Chair of the Carnegie and Kate Greenaway working party and Youth Libraries Group blog editor Jake Hope shares his first experiences attending National Conference...
My first job in libraries involved working on the Lancashire Book of the Year award. It was an amazing experience and a chance to really excite and engage young people in books and reading, showcasing that both can be vibrant, creative and social! It did feel isolating, however, as much as I'd hoped to share experiences and enthusiasm with colleagues, with the exception of my line-manager, there were rarely opportunities for that.
Joining YLG was the most incredible tonic, at last, I felt like I'd found 'my people'and 'my spiritual home'! The group was so friendly and welcoming and my first conference was brilliant - I well remember having breakfast with Wendy Cooling and talking with her about BookStart, being invited to join the Random House crew on their table for evening meals and hearing about their forthcoming titles,hearing then Children's Laureate - Jacqueline Wilson - talking about the plans she had for her tenure and talking with Janetta Otter-Barry (then of Frances Lincoln) and Nicky Potter around representation in children's books.
I came away buzzing with ideas and with bags chock-full of books, posters, resources and more and having made new friends - and indeed future colleagues! These are not easy times for librarians working with children and young people and this year has been particularly challenging. Connections and community become ever more important against this context and that is one of the deeply special things about conference, it's a chance to network and to connect not only with other professionals, but also with ideas and creative ways of working.
Our conference this year is called In the Frame: Putting Readers in the Picture and it is scheduled to take place at the impressive Imperial Hotel in Torquay from November 20 to 22. There will be an astonishing range of authors, illustrators and experts attending. Over the coming weeks we will be teasing more content. For further information about the conference, including its programme, visit here
We hope we can welcome you to what promises to be an incredibly special and memorable weekend.
Special thanks to sponsors Nosy Crow and the National Trust and to illustrator Britta Teckentrup for the conference cover.
We are delighted to welcome Darren Shan to the YLG blog to discuss his new series featuring Archibold Lox. It is fascinating to hear about the influences Darren has had. Big thanks to Catherine Ward for making this possible.
Where did the story idea for this new series come from?
I was walking across a bridge in London when I saw a young woman walking towards me, twitching her nose and pulling strange faces. I couldn’t understand why she was doing that, and it set my brain whirring. I thought, “What if she’s from another universe, and those grimaces are a key to open the door between our universe and hers?” The idea intrigued me, and I decided to follow her through that doorway to explore whatever lay on the far side.
Did the plot and characters come to you fully formed or take some time to develop?
Some of the main ideas came to me quickly — the story would be told from the point of view of a boy who sees the girl pulling faces, he finds out he’s a locksmith with special powers, and crosses after her. And some of the central concepts of that other universe fell into place neatly and swiftly. But I spent a lot of time asking questions and scribbling down ideas before I felt ready to write, and even when I did sit down to begin, there was a lot I didn’t know — the answers came as I teased them out through the writing process.
Would you consider this series your biggest feat of worldbuilding so far?
Well, it’s certainly been the hardest! My other long series were all primarily set on Earth, but the vast majority of the action in the Archibald Lox series takes place in the Merge. With my other series, I could introduce a little bit of strangeness to our world, then get the action going almost immediately, without having to worry about the background setting from that point on. In this one, the Merge is almost another character, and I had to explain lots of different things about it, so that readers could understand what it is and how it functions. The trick was in finding the right balance between the explanations and the action. Worldbuilding by itself can be quite boring — if you explain too much about a world, your reader’s eyes will quickly start to glaze over. I ended up writing far more than I needed in my first draft, then spent about a dozen edits whittling it down, getting rid of tens of thousands of words, so that the story could flow, while hopefully still making sense!
Was the writing of this series a conscious effort to step away from the horror stories for which you, the Master of Horror, are well known?
I didn’t decide to deliberately not write about horror. I just knew from early on that the story didn’t want to be as dark as most of my other work. I’ve gone a long way down the horror path, especially with The Demonata and Zom-B, so it’s been nice to pull back from that for a while and work on something different, but I’d have no qualms about returning to the genre tomorrow if the right idea came along and grabbed me. When it comes to writing, I never impose myself on my stories. I just follow where they lead.
Can you share with us some of the other writers who have influenced your writing journey and/or this new series?
Lots of different authors and books influenced this series. One of the big ones was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I’m actually not a huge fan of the Narnia books, but the beginning of Lion is truly magical, and is mirrored in the first chapter of Archibald Lox and the Bridge Between Worlds. I haven’t read a lot of Diana Wynne Jones’ books – I’m slowly working my way through them – but the few I’ve read so far have had a big impact me on, and I knew I wanted this, like hers, to be a book of gentle, subtle surprises, rather than sharp, sudden shocks. I loved Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Trilogy, and the scale of those books spurred me on to make the universe of the Merge as expansive as possible. There are shades of Neil Gaiman’s work in there… sprinklings of Harry Potter… elements gleaned from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series… Those are some of the conscious influences — there are probably loads more that I’m not even aware of!
