If you are interested in finding out about some of the hottest new books for children and young people publishing in 2023, connecting with 22 publishers, meeting an amazing array of authors ( including S.F. Said, Phil Earle, Carnegie Medal for Writing winner 2022 Katya Balen, Jenny Pearson and more!), signing up for free promotional materials or taking part in competitions and much more, the Children's Reading Partners Roadshow - run by The Reading Agency - is for you.  Details about how to sign up for you free place and what to expect in each session are below.

When: Wednesday 9 November from 9.15am - 3.15pm

Where: Zoom Webinar (link provided after registration). You need to register for each of the sessions you would like to attend as they have different log ins.

Session 1: 9.15 - 10.20am. The publishers presenting in this session are: Gecko Press, Usborne, Chicken House, Hachette Children's Group and Macmillan Children's Books. Register for session 1 here.

Session 2: 10.45 - 12.00pm. The publishers presenting in this session are: Andersen Press, Bloomsbury, Buster Books, Little Tiger, Rebellion Publishing and Welbeck Children's Books. Register for session 2 here.

Session 3: 12.45 - 1.55pm. The publishers presenting in this session are: Bonnier Books UK, b small Publishing, Faber & Faber, HarperCollins Children's Books, New Frontier Publishing and UCLan Publishing. Register for session 3 here.

Session 4: 2.15 - 3.15pm. The publishers presenting in this session are: David Fickling Books, Farshore, Nosy Crow and Simon & Schuster Children's Books.

Register for session 4 here.

The Reading Agency also run our Chatterbooks newsletter which regularly runs read and review campaigns for Children’s reading groups and offers free physical and digital resources and displays to school and public libraries as well as author visits. If you would like to hear more about our opportunities for librarians and teachers, you can sign up to our newsletter here.

We are delighted to welcome Mini Grey to the blog to discuss her hugely exciting and ambitious new picture book The Greatest Show On Earth.  Mini is a multi award winning author and illustrator.  Biscuit Boy won the Smarties Book Prize, Traction Man is Here won the Boston Globe Horn Book Award, and The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon won the Kate Greenaway Medal.  You can find out more about Mini by visiting her website.

Please can you introduce us to ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’?  

It’s the entire 4.6 billion year story of life on Earth, brought to you in the form of a performance by Rod the Roach and his insect Troupe in a Shoebox Theatre.

[See photo one in picture gallery]

What was the reaction from your agent and/or publisher to such an unusual and big book idea?

 The idea for the Greatest Show actually began around 10 years ago, and to begin with the book was small and very long! It was a little zigzag book that pulled out into a 4.6 billion year tape measure (which was on the back.) The lovely people at Penguin tried to find a way to publish it, but the zigzag format was difficult, and the little pages didn’t do justice to the story that Rod was trying to tell. For some years it drifted around, in search of the right format. And then I realised it could be a big book, rather than a little one, with space to delve into Earth’s story, and my editors Joe Marriott and Emily Lunn at Puffin decided we could make this happen!

You say the idea for ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ started with a trip to the Oxford Natural History Museum, can you explain how the idea grew?

When my son Herbie was about 5 years old, we spent a lot of time hanging out in the Oxford Museum of Natural History. Gazing at the dinosaur skeletons, I realised there were enormous gaps in my knowledge of prehistoric life, and I didn’t even know how old the Earth actually is. Well, it’s 4.6 billions years old – and I just wanted to see what all that time looked like, and hold it in my hands. Later, when Herbie was at primary school, they would do projects on the Ancient Greeks, the Egyptians; how did those timelines fit with the dinosaurs? Could it be possible to tell the whole history of Earth as a story? We humans are uniquely good at absorbing information through stories. Before writing, story was how information was passed down generations. Stories are memorable. Story makes us want to know what happens, makes us pay attention. It seizes our imaginations and curiosity.

[See Photo Two in Picture Gallery]

Could this be a first story-scaffold to hang subsequent knowledge about life on Earth upon? I think once you have a mental framework you start to collect new knowledge, and you see things that could be added to your scaffold everywhere – you see more, just in your ordinary everyday world.

