Guest Post: Anna James

Author of Pages & Co

The Magic of Librarians

I think that once you are a librarian, you are always – in some way – a librarian. It doesn’t really leave you. I was a librarian in a secondary school and sixth form in the Midlands for nearly five years before I moved to London and started working at The Bookseller magazine (and was then a literary scout in between that and writing the first Pages & Co book). It was my first job after a graduate trainee year in Warwickshire Archives and it had a profound impact on me as a person but especially as a future writer for children.

All sorts of things have lingered – a necessary lack of snobbery around what makes readers, knowing the reality of budgets and access to books and authors in state schools, the opportunities and challenges that working with real children in real communities with real personalities brings, and ultimately of seeing the impact that the right book at the right time has.

The Magic of Recommending a Book

I’ll never forget finally convincing a Year 11 student to try a book, after five years of her having IT lessons in the library and chatting to me afterwards. At the start of Year 11, asking about my summer and hearing about my trip to Edinburgh book festival she realised I truly did love books, I wasn’t just paid to tell her to read. She told me I could choose one book for her and she’d give it a go. I gave her Paper Aeroplanes by Dawn O’Porter and she burst into the library after the weekend, slammed the book down on the desk and told me she needed another one.

The Magic of Bookwandering

Nothing quite compares to those moments. I think it’s a big reason why Pages & Co is so rooted in bookshops in libraries and other people’s books. The series is about bookwandering which means people can travel inside books and they are all real (out of copyright) books – and fables and poems and plays. I get to keep recommending books even from within my own. And whenever a child tells me they tried Anne of Green Gables or The Railway Children because of my books and that they loved them, I get to experience a little bit of that librarian joy again.

The Magic Community of Secret Librarians

Most children’s authors are secretly librarians too because it is such a supportive community and we are all always recommending each other. Hand-selling each other’s books in bookshops, matching children to books they might like when they chat with us in schools and at festivals. And of course, all of this is backed up by brilliant actual librarians, as well as booksellers and teachers, who do so much work to get books into the hands of young readers.

Once a Librarian, Always a Librarian

I’m so grateful for the time I spent as a children’s librarian. For one thing, it made doing school visits slightly less nerve-wracking (I’ve done Year 10 assemblies, which I think might be the scariest one). But mainly it reminds me, every day, of the importance of a diverse range of books written with care being available to young readers and the magic of schools, bookshops and libraries in being the caretakers of those spaces.

Guest Post: Tom Mitchell

Author of How to Stop the End of the World

Humour and Reading for Pleasure

At a recent school visit, following the customary twenty minutes of attempting to get the PowerPoint working, I introduced myself to the hall of Year 7s.

‘Hello, Lincoln! I’m Tom Mitchell.’

At this, a girl in the front row screamed. Not in a Beatles at Shea Stadium way, I’ve not reached that level of stardom, not yet, but in absolute terror.

It was off-putting, a challenge even to the most confident public speaker, which I’m very much not.

‘There’s a spider!’ explained the girl, pointing.

The hall laughed.

‘Don’t worry about him,’ I replied. ‘He’s a big fan of my books.’

The hall laughed again. Not quite as enthusiastically this time, fine, but there was a definite response.

And as soon as my executive assistant had exterminated the spider, we continued. The kids saw I had a sense of humour, they recognised I was happy to not take an arachnid attack too seriously. And so they were on board.

The Most Powerful Tool

Humour is the most powerful tool for engaging kids. As a parent, a teacher, and a children’s author (triple threat?), it’s something I’ve learnt through experience. Although, clearly, a teacher’s job is to educate, rather than entertain, you need your students engaged. If they’re having fun, they’re more likely to learn.

And the same is true of books, despite the level of earnestness that often accompanies children’s literature and school visits. I once experienced a book talk in which the author discussed how important their Cambridge degree was to writing a novel about magical hedgehogs.

Choice is Key

We adults often lecture children on how vital it is for them to read but, in doing so, run the risk of putting them off yet further. On this year’s World Book Day, the organising body published the results of a survey that reported that more than a third of children aren’t able to choose what they read, and one in five feel judged for what they do.

Clearly, this isn’t great.

What Do Children Want to Read?

