Keris Stainton's Blog, page 25

Author interview: Clara Vulliamy

I’ve been chatting with Clara Vulliamy on Twitter for a while now, after I was sent a copy of her gorgeous book Martha and the Bunny Brothers. Joe and I love the book so much – and Clara is so lovely – that I had to bother her for an interview.

Can you tell us a bit about yourself?

I’ve been writing and illustrating picture books for more than twenty years now – there’s nothing else I’ve ever wanted to do, which is as well because there isn’t much else I CAN do!

I live with my husband who is an artist, our two grown-up children and two elderly spinster guinea pigs.

I’m a fairly cheerful sort of person, and even if the big things in life are sometimes burdensome I get a lot of pleasure from the small things.

What’s an average day for you?

I’m early to my drawing board, and (if I manage to resist the more-ish delights of twitter!) work without interruption until tea. Though I do always make time for a highly unhealthy lunch – a half-eaten bag of crisps, or leftovers straight from the fridge.

When the workers get back from work / college, needing some peace and quiet, I down tools and bother them with constant chat and questions about their day.

Writing can be a lonely occupation – how do you cope with the solitary nature of being a writer/illustrator?

I’m okay with it because I know I will have some company in the evenings. In the day, I LOVE solitude – and silence! No radio, music or background noise for me.

There’s also lots of communication with all the many people who work on our books with us – agent, editors, designers, publicity people – and there’s usually someone free for a chat online if it all gets a little TOO quiet.

How long does it take to illustrate your books? 

It takes loads longer than you might think! I need three or four months to do the illustrations. And before that a lot of mulling, scribbling, rubbing-out, wondering, chewing the end of my pencil, staring out of the window…

But the writing, even a short picture book text, takes me a very long time too.

What advice would you give someone who wants to write a picture book?

Have a look at what’s out there already – what do people seem to like? What do YOU like? Take it in, mull it over, then ignore it all completely and write to please yourself.

You don’t have to strive after originality – its all been done before, but not by you.

Keep it SHORT – cut, cut and cut again.

Remember the pictures will be telling the story too.

If you had to live within the confines of one book, and only interact with its characters (but you would still be yourself), which book would you choose?

I would choose The House at Pooh Corner. What more could one need than the Hundred Acre Wood to stroll in or a game of Pooh-sticks to play. Christopher Robin would probably be a bit of a pain and Eeyore could get you down, but I admire Owl enormously and I love Rabbit and his friends and relations – and oh I could meet PIGLET, what an honour that would be!

Which three books would you take to a desert island?

His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman

some T S Eliot poetry

my Wacky Races annual from 1970.

When I first got to know you on Twitter, I had no idea your mum is Shirley Hughes. I was quite nervous about mentioning it, but you were lovely about it. Can you tell us what it’s like to have a national treasure for a parent? And can you tell us about the book you’re writing together?

I’m enormously proud of my Mum, and puff up with pride when people realise that I’m her daughter and tell me how much they love her books. She doesn’t completely know quite how cherished she is, and how much her stories are an essential part of so many families’ lives, so I always pass these kind comments on to her.

It’s been on the cards for YEARS that we would collaborate, and now – at last! – is the perfect moment. She wrote the thrilling tales of Dixie O’Day especially for me to illustrate: the first in the series, Dixie O’Day in the Fast Lane, comes out next year. It’s so much fun working together, coming up with new ideas, laughing a lot. I will look back on these days and be so glad of them.

More on Dixie here.

Thanks so much, Clara. 

Clara’s lovely book Lucky Wish Mouse Sweet Dreams is the bedtime book on CBeebies today, between 6 and 7pm. Tune in!

Homeschooling Harry: Questions

Some people have asked me recently how Harry can learn without being taught. I’m a bit baffled by the question since, as I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, it suggests the person asking can’t think of a single thing they’ve learned since leaving education, but I think what they probably really want is practical examples of how Harry is learning. And mostly it’s by asking questions.

The other day, we were in the car on the way to the cinema and Harry asked, apropos of nothing: “Why do we bury dead bodies?” He didn’t mean us as a family, honest, but it led to a discussion of burial versus cremation, decomposition, funerals, what to do with ashes, what the ashes are made up of, even about town planning (“Who first thought of putting someone underground?”)

