Meet the people behind: The Bath Children's Literature Festival

On Monday July 6th general booking opens for this years Children's Bath Literature Festival. 

It's the UK's largest designated children's festival,  with masses of events, just for kids. 

Gill and John McLay are the (very hands on) artistic directors, they began it in 2007, and they are back programming it again this year.

I have been a steward at the festival since 2008 and seen masses of brilliant illustrators and authors as a result.  My kids have grown up alongside it, they've stewarded at lots of events, and rather take it for granted.  So, I think, do lots of people who live in Bath.  So I stepped away from being a steward, and a Bathonian, and asked the artistic directors a few questions about their part in it all - just to get a little perspective on this wondrous annual happening:  

 

What on earth made you start it?

JOHN – Ha! We’d moved to Bath and there was a thriving LitFest – but it had very few children’s events. Hay, Cheltenham, Edinburgh all seemed to have great children’s events running alongside their adult programmes, but Bath didn’t seemed interested. We tried a couple of times to get involved and offer our help, but it came to nothing. So we decided to set up our own! 10 days. Fully-formed. The best names we could. National sponsors. It was a lot of work.

Who were your first headliners and was that first festival fun? Terrifying? Exhausting?

JOHN – We used up a lot of favours that first year. We had Jacqueline Wilson, Julia Donaldson, Neil Gaiman, Francesca Simon, Eoin Colfer, Darren Shan, Lauren Child, Allan Ahlberg, Harry Hill, Anthony Horowitz, Felicity Dahl. It was awesome. It was definitely exhausting. It consumed everything for about 12 months but we had a lot of help. The organising committee and volunteers were just as dedicated and tireless as we were.

Then, six years in,  you took time out – why was that? 

JOHN - We thought we wanted to do something else – after six successful years. And we did – Gill started her Literary Agency and I began writing. But we soon realised we missed it and that we had the capacity to do it still, despite some organisational frustrations, which – thankfully – are now a thing of the past.

We also came back after working with the Bath Festivals new team and realising that we could really work with then and ensure that festival celebrates 10 years when it is truly at the top of it’s game. We still feel very strongly that when people say "children’s festival" it’s Bath that we want them to think of.

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Now you are back as hands on artistic directors, stewards, tea boys and sandwich buyers, who are you most excited about having this year?

JOHN – We really think this is the best line-up we’ve ever put together. The brochure looks brilliant and it’s going to be a busy 10 days. I think I’m most excited about the illustrators we are featuring this year – top emerging talent such as Rob Biddulph, Benji Davies, Rachel Bright, Chris Haughton, Chloe Inkpen and Steve Antony. Also the legends that are Judith Kerr, David Roberts, Mick Inkpen, Nick Butterworth, Michael Foreman and Helen Oxenbury.

GILL – We were very aware this year that we wanted to  make it clear we were back and with that show the industry that we want to endorse and help raise the profile of new authors. With this in mind we have put together Bath Picks. These events are chaired by either John or myself and they are books that we personally champion. We want people to try them and feel really confident that they’ll agree with us. This year we have Sarah Crossan and Shane Hegarty to mention just a couple. We also have a lot of Middle Grade authors this year with Helen Skelton’s Amy Wild, Fleur Hitchcock (aw - thanks), David Baddiel and Liz Kessler and loads more. . .

Our greatest excitement is having everyone back generally though – we love the atmosphere of the festival and we can’t wait to share it again.

Correct me if I’m wrong,  but I believe around 10,000 children’s books are published each year? How do you choose who to have, and how much notice do you have to give to book the big names?

JOHN – The Megastar authors are often booked a year in advance. We start planning the next festival the moment the current one is confirmed, designed and at the printers. The bulk of our meetings with publishers – the pitch meetings – take from the November beforehand. We try to have a mix of big names, fresh talent, popular regulars and local authors. We love character costume events and a bit of celebrity sparkle as well.

What are the biggest headaches?

