Bridget's Big Draw

We're very excited on Words & Pictures today to have Bridget Strevens-Marzo here with us to share her recent publishing success. Bridget writes

"It is good to be back writing as well as illustrating.  Even better to have a couple of book contracts after a gap, a change of life and location. My next French book is out with Bayard this September and in May 2015 I have another book due out in the UK."

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"It is over 20 years (blimey!) since I’ll have had a book which I have written - as well as illustrated - published in the UK. To signal the change for my own written and illustrated books, I am simplifying my name to Bridget Marzo. 

Tate Publishing is a ‘boutique’ publisher with good distribution here and in the US via Abrams. They are getting noticed for their original and beautifully produced children’s books. Working with them has restored my confidence to the point where, for the first time in my life, I submitted to an illustrator competition. I was shortlisted among some lovely company for the Association of Illustrators (AOI) Award. Another cause for celebration!"

Bridget tells us about some of the ups and downs she's had during her career

"I had no idea that so many years after my first three books were published in 1991-2, I’d still be battling with self-criticism and doubt. I filled drawers with projects. A UK publisher made an offer in the mid 1990s for a two-book project I wrote and illustrated - but just for the text. They thought my illustrations ‘too European’. Since most of the story was in the pictures, I declined and I took it to the first big French publisher I met – they bought the project instantly. I received full payment on completion but a change of packager and marketing strategy meant the books never came out. 
My self-confidence took a battering. David McKee (of Elmer fame) who also lived in France suggested I approach French children’s magazines. He, like Helen Oxenbury, Helen Stephens and other UK illustrators do the odd commission for them and it was good, he said, to ‘expand your repertoire’. Since then Bayard has been my mainstay as a children’s illustrator.  

Australian based Little Hare found my website in the late 1990s and commissioned me to illustrate Margaret Wild's Kiss, Kiss! It was a successful co-edition that still earns me royalties from international sales and it led to some good US illustration commissions too. But all the long while, my own stories stayed in the drawer.

But then in 2008 Bloomsbury US commissioned me to illustrate Mini Racer by Kristy Dempsey. At last I’d have a book out in the UK too. Sadly, serious family problems got in the way and the book didn’t come out until 3 years later.  

I then moved from France to the heart of London and found a cheap space in a shared studio. The studio and the chance to focus on my own work after a long interruption got me out of my self-critical stew. Leaving my time-guzzling computer at home, I went back to pencil and paper, and two characters, high-energy Tiz and low-energy Ott, came to life in a series of four little books. They are still waiting in the wings.

The publishing response to them was promising, said my agent Erzsi Deak, but I’d need a full length picture book story to launch the characters. So I bought some A4 sketchbooks, and drew and wrote in them pretending each was the final story book.  

That’s how Tiz and Ott’s Big Draw emerged. I worked on another different project in the same way, which I showed to Bayard. I’d recommend a 20 sheet sketchbook as a good way to keep your ideas, words as well as pictures, on track.

Think about what you can offer to kids from your own deep interests that is in some way distinct from all the other books out there, suggested an editor at one of the many SCBWI conferences I have been to.  

So I started to think actively about turning my obsessions – art and language – into stories. For starters there had been a language element in my very first book Toto in Paris. My dad was a Londoner and I was born in the UK. My mother was a Spanish Catalan from Barcelona with most of her family in France. Plonked into my French cousins' school playground, I felt as if I had landed from Mars and I have always felt for kids who were non-native speakers like I was there. My French editor assures me that Bridget’s Book of English will work as a title in France. (Bridget Jones to thank for that?)

I'm hoping I may use the book for non-English speaking kids here too. It’s a flap book - not a manual - offering a playful first taste of English. In it, a funny furry family go through the day from breakfast to bedtime. 

There’s a fridge to open and curtains to close and English words in context. And thanks to a chat with non-fiction packager Lionel Bender at one of the SCBWI London Socials, I asked Bayard to include for the first time in their history a QR code on the back cover that links to a site where I will pronounce all the words in the book in my - ahem - BBC accent.

As for the art, since childhood I’ve always been surrounded by the smell and splodges of paint and tools to scribble with. Later, for some years, I taught at a US art school in Paris. One of my favourite projects was getting students to put together a ‘quilt’ out of patches of marks which they had to make in as many different ways as possible. 

Tiz and Ott make marks in my story too. The  endpapers of Tiz and Ott’s Big Draw will show a bunch of crayon and paint marks like so…

  

Remember how as a child you could draw a bird by wiggling your pencil or brush in a kind of M shape? After Ott and Tiz whip up a storm and get carried away with crayon and brush, Ott manages to paint one of those simple birds – a kind of distress signal to Tiz who has scribbled herself into a hole. 

