Interview with Claudia Mills, Author of ‘The Last Apple Tree’

An interview about The Last Apple Tree by Claudia Mills, presented by The Children’s Book Review.

With over 60 books to her name, Claudia Mills shares how Swiss Miss, philosophy, and empathy all fueled her writing of The Last Apple Tree.

With the discipline of a lifelong writer and the perspective of a philosopher, Claudia Mills brings both heart and wisdom to her stories for young readers. Her “hour-a-day system,” fueled by Swiss Miss hot chocolate, has helped her produce more than 60 books that balance moral complexity with age-appropriate storytelling. In The Last Apple Tree, she explores themes of family, memory, and environmental change while maintaining her trademark hopefulness.

In our conversation, Mills reflects on how philosophy deepens the dilemmas her characters face, why alternating perspectives build empathy, and how intergenerational relationships add depth to her work. What emerges is a portrait of a writer whose steady ritual and enduring optimism shape stories that resonate across generations.

You’ve written over 60 books for young readers while maintaining your “faithful hour-a-day system” with Swiss Miss hot chocolate. How did you develop this routine, and what advice would you give to aspiring writers struggling to find consistency?

Claudia Mills (CM): Oh, it’s hard to remember how it started; it was decades ago! I think that, as the adage goes, “necessity was the mother of invention.” With a full-time job as a professor at the University of Colorado, and two young children, my only hope, if I was to be a writer, would be to get up VERY early, while the rest of the family, and the rest of the world, was sleeping. All I HAD was an hour a day, and so I made full use of it. 

My writing hero is the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope, who managed to write dozens of sprawling three-volume novels while working full time as a high-level official for the British post office. He achieved this feat by writing for a short, fixed time every morning. In his (wonderful) autobiography, he pens this line which became my mantra: “A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labors of a spasmodic Hercules”! 

As for Swiss Miss, I just love it so much and always have. People who know I love hot chocolate often give me gifts of gourmet hot chocolate, but I love Swiss Miss best, especially with a splash of half-and-half for additional creaminess!

While I am a huge fan of the hour-a-day system and recommend it ceaselessly to aspiring writers, I’m also aware that different writers have different processes and what works for me may not work for everyone. My advice would be: find what works for YOU – and then STICK TO IT. But two things to keep in mind are: 1) do what you can to make writing less daunting (this is the beauty of writing for just an hour a day – that’s not SO hard, right?); and 2) do what you can to make writing more joyous (this is the beauty of the Swiss Miss! Or beverage of your choice! Or lighting special candles, or nibbling a little treat.) In the long run, finding joy in the process is what will serve you best. 

Your background as a philosophy professor emerita clearly influences your storytelling approach. How does philosophical thinking shape the way you craft moral dilemmas and character growth in your middle-grade novels?

(CM): Here I have to be very careful, because while I do love thinking about the “message” of the story, what kernel of wisdom I want to impart to readers (young and old – and to myself, too!), I know that excessive didacticism in a story is a total turnoff.

 I think what helped me from my philosophical training was realizing that ethical issues are complex. The most brilliant philosophical minds throughout history have disagreed profoundly both on WHAT we should do as moral agents, and WHY we should do it. So, I never want to pose ethical questions for my characters, or my readers, that have EASY answers – because there seldom ARE any. I want to ask ethical questions I myself am unsure how to answer.

So, in my middle-grade novel Write This Down, I have my seventh-grade protagonist, aspiring author Autumn Granger, wrestling with the challenging question every author faces. How much are we morally entitled to write about our own lives – which includes writing about the people in our lives, our friends and family members? It would be almost impossible to write honestly and authentically without drawing on our own life experiences – and yet sometimes this may involve writing something that could hurt our loved ones, exploiting them for our own artistic purposes. I didn’t have a good answer myself, so I gave the problem to my character to see what she would do with it!

And we all know that pieces of the author themselves often end up hidden within characters and plot situations—both consciously and subconsciously. Could you talk to us about that in relation to The Last Apple Tree?

(CM): This question flows perfectly from that last one! While some of my early books for young readers were blatantly autobiographical, now I have to look a bit harder to find myself in what I write – but then I always do. In The Last Apple Tree, I am like Sonnet in that I can’t bear discord or unpleasantness in my family life. All I want is for everyone to be happy all the time, a wish guaranteed not to be granted! I’m like Zeke – or, I hate to say it – a bit like Zeke’s father, in that it was hard for me to get used to how different my two sons were from me when they were growing up, and now, how different my two granddaughters are from me. But I’m a lot nicer than Zeke’s dad because of all that Sonnet in me!