JOHN – Probably all to do with not selling enough tickets to events that we know are going to be brilliant. There are a lot of events to choose from – nearly 120. We have some big audiences, sure, but we want every room full and we take it personally when tickets for one of our favourite events doesn’t do as well as we’d hoped.

Where do you see the festival in 5 years time?

JOHN – Still going strong, possibly slightly bigger, and hopefully attracting not only big and growing audiences but also the biggest and best names in the children’s book publishing world. So many new books are published each year that there is always something new and interesting to showcase.

GILL – We have new initiatives up our sleeve too so I hope that in 5 years time we’ll have some of these in place too! Watch this space

Twix or crunchy?

JOHN – Twix.

GILL - Crunchy

The festival runs from  Friday 25 September to Sunday 4 October. To view the programme for this year: click here

Author to Author: Fleur Hitchcock Quizzes Joanna Nadin

So Jo – with that many books behind you – do you do anything other than write?

Hmm. I was about to say I also write political speeches, but I think that counts as ‘writing’. I do also teach other people how to write for children and teenagers, but I’m going to be honest and say there is very little I do that isn’t related to books. I get very twitchy when I’m not writing something, and days when I don’t put something down on paper / computer / the notebook in my head are few and far between. I do however bake a mean brownie, and can ice skate, juggle and bicycle with no hands.

Do you listen to music when you’re working – or does it interfere?

I have to have something on in the background when I’m working. It comes from years of working in very noisy TV and radio newsrooms and government offices where we always had at least three TV channels on at once. Now I either work in cafes, or I put on 6music and let it disappear into a general background hubbub. I have been known to write to daytime telly – the kind that’s so dull you won’t get distracted. 

On desert Island discs, Malcolm Gladwell said it’s much easier to make people laugh than cry – agree or disagree?

Agree. For me, anyway. I found a talent for making people laugh at a fairly young age, mainly as a) a way of making me interesting and b) if you can make bullies laugh they tend to leave you alone. Yes, I was that kid. Now I use humour even in heartbreaking stuff. I think it throws people a little, so when you hit them with the sad stuff it hits harder.

Cat or dog?

Neither. I’m more of a goat / monkey kind of girl – stemming from my desire to be either Heidi or Pippi Longstocking. I begged for a goat for years but the closest I got was working on our school’s farm. Now I have three Dumbo rats living in my basement. By choice, although they are going to be threatened with eviction if they poo on my shouder again.

When you’re reading for pleasure, what kind of books will grab you? Anything you’ve read recently that you’d recommend?

The best books for me are all about the voice, so I tend to read first person books with a distinctive tone or accent to them, and preferably a bit oddball and contemporary. So anything by Frank Cottrell Boyce works or Jenny Valentine works for me, and I love Tamsyn Murray’s new one Completely Cassidy. 

And how does that compare to the books you were reading when you were 12?

When I was twelve, there weren’t that many books written actually for us, so once I’d graduated from Heidi and things like The Famous Five I moved on to adult books by Daphne du Maurier, and Stephen King. It wasn’t until Adrian Mole was first published in about 1983 that I really read and loved a proper ‘Middle Grade’ book – one written for people like me and about people like me.

Were you a library child?

A lot of books I hocked from my Grandma’s bookcases on long hot summers or rainy winters in Cornwall. But back home I lived in the library, getting dropped off there early on a Saturday morning and left on my own while my dad did the shopping. By the age of ten I’d exhausted the children’s section and was allowed free rein (to an extent) of the adult room, which is where I first read John Wyndham and HG Wells at a very impressionable age, along with the Molesworth books, which have stayed with me ever since and are an influence on my sense of humour and writing. 

Thinking of the 12 year old Joanna – what kind of child were you?

I was exactly what you’d imagine a writer to have been: a bookish child, with a strong hint of nerd (and smell of school goat). I’ll sum up what life was like in that library for the 12-year-old me with a quote from Andy Robb’s brilliant Geekhood: ‘This is what libraries are to Geeks – sanctuaries where we can all lurk, safe in the knowledge that the only other inhabitants here are fellow worshippers. The silence is misleading, though, for if you listen carefully, you can hear nerdy spirits all singing together in a yearning for Something Other – to be like the heroes in books, to win the hearts of simpering heroines, to smite mighty foes. To be anything other than a Geek. But rather than being sad or forlorn places, libraries are the temples in which Geeks can briefly attain those goals, their souls soaring in snatches of printed glory.’

