"Books can help us remember what we have in common" - Five Questions with Deborah Ellis

On March 20, we were involved in a series of events with author and peace activist Deborah Ellis.

Deborah was on a UK tour from her home in Ontario, Canada - and if there is a single word which comes to mind about the visit, it's 'privileged' - because it was a word we have heard a lot from those that met her and heard her speak. Privileged and inspired to listen to this humble, softly spoken but powerful individual talk about her books and her life.

Deborah has written over twenty books, and is probably best-known for her international bestseller The Breadwinner, as well as many other works of fiction and non-fiction about children all over the world. She has won numerous book awards, including Sweden’s Peter Pan Prize and the Jane Addams Children’s Book Award (for promoting peace and social justice).

Deborah first visited Didcot Girl's School, where she spoke to the girls about some of the themes which she weaves into her books. The Breadwinner is the story of Pervana, a girl in Afghanistan forced to pretend to be a boy in order to earn money to help her family survive when her father is taken away by Taliban soldiers.

The story was inspired by conversations that she had had with girls whilst visiting Afghan refugee camps, and she was very careful to explain to the girls in the audience about these themes: of suffering, inequality and cruelty of course - but most of all courage that she encountered, the thing that most inspires her.

In her most recent book, 'My Name Is Parvana', Parvana her self is now fifteen and dealing with the consequences of foreign soldiers in her country. When she is taken away by American soldiers and accused of terrorism, everything that Parvana has worked for in building a new life for her and her family threatens to come crashing down...

Her talk was genuinely inspirational, if difficult at times to listen to - particularly when she was reading from another of her most recent books, based on interviews with 'Kids of Kabul' and the daily realities of struggling to go to school in the face of uncertainty and the economic hardships they face. 

Deborah is above all an advocate for the disenfranchised and oppressed, talking calmly but passionately about the capacity money and power have to make people's lives better - or much, much worse. She donates much of her royalties to charities such as UNICEF and Canadian Women for Women in Afghanistan (more than a million dollars in royalties from her Breadwinner books alone).

After speaking at Didcot, and answering lots of questions about how she writes, and the children she has met, we brought her to Abingdon (where she spent some time exploring the town), and from there she spoke to children at Our Lady's Senior School, and the Oxford Children's Book Group in the evening.

We are extremely grateful to OUP for offering us the chance to be part of Deborah's tour, and huge thanks to Deborah for spending time talking to children around Oxfordshire.

Whilst at Mostly Books, we got the chance to ask Deborah a few questions about her writing life...

Five questions with...Deborah Ellis' Writing Life

1.    What are you working on at the moment? 

"The Cat At The Wall" due for publication in the Autumn. It's a book set in Israel's West Bank.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given? 

If you really want to do it, keep doing it, don't give up, even if people tell you what you are writing is 'crap'.

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?

The best thing about writing is getting to meet kids from all over the world. There is no bad thing about writing for children (or nothing I would go 'on the record' for!)

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing of snack essential before you can start work? 

No - just a pen and notebook.

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?

When I published my first book. It was called 'Looking for X' and published by OUP. This changed everything for me, because there is a whole universe of difference between being an unpublished and published writer.

Shifty and Dangerous: Tracey Corderoy, Andy Mulligan and 'Ways Into Reading' with the OCBG

How many ways into reading? Well, let me count the ways... 

Last Saturday, Mostly Books were proud to be supporting the Oxford Children's Book Group for their annual day conference 'Ways Into Reading'.

An imaginative and illuminating programme of speakers took to the stage at Oxford University Press (in the same building as the OUP Museum) with the focus being on the myriad of ways that are available to develop a deep and abiding love of reading amongst children.

The audience consisted of librarians, teachers, educational professionals, children's publishers, authors and readers - and subjects ranged from the magic of reading aloud and story sacks to the changing role of children's written language, and the importance of 'dangerous' books...

Victor Watson - author of the Paradise Barn series - kicked off with a look at the power and allure of series fiction.

Series fiction is often dismissed critically, but Victor recounted how one small boy described reading a new book as entering a room full of strangers, but that series fiction was like 'a room full of friends'.

He described his own journey into books with Malcolm Saville's 'Seven White Gates' and the dawning realisation that there were other books in the series, and that Malcolm was still writing them...

Because the most important books that children read are the ones that they read on their own, series fiction which hooks the reader - whether a successive or progressive series - are a powerful way of fostering a love of independent reading, in Malcolm's words of 'being on edge for that first page', of walking into that familiar room.

