The Othernauts with Clare Pollard

We talk with author Clare Pollard about her new middle grade book The Othernauts. Based on the story of Jason and the Argonauts, we follow Phoebe who is bored of life on the island where she lives and is desperate to escape. When a ship with Jason and the Argonauts comes into the harbour she acts quickly and joins their quest to find the Golden Fleece. Full of humour and with illustrations by Macha Yao this is a fun and entertaining take on a classic tale. 

You can find out more about Clare here. And find her children's books below:

The Othernauts, illustrated Macha Yao

The Untameables, illustrated by Reena Makwana

And her book about picture books can be found here:

Fierce Bad Rabbits - The Tales Behind Children's Picture Books

Transcript

Katy 0:11

Hi, I'm Katy.

Ali 0:12

Hi, I'm Ali,

Katy 0:13

and welcome to Mostly Book Talk. Today we have an interview with Clare Pollard about her new book, The Othernauts, which is based on Jason and the Argonauts. It has illustrations by Macha Yao and is a fun retelling of the classic story. So enjoy. So we're really pleased to welcome Clare Pollard, who is a poet, novelist, uh playwright, translator, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. And she is now the author of her second children's book, an adventure called The Other Nortes, which is loosely based on Jason and the Argonauts. And so welcome Clare. Do you want to just start? Just telling us about your journey because you've obviously done lots of different things, do lots of different things about your journeys becoming a children's author.

Clare 1:06

I'm just a writer, really, as you said from the introduction. I just love books, I love writing, I love reading, but I love reading anything. I love reading film scripts, play scripts, newspapers. I just read everything and always have. And I guess I wanted to be a children's writer when I was a child. I've still got chapter books I wrote when I was five or six. One called Stand Up My Nostrils about Evil Genies, one called Hard Cheddar about Evil Mice Taking Over the World. So I always wanted to write children's books, and I feel it's taken a long time to get there. For me, the breakthrough as a writer was like a lot of teenagers, I wrote a lot of poetry. But unlike a lot of teenagers, I was determined to be a child prodigy. And I was very professional about it. And I used to send poems off to magazines with my little stamped dressed envelope every week when I was a teenager. I got some stuff in magazines, and my poetry editor actually wrote to me and said, Have you got a manuscript? So I wrote my first book, The Heavy Petting Zoo, when I was in sixth form. It came out my first year of university. So that sort of put me on the path of being a poet. And I suppose poetry always came very easily to me. I've always worked well at the level of the line. I think I've got a good ear. I love a good image. Whereas being a novelist took a lot longer for me, even though it's something I've always wanted to do. But I think it takes a bit of life experience to write a novel in a way that poetry perhaps doesn't. You need to know how the world works. But also learning how to tell a story, which is something I'm really interested in now, is storytelling. But I think it took me a while to learn how that works and how to carry a reader along with you.

Ali 2:48

Yeah. And that's all the more challenging with children, isn't it? Because you have to grab them.

Clare 2:54

And so I actually got adult novels published before children's novels, but not till I was in my 40s. So it took me a long time to become a novelist. I was just being a poet all that time and teaching poetry, translating, editing poetry magazines. My children are nine and twelve, so it's the perfect age for middle grade. Yeah. And I'm just really leaning into that. And it's pure, it's just pure fun writing children's books. I feel like it's what I've always wanted to do in a way. I've never had so much pleasure as when I'm writing a children's book and it's pure storytelling. I hope it's just as good writing as my poetry is or my adult novels are. But you can have a lot more laughs.

Katy 3:29

I definitely felt that right reading it. I felt like you have fun writing this. You'd enjoyed it. That voice and that sense comes through. I hadn't made the connection that you've also written a book about children's books, haven't you?

Clare 3:41

Yes, I have.

Katy 3:46

Because it came out about six years, six or so years ago, was it 2019? Something like that. I went back to to look at it and remembered I loved it because there are books in there because you're talking about picture books, aren't you?

Clare 3:57

Yeah, children's picture books.

Ali 3:59

Was that part of your MA, Katie? Was that why you read it? Or did you

Katy 4:03

No, it was after that. I just I like books about books.

Ali 4:07

And the process of that kind of writing as well.