Do you feel more at home writing longer series than standalone novels, or does it just depend how the story unfolds in your head?
It’s all down to the story. I never put a limit on the stories that I tell, or tailor them to fit the demands of the market or the expectations of my fans. If I can tell a story in a single book, well and good. If it demands three or four books, I go with it. If it requires ten or twelve, then I take a deep breath, knuckle down and push it on in the direction it wishes to go.
Why did you decide to release the first volume of Archibald Lox earlier than planned?
I was working on my final edit of the first three books, and was planning to release them later in the year, but when the lockdown started, I felt like it was the right time to put them out there, at least in ebook form, as it would give people something that might distract them from the scariness of the world for a while. I think it’s a good time for positive distractions.
Did you write the books in sequence from draft to final manuscript each time, or do you juggle working on several books in the series at once?
I usually work on several books in a series over the space of any given year. Each will be at a different stage of its evolution and I like to jump around between them. So, for instance, I might finish a first draft of book five, then edit books one through four again, before doing my first edit of book five, then moving on to a first draft of book six.
That said, I wrote the first three Archibald Lox books as a single volume, and only divided that big book into three when it came time to release it. There were several reasons why I did that — one of the major ones was that it allowed me to put the first book out as a freebie, and since this is very different to my other long series, I felt that would give fans a chance to try the first book without having to pay for it, and then, if they decided it wasn’t for them, they could stop there, and wouldn’t have spent any money on it, or devoted too much of their time to it. Thankfully the response has been incredibly positive, so most of my fans who’ve read book one have got on board with the other two books — phew!
When can we expect the next volume in the series?
Hopefully in the first half of 2021. I’ve written the second volume and am now editing it into shape. That’s a lengthy process, and I think need to go through the book at least another four or five times before it’s ready to see print — and it’s a big book, so there’s no quick way to do that! But, if all goes well, I think the first half of 2021 is achievable. If that optimism proves ill-founded and I have to push the release date back, well, the waiting will just make its eventual release all the sweeter!
Do you know the series ending, and how many books there will be in total, or is that still to be determined?!
I’m not certain. I have three volumes planned, and there’s a very good chance that I’ll stop at the end of volume three, as that concludes the main story arc that kicks off in chapter one of book one. But there’s a possibility that I could continue on for another volume or two, with one of the secondary story lines that develops over the course of the first three volumes. We’ll see how the next volume goes, and I’ll take (or leave) things from there…
The three books comprising Volume One in the Archibald Lox series are now available from all good ebook retailers.
Posted By Jacob Hope,
08 June 2020
Updated: 08 June 2020
Empathy is a vital human force. One that creates happier children, stronger communities and a better world. It’s come into sharp focus during the pandemic and right now, we’ve never needed it more. Empathy is being able to imagine and share someone else’s feelings.
The good news is that it's a skill you can learn, and Empathy Day on 9 June aims to help everyone understand and experience its transformational power. Empathy Day focuses on how we can use books to step into someone else’s shoes. Scientists say that we can train our brain with stories – the more you empathise with characters, the more you understand other people’s feelings.
Empathy Day was established by not-for-profit EmpathyLab, who are on a mission to inspire the rising generation to drive a new empathy movement. On 9 June they will host a day of brilliant online events and home-based celebrations to help children READ, CONNECT AND ACT using empathy. Children can join in whether they're at home or at school, and authors, illustrators, schools and libraries across the country will all be taking part.
To mark the countdown to Empathy Day, the Youth Libraries Group are delighted to welcome Muhammad Khan to the blog. Muhammad's book Kick the Moonis included in EmpathyLab’s Read for Empathy Collection, has chosen an extract from their book and tells us why they feel it’s a powerful read to develop empathy.
Extract: Kick the Moon pages 35-37, 2nd para, line 6, ‘By the end of the lesson, I’m solving simultaneous equations like a pro…’ [See dowload link below]
On the first day of term, Ilyas can’t believe his luck when told he’s being moved up a set in maths. His old teacher, Mr Gordon, had a less than encouraging teaching style (read old school bullying); and his gang were always snatching his book and copying his answers (more bullying). In spite of all this, he’s a little wary of his new environment. He needn’t be. It turns out Ms Mughal’s classroom is a safe space for learning. Though Ilyas is chuffed to discover this, he doesn’t think it would be cool to express these positive feelings. His gang have brainwashed him into believing ‘dons’ never show emotion except to laugh at losers, aggressively flirt with girls, or demonstrate violence. These are the hallmarks of toxic masculinity. We feel empathy for Ilyas because we know he wants to be a good boy but past experience has determined it leads to bullying.
Ms Mughal’s students seem to really like her, share jokes together, but clearly understand where she draws the line. Ilyas is surprised when they all say ‘bye’ to her on the way out. Finding this new respectful dynamic awkward, he tries to slip out unnoticed. In spite of the apparent snub, Ms Mughal tells him he is welcome to see her anytime for extra help – thereby showing she understands the enormity of his burden. In this moment she is promising to have his back, she is empathising. It flies in the face of Ilyas’s gang who claim they are the only ones who will ever look out for each other thereby exerting control through fear and lies.
