Founded in 1978 by Sebastian Walker, Walker Books is Britain’s leading independent publisher of high quality books for children of all ages. From a modest start, with just 18 titles in 1980, the company now produces over 300 paperback and hardback titles a year, more than any other children’s book publisher in the UK. A sister company, Candlewick Press, was set up in the US in 1992, and Walker Australia was launched a year later. Publishing purely for children for over a quarter of a century, Walker Books offers a diverse range of books, including picture books, board and novelty books, anthologies, fiction and non-fiction.

Denise Johnstone-Burt, Publisher and Associate Director at Walker and one of Britain’s leading children’s book editors, kindly answered our questions about the company, the children’s publishing industry in the UK, and Michael Foreman’s A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope, one of the books selected for inclusion in the 2011 Spirit of PaperTigers project.

Interview by Aline Pereira, former Managing Editor of PaperTigers and currently an independent writer, editor and editorial consultant specializing in multicultural children’s books.

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Please tell us about your path to becoming a publisher and Associate Director at Walker Books.

I joined Walker Books as a publisher and Associate Director twelve years ago from Andersen Press where I was Editorial Director, and where I had been working for ten years.

You run a varied and successful list of authors and illustrators, which includes former Children’s Laureates Michael Morpurgo and Anthony Browne, and Kate Greenaway winner Michael Foreman. When it comes to children’s books, where is your passion? What kinds of stories do you mostly enjoy publishing/reading?

I couldn’t pick one type of book over another – it wouldn’t be fair. I love them all!

The most important thing for me in regards to authors is good quality writing. It doesn’t matter if it is a picture book text, a piece of factual non-fiction or a novel – the quality needs to be there. I also look for emotion and humour.

As far as illustrators are concerned, I look for an artist who understands about telling story through pictures. It is extremely difficult to do, as you know, but when it works (for example with Michael Foreman’s work) the story speaks to the reader, whatever their age.

What attracted you most to Michael Foreman’s A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope, when you first read it?

I loved the way A Child’s Garden was about such a sensitive and important idea seen through a child’s eyes. It felt as though it represented a bit of Michael’s thoughts, a special bit that you could partake in by reading the story. A Child’s Garden is spreading the idea that everyone can do something even in the most dire situation.

Can you tell us a little bit about what working with Michael is like, and about the process of bringing A Child’s Garden to life?

I have worked with Michael for more than twenty years, and it has always been wonderful. We always discuss the story, the shape of it, what it’s about and the approach he wants to take. In the case of A Child’s Garden, Michael came in with the story and read it to me and Ben Norland, Walker Books’ Art Director. We knew instantly that this was a story we had to publish – its message was so important. We discussed how the colour in the book should reflect the growing hope expressed by the text, and Michael took the idea and ran with it.

Wherever Michael goes he sketches and records the small moments that he sees around him. Mia’s Story was inspired by the children he encountered during his travels in South America. He brought in his sketchbooks and we developed the book together. We looked at the pictures, again with Ben Norland, and discussed how we could recreate the feeling that we saw in the sketchbook. The resulting book feels like a cross between a sketchbook and picture book, and has an autobiographical feel to it.

Since its publication in the UK and the US, in 2009, A Child’s Garden has garnered many accolades. Where else has the book been published, or have rights been sold to?

The book has indeed been very successful in the UK and the US, and has also been published all over the world. Foreign language editions have appeared in South America, Japan, China, Denmark, Brazil and Spain.

Do you have a favorite among Michael’s books?

It would be wrong to pick out one since Michael has created so many incredible books, but I loved working on A Child’s Garden with him, as it was, and is, such an important book. We also had great fun working on Say Hello (with Jack Foreman) and Mia’s Story.

Has the role of editors changed much since you first started in this industry?

The role of the editor has changed since I first started in publishing although there are things that are reassuringly still the same. For example, the thrill of receiving a story or discussing an idea with an author or illustrator is as exciting as it ever was, and the process of developing the idea and thinking about how to present it to the reader is still an enormously stimulating, exciting and creative process. It is a great privilege to be able to work creatively with authors from the very early stages of a book’s conception.

I always sit down with an author or illustrator when they have a new idea for a picture book, for example, and he or she will talk me through the new idea. Then we discuss what the story is about, what the emotional heart of the story is and whether the shape of the story is right.  We also talk more practically about whether it is the right length, whether there are parts which don’t quite work, and whether we can make them work, and so on. This conversation can continue over many meetings.