What did you want to be when you grew up?

Not a writer. I was far too busy, like the quote suggests, imagining I was IN the books. And I honestly grew up with no other plan than having a life so amazing one day someone would write a book about it. It took a lot of years and wrong turns (lifeguard, juggler, radio newsreader to name but a few) to realize that was probably never going to happen so maybe I should get on and write some of my own.

If you had to choose a last meal – what would it be?

I have an irritating condition which means I can’t eat a lot of foods anymore, so, given I wouldn’t be around to suffer the painful consequences, I’d go for several slices of toasted white bloomer bread, heavily buttered and topped with Marmite.

Jo Nadin is the pen behind the Rachel Riley Series and the Penny Dreadful series. Her most recent book is Joe All Alone – You can read an extract here. And a review, here.

Author to Author: Fleur Hitchcock Quizzes Anna Wilson

Anna, are you very disciplined about writing or can you spend all morning tidying a cupboard when you ought to be editing?

ME: I wouldn’t say I was VERY disciplined, but I try to have a routine. I began writing regularly once my kids started school, so I have been in the habit for a while now of sitting down once I have dropped them off and writing until pick-up time. I try to aim for 1000 words a day. Sometimes, if I am lucky, I manage more. I never used to work in the school holidays, but now the kids are teens, they don’t get up, so I have a blissful couple of hours to write while they are still snoring. I can still spend a whole morning tidying a cupboard or two when the fancy takes me, though…

I know you’re a keen runner – what’s the connection for you between running and writing?

ME: I think Haruki Murakami puts it best in his excellent book, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running:

“No matter how mundane some action might appear, keep at it long enough and it becomes a contemplative, even meditative act. As a writer then, as a runner […] Basically a writer has a quiet, inner motivation […] For me, running is both exercise and a metaphor.”

I find the two go hand in glove (or foot in shoe?) and that the one helps the other: when I am stuck on writing, running often unlocks things.

What do your children think about you writing.  Are they impressed?

They used to be! They used to let me read my WIP manuscripts aloud to them. They used to love it when I did school assemblies. They used to laugh at my jokes… I think they are still interested in what I do, but it’s all a bit embarrassing when you’re fourteen or sixteen. Let’s face it, everything is embarrassing at that age. And I am a bit mean because I draw on my family a lot for inspiration. It would be fair to say you might recognize a few of the characters in The Great Kitten Cake Off, for example: there is a mum who is mad on running, a son who is obsessed with filming everything and who worships a Mary Berry character, a rather moody daughter and a dad who tells appallingly bad jokes.

You used to work in publishing, how much do you think that insider knowledge helps you with your writing?   

I’m not sure it helps me that much these days. The industry has changed so much since I was in-house as an editor. It is much more commercial. Publishers used to have long editorial meetings where the key decisions were made on acquisitions, and editors had a vested interest in growing individual authors and ‘owning’ them. Now the sales teams have far more say and unless your last book has sold on well, you are not going to curry much favour with your editor for your Next Big Thing. I suppose that knowing how a publishing house is structured has helped me to understand the production side of things. And I hope I am more understanding to my editor, having been on that side of the desk myself.

Tell me about Cornwall?

How long have you got?! I have been going to a little place in West Penwith for the past twenty or so years – ever since my husband and I fell in love. (Cue slushy music…) I love the wildness of the landscape, the myths and legends surrounding the standing stones and Celtic heritage, the sea, the cliffs, the big skies, Ross Poldark--  (Whoops, sorry…)

Basically I have been writing notes about the place for so long in my diaries, it was inevitable that I would write a book set there eventually, hence Summer’s Shadow – a family mystery set in a ghostly granite mansion, high on the cliffs near Land’s End.

Is your house surrounded by animals?