It's a theme which parallel's Neil Gaiman's comments this week that fostering a love of reading, at its simplest, is "finding books that they enjoy, giving them access to those books, and letting them read them".

A good series seems a fantastic way of achieving this.

The team behind the The Phoenix Comic (Caro and Tom Fickling) gave a passionate plea for comics (and comics as opposed to graphic novels) as a way for children to develop a love of reading.

(And as someone who grew up reading almost nothing but The Beano, Tornado and 2000AD in my younger years, I wholeheartedly agree)

The Phoenix Comic - successor to the early DFC - is possibly the most important comic currently being published, given its commitment to the highest quality writing and artwork. Caro and Tom shared experiences of the comic so far, the humbling feedback which flows in from readers and parents - and shared plans for the future direction under the auspices of its publisher, the newly-independent David Fickling Books.

Tracey Corderoy is a big favourite at Mostly Books, with books such as Shifty McGifty and Slippery Sam, The Very Messy Mermaid and The Little White Owl being some of our bestselling children's books in recent years.

Tracey grew up in Port Talbot, in a house with no books, and told a tale of a girl being transformed into a reading machine by the multi-sensory magic of seeing books brought to life through all kinds of creative ways - something she does with her own books, with story sacks, dressing up, theatrical performances - and even live ducks in bookshops!

Author Susie Day meeting Tracey Corderoy

Intrigued to discover more, in between signing books afterwards, we wanted to find out more about Tracey's writing life...

Five Questions With...Tracey Corderoy's Writing Life

1. What are you working on at the moment?
I'm working on Hubble Bubble young fiction #2 and #3 (a follow-up to Hubble Bubble: Glorious Granny Bake-off). I’m also working on a sequel to Shifty McGrifty.

2. What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
The best tip I was ever given was to ‘just tell the story’. Don’t worry about all the pieces being in place.

3. What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?
The best is the immediate feedback you are able to get from children, I love that. The worst is deadlines, which I think must be quite common. I find them very constraining.

4. Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing or snack essential before you can start work?
(Thinks for a moment). Mmm, not really. I think it’s important *not* to give yourself ‘kit’ actually. Otherwise, if you don’t have it, it gives you an excuse not to write. I will write anywhere, on anything – even if I don’t feel like it.

5. What was your biggest breakthrough?
It has to be the day, after three years or so of rejections, when someone got in touch to say they really liked 'Grunt and Grouch', and could I come in and have a chat about producing a book with them, as characters. That was very special.

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The conference featured a talk by the team behind Project X at OUP, and also Vineeta Gupta publisher of Children’s Dictionaries at OUP looking at the changing nature of children's language, particular some of the work they've done analysis the language patterns in the 40 million words from 90,000 short story entries in the Radio 2 short story competition. From children's favourite character names (Lucy and Jack) to the most popular 'new' word (Gangnam!) the '500 words' project is well worth discovering more about (and the BBC did a feature on this back in May).

Finally, Andy Mulligan - author of 'Trash' and the Ribblestrop books - gave a talk about dangerous books. Andy's own brush with danger (experiencing the reality of daily gun-battles whilst on the set of the film of 'Trash') Andy talked about the power of prose, and a different take on finding books that children *want* to read. And providing an extreme example of his own experiment in opening the door to a group of reluctant teen readers (it involved the book American Psycho and a not inconsiderable amount of flack from parents).

Andy's latest book 'The Boy With Two Heads' is about a mild-mannered, delightful 10 year old boy who suddenly grows another head. Cue confusion in dealing with an alter ego who is rude, arrogant and occasionally downright nasty. Anyone with teenagers might just get where Andy is coming from - and where he goes with this delightfully literal take on the adolescent and the emergence of a different persona...

We were also lucky to be able to chat with Andy, and ask him some questions as well...

Five Questions With...Andy Mulligan's Writing Life

1.  What are you working on at the moment?
I’m working on a book about the first world war, to be published next year. It’s about a 14 year old boy in this age, who becomes obsessed about a 14 year old boy who goes to war in 1914.

2. What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
Get to the end. I don’t mean to sound smug, but it’s very easy to start something, in a burst of enthusiasm, but you’ve got to get to the finish line, even if you finish badly.

3. What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?
The best is spending time with children, as characters, because as a children’s writer your characters will often be children. The worst (thinks very hard). Mmm, nope, I really can’t think of anything – what have other writers said?!