[See Photo Three in Picture Gallery]

There’s a wonderful sense of drama and theatricality in the presentation of the book; how did the idea for this develop as the central conceit for the book?

I have a mild obsession with toy theatres, and at one point long ago I worked as a theatre designer. Making a picture book is a bit like making a theatre performance: – both in how you make them, but also how you perform them (every reading is a new performance). But also the theatre was the answer to how to present my story – especially the Victorian-style Pollocks toy cardboard theatre. Modelling my book page on a Victorian theatre meant that I could organise the information into areas. The main stage is where you look first, to see at a glance THE MAIN STORY. But then to be able to delve deeper in, if you want to, you can peruse the wings and also see what's going on down at the Tape Measure of Time.

[See Photo Four and Five in Picture Gallery]

How much research was involved with the book and did you have any support with that?

When I’m making picture books, sometimes I am creating artwork, and have worked out most of the story-telling and the layouts. At these times the listening-and-words part of my brain is at liberty to listen to things – in fact sometimes I really NEED to listen to things to keep on persisting at making pictures. I developed a massive thirst for all online lectures, podcasts, radio broadcasts– about things prehistoric. (In Our time on Radio 4 has brilliant prehistoric broadcasts in its archive!) So I had an overview of what my ‘scenes’ could be. I took a copy of Richard Fortey’s LIFE – An Unauthorised Biography on holiday & scribbled on it. Making the final storyboard – I had to be sure I was telling the right story. But places to find information are infinite, it wouldn’t be possible to read up everything there is to know. I ended up with a shortlist of my go-to books: about 5 books for adults, and also about three go-to children’s illustrated information books. And lots and lots of Wikipedia. At the next stage, when I thought I’d worked out what to say: a few friendly expert fact checker professors helped, and another level of Puffin in-house fact checkers. But you can never get everything right and the science changes, as we see deeper in, as it should.

Were there any facts which particularly surprised and stuck with you?

[See Photo Six in Picture Gallery]

So many! It’s amazing and terrifying that life on Earth has been REALLY close to being snuffed out (the worst: 251 MYA). How the Earth has often been a TERRIBLE place to live in the past – (possibly even trying to get rid of life, you could suspect…) There have been huge volcanic lava outpourings, there have been tremendous freezes, there have been times when the ocean became anoxic and hostile to life. There’s also just how extremely bizarre animals of even not so long ago are: for example, the chalicotherium was an unholy mammal mash-up of a horse and a gorilla – it just looks all wrong! There is the almost accidental way one animal group takes over from another after a mass extinction: mammal-relatives (therapsids) were poised to dominate Earth 270 million years ago, but it was ultimately dinosaurs who kept the mammals small and in the shadows until that fateful asteroid impact 66 million years ago. But also dizzying is the incredible recentness of humans, and the extremely nice climate we happen to find ourselves in (compared to a lot of the past), and that our happy Holocene times (the last 10,000 years), on my tape measure of time, is just the last one-tenth of the last millimetre.

[See Photo Seven in Picture Gallery]

It’s a huge and very exciting topic, do you think picture books are a useful means for explaining big and complex ideas and if so what helps with that?

The secret power of picture books – is to tell with pictures as well as words, and pictures can tell big and complex ideas. But actually they show, not tell! I hope with very visual pages, picture books can reach ‘reluctant readers’ and also children excited by prehistoric content, who have a thirst for science. I think giving children big numbers, long names, the actual facts – is something they can handle. Picture books can make things visible and tangible.

Can you tell us a bit about your technique for creating the book and the media you used?  

