At the start of National Libraries Week we are delighted to welcome Sibeal Pounder to discuss her approach in researching and writing Beyond Platform 13, the brilliantly imaginative novel that re-enters Eva Ibbotson's magical world.  Sibeal also discusses the Easter Eggs she interlaced through the story, how many are you able to spot?

 

I read the The Secret of Platform 13 for the first time when I was nine years old and fell in love with Eva Ibbotson’s stories. When I was asked to write a sequel it was incredibly surreal and very important to me that I got the heart of the book right – that it felt as much like an Eva book as possible – and that I developed the characters and world in a way I believed Eva would.

 

 It began with research ­– and I started by reading and listening to every interview with Eva, and re-reading the book, hoping to find clues. I had a two-pronged approach for the initial research, which involved looking at two key areas. The first was to find any clues that hinted at how she would develop the world and characters. For example, in the The Secret of Platform 13, she adds in a throwaway about the gumps and writes that every country in the world has one. To me this felt like a classic world building mechanism, which would allow her to expand the world in a sequel should she wish to return. There is the possibility that, as she was published internationally, she added it in as a way of being inclusive, so her fans around the world would read the book and although they were not based in London, they would know that somewhere nearby was a gump to be discovered. It’s difficult to know, but I feel it’s deliberately placed to accommodate a potential return, and the reason she never did go back to the Island of Mist was, I believe, more to do with external factors – things that would set her writing on a different course.

 

The main event that would set her on a different course was a truly heartbreaking one for Eva – her beloved husband Alan Ibbotson passed away. Afterwards, she commented that she just didn’t feel like being funny anymore, and so she turned to writing a different style of children’s fiction and Journey to the River Sea was born. It became one of her bestselling books, along with The Secret of Platform 13, and won the Smarties Prize for children’s fiction.

 

I felt I had enough evidence to support the idea that when writing the first book she engineered a framework that would allow her to return to the world, so I used her throwaway comment about the gumps as the basis for expanding the world in the sequel.

 

The second element of my research was to go back in order to go forward. I think authors, subconsciously or otherwise, create characters with similar characteristics to people they know in real life, so I wanted to figure out who the characters might be loosely based on. If I could do that I’d have a better understanding of where to take the characters – and crucially, would be able to establish where Eva would not take them.

 

One of my favourite parallels I uncovered in my research is to do with the character Ben. He is an interesting one in terms of development as he is the prince of the island and so wields much power. He was on my list of characters to evolve and potentially corrupt, so I wanted to figure out exactly how Eva saw him.  I had a suspicion that he was in many ways Alan Ibbotson – he’s incredibly kind and gracious and gentle and loves the natural world and all creatures. These were all qualities Eva mentioned when discussing her husband.

 

In the book Ben creates a den for the mistmaker creature and hides him under his bed. In an interview Eva mentions her husband had an ant farm and he hid it under his bed! I loved that detail and the parallel with Ben. It convinced me that there were enough similarities between the two and therefore Ben was good to his bones and not someone she would ever think to corrupt in the story. So that was very helpful in guiding the development of Ben.

 

The Ibbotson family were so wonderful in being available on email, and her son Justin was incredibly kind and told me to stop in for tea any time I was passing by. One thing I decided not to do was mine the family for information. At first I was conflicted, because they knew her best, but I felt uncomfortable for reasons I couldn’t initially put my finger on. I think authors share a lot in their work, but they also hold things back for the people in their life – I can imagine this is especially true if you have children. Not every special moment or tradition goes into a book. Not everything in real life is to be plucked for fiction. I really wanted to respect that boundary that Eva would’ve established and I worried how I would distinguish where that boundary lay if I dived into her private life as a way of informing the fiction.

 

Luckily I had to write a very detailed synopsis before I started writing, and this was to be approved by her children. In order to write the synopsis I had to do most of the research, and one of the things I found was an interview with one of her sons in which he discusses Spludger cake. This was no ordinary cake and it was very famous in the Ibbotson household – she would make it for their New Years Eve parties and it was a real feature. I loved the name, and I loved the idea of Eva making it for her family every New Years Eve. I decided to use Spludger cake as a test. I added it to the synopsis and highlighted it, explaining where I got it from. Interestingly, the only hard no from her children was a note asking me kindly to please not include Spludger cake. 

 

That confirmed for me that the way I was going about my research was the most respectful to Eva and her children. I still haven’t found any instance where she mentions Spludger cake – I think it was something she kept just for them.

 

I also had fun adding in Easter eggs for super fans. I wanted the book to read on multiple levels, for those who were discovering Eva’s world for the first time, all the way up to those super fans who know her and her work so well. I won’t list all the Easter eggs as it’s fun to see if people spot them, but one I love is Netty, the new hag in the story. She’s called Netty as a nod to Newcastle, where Eva lived for many years and raised her family – it’s Geordie slang for toilet and I felt it was perfect for a hag. Another one I like is Eva once commented in an interview that if she got stuck when writing a story she would add an aunt in, so when Lina is physically stuck some ghostly aunts appear to help her. There is also a scene when Lina makes a big speech, only to realise her microphone is round the wrong way – that is a nod to Eva’s Smarties prize acceptance speech for Journey to the River Sea. She later spoke of how she held the microphone at the wrong end and no one could hear her. I knew she would keep hold of that to use in a story one day. 

