Author Jane O'Connor

Jim O'Connor

In her "Fancy Nancy" books, Jane O'Connor created a world she was very familiar with as a little girl. The idea for the adventure stories came from the special time each week when O'Connor's grandmother and great aunts would come to visit.

"The minute I would hear the doorbell ring, I'd run in my room, throw on my tutu, wrap this red cape I had and I'd come galumphing out in my mother's high heels and I felt that I was ready to greet my guests — that I was appropriately elegant for them," O'Connor tells Renee Montagne.

Fancy Nancy: Bonjour, Butterfly is the new book in the series. O'Connor explains just what being "fancy" means to Nancy.

"In her world, it means putting frilly toothpicks into sandwiches," the author says. "It means adding lace trim to your soccer socks. She turns her own plain bed into a canopy bed by rigging up a sheet with a broom and a mop. So it's all homemade do-it-yourself fancy."