Authorgraph No.237


A busy summer lies ahead for Adam Stower. There’s


publicity to do for the recently published second book in his King Coo series, The Curse of the Mummy’s Gold, then there’s the third King Coo book to write for publisher David Fickling by the autumn, a new


picture book for Andersen Press due in the same timeframe, plus the launch of the ‘Rocket family’ characters he has created for this year’s Summer Reading Challenge.


However, sitting in the corner of a shared studio space in Brighton he has worked in for more than 20 years, surrounded by bulging sketchbooks, shelves packed with picture books and piles of work in progress, he seems remarkably relaxed.


The success of King Coo, his marvellous madcap adventure series, is clearly a joy and a relief. The highly illustrated chapter books are filled with an exhilarating mix of text, full page pictures, visual gags, graphic novel panels and hilarious annotated character portraits, using Stower’s experience as a picture book author and illustrator to bring together words and pictures and make them much more than the sum of their parts.


The books feature an appealingly anxious little boy called Ben Pole and the brilliant eponymous King Coo, a fearless girl with a beard who lives in a treehouse in the woods with a wombat called Herbert. There she invents ingenious contraptions – the Cow-Pat-a-Pult is a masterpiece – and saves the day from bullies, crooked mayors and, in book two, the ‘Midnight Mob’ band of burglars.


Adam Stower Interviewed by Michelle Pauli


At the heart of her character is an air of mystery – who is she? Why is she there? And does she really have a beard?


For Stower this element of mystery is central to the books, helping the reader to invest in the characters. He explains, ‘There’s an excitement in all the potential and possibilities. If you give a child a ball, they’ve got the ball and they are probably quite happy to have the ball. But if you throw it to them and they have to catch it, suddenly it becomes much more exciting and much more of a joint effort. That’s what I like to do with the characters in my books. I’ll offer up certain things and have the reader meet me halfway on aspects.’ It also helps to keep the character fresh for him, as he claims to not know himself what Coo’s origins are or if, indeed, her beard is real. Plus, of course, ‘Coo’s rather extraordinary characteristics are great to draw!’


While nothing about the Coo books might, at first sight, appear particularly likely to be autobiographical, Stower drew heavily on a range of childhood memories and influences. Coo herself was partly inspired by Pippi Longstocking, Stig of the Dump and elements of Scooby Doo, all of which he enjoyed as a child, along with the ‘wild man in the woods’ episode of Hancock’s Half Hour. His early life was spent in Switzerland, thanks to his father’s job, in a small village on the edge of Lake Zurich. He and his brother enjoyed the kind of free-range childhoods, filled with freedom to roam wild, remembered fondly by those of us who grew up in the 70s. ‘I think King Coo is a kind of encapsulation of all of that sort of joy of


8 Books for Keeps No.237 July 2019


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