For the grand finale of Pop Up’s blog takeover, we are proud to present, not one but two brilliant creators… poet Jay Hulme and illustrator Sahar Haghgoo, the author and illustrator of Here Be Monsters. They are both enjoying a career first step: Here Be Monsters is Sahar’s publishing debut and Jay’s first illustrated book for children. Sahar is a participant in Pathways into Children’s Publishing, Pop Up’s mentoring and training programme in partnership with the House of Illustration (founded by Quentin Blake) and 12 global publishers, which supports artists from under-represented groups into careers in children’s books.

Jay asks Sahar

J: How did you decide on the dragon's shape?

S: I focused on its scale and grandeur, and also on its kindness. The image of the main character and the whole atmosphere of the story needed to reflect the epic nature of the text, so the dragon needed to take up a lot of space. I usually study a lot of pictures for character designs and I am particularly interested in Iranian miniatures.  

J: Do you have a favourite form of writing to illustrate? Poetry? Novels? Short stories? Picture books? Something else?

S: I’ve spent most time on picture books and short stories in my projects on the Pathways into Children’s Publishing programme, and I’m excited that my first published children’s book is a picture book – and also a poem.

J: What's your favourite colour?

S: My favourite colours are red and purple, and you’ll find them both in the underwater world of Here Be Monsters, but I am more interested in how colours work together.

J: What's your favourite illustration technique? (watercolour, digital, collage, etc).

S: I like collage very much, but most of the work I have done so far has been digital, which of course I drew with a pencil before.

J. How do you hope Here be Monsters will make a difference?

S. That people will realise that creatures who are different and might seem scary, because we don’t see all of them, are a beautiful addition to our world.

Sahar asks Jay

S: Will you write more stories with dragons as the main character?

J: Absolutely I will. I love dragons, they're my all-time favourite mythical creature. I've already got a number of poems and poem drafts with dragons in them, just lying around waiting to find a home!

S: What is your favourite colour?

J: I really like muted colours and earth tones: navy blue, burgundy, dark forest green, greys, browns, that kind of thing. I'm not a hugely colourful person to be honest, I think I'd have done well in the days before synthetic dyes gave us an inconceivable number of bright colours to work with.

S: Do you prefer to write for children or adults?

J: Writing for children and for adults is very different. The way you approach what you're sharing has to change to take that into account, but I always make my work very layered. Here Be Monsters is, on the surface, a simple story of about a creature who lives in the sea and then grows wings and lives in the air. But when you dive deeper, it  is an allegory for something else entirely. It’s about metamorphosis and about feeling that the way you have been living is not how you want to be for your whole life. The creature’s “songs of loss and fear and shame” are what is felt by people who are not able to live in their true identity.

I think writing for children is simultaneously easier and harder, because I can indulge myself and fill the story with dragons and joy and big sweeping ideas without having to reign in the hope for the cynicism and pain of an adult audience, but I'm also constantly aware of the fact that children's books shape children. The books you read as a child help to guide what kind of adult you will become, and what ideas you carry with you into adulthood. Children's books are part of the foundation of a person, and that's an enormous responsibility that I take very seriously. So there's a fair bit of pressure there. 

S: Here Be Monsters is a parable about the transgender experience. How do you hope your book will help make a difference to the way children think about or react to the experience you have been through?

J. I think the power of a parable, an allegory, is that it creates in its subject matter a wider applicability - yes, this story is about being trans, and the details all line up for that experience, but because it's told through the medium of a dragon, lots of children will be able to relate it to their own lives and struggles, and this will lead to increased empathy. When a trans child reads it, they will hopefully feel seen and validated, and when a cis child reads it, they will hopefully feel a connection to that character and experience too, a connection that will enable them to see their trans peers in a positive light.

We would like to offer enormous thanks to Pop Up for the innovative 10 Stories to Make a Difference project, to Jay and Sahar for an amazing joint interview - the perfect way to round off the week's celebrations! - and to Nicky Potter for her unparallleled support in bring this takeover to fruition!