But first of all, Tiz has to draw her way out of the hole rung by rung. Just like I did, line by line!"

Bridget Strevens Marzo
@bridgimage

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Bridget loves playing between words and pictures, pencil and paint, colour and computer. After a Cambridge MA in Chinese and Art History, she moved to Paris where among other things she copied at the Louvre and earned a living translating art books.

After she wrote and illustrated her first picture books two decades ago, she worked for US, UK and French publishers on picture books, novelty books and games for children’s magazines. She also shares her love of books with children, students and gives workshops for adults.

Co-hosting SCBWI international conferences earned Bridget a place on the advisory board as international illustrator advisor. Back in London, she's a contributing editor for the AOI's magazine Varoom and is working on two exciting new book projects.

Happy 50th Birthday Charlie Bucket

Karen Hart

I’m 52 and it feels like the book has permeated much of my life over its 50 whipple-scrumptious years.

I saw a delicious tribute the other day at Waterstone’s Piccadilly:  an amazing creation of Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, made with 200kg of sugar, by the awesome Biscuiteers. I loved the way it filled the window; for passers-by to press their noses against the glass much as Charlie does early in the book, 'his mouth watering like mad.'

The ginormous sweet factory struck a chord with me and brought back memories of first reading the book as an isolated kid, much like Charlie. Think of me now more like Augustus Gloop, channeling Proust's madeleine. Chocolate or industrial-size biscuit aside, I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate than by reading it again. 

I have a sweet tooth to rival Dahl himself; my parents were wartime kids living with rationing and Dad in particular always saw sweets, especially chocolate, as the ultimate treat. I didn't grow up in in a house with books. There’d be one or two as Christmas or birthday gifts, usually from an auntie: either Mum's sister or a holder of the honorary title of all female neighbours and family friends back in the Dark Ages. 

The only other book-buying occasion came after a visit to the dentist. Drooling from a mouthful of fillings or extractions, I would be rewarded with, yes, a bag of sweets or bar of chocolate - and being allowed to choose a book. That's when I got my copy of Charlie and it's almost worth the dental horrorshow that is my teeth for the irony. Last weekend, I was back in exactly the same place as in the photo: me, at seven or eight, in bed. The wallpaper, bed and lamp have changed models but not their position and the same teddy bear is in the same place. It's where I read Charlie for the first time. 

On this, the nth time, the book was on a Kindle. I revel in Quentin Blake’s lines and curves that capture the characters with such simple elegance in today's illustrations. But the pictures of Charlie, Grandpa Joe and the rest of Dahl's world that still come to my mind were drawn by Michael Foreman: that was MY edition, which is sadly long lost.

It went on to be one of my comfort books, to be re-read when I need that unique blend of mordant humour and deft lightness of touch. When I was 14, I spent several weeks in an isolation hospital far from home. No books were allowed there and, when I came back, Charlie was one of the few stories I could face. I read it over and over, stuck in my bedroom for weeks, during a horrible time of being weak and helpless but satisfied at a happy ending which felt correct without being twee or unlikely.

I went back to it again, in the mid-80s, when I was one of a press pack trying to grab a word with Dahl at Bow Street Magistrates’ Court. He was a witness in defence of a young man accused of assaulting police. ‘Fangirl’ hadn’t been invented but I have to admit to my tough reporter facade being fairly lost for words at coming face to face with Charlie’s author. Or, more accurately, gazing up and up at him. I’m not sure I would be much different today but I don’t think my eight-year-old self would have been.

There’s another reason I feel a kinship with Dahl and Charlie, which sent me back to the Chocolate Factory in my early 30s. I discovered a Swedish birth family and spent time finding not only a new father (with an even greater love of chocolate) but also Dahl-loving half siblings who were reading Charlie to their children, and the dark forests, short days and pragmatism that I believe infuse writing rooted in a Scandinavian background.

In five drafts spanning four years, Dahl perfected a protagonist in Charlie Bucket who still speaks to me much as he did when I first met him. By the way, if you want to see those drafts, there’s a special archive tour on Sunday 15 June at the Roald Dahl Museum.

It’s part of Gloop’s Glumptious Weekend, which is unsurprisingly chocolate-focused. Oh, just typing the words ‘Gloops’s Glumptious Weekend ‘is ridiculously enjoyable. I wanted to try to write this in Dahl-style, with lots of fun invented words but gave up after about ten seconds. I don’t have the imagination or the humour and he’s already done it all anyway.

All those of us who love him, and the readers yet to meet Charlie Bucket, will make sure that he’ll be around for a lot longer than the next 50 years.

Happy Birthday, Charlie.

