NEW INTERVIEW SERIES: PICTURE HOOKS DISCUSSES

Interview 1: Vivian French & Nikki Gamble, Just Imagine

Exciting news! We’re launching a brand new web interview series called Picture Hooks Discusses, where our very own wonderful Vivian French will be interviewing some powerhouses and legends of the picture book, literary, and illustration industries.

PH Discusses is all about delving deep into the magical world of picture books. Through chats with our industry expert guests we’ll be learning what makes a great picture book, why they picture books/illustrated books are so important for both children and adults, how children’s literature has evolved over the years, what trends are fleeting and what are here to stay, how illustration/artwork is vital to children’s literature… the list goes on

In our first interview, Vivian chats to former teacher, university lecturer, and founder of Just Imagine, Nikki Gamble. Just Imagine works extensively with schools in the UK and internationally to develop outstanding reading and writing, where stories and literature are placed firmly at the heart of learning.

You can watch Vivian and Nikki chat through all things picture books below.

FULL VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Vivian: Nikki’s the author of Exploring children’s literature, Fourth edition in 2019, and co-author of Guiding Readers 2016. She’s been a KS Two reading advisor and series consultant for Oxford University Press, and a content creator for the Oxford School Improvement and Oxford Owl Websites.

Established in 2010, Just Imagine works extensively with schools in the UK and internationally to develop outstanding reading and writing where stories and literature are placed firmly at the heart of learning.

[00:01:00] Well, it’s a real pleasure to have Nikki Gamble here today, uh, in conversation with me, Vivian French at Picture Hooks, and, uh, I have a list of questions. But first of all, thank you so much for joining us. 

Nikki: Honoured to be asked, and I don’t say that lightly. To be asked by the great Vivian French to have a chat, I can’t think of anything nicer. 

Vivian: Oh, that’s very, that’s very kind. Now you’ve got this brilliant, brilliant academic career. What, what made you decide to set up, just imagine?

Nikki: Very good question. And to be honest, it’s a case of responding to circumstances. So, life doesn’t always go the way you think it’s going to go. It doesn’t always go the way that you plan it, does it? And uh, years ago I was working in a university in a school of education, and if you remember that time in the late 1990s, university schools of education in particular were very much what I would call under attack from government and policy, and approaching the teaching of reading and writing through literature, which is my way in, was frowned upon a little bit. Well, not even a little bit. It was considered counter to the prevailing, uh, political orthodoxy. Now, I had a young child at that time. He was under 10 years old, so moving to a different university wasn’t going to be an option, and I have always believed that you don’t just stay somewhere and become disgruntled and grumpy if you’re going to be that person. And I’ve seen many of them in my time who stay where they are because it’s comfortable, uh, but they become disenchanted with what they’re doing, and I didn’t want to do that. So, I decided I could make more of an impact or I felt that I could make more of an impact on the outside than the inside at that time. Uh, I would say that things have changed a lot and the arguments for reading for pleasure have been one. You know, they’ve been shown decisively how important that is in terms of children’s reading attainment, their wellbeing, their academic progress, and not least because that’s relationship foundation with, uh, very young children as well. So, I spent my next, sorry it’s a long answer, but I spent my next 10 years still going into teacher education, as you know, leading a bit of an itinerant lifestyle and being supported by lots of writers and illustrators, including yourself and Nicola Davies, Minnie Gray, Anthony Brown to name a few. And we did a road show basically around to different schools of education doing the things that I really felt that I wanted to be doing at home. So that decision has had many advantages and many disadvantages too, but that’s life. 

Vivian: Well, I mean, it’s wonderful what you’re doing, and I love your mission statement, which is promoting excellence in the teaching of reading, writing, and oracy

I know that, I mean, you’ve mentioned illustration just now and I know that you’re really passionate, uh, about it and children’s picture books, and could you talk a little maybe about how they can be used as an introduction to reading and writing? 

Nikki: Well, it’s a bit of an oversight that it doesn’t, uh, mention illustration specifically, but of course I include picture books and illustrated books within literature. And, uh, I would make the point that they’re not solely for the youngest children, but if we come to the youngest children first, picture books were really my beginning, by which I mean they were an important part of my own childhood.

