Douglas Gibson

About

Douglas Gibson was born in Greensboro, North Carolina, and attended Davidson College and the University of North Carolina. He and his wife, Stacey, and son, Griffin, live in lovely Asheville, North Carolina, along with a small dog named Spencer and a medium chicken named Juliet. When he isn’t writing about books or designing them for other people, Douglas is usually hard at work writing books of his own.

Top Ten Interesting Facts About Douglas Gibson and Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight:

  1. I wrote Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight as a birthday present for my wife, Stacey. I was a week late finishing, but she forgave me!
  2. I was partially inspired to write about knights because my son, Griffin, and I occasionally join in the epic boffer sword battles that are a weekly feature in Asheville.
  3. Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight is my first book.
  4. Just like Max, I had a large collection of sticks that doubled as swords when I was younger. I still sometimes pick up sticks that look like swords.
  5. I based Acro on the Flying Fox family of bats. I’ve never met a flying fox, but there’s no doubt that flying foxes are both the largest and the handsomest type of bat there is.
  6. The characters of Isaac, Emma, and Max are based on Griffin and his friends, though I combined attributes of several kids in each character. I’m glad (or maybe sorry) to say I’ve never met a first grader quite like Lily.
  7. This is pure coincidence, but the picture of Isaac on the front cover somewhat resembles my son, Griffin. Learn more about Jez Tuya, the illustrator, and check out a totally awesome book he illustrated here. (Warning: you will want this book.)
  8. Capstone put out a British edition (Isaac Thomson and the Knights of Castle School) at the same time as the American one (Tales of a Fifth-Grade Knight). In the British edition, Isaac has a last name (“Thompson,” named in part for the British songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson) and lives in “Butford” (this is a play on “Butleigh,” the town in England where one of Griffin’s best friends lives), Castle School was brought over from Germany (instead of England), and the toilets in the third-floor boy’s bathroom play “Rule Britannia” instead of “Yankee Doodle.”
  9. My favorite books when I was Isaac’s age were: John Fitzgerald’s Great Brain books, The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key, The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konigsburg, Harriet the Spy by Louise Fitzhugh, The Dark Is Rising by Susan Cooper, Then Again, Maybe I Won’t by Judy Blume, and C.S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia. I still own most of my first copies of these books, including a Great Brain book that I checked out of my school library, thought I lost, and then found buried in a drawer in my room a couple of years later.
  10. My favorite books for middle-grade readers these days include John Flanagan’s Ranger’s Apprentice series, Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events, Eoin Colfer’s Artemis Fowl books, and The Spiderwick Chronicles by Tony Di Terlizzi and Holly Black. I also like a lot of graphic novels, including Kazu Kibuishi’s Amulet series, Jeff Smith’s Bone books, and everything I’ve read so far by Doug Ten Napel, Raina Telgemier, and Kean Soo.