You don’t mention the author’s intentions in literary criticism; it’s taboo. The Qwerty fairy is allergic to it. Try to write ‘what the author is saying here…’ and your mouse will bite you. The Text can say something; but the author is dead.

Yes, dead – we’ve got Roland Barthes to blame the murder on, but we’re all complicit.

Anyway, the big problem that we children’s literature scholars – and writers – face is that this convenient death of the author becomes extremely problematic when dealing with children’s books. A children’s book politicises, socialises, encultures the child reader – a reader almost devoid of powers on the public scene. With that in mind, can the responsible critic leave aside this aspect of children’s literature and not take into account the authors’ and creators’ intentions when studying a children’s book?

Two articles I read recently made me want to explore that question a little bit further.

But first, an anecdote.

Last summer, I was on a school visit in France to talk about one of my children’s novels, Les petites filles top-modèles, and the teacher in one of the classes had made them think really hard about the book. The young teens (they were 11-12 years old) had tons of questions – so many that I had to leave before they could ask them all. Just as I was getting ready to go, the teacher said to the kids:

It’s a shame you didn’t have time to ask Miss Beauvais all the questions you’d prepared. For instance, you were all very interested to learn more about the suicide scene.

Me:

The WHAT scene??

Just to contextualise things a little bit, Les petites filles top-modèles is a humorous teenage novel about a young top-model girl who wakes up one morning with a pimple on her nose. There’s as much suicide in there as there are homicidal maniacs in Spot Bakes a Cake.

At least, that’s what I thought.

Because – and I’m going to try not to spoil my own book, which would be a little bit silly – there is indeed a scene where my young heroine, Diane, throws herself into a canal. But…?!

Me:

But it’s not at all a suicide attempt, it’s like, well, sort of like a rite of purification, a, a… a baptism, a kind of rejuvenating ritual with a spiritual slant more or less inspired from St John the Baptist but more fun and girly… you see?!

Nope, they didn’t. Because for them, it was a suicide attempt – a failed one, a failed and funny one, but a suicide attempt all the same. That’s how they’d read it.

I was a little spooked, because suicide isn’t a theme I’d joke about, especially in children’s literature – I can’t stand the countless irresponsible teenage novels that present it as a glamorous add-on to adolescent crises. I’d never, ever do that.

But whether or not I’d intended to do it, that’s how they’d interpreted it.

Now, the Spooked Author has two ways of decoding the situation:

1) They didn’t read my book properly.

2) I didn’t write my book properly.

The first one is the more tempting, of course. In high school I had an English teacher who was also a cursed poet and kept saying things like ‘Readers are stupid, you know; they’re incapable of understanding what I mean when I say this or that.’ As a fledgling writer with no readers at the time, I would happily have strangled him with his eternal bow-tie. But I digress.

Personally, I tend to opt for the latter: that’s it, I completely failed to ‘make them see’ what I ‘intended to convey’. I didn’t have bad intentions, but I was misinterpreted. I messed up. What a loser.

In his academic article on ‘Intention’, in Keywords For Children’s Literature (edited by Philip Nel & Lissa Paul), Philip Pullman tackles this painful question. He notes that there is a huge chasm between the general public, who is constantly in demand of authorial intentions (‘How did you get the idea for this book?!’) and the English literature scholars who would happily disembowel themselves with their copy of The Riverside Chaucer rather than ask the dreaded question.

As usual, the right attitude is probably somewhere in between, and in this case, as Pullman puts it with his usual elegance, the author never really has intentions; it is probably more accurate to call them hopes.

‘All we can honestly intend to do is try‘

In short, whether or not we’re intending to do something specific, it’s very likely that it’s going to fail. But thank goodness that’s the case, because that allows the reader to emerge as an active participant in the reading event. The reader’s interpretation may be far-fetched or crazy or boring but it constructs the text. This interpretation depends on dozens of things, from the context of reading to the community of readers through to what basic background knowledge of the theme the reader has. It depends, of course, on the worries and desires of every particular reader, and that’s something the author can never anticipate.

So my teens who got all intrigued by the ‘suicide scene’ were probably predisposed to ‘see’ suicide in places that I would never think about.

The author’s intention can be ‘good’ but have disastrous results, and we can’t hide behind the notion that we ‘didn’t do it on purpose’. As Pullman says, in any other circumstance – if I accidentally drop a brick from my window and it falls on my neighbour’s car – whether or not I did it on purpose doesn’t change anything to the state of the windscreen.

Oh but I didn’t do it on purpose!

It’s also Sartre’s vision in What Is Literature?, and maybe one day I’ll get into that on this blog.