And also, they played a critical role in my decision to become a teacher. They were absolutely, central to that, and that was because of the transformative power of picture books that I experienced when I was growing up. So, I’d just like to take you back, if I may, to 1963. So, in 1963, I was three years old.

My dad was an artist, and he brought home one day this very special book, a seminal picture book, which was published in 1963 called Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak. I thought he brought it for me. I later learned when I left home at 18 and wasn’t allowed to take this book with me, that he’d really bought it for himself. But that’s another story. So, three years old, my dad read this book to me probably every night, maybe once or twice, and when we got to the wild rumpus, he would lift me on his shoulders, cavort around the living room, and then dump me unceremoniously onto the cushions of the sofa, just as Max tells the monsters to be still.

I can still remember encanting the words from that text, and I bet you can remember them off by heart. They were almost like a magic spell. That night. Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind or another. His mother called him Wild Thing and Max said, I’ll eat you up. So, he was sent to bed without eating anything.

And that very night in Max’s room a forest grew and grew and grew until his ceiling hung with the vines all around. And then we get the boat sailing in and out of the day and across a year. And you know, they are ingrained in my memory. For me, it’s the perfect picture book and nothing has surpassed it, although it’s been joined by many brilliant picture books, that I think are of equal standing, but it still is a pinnacle of perfection for me.

And what makes it so great in terms of a child’s experience? Well, first of all, it’s the rhythms and the cadences of that text, like an ebb and a flow of the sea itself; like the pulsing of blood through your veins and your heartbeat. You know that when you hear a text like that, that Maurice Sendak must himself have heard many stories being read to him.

And it’s a book in which we learn so many things. We learn so many things, but Sendak is never talking to us like a teacher. He’s never telling us how to behave. He’s just showing us how it is. And I think that’s another thing that children very young children can cope with. The most profound of experiences, even if they can’t articulate it all going on in their brain. 

So, he’s not concerned with the socializing concerns of adulthood. And if we look at some of the picture books being published today, and I know we’re going to go on to talk about that, a lot of them are concerned with socializing children and the right behaviour, et cetera.

And of course. It’s those illustrations, they’re hugely imaginative. Those monsters that are scary, yes, but not terrifying because after all, they’re smiling at you. And I think again, you know, not being too saccharine in your depictions in picture books – children, like even very young children, like that frisson of something that’s just a little bit scary.

In terms of reading, and I’m sorry if my questions are too long, but my answers are too long. But in terms of reading and writing through that book, you have an introduction to literary language. You’ve got an immersion in patterned language. You learn how stories work, and importantly, you have motivation to read. Who wouldn’t want to, read a book like that? So, you’re learning that the endeavour of learning to read is going to be worth it because the stories are good enough. So, I think all of those things you learn in somebody’s lap with a picture book. 

Vivian: I think that’s a wonderful, wonderful answer. And interestingly, I was working at what was then the National Book League when that book was published, and there was quite an outcry from librarians that it was too scary and that, uh, it shouldn’t be put into the hands of children, and it’s interesting that that happened in 1963. It was my very, very first job and, and I just remember so clearly thinking it was an amazing book. And, and there were all these librarians and one or two teachers as well saying, this is terrible. We can’t have this in our school or our library.

Nikki: Always on the side of the child, wasn’t he, Maurice Sendak. And I wanted to share also, if I may, [00:10:00] I searched for this book all morning and I couldn’t find it and I was distraught because I wanted to share it with you and talk about, you know, books and young children’s experience and the picture book creators that have done such a good job.

This one is. Eric, Carl, draw me a star. And I’ve just recounted my own childhood experience with Where the Wild Things Are. This is actually going back to my son’s experience, which is why I was distraught when I couldn’t find it. So obviously we know Eric Carl from the Very Hungry Caterpillar. For me, this is his, I dunno if you know this one.This is his best book, as far as I’m concerned. And uh, it starts with this little boy here, this artist. And the text says, draw me a star. And the artist drew a star. It was a good star. And I won’t read you the whole book, but you can see as you go through this artist here, it’s really mirroring the creation 

Vivian: Yes.