The Last Apple Tree explores loss, aging, and environmental change, yet maintains a hopeful tone throughout. When do you know you’ve found the “right” balance between addressing difficult realities and creating age-appropriate content that won’t overwhelm young readers?

(CM): This is a hard one. Often, I don’t know this until I get feedback from other readers, first from my beloved writing group and then from insightful editors. I rely on them to tell me if I’ve veered too far in one direction or another. But I have to say I’m incorrigibly hopeful myself. I just am. As the song from South Pacific goes, I’m a “cockeyed optimist” who is “stuck like a dope with a thing called hope.”

One of the things I love about writing books for young readers, or for readers of any age, is that I can make the story turn out the way I wish it would in real life. Fathers and sons in real life probably don’t find common ground as easily as Zeke and his father do by the end of the book. In real life, a grandparent’s memory loss is going to be harder to deal with than what Sonnet is starting to face. But maybe my books provide inspiration for real-life readers to be able to navigate the problems they face with a bit more grace and understanding.

The dual perspective between Sonnet and Zeke allows readers to see the same situations from different viewpoints. What draws you to alternating perspectives, and how do you ensure each voice feels authentic and distinct?

(CM): I had an experience when I was in third grade that I never forgot and that has influenced everything I’ve ever written. I was in the Crusader Choir at church, and at rehearsals I shared a hymnbook with a girl named Paula Jo Hatfield. One day it occurred to me, with blinding insight, that just as to ME, Paula Jo was just the girl who shared MY hymnbook, to HER, I was just the girl who shared HER hymnbook. In that instant, I realized that everyone who was a bit player in MY story was a star in her OWN story. 

So, when I have written series, like Franklin School Friends and After-School Superstars, often each book in the series stars a different viewpoint character, rather than having all the titles feature the same protagonist. I am just so wedded to the idea that EVERY character has a story. Even characters who might not seem all that likeable in one book BECOME likeable once we see their lives from the inside. It is amazing how different the world looks when seen through someone else’s eyes. I truly believe – or at least truly hope – that telling the same story from different viewpoints helps young readers understand this crucial difference and grow in empathy as a result.

The intergenerational relationships in your work—like Sonnet and her grandfather—feel particularly authentic. What draws you to exploring cross-generational connections and capturing complex dynamics?

(CM): I didn’t really know my own grandparents, but as they were growing up, my two sons had a close relationship both with my mother and especially with my father-in-law. The boys and I visited Grandpa virtually every Sunday afternoon throughout their childhood, experiences which grew into my ten-book easy-reader series, Gus and Grandpa. Although the events in the books are fictitious, the character of Grandpa himself is exactly like real-life Grandpa. I must have done a good job of portraying him, because illustrator Catherine Stock, who had never met Grandpa nor seen a picture of him, drew him looking almost exactly as he looked in real life. The only difference was that she gave him a mustache – whereupon he obligingly grew a mustache so that he would better match the illustrations!

This must have made me realize how much I loved writing about intergenerational relationships, because after this, they continued to find their way into book after book. Sonnet’s grandfather, Gramps, has a voice a lot like Grandpa, now that I think of it. And in my forthcoming middle-grade novel, Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom, darned if Callie doesn’t have a vexed but ultimately rewarding relationship with, yes, her grandfather!

Your Franklin School Friends and After-School Superstars series shows your range across different formats. How do you decide whether a story idea works better as a standalone novel, part of a series, or even as verse like The Lost Language? Have you ever written a story with a specific audience or style in mind, only to discover the story wants to be told differently for a different audience?

(CM): Good question! Actually, I work in the other direction, starting first with the format – middle-grade novel, chapter book, easy reader, verse novel – and THEN deciding what story I might come up with that would work well in that format. I started out exclusively as a middle-grade author until my editor suggested that I try writing a transitional chapter book, as she thought my voice would work well for that younger audience. So, I set myself to brainstorming ideas from childhood memories of my third-grade year, plus recent incidents involving my boys when they were in third grade. I hit upon the third-grade challenge of mastering those pesky times tables. This became my first chapter book, 7 x 9 = Trouble! That was such fun to write that I sought out other third-grade level topics and experiences. 

