How many people does it take to build a book?

I’ve always loved working with other people from my first job onwards – talking to people, sharing ideas, feeling part of a team – whether I was working as a waitress, a book editor, or running a writing centre. So why did I end up in one of the most solitary jobs ever? I spend days, weeks, years, alone at my desk, chasing ideas, wrestling with imaginary characters and turning it all into stories.

Not quite alone at my desk: my cat Arya keeps me company

It’s certainly true that much of the writing life can be isolated and sometimes lonely. That’s why I joined all the groups I could find - SCBWI, Society of Authors and a local critique group – so I can connect with other like-minded authors for support, advice, training (and gossip!). 

Except, as I learned when I was lucky enough to sign a publishing contract with David Fickling Books, making a book is about a collaborative an activity as you can find, especially in the final stages, and I love this part of it. 

Who is involved in making a finished book and putting it in the hands of readers? It’s slightly terrifying (I don't want to let them down!) to count them up:

In this case, my agent Ben Illis has been there from the start, reading drafts, negotiating contracts and checking in with me all along. My editor Rosie Fickling has believed so deeply in this project, offering insight and direction when I needed it most. And the wider editorial team, including Bella and Anthony, have been supportive too.

And it’s now that my part is almost finished that things get really interesting!

I’m expecting the copyedited manuscript any day now. This means that an eagle-eyed editor, Cecilia, has gone through my text with care and attention to detail, seeking perfection in grammar and punctuation, smoothing out continuity errors – didn’t this person have green eyes in chapter two? – and steering towards clarity of meaning. When we’ve finished, the tidied-up text will be sent to a designer to be flowed into page layouts.

There are talented visual artists at work! One artist has produced a stunning cover image, which will be revealed soon. The cover design is then created by Alison, who is expert in colour, typography and all the subtle balance that goes into book jacket design. Yet another artist will work on a map of the imaginary city where the story happens – this is a dream come true for me. I’ve sent notes and a Pinterest board to give them some clues, and I can’t wait to see what they create.

Here's past evidence of the team's work: beautiful cover design by Alison Gadsby and a German edition of Eden Summer next to the UK one, as negotiated by Bron at DFB, translated by Sabine Schulte and published by Aladin Verlag in Germany!

The Bologna Book Fair, where work goes on from dawn till dusk, fuelled by super strong coffee and love of children's books...

The Foreign Rights Director, the brilliant Bron, is preparing her sales pitches for the Bologna Book Fair next month, and she has asked me all about this story. She’ll meet with editors from publishing houses all over the world and present the new titles from DFB, knowing from years of experience which editors are looking for which books.

At YALC last summer with the wonderful Jasmine from DFB

Then there’s the Sales and PR team – Phil, Carolyn, Sabina, Jasmine - who are already thinking about how best to share this book with the world, and I know they’ll be full of ideas. I am looking forward to working with them as we get near the publication date. They have contacts with booksellers, bloggers, journalists and more, and will be spreading the word about this new book and which readers it might suit...

And that’s not all. I know from my experience with my debut novel that publication will bring me into contact with many dedicated professionals - booksellers, librarians and teachers among them – who love books and are passionately committed to children’s reading.

I feel so excited right now, realising the story isn’t just in my head any more. It’s taking shape, through the creativity and hard work of all these talented people. Soon it will fly out into the world, into the hands of readers, and the rest will be up to them.

I am extremely lucky to be in this position, so I wanted to take a moment to say thank you to each person in the collaboration, for all the behind-the-scenes elements that it takes to build a book. From the first meeting with everyone at DFB – including David and Simon who must be thanked too! – I knew I wanted to be part of this team.

Thanks for believing in this story. I hope it proves worthy of your faith it it.

Meanwhile, I'd better get busy writing the next one...

‘Mum, how old were you when you read Harry Potter for the first time?’ Parents Reading Children’s Books and Vice Versa

'Mum, how old were you when you read Harry Potter?' 

This sweetly naive question from my ten-year-old makes me stop for a minute. My kids think that I read all the same books as them when I was their age. They can’t imagine a world without Harry Potter. They swim through a rich sea of children’s literature, full of life and variety and colour. Between school, home and library, they have so much more choice than I did as a ten-year-old reader, and I love that they do!

Even so, they still read some of my old favourite books. I can’t help being delighted that they pick up my battered beloved copies and get lost in them like I used to. Recently I’ve caught one daughter or other reading The Ordinary Princess by MM Kaye; The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge; The Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder; Little Women by Louisa M Alcott. And it takes me right back there. I loved those books so deeply once. I loved their characters and their particular magic, and their language formed mine, I’m sure of it.