Katy 4:10

Yeah, and I think it's something about it that where you recognize books that you were talking about and the way in which you explored it, which was it was somewhere between kind of academic and memoir-y. I think is was a really nice balance. But did doing that, did that change the way? Because it was a sort of taking a step back, really, wasn't it, in terms of what are the meanings of picture books and also how we read them to children? Did that change the way you approached writing your own children's fiction?

Clare 4:44

For sure. I just like all sorts of writing and I like all sorts of reading, and that meant I enjoyed reading children's picture books as much as in I enjoy reading Middlemarch in a way. I think there's just as much skill in a great children's book as there is in a great adult book. And I think Green Eggs and Ham is just as much a work of genius as Pride and Prejudice, genuinely, just because it's like words. It takes such incredible formal skill. Easy for me to come to that conclusion because I love poetry. I can think something that's 14 well-wrought lines that's a sonnet, is just as good as war and peace. Better in many ways. I don't have that question of scale. I love picture books. I did English literature as a degree, and I am a literary critic. That's one of the many things that I do. I do a lot of reviewing. And I think one of the things it really made me think about is I think children's books are not reviewed enough. We get nearly enough to coverage, but they're so rarely reviewed in depth. Even good children's book reviewers usually have to do a roundup. And so we really rarely think about what stories we're telling our children. And actually, I think it's really important. I think it's it can be absolutely formative. You're telling them how the world works and what morality is. All children's books are political, and you can pretend they're not, but they are ultimately. If you decide to tell Roldell's Charlie and the chocolate batches, one I loved as a kid. If you decide to tell the story from the perspective of a very poor working-class boy, that's completely different from if you decide to tell the story from the perspective of a princess. That's a political decision at the end of the day. So it made me really think about what stories do we tell our children? Who do we center in these stories? Whose stories do we tell? Yeah, yeah.

Ali 6:27

Which very nicely brings us onto your book, The Othernauts and Phoebe's story. So tell us how that came about and give us a bit of an overview of the story for people who might not have read it yet.

Clare 6:39

So I adore Jason and the Argonauts. I love Greek mythology generally, but I think it's my favorite story. Probably because when I was a kid, I don't remember reading any Greek mythology as a kid, actually. It was something I got into more as a teenager. But I do remember watching the 1963 film with the Harry Hausner special effects. It always seemed to be on TV. It was always, I think it was on every Saturday morning. Yeah, and it was one of my dad's favourites. And I remember watching that with him, as well as Clash of the Titans, to a lesser extent. But those were my introduction to Greek mythology, and I absolutely love those films. And Jason the Argonaut, it's got all the fan favorites. It's amazing when you think about it. It's not just Jason on board, you've got Hercules on board, you've got Orpheus on board, Medea is in the story, you've got all these incredible characters, as well as, of course, all the monsters and different obstacles. It's just perfect. And I love a quest. It's one of the great quest narratives. So I loved the idea of doing a retelling of Jason the Argonauts for kids. And I think there's a sort of slightly missing bit in children's literature at the moment, which is adult retellings of Greek myths are there's millions of them. And because people know I'm interested in myth, they were often asking, would I be interested in doing an adult retelling? But I think it's an absolutely saturated market. But I felt like it wasn't for children at all, actually. I felt like I saw a little chink there because there are these stories where Greek gods meet contemporary children and are at schools and diaries. There's one about Hercules at the moment, or there's Who Let the Gods out, or there's Percy Jackson's, of course. But there's not really much in the way of rich retellings of these incredible stories. So that's the gap I'm hoping to fill. But the problem was when I was a kid, I wanted to be on the Argo, but the Argo is a ship full of fully grown men. And so what I what I wanted to do as a sort of wish for film, not really from my childhood, I wanted to go on this epic adventure, was to sneak an 11-year-old girl onto the ship. That was my starting point. So my version of Jason the Argonauts, it's a proper retelling, and it's based on the Argonautica, which is like the Odyssey, like Homer's Odyssey in Iliad, it's an ancient Greek epic poem. But it's much neglected, it's not read nearly as much as The Odyssey of the Iliad. It's by Apollonius of Rhodes, who brilliantly, I love this fact, was a librarian at the Great Library of Alexandria, the best library of all time, where they tried to get a copy of every text in the world. That was their aim, which is incredible. And they used to send out hunters, book hunters, all over um the known world. It was a very risky business to try and get all the unknown text. I think there's a whole book in that too. But Apollonius of Rhodes was a librarian and he wrote this Argonautica, this epic story of Jason and the Argonauts. So I've read that, which I loved. It's a great read. And I thought, where can I sneak a girl on? And early on in the journey, they go to the island of Lemnos. And the island of Lemnos is an island where all the women have killed the men, basically, because Aphrodite cursed them, made them smelly, and then the men didn't want to go near them. And they got annoyed and they killed the men, which is pretty dark. But it's not Phoebe's fault. So Phoebe's been brought up in this sort of man-free island. In fact, she's top of a class at man-hating. Yeah, I like those classes. But she's very bored. And like lots of little girls, like I did, when I was a kid, and like my daughter does, my daughter's got a spell box under a bed. She likes trying to do spells or trying to tell prophecies, try to tell the future. But really, it's just that wanting to make something happen. I think lots of youngsters go through that phase. It's wanting to get some power over your life, isn't it? And to make something happen. And then the argo pulls into port, and that's where our story begins.

