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On the Wall - An Interview with Anne Fine

Posted By Jacob Hope, 05 September 2024

 

We are delighted to welcome Anne Fine, twice-winner of the Carnegie Medal and former Children's Laureate, to the blog to introduce her new book On the Wall and share her thoughts one of its lead characters, Finley.  On the Wall is published by Old Barn Books.



It’s perhaps as well that children don’t come, like sweets, as a Pick-and-Mix 
choice. We all know what we’d be tempted to choose. But mostly, instead, we end up with a pack of All Sorts.

 

I have a host of sisters. My mother only had to raise an eyebrow at one for the poor soul to fetch up on the edge of tears. But Mum could scold another till her throat ran dry, and all that sister would do was stubbornly stand, arms folded, till she could welly in with her own tirade and fearlessly argue her case.

 

So one of most interesting things when writing about the young stems from the fact that they have such astonishingly differing personalities, and such wide emotional ranges. Take Stolly, in Up on Cloud Nine - without a doubt the most eccentric child I’ve ever tried to portray. He makes a raft for his gerbils. He can’t help but tidy the queue at his bus stop. He even starts to build his own personal Wailing Wall. He drives everyone, including his best friend Ian, to distraction.

 

Yet Stolly’s still in mainstream school, and rolling along nicely. And that’s one of the things I find most fascinating about schools. They take in pretty well everyone, the All Sorts, and by and large everyone learns to fit in and rub along.

 

There are exceptions, of course. Children like Josh in The Ladder of Fear(one of the short stories in Blue Moon Day), who has to be taught how to overcome his almost overwhelming anxieties about school. Or unhappy and awkward Tulip, in The Tulip Touch, whose own appalling classroom behaviour and frequent truancy stems from her horribly stressful home background. I’m sure the relentless show-off Titania, in the three comedies about the Mountfield Family (The More the MerrierEating Things on Sticks and Trouble in Toadpool) would prove a bit too much for most of those around her in her class.

 

But I’ve found it hard not to fall halfway in love with the young boy I feature in my new novel, On the Wall. Finley is moving up to secondary school. Those of his classmates who come from the same feeder primary already know him well. But those who don’t, and a goodly number of the staff now set to teach him, find themselves mystified by this unusually quiet and contemplative, but in no way shy, spirit. With his quite extraordinary gift for stillness and his seemingly cast-iron happiness, Finley appears to exist in his own private peaceable kingdom. What on earth makes the boy tick?

 

And how, by simply sitting unflappably on the wall of the recreation ground, does Finley end up having such a strong effect on both pupils and staff? For somehow, in his presence, nervous Juliet learns how better to deal with her previously relentless and intrusive worries. Overly excitable Akeem can be calmed. Even Miss Fuentes, suddenly bereft of her precious cat, finds his simple closeness on the bench beside her a tremendous comfort. It’s as if Finley’s acceptance of himself spreads outwards, to become an easy acceptance of how others are, giving them a confidence they find both soothing and healing.

 

Like many authors, I need a lot of time alone and a good deal of silence. Putting a character who has those same needs into a school became a sort of thought experiment. Sarah Maitland observed that most children tend to ‘disappear behind a wall of noise’. I chose to look more deeply into one who chooses to do the opposite. And I found it amusing and enlightening to work out, first, what fellow pupils and teachers would make of him, and how they might interpret his behaviour and even benefit from his presence.

 

Though there have always been children who come over as ‘different’ in children’s literature, this is a novel that wouldn’t have been written in quite the way it is before the sea-change in teaching whereby the nurture of the individual child began to be taken at least as seriously as the smooth-running education of the herd. And as a result, more and more of those of us who have dealings with young people are fully aware that disquieting numbers of our children now suffer from things like deep anxiety, or loneliness. For these, books can be a lifeline. We do, after all, read partly to know that we are not alone, and reading about someone else’s path out of an emotional mire can offer shafts of light, and ways to go.


A big thank you to Anne Fine for the blog and to Nicky Potter and Old Barn Books for the opportunity.  

 

Tags:  Anxiety  Carnegie Medal  Children's Laureate  Children's Reading  Mindfulness  Reading for Pleasure 

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Global Market Matters - We welcome Emma Shevah as our first electronic writer in residence

Posted By Jacob Hope, 24 September 2019

The Youth Libraries Group is delighted to have a new writer or illustrator in residence programme.  Each individual will be in post for a three month tenure and will be selected on the basis of championing an under-represented form of writing or illustration, helping to shine a light upon this, or else because they champion an underrepresented community.  We are delighted that Emma Shevah has agreed to be our first electronic writer in resident.  If you have not come across her books, we can highly recommend these.  This electronic residency will form a part of our Raising Voices initiative more of which will be announced soon.

