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 ... 

Chair of the Youth Libraries Group, Alison Brumwell, introduces us to the British Library's Discovering Children's Books site

When national lockdown began on 23 March 2020 it was difficult to envision where we were headed or grasp the unprecedented change children and their families would face as schools closed. Throughout this time, we’ve seen a range of teaching and learning take place online, with new blogs, Facebook pages and YouTube channels popping up to support parents with home schooling and librarians with outreach. There have been virtual tours of museums and art galleries, virtual literary festivals and free access to some brilliant online theatre productions and film experiences, not to mention author events and book launches. Library membership and e-book borrowing has burgeoned across the UK and more than 100 books worldwide have been published for children and young people in a range of languages about COVID-19.

As a librarian, I have been reading, viewing and exploring many of these, marvelling at the variety and range of material available online. One of the best new websites I’ve discovered and promoted is British Library’s Discovering Children’s Books https://www.bl.uk/childrens-books. There is a range of brilliant activities for children of all ages, each of which involves delving into the diverse heritage of children’s books; not just fiction but poetry, non-fiction and illustration too. Themes of belonging, identity and morality are explored and the ways in which children’s books have also changed the world is compelling social history; in fact, there’s so much rich content here it invites parents and children to dive straight in.

As I collect children’s picture books and illustrated material, and own quite a nice personal collection, I gravitated immediately towards the creative activities, like Make a Miniature Book. https://www.bl.uk/childrens-books/activities/make-a-miniature-book. The miniature books project was inspired by those created by Charlotte Bronte and her siblings as children growing up at Haworth parsonage, carefully crafted and hand-stitched. The website includes examples of mini books created by famous authors like Jacqueline Wilson, Katherine Rundell and Philip Ardagh, which they also read aloud. https://www.bl.uk/childrens-books/activities/miniature-books-by-your-favourite-authors. You can try making your own mini book: photos can be emailed to learning@bl.uk or shared on Twitter to @BL_Learning, using #Discovering Literature.

When Eva Eland, the talented author and illustrator of When Sadness Comes to Call and Where Happiness Begins visited Kirklees Libraries last year this was an activity she prepared for primary school pupils and they loved it. I still have my own unused resources from those sessions, so I am determined to find a way of combining my love of illuminated manuscript and traditional inks with manga and see what happens. It’s a wonderful introduction to books as interactive and “living, rather than just something to digest or as artefacts arranged on a shelf. 

There is also an exhaustive archive of interviews to watch and listen to. I love Viviane Schwarz’s in which she gives an insight into developing character through illustration: it is magical how a few lines and colour (or not) can evoke so much. And it’s something which is very accessible to children. Likewise, Joseph Coelho’s brilliant tips for budding poets.  Zanib Mian’s interview highlights the importance of own voice and lived experience – a child’s thoughts and ideas can have a powerful place in their own writing. But a highlight for me is seeing Sarah Garland’s sketches, research, dummy book and original artwork from Azzi in Between, held by Seven Stories in Newcastle. How fascinating to have an overview of the whole process from start to finish and to read about Sarah’s inspiration for this very moving book.

The articles included on the website are equally fascinating and range from fables and fairy tales in children’s books to fear (Kim Reynolds’ article on the subject is illuminating). My own favourite is food in fiction, and Imogen Russell Williams gives us a whimsical insight into the role food plays in children’s books. Nothing fills a reader with more delight or vicarious pleasure, whether it’s bread on a toasting fork, a picnic or a feast (or Mrs. Twit feeding her husband worms instead of spaghetti). One of my most pored-over books as a child was Susan Coolidge’s What Katy Did at School. As a sequel to What Katy Did, it was perhaps unremarkable, but I will never forget the sumptuous food hampers Katy and Clover used to receive at boarding school. 

I hope librarians, teachers and parents will take every opportunity to explore Discovering Children’s Books with children and young people, or just take time to click through this informative, interactive resource themselves. The gallery of activities alone makes it worthwhile, but there’s so much more to share and appreciate.

'Image © Philip Ardagh'

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 14^th 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 27^th – 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.

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

Twitter: @_EmmaPerry; Sharon Davey @thecreativefox

@DFB_storyhouse