Outside in the corridor, Ilyas sees Jade - the beautiful girl he is obsessed with - engaged in a controversial conversation with a couple of friends. Melanie says horribly racist things. Jade is complicit and it breaks Ilyas’s heart. Until now he’s placed her on a pedestal but discovers an ugly side which throws a massive spanner in the works for future romance (no matter how unlikely it was!) The third friend, Kelly, looks deeply uncomfortable with this bigotry but doesn’t have the strength to challenge her friends over it. She is an analogue for Ilyas – both teens are caught up in groups of friends who say and do things that are ostensibly wrong. The moment foreshadows the eventual friendship that will blossom between the two.
As a secondary school maths teacher, I drew direct inspiration from the children I teach. I wrote this book to try to understand why some of the kindest teens hang out with others who lack empathy and can be cruel. High school, of course, is not an easy time. There is strength in numbers. To stand alone and fight for what you believe in can make you a target, especially in friendship groups where a pecking order exists. Many young people already feel self-conscious – the burden of taking those ‘flawless’ selfies and clocking up the most likes doesn’t exactly breed confidence – so it is difficult to challenge peers to become better people. Hierarchies are established through fear and shame which of course creates subordinates while venerating a de facto leader. And as we know: power corrupts.
Ilyas and Kelly are both relatable in their very averageness. They have hopes and dreams just like everyone else and desperately want to be friends. We empathise because we see how happy and creative they become whenever they are together and feel sympathy when berated, mocked and threatened by their respective ‘friendship’ groups who demand they keep apart.
Standing up for yourself or your friends is not easy, but hopefully the book empowers young people to believe some things are worth fighting for no matter how daunting the odds.
For the first time this year, EmpathyLab will host its Empathy Day programme online to support families at home. Schools and libraries across the country will also be offering a wide range of home learning and story-time activities.
Prior to the big day, EmpathyLab are hosting a Countdown Fortnight on their social media channels (26 May-8 June). Highlights include brand-new empathy-themed illustrations from leading artists, short stories from favourite authors and video readings of empathy-boosting books and poems from the writers themselves. Families can also download a new Family Activities Pack, featuring 14 writing, drawing, crafting, listening and reading activities to do at home. https://www.empathylab.uk/family-activities-pack
Events on 9 June will begin at 9:30am with Children’s Laureate and best-selling author Cressida Cowell, who will introduce Empathy Day. The day’s activities, designed to introduce children to the concept and importance of empathy and how to put it into action, include a draw-along with Rob Biddulph, a poetry challenge with Sarah Crossan, Empathy Charades with Joseph Coelho, exercises on listening with Jo Cotterill and Robin Stevens, before rounding up the day with an activity on putting empathy into action with Onjali Rauf and Sita Brahmachari. Finally, an evening event with Cressida Cowell, Muhammad Khan and psychologist Professor Robin Banerjee aimed at parents, teachers and librarians will address the science that drives EmpathyLab.
To celebrate the 2020 shortlists of the CILIP Carnegie and Kate Greenaway Medals, we will be holding a Twitter Takeover on 14 June. This will be an opportunity to engage and interact with judges and key personnel of the awards and to hear more from the shortlisted authors and illustrators. The Youth Libraries Group are delighted to announce the provisional programme for the day which runs from 11am to 6pm.
11.00am to 12.00pm Reading around the World
An exploration of the importance of prizes in reading with Shaun Tan (TBC), Kate Greenaway shortlisted author and illustrator of Tales from the Inner City and a representative from the Children's Book Council of Australia, comparing their awards with ours.
12.00pm to 1.00pm Art, Expression and Adversity Marcus Sedgwick and Julian Sedgwick will talk about their Carnegie shortlisted book Voyages of Orpheus Black in the Underworld and about collaboration.
1.00pm to 2.00pm Empathy and Illustration
Illustrator Poonam Mistry and author and illustrator Chris Naylor-Ballesteros talk about empathy in their Kate Greenaway shortlisted books, You're Snug with Me and The Suitcase.
2.00pm to 3.00pm True North Chris Mould (TBC) Kate Greenaway shortlisted illustrator of The Iron Man and Anthony McGowan author of Carnegie shortlisted Lark talk about their books set in the North.
3.00pm to 4.00pm Sea and Survival Chris Vick Carnegie shortlisted author of Girl. Boy. Sea. and Beth Waters, author and illustrator of Kate Greenaway shortlisted Child of St Kilda talk about their books and the role of the sea.
4.00pm to 5.00pm A Sense of Self
Authors Randy Ribay and Dean Atta talk about the role of identity in their Carnegie shortlisted books, Patron Saints of Nothing and The Black Flamingo. Closes with announcement of YLG Awards Shortlist 2020!
