Major Influences

*Mrs. Haddix had a lot of influences for her books! A couple of them are: *These are both quoted from her website, where you can click HERE to access.

Among The Hidden -- “I first started thinking about Among the Hidden when my husband and I were trying to decide whether to have a third child, or whether to stop with two. All the reasons we could come up with for having or not having another baby seemed entirely subjective, more emotional than rational—except the possibility that the world was overpopulated, and it might be irresponsible to have more than two kids. I remember thinking in frustration one night, 'Well, if overpopulation were that bad of a problem, there’d be a law, that nobody could have a third child!' My next thought was, 'What if there was a law like that?' I knew instantly that I had a good idea for a book, regardless of what my husband and I decided.”

Just Ella – “I think I can credit (or blame) my daughter with inspiring this book. When she was about 2 or 3, she was fascinated by fairy tales, and would beg to have me read them to her again and again. I’d certainly heard all the fairy tales when I was a kid, but somehow they sounded very different to me when I was an adult reading them to my daughter. It really bothered me that the princes and princesses and other heroes and heroines in the stories always fell in love with each other at first sight—and all that really seemed to matter was their beautiful (or handsome) appearances. Sometimes I even changed the stories for my daughter, coming up with lines like, 'And then the prince looked at the princess, and he could tell just by looking that she was a very, very nice, smart, wonderful person, and so he fell in love….'

 Then one day when I was watching my daughter putting together a Cinderella puzzle that she loved, I started thinking about what a horrible role model she was for little girls, because she never actually does anything; her godmother does all the work. And then it was almost like I heard a 'new' Cinderella talking to me, telling what she insisted was her true story. She told me she’d never had a fairy godmother and never had to rely on magic—she’d made things happen for herself. And then I had so much fun imagining her alternative tale that I decided to write it down.”