Nikki: Of the world. 

Vivian: Beautiful book. 

Nikki: And then the artist, the artist just disappeared. But he does, he does come back after the flowers and the animals and the rain. And we notice on the double page spread in the middle of this book – for those people just listening – we have a rainbow house and a family, you know, he’s in the middle, uh, stage of his life and then the night comes and the artist draws a dark night, and at the end. He travels with his star across the night sky. 

So, at three and a half years old, my son said to me as we read this book, and he was looking so intently at these pictures, and he said to me, “Where was I before?” So, I said, I tried to explain where babies come from and he said, “No, I know that, but where was I before?” And it was said with such intensity. And there was something in his attention to that artist. 

Vivian: Mm-hmm. 

Nikki: And I know that he was asking one of the most profound existential questions, and it was the pictures in that text that took him there. 

Vivian: Beautiful book. And I love the fact that you use the word cadence. It’s something that I think is hugely important, uh, in children’s. And if children read, and the books that they read have a cadence and a rhythm, it, it really transfers to their writing as well. 

Nikki: Definitely. Um, I always used to make. Picture book versions based on books, both at home and at school when I was a teacher. Um, you see that language coming out in children spontaneously? 

Vivian: Yes. 

Nikki: And you can see a child that has had lots of stories read with them because it just comes out spontaneously in their writing. 

Vivian: Yes. Absolutely. And I mean, Draw Me a Star has so many double page spreads with no text, which takes me, takes me really onto my next question, which is the importance of silent picture books, picture books with no words.

Nikki: And if you could see the size of my pile here, I have about 500 of these books. 

Vivian: Yes! 

Nikki: And I could talk just for a whole podcast about those. But if I may, I first want to take, not issue, but to question the choice of, you know, the word silent book. Now I know that that has been picked up because they’re not quite wordless books either, but let me just take you to a book that I picked up from the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.

You know that they have a silent word, uh, a Silent Books exhibition every year. And it will perhaps explain why I don’t think these books are silent. This one is called Rumour

Vivian: Yes. 

Nikki: And it does have no words in it apart from the title, but a noisier book– 

Vivian: Mm-hmm. 

Nikki: –I never did see. So, noise is kind of inferred through, the pictures. But of course I also mean that, they’re not silent in as much as they generate conversation between readers as well. So, in that sense, socially, they’re not silent books, Frank Serafini calls them visually rendered stories, and I know it’s only semantics, but that for me gets the closest to this kind of book.

In terms of what they can do for a reader? Well, again, it’s so diverse, so for very, do you remember Jan Ormerod’s books? 

Vivian: Oh yes. 

Nikki: Sunshine and Moonlight. 

Vivian: I’ve got them both. Yes. 

Nikki: [00:15:00] Those actually take you through a child’s day. And they’re an opportunity, aren’t they, for a parent or an adult to actually talk that through together. So that co-construction of story that can go on with that, um, kind of book. There’s also a sense in which if you, uh, don’t have English as your first language, you are on a level playing field with that book. So, there’s that aspect of it. 

But there are silent books produced all over the world. And I think if you look at books, for example, those from Asia, they have a different kind of, um, aesthetic. And I think that they are about quiet contemplation. This one is, uh, one of my favourites, Susumu Shingu, who’s a Japanese architect. He, uh, produced a book called Little Pond. This one is called Spider. Um, I’ve got it in the French, but it’s only the title ’cause it’s wordless. And uh, it literally is just as you go through the pages here, for those people just listening, a spider weaving its web and it draws attention to that and it allows you to have some quiet contemplation about that process in a way that it extends your experience of the natural world. But you can go onto something really complex like, um, Istvan Banyai’s Zoom

Vivian: Oh, yes.

Nikki: Or the birthday cake sequence by Thé Tjong-Khing.And these are really complex puzzle solving wordless books. So even within that one genre, we have so many different experiences for a reader, I think they’re marvelous. What do you think of them? 