5.00pm to 6.00pm Quiz
With CILIP Library Champion Bobby Seagull, via his YouTube Channel.
Please note participants in sessions may change. Please keep your eyes peeled on Twitter from @YouthLibraries.
Make your voice and views part of the discussion #CKG20.
The Youth Libraries Group are pleased to welcome author and editor Beverley Birch to discuss her new novel Song Beneath the Tides and the influences suffused through the story.
The first whisper of Song Beneath the Tides entered my head in childhood. I was wandering among broken walls and arches of the ancient Swahili ruins of Gede. Cradled in the primeval Arabuko Sokoke forest on Kenya's coast, there was a restless play of light and sea winds through trees, bird and monkey cries, animal snufflings in the undergrowth – and then sudden, peculiar silences, as if everything held its breath for some imminent event. It frightened my 12-year-old self, and it thrilled me. What was the place waiting for? Why was the city abandoned, twice? What happened here?
There was a great strangler fig tree, with aerial roots forming a huge doorway through its centre, shafts of sunlight gold beyond, as if showing a path. 'A gateway to another world!' I thought. At night there were drums echoing across the bay: telling what story? Celebrating what? I carried those memories into my first novel, The Keeper of the Gate, whisking my characters back in time to a thriving fictional Gede, which I called Kingwana.
I spent the first 18 years of my life in Africa, split between a rural area 12 miles from Nairobi and months running wild along the coast. It affects everything I write, not just the books actually set in Africa (3 novels, a picture book, retellings). I always feel Place as a character, tapping all my senses, communicating with the human characters. The continent has such a profound effect on the senses, and its stories, from different authors, different countries, different traditions, different landscapes, different histories, nevertheless seem always to reflect the way people naturally give power, personality, significance, to Place.
Over my teenage years, I began to put fact and detail around my feelings. I found out about the life and death of the Swahili stone ruins that litter East Africa's coast and what happened to them when the first European ships reached there just over 500 years ago. This joined with other experiences, with encounters and friendships, with other discoveries, with the narratives of African writers from across the continent that I started to read then, fascinated by their distinctive voices - what a bottomless treasure trove!
Song Beneath the Tides is a love story, ghost story, and thriller. Ally is an English girl on her first visit to my fictional country on the eastern coast of Africa. She encounters Leli, from a fishing village nearby. Instantly he sweeps Ally into the world of his village and their sacred offshore island, Kisiri - protected, forbidden, revered, a place of legend. Their friendship, instant and overwhelming, is at the heart of the story, all the more intense because they are both having uncanny, inexplicable experiences: Ally - presences, voices she can't quite hear, Leli - dreams, haunted by legend, urgent warning calls.
There's a third voice telling another story winding through and round Ally and Leli's tale, the connection between them all only gradually revealed. This, and the legendary backdrop, spring from the 200-year pursuit of trade and control of the area by those first Europeans on that coast, the Portuguese, arriving under the command of Vasco da Gama, in 1498. They expected to find primitive, isolated communities. Instead they found prosperous Swahili states in stone cities, with Kings or Sultans, trading across the Indian Ocean with the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, Arabia and India, as they had for centuries. The Portuguese 'explorers' wanted that lucrative trade in gold, ambergris, ivory and slaves. They set about subjugating the Swahili cities.
There followed massacre and pillage: reading the chroniclers is horrifying. Even contemporary Portuguese writers condemned the savagery, shocking even by the violent standards of those centuries. The coastal people struggled to survive by juggling fierce opposition, attempts at treaties, shifting alliances between each other and the Arabs of Oman, who had their own quarrel with the Portuguese invaders and sailed down the east coast to challenge them.
It's all in official reports, records and letters, diaries, eye-witness accounts, found in museums and university libraries, in Portugal, East Africa and London. Add the archaeological excavations in Swahili ruins like Gede (but there are many), with their palaces and courts, mosques, houses, wells, cisterns and conduits which show how developed they were, and Portuguese forts in East Africa, like Fort Jesus, and it's a bottomless mine for inspiration.
Why explore it - apart from personal obsession? Because the other central inspiration for the story is what's happening to the world's wildlife, people and the planet because we aren't facing up to the consequences of our actions. In the microcosm of my story, it's what uncontrolled tourism does to people and places, for here I saw a parallel, in the present, with the historical onslaught under those first Portuguese ships.
Peaceful, purposeful communities, beautiful beaches, reefs, mangroves and forests are buried under massive hotel building projects for tourists. I saw it, in my teen years; I didn't have to look far to find present examples to bolster my memories. There are court cases to stop sacred sites being seized for mining, tourism or other business interest. It's happening all over the world: land-grabbing by business interests, often in alliance with corrupt politicians or organised crime, riding brutally over the lives of the people whose territory is seized. And I feel fierce about so many visitors, eager to visit new places, indifferent to the consequences.
