04.11.16
www.thebookseller.com
INTERVIEW LISSA EVANS
and what I loved stumbling across was magic. When I was little we moved from Surrey to the Midlands and I was very miserable because I lost my friends. I spent a lot of time hoping something magical would happen,” she says. Many readers will also enjoy the gentle mocking of certain types of children’s books in Evans’ depiction of the Wimbly Woos, the characters in Minnie’s picture book that later come to life and act “with a sort of idiotic jollity”, according to the book. “I suppose I imagined the sort of children’s book I dislike, those rather silly ones where everyone is friends and dances round in circles. There’s no plot,” she explains. “You get to the end and you want to burn it but you can’t because your children love it. I imagine the Wimbly Woos would be a franchise . . . there would definitely be TV spin-offs!” The Wimbly Woos act according to type: yellow-
Her first kids’ book, Small Change for METADATA
Stuart (Doubleday), was tremendously well received by the industry and “shortlisted for everything”, including the Carnegie Medal, the Branford Boase and the Costa Book Award, and led to a sequel, Big Change for Stuart. Evans now alternates between writing
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Publication 05.01.17 Formats HB ISBN 9781910989432 Rights David Fickling Books has world rights Editor Bella Pearson Agent Georgia Garrett at Rogers, Coleridge & White
children’s novels and adult books, explaining: “I can write adult books in the morning and children’s books in the afternoon without mixing the two. It does seem to come from a different place. I’m never going to be a fast writer but I can write children’s books at two or three times the speed [I can write] an adult book. I think it’s about children’s motivations. Children tend to get on with things. They don’t brood to the same degree, therefore children’s books are more plot-driven, and once
coloured ones are timid and pink-hued ones are cuddly, for example. But a dramatic denouement reveals Wimbly Woos are happier when they are all mixed up. “I found it a rather satisfactory ending, breaking up the narrow and ridiculous Wimbly categories and forming a richer mix. And it fits in with Graham and Fidge widening their own range of emotions and abilities. No one wants to be known for being perpetually timid or irritating or loud, we all want our better qualities recognised,” the author says.
THE RAT RACE Wed Wabbit is Evans’ third children’s novel (she has also published four adult novels). She began writing after a successful career as a BBC radio and TV producer, including creating the chat show “Room 101”. She says she “always” felt she should be writing and, when she was approaching 40, took six months off to write what turned out to be Spencer’s List (Penguin). It was only after her third adult book that her agent, Georgia Garrett at Rogers, Coleridge & White, suggested she should turn her hand to children’s stories. “[Georgia] suggested I read some Edward Eager, who was a sort of American Edith Nesbit, and I read and loved them. I understood that kind of writing and from then I knew it would be OK.”
you’ve got the narrative you tend to move in the right direction faster.” David Fickling Books hired Sarah McIntyre, author,
illustrator and founder of the Pictures Mean Business campaign, to create the front cover for Wed Wabbit, but Evans decided not to have illustrations throughout the book. “I thought it would spoil it really,” she says. “I write quite carefully and my intent is always for my reader to see what I’m seeing in my head.” There will be no Wed Wabbit sequel, but Evans is
already “fiddling around” in the afternoons with a new idea for a “magic in real life” children’s book. In the mornings, she is working on a prequel to Crooked Heart (Transworld), set in the 1920s. She also has a cameo in “Their Finest”, the forthcoming film adaptation of her 2009 novel Their Finest Hour and a Half (Transworld), as a make-up lady. Rights to Wed Wabbit have already sold to Scholastic in the US but Evans is reluctant to predict that Wed Wabbit will hit the big time, despite the early rave reviews. She says she has “never troubled” the bestseller list. “My friends sometimes say I’m down on myself but I’m not. I’m realistic. You never know what is going to take off and if you start down that road you could get very bitter. “I have zero expectations, but if I could make people laugh and weave the story into someone’s psyche, that would make me very happy.”
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OF EVANS’ TOP SELLERS
CROOKED HEART Black Swan,
9780552774789, £7.99 Second World War-set tale about the touching relationship between 10-year-old orphan evacuee Noel Bostock and his chaotic,
permanently penniless new foster mother, 36-year-old Vera Sedge.
13,850 SOLD
THEIR FINEST HOUR AND A HALF Black Swan,
9780552774710, £7.99 In 1940, a motley cast and crew are assembled in the wilds of Norfolk to make a rousing propaganda film.
10,507 SOLD
SMALL CHANGE FOR STUART Corgi Children’s,
9780552561693, £6.99 Evans’ first children’s fiction book features 10-year-old Stuart on a magical adventure in search of his great- uncle’s lost workshop. Shortlisted for the Costa Children’s Book Award.
9,434 SOLD
ODD ONE OUT Penguin, 9780141006932, £13.99
Contemporary comic tale about a dysfunctional Devon family.
5,875 SOLD
SMUDGER THE DOG SAVES CHRISTMAS (ILLUS HOLLY SURPLICE) Red Fox, 9781862309791, £5.99 Festive picture book.
4,625 SOLD
CV QUICK
1960
Born 1st May in Surrey
1996- 1998
Producer of series two and three of “Father Ted”
2002
Spencer’s List, Evans’ first book for adults, published by Penguin
2011
Small Change for Stuart, Evans’ first book for children, published by Doubleday
2017
Release of “Their Finest”, the film adaptation of Their Finest Hour and a Half
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