Vivian: Oh, I love them. I use them such a lot. And what I love is that, I mean, journey, uh, is one that I use an awful lot, you can use it for any age range, uh, there’s a school in here in Edinburgh which has 16 different languages and every child can unite, uh, over a wordless book. And again, I mean, I dislike the word silent because children talk about them far more than they do about books with words in.

So, they’re a splendid starting point for discussion about what’s happening in the story. 

Nikki: And of course, last year’s, uh, Carnegie winner for illustration was Aaron Becker. 

Vivian: Yes. 

Nikki: And I think what you do look backwards and forwards. In the book, you get to the end, but the end is not the end. It takes you back to the beginning. There’s always something to be discovered, uh, in his books. Obviously the same author, illustrators, as you’ve just mentioned of the journey, there’s so much innovation. That’s what I would say in the wordless or silent or visually rendered book, whatever we decide to call it. 

Vivian: I agree with you. I think silent is the last thing they should be called because.

Yeah, I, I hear such a buzz of conversation when every one of those books is on offer and, and, and I just so enjoy that. Uh, and also for some reason, whereas children of 7, 8, 9 sometimes will think that picture books are for younger children, which they aren’t, but they think that, a silent book, a wordless book they will accept.

Nikki: Why do you think that is? That’s interesting, isn’t it? 

Vivian: I think maybe because of the lack of language so they don’t feel that they’re being spoken down to, or, uh, that they can make up their own minds about it. What would your feeling be? 

Nikki:It’s interesting you say making up your own minds, because I think that notion of show not tell, you know, the very nature of these books is that they show, they don’t tell. Yes. There are no words there. To pin the illustration down, I mean, it works both ways. Illustration can pin words down sometimes, and words can pin an illustration down. So they’re open in that respect. But it does vary. So I think something like, uh, you know, David Wiesner, who is obviously a master, um, of that form. Nobody could ever think that these are just for the very youngest children. You will go back to it, you will return to it. And even though I’ve read this, probably 250 times, I see something in it that’s new each time. But you know, it’s quite different if I read something like Suzy Lee’s Wave, which is a lot simpler, so I think it does, it does depend. 

Vivian: Yes. Do you have a favourite? If you could choose just one, what would it be? 

Nikki: Picture book or a wordless book? [00:20:00]

Vivian: Wordless book. 

Nikki: Oh my goodness. You are asking me difficult questions to pick favorites. It’s likely to change every day. I do like the Korean, Japanese reflective quiet time with the book. There’s a great one called, uh [The Depth of the Lake and the Height of the Sky]. I love that. 

Vivian: Mm-hmm. I’ll look out for that. One of the questions I was wondering, what do picture books give a child that TV and screens don’t offer? 

Nikki: So, um, I wouldn’t get into the debate about one being better than the other because I think they all have their own affordances. But what I think a picture book offers that is special is that it’s a very intimate experience. Whether it’s being read alone or whether it’s being shared with someone else, I think one of the ways in which it differs is that it’s a physical experience and it’s embodied by which, I mean, if you ever watch a child or group of children reading a picture book together, you can tell by the body language as they move into or away from the text, or the way that they hold the text or the way they touch it.

It’s a very physical and embodied experience. I think also you don’t move through time in the same way. So, a screen, uh, particularly if it’s a television or a film, it’s going to move past you. And I know you can use the button and stop it, but we don’t, generally, we allow it to move in front of our eyes.

And with a picture book, you will see children naturally, as I’m sure you’ve done many times, moving backwards and forwards, flicking through the book, taking their own time, moving at their own pace through it. 

I’d also say focus and concentration, particularly when you compare it to screens and scrolling. So this is a very focused activity. And I also think potentially a broader aesthetic experience because of the range of artwork that we have in picture books that we’re opening. I mean, they are mini works of art. That is what picture books are. So we are opening children’s eyes to that broader aesthetic, uh, range.

Vivian: Yes. And I think that word sharing is so important. Uh, so often children are left to watch screens alone, and there’s not that commentary. I mean, when you hear somebody reading a picture book and they’ll stop and they’ll say, can you see what’s on the giant’s feet? It’s a beautiful thing to see. I love watching my daughter reading to her son. It’s, it’s a real pleasure. 