And so in Song Beneath the Tides I imagine the turbulent past rising to an urgent echo in the present, the present mirroring that past. I imagine two youngsters attuned to the tides washing round them, Leli from a community buffeted by these winds of change, in the past, and now, and Ally from England, beginning to see for the first time, to feel, to understand – and both hearing that insistent warning cry ...
Posted By Jacob Hope,
20 May 2020
Updated: 20 May 2020
We are delighted to welcome Jessica Wilson, poet and author, to discuss her writing and the impetus behind and creation of her picture book Sofia the Dreamer and her Magical Afro and its creation.
My children’s poem-story Sofia the Dreamer and her Magical Afro, tumbled from me one afternoon like a remembered song. This magical-realism picture book is the winner of a GoFundMe award and seeks to unpick the politics, history, heroes and joy entangled within the tight coils of kinky hair. A Jamaican Rastafarian, African ancestor and Black Panther stepped into my imagination, unravelling their narratives in rhythmic rhyme. These were voices, like my own, which had been suppressed or not yet fully heard. The piece grew into a space where each character had their own solo; an ensemble of individuals relaying their stories, in their own words.
Aimed at 5-8 year olds, my fantasy poem is primarily a response to the continued under-representation of black children in literature. I recall feeling ostracized as a youngster by trite tales of snowfalls and apple-picking which lacked the cultural collisions of my domestic life: for example, Sunday roasts enlivened with plantain and our linguistic fluidity which slipped between patois and the Queen’s English. My mother sought out African American books for me, such as Half a Moon and One Whole Star and Alice Walker’s To Hell with Dying which featured protagonists I resembled and storylines bridging fantasy and the everyday; a realm where my mind already dwelt. Spotlighting characters with skin the colour of coco-tea whose faces were framed by billowing halos of afros, these looking-glass pages planted a sense of recognition and belonging within my young mind. My own books had already begun to bud.
Sofia the Dreamer and her Magical Afro also aspires to counteract the aching lack of black history taught within schools.I chose to publish this book in May rather than wait until October (Black History month) because I do not believe multicultural narratives should be sandwiched into a small section of the year: British history with its myriad threads of migration and colonialism is not a monologue, it is a colourful, polyglot, interweaving chorus. I want to encourage children to delve into theirs and others’ historical backgrounds and be inspired to share their stories. We need more dialogue about the multifaceted nature of our national identity in the mainstream.
Examining my origins was a catalyst in my poetry career: whilst I had written articles and reviews for many years, self-expression in verse-form sprung from an urgency to communicate my own cultural eclecticism. Being both Jamaican and British, I felt like an anomaly or, as I describe in my first collection,
“I am both yet neither and the hinterland between;
I am Usain Bolt taking tea with the queen.”
-The Bulldog and the Hummingbird
Poetry provided an apt, elastic vehicle to communicate the riddle of this hybridity. Within ‘reclamation’ which was shortlisted for an Aesthetica Award, I reconfigured the diaspora as a site of creativity, noting:
“we dance
because our first names are at war with our last;
because we feel like flecks of dust
caught in a light stream between two closed windows.
we dance
because magic is dripping from our tongues
like the honeyed juice of overripe mangoes.”
Our roots, no matter how embattled, are a creative font we can tap into. By sharing the conflicts of my own legacy, I not only reconciled them but learnt to celebrate life at the interstices. Soon after, I was shortlisted for WriteNowLive, an exciting diversity initiative spearheaded by the BBC and Penguin Random House to find emerging literary talent in underrepresented communities. Recognising the need to amplify marginalised voices, I later founded Tallawah Publishing with the aim of supporting writers and artists of Caribbean and African descent.
I join many other Caribbean poets in my belief that it is our duty to rewrite our history and conserve our storytelling inheritance. It is my hope that by interweaving the ancestral past with the present, Sofia the Dreamer and her Magical Afro contributes in painting a richer, more diverse and promising literary future.
Posted By Jacob Hope,
15 May 2020
Updated: 15 May 2020
YLG is delighted to be part of the blog tour for There's a Rang-Tan in My Bedroom.
Libraries have always been about collecting and sharing stories and information. There is a power to this and an ability to achieve change precisely because information and stories help to shape, and so to change us. They alter the way we see the world. It is hard to imagine a more affecting story than There’s a Rang-Tan in My Bedroom.
Perhaps you have seen the Greenpeace video which went viral? The powerful story behind the video was written by James Sellick at Mother London The advert was picked up by frozen food company Iceland for their Christmas commercial following their pledge to remove palm oil from its own-brand products. Richard Walker, managing director for Iceland, commented on the decision:
With palm oil, the urgency of the crisis could not be ignored. We saw a window of opportunity to help organisations like Greenpeace lobby for zero-deforestation palm oil at a time when 146 football pitches of rainforest were being chopped down every hour in Indonesia.”
The video which was produced by Greenpeace was deemed too political for broadcast, but the ensuing discussion and debate around both the video itself and also around socially conscious messages and ideas around censorship helped to make the video go viral.