Things have changed, though, so it is much more difficult these days to attract attention to a new author or illustrator and to get them established than it was when I first started working as an editor. There are fewer outlets for books, which means we have to be very clear in our minds where a book might be sold and how visible it will be. This involves much more detailed conversation with sales and marketing, at all stages in the process of making the book, than before. There is only a limited amount of money to spend on marketing individual authors and titles, so I often have to discuss with authors what they can do themselves to help promote their work.

What’s a typical day like for you (if such a thing exists)?

I work partly from home and the rest of the time in the office.  For those days when I am in the office, I find that I spend most of my time either meeting with authors and illustrators and discussing their new or ongoing ideas, or working through projects with my fellow colleagues in design and editorial. I spend most of these days in conversation about books. We also have regular meetings with sales, marketing and production where we discuss the programme and the costings of different projects, as well as development meetings where we float new ideas. There is no such thing as a typical day at Walker Books.

What was your favorite book growing up?

I loved so many…The Silver Sword by Ian Serraillier, Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfeild, Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kastner, The Snow Goose by Paul Gallico, Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson…

Can you give us a snapshot of the children’s publishing industry in the UK these days and how digital publishing is affecting things?

Wonderful books are published in the UK for children, but sadly there are fewer and fewer outlets where they are sold, and not many places where children can browse and choose books to buy. That’s why projects such as PaperTigers are so vital for helping keep children’s books visible.

Regarding the movement toward e-books, many children growing up today have never known a world without electronic methods of delivering information, so as a publisher, it is exciting to me to think about new story platforms. The methods of delivery may be changing, but good stories will always endure. We no longer sit round the campfire but children continue to read and listen to stories, albeit in new ways.

What is Walker’s digital publishing strategy, and how does it fit in with the company’s long-term goals?

After signing up for the iBookstore and with many other visible market places opening up for four-colour content, Walker is assessing suitability from both front- and backlist illustrated titles. We aim to support both fixed format ePub and ePub 3 along with other relevant formats in due course. [ePub is the abbreviation for electronic publication, a widely adopted digital file format.]

Walker has a long history of supporting children’s charities. Please tell us about some of the charity-related initiatives the company has developed or been involved with.

Last year we worked with the UK Children’s Laureate, Anthony Browne and created a book in aid of Rainbow Trust (who work with families of children with life-threatening illnesses) which promoted visual literacy. In 2010 we celebrated our 30^th anniversary with a fundraising spectacular, which raised over £30,000 for the National Literacy Trust. We also have a volunteer reading scheme at our local primary school, which pairs Walker Books staff with children needing reading help.

Would you give us a taste of your Fall 2011 and Spring 2012 catalog?

We have some wonderful books coming up, including: The Pied Piper retold by Michael Morpurgo and illustrated by Emma Chichester Clark; Pop-up London by Jennie Maizels; Aladdin (a magical three-dimensional carousel edition) by Niroot Puttapipat; How Do You Feel? by Anthony Browne, and George Flies South by Simon James.

I am also very excited about the release of the paperback version of Patrick Ness’s new novel, A Monster Calls, inspired by an idea from Siobhan Dowd [read Denise and Patrick’s joint interview to Publishers Weekly, about working together on this unusual project, here].

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Thank you for taking the time to answer our questions, Denise. PaperTigers is very grateful to Candlewick Press, the US Sister Company of Walker Books, for its generous discount for A Child’s Garden: A Story of Hope in support of the Spirit of PaperTigers project. Congratulations on your great work, and we wish you continued success!

To find our more about Walker Books, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.

The Globe Theatre in London will host the Muslim Book Awards presentation on 22nd November. The following books have been shortlisted in the Published Children’s Book category:

The Friendship Matchmaker by Randa Abdel-Fattah (Omnibus Books, Scholastic)
Far From Home by Na’ima B Robert (Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, Janetta Otter-Barry Books)
Wanting Mor by Rukhsana Khan (Groundwood)
A Beautiful Lie by Irfan Master (Bloomsbury)
Guantanamo Boy by Anna Perera (Puffin)

I would say the judges are going to have their work cut out… The great thing about these awards is that they also welcome submissions from unpublished writers, including children’s stories: you can see the shortlist for that and all the other categories here. Also, running tandem to these Awards, are the Young Muslim Writers Awards, which are announced in June each year – go here for this year’s event.

Rukhsana Khan is going to be coming over to the UK from Canada for the Announcement and she would love to visit a school at the same time. Rukhsana’s school visits range from presentations around her award-winning picture books for primary-aged children to “serious issues like teen suicide, loss and abandonment and child refugees. But even my more serious presentations are laced with humour and are age appropriate.” Her visit will also coincide with the UK’s National Anti-Bullying Week, another subject Rukhsana has touched on in her YA novel Dahling, If You Luv Me, Would You Please, Please Smile, and discussed in a Guest Post here at PaperTigers. You can find full details, including how to contact Rukhsana to invite her to your school, on her website.