It reminds me of my dad and, back when I was a kid, his mania for giving me cod liver oil. He’d obviously read somewhere of its health benefits, and I’m sure it’s wonderful, but the more he explained, the less I wanted it.

Kids aren’t rational agents. They exist in the moment. And they’re definitely reluctant to swallow medicine made from fish insides just because an adult says it’s good for their brains. If you’ve a well-meaning English teacher demanding your class read your favourite novel because it’s educative, well, this is similarly problematic.

How to Stop the End of the World

That’s not to say that I don’t think my new book, How to Stop the End of the World, doesn’t have value in addition to its humour. That’s the whole point. You can have both. The protagonists, Col and Lucy, are active. They haven’t yet succumbed to the pessimism of adulthood, the throwing up of arms in grumpy surrender. They try to prevent the end of the world. As we should be.

(Admittedly, in the real world, it’s not as simple as returning a stolen sword.)

I don’t care if kids don’t engage with this idea, though. I only want them to enjoy reading the book. Because too often when we encourage reading for pleasure, we forget an important element …

… those last two words: ‘for pleasure’.

Guest Post: Jen Carney

Author of The Day My Dog Got Famous

Representing Diverse Families

It’s no secret that I’m passionate about the representation of different types of families in children’s books. Indeed, a conversation with my son about the lack of positive representation of children with same-sex parents in upbeat books was my starting point for my debut series, The Accidental Diary of B.U.G., which has been praised for its accessible, age-appropriate inclusion.

In my latest series, which starts with The Day My Dog Got Famous (released by Puffin in March 2024), I’ve represented a foster family – a blended foster family headed up by two mums – through an engaging, illustrated comedy that tells the tale of a boy trying to beat his rival in an online pet-popularity contest.

Teacher feedback: ”The Day My Dog Got Famous doesn’t just show the wonder of dogs but presents a sensitive window into the life of a foster family, as well as the emotions of a young boy who has to deal with children coming in and out of his home for varying lengths of time.”

Real-Life Inspiration

I was inspired to write this series by my sister who, in addition to having four of her own children, has fostered for over 20 years. And by my nephews and niece who, like my protagonist, Ferris, have generously opened their lives and their hearts to welcome foster children into their home for various periods of time.

Through funny capers with dogs, cartoons and comic strips, The Day My Dog Got Famous explores some of the emotions experienced by birth children who are part of blended families: frustration, connection, love and loss.

Teacher feedback: “…not just a fabulous story but one that is highly inclusive and one that balances humour with heartache to absolute perfection.”

Representing Children in Foster Care

A mother through adoption myself, and a previous panel member for a fostering agency, through the series (which will eventually consist of three books) I’ve also dipped into some of the reasons children can find themselves foster care, how they feel, and the repercussions that can ensue – all at a level that children will understand.

In The Day My Dog Got Famous, the family provides respite care for a child whose regular carer is in hospital. In book two, The Day My School Exploded, the family are fostering a child who has been removed from his mother and separated from his brother, and is soon going to be living with a relative.

Children with Additional Needs in Care

I’ve also included a long-term foster child with additional needs across all three books to represent the sad fact that such children often remain in the care system for longer than their peers. I’m an experienced parent to a wonderful child with special needs. Showing that children with additional needs are much more than just their difficulties was also important to me. The message that family is often bigger than biology is seeded through the series.

Parent feedback: “Where the book tips the line to excellent is the touches of diversity and the truths of human life…Ferris having a ‘hard to place’ foster sister, and two mums, and what that impact that has. It looks at the how and who can be in care, for respite or permanent – and what that looks like for existing children.”

Why Represent Foster Families?

1. Representation is the key to successful reading for pleasure – a well-known indicator of a child’s future life-chances and well-being.In the UK alone, there are almost 54,000 foster families and approximately 70,000 foster children living with them.

   These children deserve to see themselves in a funny book. As do the many birth children living in blended families.

2. To give children with little (or no) experience of foster care the opportunity to learn about other children’s lives and help them develop empathy as they broaden their understanding of the world.
   
   

The Day My Dog Got Famous is out now and available via Amazon or Bookshop. The Day My School Exploded will be released in February 2025, and a third title will follow.

For more information about Jen’s books, visit: www.jen-carney.com.