Check out this middle grade fantasy... This is Not a Werewolf Story by Sandra Evans (Blog Tour & Giveaway)

On Tour with Prism Book Tours.

Book Tour Launch for
This is Not a Werewolf Story
By Sandra Evans

Come along with us for some fun mixed with mystery at this
boarding school where everything isn't quite what it seems...

Tour Schedule


Author Interview

1. What is your motivation behind This is Not a Werewolf Story? Why did you want to write it?

This book is the product of long conversations with my 9 year old son, a few springs back. He had come home from school having read a picture book about a knight who becomes a werewolf over the weekend. I knew the story well—I had researched it while working on a doctorate in medieval French literature. I could see how much he liked it. Since we had been talking about writing a book together for a while, we decided to adapt the story-- Marie de France’s 12th century fairy tale Bisclavret-- into a middle grade novel.

In the end, it was a game I played with my son. He is a great listener, and an even better speaker, and he loved giving me ideas. The rules were simple—keep the essential features of the medieval tale but modernize it and locate it in the Pacific Northwest.

2. What do you hope readers take with them after they’ve read it?

I hope readers will want to visit Whidbey Island and Fort Casey. I hope they’ll think about the importance of preserving our national parks and the animals that seek refuge there. I hope some kids will feel reassured that even if your family isn’t 100% normal and maybe your parents and the people taking care of you aren’t doing a great job 100% of the time, that you’ll be okay, that you’ll find your people eventually, and that sometimes they are already around you. Also that, yes, we change. We change all the time, but part of us stays the same. So don’t be afraid to grow up. You’ll still be there when you get there.

3. Do you have a favorite scene that you can share with us?

My favorite scene is probably in the classroom with Ms. Tern. It’s a scene I had to edit heavily but could never bring myself to cut entirely. I developed the figure of Ms. Tern late in the revision process of the story, when I had begun teaching in a public high school for the first time. Prior to that I had been a Visiting Assistant Professor at a private liberal arts college. It was a tough transition, and I created her as my double—someone who was competent in many areas of life, but totally overwhelmed by a class of 25 adolescents. In addition, I wanted to link her to the heartbreaking story of Lolita and the Penn Cove Massacre, an event that took place close to the day I was born. I wanted Ms. Tern to share and deepen the connection I feel to that event and my wish that Lolita can one day go home.

4. If you could sum the book up in one sentence, what would you say?

My favorite one sentence summary of the book was written by Mariah Manley for her review in School Library Journal : “Heartfelt, enigmatic, and ethereal, Evans’s excellent debut novel takes readers on a roller coaster of emotion and keeps them guessing the whole way through.” Those first three adjectives, when I read them, gave me such a feeling of being understood. That was exactly what I wanted a reader to feel and say about this story. It gave me goosebumps.

5. Share something about you that is unique - maybe about how/where you write... or favorite snack foods?

I write in a little room upstairs on a computer that has no internet connection. One wall is a window that looks out over a mile of rooftops and telephone wires down the hill to a bay where a humpback whale just took up residence for a week, and where herons and harbor seals fish. In the yard directly under that window, there’s a holly tree that is fiercely busy with sparrows and finches. So my view while I write is a microcosm of the domestic and the wild.

This Is Not a Werewolf StoryThis is Not a Werewolf Story
by Sandra Evans
Middle Grade Fantasy
Hardcover & ebook, 352 pages
July 26th 2016 by Atheneum Books for Young Readers

This is the story of Raul, a boy of few words, fewer friends, and almost no family. He is a loner—but he isn’t lonely. All week long he looks after the younger boys at One Of Our Kind Boarding School while dodging the barbs of terrible Tuffman, the jerk of a gym teacher. 

Like every other kid in the world, he longs for Fridays, but not for the usual reasons. As soon as the other students go home for the weekend, Raul makes his way to a lighthouse deep in the heart of the woods. There he waits for sunset—and the mysterious, marvelous phenomenon that allows him to go home, too. But the woods have secrets . . . and so does Raul. When a new kid arrives at school, they may not stay secret for long.



Sandra Evans is a writer and teacher from the Pacific Northwest. Her forthcoming middle grade novel, This is Not a Werewolf Story (Simon & Schuster July 2016), was inspired by her favorite 12th century French tale, Bisclavret, by Marie de France. Born in Washington state, Sandra spent her childhood on U.S. Navy bases from Florida to Hawaii, and returned to the Northwest as a teenager. Since then, she has lived and traveled in France and Europe, but has never strayed far for long from the Puget Sound region.


Tour Giveaway

A hardcover copy of THIS IS NOT A WEREWOLF STORY by Sandra Evans plus Swag
Open internationally
Ends December 16th

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