At the cinema, we saw The Lorax, which I wasn’t expecting to like, but actually loved. All three of us did. On the way home, we talked about some of the themes of the film – the environment, animals’ habitats, responsible business practices. When we got home, I looked up the study notes to The Lorax and found we’d pretty much touched on it all (apart from the film-making aspects) without even really thinking about it.

A few days later, in the park, as I took the photo above, Harry mentioned a camera we’d seen an advert for. It was by Sony. “Do Sony treat their workers well?” he asked, referencing the conversation we’d had after The Lorax and leading to a further conversation about cheap labour and exploitation.

On Sunday, at South Lakes Wild Animal Park, I bought Harry a set of Guatemalan Worry Dolls. He asked if Guatemala is where the guinea pigs come from and so we looked it up. In an Illustrated Atlas, on Google Earth, on Wikipedia. We found a photo of a Maya child selling worry dolls in a market and learned that the median age in Guatemala is half that of the UK (and I learned that I’m now on the wrong side of the UK’s median age – argh!), we read about the country’s civil war and genocide, natural disasters and recent democratic elections.

And then, because we were in need of cheering up, we watched this. (Completely unrelated to the above but if, like Harry, you’re “just very interested in technology”, rather fab.)

New blog: Mum’s Suitcase

I’ve set up a new blog (yes, I know). Rather than blogging the stuff from my mum’s suitcase here, I thought I’d keep it all together.

It’s at Mum’s Suitcase and I’m going to be posting new scans every day along with updating the page with Mum’s diary from 1962.

I fed a giraffe (and I liked it)

We went to South Lakes Animal Park today. It was good, but not terribly exciting until just as we were on our way out, we spotted the Giraffe house and went in to find that we could feed them sprouts for £1 a go. The boys weren’t interested – I don’t think they’d realised just how enormous giraffes are (I don’t blame them, it always surprises me too) and they were a bit freaked out.

I know the picture’s ridiculously blurry – I didn’t want to use the flash and spook them – but you get the gist, yes? It was so completely brilliant, just seeing them so close and having them eat out of my hand. The first time, I held my hand flat, like I was feeding a horse, but they knocked them off (and that was that!). The next time, I held the sprout between thumb and forefinger and the giraffe sort of hooked it with its tongue and the the tongue rolled up around the sprout, like a roller-blind. Mad.

It was a few hours ago now and I still feel giddy when I think about it. Plus it’s made me determined to one day see giraffes in the wild. I’ll add ‘save up for a safari’ to my To Do List…

52 Books: The Girl You Left Behind by Jojo Moyes

I’ve absolutely loved the three Jojo Moyes books I’ve read (her last three published books) so I think I should probably make reading her entire backlist a priority for next year.

This book seemed to take me forever to read – no reflection on the book, I just had a bunch of distractions – but that was also a good thing, since whenever I did have some time to read, I knew I had a wonderful book to get back to.

The Girl You Left Behind has more in common with The Last Letter From Your Lover than it does with Me Before You, but if you’re interested in great storytelling, gripping historical detail and completely believable characters, you must read this book.

First Draft in 30 Days: was it worth it?

Do you know what? It really was. I probably only did half the planning I should have done – from about Day 14 what Wiesner calls “outlining” I call “writing” – but I’ve definitely got a lot more to be going on with than I had at the beginning of the month and I hope to use the same techniques for other books.

Mostly, it was just really interesting to try something different. I’ll never be a proper planner (like Liz Kessler – OMG!) I don’t think, but nor do I need to be. Thanks to this experiment, I now know I can just add a little bit of planning to my pantsing and it will – I hope – make all the difference. Result.

Homeschooling Harry: meeting people

Last week we went to our first home education event. I was a bit nervous because I think most of the home educating families already know each other, but I needn’t have worried – everyone was very friendly and, to follow on from last week’s post, apparently completely normal!

The children ranged in age from under 1 (Joe fell madly in love with the baby and stood for quite some time just staring at her, while she beamed gummily at him and flapped her arms excitedly) to 13. Harry was very shy, as I expected, and didn’t speak to anyone, but all I want to do for now is to get him along to things – actual interaction will come when he’s ready.

