Building Bridges Through Picture Books, by Pippa Goodhart

 As our world divides, and distrust between different peoples seems to be growing, our children need to learn to do better than us.  That will only come through understanding and communication between cultures.  This has set me thinking about the few occasions when my story text has been illustrated by an artist from a different culture.  

The first time was when I wrote a silly rhyming story about Three Little Ghosties who like to bully ghoulsies, witches and ogres.  They are about to scare a human child … when the child wakes up and scares them instead.  I had a particular British illustrator in mind for this book.  Colin Paine did these lovely roughs ...

 … but Bloomsbury appointed an Italian illustrator, Anna Cantone, to do the final illustrations.  She used collage to produce very ‘designery’ images (please excuse the badly lit photo!).  I wasn't sure about them to begin with.  And yet I’ve come to love them.  Why?  Well, largely because young children react to them so well!  (NB This book is now out of print).

I’ve had books illustrated, published and sold in South Korea, and those have surprised me by showing children who look more British than Korean to me. 

 I asked my fellow Picture Book Den contributors what experiences they had in working with writers or illustrators from other cultures, and only Jonathan Emmett had experience of working this way.  He told me …

It took three years to find a suitable illustrator for my picture book story The Santa Trap and I’d almost given up hope of ever finding one when my editor Emily Ford discovered Argentinian illustrator Poly Bernatene. Poly brought a distinctly South-American Gothic feel to the illustrations that was a perfect fit for the dark, cautionary tale.

Poly’s English is pretty good these days (and certainly puts my miserable Spanish to shame) but back then his wife Paula translated the story’s text and Emily’s email correspondence so that the language difference did not seem to present too much of a problem. We’ve since done three more books together and are hoping to do a fifth. Although Poly can sometimes interpret my words in a way that I hadn’t intended, this often leads to interesting and appealing results.

That highlights one obvious problem; language differences.  And yet translation of short texts isn't hard.  Perhaps there should be more cross-cultural cooperation?  

There is!  Tiny Owl Publishing have recently launched an exciting and innovative move to publish children’s picture books which ‘bridge cultures’, specifically between Iran and Britain.  They asked me to write a fable for an Iranian illustrator to work on.  So I wrote A Bottle of Happiness, and, remarkably quickly, there was my story made into the most beautiful and, to me, initially slightly strange images by Ehsan Abdollahi.

As with Three Little Ghosties, I wondered whether the style would be too sophisticated and strange to British children’s view, but not a bit of it!  More fool me for underestimating them.  Of course ALL styles, indeed the whole world, is new to a small child, so they naturally tend to be more open to new ideas than we adults might give them credit for. 

In our modern world, we need to know facts about each other, but I strongly believe that we also need to have a proper feel for, and familiarity with, each other’s worlds and outlooks.  We need to share cultures.  

My father, who was a lovely and wise man, used to say that the point of education was to give us more things in life to enjoy.  Well, having access to the beauty and insights of other cultures certainly gives us more things to enjoy.  So let’s give that joy to our children!

What Story Do You Think You're Writing?

'Arthur's Tractor', written by Pippa Goodhart, and illustrated by Colin Paine

I began writing the story that became 'Arthur's Tractor' with a simple aim; to capture some of the fun of mechanical sounds that I remembered from The Little Red Engine stories (by Diana Ross and Leslie Wood) of my own early childhood.  I couldn't have told you what happened in the stories, but I did remember the joy of those repeated 'CHUFFA CHUFF' train noises, and the 'WHOOEEE' whenever anything exciting happened. 

Funnily enough I came across 'The Little Red Engine Goes To Market' deep in a box of dusty books just yesterday as I was unpacking them onto the shelves in our new house.  There are other sounds in the book which I hadn't remembered - 'And it drew up at at the platform SHUUUH'.  Going uphill made the engine go HUTCHA BA HUTCHA BA HUTCHA BA BAAAA'.  And there are animal noises too.  What there isn't is much of a story; simply a journey recorded, animals collected and taken to market, and then home to the shed/bed. 

Anyway, it was those kinds of sounds that I was after, and I chose a tractor as my vehicle.  Arthur, the farmer, came into my head from I don't know where, and we were off -

'Arthur's tractor ploughed up and down, turning green to brown.

Chugga thrum, chugga thrum, chugga chugga thrum ....'

And before long we've got an 'Eeeek!' that makes Arthur stop his tractor, turn off his engine and get down from his cab.  He stands for a while, and he scratches his head, then he siad, 'That must be the sprocket spring sprigget needing a twist and an oil', so he twists and oils, and gets back on his chugga thrum way before another sound repeats the process.

The much more DRAMATIC story is happening behind Arthur's back, unnoticed by him.  The 'Eeek!' is actually coming from a princess being faced with a dragon.  Then the 'THUD THUD THUD' comes from a prince arriving on a horse, etc.  The fun, I hope, for a child is in knowing what the narrator, and Arthur, apparently don't know, because, of course, even very young children can 'read' pictures.

Arthur's and the fairy tale stories come together at the end when Arthur's plough blade breaks.  Arthur then uses the prince's sword, welded with dragon breath, to mend the blade.  And this is where the question of 'what story do you think you're writing?' comes in. 

It was only some time after the story was written, and when it was on it's way to publication, that it dawned on me (duh!) that what I'd done in this story was to literally turn a sword into a plough share.  Clearly that Biblical message towards peace rather than war was imbedded in me, and had come out in literal form.  This is the only one of my stories to end with the cliche of 'they all lived happily ever after'; a nod to the fairytale ingredients I'd used, but also because the characters have now all paired-up into happy friendships.  They've achieved peace.

But something else was going on subconsciously too because, at the end, Arthur makes friends with the princess who is called Edith.  Arthur and Edith were the names of my paternal grandparents who I never knew.  Of course I was aware of that as I used the names, but I hadn't consciously made the link with their son, my father.  My father was a man who worked in a very practical way to bring peace rather than war to the world.  He became the President of the International Court of Justice in the Hague; an institution which few are aware of (it's nothing to do with the International Criminal Court), where boundary disputes are considered and resolved, bringing peaceful solutions to such problems.  And that is why I dedicated 'Arthur's Tractor' book to my father. 

So a story intended to simply enjoy some mechanical sounds, along with a bit of visual trickery, wrote itself into being, if you like, a book about peaceful resolution to conflict.  That surprises me!

Have any of you found stories writing themselves into something different from the story you thought you were writing?