4.  Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing or snack essential before you can start work?
Mmm. A laptop (that sounds a bit dull, doesn’t it?). I have to say that, although not an essential, I love writing on a train, it’s the rhythm of the train that just seems to help with the writing process.
5. What was your biggest breakthrough?
I think – for me – it was the when I realised what the ending was going to be for ‘Trash’. There was this moment, I was in Manilla, a typhoon was approaching, I was walking around and the heaven’s opened. I just thought “this is how it’s going to end”. It was very biblical, you could see the trash coming out of the bins, everywhere, and rushing down the street...

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Thank to all the authors for making it a wonderful day, and the Oxford Children's Book Group for inviting us along. It's a fantastic group, passionate about making a difference to children love of reading locally, so why not become a member?

(For another take on the conference, read the brilliant ChildLedChaos's perspective over on her blog - and Griselda Heppel's has also done a great take on the conference from an author's perspective as well)

Becoming a Writer - Katherine Langrish's journey into the future

It was William Faulkner who advised "read, read, read...then write". But when Katherine Langrish was a girl, and having read everything that CS Lewis had written, she discovered that CS Lewis - unfortunately - was unlikely to write much more (on account of being dead) and decided to take matters into her own hands...

The result - her own Chronicle of Narnia - was an early, pre-Internet form of fan fiction, and one loving produced in a hardback book complete with illustrations and designs. It was the start of Katherine's journey to becoming an author, one revealed in front of members of the Oxford Children's Book Group on Tuesday evening in Boar's Hill.

As her journey progressed - through E Nesbit, Alan Garner (who she has been rightly compared to) and Walter de la Mare - so did her writing. After initial rejections ("I gave up submitting almost immediately") she took up oral storytelling during time spent in the United States - and arrived back in England stiffened and 'full up' with the stronger Grimm's Fairy Tales, such as The Juniper Tree - with the result that she started writing again in earnest, leading to the creation and publication of the critically acclaimed 'Troll Fell' series.

More recently she has written 'Dark Angels' and 'Forsaken', a retelling of the Matthew Arnold poem 'The Forsaken Merman' told from the point of view of one of the daughters - and based on discoveries she made whilst researching the Scandinavian folk origins that almost certainly inspired Arnold's poem.

Katherine revealed the 'chill running down her neck' when she encounters an idea or inspiration to write - and her discovery of a copy of Sintram and his Companions in Barter Books (a hugely popular and much-praised book from the 1820s, one read by Jo in 'Little Women') led to the seeds of an idea and her current book (see our interview with Katherine below) albeit one set almost as far into the future as 'Sintram' was in the past... 

Being able to listen to the opening prologue of an unpublished book is a real thrill for anyone interested in the genesis of a book, particularly when told by someone like Katherine and her storytelling pedigree.

You'll need to wait until the book is published to discover much more about it (and I really hope 'Gog and Magog' make it through the bruising publishing process) but in the meantime we were able to ask Katherine five questions and shine some further light onto her life as an author.

Five questions with...Katherine Langrish's Writing Life

1. What are you working on at the moment?
A post-apocalyptic fantasy with SF elements set in a future, ring-fenced flooded London - full of gangs, drug-dealers and religious maniacs!

2. What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
Cut out the adverbs.

3. What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?
The best: children are such adventurous readers, nothing fazes them and they come with you wherever you take them. The worst? there isn't really a worst...

4. Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing or snack essential before you can start work? A bit like Virginia Woolf, I need a room of my own with a door you can shut. My room is surrounded with reference books, maps...and no music, I need quiet.

5. What was your biggest breakthrough? Troll Fell, it was a phenomenal success for me. It went to auction...which, actually, was down to my brilliant agent, so I guess my breakthrough was getting her!


(In 2011 all three books in the 'Troll Fell' series were reissued, abridged by the author, as 'West of The Moon'.

Read our interview with Katherine about the book, her favourite authors, 'beheading' schoolchildren...and Granny Greenteeth...)

How To Train Your Author: World Book Day (ish) and Cressida Cowell

It wasn't exactly *on* World Book Day, but it was pretty close. On March 10, Cressida Cowell, author of the "How To Train Your Dragon" series, as well as the brilliant 'Emily Brown' picture books, gave a gripping and hugely energetic talk organised by the Oxford Children's Book Group and Kennington Library.