Oh, and just thinking about picture books over the years, um, what changes have you noticed? Because you must have seen so many. I mean, there’s the picture books that you read like Where the Wild Things Are when you were little, and then when your son was little. And you are seeing new picture books coming through all the time. Are you enthusiastic about the direction that they’re taking at the moment, or do you feel that they’re missing things just now?

Nikki: definitely enthusiastic, but you know, there are, there are always pluses and minuses. Look, I got out, a very old John Birmingham here and look how tiny it is, you know, if they’re it today, it looks like that. Much bigger, so a more immersive, experience. So there are things to do with the technology and the color printing and the use of neon inks and all of those sorts of things that allow people to experiment and do things that they haven’t done before.

But on the downside. It’s interesting that when I think about books with soul, that affect you, like where the wild things are very often, the people that I go back to, they are the John Birminghams, they’re the Helen Oxenburys. And you know, I think. Why is that? And I think it may be to do with the, something to do with the process of production and everything’s speeded up and it’s not people perhaps having time to explore their own projects in the same way, develop their own voice. Um, there are more topics that we cover now than we would’ve done, you know, in the 1960s. Uh, one of the things that you wanted to talk about was taboo subjects, and I think some of those taboos have been  broken, [00:25:00] like bereavement and death, certainly that occurs more, but it’s always about remembering the people who’ve gone, you know, and that aspect of it rather than the process of dying and what happens to us afterwards.

Other changes? Well, of course there are a lot more books. So lucky people, lucky little people. Yeah. But you’ve also been in this game, look, I’m asking you questions now. You’ve also been in this game a long time. What, what do you think are the most significant changes? 

Vivian: I think very much as you’ve described, I was talking to, uh, Chris Mould this morning, and David Melling as it happens. Um, we were saying that there are an inordinate number of books at the moment, which are, as it were, almost like a single, the crux of the story is a single joke. They’re not as thoughtful as they used to be. And I know from personal experience and from talking to other authors and illustrators that publishers keep saying, oh, but it’s too quiet. Uh, and there seems to be, and this is more than one publisher, there seems to be some kind of bias against quiet books, books that do have something to say that just very gently comes through

Nikki: I do get reviewers fatigue actually, because I feel I’m picking up the same book so many times. I really don’t want to read another book about how much I love you. 

Vivian: Oh yeah. 

Nikki: Or how green we should be. Not that we shouldn’t be these things, but the same message being told in a very obvious way, over and over again. There’s nothing obvious about draw me a star. 

Vivian: No. 

Nikki: There’s nothing really obvious about where the wild things are, that’s the worst trend for me is this very saccharine, “Do the right thing”, “Learn not to shout”, “Learn to have friends”. You do learn those things through stories. A story well told will bring those things to the surface without somebody wagging their finger at you. 

Vivian: So would you say there’s a lack of subtlety perhaps? 

Nikki: I would say yes. And then you have some writers and illustrators who come through and they buck that trend, don’t they? I mean, people like Sydney Smith. 

Vivian: I was going to say Sidney Smith. I mean, he’s superb. Yes. 

Nikki: You know, it takes us back to there’s a soul here. There’s a voice here. Not just producing what they think the market wants next, but something that has touched them deeply. And because it’s touched them deeply, it’s going to touch their readers in the same way. 

Vivian: I think Town Is by the Sea is a quite extraordinary book and it’s one that I use an enormous amount. I don’t know, do you use that one? 

Nikki: It’s on the pile that I, now I can’t find it ’cause the piles are, are so big. But it’s on my pile of books that I wanted to say.

This is, uh, fabulous. And also, do you remember Me, which is his, uh, most recent. authored and illustrated book, and it’s often, I mean, Town Is By the Sea isn’t, it’s just illustrated by Sidney Smith. But I agree, it’s an extraordinary book. But in Do You Remember, obviously there’s a unification of his voice through the illustration and through the words in that book.

