Letter from Elana K. Arnold

By the time I was eleven, I had moved at least that many times.

In addition to moves from one part of the state to another, we also

moved from neighborhood to neighborhood within my hometown of

Long Beach, California, and sometimes (for reasons still unclear to me),

I was moved from school to school, often mid-year.

Maybe it’s because of all these displacements that I fell so heavily

in love with settings in stories—particularly small, knowable places.

Ramona Quimby’s Grant Park neighborhood in Portland, Oregon.

Anne Shirley’s Avonlea. And Miss Jane Marple’s beloved St. Mary Mead.

A village, Miss Marple believes, is a microcosm. It’s a little place

with the opportunity to see all the sorts of people, to see all the human

dramas acted out in miniature, so to speak.

How I longed for such a cozy place. How I longed to know a place, and

to belong to one. So I suppose it’s no surprise that when I set out to write

a series for young readers—one that promised, among other things, cozy

mysteries—I began first of all with place. Marble Island is a quaint little

island just off the coast of southern California, not unlike Catalina

Island, just 22 miles away from where I live now, crossable by sea or air.

At the beginning of Just Harriet, Harriet Wermer is “displaced” to

Marble Island, which turns out to be the perfect place for this inquisitive,

curious kid to begin solving the small mysteries of island life (like what

the big, old-fashioned key might open), and the big mysteries, too—the

human mysteries that can take a lifetime to unravel.

In Harriet Spies, our beloved sleuth is again challenged by mysteries

great and small: What happened to the Captain’s binoculars? And what

does it mean to be a friend?

The Harriet books, like all my books, honor and respect the hard work

of being a human in the world. Each novel in the series takes an honest

look at the cost of dishonesty. They’re funny, and full of furry friends, and

also, always, love.

I hope that Marble Island, Nanu’s Bric-a-Brac Bed & Breakfast, and

even Harriet herself will feel to readers like a comfortable homecoming,

even if it is to places and perspectives they have

never seen.

Elana K. Arnold