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@KarenJKhart

Karen Hart has written facts for a lifetime in journalism and public relations, from news updates at the aftermath of bombs to features on vanishing rural
crafts. Now she's writing a MG novel and working for herself, supported by her husband, teenage daughter and two cats. She divides her time between London, the seaside and seven Swedish half-siblings. 

She is a digital immigrant turned native, addicted to social media and running six Twitter accounts. Karen is the only volunteer on the Writeidea reading festival committee and a member of the Golden Egg academy. There are two YA manuscripts in her drawer.

Ten-Minute Blog Break - 10th June

Hello Blog Breakers, I hope I'm not distracting you from the breakdancing baboons and singing goldfish that are doubtless populating your entries for our marvelous Chalkface Challenge? Remember you only have until Sunday to enter!

Richard Dawkins would probably disapprove of breakdancing baboons, since his quote (or misquote) about the dangers of telling children fairy tales generated a lot of column inches last week. K.M. Lockwood has a more measured approach, and rather than taking potshots at Dawkins, decides instead to write a post that celebrates "the love for fairy tales and fantasy I share with thousands of others." Personally, I thought the whole Dawkins furore was quite funny and wrote a story in response, which I hope to run on my blog on Friday.

Even more of a fuss was caused by the Slate article chastising adults for reading YA books. I didn't spot any SCBWI bloggers tackling the issue, but there was a very lively discussion thread over at the SCBWI-BI Facebook group.
Update - Non Pratt just had an article published on the Guardian Children's Books site responding to this controversy.

Extreme weather is a key feature of Nick Cook's Cloud Riders series, so what better way for him to research than to talk to a genuine tornado chaser? Nick's managed to get an interview with storm chaser Jesse W. Walters, who talks on Nick's blog about hair-raising escapes and the altruistic side of driving into danger rather than away from it.

The big news this week is that Sarah Broadley has decided not to eat carrots. Actually, make that metaphorical carrots. Actually, ignore those last two sentences and read Sarah's post all about how she's turning away from submission temptation and not letting her WIP (Work In Progress) escape until it's quite ready!

Finally, just a reminder that Space on the Bookshelf are continuing their Carnegie shortlist reviews - they've added three more since I mentioned them last week. Is it me, or are the Carnegie books a bit of a grim bunch this year? More singing goldfish required, I think.

Nick.

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A SCBWI member since 2009, Nick Cross is a former Undiscovered Voices winner who currently writes children's short fiction for Stew Magazine.

Nick unleashed "The Large Hadron Collider of storytelling" on his blog this week, an amazing contraption called The Massive Mash-Up Machine.

My Little Hut

As part of our celebrations for the fiftieth birthday of Charlie and Chocolate Factory, Sandra Greaves takes a peek into Roald Dahl’s famous writing hut. 

The places where writers write are often intriguing. Roald Dahl’s writing hut is downright irresistible. With two tiny rooms, it was only just big enough for the 6ft 5’ giant of a man and a handful of furniture. Yet it was his workplace for 30 years.

Roald Dahl in his writing hut, circa 1990 © Jan Baldwin

Dahl had visited Dylan Thomas’s writing shed at Laugharne in the 1950s, and it inspired him to build his own in the orchard of Gipsy Cottage, his house at Great Missenden in Buckinghamshire. The little hut gave him a private space to work, and an escape from childcare when his Hollywood actress wife Pat was away. ‘There’s no doubt that babies are charming,’ he told his agent’s assistant, Sheila St Lawrence, ‘but they do bugger up the quiet and routine necessary for work.’

Dahl adored his hut and wrote in its back room for four hours every day – two in the morning before lunch (Norwegian prawns, half a lettuce and a Kit Kat) and two following his afternoon nap. ‘When I am in this little place, it’s lovely, and you can lose yourself in your work,’ he said. ‘It is my little nest, my womb.’ A former fighter pilot, he also compared it to the cockpit of a Hurricane – a place where his mind had the freedom to soar.

Once inside the hut, Dahl would sharpen his six pencils for the day, draw the curtains and sit in his wing-backed armchair – hollowed out to accommodate a spinal injury from his flying days – with a blanket over him and his feet in a sleeping bag when it was cold. An Anglepoise lamp shone a little light onto his writing board. Ensconced there, he would slip into the world of the imagination. ‘I go down to my little hut, where it’s tight and dark and warm,’ he told his biographer, Donald Sturrock, ‘and within minutes I can go back to being six or seven or eight again.’

The front room stored Dahl’s papers in two wooden cabinets, one of them with a grisly handle made out of a steel prosthesis from an unsuccessful hip operation.

