Today we are very excited to share an interview with author Alison Green Myers!
Read on to learn more about the author, the book, and a giveaway!
Meet the Author: Alison Green Myers
Alison Green Myers is a passionate educator, novelist, and speaker. As the program director at the Highlights Foundation, Alison supports storytellers with fellowships and care throughout their careers. Alison is the author of the Schneider Family Award-winning A Bird Will Soar and the forthcoming This Way to Happy. A National Writing Fellow and teaching artist with Bethel Woods’ educational programs, Alison is always happy to spend time in the company of curious kids! Alison lives in the woods of Pennsylvania with two extraordinary humans and two dear dogs.
About the Book: THIS WAY TO HAPPY
From Schneider Family Book Award winner Alison Green Myers comes a heartwarming middle grade novel about loss, friendship, and the many paths we create to happiness.
Growing up at her grandparents’ amusement park, Reilly Rhoades spent her life in the glow of bright lights, hard work, and sweet treats. That is until her beloved grandfather died. With Grandpa gone now, the sweetness of the park disappears, and the pride Reilly had for her family’s legacy grows bitter.
Without Grandpa, Reilly’s family fights to keep the park going—spreading happiness to others as they struggle to find it themselves. The strain causes one problem after another to erupt, until the Rhoades family, and their amusement park, comes apart at the seams.
As past traditions clash with today’s realities, a new friendship splashes into Reilly’s universe. With epic advice, wild adventures, and a plan (or twenty) for tackling life’s twists and turns, Reilly Rhoades discovers that happiness doesn’t mean you have to choose between the past and the future—sometimes building a bridge connects all the best parts of you!
This Way to Happy is a rollercoaster ride that reminds readers even in the midst of life’s most challenging turns, happiness can be found just around the corner.
~Author Chat~
YABC: What gave you the inspiration to write this book?
I’ve been trying to write a “carnival” book for a long time, inspired by my own experiences traveling on the carnival. The first one I wrote turned out to be a mystery—both in genre and in what I was actually trying to say! I tried again, this time with a romance set on a traveling carnival… but let’s just say romance isn’t exactly my strength.
Things finally started to click when I imagined keeping the carnival in one place—more like the end of the season for the carnival when we’d work at an amusement park called Knoebels Grove during their fall festival. All of the parts of my carnival experience were there—just not the traveling from town to town, and that stationary setting helped the story begin to take shape.
An amusement park’s purpose is to create happiness—for others. If you work at one (or own one, like the family in my book) your job is to create that happiness. That idea stuck with me, what does it mean to live in a place designed for joy, when you’re struggling to feel it yourself? What does always centering other people’s happiness mean when it comes to filling up joy inside yourself?
Early drafts of this book were filled with amusement park details, the happy and not so happy—like fallen ice cream cones, and spending money, along with spending time with family and those silly photos that get snapped when you fly down the side of a roller coaster. But as the deeper theme of finding your own path to happiness became clearer, I pared back those observations and focused more on my main character, Reilly Rhoades, and her emotional journey.
YABC: What came first, the concept, landscape, characters, or something else?
I am a slow writer.
Things percolate for a long while in my brain.
The characters were forming for a while— so many come from my own life; and the place was always there too, but just out of reach of being something real or made up. While those ideas were simmering, I let myself think about the emotions.
For a book whose title includes the word, “happy,” the main emotion I explored was grief. I spent time reading about the way humans understand grief, and how individual the experience can be. When I think of grief, I think about signs—both internal and external. An amusement park would naturally have literal signs, but what would the “emotional” signs be for my main character as she processes the grief of losing her grandfather and the grief of losing her role at her family’s business.
I write a lot of things that never make it into the narrative of the novel, and for this book, I wrote about other moments of grief in the history of the amusement park and Reilly’s family history. (Plus I illustrated a lot of signs.)
YABC: Which was the most difficult or emotional scene to narrate?
There were many challenges in writing this book. I was exploring grief on the page while living through it in real life—my dad was in hospice as I wrote, and my family and I were doing a lot of caregiving. At the heart of the story was the idea of “finding your own way to happiness,” but I was struggling to find happiness in my own life. I tend to write from a very personal place, but THIS WAY TO HAPPY was almost too personal at times. The drafts felt heavy. Life felt heavy.
An amusement park has happiness baked into its very being, but even there I struggled. Finally, things shifted when I discovered the connection between Reilly and a new friend, Alex. That relationship let a little light in—first into Reilly’s world, and then into the process of writing this book. Once I set Reilly and Alex free on the amusement park— apple cider slushies and blazing fast rides, I found a path toward happiness again.
Some of the most difficult scenes to write centered on Reilly’s grandma, especially those in the hospital and rehab. One scene, when Reilly’s mom says Grandma is “doing better,” and Reilly interprets those words differently than what her mom meant. Capturing the complexity of that moment from Reilly’s perspective, not mine as an adult, was tough. Seeing someone you love—someone who’s always been the one taking care of you—suddenly fragile is hard. It was a scene that I deeply wanted to “get right,” especially because it shows Reilly shifting from one part of her life to another. In the end, I believe I stayed true to the experience, and in doing so, I wrote a scene that matters to Reilly’s understanding of her world, and the relationship she has with her mom and grandma.
