If you haven’t read anything by British author David Almond<\/strong><\/a>, here—in the words of reviewers who covered his first novel, Skellig<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, winner of the Carnegie Medal<\/strong><\/a> and Whitbread Children’s Novel of the Year Award<\/strong><\/a> as well as a Printz Honor<\/strong><\/a>—are some of the themes you’re missing: “the transforming power of caring and love” (Publishers Weekly<\/em>); “worlds enlarging and the hope of scattering death” (NY Times Book Review<\/em>); “loneliness, friendship and grace” (ALA; Printz Award Selection Committee); “the fearful, wonderful fragility of life” (author Richard Peck<\/strong><\/a>); “essential goodness, faith, truth, and love” (author Karen Cushman<\/strong><\/a>); and “miraculous happenings” (The ALAN Review<\/strong><\/em><\/a>). In their review of Almond’s first novel, School Library Journal<\/em> best summed up what I think is Almond’s greatest strength as a writer: “The beauty here is that there is no answer and readers will be left to wonder and debate, and make up their own minds.” In their review of Skellig<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, the New York Times Book Review<\/em> praised my second favorite thing about Almond’s writing: his subtlety.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Or, instead of trying to label Almond’s writing, we can leave it to The Guardian<\/em>, who wrote, “David Almond\u2019s books are strange, unsettling, wild things, unfettered by the normal constraints of children\u2019s literature. They are, like all great writing, unclassifiable.”<\/p>\n It truly is an honor for 7-Imp to be hosting a visit with Almond today. I’m a hugely huge fan, and I thank him for his time. Without further ado . . . <\/p>\n 7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: Can you talk a bit about what drew you to tell the story of Lizzie, her father, their wings, and the dumpling-throwing Auntie Doreen in My Dad\u2019s a Birdman<\/strong><\/a><\/em>?<\/font> <\/p>\n David<\/font><\/strong>: The story started as a play. It was commissioned by the Young Vic Theatre<\/strong><\/a> in London. They wanted a play for younger children, with some Skelligy themes, to run in the studio space while the stage version of Skellig<\/em> was performed in the main theatre. I started doodling and scribbling and playing with possibilities and pretty soon Jackie Crow appeared with his home-made wings, and here was Mr. Poop and his Human Bird Competition, and Auntie Doreen with her dumplings, and the nice head teacher Mr. Mint. You can never quite tell where stories and characters come from. With this bunch, it was like they were ready-formed, waiting their chance to jump into the world. The play was great fun and the audiences loved it. Once the show was over, I moved on to other things, especially writing Clay<\/em>, which took a lot of time and energy. After that, I looked at the play again. I thought maybe I could make a picture book from it. But that didn\u2019t work. Then I thought, How about a short novel with illustrations<\/em>\u2026I wrote the first line, “An ordinary spring morning in 12 Lark Lane,” and the characters burst into life again. The first draft took me four days, which for me is astonishing. <\/p>\n 7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: What was it like to see Polly Dunbar<\/strong><\/a> (whom we will be interviewing on Wednesday) bring your characters to life on the page with her illustrations for My Dad\u2019s a Birdman<\/strong><\/a><\/em>?<\/font> <\/p>\n David<\/font><\/strong>: I knew some of Polly\u2019s previous work–\u2013especially the marvellous Shoe Baby<\/strong><\/a><\/em>–\u2013and I knew she could do something wonderful with this story and its characters. And she has. As soon as the first sketches started coming through, it was clear that the story had found a kindred spirit. Her work is fast, funny, light, poignant, joyous. Quite perfect. And I\u2019m delighted that she\u2019s illustrating another of my books–\u2013The Boy Who Climbed into The Moon<\/em>–\u2013which comes out in the UK in 2009.<\/p>\n David<\/font><\/strong>: In many ways, you don\u2019t choose what you write about. Your material comes and gets you and says, Write me!