Sharing the creative non-fiction love – a tale of chocolate, passion, determination and joy (and that’s just the writing of it…) by Juliet Clare Bell.

I love SCBWI and the wonderful things that come out of it. Sometimes it’s practical (a book deal from a meeting with an editor at an event); sometimes personal (enduring friendships). But what I really love about it is that it’s usually both. The annual British SCBWI Winchester Conference is the perfect place for this mix of both to happen.

At the 2008 conference, I sat next to Rebecca Colby at dinner on the Saturday night. We’d never met before. Neither of us was published at the time but we were in a similar place. We showed each other our stories and something just clicked. We’ve shared our writing and supported each other’s journey ever since. A perfect mix of practical and personal. I’ve never written anything that hasn’t been improved by her insightful comments, and for the last three years or so, we’ve been part of the same fantastic picture book critique group.

At the 2014 conference in November, Rebecca and I, who have both fallen heavily for creative non-fiction picture books over the past year or so, did a joint presentation on breaking into the creative non-fiction picture book market (Anita Loughrey did a write up of the panel on this blog last week).

Through our mostly American critique group, I’ve been gradually exposed in recent years to non-fiction. Creative non-fiction (or true story) picture books have taken off in a really exciting way in the States and I was hearing more and more through our critique group, and when I was approached by Bournville Village Trust to write a true story picture book on the Cadbury family and Bournville (which would be illustrated by Jess Mikhail, a very good friend of mine!), I jumped at the chance.

I blogged about the Cadbury project earlier this year on Picture Book Den and at the time of blogging, I’d done months of research and had just given the outline of the structure of the story to the Cadbury and BVT people. And they’d just told me to go ahead and write that story. Since blogging, I have written up a first, then second, then subsequent, drafts. I’ve had them critiqued with both my online and in-person critique groups…

Some of our local picture book critique group relaxing Halloween stylee at the SCBWI Annual Winchester Conference, 2014 (plus Addy Farmer, far right, who is an honorary member and welcome whenever she likes)

…done more edits and a little bit more research - mostly just because I could and it felt so exciting to be able to go to the new Library of Birmingham, place my things into a locker… (no bags or pens allowed –it felt like a secret inner sanctum ritual)...

waited for entrance into the special room where really old archives are kept, and had letters, documents and photos (many over 130 years old) weighed out and handed to me for my perusal...

with gloves on, of course (c) Cadbury Archive

The Cadbury family summer house drawn by Maria Cadbury © Cadbury Archive

George Cadbury, circa 1850 (c) Cadbury Archive

Childhood letter from George © Cadbury Archive

and have done more edits (and critiques) until deciding it was probably time to stop and hand it over.

Jess Mikhail is currently working on the roughs -when she’s not too busy surfing on chocolate

(With apologies for silliness)

or playing hide and seek in an egg…

(And yet more silliness…)

A couple of weeks ago, we went to the printer’s and discussed book size, paper quality and bleeds

Jess, Tim (expert printer) and me

…and were shown how the printing works.

Because it’s not being published traditionally (though it will be sold in lots of outlets, including the shop at Cadbury World, which has over half a million visitors each year), we get to see the printing, and later, book-binding side, which is fascinating.

True story picture books, when they’re done well, are amazing. In the Cadbury book and subsequent true story picture books I’m planning, I want to capture that joy of discovery –whether it’s something physical...

The joy that is an acorn

or mind-blowingly magical...

Last week my son was blown away by discovering (with the help of his big sister) that it’s possible to add up much larger numbers that those you can calculate in your head if you know how to do… column addition!

or pure wonder.

This first-time experience was so amazing, he had to immerse himself in it fully…

And that state where you’re completely absorbed and focused on a task

It’s how I felt when I was researching for the Cadbury book – what an enormous privilege to be able to have that kind of access - and it’s how I feel about the new topics I’m researching. I can’t say what they are yet because someone might beat me to it (though there are many ways to tell a story) but since my pictures are so utterly un-life-like, here are some of the people I’m intending to write about:

An almost final word goes to the wonderfully wise David Almond who said it all when I saw him with my eldest daughter last year in Birmingham, in answer to the question: what’s the most important thing when you’re writing a book?

Make it lovely…

A final thanks goes to my youngest sister, Grace. After a very long phone call with her last week, I had sixty new ideas for non-fiction picture books (which I blogged about over at the Picture Book Den last week). I was nearly four when she was born and I have a specific memory of visiting her in hospital: not only was it Christmas Day, but we got to eat our first ever Womble chocolates, bought at the hospital. I’ve never seen them since… until earlier this year when I was doing research for the Cadbury book and was being taken behind the scenes at Cadbury World by the wonderful Colin Pitt –and guess what we found?