Katy 10:34

And absolutely everything happens, but it's also in the way you've done it, the kind of all of those potentially could be really big characters, they're kind of beeless characters compared to the children. And it's quite nice that they're like major recognizable characters, but they flit in and out. But the children are the real stars of the story.

Clare 10:54

Yeah, there's a character called Perry who is based on a real character in the Argonautica. There's a man who can turn into different creatures on the Argonautica to help him battle, which is amazing. It's like a superhero, right? It's like an early superhero. I was thinking Beast Boy, who my children like Teen Titans. And Teen Titans go, they like the kids' one. But so there's a character called Perry, but I just made that man into an 11-year-old boy as well. So he's the one who helps Phoebe onto the ship. And I'm really fond of him because he's basically my son. So my son can't turn into different creatures. But he's always putting his clothes on back to front and asking, would you rather questions and just a really sweet bit of a dreamer. But cheerful. I'm really fond of Perry as a character. So he befriends, well, if Phoebe won't quite let him befriend her, but he tries to befriend Phoebe. Yeah, because Phoebe's kind of cross and angry, but also super likable and fun, all of those things at once. Is she based on a real person? She's a sort of character I've always had in lots of iterations. I wrote a rom-com script when I was in my twenties, although it never got made, about a psychic who was really gloomy and sarcastic because she could see the future and it was terrible. And I love those sarcastic characters. As a kid, I loved Bill Murray and Garfield, and I've always loved Dorothy Parker and Blackadder. I love Blackadder. I love that sarcastic humour. I've always been drawn to those sarcastic characters. It's a bit like my daughter, but she's also got this Dorothy Parker-like humour that I appreciate.

Katy 12:29

She has crises of confidence, doesn't she? And could be a bit, given what's happened to her on the island, because she has a twin, doesn't it? She's not really. She's lost her family. She lost her family and she's slightly resentful of the whole island setup, isn't it? Isn't she desperate to escape? So she could have been a kind of a bit miserable, but she's actually quite fun and likable, I think.

Clare 12:53

Yeah, sarcasm's often a defensive mechanism, isn't it? You can feel this vulnerable little girl under there somewhere.

Katy 12:59

I like the fact that there seems to be an oversupply of oracles.

Clare 13:03

Yes. Yeah, she thinks she wants to be an oracle when she grows up because it's like a career path for a girl, but it turns out there's just oracles everywhere you move. That's true. If you read the Argonautica, the ship's swimming in sears, they're just all over the place. I like the fact quite early on in the book, she gets good advice about you don't have to start every sentence with low.

Katy 13:24

Yes.

Ali 13:25

Which if you were talking to me or Katie, you would just be like, you don't have to start every sentence with so before you do your thoughts. So that I like that bit as well. That that amused me.

Katy 13:34

No, that was good. But also that there's this over supply of oracles, but she actually turns out to possibly have a real skill that that she does perhaps see things. To her own surprise, really.

Clare 13:47

There's certainly going to be two books. I'm hoping there's a third. So that's perhaps a skill that will build up as it goes on. And perhaps her ultimate aim is to be the Oracle of Delphi when she grows up. So let's see. Oh, okay.

Katy 13:58

This is a career path.

Clare 14:00

Yeah.

Katy 14:02

She finally meets her heroine, doesn't she, Medea? And it goes quite badly. Was that a kind of a deliberate commentary on overrated heroines or

Clare 14:14

um I you know a lot of a thing about retelling a story like Jason and the Argonauts for children is that that sets up quite a few problems because a lot of the subject matter is very adult or difficult. And Medea is a tricky one. She's a tricky one to write for children at the end of the day. Especially if they might Google what happens afterwards with Medea and so on. So my solution was to make her a sort of moody, a moody teenage goth. I hope it works. I think it works.