Vivian: Yeah. I have to say that when I use Tony by The Sea, I very often don’t read the words at all. I, we, we just look at the pictures. As if it was a wordless book because he’s done such a remarkable, uh, I mean it’s the shadows in the where, where the father is kind of gradually coming home. Uh, but just to go back to the questions that I am asking you, um, are there any picture books you would single out as being – I mean, we’ve talked quite about, quite a number of picture books, but is there any, that you would signal out as being of particular significance that should be in every child’s library? 

Nikki: Um, there are people that I feel very strongly about their work. Beatrice Alemanga would be one, I think. Levi Pinfold I think is extraordinary.So not necessarily for the youngest readers, but his book, Greenling, again, I must have read that 300, 400 times. And even this past month, I saw something in it that I hadn’t seen before. So that kind of depth, um. Things like Polly Dunbar’s Penguin. 

Vivian: Yes! 

Nikki: Polly, you know, understands so perfectly what a very young child is like. And in a way, her book has that soul that takes me back to some of those books from the [00:30:00]sixties and seventies that I was talking about. But there are so many, you know, Laura Carlin, another one whose artwork doesn’t condescend in any way to children, but they respond to those illustrations.

Vivian: How important do you think it is for a child to recognize themselves and does this change according to age? 

Nikki: Of course, it’s hugely important that everybody can see themselves in a book, whether that’s to do with ethnicity or gender or religion or social class. People like Jerry Pinkney, the great American illustrator who shows us that Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t have to have blonde hair and uh and yet still manages to retain a classic feel in his books. Two more modern, books like Joseph Coelho’s absolutely fantastic Our Tower, and books that also represent all kinds of histories like, Kwame Alexander and Kadir Nelson’s The Undefeated.

So, I would say absolutely it’s important, but I also think that we shouldn’t be simplistic about what it means to see yourself in a book. You know, I could respond as much to the characters in Our Towerand see myself in that book. It’s not only about the surface features. Plus I would say that, as well as seeing yourself in a book, picture books are also about seeing the world and seeing others, so I would like to see more internationalism in our picture books. This one’s Korean, it’s called I Am the Subway, and it’s that, do you know it? 

Vivian Yes. Love that book. Yes. 

Nikki: So we see people from all walks of life– 

Vivian: Yeah. 

Nikki: –on the subway in Korea. And, you know, own voices, they’re really important. But let’s not get into a place where we, as I say, just think about things on the surface because children respond in lots of ways to lots of different characters in stories. 

Vivian: When I’m working with illustrators, at the art college, very often I suggest that they start off by drawing animals as characters in their stories, because then the child relates to the emotion rather than the actual physical appearance. And they’re always rather surprised by that. They seem to find that, a rather unusual suggestion, but I do know that my daughter, she really disliked children with blonde hair ’cause she was very, very dark with a monobrow. So stories about animals spoke to her when she was very little, far more clearly than little blonde girls with blue eyes.

Nikki: Interesting. There was some research, I dunno, if you’ve read it, and I’m shadow boxing ’cause I can’t bring the exact reference to mind. It indicated that children do not respond to animals in the stories in the same way that they respond to other human characters, and it was suggesting that they don’t empathize as much. I’m not sure I entirely believe that. 

Vivian: It’s an interesting point and I think, I think it probably depends on the child, to be perfectly honest. I think it’s really difficult to make generalizations when every child is so different from another.

From your perspective as an expert in the field, what tips would you give to an emerging illustrator who wants to illustrate picture books? Are there trends and fashions? What would you recommend? 

Nikki: There are trends and fashions, but I would always recommend, making sure you know what your voice is and what it is that you want to say first and foremost and, yes listen to what publishers say about trends and fashions and, what will sell a book, because after all, that’s what they want to do. And we all want to sell books ’cause we need to make a living. So I would say listen to advice thoughtfully, but first and foremost have the courage of your convictions in terms of your voice and finding your voice. And by that of course, I mean both the words and the illustrations and the illustration style. 

Vivian: You mentioned earlier that you think that we’re more open-minded about subjects that were previously taboo, but when I’m in Bologna and I look at the Scandinavian stands, it seems to me that they cover far, far more than we do.There are still limitations in the UK. I don’t know whether you feel that’s, that’s true? There was a wonderful, wonderful book I found called Birdie’s Dead. I don’t know whether you’ve seen that one, but the cover is a bird lying on its back with its legs in the air and it is now published in English as well. But I asked a couple of publishers whether they would’ve taken that on in the UK publishing world and they said no. 