<\/em> Yes, there\u2019s lots about faith and wings, and exploration of metaphysical matters. I guess it comes from having a Catholic childhood. I struggled against the Catholicism for a long time, but there came a moment when I recognized that it would never go away, and when I also recognized that it was a kind of treasure house of language, imagery, ritual. So I just allowed it to influence my fiction. I was influenced by “magical realist” authors like M\u00e1rquez<\/strong><\/a>, Borges<\/strong><\/a>, Calvino<\/strong><\/a> -\u2013 the way they deal with extraordinary events in ordinary language. Magical realism is of course mainly encountered in Catholic cultures. But there are many other forces. Right from the beginning of recorded culture, there have been stories and images about creatures like us who happen to have wings. And yes, Clay<\/em> takes place in a Catholic setting, but it\u2019s built around the Jewish legend of the Golem<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n 7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: Your first novel, Skellig<\/em>, won the Whitbread Children’s Award and the Carnegie Medal. How did those awards and all the critical acclaim impact your writing, if at all? Did you feel any outside pressure (or internal pressure) to top it with your next book?<\/font><\/p>\n 7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: On that note, you hit it right out of the ballpark with your first novel. For readers who haven\u2019t already seen this<\/strong><\/a>, can you summarize what advice—if any—you have for aspiring authors?<\/font> <\/p>\n David<\/font><\/strong>: First of all, just do it. Don\u2019t think about doing it or talk about doing it. Do it. Don\u2019t think everything you write has to be good. It can\u2019t be, so feel free to write rubbish. We all know that writing can be difficult, serious, burdensome, etc., but it is also a form of play. So enjoy yourself, and play: doodle and scribble, experiment with possibilities. Be brave enough to say that you actually like some of your work. Read and read. Aim high. Aim to be as good as your favourite authors. Don\u2019t think that you have to know all of your story before you set off. Allow your story to grow organically. Writing is an adventure, a journey of exploration and discovery. <\/p>\n David<\/font><\/strong>: My work is filled with the language, landscape, history, etc. etc. of NorthEastern England. And it\u2019s filled with influences from my own childhood. The first time I wrote about such things deliberately was in the story collection, Counting Stars<\/em>, which I wrote just before Skellig<\/em> (though it was published later). The stories are about a boy very like me and a family very like mine growing up in a town very like mine. Real and imaginary characters and real and imaginary places co-exist. In the stories, I learned how to deal with vivid memories—especially the deaths of my sister and my father–\u2013to make them work as fiction, and how to accept and to celebrate my personal history and my Northern Catholic heritage. Ever since those stories, I\u2019ve used incidents and characters from my childhood. In The Fire-Eaters<\/em>, for instance, I recall the events of The Cuban Missile Crisis when I was eleven. In Clay<\/em>, I draw on particular memories of being an altar boy. The memories, of course, are re-imagined and fictionalized. Sometimes my memories of childhood seem very vague. As I write, though, I often discover things about my own childhood that I had “forgotten.” Imagination and memory are very closely connected. When I\u2019m writing well, a totally imaginary event can feel strangely like a memory.<\/p>\n I seem to be moving into a new phase. The two Polly Dunbar-illustrated books—My Dad\u2019s a Birdman<\/strong><\/a><\/em> and the forthcoming The Boy Who Climbed Into The Moon<\/em>—don\u2019t really draw on my childhood, the north, or Catholicism at all. They\u2019re stepping into newer—and barmier—territory. And the new novel Jackdaw Summer<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, though it\u2019s set in Northern England, is much less influenced by memory than the books that I\u2019ve done before. <\/p>\n 7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: You write at your web site that \u201c{t}here are lots of people around who say that children and young people aren’t interested in language and books these days. These people should be dragged into children’s events like {the Edinburgh Book Festival<\/strong><\/a>} and to see how wrong they are.\u201d How does talking to young people about your books (via school visits, books festivals, etc.) affect your writing, if at all?