Pretty much. We own a black Labrador called Kenna (named after my favourite place in Cornwall, Boskenna), we have two cats who think they own us, some chickens (the numbers change depending on predators) and a tortoise called Hercules who we adopted last year. We are surrounded by a rookery, deer, foxes and badgers (hence the head-count on the chickens being a literal moveable feast) and many beautiful wild birds including a pheasant who has recently taken up residence.

Were you an animal-focused child?

I was, but mostly in my head. My mother hates animals. I mounted a concerted campaign from as early as I can remember to be allowed a pet. She finally gave in to a tortoise who did not live long, (much to Mum’s delight and my deep grief). A few years later I somehow persuaded her to let me have a cat who was a fiend in feline form, but managed to win Mum over so successfully that Mum phoned me in tears at work when the cat died eighteen years on. Probably as a result of my deprived childhood, I am a complete push-over whenever my family asks for another animal…

When you were 10 what books were you reading?

Anything I could lay my hands on. I was a member of the Puffin Club and devoured the monthly magazine for tips on what to read next. I used the local library and the school library regularly. I adored mysteries such as Tom’s Midnight Garden, The Secret Garden, The Eagle of the Ninth, The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, The Owl Service… I think these books informed Summer’s Shadow a little, as I found myself wanting to write the sort of book I was looking for in those final days of childhood when you are on the brink of adolescence and not ready for anything too adult, but you still want a good meaty story.

And what did you want to be when you grew up?

I’m not sure I have grown up yet, which is why I love writing for children. When I was at school, I really did want to be a writer. I kept that ambition a secret for a long time, as I was convinced I would not write anything good enough. But I spent all my spare time scrawling in notebooks and kept a diary all the way through university. (Still do.) Writers have always been the people I admire the most. There’s a part of me that doesn’t really believe I have made it yet.

If you could give a single piece of advice to the 10-year-old Anna what would it be?

Go for it! Believe you have something to say. Keep on writing and don’t give up. (Actually I’m going to print that out and stick it above my desk for the 45-year-old Anna. She just might take a bit of notice if I do that.)

Author to Author: Fleur Hitchcock Quizzes Cathy Hopkins

Cathy is known as a teenage author, but recently she’s been dipping her toes deeper into middle grade.

  

Cathy you’ve written masses of books so you must know by now: what’s your favourite part of the writing process, drafting or editing?

Editing. When I have the main story down, I like going back to the beginning and adding light and shade and rewriting.

Do you write using music?

Absolutely a no no for me. I can't concentrate if there's music on. I like to listen when doing anything else but not when I am writing.

Who gets to read your manuscripts first?

I usually send to both my editor and my agent when a book is finished.

Your most recent book, A Home for Shimmer is a book about dogs or friendship or both?

More about friendship I think, there is only one dog in it though she plays a big role. The main character Amy is the new girl in an area and feels lonely at first because she doesn't know anyone and all her friends are in her old home town so it's about how she finds new friends, one human, one canine.

When you were Amy’s age – What books did you read?

I loved the Narnia books by CS Lewis and the Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

So what did you want to be when you grew up?

A ballet dancer. No really, don't laugh.

I’m not laughing – I wanted to be Olga Corbett.

If you could be 10 again – what would you want to be?

A writer. I wished I'd started earlier and done creative writing classes at that age and read all the books about story structure, creating characters, plotting etc. The focus back then though was more on reading rather than writing.

And did you enjoy school?

Loved it. I grew up in Kenya in East Africa and my memories of the schools there are wonderful, of open sunny spaces and a lot of time outdoors.

Did growing up in Africa influence your writing? Does it creep into this book?

The location hasn't crept into this book because it is set in Devon but we did have dogs when we were abroad, always golden Labradors. Shimmer in the book is a golden retriever.

If you could rescue one book from a burning library what would it be?

I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, it's one of my all time favourite books. I have returned to it many times and never get tired of it.

A Home for Shimmer is published by Simon and Schuster.

Author to Author: Fleur Hitchcock Quizzes Sam Gayton

So Hercufleas is about a miniature hero – Lilliput had a miniature heroine – what’s with the miniature thing?