YABC: What can readers expect to find in your books?
I often write about grief and secrets—especially the kinds of secrets that live inside families. I’m drawn to stories of forgiveness and found family, and those themes show up in almost everything I write. They come from real experiences in my own life, and writing about them is a way of continuing to understand them.
I write about neurodiversity, epilepsy, sometimes brain injury, sometimes the science of brain health. I write about mental health, and what goes on inside the mind and brain. I’m fascinated by the mind, quietly (or not) running the show behind the scenes. I read about brain science whenever I can. Call it a lifelong interest.
And because I write middle grade books, I write about hope.
At the end of my books, readers will find a note from me. As a former classroom teacher, it feels important to speak directly to readers after sharing a novel with them. These notes give me a chance to share where the book came from, what parts are rooted in my own experience, and most of all, to thank them for spending time in the world and with the characters I’ve created.
YABC: What do you do when you procrastinate?
This is an interesting question. Procrastinate from… That depends on the day of the week for me! I am a classic procrastinator. I like to think of it as “time optimism”— you know, just so sure I can get everything done without a real grasp on time, but really, I just busy myself with things until the work gets urgent!
I’d like to say when it comes to my day job that I’m not too procrastinatory, but I am, especially when it involves writing a note/email to someone— whether that be a request, a response, a thank you, an invitation… I overthink the way that the note or email will sound. I hate not being able to interpret tone in emails! I tend to mentally write and rewrite emails so many times in my head that sometimes I even think I’ve responded to someone because the note has already become so clear in my mind. So, I procrastinate by letting the email responses pile up. (And pile up they do!)
When it comes to writing novels, I’d say my “procrastination” is that I write in fits and starts. With my job and family, I don’t always stay in my writing projects daily (or even weekly). This means a bit of procrastination, I guess, is the other parts of life. But let’s be real, that’s not the only reason I procrastinate in writing my novels.
Maybe there is a little bit of fear?
Maybe it is a little bit of overwhelm?
Maybe a lack of confidence?
Whatever causes the procrastination in working on a novel, my go-to distraction is working on my teacher’s guide/reader’s guide. I love spending time thinking about what I want to talk to readers about when it comes to the finished book. That is my nature “happy place”— talking with readers. I can wander pretty far from the book itself into the “hey, this would be so much fun to do with readers after they read this book!” (As you can imagine, finishing the book is kind of pivotal to having something to actually read, and therefore even need a reader’s guide… but you asked about procrastination… and logic can fly right out the window when procrastination moves in.)
YABC: What’s one book you’ve recently read and loved?
I love reading (especially audiobooks) and am always thrilled to read books coming out from friends and from so many writers that I get to spend time with at the Highlights Foundation.
If I had to pick one recent book that I’ve read, a picture book that I’ve been sharing is called, “Our Lake” written and illustrated by Angie Kang. The tenderness of the illustrations and words share a special connection between siblings as they are navigating loss. I love that the book uses place to celebrate memory. I think having more books that navigate grief for young children, especially when done as beautifully as Angie’s book, is so important. Our kids are going through so much, and books like “Our Lake” can be a companion to them so they aren’t going it alone.
YABC: Is there an organization or cause that is close to your heart?
Working for the Highlights Foundation means that there are many organizations near and dear to my heart. I am endlessly grateful for caring people caring for others— it’s the only way we’re going to make it in this world. Personally, one of the non-profit organizations that means a lot to me is The Trevor Project.
The Trevor Project provides education, crisis support, and advocacy for queer youth, caring to make a difference in access to mental health support and suicide prevention. My kid once asked me, “If you could launch your own non-profit what would it be?” I answered saying that the non-profit I’d want to create already exists: The Trevor Project, and it is needed now more than ever.
YABC: What’s up next for you?
I am working on two projects currently.
One will be my next middle grade novel. It follows Rebecca Aurelius Smith from a farm in Pennsylvania to the wild world of professional wrestling in Clearwater, Florida. Rebecca (but please call her Beck) has just witnessed a terrible accident. Her wrestling hero—Fard Mercury, botches a piledriver which leads to severe concussion complications. Outside the wresting ring, Beck calls Fard Mercury, “dad.”
This book is about reality and “reality tv”. It is a book about family responsibilities and found family. It is a book about healing and hope. It opens the curtain on a retro professional wresting promotion that I could talk about all day long—but I’ll stop here instead.
The other project I’m writing is a collaboration between myself and fellow middle grade novelist Meera Trehan. We’re co-writing a hauntingly fun chapter book series for readers who like a little fright with their family stories. Creating this series with Meera has been a special treat—and not just because there are banana cream pies involved in the hauntings!
Title: THIS WAY TO HAPPY
Author: Alison Green Myers
Release Date: September 23, 2025
Publisher: Dutton Books for Young Readers
ISBN-10: 0593325702
ISBN-13: 9780593325704
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction
Age Range: 10 and up
~ Giveaway Details ~
Three (3) winners will receive a hardcover copy of THIS WAY TO HAPPY (Alison Green Myers) ~US Only!
This sounds like the kind of book I’m not likely to forget long after finishing it, which are the best kinds of stories. And love the pretty cover!
Really excited to read this one!
I loved reading the backstory for this book, and the premise is just really interesting.