Bobby and The Big Stink
I think of myself as a smart person--now. However, when I was a kid, I did so many questionable things.

Like the time when I stuck my wet hand against the wall of the freezer to see what would happen. While it wasn't as tragic as this, it still was pretty bad.


Then there was the time I decided to cut my own hair. (Okay, you know you've done this, too.)

Or what about when I was one of 76,000 people who stood in line for HOURS in the hot sun just to smell stinkiest plant on the planet? Oh wait. That last one I did as an adult.

The Corpse Flower is beautiful, rare and wonderful . . .


. . . but it is stinks. And I mean, STINKS. It's smell is like decomposing corpse, hence it's name. CLICK HERE to find out more about the smell.

The bloom and subsequent stink happen only once every five years ago. I was there in 1999 and the image (and smell) stuck with me. Recently, the Corpse Flower bloomed again.

So, when I was writing BOBBY VS. GIRLS (ACCIDENTALLY), I decided that Bobby should share that experience . . .


I set a scene at the Huntington Gardens, and let Dan Santat, my pal and the book's illustrator, have some fun with it. Here's Dan contemplating what to draw . . .


And here's a sketch from an ARC (advanced readers copy -- the real book comes out in September) . . .


I also changed the Corpse Flower to the Koloff Tree (a name I invented) and made it sticky, too, so Bobby could get stuck to the tree (in real life, we weren't allowed to touch the plant) . . .


Sadly, the Corpse Flower is now facing its doom, but if you missed it, there's always 2014.

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