Nikki: So that book, I know the book very well. [00:35:00] It was taken on by a Canadian publisher, I think, and has come, I think I’m right that it’s come from, a Canadian buy-in. So the kinds of things that I think has still taboo, that’s one of them. And I was talking about how we have talked a lot more about bereavement, but not the process of death and, and dying. And I saw a book in Japan many years ago that did the same sort of thing with a bird, but it was photographic. I’ve seen books that, look at animals in varying states of decay through photographs in a book for children.

Uh, nudity is one, isn’t it? Did you know there was a book – you probably do know it – Tous a Poil. It’s a French book and it has a whole village, a community that go out bathing one day and they all take their clothes off from, the largest woman and the smallest boy and the village policemen and they’re all going swimming.

That was published in France, but there was still an outcry, about it. And, in consequence, French booksellers went and had their photographs taken in the nude in support, of the book. 

Vivian:Oh, that’s lovely. I didn’t know that. 

Nikki: Look it up 2014, I think, and I’ve used that book and it, I get very, very mixed results here in the UK about that. I dunno why we’re so prude. About nude actually. But we are. 

Guns and knives are a taboo. I think that’s a good thing. um, adventure is often sanitized. So adventure has to be safe adventure

Vivian: yes. 

Nikki: And prettiness. So I was talking to a Swedish illustrator, Per Gustavsson, who has been told to make his characters more attractive because when they’re angry, they look ugly. And he said, well, angry and sad affects the face in an ugly way. And he’s been told to pretty up his pictures. 

Family dysfunction is something that we don’t see here, there’s a Norwegian book called Angry Man. I mean, that’s obviously the English translated title. But it is about a boy who, who lives with his family and his father gets very, very angry. And so it’s this kind of feeling of an abusive family. We don’t publish books like that here. And again, I’m sure that even in Norway, that that will have, you know, caused an outcry, but it wouldn’t get past the first post here, in the UK. 

Vivian: because Anthony Browne, actually in some of his picture books, he had really quite dysfunctional families, didn’t he? In Piggybook and books like that. And, of course, Hansel and Gretel, I mean, it’s a fairy story, but there’s still a lot to talk about in that. But it does seem that over the last five years or so, that there are far, far fewer books of that nature coming out. I also remember Debbie Gliori being told to remove a tummy button from a little girl standing up in the bath because apparently that was offensive in some way. I’m not quite sure to whom or why.

Nikki: that what be the American market, because as we all know, things like nipples and belly buttons have to be removed for that particular market. 

Vivian: You’ve mentioned picture books having read Where the Wild Things Are when you were little. So is that the one that stayed with you most from your childhood as a picture book?

Nikki: Yes. I mean, there are others but that was the most significant. I had a book called Mr. Moonlight and Omar, which was by an American artist called Aliki who’s still alive today, she’s 95. 

Vivian: I remember it well, yes. 

Nikki: I loved that book. I mean, my dad was at art college with Brian Wildsmith. 

Vivian: Oh!

Nikki: so of course I had all of Brian Wildsmith’s books. John Burningham, Borka. That was one of his early books. But of course it was a time when there weren’t as many picture books. It was still a very emerging genre. So we got quite a few books from America. I seem to remember quite a few European books and a lot more illustrated fiction. So they weren’t picture books as we know them today or like Where the Wild Things Are, but they would be stories with illustration in them.

And I loved the colour plates of things like Arthur Rackham’s fairytales, and I think also Jan Pienkpwski silhouette fairytales were there towards the end of my sort of primary years, early 1970s. But I think Where the Wild Things Are is probably the one. 

Vivian: As I say, it was my very first job when I first came across it, but it, stayed with me so, so, so clearly, and it’s the one that I always go back to as an example of the perfect, the only really perfect, picture book that’s ever really been created. It’s extraordinary. 

