Children's books: to count or not to count?
And an interview with an author who writes for both kids and adults
As an author, it feels weird to say (write) this out loud (in my newsletter): I am an incredibly slow reader.
When I read, I need to take my time. My brain refuses to let me skip over a sentence, knowing that multiple people would have spent goodness knows how many hours crafting each one to perfection. I find it physically impossible to skim-read (I tried that bionic reading thing – it doesn’t work for me at all, and nor do audio books) and like to make sure I’ve captured every possible element of a story through every single word.
This approach means that, in a ‘good’ year, I might read a dozen or so books (and I’ll probably DNF a similar number – I’m pretty ruthless). But this year has been an even slower reading year than normal. With so much editing and author admin stuff going on in the background, there’s less space in my brain for being able to meaningfully absorb stories via the written word in the slow, focused way my brain needs to.
But this week I had a revelation: why haven’t I been including all the kids’ books I read with / to my children in this annual count? That would probably double my tally at the very least.
My children – aged six and nine – are at very different reading stages. My youngest is not yet an independent reader and has only just started to express an interest in chapter books. We read her a couple of chapters of her chosen story a night, getting through a book or two a week with her on average.
And these books are (largely) so great! Like, not just ‘great for a children's book’ but great, full stop.
I recently had the pleasure of reading Gobbolino The Witch’s Cat by Ursula Moray Williams to my daughter. I’d never read it before, and found myself looking forward to the next chapter as much as (if not more than) my six-year-old. First published in 1942, this sweet story follows the reluctant witch’s cat Gobbolino as he repeatedly tries and fails to find his forever home. The writing is melodically exquisite, and reading it aloud was such a pleasure; the sentences unfolding with ease and rhythm, despite some formal language quirks consistent with the period in which it was written.
At 200+ pages, this book took us a couple of weeks to finish, and I enjoyed it immensely. So…why do I automatically discount these kinds of books from my annual tally?
On the other hand, my eldest child is now a voracious independent reader, easily devouring three or four chapter books or graphic novels a week (in addition to endless comics and school books). Hearing him shriek in delight at hilarious or audacious parts of a story – or being called into his room to read a page or two that’s particularly entertained or surprised him – brings me so much joy. Given that he spent the first two years of school in and out of covid lockdowns (and refusing being unable to engage in any formal learning at home), I know his passion for reading comes from his story-loving heart, not his education-induced obligations.
His heavy preference is for funny or adventurous stories – the sillier or more fantastical the better. When he was a little younger, the two of us whizzed through the entire series of Kes Gray’s Daisy and the Trouble With… books in a matter of weeks, often howling with hilarity at Daisy’s latest self-induced misfortune (seriously, Daisy and the Trouble With Kittens* is one of the funniest books I’ve ever read). And one of his latest favourite series is The O.D.D. Squad by Stuart Heritage, which follows a hapless crew of unlikely superheros, one of whom is an invisible dog called…Invisidog.
I can’t claim to have read every single title that my son has, but I’ve read a decent chunk of them. And each one has undoubtedly taught me something about writing style, humour in storytelling (especially poo jokes), narrative structure and the importance of varying cadence in every sentence (thanks to reading them aloud). But, even removing all these professional takeaways as an author, I just really enjoy them as stories!
So I’ve decided that, from now on, I’m totally going to include all the children’s books I’ve read in my end-of-year figure. As an author, there’s something to learn from every single one. But, more importantly than that, stories are stories, books are books, and joy is joy.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this! Has it made you rethink your approach to ‘counting’ kids’ literature as books you’ve read? Perhaps you already do include them in your round-ups? If not, why not?
And now for a pretty nifty segue, even if I do say so myself…
“Generally speaking, I don’t know how things work, so I like the comfort of having a team of experts around me.”
Stuart Heritage: journalist, author, Hollywood cake-recipient
This time, it’s the turn of journalist, children’s author and grown-up author (yes, author of The O.D.D. Squad series my son adores!) to share his journey to the nation’s – nay, the world’s! – bookshelves.
Fun fact: Stu confidently estimates that he receives more cakes from Tom Cruise than anyone on Earth. We are truly honoured!
At what point in your life did you think to yourself ‘Yes, I want to write a book’?
Long before I actually wrote a book. I’ve been writing professionally for almost twenty years, and about a decade ago it seemed like a book was something I should explore. But it took me years and years to seize upon a good idea.
Do you have an agent? And what made you decide that choice was best for you?
I do. More than anything, an agent knows how things work. They know all the editors at all the publishing houses, so they have a much better sense of who to target and when. Without my agent, my approach to submitting proposals would just be to copy and paste the exact same email to a million editors, which is pretty much the surest way to annoy a million editors at once. My agent is brilliant – he’s supportive and knows when to kick my arse, and he’s one of my first readers – and I wouldn’t be without him.
However, it did take a while to find the right agent. First I signed with a big prestigious agent with a billion important clients, and quickly found that he wasn’t able to give me the time I needed. Then I went the other way and signed with a brilliant independent agent who gave me all the time I needed, but his client list was so small that money ran dry and he ended up changing careers. Third time lucky.
How long did it take from starting to write your first book, to people being able to buy it?
I think it was about three years.
Why did you choose to publish your book traditionally?
Same reason as getting an agent, really. Generally speaking, I don’t know how things work, so I like the comfort of having a team of experts around me. At the moment I work with two publishers – Puffin for the kids’ books and Profile for the adult books – and they both have different things going for them. Profile is a small team, and really agile. Puffin is enormous, and has a lot of firepower to throw behind its authors. Plus, it published a picture book by Paul McCartney, so technically we’re peers.
