Octavia Spencer Explains Why She Began Writing Mystery Novels for Children

ABC/MICHAEL DESMOND(NEW YORK) — Octavia Spencer is out with her second children’s book in the Randi Rhodes Ninja Detective series, The Sweetest Heist in History. The Oscar winner tells ABC Radio she decided to write a mystery series because she fell in love with the book genre at a very young age.

“When I was growing up, actually about six, I realized that…I wasn’t the best reader and didn’t understand why things seemed more fragmented, or sentences didn’t make sense,” she says. “And then I had a teacher who told my mom that maybe mysteries were the best way to keep me engaged. It just opened up a whole new world for me.”

So Spencer decided to write her own mystery novels for children. The Randi Rhodes Ninja Detective series centers on ninja detective Randi Rhodes and her fellow ninja detectives, DC and Pudge. In the second book in the series, the detectives trek to New York City to visit Randi’s aunt.

The Insurgent star adds of the second book, “One of the things that I’m obsessed with in my regular life…is Faberge Eggs. My dream would be to come across one. And I decided that the next mystery needed to involve Faberge Eggs.”

“Randi is in Brooklyn and there are six Faberge Eggs that go missing, and she and her counterparts have to solve that mystery,” she adds.

The Oscar winner said one character in her book has a disability, much like Spencer, who is dyslexic. Spencer tells ABC Radio why she finally decided to go public with the reading disorder.

“It was never my intention to be open about it,” she admits. “But…because there was certain things that I won’t do when I was auditioning. It’s like, ‘Look, if they want me to do new material, they can’t just give it to me in the room. I have to have had the material for a while. I don’t do cold readings.’ And you know there were a lot of things that I don’t do. And [my agent] was like, ‘You know? I think this is that time that you get to share that to let kids know that this is something that you have and you were able to overcome those obstacles.'”

Although Spencer plans to pen a third book in the mystery series, she has no plans to write for adults. “No, no! Let me tell you! This is hard enough,” she says, laughing. “I like the lighter fare. I enjoy reading darker fare and books for adults, but this is very nostalgic for me and it also helps to ground me in a way with my work.”

The Sweetest Heist in History is in bookstores now.


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