An Author's First: Joshua Hodge's Wild Christmas  

For the Foxborough Regional Chater School's The Xylem, October 6, 2006 by Jenna Storey 

Joshua Hodge wrapped a Christmas present of words and comical self-discovery by the fantastic book titled, Wild Christmas, debuting this holiday season. 

In his sophomore year a short story bowed itself into presence. It increasingly poured onto paper over the summer, and he realized it was taking the shape of a book. What began this printed flurry was none other than his constant passion for writing. 

He relentlessly turns knobs into the imaginary, spindling in the hours of night his most  precious plots and characters. He says he wrote stories “as soon as I picked up the  pen.” Then it became an unstoppable pursuit. In the second grade he was the little kid  reading one of his stories to public viewers on PBS’s WGBH  as the winner of the Young Writers and Illustrators Award Contest on the show Reading Rainbow. 

Crates of notebooks filled with stories reside in his bedroom, and he always has a fresh  hanging of sketches, portraits, and other eye-catching art in his room. Now, Josh’s talent has delved into the world of his school’s literary magazine, newspaper, and the Scholastic website. “I promised myself I’d write my own book before I finished high school,” he devoutly says. The book is about self-discovery amid pandemonium, rendering from a kinda fate-like  place in time. When the main character, Dan, is in the North Pole, Santa’s time machine is broken and he has to fix it. “They are where they are in their lives for a purpose,” Josh says, or believes (I can’t quite tell), when referring to his characters. 

Here’s a quote from the book cover, with permission: “There was no escape. He was trapped, just like he was when he was in detention. Life was an enormous prison for Dan. He always found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time. Never had he believed that he was in the right place in life.” 

Josh says that his inspiration was the spirit of Christmas when specials air on television, and the sweet smell of mulling spices fill houses. When writing the novel he had Christmas songs caroling in his head, he admits.The book is a festoon of characters put into a holiday special inspired by Christmas songs and his collection of short stories with the same characters. “I’m a little bit of all the characters in the book,” Josh adds. But there was more motive to the soul of Wild Christmas… 

It holds a message towards the adolescent audience: “Jealousy can ruin an individual,” Josh resolutely declares. He observes that the majority of the young adult books published aren’t from the current teenage perspective. Josh will continue to write and  entertain his own age group, imparting  “funny and enjoyable” reads.

Buy your copy here!