 

Hello. I’m Emma Shevah and I’m honoured to have been asked to be the YLG’s first electronic Writer-in-Residence. I’m the author of three Chicken House books for 8-12s (Dream on Amber, Dara Palmer’s Major Drama and What Lexie Did), and an early reader with Bloomsbury (Hello Baby Mo!). My fourth MG novel will be published in summer 2020.

 

As a Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) author writing about BAME characters, the findings of this week’s Reflecting Realities CPLE report on Ethnic Representation in Children’s Literature have been interesting. They reveal that only 4% of UK children’s books published in 2018 had BAME main characters—up 1% from 2017 but still unpardonably low. Hopefully, my 2018 offering was included in that percentage, but Lexie is Greek Cypriot and the BAME acronym’s ‘minority ethnic’ definition is unclear (more on that next month).

 

Meanwhile, a PhD student interviewed me recently: her department at the University of Leicester is researching artists, writers and musicians, and how they manage - or don’t - to finance their creative lives. She asked about my writing process, my books, and whether I need to undertake other work. Four of her questions struck me. What percentage of your income is from writing? followed by what percentage of your time is spent writing? (face palm moment). Would you recommend writing as a career? And do you think it’s different for BAME writers?

 

Hmm. Writing about BAME characters can pose financial problems. The UK’s drive for diversity in children’s books is not necessarily shared globally, and contemporary novels about diverse characters and/or family situations can be difficult to sell internationally as they may not reflect the experiences and situations of cultures overseas. The reason there are more animal protagonists than BAME ones is that animals are generic and therefore translatable: a lion learning about his identity is likely to sell in many more territories than one about a mixed-raced child in Luton with same-sex parents. Publishing is an industry, and for authors and publishers, global markets matter.

 

Back home, there are issues, too. UK book buyers for the under 12s are predominantly (white, as that is the demographic) parents. While some are just relieved their children are reading and will buy any book they choose, others cherry-pick ‘literary’ books of ‘quality’ that will further their children’s schooling rather than ones that will widen their cultural and sociological understanding of modern Britain. Writing contemporary novels in the first person doesn’t help: I write in a style and vernacular that mirrors today’s eleven-year-olds, who tend not to talk in lyrical language rich in metaphors and similes. Historical, fantasy and third-person narratives free authors of this limitation.  A very small number of books scoop up the majority of sales, and once they sell well, more resources are put behind them from publishers and retailers so they sell even more, leaving little space and money for the rest. Celebrity authors are the new vogue, too, for the same reason. And while school librarians tweet photos of my dog-eared books, saying there’s a queue for them, which I love, those many readers are reading just one book.

 

These factors affect sales, and low sales negatively affect the ability of BAME writers to earn a living from writing. Of course, most writers share this problem. But without strong UK sales and foreign rights, generic stories about bears will continue to trump BAME characters and their specific experiences. There are further issues: with the BAME acronym, with the immigrant work ethos influencing/ dominating the career choices of first generation children where writing is not a valid career option, and the unconscious (or possibly conscious) collective bias that means books about young British Muslims have more chance of being published and promoted than ones about young British Jews.

 

What percentage of my income is from writing? Less than 5%. What percentage of my time is spent doing it? Oh God. 40%? Rising to 70-80% in the school holidays? Would I recommend writing as a career? No. See above. But this is also subjective: I’m a lone parent with four children living in an expensive part of the country. I have a demanding full-time job, and a part-time evening job, and when I should be gathering strength and enjoying my children, I’m exhausting myself by tapping relentlessly on a laptop keyboard. My books haven’t sold in forty territories – eight is the most so far, and this is good, especially as it includes the US and Canada, where—thanks to The Odyssey Honour award and New York Times, Wall Street Journal, People magazine and starred library journal reviews– my profile and sales are higher than they are here. But this still isn’t enough to provide me with more time and space for writing.

 

Are my BAME books getting out there, making a difference, changing the world and its shameful statistics? Who knows. I’m tired. I’d like to stop for a while because I value my health and my family, and need, really, to focus on my reliably-paid jobs. Is this experience shared by other BAME writers? No idea. Our experiences of writing are as personal as our stories.

 

Obviously, I’d love to see more BAME protagonists in UK children’s books. I wrote about the dearth of South East Asian characters in The Bookseller and write them myself to ensure they exist. But parents need to buy them, booksellers and librarians continue to promote, showcase and encourage readership of them, teachers use them in the classroom and add them to reading lists and curriculums, and the ‘canon’ adapt to incorporate them. BAME writers must have money and room if they are to write, and, importantly, to continue writing.

 

Is it different for BAME writers? I think it is. We’re in the peripheral vision, finally. But there’s still such a long way to go.

 

Tags:  Children's Reading  Diversity  Libraries  Raising Voices  Reading for Pleasure 

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