Abigail Sawyer regularly reviews books for us here at PaperTigers, and she’s also, in her own words, “a lifelong library lover and an advocate for access to books for all”, so who better to write an article for us about “unconventional libraries” and the children’s books they have inspired. Abigail lives in San Francisco, California, USA, where her two children attend a language-immersion elementary school and are becoming bilingual in English and Mandarin: an experience that has informed her work on the blog for the film Speaking in Tongues. I know you’ll enjoy reading this as much as I have.

On Traveling Libraries and Heroic ‘Book People’: Inspiring children’s books about getting books to people in remote places and difficult circumstances

My sons and I paid our first-ever visit to a bookmobile over the summer.  For us it was a novelty.  We have shelves of books at home and live just 3 blocks from our local branch library, but the brightly colored bus had pulled up right near the playground we were visiting in another San Francisco neighborhood (whose branch library was under renovation), and it was simply too irresistible.  Inside, this library on wheels was cozy, comfortable, and loaded with more books than I would have thought possible.  I urged my boys to practice restraint and choose only one book each rather than compete to reach the limit of how many books one can take out of the San Francisco Public Library system (the answer is 50; we’ve done it at least once).

The bookmobiles provide a great service even in our densely populated city where branch libraries abound.  There are other mobile libraries, however, that take books to children who may live miles from even the nearest modern road; to children who live on remote islands, in the sparsely populated and frigid north, in temporary settlements in vast deserts, and in refugee camps.  The heroic individuals who manage these libraries on boats, burros, vans, and camels provide children and the others they serve with a window on the world and a path into their own imaginations that would otherwise be impossible.

Shortly after my own bookmobile experience, Jeanette Winter‘s Biblioburro (Beach Lane Books, 2010), a tribute to Colombian schoolteacher Luis Soriano, who delivers books to remote hillside villages across rural Colombia, arrived in my mailbox to be reviewed for Paper Tigers.  I loved this book, as I do most of Winter’s work, for its bright pictures and simple, straightforward storytelling. Another picture book, Waiting for the Bibiloburro by Monica Brown (Tricycle Press, 2011), tells the story of Soriano’s famous project from the perspective of one of the children it serves, whose life expands beyond farm chores and housework thanks to Soriano and his burros.

I was moved, of course, by Soriano’s story, which got me thinking about another favorite picture book my children found at our branch library a few years ago: That Book Woman by Heather Henson (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2008) is a fictionalized account of one family’s experience with the Pack Horse Library Project, a little-known United States Works Progress Administration program that ran from 1935-1943.  The Pack Horse librarians delivered books regularly to families living deep in Kentucky’s Appalachian Mountains.  In this inspiring story (more…)

I’ve written a few posts about Shakespeare for PaperTigers and have been much enlightened on how the Bard’s work can be transmitted to children.  I was therefore quite happy to be presented with a copy of Shakespeare’s Storybook: Folk Tales that Inspired the Bard by Patrick Ryan and James Mayhew (Barefoot Books, 2001) by my local university’s (University of Manitoba) Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.  Patrick Ryan, co-author of this book, is this year’s Storyteller-in-Residence at the Centre.

Shakespeare’s Storybook tells the tales that were likely the precursors to the stories of his plays.  As is commonly known, Shakespeare did not ‘invent’ the stories of his plays — they often came from various sources which Shakespeare then ‘played’ with in order to create his own version of the story suitable for the stage.

I launched into a reading of Shakespeare’s Storybook as soon as I got it, and played the CD of the first story “The Devil’s Bet”  to my daughter.  She was immediately hooked.  And why shouldn’t she be?  The first story — the precursor to The Taming of the Shrew — was about a nasty girl named Nora who through an encounter with a gentle but spirited husband and through her own wits, manages to reform herself and rid her household of the Nicky Nicky Nye, a pestilent water devil.   Although my daughter condemned Nora’s nastiness, she did perceive rather sagely that the husband, Jamie, was effectively ‘training’ Nora to be a better woman.  Nothing like a wayward character to get a child interested in a story, that’s for sure!