Cressida is an insanely talented author, and one possessed of a passion and energy that captivated a whole range of ages who packed into Kennington Village Centre to see her. In fact, you imagine that in a different age she would have gone exploring in the Hindu Kush, or hacked her way into the middle of a Borneo rainforest dressed in a smart tweed suit.  

And we found out why. As her child, she was taken once a year - for up to a whole month - to camp on a remote Scottish Island with her family (you can just make it out behind Cressida in the image above). And it was here - with the family left to fend for themselves, catching the weird, wonderful and often frightening sea creatures that sometimes even local fishermen had never seen - that the seeds of the Hiccup stories would take root.

 

Cressida urged her young audience to write throughout her talk: someone's got to become an author, why not you? Influenced by the books of Peter Pan, and someone who filled notebooks and paper continuously as a girl, there was only one thing she was ever going to do...

She shared secrets of the Dreamworks film, including the mind-boggling seven years it took to turn the book into the finished film (another one is currently in production). She also shared a few secrets about the last ever Hiccup book (which we can't tell you about).

There were plenty of fans who queued up to meet her and get books signed:

Mostly Books was very privileged to be asked to provide the bookshop. And we had plenty of volunteer help, including some younger members of the audience.:

There was a distinct Viking 'feel' to proceedings:

And Cressida was dispensing largesse in the form of Hiccup freebies, reading and writing tips, along with her signature:

Finally, in between a busy schedule, we managed to ask Cressida a few questions...

Five questions with...Cressida Cowell's Writing Life

1.    What are you working on at the moment? 

How to Seize a Dragon’s Jewel (the latest Hiccup adventure) – and a new series that is a secret and I can’t tell you about.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given? 

Read masses. I have always read loads and loads – fantasy, murder mysteries, childrens and adults and just reading is the best writing tip because it helps you to see the way stories are put together. Also – not to be too self-critical.

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?

Children are interested in everything, all the really important things in life – all the big things; life, death. So you can write about those, but there are also no obstacles, so if you want magic, you can have magic. The worst is that they grow up on you and you have to write quickly.

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing of snack essential before you can start work? 

With three children you have to be pretty flexible and be able to write no matter what’s going on. I write in a shed at the bottom of the garden and you should see what builders are doing at the bottom of the garden at the moment – it’s decimated. So if I can write through that – it’s amazing what you get used to.

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?

It is fantastic to see your first book on the shelf in a real bookshop. But there are so many things that happen along the way it never seems like a breakthrough. It was amazing when Dreamworks made a film of the first book – you never think that is going to happen!

One enchanting evening: Kevin Crossley-Holland

It is doubtful to be able to think of another writer writing today who celebrates so wholly, the long traditions of story-telling, as Kevin Crossley-Holland.

At an event hosted jointly by the Oxford Children’s Book Group and Oxford Brookes, Kevin Crossley-Holland, who has recently published an autobiography of his childhood, described his journey to becoming a writer.

He places its origins not simply down to sharing stories of myths and folk tales with his father, but also to a love of history – which fired him up as a boy, to transform his garden shed into a museum. People brought him artefacts discovered locally or from home. And his grandfather had collected treasures that were so precious he had offers from the British Museum.

It was an accident which closed the door to a possible sporting career, resulting in a lot of time recuperating, that than transformed his studies into a proper appreciation and a love of language – particularly Anglo-Saxon.

One of his first works was a translation of Beowolf (he started writing poetry in his youth), which he started when at Oxford University.

But a full-time writing career didn’t beckon until two mentors he had met in Oxford, encouraged his decision to give up his job in publishing to research and write a book of Norse myths.

And those mentors were JRR Tolkien and WH Auden.

Of course he has gone on to not only be shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal, but to be the only writer ever to have won with a book for younger readers ‘Storm’. He called for the judging criteria to be split, as so many novels published are for older readers, meaning primary school teachers are left lamenting the fact that there is never room for the best writing for younger readers.

But even all this did not make it easy for Kevin Crossley-Holland to write the book he is best known for his King Arthur trilogy, which starts with ‘The Seeing Stone’. This was a project he had thought about and planned for years but could not find a way to approach, until he was commissioned to write it and had already spent his advance before he started to do the actual writing.

Here, he gave an insight into his writing life. Answers are under our own noses, he said and offered plenty of tips about how to approach work, how to get inspiration and ideas, and how to weave your own knowledge and research into a narrative world children can enter.

Why should our first thoughts be the best, says the author, who spends about 40% of a book’s journey in the planning, thinking and getting to know a character, then about 20% of the time in rapid writing and about the last 40% in drafting and revising.