You probably won’t be surprised to find that I wasn’t quite so reticent and had a good chat with quite a few other parents. They were all lovely (one shares my first name, another was wearing a top the same as mine) and told me about other events and activities coming up. (I was particularly pleased to hear there’s a forest school Harry can attend – although it’s full at the moment – Harry would have loved Joe’s outdoor preschool so much, so it’ll be great if he can go to something similar himself.)

The actual event was a first aid course aimed at children. Arranged by the British Heart Foundation, it was hosted by Community First Responders and it was great. They showed videos featuring a mum falling off her bike, a woman fainting and a boy bleeding, and then showed the children what to do in each situation. We were supposed to practice the recovery position, but when I lay on the floor, Harry and Joe just dived on me, but we can work on it.

I’d been a bit wary about taking Joe, but I think he asked just as many questions as Harry and enjoyed it even more (except for the ‘bleeding’ video – he didn’t like that much).

I was so glad that we went – it was valuable in many ways – and we’ll definitely be going to more meet-ups and events. In fact, there’s one this Friday… hopefully without any bleeding.

Birthday doghouse

It would have been my lovely mum’s 75th birthday today. She was 61 when she died. I’ve been looking through some photos…

With me, in New Brighton

In New York

I had a quick look through her suitcase too* and found this birthday card from my dad. I wonder what he’d done…

 

*Next year, I need to get it organised, scanned, and maybe set up a blog for it or something. I live in fear of something – fire, flood! – happening to it all, but there’s so much stuff it’s rather overwhelming.

Giving thanks and eating pie

I’ve written about our Thanksgiving over on Bea today – What are you thankful for? – but I also wanted to mention the pumpkin pie I made.

Now I’ve tried to do some baking this year, for the first time in my life. Sometimes it’s been a success, sometimes a dismal failure. This pumpkin pie was freakin’ fantastic.

It was ridiculously easy to make, but I can’t find the recipe I used (I think I accidentally dropped it in the recycling). This one‘s pretty close, although I ‘blind baked’ the pastry first. (Plus I didn’t add any of the spices and I forgot the salt.)

I wasn’t expecting much – I mean, it’s pie made with pumpkin – but it was delish. Sort of egg custard-y, but not too sweet. David and Harry weren’t keen, but me and Joe LOVED it. I took some into Joe’s preschool and the staff and children seemed to really like it too (apart from one child who ate the pastry, but left the pumpkin). Joe’s already asked me when I’m making it again. I definitely won’t be waiting until next Thanksgiving.

Pedro & Me by Judd Winick

I’m cheating again because I read this book a couple of months ago and I haven’t finished a book this week (I don’t know what’s wrong with me) (actually, I do – it’s the iPad), but I did read it and didn’t blog about it at the time so it still totally counts.

I’d had this book on my wishlist since I started my wishlist – I think I added it in early 2006. God knows why I didn’t buy it sooner – I think maybe I was worried about Feeling All The Things, because I was so obsessed with and in love with The Real World: San Francisco and I was devastated by Pedro Zamora’s death. Honestly, I can remember crying uncontrollably and feeling disbelief – he’d been so vibrant and alive in the show, it was almost unimaginable that he was dead.

Finally I decided it was time to buy it and read it and it’s just brilliant. It’s a graphic memoir (as in it’s in the form of a graphic novel, rather than it has graphic content) by Judd Winick who was a fellow Real World cast member – did you all watch it? Do you know who I’m talking about? – who became best friends with Pedro during their time on the show and remained close to him right up to his death. I say that like it was years after the show ended, but it wasn’t at all. In fact it was appallingly soon. One of the things that so upset me about this book was how young Pedro was – he was 22 when he died – and how he spent what little time he had making a difference. (You can read more about him on Wikipedia.)

But this isn’t a depressing read. It’s incredibly sad, yes – for some reason I was, once again, reading it on a bloody train and I had to stifle myself. If I’d been reading it at home, I would have been sobbing, no question – but it’s also uplifting and inspiring. Plus it’s laugh out loud funny. There’s a brilliant anecdote about Bill Clinton that made me do a laugh-sob. It was a busy train too.

If you remember Pedro and Judd, remember The Real World: San Francisco, this is a must-read.

I got a used copy from Amazon.  I was slightly put out when I realised it was a library copy, but then thrilled when I saw which library it had come from. How cool is this?

(I’ve just discovered that MTV’s Tribute to Pedro Zamora is on YouTube. I’ll have to psych myself up to watch it.)