Authorgraph No.213
Carnegie Medal and Diamonds and Daggers, the first of her new The Marsh Road Mysteries series, has been chosen for this year’s Summer Reading Challenge. The second in the Marsh Road series, Crowns and Codebreakers, is just out.
E
We meet in a Bristol café, which sells
fabulous cream-
filled cakes, and Caldecott is warm and friendly with much the same gentle poise and sense of humour evinced in her books. She seems to lead a modestly idyllic life. She and her husband Simon and their dog Biff live in one of the little, coloured terraced houses in Totterdown, South Bristol. Here she writes her books sitting in a sofa in her spare bedroom which looks out over the park. Twice a week she goes out to her day jobs: for three hours a week she teaches undergraduates on the creative writing course at Bath
Spa University; and for another three hours she works as a cinema usher at an arts centre. She says, ‘I get to watch film for a living. It’s great! I’m very lucky with my day jobs.’
Caldecott grew up in North Wales. Her parents separated when she was ten and both remarried and had more children. Her family is therefore complex: ‘I have a sister, two half brothers, three step brothers and a half sister.’
She was an early reader and her childhood was steeped in books. ‘My mum was an English teacher and a great reader. She had kept all of her books from childhood so I had her old hardback copies of Enid Blyton and What Katy Did and The Secret Garden. It was a very classic 1950s children’s library that was given to me – it was brilliant!’
After school Caldecott studied Ancient History and Archaeology at Birmingham University. Subsequently, she says, she ‘pootled around’ trying out various careers.
Eventually she found a permanent post working for the National Museum of Scotland, the vast, eclectic museum in central Edinburgh. ‘I was an education specialist and every day we would have multiple school groups come and learn about the Vikings or the Romans. There were some kids who would just come in after school and try on Tudor dresses or whatever. It is amazing how many really interesting children take themselves to museums.’
When she was eventually made redundant from the museum, Caldecott used her leaving money to write. She began an adult novel. ‘I was 28 and I thought I had interesting things to say [here she sighs] about feminism and women’s role in the world. So I started writing a book about a girl moving to London to set up on her own and be free. It was awful! ’
To give herself a break, she began writing a children’s book, and quickly realised that this was where her future lay. This book was
10 Books for Keeps No.213 July 2015
len Caldecott is a rising star of children’s literature. Her warm, funny, redemptive adventure stories – all partly fantastical and partly kitchen sink – have proved immensely popular with children. She has been long listed for the
Elen Caldecott never published,
Interviewed by Amanda Mitchison but she
received encouraging letters from the publishers that turned it down and this inspired her to sign up for the MA in Writing for Young People at Bath Spa University.
The course, completed in 2007,
which she was
‘supremely useful.’ She says, ‘You’d tear books apart and see how they were built and then have a go at building one yourself and then do it again and again. And every time you were critiqued on what you had done by your peers and by your tutor. Just for a year all you think about is how stories work, how they are made, and what makes a good one. And then there was lots of very practical industry advice. ’
Bloomsbury took her on and published published How Kirsty Jenkins Stole the Elephant, the children’s novel which she wrote during her year at Bath Spa and which went on to be shortlisted for the Waterstone’s Children’s Book Prize. The novel features a feisty girl who steals a stuffed elephant from a museum. Caldecott says,
‘ I thought that actually doing your best to
tell the truth about how divorce feels and to make the experience a normal one for children was really important to me.
’
‘It was partly inspired by working at the museum – there was a stuffed elephant, and there was really big good lift.’ And a deeper narrative is also at work. Kirsty has a half-sister who she doesn’t get on with, and her father comes down with depression at the beginning of the book after Kirsty’s grandfather dies. However, by the successful end
to the extraordinary
escapade with the elephant, the family have come to terms with each other and the father is on the mend.
Fractured, complicated
families are a frequent theme in Caldecott’s work. In her second novel, How
Ali
Ferguson Saved Houdini, the protagonist Ali lives with his mum, his dad having moved out two years before. Caldecott says,
‘For my first
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32