Best-Selling Author James Ponti Speaks to Grades 4–6

On February 11, we were excited to welcome James Ponti, New York Times bestselling author of the Framed!, Sherlock Society, and City Spies series, to WIS to debut the next book in the City Spies series: City Spies #7: Europa.

James started off his talk with a confession: as a child (and even as a younger adult), he HATED to read because "The only way I knew how to read was to say each word slowly in my head," However, when he was in Grade 3, he came across a book called From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, with an "incredible opening sentence: 'Claudia knew she could never pull off the old-fashioned kind of running away.'" 

For years, James still did not consider himself a reader, but during a poetry unit in Grade 5, his favorite teacher gave him an assignment (that he didn't want to do!), which would inspire him to become a writer. As they began to study poetry, his teacher said, " 'Now you have to know, there's some tricks to reading poetry. You have to read it really slow,' and I thought, 'I read everything slow. This is great!' 'And you have to say each word in your head so you can see how the words go together.' Again, I thought 'that's the only way I have to know how to read!' and best of all, the poems were short, and because they were short, I could finish them."

James wrote something that finally felt possible: a poem. His life changed not because of the teacher, but because one of his classmates guessed James' poem was written by Shakespeare! "I remember every detail because it was the moment I became a writer. From that moment on, I never wanted to be anything but a writer. I didn't have the vocabulary to express how that made me feel; I just knew I wanted to feel like that again as often as possible." The problem was that he didn't know what he was going to write, because "it wasn't books; I didn't read books."

One of his classmates thought that a poem he wrote (read anonymously in class) was actually written by Shakespeare: "I remember every detail because it was the moment I became a writer. From that moment on, I never wanted to be anything but a writer. I didn't have the vocabulary to express how that made me feel; I just knew I wanted to feel like that again as often as possible. But I didn't know what I was gonna write, because it wasn't books; I didn't read books."

James majored in screenwriting in college, and eventually wrote for a show on Nickelodeon called The Mystery Files of Shelby Woo, which became so popular that the executives wanted to create a book series based on the show. James and his friend, Suzanne, both wrote for the show, and they wanted to write these books. When their boss told them "you can't write a book. You're not real writers, you're just TV writers," they both decided to prove him wrong. The book that James wrote was ultimately picked to be published over Suzanne's, which he used to tease Suzanne about; however, "she knew I was joking, but the ultimate joke was on me, because Suzanne's last name is Collins, and she wrote The Hunger Games series."

James concluded his talk with some advice for our students: "Throughout your life, people who you respect, people who you like, will tell you things about yourself. It doesn't mean they're right. If either Suzanne or me had said 'our boss is right, we probably can't write that,' then none of my books, and none of her books, would exist.

I also think you should do the things you love, even if you're not very good at them. I love baseball. I am the worst baseball player in the history of Atlanta Beach, Florida. I was monumentally, historically bad. But I liked it. So I still did it. And I never got better at that, but I love stories. I love the idea of books. I got better at that. And then you get to have this amazing life, where the thing that you're doing is a thing that you love."

We are grateful to James Ponti for taking time out of his busy schedule to share his journey with our students!