The front room stored Dahl’s papers in two wooden cabinets, one of them with a grisly handle made out of a steel prosthesis from an unsuccessful hip operation. In the back room, Dahl kept his favourite pencils, his lined yellow US legal pads for writing, and a ‘cabinet of curiosities’ that included shavings of his spine floating in a glass vial, fragments of Babylonian pottery and a metal ball he had made out of the wrappers of hundreds of chocolate bars. Donald Sturrock describes everything as ‘yellow with nicotine and reeking of tobacco’, with ‘a carpet of pencil sharpenings and cigarette ash’ covering the linoleum floor.

Mostly Dahl was left to himself in his hut. He discouraged the children from visiting by telling them it was inhabited by wolves, though his granddaughter, Sophie Dahl, remembers occasionally being allowed to bring him a gin and tonic and stand outside on the step as he drank it. There were other visitors too – in the early days of the hut, Dahl described the cows ‘licking the windowpanes from time to time and eating the curtains if the windows were open’.

Amazingly, it’s all still there. After Dahl’s death in 1990, the hut was saved for new generations of fans and reconstructed in the nearby Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Great Missenden. You can see it online or in its wood and polystyrene flesh - including cigarette butts in the ashtray and Dahl’s beloved ball of chocolate wrappers. How whizzpoppingly awesome is that?

© The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre

Celebrated SCBWI sheds

SCBWI South West organiser Lesley Moss is another fan of sheds – she’s worked in one for the last three years. ‘It’s like a beach hut!’ she says. ‘In the garden! Through the window I see trees and telegraph poles, coppery leaves, clouds. A twisty hazel twirls in front of the door - the sound of rain pattering on the roof makes me feel I’m in my own magic world: I’m outside in the garden, but inside my den too.’

So what does Lesley think about fellow shed writers?

‘Authors who work in sheds are lucky, whether yours be a shack, hut, or a palace of delights. And I think for children’s authors it’s especially appropriate, because the very act of entering your outdoor space instantly transports you back to the sheer fun of childhood den building, and how exciting that felt, and all the imaginary worlds and adventures that exist and start there. So you access your own childhood mind.’

Since moving to The Shed, Lesley has extracted her WIPs from the writhing clutter of the kitchen table, and they are so grateful to be rescued, they are practically writing themselves. She’s hoping they’ll edit and submit themselves too while they’re about it. Read her blog here.

Exterior of Lesley's Shed

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@sandra_greaves

Sandra Greaves is one of the winners of SCBWI’s Undiscovered Voices 2012. Her first novel, The Skull in the Wood, was nominated for the Waterstones Children’s Book Prize 2014.

A Week with Publishers

Very exciting - entries for the Chalkface Challenge are rolling in. In this competition everyone's a winner. Last year's entrants loved receiving comments from the children who judged. I'm sure the published among us can relate to how wonderful it is to receive a handwritten note from a child who's read your words. Isn't getting your story into the hands and head of a child or young person what it's all about?


If you entered last year and by any chance didn't receive your judges comments, do get in touch #neverthrowanythingaway.
If you entered last year, what was your experience?


Last week...

• We asked Venetia Gosling, Fiction Publishing Director at Macmillan - listen for her most unusual acquisition story. Can she choose just four desert island books?
• I'm still catching up with the blog break because I was blown away Sarah Mcintyre's Hay experience - it was as if I was there. However I have been overly distracted by Nick's latest invention - stuck for a plot, look no further than The Massive Mash-Up Machine. (Just promise me you'll come back to W&P eventually if you follow that link)   
• After Macmillan Children's Books on Monday, on Wednesday Little Tiger Press', Ellie Farmer with our very own RA Natascha Biebow brought another treasure trove of picture book wisdom to W&P. Voice, tone, and pitch - is your picture book text truly child-centred? 
• Then on Friday, Gillian McClure of  The Plaister Press' was very insightful on USPs - why they're so important and if you're stuck on identifying yours, Gillian has identified something that can help.
• Finally on Saturday, it was wonderful to celebrate Chitra's success with Farmer Falgu - she has some great pictures of her in storytelling action in Streatham! 

A very publisher focussed week.

This afternoon we'll also have some news about the April Slush Pile Challenge.

Next week...

• Charlie Bucket was 50 yrs old last Wednesday on June 4th, so June is a Dahl themed month and Sandra Greaves invites us into the great man's shed on Monday.
• On this Wednesday with Karen Hart, we celebrate Charlie's 50 years and a week.
• We'll also be celebrating with Bridget Strevens-Marzo, W&P's marvellous Art Director. I love the word 'marvellous' I've been saving it up for Bridget because I do marvel at what she manages to fit in!

Don't forget: If you entered The Chalkface Challenge last year I'd love to know how it was for you and if anything happened next....

Jan Carr

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Jan Carr is the editor of Words & Pictures. Her fiction is all over the place, she blogs occasionally and loves to write in magenta. You can contact her at editor@britishscbwi.org.