When I was making the pages, I was building each scene as if it was a theatre set, with actors, scenery and backdrops in layers. I’d work out the layouts with loads of layers of tracing paper cut-outs that I could move around. I’d make artwork for all my actors and scenery pieces separately, and then layer them up in Photoshop in my theatre page framework. The fun challenge was inventing what sort of puppetry Rod & Co might be using; there was quite a thrill in making insects manipulate giant puppet insects (in the Carboniferous era). I was also trying to hide jokes maybe for grown ups: eg in the Cambrian explosion page, Brunhilda (beetle) and Edna (earwig) are trying to work out which way up a creature goes: that creature is Hallucigenia. When it was discovered in the Burgess Shale, it was so odd-looking that palaeontologists couldn’t work out which appendages it walked on, and which were (maybe) for defence, and its name reflected its very mind-bending puzzlingness.

[See Photo Eight and Nine in Picture Gallery]

The tape measure is a clever way to create a time, what was involved in mapping events across such a huge span of time?

[See Photo Ten in Picture Gallery]

There were massive problems with mapping the entire 4.6 billion years. For the first 4 billion years, there’s no complex animal life. But on my scale of 1 million years to 1 centimetre, this bit would be 40 metres long – right down the street! But very luckily, after the dawning of complex animal life, about 600 million years ago, time becomes more mappable. The International Stratigraphy Chart was invaluable! I discovered a lot of geological time periods last about 50 million years. (There’s usually some sort of extinction event that differentiates the rock layers of different geological periods.) This was incredibly useful and lucky, because my open book was going to be about 50cm wide – so each spread I’d have 50 million years of timeline to play with. I had to be careful not to overload the tape measure – so that meant a lot of thought & research to work out what climate ‘story’ to tell on each spread. With the Tape Measure I was trying to show: the date/time, earth’s changing climate, earth’s changing continents, and snippets of the animals that were around at the time, and introduce the geological eras. The Time Team use cocktail stick animals and teeny road signs to mark out what’s going on.

[See Photo Eleven and Twelve in Picture Gallery]

Are there any other ideas for information topics which you’d love to approach?

How there are so many amazing animals that didn’t get to appear enough in The Greatest Show – for example: dimetrodon, therapsids, mad palaeocene mammals. What would happen if Rod and the Troupe had a time machine instead of a tape measure?

A huge thank you to Mini Grey for a fascinating interview and to Puffin Book for the opportunity.  If you have enjoyed reading about The Greatest Show on Earth, you may also be interested to attend the YLG annual conference this year, Reading the Planet follow the link for more information.

Picture Gallery:

One:           The Greatest Show on Earth
Two:           Oxford Natural History Museum
Three:        First Zig-Zag version of The Greatest Show on Earth showing the
                   Timeline.
Four:          A Pollocks Toy Theatre
Five:           This page explains how to read the book
Six:             251 million years ago – the End Permian mass extinction
Seven:       A chalicotherium – from the DK Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs
Eight:         Some of the pieces for making the Age of Fish page
Nine:          Hallucigenia
Ten:           International Chronostratagraphic Chart
Eleven:      Tape Measure research
Twelve:      Tape Measure

We are joined by Joy Court, conference manager for the group to outline changing plans for the 2021 Conference and the rationale behind these.

It is with profound regret that we have to announce that we have had to cancel the live YLG national conference that would have been taking place on 17-19^th September in Torquay. This is not a decision we took lightly since we had received such superb support and backing from speakers and exhibitors, who were keen and willing to take part. Indeed, Exhibition bookings were at or above normal levels.

However, despite extending the Early Bird dates and despite the announcement of the Prime Minister relaxing restrictions it seems that people were still very reluctant to commit to travelling to a residential large-scale event such as a conference. Even the Prime Minister cannot deny the soaring rates of infection and so this attitude is completely understandable.

 We felt that it was financially irresponsible of us to gamble on numbers picking up over the summer and also felt that the location of the conference in Torquay meant that we were not surrounded by a highly populated area that might generate more day delegates. We also felt that it was morally wrong to accept the significant financial outlay by exhibitors and publishers supporting author attendance if we could not guarantee them our normal audience.

We have been extremely fortunate that the venue, the beautiful and historic Imperial Hotel in Torquay, have acted with great understanding for our position as a small charity and have agreed to release us from the contract and refund our deposit.