Anyway, the children’s writer, in my view, has a specific responsibility towards her readership and must think about this distance between intention and interpretation. But only to a certain extent. Because the reader, especially the young reader, can’t be seen as a monolithic, predictable entity. We have to accept – and celebrate – the fact that the reading experience, for better and for worse, will be full of unplanned interpretations.

That’s all for now. In the next blog post on this topic I’ll talk about the second article that made me think today- about the sometimes tense relationship between author and literary critic…

Considering it can get a little tiring to put up with the little coughs and frilled-up nostrils of an elitist snob fatefully sat next to you at a Formal Dinner once you’ve confessed to him that you like, read and write books for children, here are a few ready-made answers to help you counter his fearsomely annoying questions with awesome sprezzatura.

Snob: Ahem ahem, but then, well, as it were, do you intend, one day, to, one could say, start writing for adults?

You: Oh yes, of course, fret not! I mean, I’m barely past puberty now, but once maturity kicks in, I’ll be learning new vocabulary and sentence structures to appeal to adults. It’s like paediatricians, you know, they’re all waiting for the day that they get clever enough to cure adults, because giving medicine to sprogs isn’t exactly serious.

Snob: Oh, very well; nonetheless, all those books for, erm… what is the correct terminology?

You: Children?

Snob: Quite – all those books, they are simply detestable! That… that ‘Twilight’ thing, or whatever it is called, and which of course I have never opened, is utterly terrible.

You: How shrewd of you to judge a whole art form based on the one book that you often hear about in the media. Twilight is indeed entirely representative of the whole of children’s literature, just like Dan Brown is the shining symbol of adult literature.

Snob: Well, my dear, all I have to say is, when I was a… a… erm…

You: Child?

Snob: That’s right; well, no let’s say, at the time in my life when I was slightly less tall than this table, I barely read all that stuff, I immediately went on to reading Defoe and Dickens, I didn’t waste time with those stupidities!

You: My word aren’t you bright. I think I’m falling in love. Anyway, yes, you’re right: the purpose of children’s literature is of course to help children upgrade illico presto to adult literature. I’m thinking, actually, of organising intensive summer camps for young readers where they’ll read a book a day, of increasing difficulty, until they finally manage to get through Of Mice and Men and graduate. Minimal waste of time.

Snob: I certainly do not mean to offend you, but it saddens me, you see, that adults like you spend time working on those silly things. I mean, perhaps it might be time to grow up soon, mightn’t it?

You: Clearly. The causal link between level of maturity and interest in children’s literature is obvious. Similarly, I sometimes think to myself that paleontologists should evolve a little bit, because their interest in prehistorical things, well, it’s fun for a little while but we’ve reached a higher level of development since, haven’t we?

Snob: My dear, dear friend, what I do not quite understand is that you are so gifted! Why waste your talent in that? There are so many things you could do!

You: By Jove, that is true! Talent is, as everyone knows, available in limited quantities, and writing for children squanders it voraciously whereas writing for adults magically multiplies it. I’m going to end up bankrupt soon. Quick, let’s write a dark, nostalgic short story about the menopause to top up my account.

Snob: Well, anyway, as everyone knows, it is but a mawkish, tepid literature full of flowers, rainbows and little rabbits. Anyone can write a book for children in two minutes on the corner of a café table.

You: Indeed, and one wonders why some spend more than twenty minutes on such things! They must be profoundly mentally retarded. Here, have a napkin and a Biro. I just can’t wait to read your story. And then we’ll send it to Bloomsbury, ok? They’ll love the adventures of Pansy the pansy and Ben the Bunny in the land of Colours.

Hopefully those little tips will help you survive until dessert.

Clem x

Ah the joys of self-promotion. When my first book was published in 2010, I didn’t tell anyone on Facebook until the day it was published. That day I suddenly came up with a little Facebook status saying ‘Hey everyone, hi, how’s it going, well, I don’t like doing this at all, but, like, today I have a book out,  no pressure, but if you want to check it out, I’ve written about it on my blog. Sorry about the inconvenience!!!’. Or something of the sort.

People were understandably a little bit surprised.

But then I learnt. I became Facebook friends with other authors and illustrators. I opened a Twitter account. I started following blogs. And I quickly lost my innocence, shyness, humility and reserve. Forever.

Me, Before.

Me, After.

Because when 70% of all tweets, Facebook statuses and blog posts from your fellow writers and illustrators are about A New Review of Their Book, A New Interview of Them, A New Article about Them and A New Award They’re Nominated For, you quickly lose your little complexes and start doing exactly the same thing.