May you all be fired up by your own writing projects (or chocolate, or both).

And one last hooray for the British SCBWI conference from which many good things have come. I wasn't sure we could top the 2008 one, but I reckon 2014 was the best yet!

Medusa next to an eye tree. Just because...

(with thanks to my ten-year-old)

Juliet Clare Bell (always called Clare), is the author of Don’t Panic, Annika! (illustrated by Jennifer E Morris; Piccadilly Press, recently featured on CBeebies), The Kite Princess (illustrated by Laura-Kate Chapman; Barefoot Books, recently endorsed by Amnesty International and Pirate Picnic (illustrated by Mirella Minelli; Franklin Watts). Don’t Panic, Annika! and The Kite Princess were both shortlisted for SCBWI Europe’s Crystal Kite Award (in 2012 and 2013, respectively). 

Clare is a huge fan of SCBWI, jointly coordinating the Central West British SCBWI region with Julienne Durber, and running the Friday Night Critique at the annual British SCBWI conference. She would highly recommend volunteering with SCBWI (please contact them if you’re even contemplating it, or leave a message in the comments section, here: you’ll get back so much from it). She teaches writing picture book courses to adults, and creative writing to children, and blogs regularly for the Picture Book Den. 

National Non-fiction November is the Federation of Children’s Book Groups’ annual celebration of all things factual. Born out of National Non-Fiction Day, the brain child of Adam Lancaster during his years as Chair, the whole month now celebrates all those readers who have a passion for information and facts and attempts to bring non-fiction celebration in line with those of fiction. 

Where Fact Meets Fiction

We love to sort, indeed we have to sort to make sense of the world. Being National Non-Fiction November, the sorting I have in mind is that of children's books into fiction and non-fiction. By 'books' I mean any fiction or non-fiction story-carrying media and specifically, for  this post, the media are short stories and theatre.


The OED says that fiction is 'something that is invented or untrue' and that non-fiction is 'prose writing that is informative and factual rather than fictional'. Instead of a black and white distinction, I think of it more as a spectrum ranging from the completely fantastical to the rigorously evidenced. I do believe that although the OED suggests otherwise, any fiction has to have an element of truth. I'm in serious danger of straying down the philosophical rabbit hole of what is truth here so, cutting to the chase, my spectrum suggests there's an area in the middle where fiction and non-fiction meet.

2014, the centenary of the outbreak of The First World War has been a momentous year for remembrance. Last Tuesday on the 11.11.14, I saw the poppies at the tower, moving and symbolic as much for the spectacle itself as for the loss of life it represented. Barely a month has passed this year without some reference to The First World War.

An outpouring

August was the month that inspired this post. Hampshire Youth Theatre performed Michael Morpurgo's short story The Best Christmas Present in the World adapted for them by Oliver Birch. This beautiful story is an imagining around a real event, the Christmas Day Truce of 1914 and the subsequent football matches. This well-cited Wikipedia article is a fascinating and heartening account of the distaste for war. It records how frontline troops persevered in trying to make peace in spite of generals on both sides ordering offensive manoeuvres on subsequent Christmas Eves.

The HYT Programme

The Oliver Birch dramatisation was performed by young people aged 14 to 21 in a temporary performance space in Southampton's Guildhall Square, designed to represent a football stadium. The young people, in order to convincingly portray the fictional characters and real events of this story, had to research the facts of the war, the nature of dementia, loneliness and loss. Factual research like this would be the case for any play and any work of fiction or non-fiction but the advantage of the dramatisation is that it involves many more than just the author in the research, the non-fiction.

Where it fell

You might say that the truth of this story is that peace is better than war. However, it is not a fact, because however appalled we may by the idea, it is open for discussion. But the facts that make up some of this story while firmly in 1914, carry truths that are as embedded in 2014 as they were a hundred years ago. Fact and fiction met, even merged, for the writer, the readers, the young adult performers and the audience in the dramatisation of Michael Morpurgo's beautiful story.

Follow the links for rehearsal photos, the performers' experience of researching for the show, and the original short story published in The Guardian, Christmas 2003.

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Jan Carr is handing over the editorship of Words & Pictures to the wonderful Nancy Saunders. Jan's works in progress are currently upper middle grade and new adult, if not adult (ooh er). She aims to blog here more regularly though she has blogged here almost every week since March 2013.