To end our week long blog takeover celebrating the publication of The Mab, we are delighted to host an interview with author and the inaugural postholder for the Children's Laureate Wales, Eloise Williams.

Do you remember reading the Mabinogi when you were a kid?

No. Not at all. I think we may have done something to do with King Arthur at some point but there wasn’t a specific reference to Wales. I grew up in Llantrisant in Rhondda Cynon Taff, was a voracious reader, lived opposite a library and took home stacks of books all the time. It seems so strange that I didn’t know anything about these stories. I’m hopeful that The Mab will change this situation for lots of young people.

Why do you think stories are important?

They give us an insight to our ancestors. How they lived, their values, what they thought was important. It turns out that the things which mattered to them are still common themes in our lives today. Love, grief, fortune, war, friendship, the wisdom of listening to animals and nature, the way life can turn on a penny. Stories are such an important part of keeping the voices of the people alive. I hope that these stories will be a celebration of past and present and that they’ll be told in new voices in the future too.

Why did you want to retell the story of Blodeuwydd?

Blodeuwedd, like so many of the women of The Mab, is such an interesting character. A woman, conjured entirely from flowers by a magician because a cursed man wants a wife will surely have a lot to say about her situation? It was really interesting to explore her actions and the consequences of them in the ancient landscape they were originally set in but with 21^st Century sensibilities. She’s inventive, cunning and manipulative, and why shouldn’t she be? She is taken from the freedom of her existence and forced into a life she doesn’t want. The extent to which she takes things to escape that life are murderous and I don’t want to give too much away, but they involve a bath and a goat.

What are some of your favourite bits from The Mab?

There are so many wonderful moments. Creepy bits and weird bits. Moving storylines and belly laughs. Nothing is as expected. The stories are surprising and strange and completely unpredictable! I like so many things about each of the stories and find something new in them with every reading. My favourite bits change daily.

Was there anything about the process of creating The Mab that you think has had a lasting effect on you?

Yes. Working collaboratively has been a joy. I’ve learned such a lot from creating The Mab with Matt Brown. He is just brilliantly calm and focussed, where I am more tempestuous and impulsive. He has a unique style of comedy and is such a generous and hardworking person to collaborate with. Writing can be a very solitary career, and it has been really fantastic to have someone there to bounce ideas off. The whole process has been truly amazing. It has opened my eyes to a whole new world of possibilities.

A big thank you to Eloise Williams for the incredible interview.  Special thanks too, to Max Low, illustrator of the The Mab for use of its brilliant cover.

We are delighted to celebrate publication week of The Mabwith a week-long blog takeover.  Here Matt Brown introduces us to The Mab, its themes and authors.

The Mab is a collection of eleven retellings of the epic Welsh stories from the Mabinogi. These stories are really, really, really old. Really. In fact, there are some clever people who think that they might be the oldest, ever, written-down stories in the history of Britain (you know, the sort of people who wear brown jumpers and stroke their chins and say things like “I think you’ll find that…”, or “I simply don’t agree…”, or “HELP! HELP! I’ve lost my trousers”).

The stories were first collected together in the 14^th century in two books, Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch (the White Book of Rhydderch), and Llyfr Coch Hergest (the Red Book of Hergest). But really, the stories of the Mabinogi are even older than that because individual stories may have been written down before the Norman invasion in 1066. And the stories almost certainly would have been performed and shared, orally, between people for many hundreds of years before that.

But as well as being really, really, really old, the stories in The Mab are thrilling and funny and full of MAGIC. They are stories of monsters, and magicians, of knights, and a giant who has a cauldron that can bring the dead back to life, a storyteller who catches bandits, and a team of avenging heroes who ride an enormous fish. I mean, what’s not to love, right?

The stories in The Mab take place in both the real world and the Otherworld. The Otherworld is the Celtic land of magic and enchantment, a world that exists alongside the ‘real’ world but that is separate. Well, it is for most of the time. The stories in The Mab reveal that there are gateways between the real world and the Otherworld and that sometimes it was possible to step between the two. The stories begin when a prince called Pwyll stands on a hill and falls in love with Rhiannon, a queen from the Otherworld. Now, in many fairytales the story ends when two people fall in love, or get married. Not so in The Mab. Time and time again, marriage or love signals the beginning of people’s problems. Once Pwyll and Rhiannon get together, something awful happens to them. And so it goes for Lleu who has a woman conjured from flowers to be his bride. And Culhwch, who falls in love with Olwen. And Geraint, one of King Arthur’s trusted knights, who falls in love with Enid. And, well, you get the idea.

It seemed strange and sad to us that there wasn’t a retelling of all eleven Mabinogi stories for kids. That’s why we created The Mab. We wanted to make sure that a whole new generation could fall in love with these incredible and extraordinary stories. The stories have been retold by some of the best kids’ authors, writers and poets and we’re very excited to have such an amazing roster of talent. Authors like Sophie Anderson (The House With Chicken Legs), PG Bell (The Train To Impossible Places), Nicola Davies (The Song That Sings Us), Alex Wharton (Daydreams and Jellybeans), Claire Fayers (Stormhound) and many others. The book has beautiful, full-colour illustrations by Max Low and each story has been translated into Welsh by Bethan Gwanas. The result is, we think, unlike any version of the Mabinogi that has come before. It is crisp, fresh, exciting, funny and packed full of mystery and suspense. We can’t wait for people to read it and we hope you love it too.

A big thank you to Matt Brown for this introductory blog.  Keep your eyes peeled for further blogs on The Mab each day this week!  Special thanks too, to Max Low, illustrator of the The Mab for use of its brilliant cover.