A Good Old Rant – Ruth Hatfield

Last month I was invited to my old Sixth Form College, Hills Road in Cambridge, to talk to their creative writing group and the shortlisted authors in a short story competition they’d been running. I also had to judge the shortlist and select a winner, which was a job that sounded great on paper but was a bit overwhelming when it came to actually doing it – being responsible for raining on all the non-winning parades was a bit brutal. But the main dilemma I faced was that I don’t really talk much to older teenagers – my published books so far are all middle grade, and although I’ve written stuff for older readers it’s all now safely buried under tons of earth in the back garden making the worms happy.

The usual stuff about heroes and villains wasn’t going to cut it –sixteen year olds know a good about nuance and subversion, and have to face up to plenty of it in their everyday lives. And I know that teenagers’ lives have changed a lot in the last twenty years, so I suspect I don’t know much about what it’s like to actually be one, these days. What could I say that was relevant?

I floundered for a bit, then seized on it – this was actually brilliant! I could have a proper, emotional, political rant – the kind that usually only comes out after a beer or several. I’m terrified of being political in schools when talking to a younger audience, but the dark doubts of an author are often all-consuming, and at home I do tend to answer mine with the absolute conviction that creative writing is both personally helpful and of huge political importance.

It was easy to start and much harder to stop after that, and it felt so good to be able to talk about the things I really feel strongly about: the fact that art is so undervalued in terms of educational achievement (mainly because it’s hard to assess and mark, I guess); the fact that art is misunderstood, threatened, dismissed and discounted by authorities of all sorts; most of all, my own perception of the sad political situation we’re in now, where a hopeful ideology of any kind from any part of the political spectrum seems entirely absent. And the desperate need we have to counter this by remembering the value of new ideas, of imagination and of creativity.

I won’t replicate the entire rant here, mainly because I think in retrospect I could have said it much more succinctly by using those words of Emily Dickinson’s: “Hope is the thing with feathers/ That perches in the soul/ And sings the tune without the words…” And just added: creative writing puts that tune into words. Words spread.

To those awful, unimaginative people who currently seem to make up the ruling establishment and hold our lives firmly by the throats, trying to tell us that the past was better, the best response can only be to keep writing about the beautiful future yet to come, to keep exploring and explaining our humanity to each other, in the certain conviction that we’ll be proved right in the end, even if we aren’t here to see it.

It was really, really great to be able to say that sort of thing not just to friends in the pub, but to an audience of strangers. Definitely another moment of feeling privileged to be a writer. I just have to work out how to say the same to year 6s now…

The power of shared stories - Lari Don

I received an email from a teacher at the end of last week which took my breath away. The email itself was a fairly mundane reply to queries about the school timetable and class sizes - we’re organising an author visit – but the PS was astounding. Here it is:

 PS - We've just had a very interesting class discussion on the morality of Yann's possession spell in First Aid for Fairies. One of the children made a connection with Trump's new torture agenda (our news article of the week) - who knew a book written almost a decade ago could be so topical?

To clarify, this is a class of primary age children, reading one of my adventure novels (First Aid For Fairies And Other Fabled Beasts, published in 2008), then the pupils, and their clearly superb teacher, bounced off it to discuss morality, ethics and world affairs.

I didn’t write that scene with any huge political goal in mind. Actually, this was my first novel, so I wrote it with no idea of whether anyone would ever read it, let alone discuss it. Honestly, I wrote it to discover how dark I could go with a children’s story, how flawed I could make a character and still care about him, how far I could stretch the magic that I was just learning to play with.

I didn’t write it to prompt discussions about right wing conservatism, abuse of power and the ethics of information gathering.

I am astounded, amazed, impressed and humbled that these primary age children were prompted by my words to think, to discuss, to make connections, and to discover their own opinions…

But perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised. This is after all what books and stories are for. This is what shared reading, and discussing stories together, should be for. Not specifically for dissecting the flaws of Donald Trump’s presidency (though, please go ahead and do that…) but for giving us shared vocabulary, and shared experiences within the safe environment of a story, so we can explore other issues together.

