Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom

This post is sponsored by Claudia Mills. The review and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal views.

About The Book

Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom

Written by Claudia Mills

Ages: 9+ | 272 Pages

Publisher: Holiday House (2026) | ISBN-13: 978-0-8234-6050-2

Publisher’s Book Summary: “Difficult” student Callie joins a philosophy club seeking the wisdom she needs to keep her beloved but equally difficult dog in this hilarious, heartfelt middle-grade novel for underdogs and dog-lovers alike!

Once Callie (Calliope Callisto Clark) starts saying something, it’s hard for her to stop. The opinion gets bigger and bigger, her voice gets louder and louder—and she gets in more and more trouble. She’s in trouble with her teacher, who likes order and not Callie. She’s in bigger trouble with her Grampy, who blames Callie and her dog (a.k.a. Best Ever Friend) Archie for his ever-rising blood pressure. Then there’s the biggest trouble of all… just one more strike, and Callie could lose her beloved Archie forever.

When she turns to Greek philosophy for answers on how to solve her problems, she only gets more questions: What is justice? What is fairness? And as her problems get bigger, so do her questions: Is it Callie’s fault when Grampy has a stroke?

Told in Callie’s endearing, energetic voice, Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom is sure to speak to any student who’s ever been called “disruptive.” Acclaimed children’s book author and retired philosophy professor Claudia Mills delivers a heartfelt middle-grade novel for misunderstood readers who feel like they’re living their own Greek tragedies.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Claudia Mills has written over sixty books for children, including The Lost Language, an NCTE Notable Verse Novel, a Charlotte Huck Recommended Book, A Mighty Girl Best Book of the Year, and A Bulletin for the Center of Children’s Books Blue Ribbon Book. Her most recent book, The Last Apple Tree, received a starred review in Kirkus Reviews. She is a recipient of the Kerlan Award for her contribution to children’s literature. She was a professor of philosophy for more than two decades at the University of Colorado. She lives in Boulder, Colorado.

Visit her at claudiamillsauthor.com.

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Guest Post

What a Philosophy Professor Learned About Wisdom from Writing 64 Children’s Books

For decades I was a philosophy professor at the University of Colorado, specializing in ethics. At the same time, I also wrote dozens of books for young readers, from picture books through middle-grade novels. 

Often people expressed surprise at this combination of careers. A philosopher writing children’s books? But to me nothing could have felt more natural. I think of philosophers as the ones who continue to ask the questions the other grownups have stopped asking – the same kind of questions with which children pester the adults in their lives. That endless parade of “Why?” questions, where each so-called answer only provokes another “Why?” And the questions that probe concepts most of us take for granted. Yes, we all want to “pursue happiness”; we want to live in a world with “liberty and justice” for all. But what exactly IS happiness? And liberty and justice – what do we MEAN when we toss those words around? 

The word “philosophy” itself means “love of wisdom.” But I couldn’t truthfully say that philosophers – or certainly philosophy professors! – are on average wiser than anybody else. One only has to work in an academic philosophy department and attend some very frustrating department meetings to lose confidence in that claim! The more I studied philosophy, the less confident I became in my own opinions about anything. After all, Socrates’s only claim to be the wisest of all men was that he alone knew that he knew nothing.

In my new middle-grade novel, Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom, 11-year-old Callie is desperate to get some wisdom and get it fast. Orphaned at a young age, emotionally intense with passionate opinions about everything, she lives with her elderly grandparents who are at a loss for how best to handle her. Maybe a pet dog would be a calming influence, but border-collie mix Archie proves to be as “difficult” as Callie herself. When Granny trips over Archie while hurrying to pick up yet another phone call home from Callie’s teacher, and breaks her wrist, they decide Archie has to be rehomed. Moved by Callie’s heartbroken tears, they relent. Archie can stay – but Callie has to start doing better. So, when she learns at school that ancient Greek philosophy contains “the wisdom of the ages,” she is wild to get a big dose of that wisdom herself.

