Veteran novelist, TV host, and comic book writer Brad Meltzer‘s Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum, which debuted earlier this year on PBS, has already managed enough of a following to get a full-length movie greenlit. In it, Xavier’s sister Yadina Riddle says that she wants to be President when she grows up. When it turns out that no woman has done so, Yadina (along with Xavier and the gang) goes on a journey into the past to meet some of the great female trailblazers in history. Among them? Olympic legend Jackie Joyner-Kersee, who actually voiced herself in the project.
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Meltzer, who has worked with some of the subjects of his “Ordinary People Can Change the World” biographies — little hardcovers aimed at a young audience and illustrated by veteran cartoonist and comic book letterer Chris Eliopoulos — was nevertheless a little starstruck by the extent to which Kersee volunteered to be involved. During a recent interview, Meltzer told ComicBook.com about the process.
“It’s one thing to have Jane Goodall help us correct things. I spent two hours on the phone with Billy Jean King as she worked with us on the books. But Jackie Joyner-Kersee is, standing with me and we’re watching her cartoon version of herself move around and that just the new layer of the Wonderland,” Meltzer told ComicBook.com. “The funny thing is that she kept thanking us and I was like, you’re getting it all wrong. We are simply here to thank you.”
Meltzer also said that, while he is working on a new book for adults and two “Ordinary People” biographies, it’s nice to have the resources of a TV show behind him.
” I usually approach them. I’ll use… We found Jane Goodall, I found Billy Jean King. We speak to their people, and then they get involved because they see what we’re doing,” Meltzer explained. “This was the advantage of when we do Xavier Riddle. There’s an entire staff of amazing people who make this thing happen. This is not Chris Eliopoulos and I just trying to do some magic on the page. This is an entire staff of people in Canada, in the United States, at PBS, at 9 Story. So they reached out to her. We had identified her, and knew we wanted to do the story on her.”
Of course, Meltzer was just watching one of his icons get the same treatment that he gets on a weekly basis; among Xavier’s group of friends is the scaredy-cat Brad, loosely based in personality and appearance on a younger version of Meltzer. He said that being turned into a cartoon has been a big change at his book signings, where audiences of families have long come out together (he writes nonfiction and fiction, as well as the kids’ books and comics, so there’s a little of everything on the table).
“The funniest thing is that I’ve been on television for years on the History Channel, but kids don’t watch the History Channel. They don’t care,” Meltzer said. “So anyone who came with their kids, they weren’t impressed when they would come up in line. They would just be like, he’s the writer of I Am Abraham Lincoln. And the kid would be like, ‘I don’t care. Where’s the guy who can draw?’ That’s what impressed. But the fact that Chris Eliopoulos turned me into a cartoon, and now I’m a cartoon character, I finally have my kid street cred. Kids are like, ‘Wait a minute, you look like that guy that I watch on that show, you don’t have as much hair, but really awfully close to that.’ And then when they find out my name is Brad, they’re like, wait. And then they start asking me questions as if I live on the show. So they’re like. ‘When was the last time you spoke to Berby? When was the last time you went back in time?’ And I’m just like, ‘Yesterday.’ I tell them the truth. I’m like, ‘I was with Amelia Earhart yesterday and tomorrow I’m going to go see Rosa Parks. It’s going to be spectacular.’”
Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum airs on PBS. Check your local affiliates for times and channels. The Xavier Riddle and the Secret Museum movie, starring Jackie Joyner Kersee, streams on PBSKids.org.
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