We realise this will be a huge disappointment to those of you who had booked and who were looking forward to the inspiration, comradeship and networking that we all so richly deserve after a tremendously difficult period.  We want to say a huge thank you for your support for YLG. Again, we are extremely grateful for the swift action from CILIP to repay in full all of those bookings.

The only good news we can offer is that we know that we can deliver a good virtual conference having done so very successfully last year and so I hope you will all be relieved and delighted to hear that we are fully intending to deliver as much as we can of the brilliant programme for Representations of Place- New Lands and New Ways of Looking as a virtual offering. Watch this space for details for how to book. 

I would also like to assure our colleagues in the South West region that we are still committed to bringing our conference to you as soon as it is viable to do so. We think that people need to re-establish the conference attending habit and so for 2022 we will be seeking a venue that is as central and accessible as possible.

We do firmly believe that our sector needs dedicated CPD about our specialism and that a residential conference provides so many benefits over and beyond the stimulating programme content. You never forget those inspirational speakers, meeting authors and illustrators and being able to pass on those enthusiasms to your young patrons, making professional contacts with colleagues and networking with publishers and partner organisations-  not to mention meeting like minded souls, fellow reading addicts and making friends for life! It can be a lonely job as a sole practitioner in a school library or as the only specialist in an authority and we all need positive reinforcement to do our jobs well.

However, we are all open to change and it maybe that the period we have been through will permanently alter how people want to access training. If you have any ideas or comments, we would love to hear from you. We are here to serve you, our members, after all! Please feel free to email me at events.ylg@cilip.org.uk

Eva Eland grew up in Delft, Netherlands. She studied at the School of Visual Arts in New York as well as at the Cambridge School of Art, where she received a distinction in children’s book illustration. Eva won the 2020 Klaus Flugge Prize with When Sadness Comes to Call, which also won a V&A award, book cover category.  Where Happiness Begins was published in 2020.

With such a broad range of illustrations and all the different approaches to storytelling in the longlist of this year’s Klaus Flugge Prize - the prize for the most exciting newcomer in picture books - it has been very inspiring for me to delve into and analyse the books. The shortlist contains five very distinctive books, that feel fresh, original and demonstrate a high standard of work. Parents, children and book lovers in general are lucky with all the new picture books they can choose from these days.

The fact that the books and illustrations are very different from each other in how they look and what they accomplish, reminds me of just how many functions a book can have. Picture books can be these beautiful and rich objects we can share with each other, talk about, enjoy and be comforted by. They can invite us to reflect on our life, our relationships and put our feelings into words and images, giving us the vocabulary we might need to deal with some of the more complicated issues in life. They can offer an escape and stir our imagination, make us wonder and test our own understanding of the world and our preconceived ideas. Some might even encourage us to be brave, as they remind us of the things that truly matter and that we can always return home.

Illustration, and especially the space between text and image and how they relate to each other, has such a vital importance to bring all these elements out in a book. It can build worlds for the words to live in. For children, a picture book can be their first encounter with art and art, in turn, I think, can help stimulate an appreciation for the beauty that can be found all around us. An appreciation that will enrich our lives and help to cultivate a sense of childlike wonder.

To have a prize that is focused on illustration alone, and that encourages new talent by celebrating their work and giving them more visibility, is hugely important in a time where so many new books get published every year, and new makers might otherwise get lost.

The longlist for the Klaus Flugge Prize is well worth perusing, as each of the books has their own story to tell and there are some exceptional and original new voices in illustration that I’m sure we will see more of in the future.

From these books, five of them stood out in particular, and make up this year's shortlist.

My Red Hat by Rachel Stubbs is a tender tale, full of love, showing the relationship between a grandfather and child. They share stories, adventures and dreams together and we get a sense of all the things that a grandparent might want to pass down to their grandchild, and the encouragement they can offer to go and discover the world on their own. This story unfolds in a very organic way and at a gentle pace, from spread to spread, with the red hat as a visual and thematic thread holding the words and images together. The unusual landscape format and the hand drawn typography fit the story and the illustrations perfectly.