And what next for Just imagine? Where are you going to next? Has the [00:40:00] new book about literacy and curriculum subjects in the primary school, is that publishing very soon or has it been published?

Nikki: It hasn’t been published. It’s being delivered in September. So that’s my summer tied up. That will be nice. It’s 10 years worth of thinking though, so, you know, the pulling it together is just the final bit. I’ve got some new app developments, for supporting children’s development of their reading identity, that’s about to be launched. And you know, we are running a lot of online events Thursday evenings and ‘an evening in with’ quite a lot of illustrators. We had a lovely chat between Kate Winter, who was last year’s Klaus Fluger winner, and Mini Grey. So that was a really interesting conversation. So those are Thursday evenings from September through to May. And then the summer is planning for the following, year. You’ll have to be a guest on that podcast. Vivian. 

Vivian: I’d love to listen in on this as well. I mean, that’s very kind, but I think, that sounds absolutely fascinating, and don’t you find though, that Thursday evenings seem to be really, really busy? Orange Beak have open evenings with discussions with illustrators on Thursday evenings as well. 

Nikki: Well, I, think because it’s about talking to teachers and librarians, they’re our principal audience and they’re a little more relaxed on a Thursday evening. Friday evening, we are too relaxed. We are thinking about the weekend. So, Thursday is the optimum day of the week.

Vivian: No, I think you’re absolutely right. Is there anything that you wanted to add or, um or to ask me just before we actually finish? 

Nikki: Just one point and that is, we’ve talked a lot about picture book fiction. And I would like to say that there’s a market out there for illustrated picture book nonfiction. Last year’s Klaus Fluger, winner Kate Winter. Things like Flora Delargy’s Gold Rush, where the illustration really brings depth to what that text is about. Mini Grey’s, The Greatest Show on Earth. I’d like to see a lot more high quality illustrated nonfiction where the illustration adds just as it does with a picture book. It’s the marrying of these two together. Illustrated nonfiction is not just decorating the text or adding context, it brings depth to it, and that’s what I’d like to see. 

Vivian: And some of the narrative nonfiction that’s around, I mean, as you know, I write quite a lot of it myself, but some of the books that Nicola Davies, for instance, has done, I mean, they’re fascinating and not every single child loves, imaginative, fictional stories and small children can be just as engrossed in stories about, I don’t know, money or worms or anything at all. So I think you’re absolutely right and there’s The Fossil Girl, I think it’s a remarkable book. I picked that up quite a long time, well, when it first was published, and I thought, yes, good for her, let’s have more of those.

Nikki: I’d really recommend to anybody that hasn’t had a look at it, that Flora Delargy. Emily Sutton, you mentioned Nicola Davies. Her illustrations for, I can’t remember what the book about the cell is called, but it makes you look at that in a completely different way. And her illustrations for Green, which is one of Nicola’s more recent books.

Vivian: That book, I can’t remember what it’s called, that zigzag, and you pull it out and then there’s the earth at the top, no, the sky at the top and the earth at the bottom is remarkable. 

Nikki: That’s [The Street] Beneath my Feet, Charlotte Guillain and Yuval Zommer.

Vivian: Finally. If you could meet just one picture book character, who or what would it be? You asked me impossible questions. I’m not going to say Max or a wild thing. I think it would be great fun to travel with, Raymond Briggs, The Snowman, but actually I’m going to pick Fungus the Bogeyman. That’s who I’d like to meet.

Vivian: Lovely. Well, Nikki, thank you ever so ever so much. You’ve been brilliant, well as we knew you would be. All I can do is say thank you from everybody at Picture Hooks.

Nikki: Thank you for having me! I’m sorry the answers were a bit long!

Vivian: They were so good. No, and actually to be honest it’s an interviewer’s blissful moment when somebody takes off and knows as much as you do and is as fluent and articulate, I mean it’s a joy, so thank you. 

Nikki: It’s so lovely to talk to you. 

Vivian: And you. Nikki you look lovely, you look really well and it’s so nice to see. And yea, see you soon, one way or another. I come to London quite often so I’ll give you plenty of advance warning.

Nikki: Please do, yes!

Vivian: Okie doke, take care!

Nikki: bye!