Now in the teen frame of mind and because ‘I wanted to go with what works’, Ally wrote Berserk, the story of a boy writing to someone on Death Row. It had many of the same qualities as Beast and again explored the complexities of the world of a troubled and testing teenager. For her third book Ally tried something different. ‘I didn’t want to be a one trick pony. I had more confidence and I wanted to write about a girl.’ Lexi had appeared in Berserk and Ally wanted to write something for her. The setting of Cane Hill provided a rich background and the story about who was hiding in it came from her strong feelings about the deportation of illegal immigrants. ‘I’m probably naïve but I just think please, give these people a place. Some things just rile you up but I don’t want to push my simplistic views or preach.’ Ally does neither although she shows her anger and she also shows that she can write about girls too.


Ally was accepted and sees it as the moment that her attitude to her writing changed profoundly. ‘I felt my writing was given some importance.’ Ally loved the course but she was sick of The Quab Baby and also longing to get pregnant. Luckily a tutor suggested that Ally should start writing something else. She did and ‘I finished it two weeks before my daughter was born.’ The book was Beast, the story of Stephen who wants to turn his life around and be responsible but who has the complication of the hideous creature he keeps as a secret pet. Ally’s distinctive teenage voice was immediately recognised by her being awarded a prize at the end of the course which led to a major auction and the reward of a three book deal from Scholastic.


On publication, Beast was hailed as ‘an extraordinary and imaginative achievement’ and shortlisted for the Carnegie Medal. All at once Ally, at just 29, was a recognised author and a mother. ‘The book and being a mother are all tied up together. I’d go into town to look at the book in the bookshop and then get a flat tyre on the buggy on the way home. I didn’t really have time to feel proud of it.’ Ally had adopted a first person narrative voice ‘because I thought it would be simplest and because in a single viewpoint like that you can make every word count.’ It was a trick she’d picked up on the course but what made it so powerful was the way she combined it with her knowledge of damaged teenagers. ‘The voice just came from the finer qualities of many of the foster brothers. As a foster sister, I was very aware of the indignities of children who’d been in care and how at 17 they were just meant to manage on their own. I was very scared for Stephen because I had seen how hard that can be.’


Three books in very quick succession and all of a kind were followed by the delightful and hugely entertaining Sparks, a romp of a story for younger readers about how three children, acting without adults in the best tradition of children’s fiction, manage to arrange a Viking funeral for their grandfather. ‘I got a new contract so I thought I’d write two books in the year but I moved house instead.’ As ever, Ally’s life and her writing cut across each other but she had a trick up her sleeve. ‘I stole the story from my GCSE folder. It was called ‘The Last Request’ and provided the bones I could build from.’


But that was an interlude. Now, with Quarry, Ally is back again to those teenagers in her darkest book yet. The chaos of Scrappy’s life is tangible but there is nothing sensational or mawkish about how Ally describes it. And she doesn’t offer any easy fixes. Instead, in her familiar, first person narrative enriched this time by her habit of ‘sidling up to a group of teenagers and stealing their speech’, she tells a bleak story about the absolute collapse of a parent and how it almost destroys a child in its wake. But, despite the desolation, there is humour, kindness and a strange sense that things will get better – somehow.


If Ally Kennen keeps up this rate of writing, her output will be prodigious. Somehow, I think she’ll have to slow down on both babies and books but, whatever she writes next, will be a book to look forward to. n


Julia Eccleshare is the children’s book editor of the Guardian and the co-director of CLPE (The Centre for Literacy in Primary Education).


The Books (published by Marion Lloyd Books in paperback) Beast, 978 1 4071 1708 9, £6.99 Bedlam, 978 1 4071 1710 2, £6.99 Berserk, 978 1 4071 1709 6, £7.99 Quarry, 978 1 4071 1107 0, £6.99 Sparks, 978 1 4071 1108 7, £6.99


Books for Keeps No.186 January 2011 15


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