To mark National Libraries Week, Samantha Lockett recounts her experiences at the  Youth Libraries Group conference.  Samantha won the bursary kindly sponsored by Browns Books for Students. Her account is a powerful reminder of the importance of training and development within the profession.

The theme of this year’s Youth Libraries Group conference was Reading the Future. Sponsored by Enid Blyton Entertainment, it was a celebration of the old and new, looking back on childhood favourites – such as Blyton – while discussing how these can be reimagined for modern audiences. Alongside the nostalgia, there was a sense of immediacy, an awareness that children’s fiction, literacy and libraries must be fought for. The conference explored many of the key issues in contemporary children’s fiction – such as the rights and representation of women, the need for diverse and inclusive books and the promotion of empathy. Throughout the conference, authors, panelists, poets and publishers stressed the importance of reading for pleasure. Reading may not be an instant joy to all children, but with enough support it can become one.  

Within minutes of arriving at the Mercure hotel, I found myself part of a group marching towards Central Library in the torrential Manchester rain. As a visitor to the city, I had only ever ducked into the library, too intimidated by the grand architecture and swish café to do more than browse the gift shop. The tour was an eye-opening experience, giving us backstage (backstacks?) access to the many hidden wonders of the library, including the restoration room and archives. As you might expect from a collective of children’s librarians, we were reluctant to move on from the Children’s Library with its delightful Secret Garden theme, but with lunch imminent we said goodbye to Central Library and headed back. The conference was about to begin. 

That first day, I overheard somebody say, ‘Only the YLG!’. As I watched the opening courtroom skit – three librarians dressed in wigs and gowns, interrogating a series of witnesses, including Anthony McGowan and Non Pratt, about what makes a reader, I could understand why. Only at the YLG Conference. As the weekend went on, it became my internal refrain. Ginger beer cocktails? Only the YLG. A midnight feast? Only the YLG. A lollipop shaped like the decapitated head of Frankenstein’s monster? Only the YLG! One of the things I most enjoyed about the conference was that it encouraged people to have fun, to be a little silly. The poet Matt Goodfellow got an entire room of bookish people to act out his poem Chicken on the Roof. Philip Reeve and Sarah McIntyre had us in hysterics as they led a group drawing session of Kevin, the flying pony hero of their new book. Audience participation – one of the most feared phrases in the English language – was met with applause. What wizardry was this?! 

With such a jam-packed programme, I was worried about sensory overload. However, the programming worked extremely well, mixing formats – a panel followed by a poetry performance followed by a publisher roadshow – to great effect. I particularly enjoyed the tea break sessions; thirty minutes of listening to brilliant authors while eating themed-snacks may be my new favourite thing in life. On the second day, delegates were given a choice of breakout sessions to attend. I chose ‘Literacy by Stealth’ – a discussion of how the Book Bench project and Read Manchester initiatives have engaged disadvantaged communities in Manchester, increasing tourism and library visits – and ‘Life Online’ – a two-part session delivered by CILIP’s Andrew Walsh and the author Nicola Morgan about information literacy and the preconceptions we hold about teenagers and technology. I found both sessions to be hugely informative, giving practical advice, such as how to reach underrepresented groups and forge connections with partner organisations, that I have since followed in my own library. Another session that I thoroughly enjoyed detailed the painstaking creation of the children’s poetry book, I Am the Seed That Grew the Tree: A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year. The book’s illustrator, Frann Preston Gannon, and its publisher, Kate Wilson of Nosy Crow, took us through the stages of its creation, from early sketches to the final cover art. It was astonishing to see how much work – and passion – went into producing the book.  As I walked around the Exhibition Room, where publishers showcased their new and upcoming releases, I had a greater appreciation for… books. For everyone who plays a part in making them. I was so excited that children and young adults would soon be reading these incredible titles, and, as a public library, we would be doing our part in providing them. 

Frank Cottrell-Boyce made me cry. He may also have made a nun cry, if his opening anecdote was anything to go by. His keynote speech was so full of sincerity, humour and wild, unrepentant bookish love, that my notes became a scribbled explosion of his quotes. My favourite is this: ‘only books catch all the voices’. Books, according to Cottrell-Boyce, stand for complication. There is a democracy to books. This, I believe, is one of the key themes of the conference. Reading the Future does not mean forgetting the past. In his closing speech, YLG Chair Jake Hope mentioned that he always intended for illustrator and author, Jackie Morris, to be the final act of the conference. Co-created with Robert Macfarlane, her book – The Lost Words – brings lost words back into being. It is a beautiful book, full of Macfarlane’s “spells” and Morris’ uncanny illustrations. Watching Morris paint an otter into life was an experience I will never forget. It showed how books, as tangible, living things, can bring people together. Not just a conference room of strangers, but families and classrooms and communities. What wizardry indeed.  

I would need another thousand words to write about all the other wonderful things I saw at the YLG Conference. Or maybe ten thousand words, including the words I SAW MALORIE BLACKMAN AND SHE SPOKE KLINGON. As it is, I will just say thank you to Browns Books for Students for the bursary, and to the YLG committee for organising it all. It was absolutely brilliant. 


Samantha Lockett is a Library Assistant at Holmes Chapel Library in Cheshire East. She is currently studying for an MA in Information and Library Studies at Aberystwyth University.