Like me, Callie is going to learn that philosophy offers more questions than answers – and that its answers don’t really give much help in her (doomed) quest to be a completely new and perfect person. But she does thrill to the questions.

As a children’s book writer, I think I grew most in wisdom not from wrestling with philosophical texts but by writing the books themselves. When I have some problem I’m pondering in my own life, I sometimes give it to my child characters and let them lead me to an insight I might not have come up with on my own. Now, of course, I can’t help but notice I’m the one who created each character and wrote down all their thoughts and feelings! But as I fully inhabit them while I have the pen in my hand, I discover things within myself I didn’t know were there – or understand and accept more deeply truths to which I only gave lip service before.

In Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom, the middle-school philosophy club Callie helps to create exposes Callie and the club’s other two members to a bit of the thought of Socrates and Plato. But it’s when she encounters the great Stoic Epictetus that she stumbles on the truth she needs most. Epictetus’s fundamental principle is that there are only two kinds of things in the world: things that are “up to us” or in our control, and things that are “not up to us” and so outside our control. The main thing NOT up to us? Other people! There is NOTHING we can do to change other people! The only thing that is up to us? You guessed it: ourselves. 

Now, I knew this. After all, I used to teach Epictetus every semester in my Intro to Ethics course. But I felt it in a new way when it strikes Callie with such powerful force toward the end of the book, as she is blaming herself for so many things: her grandmother’s broken wrist, her grandfather’s elevated blood pressure which may have caused his stroke. “Yes, Callie!” I wanted to cheer, when she finally “gets” this. “Did Epictetus know how much better his words could make an eleven-year-old girl feel about her life two thousand years later?” That felt like the moment when I final “got” this, too.

I’ve wised up along with my characters in other books, as well. In Write This Down, I gave my seventh-grade character, aspiring author Autumn Granger, the moral dilemma every author faces who draws in any way on her own life for material (i.e., most of us!). Is it wrong to write (and publish) something based on our lives – which include the loved ones who are an inescapable part of those lives – when this might be painful for them to read, or have other people read? In my

generally lighthearted chapter book Cody Harmon, King of Pets, I gave third-grader Cody the moral dilemma of whether to call out a close friend who has acted badly (here, throwing a stone at a squirrel with a missing tail). In The Last Apple Tree, I let my characters experience the painful, lingering effects of long-kept family secrets – and then resolved to be more open with my grown sons about my own past. 

Finally, the vicissitudes of being a children’s author – or any kind of author – has taught me more than I ever wanted to know about how to ride out the ups and downs that come with this challenging profession. The rounds of rejections followed by the thrill of an acceptance, the hope that each book will be “the one” – the agonizing wait for reviews – the giddy joy when a starred review comes – the crushing disappointment when a reviewer does NOT fall in love with the characters so dear to my own heart – I could go on and on! This rollercoaster of emotions drives me back to the words of Epictetus, who scoffs at allowing ourselves to care so much about something so little “up to us.” Yes, we can try to write the best books we can, but whatever happens after that, how they are received by the world, is simply out of our control.

Callie had to learn this. I need to keep on learning this. And Callie’s struggle helped me! Now, as I await the world’s reception of this book, her book, our book, I’m holding this realization close, though probably not close enough. In the books I write, the character has an epiphany moment and gets some bit of wisdom to help her move forward toward maturity, a treasure to cherish for the rest of her days. In real life, outside the pages of books, alas, we have to learn the same thing over and over again. And part of wisdom is just . . . accepting this.

Discussion Guide PFD

Giveaway

Enter for the chance to win one of 10 signed hardcover copies of Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom. One grand-prize winner will receive two additional signed books by Claudia Mills, plus an unforgettable one-hour Zoom visit with the author!

Calliope Callisto Clark and the Search for Wisdom: Book Giveaway

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