Stories help us think. Shared stories help us think together.

At this point I should probably explain: Yann is a centaur. In the relevant scene, this half-horse half-human from Greek myth (who is also a fairly grumpy Scottish pre-teen) uses dark magic to compel a weasel to spy for him, causing the weasel obvious pain and distress. The scene is set in tunnels under Edinburgh, which are being used by a minotaur as his temporary Scottish labyrinth, and the centaur’s use of dark magic is witnessed by his own friends – a selkie, a fairy, a phoenix and a token human girl - causing them to question his use and abuse of power.

As you can probably tell, First Aid For Fairies is a fantasy. It’s not set in contemporary real-life America, or the Middle East, or Guantanamo Bay. It’s a fantasy. And the fact that this wonderful teacher used this scene to encourage her pupils to talk about ethics and link them to current global concerns, proves something that I’ve always believed. Fantasy and fairy tales – stories set in magical worlds safely distant from our day-to-day lives – are very strong tools to allow us to examine our real world.

So, the power of class novels to prompt discussion, the power of fantasy to give us a new way to look at reality - this PS gave me pause to think about both of those issues. But the main reason this PS took my breath away was because it reminded me of the awesome responsibility of writing for children.

I don’t write stories with messages, I write stories with ambushes, chases and magic spells. But I also choose to write about characters and situations that allow me to explore questions which fascinate and concern me. I write because I want readers to enjoy the stories I imagine, I don’t write with the intention of teaching moral lessons (never, ever!) But I am incredibly moved and impressed if my books prompt young readers to explore their own questions.

It’s a privilege, an honour and a huge responsibility writing for kids, and it’s important to be reminded of that regularly. It’s also a very heavy weight to carry. But I suspect if we didn’t recognise the size of the responsibility, and occasionally stagger under its weight, we shouldn’t be doing it…

So, having almost recovered from this email, I’m now very much looking forward to meeting this thoughtful and wonderful class, and their amazing teacher, in a few weeks’ time.

But first, I’m off to explore questions of identity and choice, lightly disguised as a trilogy about shapeshifters… 

Lari Don is the award-winning author of more than 20 books for all ages, including fantasy novels for 8 – 12s, picture books, retellings of traditional tales, a teen thriller and novellas for reluctant readers. 

Lari’s website 

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Adapt At Your Own Risk - Clementine Beauvais

This is one of my French books, La louve, fabulously illustrated by Antoine Déprez:

When I say 'fabulously', I mean it in both senses of the term: they're brilliant illustrations, but they also reproduce very well the fable-like feel and texture of the story. La louve is an original story, but it is what is generally called a literary fairy tale - a new story made to feel like it's a classic folk or fairy tale.

This might be why, when La louve recently appeared in the White Ravens list at the Munich International Youth Library, it was described as 'a retelling of a Russian folkale'. To my knowledge (and that of my Russian friends), it isn't. There are many folk and fairy tales around the world that involve transformation, wolves and curses, but this one isn't a retelling of any one in particular.

After La louve, however, the publisher, Alice Editions, has asked us to work on a second opus which would be an adaptation or reinterpretation of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. I immediately agreed, because I've been fascinated by that weird tale for a long time. So I started to think about how to do it. The idea was not to retell the tale, but rather to write an original story inspired from, or reactivating or reimagining, the tale.

I soon realised it was an enterprise fraught with interesting peril. First I thought I’d focus on the rats, perhaps make the main character one of the rats. But immediately, a problem emerged: the glacial contemporary political and ideological connotations of a narrative that involves hordes ("swarms"?) of rats "invading" a village, spreading an illness, being thrown out, and drowning. The portrayal of a population identified as parasitic, swarming the streets of a nice little traditional village and taken away to die - in the water - in exchange for money, has a very unpleasant ring to it; or at least, it should, to anyone who’s even vaguely concerned with what’s happening in the world today. You'd have to be the most candid person on Earth not to realise.

