Character Interview: Daisy from Daisy and the Pirates!

Hello Daisy! Thank you very much for agreeing to this interview.  Hopefully it'll be a lot of fun! To get started why don't you tell everyone a bit about yourself? 

Hiya, Paige.  Thanks so much for interviewing me.  So the blah-blah on me basically is that I wrote a book called Daisy and the Pirates about being stranded on a remote island with my divorced parentals and psycho sister after some real-life pirates took over the ship we were on.  I was eleven when it happened.  (I’m twelve now.)  The whole thing sounds far-fetched, I know, but it’s really true.  I’m not some liar like my sister says I am.          

1.)   This you've probably heard dozens of times, but what were your first thoughts when you realized the ship was going down and the pirates had took the only remaining life boat? You seemed a little shaken, but I didn't feel like you were quite as scared as everyone else and it didn't appear you were freaking out quite as much as they were either.

Oh, I was freaked all right.  In fact I was so freaked I don’t think you could call what I was doing thinking.  When I first saw the bow of the Ayutthaya dipping underwater, my heart started pounding so hard I thought it would punch its way out.  But then I just made myself move.  Who even knows how?  And who knows if I’d be able to do it again if something like that happened again?                 

2.)   I know you have a thing for National Geographic, but just how do you have all that knowledge about survival skills in your head at such a young age? (I'd put it off to your dad being an archaeologist, but neither your sister nor your dad himself seemed to know as much! I'm going to be honest and say I learned quite a bit from you reading your story, and it even prompted me to do some research of my own!

Good for you! I’ve always liked that stuff.  Camping, fishing, survival, wild food plants—it just always seemed fun.  I’m not much of a girl-girl.  My sister’s the girl-girl and she ridicules me to no end, but so what.   And anyway, why should boys get to do all the cool stuff, like gut a fish and build igloos and collect water under a plastic sheet that you suspend over a hole in the hot sand?  Of course, one of the things I learned on the island is that all that stuff is much easier to read about than actually do.  I can’t even tell you how many times I was screaming my head off because something didn’t work the way it was supposed to.       

3.)   You didn't seem as put off as the rest of your family about being trapped on a deserted island chain, why do you think that was? Besides, of course, getting out of school!  

To be honest, I’m kind of a loser at school, plus, even though I know a lot of words and can write okay, I’m not what you’d call a good student.  But even if that weren’t the case, what better way to practice your survival skills than to have to survive?  We really could have starved or died of thirst or a million other things.  But for me, survival-nerd that I am, it was huge.  Okay, and one other thing.  Now this may sound weird but I had this crazy idea that if Mom and Dad just spend time together on the island, they would realize how made for each other they were and get back together.  Dumb, I know, but that’s what I thought. 

4.)   I have to say that your father seems to know quite a lot about different cultures, what's one of the strangest stories he's ever told you about discoveries on an archaeological dig?

He’s told lots of weird stories.  His main area is Roman Empire Maritime Archeology.  That means he knows a lot about the old ships they used and their trade routes and how plagues spread from one place to another when rats would jump off the ships.   But one thing that surprised me is that the Romans were wild about Greek sculptures.  So after they conquered Greece, the rich Romans all wanted Greek statues for their estates and palaces so they bought up or just took all the statues out of Greek temples.  Pretty soon they’d carted most of them off.  So the Greeks started making fake Greek statues.  I mean they were Greek statues, but they were made to look chipped and stained and dirty, like they were hundreds of years older than they were.  It’s pretty funny if you think about it cause half the Greek statues in Italy today are just copies the Greeks whipped up to sell to rich Romans.  And now, since they’re all thousands of years old, the fakes are as valuable as the originals.     

5.)   What is your favorite thing you've taken away from being stranded? Least favorite?

Let me start with least favorite: I don’t like scorpions.  There is not one good thing about scorpions.  Sorry scorpions.  As far as favorite: There were so many beautiful moments I will never forget, like when you would be suddenly surrounded by a cloud of butterflies sparkling in the sunlight, or the thrill when we first found the gold.  But one of the biggest ones is kind of both favorite and not so favorite: Survival-nerd that I am, I still have to admit that I would never have survived without my family, including my sister.  I also would never have been brave enough to do what I did if not for them.     

6.)   So, I have to ask: after all this happened--do you get along better now with your sister?

Um, not really.  Sorry.  She’s still a self-absorbed, brainless, boy-crazed menace, but she did save my life, and she still gives me birthday presents, so what can I say?  My dad tells me that I have to be careful because it isn’t a given that sisters grow up and like each other when they are adults, if they treat each other terribly when they are kids.  He constantly reminds me that Clymene is the only sister I have.  So, I’m trying, I really am.   

7.) Hearing about your adventure was just so enjoyable, are we going to get to read more about your life soon?  

I’m so glad you enjoyed it.  As for more, I wrote this blog novel called My Stupid Journal (http://www.daisytannenbaum.com) which I’m now editing into a real novel, about going to live in Paris with my Aunt Millicent, after I punched this bully at school and got expelled.  I hated Paris at first but it turned out to be exciting, since Aunt Mill cracks secret codes for a living and was involved in this whole scheme to discover Marie Antoinette’s long lost diamonds.  So if you can’t wait, you can read the blog, which tells the story and has a lot of great pictures of Paris.  

After that I was thinking maybe I’d write about our trip to Dubai and the twelve-year-old Saudi princess who was going to be married to some old guy her parents picked out (yuck) and how she and I planned an elaborate escape.   Then again, there was the whole crazy story about Clymene and her modeling career and all the stupid stuff that happened when I visited her in New York. Plus there’s the time I ran away from home, which was really a stupid thing to do, so maybe I won’t write about that after all, because I was just a stupid little kid when I did that.    

8.) I just really loved your book-so thanks again for being here today. I'm still kind of new at this whole interview thing(hopefully getting better every day!), so do you have anything else you'd like to add? I'm sure your potential readers would love to know anything you'd like to add! *cough* Me too *cough* :) 

Thanks you so much, Paige.  I’m definitely new to answering interview questions, so that makes us pretty even.   I had a lot of fun writing Daisy and the Pirates and hopefully it will make people laugh.  Writing it helped me ease back into civilization.  My friend, Nina, who I met in Paris when I got sent there, calls me fauve girl, which is like French for savage girl or wild girl, and sometimes I think she’s right.  I don’t quite fit in with civilization or school or even with my family for that matter, even though I love them.   I suspect there are a lot of kids like that (and adults too) and so maybe they’ll enjoy the book.  Thanks again.  Feel free to write me at daisytannenbaum@roadrunner.com or tweet me at @DaisyTannenbaum or leave a comment on My Stupid Journal.    

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Giveaway!

Do you want to read more about Daisy's adventures in Daisy and the Pirates? Here's your chance with this awesome giveaway! One Grand Prize winner will receive a copy for himself/herself and one for a friend, whereas the Runner-Up will receive a copy for him/herself. I've included lots of ways to enter so everyone has a chance to win this awesome book! 

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