Mother of four and writer Anne Rellihan went to KU for English and journalism. After graduating, she realized journalism wasn’t her passion and pivoted to teaching, traveling around the country with the Teach for America program.
During this time, the Kansas native realized she still aspired to be a writer—just not a journalist—and dreamed of becoming a children’s book author. After the birth of her second child, Anne Rellihan took a step back from teaching and decided to earnestly pursue her dream of writing.
In February, Rellihan released her debut novel, Not the Worst Friend in the World, aimed at children ages eight to 12. She chatted with us about the novel and her dreams for the future.
Tell us about the inception of the novel. I’d always loved reading realistic fiction. Contemporary books are my favorite to read and always have been since I was a kid. So I knew that was the direction I wanted to go. I also loved mysteries, so I wanted to incorporate mysterious elements. I revisited some books that I loved as a kid, and one of my favorites when I was little was Harriet the Spy. I also spent a lot of time thinking about my own growing up and being a fifth or sixth grader. Friendship is so important at that age. The most important thing in the world to me was my friends and what they thought. So I knew I wanted to have that element in the book. And then the mystery part of the story actually comes from when I was teaching here in Kansas City. I had a class of fifth graders that had this book about a kidnapping that almost went viral within the classroom—everyone was checking it out at the library and passing it around. [They started] having all these conversations. ‘What if somebody in our class had been kidnapped? What if one of us was and we didn’t even know it?’
Can you describe your novel? It’s a friendship mystery set in a small fictional town in Missouri. As the book opens, the main character has just had a big friendship breakup. She and her best friend are no longer speaking, so she’s feeling really isolated and alone. Then a new girl shows up to the town under mysterious circumstances and she asks Lou, the main character, to help her. She quickly reveals that she believes she’s in the small town because her dad kidnapped her and she wants Lou’s help trying to figure out how to find her mom. It goes back and forth between the friendship storyline of Lou trying to win back this friendship that she feels like she destroyed and then helping this new girl solve this big problem that she had.
What’s next for you? I would love to have a long career as a children’s author. My youngest child is one year old, so that has kept me pretty busy, but I am working on a second book. It’s going to stay in the same genre. My first book was set in Missouri and this book is set in Kansas. It will be a contemporary story with friendship and family themes—and a little bit of a mystery, too.
For more information about Anne Rellihan, visit annerellihan.com. Not the Worst Friend in the World is sold locally at independent bookstores The Learning Tree, Rainy Day Books and KD’s Books, as well as many major retailers.
