It looks as though her own career as a writer is going to be more than okay, with the publication of One and the imminent announcement of a publishing deal for a verse novel she has already completed as a collaborative project. She is immensely proud of appearing on the Carnegie shortlist, the posters for which are in pride of place above her desk. She says that it made her think that she could ‘actually do this as a job. It made me want to keep producing good work.’ Yet she is still getting used to the idea of herself as a successful writer and gives huge credit to her agent and to her editors at Bloomsbury and at Greenwillow in the States for their support and advice. Her agent is the first person with whom she discusses her work: ‘It’s like a marriage, where you have to be honest with each other and have difficult conversations. In terms of my writing Julia’s the most important person in my life. She picked me out of the slush pile. She knows the kind of books I want to be writing. I owe her a lot.’
that, with the medical detail that she might need to put across in the story, this would be the way to do it. But, after thirty thousand words – ‘half a book!’ as she says in remembered exasperation – it just wasn’t working. When she began it again it was in verse. Set in New York, it’s the story of twins, Grace and Tippi who share a single body below their hips, and how they adjust to going to school for the first time in their lives and to being the subject of a TV documentary. It looks at how adolescence and its hopes and dreams, especially in terms of love and identity, might be experienced within a relationship so physically and emotionally indivisible. Sarah had at first thought that she would tell it from both Grace’s and Tippi’s point of view but, having begun it from Grace’s point of view, she found that ‘Tippi just wouldn’t speak to me.’ Nor did she anticipate the ending, which has moved some of her readers to tears. ‘The ending is just as the ending needed to be. I don’t want to manipulate the reader in any way.’
She feels a keen responsibility to her readers just as she did to her students when she was a teacher. ‘I felt that my job when they came in was to make them want to be in the room.’ And she feels that verse novels, although relatively unfamiliar in the UK, may be a good way to connect to teenage readers: ‘The kids read them so quickly.’ She feels, too, that verse novels can be a way of making poetry relevant to young people’s lives rather than it just being the subject of study in English Literature classes. She believes that writers for young people should deal with challenging themes. Thinking about a book that she had been asked to review recently which dealt with sexual abuse, she says, ‘There is a responsibility to address every single subject, because that’s the reality for young people. They may be living lives where they are bullied or abused.’ But she feels that this must be done carefully without traumatising readers, and the hallmarks of her work to date are its sensitivity, empathy and humour.
So far, she has written from a girl’s point of view but she doesn’t feel that her books are necessarily girls’ books and the book she is working on at the moment is about a seventeen-year-old boy. ‘I don’t think the books have been marketed as girls’ stories and I have good reactions from boys when I meet them.’ Each of the protagonists in her contemporary stories are, in one way or another, outsiders finding their way in new social situations or relationships. In each book school, family and friendships play a big part. ‘There’s a weird balance in a young person’s life which is, how can I fit in but also how can I be different and stand out, how can I be special? We all have those insecurities but it’s so pronounced when you’re young. So even though a book is about a Polish girl moving to England, or about conjoined twins in a private school in New York, we’re all feeling that way. I think my job, as it was when I was a teacher, is to validate young people, to tell them that it’s going to be okay.’
Sarah is very knowledgeable about the younger generation of writers for young people, and there are writer friends whom she can call up when the solitary business of writing gets a bit too much. Born in Dublin, she feels especially privileged to have been welcomed into the Irish as well as the British and American children’s book scene. She says that she is naturally gregarious and misses teaching. ‘But part of writing for young people is about meeting young people, and doing school visits and doing events. And they are so excited and you get the nicest e-mails. That’s what’s lovely about writing for young people. It feels like an activity that happens in a community.’ So she doesn’t think that she will go back to writing for adults. But for a writer of her talent at the beginning of her career, there are plenty of challenges. She wants to make poetry more a part of young people’s lives. She has been approached for picture book texts too, something she has thought about as she tries to find good books for her daughter. She knows that, contrary to what some people might think, writing picture books would be ‘really, really hard’. But, given that she can already be credited with introducing the verse novel to young people in the UK, I don’t expect that to deter her in the least.
Books, all published by Bloomsbury Children’s Books:
The Weight of Water, 978-1-4088-3023-9, £6.99 pbk Breathe, 978-1-4088-2719-2, £6.99 pbk Resist, 978-1-4088-2720-8, £7.99 pbk Apple and Rain, 978-1-4088-2713-0, £6.77 pbk One, 978-1-4088-6311-4, £10.99 hbk
Clive Barnes has retired from Southampton City where he was Principal Children’s Librarian and is now a freelance researcher and writer.
Books for Keeps No.214 September 2015 11
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