<\/font> <\/p>\n David<\/font><\/strong>: I\u2019m not sure that it actually affects my work, but it does affect my sense of the audience. I\u2019m a great optimist. I see young people all around the world who are fascinated by books, by stories, by language, and who ask serious and perceptive questions about my work. It encourages me in my belief that young people form a wonderful readership, and that the children\u2019s book world offers writers all kinds of opportunities for exploration and experimentation. Children accept stories in all kinds of forms, often in forms that might be seen by adults as too difficult, too whacky, too strange. I love writing illustrated fiction, for instance. There are very few options for a writer to work in such a form in adult books. <\/p>\n David<\/font><\/strong>: Yes, it does. Stephen Rose was a very troubling character. When he turned up at the start of the book I knew he was up to no good, but I thought that by the end of the story he\u2019d be somehow drawn into the community and that there\u2019d be signs of some inner goodness that would be exposed and in some way nourished. Well, it didn\u2019t happen. He just kept on getting wickeder and wickeder! And at the end, he goes off into the darkness, presumably to work his wickedness elsewhere. So yes, the evil is still out there. This was interesting. As I wrote, it gradually became apparent that if the book was to work properly, things had to end up like that. And accepting this was difficult and pretty scary. Several reviews picked up on that, and one or two even concluded that the book was therefore nihilistic, and that I had succumbed to some kind of despair! Not true, of course. The next book I wrote was My Dad\u2019s a Birdman<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, which is hardly a document of doom. <\/p>\n David<\/font><\/strong>: I suppose I write for the reader in myself. I write everything with the utmost care and to the very best of my ability. I think that some of my “younger” work may be artistically better than the “older” work. A good children\u2019s story should be accessible to everyone, not just the young. I\u2019m a bit suspicious of the notion of “crossover” books that are supposed to appeal to adults because of their adult-ish themes. Stories don\u2019t work through themes\/issues, but primarily through their language and their narrative force. <\/p>\n With My Dad\u2019s a Birdman<\/strong><\/a><\/em>, however, I did have my eight-year-old daughter in mind. I didn\u2019t show it to her as it was developing, but I kept her in mind as the perfect reader. When it was finished, she read it, commented on it, and went through it with a pencil and pointed out some glitches. <\/p>\n I\u2019m interested in developing the idea that books and bookish events can be for everyone. The stage adaptations of my work draw people of all ages. I do a lot of writing workshops, and more and more I have adults and children working together. And it\u2019s marvelous to see how the adults are often astonished by the perceptiveness and creativity of the young -\u2013 and to see how children can teach the adults a lot about the joy and freedom of writing. <\/p>\n 7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: How many of your books at this point have been adapted to the stage, and did you write the scripts for all those? What is it like to see your words come to life on the stage in an entirely different medium?<\/font> <\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/skellig1.JPG\")
Skellig<\/strong><\/a><\/em> (Delacorte Press, 1999) tells the story of a young boy who, unhappy about his baby sister\u2019s illness and the chaos of moving into a dilapidated old house, retreats to the garage and finds a mysterious stranger who is something like an owl, something like an angel, and even a bit like a man. Publishers Weekly<\/em> called this book “a triumphant debut in the field of children’s literature with prose that is at once eerie, magical and poignant.” Almond followed Skellig<\/strong><\/a><\/em> with a series of books—Kit’s Wildnerness<\/strong><\/a><\/em> (Delacorte, 2000); Heaven Eyes<\/strong><\/a><\/em> (Delacorte, 2001); Counting Stars<\/strong><\/em><\/a> (Delacorte, 2002); The Fire-Eaters<\/strong><\/a><\/em> (Delacorte, 2004); a 2005 picture book, illustrated by Stephen Lambert<\/strong><\/a> — Kate, the Cat, and the Moon<\/strong><\/a><\/em> (Random House, 2005); Clay<\/strong><\/a><\/em> (Delacorte, 2006); and more—which were overwhelmingly met with critical acclaim, as well as a handful of more awards, including a 2001 Printz Award<\/strong><\/a> for Kit’s Wildnerness<\/em>, a 2004 Boston Globe-Horn Book Award<\/strong><\/a> for The Fire-Eaters<\/em>, and a Carnegie Medal shortlisting for Clay<\/em>. It has been said that no one captures the mysticism of childhood like Almond; in fact, his books are often labelled “magical realism,” though part of the wonder of his writing is that it is, indeed, difficult to categorize. Certainly, themes of magic, memory, borderlands, creativity, darkness, death, religion, coming-of-age, the weaving of the mythic and the mundane, the nature of one’s self, and the vulnerability of children appear in his writings. When it comes to the topic of magic and his writing, perhaps Almond put it best when he said<\/strong><\/a>, “{w}riting can be difficult, but sometimes it really does feel like a kind of magic. I think that stories are living things — among the most important things in the world.”<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/birdman2.jpg\")