Hachette bought the rights for a picture book adaptation of the video There’s a Rang-Tan in my Bedroom which published under their Wren and Rook imprint in August 2019. The book features a foreword by Dame Emma Thompson who narrated the original Greenpeace video and alongside the story which has been visually re-imagined by illustrator Frann Preston-Gannon, there is also information about Orangutans – the name comes from Malay words for human ‘orang’ and forest ‘utan’- about deforestation for the production of palm oil and about campaigning for change.
International Orangutan Day takes place on August 19 each year, in the lead up to this, what plans and activities can you make to help share the plight of these magnificent creatures far and wide through your libraries and amongst readers?
We are delighted to welcome Justin Somper, bestselling author of the Vampirates novels to the YLG blog to talk about his recent trip to Australia, his wedding, the challenges that he faced with the unravelling Covid-19 and how this fed the idea of devising a series of creative challenges.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…
Saturday March 14th 2020. I’m standing barefoot on Redgate Beach in Margaret River. This glorious region of the Western Australian coast is celebrated in equal measure for its surfing beaches and wineries. Alongside me, also barefoot, is my partner PJ. Before us are arrayed a gaggle of family and close friends. To our left is Anita, our celebrant. After fourteen years together, eleven as civil partners, PJ and I are “upgrading” (now that it’s legal) to marriage.
This isn’t entirely the Australian beach wedding I was promised! Beach – tick. Barefoot – tick. A select gathering of our nearest and dearest - tick. But where’s the afternoon sun? It’s been raining on and off for most of the day. As we drove to the beach - in our friend’s uncle’s vintage Jag! - the rainfall became more persistent. We’ve all got umbrellas – several of them borrowed in haste from the reception of our guest house. Anita has brought her own - a rainbow one.
As the brief but beautiful ceremony progresses, the rain becomes heavier. By the time we are signing the wedding certificate, on a nearby rock, we’re deploying multiple umbrellas to keep the paper dry. We sip locally produced fizz to the sound of Kylie singing All the Lovers from a tiny speaker, then throw our umbrellas – and caution – aside, and allow the heavens to thoroughly drench us. It feels like we’re in a movie – an Aussie spin on Mamma Mia. Anita tells me that the rain is a good omen. It means the marriage knot will be tighter.
The morning after the wedding, reality hits like the heaviest hangover and the movie we’re living in – along with the rest of the planet – is suddenly something far more dystopian. It’s now clear that we’re not going to be able to fly out the next day to Tasmania, to see my father-in-law, nor from there to a weekend of friend catch-ups in Melbourne – in case we get stranded in either location. A more fundamental question looms as we drive back to Perth. What if we aren’t going to be able to get back to the UK?
The question hangs over us throughout the next week. Now that we’ve cut out the week of interstate travels, we find ourselves with time on our hands in Perth – and, surreally, the freedom to move around WA. Australia is well behind the UK in terms of cases of Covid-19 and there aren’t even social distancing measures in place yet – simply scrums in the supermarkets to secure loo roll and liquid soap, pasta and porridge oats.
That week, we drive up the coast to Cervantes (I love a town named after a writer, don’t you? *), to the Pinnacles and Nambung National Park, to Scarborough and Hillarys Boat Harbour. With the brilliant revamp of my Vampirates books by UCLan Publishing in March, it was always our intention to capitalise on the sun-drenched Australian coast to record some short films to deploy on social media at a later date. Now we have time and space to do this, but it feels oddly frivolous to record the standard Q&A about characters and inspiration.
I’m aware of the brilliant resources illustrators including Steven Lenton and Rob Biddulph are creating for kids on social media – and now in these unprecedented circumstances, it feels all the more vital for parents, librarians and teachers. I begin thinking about what I can offer in a similar vein. The answer comes to me while we’re out and about. How about I issue some bite-sized creative challenges to young people which they can engage with, whether or not they have read my books? Buoyed on this wave of positive energy, we spontaneously film three challenges that day at Hillarys.
The next day is a tough one. The UK is about to go into lockdown. My sister texts me, “come home now!”. My brother simultaneously texts, “stay there!”. We can’t get Trailfinders or Qantas on the phone. We start drawing up lists of contingencies. Can our dog-sitter continue to care for Bella, our beloved black lab? Can we get a mortgage holiday if necessary? What items would we need retrieved from our home office if we had to set up remote working from here?
PJ suggests I take a break from this and focus instead on a list of Vampirate Challenges, which rather than being random will work in a coherent sequence. I’m hot. My brain is frazzled. My emotions are see-sawing. But I really want to do this. I want to make the most of the amazing location and I really want to make a positive contribution to the daily lives of children and parents entering this incredibly odd and scary set of circumstances. I pull it together over lunch and confirm there will be a sequence of 15 challenges! That very afternoon, we head to one of our favourite spots – City Beach. There, to my amazement, we record four of the short challenge films. I had a cry earlier and I’m wondering if that’s noticeable. It’s not the mood I want to project through these short films. I want them to be fun, inspiring and maybe, as a result of the locations, a tad soothing too. PJ assures me that I don’t look upset, just maybe a bit hot and red!