Equally compelling were some of the other stories like “Ashboy” (Hamlet) and “The Hill of Roses” (Romeo and Juliet.)   My daughter, whose first Shakespeare play was Twelfth Night, was a little disappointed that the story behind that play wasn’t in the book, but she did enjoy the others.  We had an entertaining few bedtime nights of listening to the CDs and going through the book together.  If you enjoy Shakespeare, I’d certainly recommend this book  as an engaging introduction to the master playwright’s work.

Carol Ann Duffy was named poet laureate of the United Kingdom in 2009.  She was the 20th such laureate in the UK, but the first woman to have assumed the post.  I was quite delighted to find that Duffy has written a few children’s books, one of which I discovered in my library — Underwater Farmyard (illustrated by Joel Stewart, Macmillan, 2002).   Underwater Farmyard takes the classical farmyard setting with all the animals, and places it in the ocean. “Under the blue-green fields of the Deep/Bleat the bubbly baas of webbed-feet sheep” it begins and page after page, in lovely lilting rhyme with beautiful illustrations,  farmyard animals and sea creatures commingle in their aqueous environment.  I particularly liked all of Duffy’s references to the ocean — the Deep, the Brine, the Drink, etc.  The end of the book, meant to be read at bedtime, has all the creatures going to sleep.

This is a good book to read aloud to, or with, your child, just so you can enjoy the play with the language which is what poetry, especially childrens’ poetry, is all about.   This book whet my appetite for more Duffy, so I went up to the adult non-fiction section of the library and took out some of her poetry collections.  Fine stuff, indeed.

Poetry Friday’s host this week is Amy at The Poem Farm.  On another completely unrelated note, I do invite any of  you who are interested in reading spiritual poetry to  check out my new book of poems, Alert to Glory, launched this week in Winnipeg.  You can order copies through my publisher, Turnstone Press.

It’s back to school time and with all its attendant busyness, our family is considering (perhaps rather foolishly!) of getting a dog.   So lately, we have been researching dogs by consulting various books, looking at websites and generally asking our friends and neighbors for their advice.  One delightful book I discovered in my perusal at the library for dog books was James Herriot’s Favourite Dog Stories, illustrated by Lesley Holmes (McClelland and Stewart , 1995)  In this book, British veterinarian James Herriot regales the reader with stories of dogs he has treated in his countryside practice in Yorkshire.  There’s the story of Tricki Woo, the spoiled Pekingese  who lives with his rather ostentatious owner, Mrs. Pumphrey, or the moving story of Herman, the daschund who suffers from paralysis in his hindquarters owned by a disabled former miner and his wife, and Jake, the greyhound, the beloved companion of itinerant laborer, Roddy.   My daughter listens to these stories with a keen ear in the midst of her bed, covered in stuffed dogs (soon to be replaced by a real one, she readily hopes!)  I’m not sure how our search will go but reading Herriot’s warm stories has certainly  helped increase the anticipation and excitement for this future — gulp! — addition to our household.

First, there’s the book and then there’s the movie.  Where to encounter the narrative first is always the question!  Most of us ‘older’ folk tend to encounter the narrative first in a book, and then later in the movie version.  But for today’s children and for me — especially in the case of Japan’s Studio Ghibli movies at any rate — it’s often the movie first.    When I first got wind of Studio Ghibli’s movie release, Arietty (it came out in Japan in 2010, DVD release July 2011) I noted quickly that it was based on Mary Norton’s The Borrowers (Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1953).  The directors at Studio Ghibli — notably Hayao Miyazaki and son, Goro Miyazaki — have occasionally gone to British children’s books for inspiration for their movies.  Their previously released Howl’s Moving Castle was based on Diana Wynne Jones’ book of the same title (published in 1986) and it was through that movie, that I was introduced to Wynne Jones’ writing.

Thanks to Studio Ghibli again, my daughter and I have had a chance to experience The Borrowers by Mary Norton.  I picked up a hardback edition of the novel at a used book sale in Nishinomiya where I lived and began reading it at night to my daughter.  The Borrowers are little people who live under a house in England, and who ‘borrow’ things from the much larger humans that dwell above them.  The family in the first series of the Borrowers books is a small one comprising of the father, Pod, the mother, Homily, and their fourteen year old daughter, Arietty (on whom the movie title is based.)    My daughter and I got about halfway through the novel before she got to see the movie (we rented the DVD in Japan just before the day we left) and it was clear from the snippets I saw of it that the Studio Ghibli team was well into animating the tiny world of the Borrowers with its signature, detailed and colorful animation for which it is famous.  I hope Arietty makes it into the North American viewing market soon, but barring that, The Borrowers still make a great read for parents and children alike.

Tom Avery,
Too Much Trouble
Janetta Otter-Barry Books, Frances Lincoln, 2011.