Rachel Stubbs cleverly depicts childhood, with all its ups and downs, and the moments when you might get lost but are found again and return home, ‘to where you belong’. The looseness of the marks and the delicate lines add to the gentle and imaginative atmosphere and the limited colour palette gives it that extra nostalgic flavour, cherishing the innocence of childhood and the special bond that can exist between child and grandparent.

A book that stands out for its very original approach to the illustrations is While You’re Sleeping, illustrated by John Broadley and written by Mick Jackson. The book takes us through a night and its creatures, workers and wanderers. With its absence of a story arch or protagonist, there is a consistency and rhythm to the words and images that could work like the perfect bedtime lullaby.

The bold lines, limited colour palette and collage of patterns are reminiscent of the great English print-makers of the thirties and forties like Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, yet it feels utterly unique and there is an otherworldly quality to the artwork, with its wonky perspectives and stiff characters, adding a layer of mystery to this whole different world that seems to emerge at night.

The way the light is depicted in this book caught my eye - for the dark nighttime spreads we see beams of yellow light, with the indoor spaces like the hospital using the white of the page to indicate brightly lit spaces. Time passes slowly in this busy night, with clever transitions from the left hand to the right hand page, some compositions framed by walls and lamp posts, and other spreads bleeding off the borders creating a sense of vastness and timelessness. Though this book doesn’t tell a conventional story, it leaves you with a lot of threads of little narratives and a diverse range of characters you could make your own stories for. The illustrations are so rich with detail, that you will have plenty of room to meander through this book, and its night, and wonder about all the different lives that people are living simultaneously, and maybe in doing so, one might slowly drift away to sleep.

I was immediately drawn to the painterly and colourful illustrations by Charlotte Ager for Child of Galaxies, written by Blake Nuto. I was already familiar with her work, and it was interesting to see how she managed to bring her world and visual vocabulary to this text, and give a lot of abstract and big ideas a sense of place to simmer, allowing them to expand their meaning further. The fluid quality of the textures, marks and sketchy pencil lines, combined with a changing colour palette that help shift moods and meaning, fit the poetic text perfectly. Sometimes the words are paired with bold compositions, using what looks like collage with painted paper, or using the very spacious white of the paper itself, creating a lot of room for interpretation. Other times the text is accompanied by a more sensitive and emotive image, with shades of a limited colour palette and directional painted marks, or, for example, looming tree figures that frame a child. Scale, colours, textures and mark making are used to great effect by Charlotte Ager. The meditation on nature and the beauty all around in the illustrations, even when ‘shadows persist’, will offer the reader a lot of opportunities to reflect on the abstract ideas the text offers.The diverse range of characters makes this book feel inclusive and directed to all of us, just like the text reminds us we’re all made ‘from the stuff of the stars’.

Gustavo, the Shy Ghost is a classic story in its essence, about a shy little ghost wanting to make friends, who overcomes his own fear and reaches out. A story that will be relatable and comforting for those who experience similar shyness and insecurities (though I bet at times we all have a little bit of Gustavo in us and will recognise the universal fear of not being seen and invited to play). It’s hard not to like this character or not identify with the moments of longing and hesitation (oh, just imagine the anguish of missing a good opportunity like getting ‘eye-scream’ because you were too shy! Or wanting to get close to the girl you love but not knowing how to make yourself noticed).

This book is filled with details, textures, references and full of the strangest, yet adorable, creatures, that reappear throughout the book, with a lot to discover on each spread, making this book a joy to read and I imagine one to read again and again, reminding little ones that they are not alone.

The structure of the story and the pairing of text and image are very well crafted, there is not a word too much, and though the images are full of details to be enjoyed, it never feels cluttered or distracting, which is a remarkable feat. There is a strong sense of place, grounded in warm and muted colours, with Mexican influences and many references to The Day of the Dead, classic horror films and monsters. The palette of muted colours contrasted with warm orange and Mexican pink, and clever use of negative space as well, are integral to the storytelling and add to the sense of drama, and calm, where needed. Everything in this book, from cover to the final end papers, appears to be very considered, yet there is a light and playful touch that feels very generous and authentic, and Flavia Z Drago, not unlike Gustavo playing the violin, seems to reach out to us, the reader, by sharing her passion for illustration, storytelling and monsters, uncovering some of our deepest fears and longings with this very universal story.

