Karina Glaser: Hi, this is Karina Yen Glaser, and I am the author of the Vanderbeekers of 141st Street. I'm going to tell you a bit about how I came to write this book, and then I'll share an excerpt with you.

I started writing this story four years ago. I was walking down a street in Harlem, which is the neighborhood where I live in New York City. And my mind was wandering as it often does, and somehow I ended up thinking about how rare it was to see large families in New York City.

I thought about the books I loved when I was young, books like All in a Kind Family, by Sydney Taylor, and The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright, which all feature families with lots of kids living in New York City.

I couldn't stop thinking about what a contemporary version of these classic children's books would look like. Around this time, I'd also started thinking about participating in National Novel Writing Month, it's also known as NaNoWriMo, which is an annual one -month challenge where people try to complete 50,000 words of a novel.

My husband thought I was totally nuts to do it, but a few days before the challenge started, I woke up in the middle of the night, with the first line I would write for this book, which I scribbled on a notebook in the middle of the night in the dark.

And a lot of people have asked me what that line was, so I will share it with you.

Among the many people who had visited the Vanderbeekers' home, there was quite a bit of debate about what it was like, but general agreement about what it was not: calm, tidy, boring, predictable.

So that was the line that I kept close to me as I wrote about this family, and I must say that I had so much writing about the five Vanderbeeker children, and all their quirks and funny antics and adventures.

And now I will read an excerpt to you. This is from the very beginning of the book.

Chapter one.

In the middle of a quiet block on 141st Street, inside a brownstone made of deep red shale, the Vanderbeeker family gathered in the living room for a family meeting. Their pets, a dog named Franz, a cat named George Washington, and a house rabbit named Paganini, sprawled on the carpet, taking afternoon naps in a strip of sunlight.

The pipes rumbled companionably within the brownstone walls.

"Do you want the good news, or the bad news first?"

The five Vanderbeeker kids looked at their parents.

"Good news," said Isa and Laney.

"Bad news," said Jesse, Oliver, and Hyacinth.

"Right-o," said Papa. "Good news first."

He paused, and adjusted his glasses. "You kids all know how much Mama and I love you, right?"