A Missing, Celebrity Feline is at the Centre of Another Case in Mystery at the Biltmore #2: The Classified Catnapping

Our featured title today is the second book in the ongoing, acclaimed Mystery at the Biltmore series (Pajama Press), which has been enticingly billed as "Only Murders in the Building meets Harriet the Spy." In this instalment, we return to the famed Biltmore with the LaRue Detective agency, who are chasing down yet another spellbinding case.

In Mystery at the Biltmore #2, The Classified Kidnapping, there is a movie being filmed in the courtyard of the titular building, starring Bijou the cat. This fluffy feline is primed to inherit the fortune of a popular designer, including his apartment, but soon enough Bijou is reported missing! This is when the LaRue detective agency, and our protagonist Elodie, are brought in to quietly investigate the mystery. With discreetness being the order of the day, Elodie has to think up new detective tactics, and call on her friends to help solve the case. 

This charming and lively story is brought to life by Colleen Nelson's prose, and illustrations from award-winning artist, Peggy Collins. 

Check out this special Kid's Club BFYP interview with the author, right here on Open Book!

Open Book:

Tell us about your new book and how it came to be.

Colleen Nelson:

The first Biltmore book was well received by the team at Pajama Press. Gail Winskill, the publisher, suggested it would make a good series which was wonderful news to me because I loved writing the characters. 

It wasn’t long after the first one was off to print that I began working on the second one. I had an idea for a missing pet and had recently watched a documentary on fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld. He had a cat named Choupette who had inherited a beautiful apartment in Paris and had a full-time nanny, as well as an agent. This pampered feline was the inspiration for the Bijou, the equally spoiled cat in the book, who gets catnapped. I got to play around with what it means to be a celebrity and that sometimes fame is more than you bargained for.

OB:

What defines a great book for young readers, in your opinion? Tell us about one or two books you consider to be truly great kids books, whether you read them as a child or an adult.

CN:

When the CCBC Book Awards were announced, I gathered the books nominated for the Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award and read them with my class. The kids picked their winner and it ended up being the same as what was announced at the awards. Jack Wong’s When You Can Swim is amazing. The illustrations and the text pair together so well. The grade 7/8’s read it through their ‘child eyes’ but also with the critical thinking of an older student. Because my book, The Umbrella House, was nominated for the TD Literature Prize, I was at the ceremony and reached out to Jack ahead of time. I asked if I brought the book, would he sign it for my classes. He agreed and I was the nerdy fan girl walking around with his book all night! LOL! It was worth it though, because the message he wrote to the kids made the book so special. I look forward to sharing it with other classes in years to come.

I also read Kristen Ciccarelli’s Crimson Moth book recently. Wow! I’ve loved her other books but this young adult novel was unputdownable. The cliffhanger ending has made waiting for the sequel difficult. I’m looking forward to M.L. Fergus’s new Fractured Kingdom series out this spring. The first title is Prophecy. It’s fun to bring series like these into my classroom because the students often get as hooked on them as I am.

OB:

How, if at all, does social media feature in your writing process?

CN:

There’s an account by Bev Rosenbaum Katz that I recommend to anyone who writes—whether they’ve been published or not. Bev is an author and an editor and she gives honest, relatable advice in her posts about the industry, and the art, of writing. A recent post about staying true to who you are when you write really stuck with me. Knowing who you are as a writer, and being okay with it, is part of finding the joy in the process of creation. If you’re feeling a little ‘bleh’ about how a manuscript is going, or underwhelmed with sales, I highly recommend checking out @bevrosenbaum on Instagram. I promise you’ll learn something, or look at writing with fresh eyes.

OB:

How do you cope with setbacks or tough points during the writing process? Do you have any strategies that are your go-to responses to difficult points in the process?

CN:

With this book, Emma Davis, my editor, did a great job seeing some plot holes that needed to be tightened up. I find it helpful to chat things through a little and hear Emma’s perspective about what’s not working. She will sometimes have a suggestion and other times will point me in a direction I hadn’t considered. With Mystery at the Biltmore: The Classified Catnapping, the ending completely changed after we talked. While I can look back now and see that the original ending had problems, it was hard to recognize it without someone else’s feedback. 

OB:

What's your favourite part of the life cycle of a book? The inspiration, writing the first draft, revision, the editorial relationship, promotion and discussing the book, or something else altogether? What's the toughest part?

CN:

With a series, getting to spend time with characters you’ve already created is a lot of fun. I learned this when I wrote the Harvey series which featured two kids who volunteered at a retirement home with their dog, Harvey. It was so easy to slip into their world and reconnect with them. Elodie, Oscar, and the other folks at The Biltmore are very real to me at this point. Plus, Peggy Collins, the illustrator, does a beautiful job of bringing them to life. She captures the character’s personalities so well.

OB:

What are you working on now?

CN:

I’ll be turning my attention to some edits on another middle grade book shortly and there’s a third Biltmore book in the works! These characters are so fun to write, plus I love being able to let my imagination run wild inventing new residents at the building.

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Colleen Nelson earned her Bachelor of Education from the University of Manitoba in her hometown of Winnipeg. Her previous novels include Blood Brothers, selected as the 2018 McNally Robinson Book of the Year for Young People, and Pulse Point, selected as one of the CBC’s Most Anticipated YA Books of 2018. Colleen writes daily in between appearances at hockey rinks and soccer fields in support of her two sports-loving sons.

Peggy Collins is an award-winning children’s book author-illustrator with more than 35 titles to her name, including Harley the Hero, A Sky-Blue Bench, Whistling for Angela, In the Snow, and In the Garden. She has also written and illustrated for animated apps teaching math, indigenous history, and education. Peggy lives in Newburgh, Ontario with her two children.