I’m Sticking with You, illustrated by Steve Small and written by Smriti Halls is a character driven story, exploring friendship and the push and pull we can sometimes experience within relationships, especially with those people that are so very different to ourselves.

Bear and squirrel are very loveable characters, and Steve Small has allowed himself to zoom in on them, using only minimal background elements and props to nudge the story along, on otherwise crisp, white pages. The disparity between text and image is where the story is told and where the deadpan humour lays. The timing, scale and body language of the characters are always spot on, adding to the comedy and betraying Steve Small’s background in animation. There is a lovely twist in the book, emphasised by using a black background, and a change of direction to where the characters are going. Here we finally get to see and read the perspective of squirrel, who, after announcing he needs more space, actually misses his overBEARing friend a lot. An almost empty page shows his sudden understanding, and creates a very effective pause before he rushes back and we near the end of this story.

Looking at all these shortlisted books and seeing the different ways in which they excel and exemplify what illustration can do, reassures me that there are so many ways to tell a story, and so many stories to tell still. But also just how important it is to cultivate your own, unique (visual) storytelling voice as a picture book maker. The essence of the stories might not be new in any way - but the ways they are told feel original and personal, and give the reader the possibility to connect with the story, ideas and characters. I can’t wait to see what Steve Small, Flavia Z Drago, Charlotte Ager, John Broadly and Rachel Stubbs have in store for us in the future.

Find out more about the Klaus Flugge Prize on the website.

Do check out the picture gallery below showing:
Cover illustration and spreads for My Red Hat
Cover illustration and spreads for While You Are Sleeping
Cover illustration and spreads for Gustavo the Ghost
Cover illustration and spreads for I'm Sticking with You
Photograph of Eva Eland, copyright Signefotar

A big thank you to Eva Eland for a fantastic blog overview and to the Klaus Flugge Prize for the opportunity.

We are delighted to welcome Nansubuga Isdahl and Nicole Miles, author and illustrator of First Names: Nelson Mandela published by David Fickling Books to the blog to talk about the book, Nelson Mandela and their work and research!

1) Please can you introduce yourselves and tell us a little about your background and interests in children’s books?

Nansubuga Isdahl, author: Thanks! I’m Nansu. In short, I was born in the US and am of Ugandan heritage. My family and I currently live in Tanzania, but I’m typing this from Florida (US), where we’ve been taking cover for the past year. I write for international NGOs and UN agencies during the day, and I work on children’s books by night. I’ve always loved books, but became particularly interested in children’s books when I had my daughter and realized that the range of voices telling stories was severely limited and the industry was skewed towards certain perspectives.

Nicole Miles, illustrator: My name is Nicole and I’m from The Bahamas. I came to the UK for university and lived here since then. I find it difficult to explain my interest in children’s books because it’s so hard to imagine why anyone wouldn’t love children’s books! Haha I actually find the category to just be really engaging and accessible and there is a sincerity in kids’ books that can often get replaced by a cooler cynicism in books for older readers and, although that’s sometimes what I’m in the mood for, that sincerity in books for younger readers is just really lovely to me.

(2) How did the commission come about?

NI: My agent brought it to me after DFB had seen a travel series manuscript of mine. I had a call with the editor and they introduced the series. Serendipitously, I had been living in South Africa for years and the opportunity to write about Nelson Mandela fit perfectly with my interests.

NM:This story is maybe not so exciting, but David Fickling Books contacted me and asked if I would be interested in working with them on the series and I was available and interested.

(3) What kind of research was involved in planning the book?

NI: On my end, I read widely. This included Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, The Long Walk to Freedom, and other texts. I also did extensive on-line research, watched many movies, listened to the freedom songs from that time period, etc. I had already visited the Apartheid Museum in Johannesburg, so felt I had a grasp of that. Also, simply by living in Johannesburg, I was afforded a considerable amount of perspective about Nelson Mandela because his legacy is reflected throughout the city.