Ages 9-12

Winner of the 2010 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award, Too Much Trouble will have its readers hooked right from the explosive introduction to the prologue: “The gun was much heavier than I expected.” The story of how Emmanuel, the book’s likeable 12-year-old narrator, got to this point is a gripping tale that deliberately mirrors Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist in a modern setting.

Emmanuel has mastered the art of not attracting the attention of his peers or his teachers – no mean feat, considering that he and his nine-year-old brother Prince are living alone. The boys had been sent to England to escape conflict in their unnamed African country, but the uncle who is supposed to be looking after them turns out to be a drug dealer and eventually throws them out.

Salvation comes from an unlikely quarter, in the shape of Mr Green, who is just as grotesque as the original Fagin. It’s a slippery slope from there into learning how to be good pick-pockets, along with the other children Mr Green has taken under his wing. Emmanuel is old enough to have learned the roots of integrity from his parents and to feel disturbed by this new mode of survival; the same cannot be said for Prince, which adds to Emmanuel’s anguish, as the responsible older brother. And so, eventually we come full circle to the point where Emmanuel has a gun in his hand…

As is appropriate for its targeted readership, Too Much Trouble does not enter into deep analysis of the social background, or do more than sketch in the criminal underworld. We don’t find out the other children’s stories, we just know they are bad. One girl, Terri, is an avid reader, and there are some deft allusions to books (including Oliver Twist) that may or may not be familiar. If they are, it adds to the story’s strength; if not, readers may be curious to find out…

Avery (a teacher himself) credibly weaves in the ineffectuality of the teachers and other adults in picking up on the brothers’ situation until it’s almost too late. This does not mean, however, that readers are not required to consider deeply the issues involved. Because it steers clear of making any moral statement itself, as a knuckle-biting journey of a read, Too Much Trouble is likely to evoke a strong response for social justice.

Marjorie Coughlan
July 2011

Following on from my brief post yesterday, here’s a fuller account of the Award Ceremony for the 2011 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award, hosted at Seven Stories, who play a prominent role in administering the award – not least in coordinating the many volunteers who read through the entries and compile the shortlist.

This year’s award was won by Helen Limon for her story Om Shanti, Babe, “a story about growing up, family and friendship” described by the judges as “Fabulous . . . laugh-out-loud funny.” They were looking for a “strong story that an 8 to 12-year-old would want to read rather than a worthy book
that overtly explores social issues.” We were treated to an extract from the book and it certainly sounds like they found what they were looking for. Now we will have to be patient while we wait for the manuscript to go through its due process towards publication. To whet your appetite, here’s a brief synopsis:

Teenager Cassia joins her mother, who runs a fair trade craft shop, on a buying trip to India, a country that she mostly knows from her Bollywood dance routines. Troubled by a friendship gone sour at home, and feeling out of place in a new culture that challenges her assumptions, she reacts badly to her mother’s relationship with an Indian colleague. As Cassia sheds some of her preconceived ideas, she finds friends where she least expects to and starts to realise her dream to follow her mother into business. The story emcompasses fair trade and environmental issues alongside her spiky tussles with fashion-mad friend-to-be Priyanka, and her crushes on pop star Jonny Gold and Dev, a boy she meets on a train.

Helen had put together a display of pictures and objects she had brought back from a trip to Kerola, India in 2009, which was the inspiration for her book:

“Talking to the mothers about their lives and their ambitions for their families, and listening to
what the children said they wanted, inspired the story and made me conscious of the social and environmental themes that are woven into the book.

“My characters are not the sort of children that get written about much and I lived most of my life not in
England, so I do sort of know what it is like to be different inside your head even if you look like everyone
else on the outside.”

Runner-up in the competition was Karon Aldermon for her story For Keeps about Benedicta (Ben), her mother and younger sister who are asylum seekers from Cameroon. “While their uncertain future and (more…)

I will be posting properly about the Award tomorrow – just to let you know the news in the meantime that Helen Limon is the winner of this year’s 2011 Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Children’s Book Award for Om Shanti, Babe. Runner-up was Karon Alderman for For Keeps, and Michelle Richardson received a Special Mention for Tek.

The Award was announced at Seven Stories in Newcastle, and the occasion also marked the launch of Too Much Trouble, winner of the Award last year, by Tom Avery, and of The Filth Licker by Christy Burne, a sequel to her 2009 winner Takeshita Demons.

This great official photo shows (l-r) Helen, Tom and Karon with the three published books. You can also see some of my photos from the Awards Ceremony here; and read more about the Frances Lincoln Diverse Voices Award here.