Katy 14:48

It does. I just think it feels really so how she's so disillusioned, and then and that just sense of be careful what you wish for in terms of meeting the people that you have idolized, and that she has that experience, and it's quite and it almost brings out her inner strength in terms of going, actually, I'm not going down this path.

Clare 15:12

Yeah, in a way, it could make her more cynical. But I think a lot of the story, if the story has a moral in many ways, it's about that life's all about the journey, really. And she wants to go to Corinth to meet Medea, that's her aim, and they all want to go to Corinth to get the golden fleece. But Medea is disappointing, and ultimately the fleece is just a rogue. I like that as well. So you know it's about the journey. And one of my favorite poems of all times about that by Kavathi, the poem Ithaca. I don't know if you know it. Look it up, guys, look it up. We're all looking for it. It's not about reaching Ithaca, it's about the journey. It's about getting there. That's what life's really about. And I think the book's about that too. But do you want to read us a little bit, Claire? If you've got a favorite message you'd like to share with us, I will read you a little bit. So this is they're about to get through the clashing rocks. So these two massive rocks that sort of smash together, very difficult. No ships ever got through. And one of the many seers they've met on the way has told them they have to send a dove to fly through it. And if the dove survives, the ship can go through it's an omen. And if it doesn't, if it dies halfway through, they've got to give up and go home. But they don't have a dove. Oh, I should say too that the boat, the Argo talks. Yes. There's one right here, honey, the Argo says. And the Argonauts look to her prow and there one is, ruffling its feathers, the colour of milk and cooing. Phoebe has a bad feeling and checks frantically around. It's Perry, she yelps. That's not a dove, it's Perry. He's actually done something useful and it frightens her. He's too clumsy. Surely he'll hurt himself. As they draw nearer to the rocks, you can hear their terrible, forbidding rumble. Perry, is it you? Jason asks. Perry cooser, yes. Well done then, Jason says. Fair play. Are you sure you're volunteering to go through the clashing rocks, though? It's very dangerous. Perry bobs his head in a kind of nod. Okay then, well in that case. At that moment the rocky headland looms into view. Its sheer, jagged sides seem to headbutt each other, then grind mercilessly together. An explosive boom echoes through the narrows. The impact sends vast waves out, almost tipping the Argo over. On the count of Tan, Jason shouts over the splashing. Grun, boo, knee, seven, jive, sticks, plates, nineteen, tan. Oh my gosh, Phoebe mutters, shaking her head with despair. Shiron mouths his apologies. But Perry is off on the count of Tan, thinking, Now's my time to shine. He flaps his wings and takes off. Whoa, he's fast. He can't really see through the sea spray and bangs straight onto the ship's mast. Oops, never mind. He can do this, he can do this. There are his tiny new friends below, waving to him. You don't have to, Phoebe seems to shout in a far away voice. It's just a rug. Very good. Sorry, I laughed then when I was counting. I love that it's just a rug. But that's what you see, I made myself laugh. That's what happens when I'm writing. I chuckle.

Katy 18:25

But that's the part of it, isn't it? So it is this really tense moment, but then there's Phoebe kind of going, Oh, he's so clumsy, he's just bound to mess this up. And Jason, who yeah, that's it. Yeah. Jason feels like he's determined to be a hero and has in a remarkable run of luck, but it's just not all that.

Clare 18:50

Yeah, the easy thing would have been to make the heroes the bad guys, and I've done that before. I should say my first one's book, The Untamables, the Knights of the Round Table are the bad guys. It's Arthurian mess. But I didn't want to make him a bad guy, but I think he's one of those people. I guess you could say he's got male privilege, you know. He's just moved through life very easily. Everything's come very easily to him. He just expects everything will go well for him.

Ali 19:14

Yeah.

Clare 19:14

And that everyone will fall in love with him. So he has to learn about teamwork and

Ali 19:19

he'd be an influencer, wouldn't he? Be in the gym now.

Clare 19:24

He's okay. But at the start of the story, famously, he helps an old lady across a river. That's why Hero looks after him, because it's actually here in disguise. Yeah. So you know, there is that about him in the original story. He does have his nice side.