A simple retelling of the story just about gets away with those connotations, because the literal explanation proposed by the story - the plague - works sort of fine, and you can sort of turn off the metaphorical reading. But with an entirely new story, you can’t claim innocently that you don't mind that extra layer of meaning. It just invites itself, whatever you do. 

So of course you can play with these political connotations, and turn the story on its head, getting the rats to be the good guys in the story; the misunderstood, the oppressed and the silenced. You can even write an interesting story where the plague is an invention of the humans to create suspicion against the rats. You'd turn the story into a politically committed tale, preaching compassion towards a marginalised group.

Yeah. But it's a really tricky thing to pull off, because in this roman à clefs you're still identifying a group of people as rats - whether or not you're arguing that it's someone else's vision, that's pretty dangerous.

I know Art Spiegelman's done it. I'm not Art Spiegelman though.

In other words, I couldn't see a way of adapting the Pied Piper of Hamelin story without grappling with the metaphorical political implications. And while I'd be happy to do that in another context, it absolutely wasn't what I wanted this particular book to be. It was supposed to be like La louve: intemporal, slightly frightening, low-key and poetic. Not political. 

So I took the story differently. I decided to get rid, so to speak, of the original tale, by putting it in its entirety on the first page. The story begins with a young girl whose grandfather tells her the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. And then the story starts, seemingly unconnected to the tale. But it loops back onto itself... and connects, at the very, very end, with the very, very first page.

Dealing with this adaptation, I felt like I'd spent quite a while, at least a month or two, thinking about how to catch it, a bit like you would observe a scorpion thinking of the best way to pick it up without getting stung, and getting it to do what you want it to do. Coincidentally, the YA book in French I'm currently working on is also an adaptation. And there again, I spent many train rides looking out of the window, thinking of how to catch that particular scorpion.

I'd be curious to hear your stories of adaptations, retellings or reimaginings of classical tales or novels - I'm sure there are many around, as it's quite a common thing to do. Do tell! 

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Clementine Beauvais writes in French and English. She blogs here about children's literature and academia.

Copyright. It's a piece of cake - John Dougherty

Who would have thought that copyright would be one of the issues of this election?

Not one of the major issues, obviously; not one of the really important issues like how best to eat a bacon sandwich, or whether Scottish MPs should be allowed to help make the laws or should just sit at the back doing raffia. But amid all the high-level politicking, someone noticed that the Green Party website expressed an apparent desire to reduce copyright to a period of 14 years.

Obviously, some people got cross. Some other people, however, couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. They started saying things like, It was an initiative to get copyright owned by artists & writers, not companies, and The idea is to support arts, and It is in all of our best interests to have a vast public domain, and No one needs decades of monopoly, and If you write a book and after 14 years you haven’t made enough money, maybe you should write another book.

Much of this demonstrates a real misunderstanding not just about the working life of the average writer, but also about the basic principle of copyright, which is this:

If I make something, it belongs to me.

This applies whether it’s a song, a story, a poem, or a cake. I suggested this to someone on Twitter, who replied, I give cakes away. And you know what? That’s fine. If you make a cake, and you want to give it away, you can. You can give it all to your friends, or you can put it on the wall outside your house with a note saying “Help yourself”, or you can throw it at the seagulls. That’s fine. It’s your cake.

Similarly, if you want to sell it, that’s up to you. You can set up a cake-stall and sell it slice by slice; you can put it on eBay; you can sell the whole thing to someone who forgot to bake a birthday cake, or who’s having guests round for tea and hasn’t been to the shops, or who has a cake-reselling business, or who just likes cake. Or you can ask the cake-shop down the road to sell it for you at an agreed commission. That’s fine. It’s your cake.

And if you want, you can leave it on the kitchen table till it goes stale and mouldy. You can hang it from a tree and throw apples at it. You can put it in the bath. You can bury it in the garden. You can do any of these things, because it’s your cake. Whatever you want to do with it, that’s fine.

What’s not fine is for someone else to decide that it shouldn’t be your cake, and help themselves without your permission. 