You tell me, Miss My-First-Novel-Was-About-Shrinking-Stuff! What is it with the miniature thing? With Borrowers? With Minpins? With Lilliputians? With (Honey-I-Shrunk-The) kids?

For me, though, it’s a kind of wonderful what if? It sets me wondering. How would you do such-and-such? What would so-and-so be like?

And I find if I wonder about something enough, if I feed my mind enough questions, then sooner or later, it spits out a story.

I’ve done two books about the miniature, now. And for book number four, I’m doing the opposite - The Gigantic... 

In Lilliput did you think long and hard about using slug slime to stick miniature Lily to the stairs or was it obvious?

Ha! I ran through the possibilities! Could she get a lift from a bee? Nope. Strap fleas to her feet and jump? Maybe. I went through a whole load of ideas. Slug slime seemed to be the most disgusting. So I went with it.

  

50% of book-writing is problem-solving. The other 50% is problem-detection.

Will there ever be a sequel to the Snow Merchant?

There are plenty of sort-of-sequels. Hercufleas is one. It is set in the same world, a few decades after… Lettie makes a (very) brief appearance.

The next book is a prequel to The Snow Merchant, set about twenty years before. It features some of the same characters - Teresa, Lettie’s Ma, is a young girl.

Also, I’ve just written a short story for the National Literacy Trust, that tells what happens to Noah from the Snow Merchant. You ought to be able to read that for free on their website, soonish.

I love to include old characters in new stories. It makes me feel like they really exist, and they don’t end when the book does. It’s cool to glimpse a main character in someone else’s tale. We’re all the supporting cast in everyone else’s lives, right? And it is exciting for me, because I feel like I’m creating a new world, and my world has a population that meet each other.

Do you write using music?

I used to. Sometimes it helps create a mood, doesn’t it? The downside is that the music creates all the atmosphere, and disguises the fact that the writing needs to work harder!

But some music can help give you a rhythm to work with. Novels are songs, sung in your head. They need a beat to them, and music can do that.

Who reads your manuscripts first?

Hmm. Well, once I have them finished, it probably goes in roughly this order: My wife. My agent. Me. My editor. My mum.

When you’re writing - who do you imagine you are writing for?

Myself, at first. But after that, for edits and stuff, I imagine the assemblies of the schools I visit. It can be useful. They sort of sit in your head as you read things back over, and you can tell when you’re losing them, and when you’re hooking them in.

These books are all firmly middle grade so I want to know - when you were 10 what did you want to be when you grew up?

Taxi driver.

Really?  And what books were you reading at that age?

Redwall by Brian Jacques. Star Wars books. Ray Bradbury short stories. 

And when you came home from school – what did you do?

Designed extremely complicated boardgames, and played Lego. 

So – on to that very important subject what is your favourite board game?

OOOOOOOOHHH.

SUCH.

A.

HARD.

QUESTION.

My favourite has to be an old Risk-type game, called Power. Me and my mate Steve Biggs used to play it. He always wiped the floor with me. You plan all your moves at the same time on paper, then play them all at once. It’s brill.

But I also love Avalon - which you have to play with a bunch of friends. You’re all Knights of the Round Table, and you all get cards with secret identities, and you have to form teams to go on quests for the good of Camelot. But some of the Table are evil minions of Mordred, and they’ll say anything to get on a quest and sabotage it..!

Sam’s new book, Hercufleas, (Anderson Press)  is hot off the press and available in all good bookshops.  The Snow Merchant and Lilliput are also published by Anderson Press.