In summary, the books I write would be much, much, much, much, much more crap if I self-published them.
What part of the writing or publishing process do you find the most annoying?
I hate publication days. HATE them. You spend a couple of years devoting your entire life to creating something, and then on an arbitrary day it comes out and that’s it. It doesn’t belong to you any more. It feels like it should be a big special day, and it so rarely is. Even if hundreds of thousands of people buy the thing on the day it comes out (which they won’t), it’ll still take them a few days or weeks to finish reading it, so the day ends up being a horrible weird vacuum. But I’ve had enough books out to anticipate this, and now on publication day I’ll usually sack everything off and go to the cinema by myself.
Plotting or pantsing: what’s your happy place?
Instinctively I’m a pantser, but I’m reluctantly coming around to the benefits of plotting. I think the sweet spot for me is loose plotting. If I plot the whole story in too much detail, then the actual writing becomes a dot-to-dot process and the text loses a lot of life.
What was your first ‘I can’t believe this is happening’ moment as an author?
My first book (and this is the only time it’s happened) went to auction, and I spent a couple of days getting quite aggressively wooed by lots of different people. The plus side of this is that everyone lost their minds and I ended up getting paid a lot more than I was expecting for the book. The downside is that the publisher overspent so much that the book will never, ever, ever, ever, ever, EVER come close to earning out its advance, which means that it’ll always feel a little bit like a failure.
What one thing is the most surprising thing about being an author?
Probably that it isn’t the ‘get rich’ scheme I was hoping for. I had vague plans that I’d write one book, it would immediately become the international bestseller of the century and I’d take the money and never do anything ever again. Clearly, that didn’t happen. But the first book opened a lot of doors, some of which I'm still sworn to secrecy about, and it’s been a lot of fun exploring all the new opportunities, even if it has bollocksed up my early retirement a bit.
If you could change anything about your path to publication, what would it be?
Honestly, nothing. I meandered all over the place for years – I started writing blogs, then I wrote jokes for TV shows, then newspaper columns – but all of this informed how I operate as an author. So it took a while, but it happened when it happened.
What would be your dream achievement as a writer?
At this point, I have one vain one and one realistic one. The vain one would be for the O.D.D Squad books to get turned into a TV show (although I’m not pursuing it at all, and I haven’t discussed it with anyone, and so I’m basically just waiting for Father Christmas to click his fingers and make it happen, which it won’t). The realistic one is to try and do well enough to keep writing more books. Of all the things I do, it’s my favourite, and right now I’d like to do it until I keel over.
Thanks so much, Stu! You can follow Stu on Instagram here and subscribe to his newsletter here. He is too old for TikTok 🙏
Are you an author who’d like to share your own publication journey in this newsletter? Get in touch!
Things I’ve done recently
🏆 I made the final of the New Yorker’s weekly Cartoon Caption Contest! I’ve been diligently entering this competition for a few years, with a pretty decent degree of success (if Instagram ‘likes’ are anything to go by). But my submission for contest #914 was the one that finally caught the attention of the judges at the New Yorker (!). I find out next week if I’ve won!!
🔐 I am so close to being able to share exciting book news with you. There’s been a delay in announcing as there’s even more stuff to announce now (!). Thanks so much for bearing with me during what must be the world’s most drawn-out build-up…
Things I’ve enjoyed recently
📑A new favourite Substack of mine is
by comedian and comedy writer . This post about her experience in writers’ rooms is both fascinating and snort-inducingly funny (and her back catalogue is well worth exploring, and I adore this genius comedy short of hers).
🕍 You guessed it, along with every other millennial woman on social media, I recently binged the Netflix series Nobody Wants This.
Ultimately, I had a lot of fun watching it, although there has been some very valid criticism of its depiction of Jewish women. But there was something else bugging me about it that I couldn’t put my finger on until after I’d watched the final episode: the way that practically every single woman (Jewish or not) was positioned against other women! Joanne and her sister, the sisters and their mother, Joanne and Rebecca, Miriam and her mum, Joanne and the girls at camp, Noah’s mum and…well, every other woman in the show…
It was a never-ending conveyor belt of women battling each other over the men in their lives, while the men were permitted to just get on with whatever the hell they wanted to. Even Joanne and her sister’s podcast centred men in every single discussion.
This is a very long-winded way of me saying: YES, let’s have (and write!) more chemistry-laden rom-coms that feature emotionally intelligent men (although Noah – played wonderfully by Adam Brody – was the only one…), but NO, let’s not have more rom-coms that normalise women being threatened by other women, which is incredibly reductive and unprogressive.
📚 Poetry anthologist Ana Sampson has just released her latest curation of verse, Heroes and Villains*. With a focus on poems about legends, this is the second collection of hers that’s been illustrated beautifully by Chris Riddell, and I was lucky enough to be invited to the launch party at our local independent bookshop.
🎧 I’m adoring this album by Gem County, which is percussed to perfection by none other than my drum teacher (and We Are Scientists drummer!) Keith Carne. It’s floaty, nostalgic, ethereal, uplifting and well worth listening to on headphones for extra ASMR yumminess. Enjoy!
Love this! We read a lot together and I've never thought of "counting" my kids' books.
I DMd you this, but shout out to Kid Sister on itvX for a funny, heartwarming show with a Jewish creator