Katy 19:36

And he's kind he he seems very unfazed that he's got these three children on his boat. Um whatever, we'll get on with that. Must be here for a reason, because destiny is my thing, really.

Clare 19:48

He's alright, we don't mind Jason. I've been writing the second book, which is about Perseus' quest for Medusa's head, and Perseus is not a very nice man, quite a different type of hero.

Katy 20:02

He's he's easier to dislike, really, isn't he?

Clare 20:06

Perseus is awful. Don't even get restarted on Perseus.

Katy 20:09

Yeah. So going back, you've touched on this, but Greek myths are really quite full of violence, killing people and moral, dubious decisions. How do you decide what you keep in and what you leave out and how dark you let it get? Because some of it is really dark. How do you balance that in because it's a book for children?

Clare 20:33

Um, I think it it children live in the real world. They know there are wars, they know there are murders, they know these things exist. Nine to 12-year-olds do. That's me. So, you know, these children also live in a world where these things exist. However, I wouldn't have any of my heroes or my crew kill anyone, for example. You just got to have hard rules like that. But also, I'm very anti-violence, and my book Anti-Untamables was very anti-violence too. So the only person who does anything of any violence of the good guy's Hercules, he likes slaying things. He's definitely not a hero. That's all it's made him to more of a joke than it's it's not a good quality. Never trusted with your houseplants or to look after your pets when you're on holiday. Hot, hot, hot tip. I wouldn't have one of the children's heroes be good with a sword, which I know lots of children's books are like that, but I'm not interested in that. I'm not interested in big boys fighting.

Katy 21:37

Yeah, fair enough.

Clare 21:38

Perry's and Perry's not like that at all. He's a different sort of boy, I hope.

Katy 21:42

Yeah.

Clare 21:43

Quite gentle and kind.

Katy 21:46

And when you're writing, do you have a child in your head that you're writing for?

Clare 21:53

What my own children, look like. This is why I'm really enjoying writing middle grade now.

Ali 21:57

Yeah.

Clare 21:57

And feel like it's the time to really lean into. It because I have a ready-made audience and I read these books, I test them on my children. It is great for testing jokes and things like that. It's a hard audience. When you say you've written something really funny, and it's just like I can only imagine my children would just be like when they were that age, they would have just been like, Really? So, as you're writing it, were you evolving it with uh with your hard audience feedback? I wrote a first dragon and then I read it to them. So between I didn't know that's really handy, yeah. And sometimes there's things you don't even think as an adult that children might understand. But I had a joke about double glazing and neither of them had knew what double glazing was, or things like that. When I was a kid, it felt like there was nothing but adverts for double glazing, it was all I ever heard about. Yeah.

Ali 22:45

Yeah, you're right. Now it's just like windlows, isn't it? That's how they come. Yeah.

Clare 22:50

But things like that. But also it means I'm I I can use words like riz in my book or whatever, which a lot of children's authors don't have access to that vocabulary that I do. We know all about Italian brainrot. I know all this.

Ali 23:05

We talked to Nate Lessore, who said it's really hard to get that right. Um and you need a reader very close to the right age to make sure you're using whatever the current kind of words are. But then also making sure that they're not too now, so that if it's read in a few years' time it won't date that. Yeah,

Clare 23:23

yeah, that's an interesting thing, isn't it? But um I think I can get away with it in the Othernauts because what I do is play with anachronism a lot, which is a lot of the fun of the book, because the narrator knows that this scroll is going to be buried for thousands of years, not found till 2026. So there's lots of jokes about that and references to the future reader and Taylor Swift and Tom's hair and things. And not having anyone to talk to about it. But that's part of the fun. I always enjoy a bit of anachronism.

Katy 23:55

Yeah, then so you've hinted that there's definitely another one on its way. What are you working on at the moment? What's next?

Clare 24:01

Yes, I'm working on that. We've just done copy edits and the illustrators gone to work on it. So it's all very real. That'll be my next book, which will be out in January next year. Oh, The Northern the Gorgons Gaze.

unknown 24:14

Oh.

Clare 24:14

So it's quite quick, then I like that with a series.

Ali 24:17

If you've read one, you want sometimes there's like a whole year, 18 months.

Clare 24:21

They're like a poetry book, they don't want another one for six years. Ideally.