Interview with Anthony Horowitz

Today sees the re-release of the complete set of Anthony Horowitz's Alex Rider books, all newly rejacketed with stunning new cover designs to celebrate fifteen years since the release of Stormbreaker. We wanted to help celebrate this as Anthony is one of a small number of authors that changed the face of children's publishing, paving the way for the vast wealth of middle grade books that are published today, and so a couple of weeks ago we ran a competition on Middle Grade Strikes Back for our readers to post questions for Anthony. We picked what we thought were the best ten, and now Anthony is here to give us his answers:

I run a Year 5/6 book club at a local primary school and would like to ask, what is the secret of your PHENOMENAL popularity with my young readers? (Hoping it's not an 'if I told you I'd have to kill you’ type thing)

First of all, it’s nice to know your readers are enjoying my books – thank you. But if you want to know the secret, you’re probably better off asking them, not me. I just write stories I want to tell. And I suppose, quite by chance, those are the stories they want to read.

Where were you when you first thought up the idea of Alex Rider and Stormbreaker?

I was being interviewed by a man called Michael G. Wilson. I was trying to get the job of writing a James Bond film and he was the producer. It was a disastrous interview. But when I left, I started thinking about Bond, how old he had become and why he couldn’t  be a teenager again. Five years later, I wrote Stormbreaker.

The Alex Rider books are great for reluctant reader boys. Was this one of your intentions when writing the first, or subsequent books?

I just wanted to write enjoyable, fast-paced books, the sort of books I’d have enjoyed when I was young. I didn’t think “boys” in particular. I didn’t even really think “children”. And I certainly never set out on a crusade to convert kids to reading even if that is, in a way, what’s happened.

Now that the Alex Rider series has been finished for several years, has the distance given you any new perspective on the series?

Well, I miss writing Alex – that’s for sure. I’m surprised how well the stories have stood up to the test of time although I did have to make some changes for the new edition (with its great new covers). I had to remove one or two references to footballers and pop singers who have sadly been forgotten. One or two of the gadgets were also, sadly, out-of-date.

How far is Alex Rider your teen alter ego, that inner hero/heroine we all have that wants to break out?

I think every young person dreams of being a hero and it’s probably true that Alex rubs that particular nerve. When I was bored and bottom of the class at school, I often dreamed of saving the world and I was remembering those dreams when I wrote the books.

It's one thing to come up with one excellent book, but to keep them coming with the same exceptional characters is something special so I would like to know if it gets harder to keep the stories fresh and exciting or easier because you get to know your characters’ traits, behaviour and characteristics better with each book you write?

This is a very good question because I think there are quite a lot of series that go off the boil after a while. It is quite difficult to think up new villains with new villainous plans, new chases, gadgets, action sequences, escapes. I was quite nervous of writing an Alex Rider novel that felt tired or which repeated the others – that’s why I always said I would only write eight or nine of them. Well, in the end I did ten.

How did you remember/keep track of details from earlier books to keep continuity?

It took me seven months to write each book which meant that I knew Alex pretty well and remembered most of the things that had happened to him. I also had brilliant editors at Walker Books (my publishers) who sent me detailed notes about what had happened in the earlier books.

Do you ever feel pressured into being politically correct in choosing your villains ethnicity or sex? Personally, I'd love more fab roles written for great female villains.

The only problem with a female villain is that I feel a bit uncomfortable killing her off at the end – I don’t know why. That said, I really enjoyed creating Julia Rothman in Scorpia (she’s named after the cigarette, which also kills you) and she does have a terrific death. I don’t care about political correctness very much but I have to be careful not to annoy teachers or parents. They might stop children reading my books!

How easy do you find crossing between writing for the different ages you write for? Are the techniques you use the same?

There’s not a huge amount of difference in writing for children and writing for adults. I do try not to use complicated language or constructions in my YA books – I don’t want to put off those reluctant readers you mentioned earlier. And of course, the content is a little different…no bedroom stuff, for example. But the pace, the energy and the love of story are what matter most to me and they remain the same.

You have had such an amazing career, but which of your works are you most proud of and why?

The answer has to be Alex Rider because it does feel rather good to have somehow helped get so many young people reading. But I also created Foyle’s War which swallowed up fifteen years of my life and I’m quite proud of that too.

~~~

Huge thanks to Anthony for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer these questions for us. The Alex Rider books are as great now as they ever were and with their fresh new cover designs they make perfect reading for boys and girls who love their middle grade laced with action, adventure, spies and gadgets.