It doesn’t matter why they don’t think it should be yours. They can argue that you’ve got more than enough cake; they can argue that you wouldn’t have been able to make the cake if someone else hadn’t produced the flour & eggs & sugar; they can argue that cake should be for everybody. They can argue that the big corporations make too much money out of cake; or that wider distribution of cake benefits society; or that if you haven’t got enough cake then maybe you should make some more; or simply that they really really like cake. Some of these may be true, but none of them is relevant. Because it’s your cake.

Nobody’s been able to explain to me why a story or a song should be any different in this regard than a cake - or a business, to use another comparison. If someone builds a business up and then hands over the day-to-day running to an employee, would we say that after 14 years she should lose her rights either to profit from the company or to control its direction? I don’t think we would. If someone builds a house and then rents it out, would we say that after 14 years of not living in the house he should lose his rights of ownership? Again, I doubt it. When you strip away the sound and fury, most of the arguments for reducing copyright seem to boil down to one of two:

1. I want free stuff
2. The internet has made it easier for people to steal stuff

We wouldn’t accept either of these as a good reason for removing other property rights. I don’t see why intellectual property should be any different.

Cake images © Michael Dannenberg. Used with permission. Because, so to speak, it's his cake. 

Further reading:
The ever-wise Sarah McIntyre in defence of copyright
Jonathan Emmett on why, even as a solid supporter of copyright, he's voting Green. I think I may do the same. Thanks to Jonathan for sending me a link to this.
John Degen on myths about copyright. I found this one on Sarah's blog.
The wonderful Joanne Harris - again, thanks to Sarah for the link. This one contains a cool little test to help you work out if you support the copyright principle or not.
Tom Chance, a former Green party spokesperson on Intellectual Property, gives his view
The Society of Authors's statement in response to concern over the Green Party's position. The Society's quick guide to copyright may be found here.

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John's latest book is the extremely silly Stinkbomb & Ketchup-Face and the Evilness of Pizza, illustrated by David Tazzyman and published by OUP.

Je suis Charlie by Keren David

Cartoon by Sarah Macintyre, saying it better than I can in words

How can we, as children's writers, respond to the horrific massacre  in Paris yesterday? As I watched people gather in Paris and London, holding pens in the air as a protest against those who seek to silence, I asked myself how can I use my pen, my ability to write, my privileged position as an author, to oppose and prevent future atrocities?

These are the inadequate answers that I came up with:

 -  Oppose extremism in every guise. Stress shared humanity and values. Never glorify violence, warfare or death.

 -  Give children the idea that conflicts can be  addressed and even solved through talking. 

 - Feed and encourage their sense of humour.

 - Support the education of children all over the world. The extremists of ISIS and Boko Harem are waging a war on children, slaughtering them in their schools, because they fear the power of  reading, writing, thinking.

 - Celebrate cartoonists and writers who poke fun at authority. 

- Write about the real Islam, the moderate peace-loving Muslims, who are horrified by acts of violence carried out in their name and against many of their community.  Do not allow the extremists to become the face of Islam. 

 - Champion freedom of speech, even if that freedom leads to offence. This is a difficult one, because there's a natural and correct strong urge to avoid giving offence, and so many words can be exceptionally hurtful.  I've just written a book set in Amsterdam, where I lived for many years, and I was often surprised by Dutch bluntness -  a by product of a deeply held belief in the freedom of speech, whatever offence that may cause.
 The assassination of  film-maker Theo Van Gogh in Amsterdam by an Islamic extremist just over ten years ago was very similar to yesterday's attack. Van Gogh, like the Charlie Hebdo magazine, made a point of laughing at everyone,insulting everyone, including Muslims. Getting children to understand the appropriate responses to insults and teasing, to understand the difference between personal attacks and criticism of beliefs and ideas is a difficult conundrum - but completely essential. Ultimately the right to offend is an important freedom, even if it's not a very comfortable one

 Je suis Charlie, say the placards in the Place de la Republique and Trafalgar Square; in Berlin, Montreal, New York, all over the world. Je suis Charlie. Nous sommes Charlie. But what are we going to do?