When we finally get Trailfinders on the phone, they strongly advise us to stick with the flight we always planned to return home on – the flight everyone wants – direct from Perth to London, departing Friday evening. But what if they cancel all flights by then? It’s a risk but, at this point, we realise that it’s a risk we’re going to have to take.
Within all the craziness of the following 5 days – trying not to dwell on the ‘what ifs?’, contending with increasingly stressful calls home and the beginnings of the goodbyes to our family and friends here – I find that making these short films is grounding me. My writing has always been a place of escape for me and I guess with my Vampirates books, it’s a world where readers and I can escape together. I’m relishing being back in that world. I’m enjoying this sense of connecting directly with my readers. I’ve always loved going into schools and festivals, whether to talk or conduct workshops, and what I’m doing here - in the dunes, at the harbours, in the searing heat around the Maritime Museum in Fremantle – feels like it’s harnessing that same impulse. I just hope people won’t be irked by the sight of me moving around freely in the Australian sunshine.
Friday March 27th – late afternoon. Perth airport is surreal, silent and largely empty. Every other seat is covered in black and yellow hazard tape like a crime scene. The few passengers are edgy. Many sport face masks. After a couple of eleventh hour scares, we are sitting in our seats on flight QF09. This will be the last direct flight out of Australia. The air crew are professional and upbeat despite the pervasive fraughtness. One of the stewardesses learns we have just got married and brings glasses of fizz to our seats. Our seventeen-hour flight commences. Before you know it, we’re eating cottage pie, watching Jumanji 2 in perfect synchrony, trying to make out like everything’s normal. But it isn’t. But you know that.
* In the interests of full accuracy, I have to acknowledge that the town of Cervantes was named after a ship, which was wrecked nearby. The ship, in turn, was named after Miguel de Cervantes, author of Don Quixote.
You can find Justin Somper’s #Vampiratechallenges every Monday, Wednesday and Friday on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook (all @JustinSomper) and the full sequence of challenge videos at vampirates.co.uk/videos.
Whilst in Australia, Justin was also able to record a “Ten Minute Writing Challenge” for Authorfy, which you can find along with a host of other resources at authorfy.com.
New editions of the first three Vampirates novels - Demons of the Ocean, Tide of Terror and Blood Captain – are available now from UCLan Publishing. They each contain bonus content including new stories, new artwork and Reading Group Questions from Jake Hope.
The Youth Libraries Group are delighted to welcome L D Lapinski to talk about a lifetime of reading and escapism and how this has influenced her novel The Strangeworlds Travel Agency book in with us now to discover more as YLG's part of her blog tour. A big thank you to L D Lapinski for writing such a superbly engaging feature.
The Strangeworlds Travel Agency is a book of escapes. The main character, Flick, longs to escape from what she sees as a dull and repetitive existence. Her new friend, Jonathan, wants to escape from responsibility he neither asked for nor expected. And there are other, less genial characters, looking for escapes of their own.
Escapism has always been a selling point for me when it comes to books. I spend so much of my time worrying about things that are happening in the real world that when it comes to choosing art to enjoy, I want to settle down with something that’s happening in a galaxy far, far away, or even further. And right now, I am extremely keen to escape in any way I can. Stories have never been more important, in whatever form we choose to access them. Books, film, TV, video games – all of them offer escapes into other worlds, where we either craft stories of our own, or choose to lose ourselves in someone else’s for a while. I suppose, too, there is some sort of safety and comfort to be taken from seeing conflict happening where it can’t get you – like when you’re at school and there’s a fight happening but you’re up high and safe, so it’s ok to shout advice down!
I am a child of books. My entire childhood was a journey of travelling from book to book, world to magical world. I loved anything magical, anything where our world was infiltrated and set alongside a more magical one. The idea that adventure was merely a step away was something I’ve always loved reading about, and always wanted to write about, too. I used to write “books” all the time at the table, folding paper and writing stories about a frog named Pip who lived in a tree house and flew a little aeroplane around. As I got older, I kept on writing what was often poorly-disguised Lord of the Rings fanfiction before moving back to making up original stories of my own. And they were always about magic, in some form or another. And, more often than not, set in other worlds. But how to get there… that was something I’d never really figured out!
As much as I love books where there is one other secret or magical world behind the curtain, I’m much more of a fan of a multiverse, or myriad of worlds. I have always loved how, in His Dark Materials, Will has access to an infinite number of worlds when he uses The Subtle Knife. And the whole concept of him being the custodian of all those worlds – and yet able to step into them at any time – was something that played on my mind for years. The responsibility of keeping the worlds safe comes at great cost to Will, and I wondered how that might work if such a responsibility was handed down in a family. And what might happen if someone who wasn’t a part of that family suddenly knew about the secrets. I also very much wanted to make access to the worlds contained in one place. Somewhat like Narnia, where the portals are in definite places, but instead of each one taking you only to one specific world, there could be many possibilities. The whole idea of using suitcases was not one that I consciously set out to craft – it came to me suddenly, and the idea of other-worlds-in-storage suddenly had a place to land.