Katy 24:28

We always get to this idea that if a child has started a series, that actually a year in a child's life is a really long time. And so it may make complete sense from a publisher's perspective, and also from an author's perspective, because obviously you're you actually have to do the work for there to be a year, but for a child, it's just like I want it now. And uh and there's something about discovering a series that's actually already been completely written, and then you can read every single one one after the other. I've got the proof which doesn't have the illustrations in it, but you've seen the illustrations, haven't you? It's quite highly illustrated.

Ali 25:00

Yeah. No, I haven't either. I've I haven't you've got the better proof than I had. Yeah. So you've got a soft proof. I thought they were in the soft proof, in the e-proof. No, so we haven't seen the illustration. I've seen the front cover.

Clare 25:13

So has it got a lot, a couple of feathers? Yeah, it's got 30 illustrations in it. And they're really detailed. They're almost like in more like graphic novel than they're not just little sketches, they're proper.

Katy 25:24

Oh we're gonna have to go and have to search it out.

Clare 25:27

That's the problem with the illustration. It's really fantastic, really. So we say that match it, yeah. Okay.

Katy 25:32

So the illustrations throughout, I've seen the front cover, which looks amazing.

Clare 25:36

And they're really fun, I think.

Katy 25:37

Oh, good. I'm glad that we established that. Because when I saw the e-proof, I could see that there were more chapter illustrations in it.

Clare 25:44

And my kids, even my 12-year-old, they still like a book with pictures, really. Oh, absolutely. It just Yeah, I think it's and I think if you've got a quest book, you need some pictures. Yeah, you do. All the different obstacles, all the different monsters. Yeah. You just need to see where you're going on that journey and what it looks like. I feel very strongly about playing with layout, because that's something I do as a poet as well. Um short chapters. I don't like big long chunks of tech. My children don't, but neither do I, frankly. I think the chapters in Harry Potter are way too long, by the way. You can't read it as a bedtime story, they're just too long. I end up having to abbreviate them or chop them. I've given up now. I have great sympathy.

Katy 26:26

I tried. I think that is part of what we were saying that we felt that it was a really a book that would be a great read-aloud. And I think that is partly it. It's partly the voice and the the way the narrative.

Clare 26:39

I've tested it as a read-aloud. Yeah, yeah. I think it was plenty in there for parents as well. Yeah. And if you're interested in Greek myth, there's little references to to go off and do a bit more. The idea that the Argo gets completely rebuilt, all these sort of classic ideas. Yeah. There's lots of little Easter eggs for the people to go and think. Yeah. And if you've got a kid that really likes exploring and finding out more, there's lots of other places to then go off and find out more about it. And is there an Audible book version? There's going to be, yeah. There's going to be. And did you get any input into who might read that? I haven't heard it yet. But I I was sent some casting text. So I was part of the decision of whose voice was best. Yeah. That'll be exciting.

Katy 27:23

How are they going to do the siren bits?

Clare 27:26

That's a very good question. I was saying as a poet, I like how things look on the page. I really enjoyed putting all that redacted text in. I think it's Yeah. No, I like that. So yeah, we haven't said Cora. There's Cora, a little uh a little half bird, half-girl, who could be a harpy, could be a siren. She reckons she's a siren, but her voice says otherwise. She's the worst singer of all time, and it's had to be redapted.

Ali 27:51

So yes, there's a so yeah, that I thought was funny because it would have been hard. It just made the point without kind of describing it. It was just like, no, this is just too awful, even to listen to. You just you don't do not want to hurt your ears, they're just gonna redact it. Yeah, but that'll be interesting to see how they do that in the audiobook. Silence, silence, or maybe like just like maybe bleep it out. When you bleep things out on the radio, yeah, that would be fun. So, what we're also asking people about this at the moment, because it's the national year of reading, what are your hopes for the national year of reading? What would you most like to see happen for children and reading, uh, given we've got a whole year of it?