NM: On my part, there was a lot of visual research and, because photos of Black South Africans and their living and working spaces and so on at that time are likely very rare, there was a fair bit of sleuthing involved too. For anyone mentioned in the book I obviously would have to look up as many photos of them as I could find to draw them, but if Nelson is ever driving a car, for example, and the make and model are not named, I was looking up which cars of the time were popular and accessible, whether he would have had the newest model or a car that had been in circulation for a few years, which side of the road they drive on in South Africa and which side is the steering wheel on, and so on. I looked up police uniforms versus other official authorities’ uniforms and the political parties’ flags but made sure I got the emblems from the right era, and what kinds of casual clothing Nelson would have worn at university when he wasn’t in traditional dress or a suit. Basically a lot of time was spent searching online historical photo archives!

(4) What did you learn about Nelson Mandela that you didn’t previously know?

NI: I didn’t know that he had such a tremendous sense of humour. He was very charming, it seems, and I think his sense of humour was part of that charm.

NM:Maybe I should be embarrassed to admit it but, prior to reading Nansu’s manuscript, for me it was as though Nelson Mandela’s life started in middle age when he was sent to Robben Island in 1964, then there was another big gap in my knowledge spanning 27 years, after which he simply existed as a hero because of some vague ideas about fighting apartheid here and there. I respected him before coming to this book and understood that he was an important person, but it is truly an understatement to say I learned a lot working on this project.

5. How important do you feel biographies are for children and young people, and what can we learn from them?
   
   NI: I think biographies, especially those about people who are lesser known or who live in different parts of the world, are particularly important. Historical texts, including biographies, shape how we view the past and the present. I think biographies can help expand young people’s worldview and hopefully allow them to realize that not everything we’re taught reflects the totality of an experience or event. Rather, what we're taught often reflects an interpretation or one side of a story. I think it’s very important for children to learn that distinction early and to gain those critical analysis skills. Biographies are a great way to do this. Biographies can also put a personal face to historical events, which I think makes them far more engaging for children. Learning about apartheid in history class is one thing. Learning about it from Nelson’s life, and the impact it had on him and the people around him, adds a richness that is invaluable. It also helps children to develop empathy – another critically important life skill.
    

   NM:I am not someone who is disinterested in history or global civil rights movements and yet here was a huge oversight on my part about a man who made big waves globally and was the face of a massive movement. I imagine many people, especially anyone (like me) who was too young to have been aware of the events surrounding Mandela as “current affairs” as it was all unfolding, are similarly ignorant (or even less aware) than I was about him (and others in the movement who are also mentioned in the book). That ignorance is an important thing to correct because, as the saying goes “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it” and a past with so much avoidable cruelty and discrimination and pain for so many people would be a horrible thing to senselessly repeat. Biographies for young people are not simply a warning though. Historical biographies can serve as a source of inspiration to children to see that, even with so much against you, it is possible to overcome and that is not just pretty words; it happens. People do great things and overcome great difficulty. I think that’s important.

    

   
   (6) It feels as though schooling was a very important point in Nelson Mandela’s life, how formative do you think being educated in a British-style school was for him and what changes did he have to make because of this?
   
   NI: I think Nelson’s formal education helped to widen his perspective about the world. It also gave him access to jobs (i.e., being a lawyer) that would have been unlikely otherwise. I think given that he was a country boy, as he put it, he certainly had to acclimate to a more formal environment during his schooling. He also learned through his formal education that what was being taught in school differed greatly from what he was learning at home (e.g., about South African history). That tension was formative in helping develop his views about equality and justice.  So, Nelson essentially gained the skill of living in two worlds--the Western one through his schooling and the South African one. His ability to “cross over” worlds, if you will, was critically important in building bridges when he came President.

