Interested in a retelling of "The Wizard of Oz," but told in the perspective of Toto? Then check out "TOTO" by A.J. Hackwith.
What was your inspiration behind your most recent book?
I was going through a rough time when I started thinking about "TOTO." "The Wizard of Oz" was an obsessive favorite when I was a young queer kid, and the idea of approaching that story through a modern, unexpected lens really sounded fun. (I have the belief that if something is fun to write, it is more likely to be fun to read.) As a dog lover, the narrator and protagonist felt immediately obvious.
I had plenty of inspiration, having been lucky enough to share my life with some amazing dogs over the years, including my own current "little dog," a chihuahua mix named Mochi. I ended up writing this book in the final year of her life as she struggled with cancer. She passed away only a month before "TOTO’s" planned release date, which makes her presence in this book extra meaningful for me.
What does Reading Rainbow mean to you?
I think Reading Rainbow means embracing both the stories that feature people like you, and actively seeking out and embracing stories that feature those that don’t. Although it’s fantastic that there is a bounty of new fiction featuring queer folk for us to choose from, it is not enough for us to just read what we gravitate to. I feel this, especially from the perspective of a queer white woman. We need to make sure a Pride movement is intersectional, and we seek out, read, promote, voices that are different as well.
Read broadly, read outside your identity, outside your lived experience. Recommend that diversity to those you know who may not have done the work of seeking them out. Reading Rainbow is not a passive indulgence — though the value of that kind of reading shouldn’t be denied — but an act of widening the circle for us all.
Why do you feel representation of a variety of people is so important when it comes to writing books?
I had the familiar experience as a child, reading fantasy books filled with protagonists that never looked like me. As much as I enjoyed them, I grew so tired of putting myself in the shoes of an everyman white guy, and only seeing minorities as flat or powerless characters lacking agency.
Many of the books I write are a response to that: writing books I wish were available at certain stages of my life. Stories that are led and powerfully shaped by people who look like me — or my friends and loved ones — who were normally backgrounded, fridged, exoticized, tokenized. Representation is not, as some critics accuse, an exercise of ‘unrealistic’ alterations, but an acknowledgement of people who were always there, their stories stolen, muted or erased in the background.
Tell us a little more about the book and why you decided to write it.
"The Wizard of Oz" has always been a story close to my heart. Growing up as a rural kid in Nebraska — one cornfield to the north of Kansas — I wore out VHS copies of the classic movie then sought out Baum’s books.
Dorothy was perhaps one of the first American girl protagonists — the forerunner to today’s Katniss, Hermione, Tris, and others. While Baum writes an imaginative and fantastical world, I couldn’t help but feel disappointed at some elements of the story in subsequent books. An army of girls was portrayed as silly, a porcelain people contained exoticism themes, and a potential trans-hero was dismissed. I felt the spaces in Oz where other stories could exist, like the gap of a missing tooth.
I decided to write "TOTO" to explore those stories — and because I am a lifelong dog lover. Toto made a great narrator because of his overlooked role in the original books. Even in the movies, Toto is always running around in the background, disappearing here just to reappear there. It made for so many great gaps and off-screen places where he could change the telling of the story. In "TOTO’s" interpretation of Oz, queer people exist (including Dorothy). People of color exist. Disabled people exist.
As I said, I try to write the books I needed to exist in the world.
What can fans expect from your book?
Readers will find "TOTO," I hope, a clever and witty retelling of "The Wizard of Oz," told by a canine narrator with humor and modern sensibilities. I hope they’ll enjoy the characters the most — from Dorothy as a rural YouTube-watching queer teenager struggling with loneliness, to the reimagined faces: Scarecrow as a misunderstood herbalist-turned-straw, Lion as a deposed and despondent member of his own kingdom, and Tin Man as a golem who was once a young man caught up in a toxic movement. I hope they’ll also enjoy the new characters: a munchkin knight who is determined to save her brother and, perhaps my favorite, a revolutionary blue jay who wants very badly to be a clever crow.
In short, I hope fans can expect a cozy fantasy adventure that delights and becomes a story all fantasy-loving (or dog-loving) readers can return to when things get rough.
What's up next for you in the bookish world?
I am working now on a book I’ve had in my notebook for a while. It’s a cozy fantasy based on the folk tale of the goblin market — most famously depicted in Christina Rossetti’s poem by the same name. We follow Toast, a goblin changeling who believed she was a normal human girl until her eleventh birthday, when she was forced to return to the goblin market which exists in a confusing world of ever-shifting rooms and faces. Although she’s lived in the shifting, magically changing goblin market for years since, Toast has never quite embraced the goblin world where everything seems up for trade. When a childhood friend from Toast’s human past stumbles into the Market and the goblin’s guardian spirit disappears, Toast will have to learn to embrace her strange little community and learn what a home is really worth.
That’s the pitch, now here are the vibes I’m excited about: a shifting house of liminal spaces, a found family of weirdos, fey, and monsters. A titan bear spirit holding up the world, a femme knight with a mysterious motive. Sisters with complicated feelings, but who would still kill for each other. The dangerous taste of goblin fruit and a vivid, fantastical living market that sells anything, buys anything, found in your imagination. A fight to realize your own worth and perhaps the love and support you didn’t know you had all along.
