The Wonder Behind "Little Wonder"

When I was in high school in Austin, Texas, I would walk into BookPeople and head straight for the books with the Oprah Book Club seal. It was my guide to what I should read next. I remember falling in love with books like Here on Earth by Alice Hoffman and Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson, all because Oprah had recommended them.

Now, Oprah has chosen Little Wonder by Sophie Chen Keller, a novel published by my imprint Thousand Voices, as the newest selection for Oprah’s Book Club (I still have to pinch myself every time I say that). I have admired Oprah’s taste since I was sixteen years old, so this moment feels enormous, both for our little publishing house and for Sophie, an author who heard plenty of “no’s” along the way but continued to follow her heart and keep writing, even while raising two young children.

Little Wonder is a beautiful story about the love between a mother and son, filled with hope and wonder, and I cannot wait for y’all to read it.

xx,

Jenna

Here’s Sophie:

I moved to the US when I was four years old. Each night, tucked into my new bed, I fell asleep to my mother’s voice, reading book after magical book—Charlotte’s Web, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Madeline, Matilda. And so I learned to dream in words, in stories.

My memories of that time are some of my most vivid. My parents were graduate students at the Ohio State University and we lived in a housing complex with many other families like ours. I spent the weekends riding bikes with my friends, coming home with a scraped elbow or knee. I played make-believe with my stuffed animals and skipped rope to chanted rhymes and rushed headlong into new snow, my mother leading the way; a Northeast China girl at heart, she felt right at home in those Ohio winter mornings. As for those Ohio summer nights, glimmering with stars above and lighting bugs below—they seemed, to me, endless.

The grassy fields beyond our door—endless. The size of the world—endless. The depth of my wonder—endless.

As soon as I could hold a pencil, I began writing stories of my own, about talking animals (a la Redwall) and twins (a la Sweet Valley). When asked, I responded that I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. My first publication came when I was in high school, a short story about a pedicab driver in rural China.

As I grew older, I began sorting the stuff of dreams from the stuff of reality. I studied economics in college and worked in New York City afterwards, making pitch decks and practicing Excel shortcuts. Eventually, I met my husband, and in the small hours we spoke of our big dreams and gave each other the courage to reach for them. Before our wedding, we both left our jobs. He went back to graduate school and I started writing what became my first book, The Luster of Lost Things.

It was a good thing I hadn’t known then how long and winding a journey publishing can be! After The Luster of Lost Things came out, I spent a long time working on a different book, which my first agent didn’t connect with. After we parted ways, I spent years working on the book that eventually became Little Wonder. But when my second agent read an early draft, she didn’t connect with it, and she, too, parted ways with me.

But also during that decade, a marvelous thing: I became a mom. And a voyage of a different kind: we moved to Beijing. And then my son was sitting, and then crawling and standing and walking, and then he was running gleefully into daycare.

Suddenly, I had time to savor my coffee and take an unhurried shower. I had time to write, and so I wrote about motherhood. I wrote about music and about food delivery workers in Beijing, which is one of the largest places in the world. I wrote about a small place, too, where my parents were born and where I was born, where my relatives still lived and where I had once lived with them.

The title, Little Wonder, would come after I signed with my third agent. The hardest work had yet to be done, solitary seasons of digging.

Four years and as many rewrites later, Jenna called.

Another year later, Oprah called.

And later still, at bedtime, I tucked in my children. For my son, I read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. For my daughter, Madeline.

I paused before turning off the light, and the view was everything I had dreamed it would be when I was their age and my mother was mine. Here we are in this strange and wonderful land. Here we are together, reading a bedtime story.

– Sophie Chen Keller

Little Wonder completely swept me up and transported me into River and Song’s world. I loved every minute of this story, and I cannot wait for all of you to experience it for yourselves.

And if I still haven’t convinced you, I’ll let Oprah take it from here.

XX

Jenna