Almond’s been busy lately, which you’ll read about more in the interview below. Many of his novels have been adapted to the stage, including an upcoming opera adaptation of Skellig<\/strong><\/a><\/em>. And his latest book, My Dad’s a Birdman<\/strong><\/a><\/em> (Candlewick; April 2008; reviewed here<\/strong><\/a> at 7-Imp), shows a bit of a departure for him — it’s an illustrated novel, brought to vivid life by illustrator Polly Dunbar<\/strong><\/a>, about the power of love and imagination to overcome grief (to be sure, those themes aren’t a departure for Almond, but an illustrated novel is). With even more illustrated novels in the pipeline, as well as some exciting new projects (including a “part novel, part graphic novel” with Dave McKean), Almond shows no signs of slowing down any time soon. Lucky for us. <\/p>\n
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Illustrations copyright \u00a9 2007 Polly Dunbar. Reproduced by permission of the publisher, Candlewick Press, Inc., Cambridge, MA.<\/em><\/center><\/p>\n7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: My Dad\u2019s a Birdman<\/strong><\/a><\/em> marks the second time you\u2019ve written, almost allegorically, about faith and wings (after Skellig<\/strong><\/a><\/em>). You also address religion in Clay<\/em>, what School Library Journal<\/em> called a \u201cCatholic ghost story.\u201d Reviewers like to describe your stories as metaphysical and surreal and have dubbed it–\u2013in the case of Skellig<\/strong><\/a><\/em> and Clay<\/em>–\u2013\u201cmagical realism.\u201d What draws you to writes such philosophical stories?<\/font><\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/kit's1.jpg\")
David<\/font><\/strong>: Before Skellig<\/em>, I\u2019d been writing for years without many people noticing. Then Skellig<\/em> came along. In the months before it came out, there was a lot of fuss about it. Very exciting, but I knew the important thing was just to keep on writing, so as I waited for publication, I wrote Kit\u2019s Wilderness<\/strong><\/a><\/em>. I finished it before Skellig<\/em> was published. Skellig<\/em> started taking off and winning prizes. People came along and said, So, what are you going to write next?<\/em> It was great to be able to say I had another novel finished, and that I was already setting out on another–\u2013Heaven Eyes<\/strong><\/a><\/em>. Awards etc can bring pressure, but the best kind of pressure comes from yourself. You have to have high expectations. I want to keep moving forward, trying new things. I want every new book to be better than the one that preceded it.<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/fire-eaters1.jpg\")
7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: For Clay<\/em>, you set the story in the English north country of your youth, just as you did with Kit\u2019s Wilderness<\/em> and The Fire-Eaters<\/em>. Do you remember your childhood vividly and, if so, does it inform your writing?<\/font> <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
![](\"http:\/\/blaine.org\/jules\/clayinterview.jpg\")
7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: You also say at your web site that Clay<\/em> was difficult—and sometimes scary—to write. Can you elaborate on that? Does it have anything to do with what The Guardian\u2019s<\/em> review of the novel noted, that \u201cthere’s no neatly tied-up ending and no redemption. The evil is still out there\u201d?<\/font><\/p>\n7-Imp<\/font><\/strong>: Erica Wagner of The Times<\/em> wrote that your work, “like the best literature for children, is in fact simply literature.\u201d This brings me to the question of audience, and I\u2019m always interested in hearing authors talk about this: Do you write with a child or young adult audience specifically in mind, or do you write the story you\u2019re led to tell with no particular reader in mind (or, as Maurice Sendak once said, \u201c{t}here’s no way we can segregate what’s meant for the young from what’s meant for the rest of us.\u201d)<\/font><\/p>\n
<\/a>David<\/font><\/strong>: I adapted Skellig<\/em> myself, and it was produced at The Young Vic<\/strong><\/a>, directed by Trevor Nunn<\/strong><\/a>. There will be a new production in 2008. Skellig<\/em> is also to be an opera: music by the wonderful American composer, Tod Machover<\/strong><\/a>, libretto by me. It will be premiered in November ’08 at The Sage Gateshead<\/strong><\/a> (UK). I also adapted Heaven Eyes<\/em>. It had two national tours with Pop-Up Theatre<\/strong><\/a>. Secret Heart<\/em> was adapted by Amanda Dalton, and produced at The Royal Exchange in Manchester<\/strong><\/a>. Clay<\/em> has been adapted for TV by Peter Tabern<\/strong><\/a>, and was recently broadcast by BBC. Clay<\/em> is