The World-Famous Nine because I thought it would be fun to set a story in a type of enormous, elegant, and old-fashioned building that was once very common: a department store. When I was young, I used to love visiting two beautiful department stores (Frederick & Nelson and The Bon Marché were their names) in my hometown of Seattle. There always seemed to be so much exciting activity inside those two huge stores! Plus, I’ve always loved big buildings. Not ones filled with offices or machines, but ones that have plenty of interesting—maybe even mysterious—places or things in them. Vast hotels, endless mansions, winding palaces, sprawling museums—those are the sorts of buildings I like, because something unexpected might be found behind each door or around any corner. A department store began to feel like the perfect setting for a story, and I found myself imagining a gigantic department store with a very old secret—a curse—that threatened it. It would be run by a woman named Zina Winebee, I decided, and the story would take place when her grandson, Zander Olinga, is visiting for the summer. The novel developed from those starting points, but the inspiration was the setting itself, and that came from pleasant memories I have of those two grand stores I visited many years ago.
YABC: Which came first, the title or the novel?
The novel came first, definitely. The working title I had for the book was Zina Winebee’s Number Nine Plaza, which I thought sounded kind of interesting and maybe somewhat mysterious, but I began to worry it might be a little tough for readers to figure out what it meant. My editor, Christy Ottaviano, suggested something shorter, and she and I eventually landed on The World-Famous Nine after contemplating The Number Nine Plaza and also, simply, The Nine. I really love the title we came up with because it spotlights the word “Nine,” which is an important element of the story, but it also has “World-Famous” in it, which sort of makes you wonder just what is so remarkable about the place!
YABC: What do you like most about the cover of the book?
I really love how the cover of The World-Famous Nine captures the mood of the story while also being very eye-catching. You can see right away that the two main characters in the book, Zander Olinga and Natasha Novikov, are right at the center of a lot of mysterious action that has left them not only startled but curious. Also, it’s apparent from the background that there are other characters—possibly helpful, possibly shady—who will play a role in the story. There’s a sense of vastness and intrigue in the background, too, with the stylized depiction of the enormous department store in which the story is set, The Number Nine Plaza. Finally, there’s the attractive color combination, the mix of gold and purple, that suggests the story will have a bit of glamor as well as some danger. Oh, one last thing—the cover was done by Chloe Bristol, who also did the covers (and all the interior illustrations) for the three books in my Winterhouse series, so it was a real thrill for me to have Chloe’s wonderful contribution to another one of my stories.
YABC: What’s a book you’ve recently read and loved?
I recently read (for the sixth or seventh time) Cornelia Funke’s The Thief Lord and fell in love with it all over again. It’s been a favorite of mine for many years—I always enjoy returning to this story about two brothers who fall in with a group of Venetian street children and the young master-thief who oversees them. The book was first published in Germany in 2000, but Funke’s classic style gives the novel a charming, old-fashioned sensibility, while the pacing and characterization works just fine for contemporary readers, at least to my eyes. The book has everything I love in stories for young readers–mystery, magic, friendship, and startling plot twists–and the interior illustrations done by Funke herself are lovely.
YABC: What’s up next for you?
My next book, which will come out during the summer of 2025, will be the sequel to The World-Famous Nine. The book doesn’t yet have a title, but it will continue the adventures of Zander Olinga and his new friend Natasha Novikov as they learn more about the history of The Nine and some ongoing threats to its safety. The next book after that, which will come out in 2026 or 2027, is called The Hidden Workshop of Javier Preston. It’s about a twin boy and girl who move to a town in the state of Georgia with their parents and end up involved in a mystery about a reclusive artist and a secret code that might open a safe with valuable items inside.
YABC: What is the main message or lesson you would like your reader to remember from this book?
I’m not that big on attempting to convey messages in my books and really just hope readers enjoy the story—though, definitely, I’d like it if readers felt there was something a little bit deeper going on in the pages than just action or fun or one incident after the next. There are a few moments in The World-Famous Nine where the main character, Zander Olinga, recognizes he has more courage than he might have given himself credit for, so perhaps a reader might take away from the story something along those lines—there is strength in understanding and believing in and cultivating your own abilities.
YABC: What would you say is your superpower?
I think my superpower is I am able to remain very disciplined about my writing and stick with it day after day, with—I hope—order and focus. I find that by writing almost every single day and keeping distractions to a minimum, I am able to be very productive and remain “in the flow” of whatever story I’m working on. I read something once along the lines of “If you wait for inspiration to hit you, you’ll never finish your book,” and I think there’s a lot of truth in that—so I sit down very nearly every day and work on my stories, even if I feel a little bit uninspired initially.
YABC: What advice do you have for new writers?
I have two pieces of advice for readers who would like to become writers. First, read as much as you can and as widely as you can—and push yourself to read books that might seem “beyond” you, such as so-called “classics” or books that might be aimed at older readers. Second, write as much as you can and with regularity—ideally, daily, and for at least an hour or two. You will really improve in skill and confidence if you write every day. Finally, as sort of an aside, I believe that if you really love to write, you should always remain focused on the writing itself rather than the fruits of your efforts. Any degree of financial reward or public attention—or even publication itself—is outside of your control, so if your happiness and self-worth are based on the external rewards, you could be setting yourself up for dissatisfaction; stay devoted to the pleasure of putting words together and telling good stories. Anything else will follow from that.
Title: The World-Famous Nine
Author: Ben Guterson
Illustrator: Kristina Kister
Release Date: 1/30/2024
Publisher: Christy Ottaviano Books / Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Genre: Middle grade novel, action and adventure
Age Range: 8-12
