We chat with author Kaela Rivera about The Hungry Forest, which is a spooky horror for fans of Small Spaces where a boy must face his feelings and save his younger brother from a cursed forest.
Hi, Kaela! Welcome back! When did you first discover your love for writing and stories?
When I was around 5–7, I struggled with reading and writing, so I didn’t really discovery my love until after my mom sat me down and told me she “wanted me to learn that I can do hard things.” She worked with me to write every day until, over time, it stopped feeling so hard and started to feel like a great way of capturing my imagination to build on later. I had a bunch of stories in my head even as a little one, so discovering I could contain those stories and share them even when I wasn’t around? Absolutely awesome!
The same happened with reading. I remember dragging myself through the first Harry Potter book, but by the time I was reading the second one, I could actually get lost in the story instead of stess about the words, and it fed into that love of stories, of possibilities beyond day to day life, and I realized I wanted to capture the stories in my head the way the fantasy books I was reading were able to.
And thus, a love for writing and stories collided into the same formation: a wannabe author by the age of ten!
Quick lightning round! Tell us:
- The first book you ever remember reading: Tigers from Houghton Mifflin! It’s an early readers book that I had to look up to properly remembered, because all I could recall was was three kids hanging out with a tiger. But at least my deep love of predator animals in books makes sense now haha.
- The one that made you want to become an author: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, and I Am the Messenger. These came at two different parts of my life, but they were both key to me both wanting to be and becoming an author.
- The one that you can’t stop thinking about: The Last Cuentista. I can be scrolling through the grocery aisles and still think about the themes and marvelous, deep, sensory experience of that book.
Your latest novel, The Hungry Forest, is out now! If you could only describe it in five words, what would they be?
Grieving brothers. Masks, horror, hope.
What can readers expect?
Think Alice in Wonderland, but trade the whimsical creatures Alice meets for monsters testing the depths of the main character’s souls. Ryan and Teddy both seem to have plenty on their hands after their father dies, but it’s nothing compared to the trials awaiting them once they go inside the local haunted forest, following the voice of their deceased father. They’ll face masked monsters all testing them from every side, an evil sleeping deep beneath the forest that seeks to trap them there for eternity, and perhaps most frightening of all—the dark places inside themselves. If they can find a way to turn their hearts back to each other and work together, they may just find a way to survive.
Where did the inspiration for The Hungry Forest come from?
Like all my favorite stories, The Hungry Forest is a constellation of a bunch of things I love or am passionate about connecting into a story of its own. This book is defined by my love for my nepheuws, the troubles they’ve faced, our shared love of indie horror video games like Little Nightmares and Five Nights and Freddy’s, and my love of masks and how they’re made and designed.
I’d dare any indie horror fan to go through the monsters in the book and see if you can find the mascots behind many of them.
Were there any moments or characters you really enjoyed writing or exploring?
Oh, how I adored writing Perdida. She’s the one monster in the book who acts more human than the main characters at times. Even when her memory is riddled with holes, she’s got a heart of gold that starts to rub off on the boys who need her to survive—both physically and emotionally.
Did you face any challenges whilst writing? How did you overcome them?
Well I set up most of my big challenge with this book early: I wrote The Hungry Forest in six days. It was a mad dash of inspiration and excitement, and I didn’t want to let it go even to eat, sleep, or relax. It was such a high-octane adventure, and I rode the rollercoaster the whole way!
The downside of that fun ride was the challenge of revisions. It was written so quickly, but it took several months of cleaning it up and honing in on what throughlines mattered most to allow it to be the clean, tight adventure I wanted readers to have.
Do you have a pitch for parents, loved ones, or educators to pick up a copy of The Hungry Forest for young readers?
This book is aimed for reluctant readers, so it has everything they want:
- Fearful, thrilling adventure to get the blood pumping
- Horror that entices and transfixes, but doesn’t traumatize
- Short, page-turning chapters to build reading confidence
- Illustrations to reward the reader for each chapter checked off (I did them myself!)
- Strange, interesting beastiary of monsters to obsess over
And it’s written by someone with the tender heart of an educator, so it also has everything parents want:
- Social emotional learning that guides the exploration and regulation of difficult feelings like shame
- Gentle discussions of immigration, positive and toxic masculinity, and grief that scaffold conversations between trusted adults and children
- Appropriate horror that excites but never traumatizes (this ones’s for kids and adults both haha)
- Short book that can be read together, or read alone by the child, and build reading confidence
What’s next for you?
I have a new horror darling already in the oven: THE DESPERATE DARK will come out in 2027, and if you like THE HUNGRY FOREST, I think you’ll love this in-universe companion book. But no worries—it’s a fully standalone novel, so you won’t need to have read The Hungry Forest or reread anything to get the thrill of this new protagonist on a mission to escape an evil being’s generations-old grudge against ther family.
Subscribe to my newsletter to keep getting updates about it! The cover may even be coming soon . . .
Lastly, what books are you looking forward to picking up? Any you’ve read so far this year that you’ve enjoyed?
I really want to read Little Monsters by Máire Roche and Griffin Speaker by Jan M. Flynn. They both sound so good, hitting that perfect sweet spot middle-grade books can hit where they explore difficult subjects with hope, excitement, adventure, and life-affirmimg power.
So far this year, a standout book to me was Silk and Sensibility by Mengxi Seeley. A Jane Austen retelling set in historical China? Uh, yes please! As soon as this one’s available to the general public, y’all, grab it and drink it up!
