Paris, City of Dreams, by Sasha Watson:

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Last week, I visited a college French class as a guest speaker. In French, I told the class about Vidalia in Paris, and, in French, they asked questions. Many of them were writers themselves, and they asked about writing and publication, but mostly they wanted to know about my connection to France. What had taken me there, and why had I chosen to write about it?

When I was four years old, my mother and I moved to Paris. She studied French at the Sorbonne and I went to school at the American Church with other expatriate children. The memories of that year have stayed with me. Holding a hot baguette as my mother led me through the streets, riding the carousel at the Jardins Luxembourg, sitting by the Seine, all if it was etched sharply into my memory.

As the years went by, Paris became more than a memory for me; it became the home of all my fantasies. Unhappy in middle school, I dreamt of going back there, living a life of romance and adventure. Paris became the place where my ideal self – sophisticated and glamorous, confident and free – awaited me. That self was, of course, the opposite of the real me at that time, a shy girl with her nose in a book.

By the time I returned to live in Paris, first in college and then after, I no longer needed to escape my real self and my real life. I still loved the city, though, and loved living there, enjoying its rich history, its art, those baguettes.

When I started writing my first novel, I started with Paris. The bright, strange images of the place that had stayed with me from childhood; the fantasy of a bigger, better life than the one I lived; and the real Paris, the one I lived in as an adult, all went into Vidalia’s story.

“What does Paris mean to you?” asked the college students last week, and “Why do you write about teenagers?”

As I see it, the eternal question of travel is the same as the question at the heart of adolescence: “Who am I?” (Or “Qui suis-je?” as I said to the French students). Who am I in relation to this new world, ask the traveler and the teenager. How am I different from these people around me? How am I the same?

There’s a kind of perfect justice, then, to the meeting of young adult fiction and travel. For Vidalia, as for me, Paris is a place to wonder who she is and to fantasize about who she might become. It’s a city of dreams and it’s a real city, too. It’s where she comes to realize that her identity hinges not on glamour and sophistication but on what’s inside of her. In the end, Paris might not be the answer, for Vidalia or for me, but it’s a great place to ask the questions.

Sasha Watson

Vidalia in Paris

Young Readers,

Viking Children's Books

Penguin Books