The Strangeworlds Travel Agency is the product of a lifetime of reading, of stories in all forms. It is a book I never sat down and planned, because it’s almost as though it has been slowing coming into existence for my whole life. The portals, the magic, and other worlds, have all been percolating in the back of my mind without me really knowing it. Which, ultimately, is the real magic of books – they inspire. Perhaps not instantly. Perhaps not consciously. But they are catalysts of imagination, each and every one. I am privileged to have grown up in a household where books were available, where the library was (and still is) in the village to be visited with ease. I am dreaming of the day libraries are open again, so I might see The Strangeworlds Travel Agency on one of their shelves. It is the result of a lifetime being in love with stories, and it is my hope that it will become part of another child’s reading journey, wherever that might take them.
It's World Book Night and the Youth Libraries Group have a full day of celebrations planned. How will you be celebrating and what will you be reading? Dolet us know. You can join in with our celebrations by checking out the hourly broadcasts for the #NationalShelfService on YouTube, ask or answer a question using #DrBook on Twitter and enjoy the virtual storytime and talk with award-winning poet and author Joseph Coelho broadcasting via the #NationalShelfService at 7pm. As if all of that weren't enough, we've been talking with Founder of My Book Corner and picture-book author Emma Perry. If you haven't read I Don't Like Books. Never. Ever. The End. we can definitely recommend it. Thanks Emma for your time!
What are your first memories of books and reading?
Without a shadow of a doubt my first memory of books as child would have to be Where The Wild Things Are. I can still remember that being read to us at playgroup. That final line… sigh!
As a teenager I can remember cycling back and forth to our library during the long summer holidays, maxing out my library card each time! I liked nothing better than sinking into a good book, even then!
Are there any authors and illustrators that you particularly admire and who have influenced your work?
I spent five years in Australia immersed in picture books, during that time I fell head over heels in love with the illustrative styles of Anna Walker, Marc Martin, Dub Leffler and Gus Gordon in particular – go and have a look at their work, it’s heart thumpingly good.
A bit closer to home I adore the brilliantly bonkers humour of Michelle Robinson’s books (and her fab ability to rhyme), and I most definitely can NOT walk past a David Litchfield illustrated book without stopping to admire the contents. I’m on tenterhooks waiting for the next picture book from Jessica Love to emerge, she’s been putting sneak peeks on Instagram and it’s EVERYthing!
I also love having a chuckle with books that have that great tongue in cheek style humour. Jon Klassen and Morag Hood always hit the spot for me. I am full of admiration for their deliciously low word count, which in no way impedes their ability to tell a top-notch story. I have been finding that my own scripts have got shorter and shorter over the last 18 months or so, there is something deeply satisfying about creating a book with a low word count.
Do you have a favourite place to read?
My favourite place to read has got to be the sofa or my bed – squishy, cosy and space to streeeetch out my legs!
Can you tell us a bit about your debut picture book I Don't like Books. Never. Ever. The End?
I Don’t Like Books. Never. Ever. The End was the second picture book script that I ever began to write, back in 2015. I was just getting into writing, and everything I’d read said to ‘write what you know’. Well, with many years of running My Book Corner under my belt there could only be one answer to that question… books! Of course!
I wanted to write about books coming to life, I tried to imagine what they would do and say. Initial drafts of this script were… terrible!
The words did not behave, and they found themselves unceremoniously dumped in a dark and dusty drawer for a loooooong time. For over a year in the end. By the time I had the courage to take them out again I had learnt a lot more about writing picture books, had a lot more practise, and my first picture book had been sold to David Fickling Books. With newfound confidence I set about a complete overhaul – it’s barely recognisable from those first drafts. My agent liked the new draft, then David Fickling Books liked it, bought it, and found the superbly talented illustrator Sharon Davey… and here it is!
What’s next for you?
What’s next? Well remember I said about that first picture book script being sold to David Fickling Books? That very first script that I wrote, somehow had a lot of luck woven into it… it won the SCBWI Slushpile Competition and lead to an agent… and will be published on the 4th June this year! This Book Has Alpacas and Bears has had quite a journey, and it does feel like a weird time for Alfonso and Colin to be leaping onto the shelves, but, you know what? Rikin Parekh and I are hoping the pair of them will provide plenty of giggles for those who read their story. They may even inspire children to go out and create their very own book, just like Alfonso does!
Emma Perry is the founder of children’s book review website, My Book Corner. She was the winner of the SCBWI Slush Pile Challenge in April 2016 and is represented by Jodie Hodges, United Agents.
Sharon Davey is an illustrator and designer, represented by Plum Pudding Illustration.
I Don’t Like Books. Never. Ever. The End. is published by David Fickling Books | Hardback | £11.99
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