In answer to a question about whether he could put his finger on why stories were so important, the author was in no doubt. He believes it is important for children to know stories because is that it is part of a genetic heritage. This is why we are so able to suspend our disbelief, because it is through stories that we learn to be human, to feel sympathy, joy, or excitement for another person – through reading about what happens to a character we learn empathy.

Five questions with . . . glimpses of Kevin Crossly-Holland’s writing life
1.   What are you working on at the moment?
I am completing the second in the Viking trilogy ‘Scramasax’. I always write poetry. And I am going to do a picture book with Jane Ray about Vivaldi.

2.    What is the best writing tip you’ve ever been given?
It is a job of work and a matter of getting down to it and not waiting for inspiration. It’s all about thinking of writing as a discipline. It’s also about going that extra mile – writing something and thinking even as you write it that it won’t wash – you have to take risks and go for it. Actually, I am better at doling out tips than receiving them.

3.    What’s the best thing and the worst thing about being a children’s writer?
It is probably having children writing to you, sometimes even long after they read something, and tell you that something you’ve written really counted. That and the smiling faces of children when you meet them. There really isn’t a worst. It is a gloriously rewarding job.

4.    Do you have a writer’s survival kit, eg a place, thing of snack essential before you can start work?
Well I am extremely pernickety and I go around my study tidying imaginary things away and checking that my pens have got a refill and just about anything to defer starting work.

5.    What was your biggest breakthrough?
In terms of critical esteem is was ‘Storm’ (which won the Carnegie Medal) and in terms of sales it is the Arthur trilogy, which has been translated into 25 languages.

Sharon Dogar and Falling

At the end of April we welcomed Sharon Dogar to Mostly Books to coincide with the launch of her latest book 'Falling'.

For the first time, we hosted an event jointly with the Oxford Children's Book Group - part of the Federation of Children's Book Groups - and thanks must go to the lovely Moira Da Costa, who worked very hard to publicise the event, and brought plenty of members to the shop on the evening to listen to Sharon.

'Falling' is Sharon's second book - her first was the critically-acclaimed 'Waves', shortlisted for the Branford Boase award in 2008. (BTW, if you've never heard of the Branford Boase award, it's worth going here and looking at why the award was set up, and what its aims are. In the increasingly cluttered universe of book awards, the BBA stands out in terms of its integrity, and for the unique way it aims to recognise and reward not just an excellent first-time novel for children, but the role of the editor in selecting and nuturing the writer). Unusually for me, I not only had read 'Waves' the previous year, but I managed to read 'Falling' before the event. We had actually read and discussed 'Waves' in my bookgroup last year - all the bookgroups did a children's book around that time - and although it's fair to say that I was probably not the author's number one choice of reader when she wrote the book (teen romance set against the Cornish surfing scene, paraphrasing and pigeonholing dreadfully) I was - quite unexpectedly - caught up and moved by the end of the book. 'Falling' is an entirely different beast. It came to me after two other staff members had read it, and everyone I spoke to cited its difficult themes. I started reading it with the sole intention of getting it read before the event, not really expecting to be as swept up by the book as I was. It is a powerful read, but more than that, it is an example of the author showing complete mastery over her characters. As readers, we are drawn into the book with our prejudices, and then gently but inexorably forced to abandon these by the time we reach the thrilling - and entirely unexpected - conclusion. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than with one of the central characters, a viscious racist whose thoughts and words are at times extremely uncomfortable to read. By the end of the book, you not only understand him, you are rooting for him to pull through (at least I was). The book is not primarily about the challenging themes of knife crime, self-harming, racism and intolerance that feature in the book. It is - IMHO - a book about the power of tolerance, respect and love, and their ability to heal the brutal, and unchangeable, acts of the past. Truth may be the daughter of time, but healing and reconcilation are its grandaughters. We have been very fortunate in April to have had - with Sharon Dogar and Julie Hearn - two extremely gifted children's authors writing powerful books about difficult themes, and it would be wonderful to think that 'Falling' and 'Rowan The Strange' might be duking it out on the Carnegie shortlist next year...

My thanks for Sharon for giving such an amazing reading on the night - including a chapter from a new, and as yet unpublished third novel, just completed. Thanks to her publisher for making the awful journey up to Mostly Books from the East End, to Moira and members of the Oxford Children's Book Group for coming along and making it such a memorable evening.