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Some of my old books...

So while it’s great that they humour me and we can talk about these familiar favourites, my daughters soon move on, distracted by dozens of other delights.

And sometimes we just disagree. Our tastes can diverge drastically. No matter how obviously I lure my children towards a certain author, leaving books temptingly in their way, they are stubbornly independent. And so they should be too.

Just because I want to go back in time and read Philip Pullman when I was ten, doesn’t mean they have to like his books.

And just because my eldest has re-read all the Harry Potter books multiple times, doesn’t mean I have to.

She despairs of my grasp of the plot when we watch the films together, ‘I thought you said you’d read this one, Mum!’

‘Once, when I was twenty-seven! Sorry!’

Having a parent who likes reading children’s books must be a right pain. They have to carve out their own space and rebel against me somehow. I think they’ve identified the series I will never wish to borrow. And even though I tried to hide it, they know which ones I don’t really want to read aloud to them either.

When we agree it’s lovely. They introduce me to some fabulous books and I bring a few home too. Recently we’ve agreed on David Almond, Adrienne Kress, Cressida Cowell, Sally Gardner, Sita Brahmachari, Eva Ibbotson, Cornelia Funke and RJ Palacio, among others.

This brings certain pitfalls.

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Borrowing books...

The other week I treated myself to some hotly desired YA fiction to enjoy during the half term holiday. It was sitting in a pristine pile on my bedside table. When I finally had a free evening, I turned to the pile – and it had vanished.

Still, a little light pilfering seems a small price to pay for keeping them hooked on books – I just pray it continues.

Why Children's Books?

It’s been a while since someone asked me, ‘Why children’s books?’ in a tone that implied, ‘Why not proper grown-up books?’

When we discussed what I edited at work, what I read in my free time, or what I’d started writing, there was a time - not so long ago - when children’s books were seen as inferior by people who should have known better.

Then came JK Rowling, Philip Pullman, Melvin Burgess, Mark Haddon and more. Then came Twilight and The Hunger Games, and adults weren’t ashamed to be caught reading young adult fiction on the tube. Then came books by David Almond and Meg Rosoff and Patrick Ness, books that were so brilliantly original and powerful and well written that they demanded to be read by people of any age who appreciated excellent fiction.

So perhaps nobody else has asked me ‘Why children’s books?’ lately but the question hasn’t entirely gone away.

Every time I’ve begun sketching out a new project, I’ve wondered if it’d be for kids. I’ve tried to keep an open mind, toying with a blank page. But sure enough, the idea that took shape turned out to be for younger readers.   

Why am I writing for children?

I’ve thought about it a lot. Partly the answer came about because I worked in children’s book publishing and became an editor who was also expected to write.

Partly it’s because you can blur boundaries and mix genres and find more spaces for magic in children’s books.

But maybe the answer grows from remembering how much children’s books meant to my past self.

That’s the past self who trotted along to Hebden Bridge library clutching a well-worn cardboard library ticket with her name in biro on the front and borrowed as many books as she could carry home each fortnight. That’s the teenage reader who had her mind blown in a way I can still precisely recall on first reading books by authors like Margaret Mahy or Susan Cooper or John Christopher or Robert Westall. Those books changed the way I thought and felt and saw the world. They re-wired my thinking, in less than 300 pages.

I admit I am a total beginner here, but there is something about my desire to write for children that is rooted back into that transformative power and the excitement of reading something for the first time.

If a book can open a window in a mind, then books for children can be the first time a child has opened that window in their mind and looked through it into a bright sunlit place where other things are possible. Or looked through a window into deep darkness and realised they’re not the only person who sees it.

The window can be about connection, or escapism, or laughter, or information, or just delighting in the view, but opening it and looking through is hugely important and I believe that children need as many windows as they can get.

I’m not saying kids have to read great fiction every day. That would be like having to eat your greens, and it’s not what I do – I like fruit sure, but I also love chocolate. I read literary fiction and romance and historical fiction and sci-fi and crime and YA and children’s books, sometimes all at once, stuck in the middle of three different books at the same time. That’s the way I like it, and I don’t expect to be lectured on it.

In his wonderful, passionate Reading Agency lecture last week, Neil Gaiman talked a huge amount of sense about reading and its uses to communicate, innovate and connect people through empathy. He also said, ‘We have an obligation to daydream’.

So maybe writing for children is honouring that obligation and daydreaming… If we have enough different writers all daydreaming and writing the stuff they know best, then maybe they are all opening up new windows – each with its own partial, particular view – for kids to look through and see the world.