Clare 28:33

Um, I miss uh the days when at primary schools teachers read out whole novels. My daughter's at a lovely primary school, the teachers are great. But having seen how English operates there, they often don't get the chance to look at whole books. You'll say you're studying Peter Pan or something, and then they'll look at a chapter and have to look for fronted adverbials in it or something. Yeah. And often you don't even get to the end of the story. And I I'm a great believer in storytelling, and I think our best way to make children read is to get them interested in wanting to know what happens next in a story, proper storytelling. I remember being at primary school and we would got read out all the roll dolls. It was just peak roll doll time when I was younger. We'd get read a couple of chapters every day. I remember even one when I was in like junior three, I don't know what year you'd call that now. Year six or something, five. I remember a teacher told us the whole plot of Lord of the Flies. He was reading it and he just sort of paraphrased it for us and told us over three or four days. And it was one of the most memorable experiences. All my class were like, what happens next? What's happening to Piggy? I can see why he probably didn't read it to you as primary children. But yeah, I think children love stories, and that's the best way to get people reading is to make them want to know what happens next. And I don't think they tell enough whole stories. I totally agree.

Katy 30:00

Used to drive my kids absolutely mad that they would start a book and they go, I know we're not going to finish this because it's two weeks till the end of term and we're not gonna finish it, and it's gonna annoy me so much. Why did we even start it? And then that not being a thing that they would just go, Oh, yeah, sorry we didn't get to finish it.

Clare 30:18

But that's the main pleasure of

Ali 30:21

and that sort of continues. I was one of those parents for GCSEs, just not reading the whole text. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Both my son and my husband were like, Why don't you go and have another conversation with the teacher somewhere over there? Yeah, but I know teachers are time short, but that's a problem that needs solving, I think.

Katy 30:43

Yeah, it's not the teachers' fault, it is it's about the system that they're in and what's prioritized within the system. I think we find that in primary schools there are more teachers now who are prioritizing reading out loud every day and are doing whole books. And I think that has really started to turn back around, and there are more people understanding the value of that. And more to the point, their sort of leadership team is allowing them to prioritize that because so often what happens is that it just gets squeezed out. It's the thing you do at the end of the day, and then if things are slightly overrun or whatever, then it gets squeezed out.

Clare 31:20

We need children who can read whole books, don't we? Yeah, not just start things and then get distracted. That sort of focus is an important part of what reading teaches you.

Katy 31:31

I totally agree. It's that getting lost, it's that feeling I really inhabit this book and I really care about what happens, is the only way. Or I don't care, or I really hate that character, and I just really hope that they fall off, someone pushes them. Do fall off the cliff. Yeah, whatever. But it's that investment, isn't it, that would make you want to come back? Because why would you not come back? Why would you not pick up another book if you haven't experienced that getting lost in it? So finally, do you have a book that you would recommend that you've read recently and that you think, oh yeah, I really want to pass this on? This is a book I would say read. Could be adult or children's.

Clare 32:09

Oh, but for adults, actually. The book I'm reading at the moment is called Lud in the Mist. It's by Hope Mirrelles, who's like a modernist, she's best known as a poet. It's absolutely incredible. My last adult book was a poetry collection called Lives of the Female Poets. And I'm really interested in the way that women are often being written out of literary history and forgotten and neglected and not put in the anthologies and not canonized and so on. And Hope Merrilles is a modernist poet who now is thought to have influenced Tierce Elliott's The Wasteland and stuff who's got written out of literary history a bit. Anyway, this novel is about it's a fantasy set in fairyland, set in this country that borders on fairyland, and all this fairy fruit's been creeping over the border, and people are getting drugged on this fairy fruit and behaving very strangely. And I'm absolutely loving it. It's incredible. I love fantasy, I love fairies. It's a bit like uh Susan Clark Mr. Narrow. Did she do Piranesi as well? Yeah, she did. It's a bit like uh writing it's incredible, and it's I love that. I feel like it rediscovered a masterpiece. Oh, brilliant.

Katy 33:23

So there's a serendipity reading, yeah. Fantastic. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. So I really enjoyed it. It's got lots of jokes in it.

Ali 33:36

Yeah, it's funny. It's got lots of illustrations, yeah.

Katy 33:39

It's got sort of in jokes in it, isn't it? Because you're kind of invited to be on the inside in terms of the jokes that are going on, and it's got illustrations throughout. It's not as highly illustrated as, say, something like Louis Stowell's Loki books, but I think it would appeal to the same readers. It's that kind of humour and myths, different kinds of myths.

Ali 34:02

But and a different perspective on the story. Um, it's fun.

Katy 34:07

Yeah, I don't know. I'm not uh an expert on my Greek myths, but it feels like the core of it is a is a fairly faithful retelling, but because of the kids retelling it, it even if you really knew the story well, it would be a different perspective.

Ali 34:21

Yeah, and I think we talk about it in the interview, but the fact that, you know, the fleece that they're looking for is just a rug.