Regarding stand-alone titles versus a series, a lot there is the choice, for better or worse, of the publisher. Once I have characters I care about, I could write endlessly about them! I’m dying to see what they do next! But whether a book has a sequel, or grows into a series, depends quite a bit on how marketable the publisher thinks it is. I was surprised – and delighted – when the first title in the Franklin School Friends series, Kelsey Green, Reading Queen, spawned a series, when (if I’m remembering this correctly) Scholastic expressed early interest in the title for its book clubs. The first book was almost done when the decision to launch a series was made, so I had to scramble to change the last names of Kelsey’s best friends to provide rhyming titles! Annika would never have been Annika Riz and Izzy would never have been Izzy Barr if I hadn’t needed names to rhyme with Math Whiz and Running Star! So here is where authorial creativity meets marketing savvy. And it’s why the final two books in the series, featuring characters Simon Ellis and Cody Harmon, do NOT have rhyming titles. It was too late then for any more rhymes!

Drawing on your experience as a faculty member in children’s literature graduate programs at Hollins University, how has teaching and working with emerging writers impacted your own writing process?

(CM): It has mainly humbled me. There are SOOOO many talented writers out there, with SOOOO many wonderful stories to tell. Mentoring these emerging writers has made me realize that I had better work as hard as I can to grow in my own craft if I’m going to continue to produce books worthy of publication.

And because Zeke wanted me to ask:  What’s something you’ve ever wanted? Is there anything else you’d like to share, The Last Apple Tree, your writing, future projects, or anything else at all?

(CM): Thank you for asking! I’m very excited about my forthcoming book, Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom, because (more than any of my other books) it brings together my philosophy self and my children’s book writer self. As you noted, I often write books where my characters face the kinds of philosophical/ethical dilemmas I talk about with my students in university philosophy classes. But here for the first time, I decided to let my protagonist engage philosophy directly herself. My favorite philosopher of all time is the great Stoic Epictetus. In this book I let Callie fall in love with his bracing, thrilling ideas the same way I did when I first encountered them as an adolescent. They changed my life; they change her life; and I hope they may change the lives of my readers, too.

Finally, thank you so much for hosting me. One of the main things Callie learns from Epictetus is the value of gratitude, and right now, in these challenging times we live in, I am weak with gratitude for the people who work tirelessly to celebrate books and share them with readers. What a gift you give to authors, readers, and our hurting world. As I said above, I do believe that hearing other people’s stories, from their different perspectives, whether in real life or in fiction, is a wonderful way for us all to become more empathetic and then, as a result, kinder. This is what our world right now needs more than anything. And YOU are a vital part of making this happen. 

About the Book

Publisher’s Book Summary: Twelve-year-old Sonnet’s family has just moved across the country to live with her grandfather after her nana dies. Gramps’s once-impressive apple orchard has been razed for a housing development, with only one heirloom tree left. Sonnet doesn’t want to think about how Gramps and his tree are both growing old—she just wants everything to be okay.

Sonnet is not okay with her neighbor, Zeke, a boy her age who gets on her bad side and stays there when he tries to choose her grandpa to interview for an oral history assignment. Zeke irks Sonnet with his prying questions, bringing out the sad side of Gramps she’d rather not see. Meanwhile, Sonnet joins the Green Club at school and without talking to Zeke about it, she asks his activist father to speak at the Arbor Day assembly—a collision of worlds that Zeke wanted more than anything to avoid.

But when the interviews uncover a buried tragedy that concerns Sonnet’s mother, and an emergency forces Sonnet and Zeke to cooperate again, Sonnet learns not just to accept Zeke as he is, but also that sometimes forgetting isn’t the solution—even when remembering seems harder.

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About the Author

Claudia Mills is the author of over 60 books for young readers, including most recently the verse novel The Lost Language and the middle-grade novel The Last Apple Tree, as well as two chapter-book series: Franklin School Friends and After-School Superstars. Her books have been named Notable Books of the Year by the American Library Association and Best Books of the Year by the Bank Street College of Education; they have been translated into half a dozen languages. Claudia is also a professor emerita of philosophy at the University of Colorado and a faculty member in the graduate programs in children’s literature at Hollins University. She has written all her books in her faithful hour-a-day system while drinking Swiss Miss hot chocolate.

For more information, check out claudiamillsauthor.com.

This interview—Interview with Claudia Mills, Author of ‘The Last Apple Tree’—was conducted between Claudia Mills and Bianca Schulze.