Joelle Charbonneau, a New York Times® Bestselling author, is most well-known for her book “The Testing”, along with “Independent Study” and “Graduation Day”. These three books make up one of the most famous young adult fiction series across the nation. “The Testing” was part of the 2014 Texas Lone Star List, which is an annually-released list of 20 books chosen by librarians and teachers across the state. A small group of mustangs got the chance to meet this amazing author in the Lecture Hall and attend her presentation on Thursday, October 1. 

“The Testing” is a dystopian novel set in a futuristic world in which a war called the Seven Stages War left the entire planet a charred and burnt wasteland. “The future belongs to the next generation’s chosen few who must rebuild it. But to enter this elite group, candidates must first pass The Testing—their one chance at a college education and a rewarding career.” (Blurb taken from Goodreads). The Testing is a challenging and invigorating course of tests that are taken by the candidates of the elite group in order to determine who will get to go to college. The tests will be taken away from home, but none of the candidates realize how hard the tests will be. Those who don’t pass will die, and in the end only a few remain. Cia Vale is proud and honored to be chosen as a Testing candidate, but on the eve of her departure for the tests, her father, who was a previous Testing candidate (and passed), hinted that the Testing was more than it seemed.

After the bell rang for third period, an excited group of students gather in a large throng outside of the lecture hall doors. Mrs. Stiles and Mrs. Maddox have the students sign in and find a seat quietly in the Lecture Hall. A young woman with bright eyes, a smiling face, and wavy red hair stands in the front of the Lecture Hall. She is the much-anticipated Joelle Charbonneau. Charbonneau starts off her presentation with a little bit of history and background on who she was before she started writing. Charbonneau took theatre arts and music. She was used to singing and dancing on stage, and she has an undergraduate degree in music and theatre and a master’s degree in opera performance. It wasn’t until she was almost 30 that she had an idea for a book and decided to sit down and try to write. “I had no interest in writing. It just wasn’t my thing,” said Charbonneau. “I never had a creative writing class.” Charbonneau moves on to talk about her career in theatre, opera, and performing arts. She especially remembers the many times that she had been rejected after an audition. “You just keep going to auditions and hoping…” said Charbonneau. “You’re always looking for your next show.”

Then there was one time where she got rejected from an audition and she was furious. She was in her car, driving, when she thought of an idea for the start of a book, about a character who had gotten rejected too. “That idea wouldn’t let go.” said Charbonneau. The feelings inside of her gradually started to change into a creative writing thought process, when “I thought– what does it take to put that many words together and it all makes sense?” She pauses, and then says, “I wanted to know if I could write a book.” That was the beginning of her writing career.

It wasn’t really a career, more like a test to see if she could actually write an entire book. “It was boring, it was long, and I was proud of it,” she says with laughter in her voice. “It was a bad book, but it was my bad book.” Afterwards, Charbonneau had another idea for a different book. She thought about how hard it was to get into some of the plays that she had auditioned for, and related it to how hard some colleges were to get accepted into. She thought about how it would be even harder to get accepted into a college if there was only one college. “There’s a lot of colleges out there, so what do you do? You blow up the world!” she said. This caused much laughter among the students. “Authors make the best terrorists,” said Charbonneau, “so I blew up the world, which was so fun.” After this, she started to build her plot off of this ruined world with only one college, which is where “The Testing” started.

“I had a lot of fun writing those books…when I finished it, I started to think maybe I should try to get it published,” Charbonneau said. “Not because I actually wanted to actually be an author as a career, but I wanted to know if I’d gotten better.” She starts to relate how her process of trying to get her first book published was a lot like her acting career. “Trying to get published is a lot like auditioning,” Charbonneau said. “You send the book out, and you get REJECTED!” Luckily, Charbonneau finally found a writing agent who thought the book had value, and within 3 weeks, “The Testing” had a publishing contract. “The Testing” was finally published on June 4, 2013, and on June 5, Paramount Pictures© acquired movie rights for “The Testing”.

Many of the mustangs that attended really enjoyed Charbonneau’s presentation. “She is very relaxed and easy-going,” said Mrs. Stiles, Canyon Vista librarian. Mrs. Stiles and Mrs. Maddox organized the event, and Mrs. Stiles also hosted a group breakfast with Charbonneau earlier that day. “She seems more connected with her audience than most authors,” said 8th grader Atithi Shrestha, who attended the group breakfast with Charbonneau. “She told us to just write about anything, and just make stuff up as we go along, and [to] just use ‘what if’s.” said eighth grader Kate Jernigan. “[She] was a very comedic author, and knows how to connect with her audience. I thought she would be serious, because most authors are, but she was really funny, and I was entertained.”

“The Testing”. “Independent Study”. “Graduation Day”.

Three books.

One amazing trilogy.

One New York Times® Bestselling author.

Adventure for a lifetime.