Katy 34:27

It's a good take. And I think we were we talked to her about her poetry, didn't we? And and I think the fact that she's both a poet and a playwright comes through in the book.

Ali 34:38

Yeah, it had a real sense of place and setting.

Katy 34:42

Yeah, I kept on thinking that because I I like the illustrations, I particularly like the cover. I think the cover is quite a fresh look. And I kept on thinking that it would because of the way you kind of move through it almost that you feel like, okay, well, this is another scene or another act, and that it would make a really good animated film. Yeah. So anyone looking for rights for an animated film, I would recommend having a look at it. Over here you go, have a look at it. And it's the first in a series, so always we always love that. Yeah, go and explore that. We enjoyed it. So it's also been a busy time.

Ali 35:17

We've got to go out, haven't we, a bit, which is nice. We have out of our little boxes.

Katy 35:21

Yeah. So we were very lucky to be invited to the Carnegie Awards ceremony. So it's a bit of a later catch-up. We've obviously got two fantastic episodes, which if you have not listened to them yet, you should. Why not? Why not? Yes. So where we go through both the Carnegie Medal for Writing shortlist and the Medal for Illustration shortlist with teacher Alison Dewitt and librarian Amy McKay, who are really experienced shadowers and have been involved in Carnegie for many years. And we talk about all of the books, uh, what they're about, how their shadowers have reacted to them. And yeah, we really enjoyed those discussions. We had the nice invitation to go in and talk to some of the authors before the ceremony. Yeah, so there are five little shorts on our YouTube channel. I know. Who's who to thunk it? Who'd have dunk it? We we do have one. We're not sure we know exactly how it works.

Ali 36:18

But there are five little short videos where we interviewed some of the authors before the ceremony, and you can check those little reels out there.

Katy 36:26

Which is Yeah, so we interviewed Beth O'Brien, didn't we? Patrick Ness, uh Tear Fisher, uh J. Rose, JP Rose, Kate Rolfe, and Amy Dujong. Yeah. So yeah, go and listen to those. So the ceremony itself is just always brilliant, isn't it? And worth watching it.

Ali 36:45

It's really good fun. The kids come, you can watch it, it's an hour long, you can watch it online. It's at the Matilda Theatre, and it's just a kind of celebration of books, a celebration of the shortlisted authors and the kids who've shadowed those books, they invite a load of shadowers. A couple of them came on stage to say which books they'd enjoyed.

Katy 37:04

Yeah, um I think it's nice that there's so many kids there, and I liked it. So for the kids, the authors wander around the theatre beforehand, chatting to the kids, they'll sign books for them if they've got them or anything else, and they just all wander around. So the kids can kind of just see them informally, and that's really nice. And it feels right that it's mainly I mean, there are old people like us in the audience, but there are mainly kids in the audience. And how did we do on the predictions, Allie? I think I think I did go for Wolf Siren. I think we did. I'm not sure I got any of them right. Actually, I think Wolf Siren was my wish, but I think I thought that they would go for something else, but I I have to go back and check. It's terrible, isn't it? Can't remember. Um, but I think we did think that Lord of the Flies would do well. And we we did highlight also Kate Rolfe's book because it was very distinctive in terms of its illustration and design. So I we'd have to go back and do the proper scores at some point. They were both such strong lists this year, though, it's really hard. It's really weird, isn't it? Because it just depends what else you're up against each year.

Ali 38:11

And it's I think it was a a you know a tricky year to win.

Katy 38:15

And there were so many books I love. I mean, I love Birdie. And she won the Shadowers Prize at the UK LA Awards for Birdie, JP Rose, which was brilliant, even if she got stuck on a train and couldn't get there. Oh, didn't she make it? No. Do you remember we saw her, didn't we? Oh, yeah, and she was saying I saw her on her Instagram as well that she was charging there and then got stuck. Oh. I know. In the heat. Yeah. Well, in the trains that never seem to go anywhere. Anyway, if you haven't yet had a look at the Carnegie short list this year, put them on your summer reading list. Both lists. The picture books you can kind of race through. They're really popular books. They will be in libraries. So if you're thinking I don't have however much to go and spend, go and find them in your library. Yeah. Yeah. They're chosen by librarians. Librarians read a lot. They do know what's working for kids, and it's a particularly strong list this year on all ages. So yeah, go go and have a look.