    

   NM: This is a fantastic and complex question. My understanding is that, while it benefitted him and made certain opportunities available to him that may not have been otherwise, the colonial school system also took from him his culture, his history and even his name — one could fairly say much of his sense of identity… There’s a part in the book where this confusion is expressed as he compares what he is learning in formal lessons with what he is learning from elders in his village. It’s interesting because, as someone who grew up and was educated in an ex-British colony (The Bahamas), I found this particularly interesting. It speaks a lot to colonisation and whether the benefits outweigh the many damages and how those subjected to the system can use it to their advantage (and, I would hope, to help those who didn’t benefit from it as Nelson did). When talking about the ills of colonisation, there is often a knee-jerk reaction from descendants of colonisers (and the pro-establishment colonised) that the meagre benefits (roads, education, etc.) were worth it in exchange for subjugation and being second-class citizens. I personally disagree, but I don’t think it’s a topic around which anyone need feel defensive. It will always be of huge benefit to be able to conform to the established norms (whether those established norms set by colonial powers, class expectations, gender expectations, etc), but I think it’s vital that people keep hold of who they are as well because no one story is more valid than another. I guess that’s what “code-switching” is essentially.
   
   (7)  How easy was it showing the growth and maturation of Nelson through the book?
   
   NI: I was working from an outline that I had developed before I started writing and so once I charted the decisive moments at each stage of his life, this became easier.
   
   NM: I think around middle age was the trickiest and I started to sneak a little greying in his hair to show that but I didn’t want him to read as being suddenly quite a lot older, especially since elderly-Nelson was narrating the book and that might get confusing towards the end. It was very helpful having my Art Director Katie pointing to when he needed to be older or younger in certain illustrations.
   
   (8)  Did you use any photos or source materials as background for characters and indeed for the village of Qunu and the Xhosa people?
   
   NI: I’m quite sure that Nicole did as I remember sending through some images that I thought might help.
   
   NM: Definitely! As many photos as I could find haha! In some instances, it was just hard to find examples that seemed to match up to time, place and description, but I was always looking up images before I started sketching anything.
   
   (9) The book could easily feel very serious but the illustrations play a wonderful role in infusing warmth and humour, how did the collaboration work?
   
   NI: Working with Nicole (via the series editor) was lovely. I’m not sure how many rounds of the illustrations she did before they got to me, but the editor would send through roughs and final versions at various stages and I could provide my feedback or comments, based on what I understood of the context and Nelson’s life. I felt very fortunate to have been able to contribute in some small way to Nicole’s really brilliant interpretation of the book.
   
   NM: When I first started the project I was initially a little nervous that it needed to be serious, almost a little distant in tone. So, even though I probably enjoy being playful and humorous in my work more often, when I submitted my first samples they were all pretty stiff and serious. The feedback was that the team wasn’t keen on that direction and actually wanted the lighter tone that I preferred. After a conversation with Katie to talk things over and her pointing to some things in my portfolio that she felt had a closer tone to the one they were going for, I was much clearer on (and happier with) the direction and sent over a sample that employed more of the humour you see in the book now. I was very relieved that we were actually on the same page. I feel it’s much more engaging than a more classically “educational” approach would be, without being disrespectful where a more sombre tone is required.

   
   
   (10)  What is next for you both?
   
   NI: I’m currently working on (writing, drafting, brainstorming) more middle grade novels than anyone should be at one time!
   
   NM: I’ve got a few books coming out this year including Walking for Waterby Susan Hughes which is based on the true story of a little boy in Malawi who realises the world is quite different for him and his twin sister and that is coming out 1 June. Then in autumn of this year the first book in Joel Ross’ funny Alley & Rex middle grade series is coming out. I’m illustrating Viviane Elbee’s I Want My Book Back about a dinosaur-obsessed kid who wants his library book about dinosaurs back, which is out in spring 2022. Then autumn of that year sees Groundhog Gets It Wrong hitting shelves.

   
   It’s a real joy for me to be able to work on so many great book projects and I’ve got a few exciting non-publishing projects popping up this year too. My Instagram is probably the best place to keep up with what I’m up to.

A big thank you to Nansubuga and Nicole for the interview and to David Fickling Books for the opportunity.