And we do it partly because we have to – because publishers these days see writers as prodigious multitaskers. We’re expected to sell our books, not just write them. We’re expected to get people excited about them, we’re expected to talk about them and we’re expected to be as visible as possible. It’s not just a question of money, it goes beyond that: if your books don’t sell, if you’re not visible, your future books might not even ever find a publisher. So get promoting.

But for goodness’s sake, within reason. I’m generally fine with the ocean of more or less humble bragging which I wade through everyday on my Twitter and Facebook accounts, and which I enthusiastically contribute to. I now find it completely legit to tweet and facebook new blog posts, interviews, big news, and big reviews. I know some people disagree, but I personally think it’s fair enough.

But there should be a special part of that ocean in which to drown those authors who outbrag everyone else in the most ludicrous ways imaginable.

1) Those who retweet every single snippet of praise they get.

Aww thanks! <3 <3 RT@randomreader hey i liked ur book

I’m so glad you did 🙂 RT@somereader your book is funny! I loled

So sweet thank you!! RT@readeranonymous looking forward to your next book

That is the equivalent of having dinner in crowded restaurant and sporadically shouting out at the top of your voice:

“So adorable!! Laura’s just told me ‘That’s a lovely dress you’re wearing!'”

“Ohhh thank you very much Sam for telling me ‘You chose exactly the right wine!'”

“I’m so so so SO touched by what Fiona’s just said! She said “You’ve always been a good friend to me”!’

People will look at you like you’re bloody mental. Okay, someone’s praised you in a public space where other people might overhear. But when did that suddenly become the equivalent of  ‘please take my praise and broadcast it to your 250 followers’? What even is the point? If I follow you, I probably like you already or think I might do in the future. Why would @purplegothreader1995’s cryptic and frankly quite uninteresting praise of your book make me like you more?

But there’s worse.

2) Those who share fan mail and emails.

You get an email/letter from little Zoe, 9 years old, whom you met a few months ago on a school visit. She says thank you for coming to visit, it was great to meet you, here’s a drawing, please come back, etc. Huge ego boost + mood enhanced for the rest of the day. But it’s not enough, oh no. Some people have to post it, the whole integral letter or email, to Facebook, Twitter and their blog.

What the? Hello?

I mean, it’s an email, right? a letter, right? you had to type in your password to access it, or open your postbox with a key, right? I know little Zoe hasn’t technically said ‘Please, Mrs Author, don’t use this private communication for means of self-promotion’, but what makes you think it’s ok to do so? And blurring out the name of the kid on the letter doesn’t make it right, you know. She wrote it to you, not to your followers and facebook friends. Is it fine to share it? Search your soul, if there’s still such a thing among the publicity-obsessed circonvolutions of your brain. You horrible child-eater you. You ogre.

3) Those who tweet and facebook about every single little thing.

12.31. Invitation to do a school visit! yay!

12.34. Fun to open email from editor and get new illustrations. Happy!

12.40. New blog post already has 12 comments 🙂

12.42. 13 comments now! 🙂 🙂

12.48. Email from agent – discussing next book series! exciting lol

12.52. Oh new review of my book here!

The truth is, every single day in the life of a writer has lots of cool little things happening in it. Little. Things. Not all of them tweetworthy. And all of them put together tweedious in the extreme. Save them up for a weekly blog post, select the best ones, or if you really need the sugar rush then write them in chocolate on a ribbon of marzipan and stuff your face with it, but for heaven’s sake spare us the incontinent bragging.

Or at least be clever and spread it out between non-self-promoting tweets.

I’m going to shut up soon. Just to say that’s it’s unbelievably, scarily, depressingly easy to become that kind of writer, and frankly quite distressing when you used to be a shy, introspective, humble person and all of a sudden you find yourself tempted to post to Twitter the contents of a private email you just got. I guess the thing to remember is that people aren’t going to love you less if you don’t post it; they just won’t know about that particular thing. It’s ok. They don’t need it to love you. In theory. If they do, you have bigger things to worry about.

Clem x

Just a short blog post to tell Anglophone children’s literature friends about Georges Chaulet, who, it was announced today, died a week ago. I can’t define him any more evocatively than by saying that he was the French Astrid Lindgren.

Georges Chaulet wrote a series of books from the 1960s onwards called the Fantômette series, starring a young superheroine – but not of the kind that has superpowers bestowed upon her; one who knows how to fight, use her brain, speak several languages, investigate, and hide her secret. Narratively speaking, the series is extremely interesting because although it is clear to the reader that the elusive Fantômette is in fact one of the girls in the main trio of characters, it is never spelled out and the other two girls are blissfully unaware of this fact.

Fantômette was the first truly feminist series for children, unobtrusively normalising the portrayal of a strong, decisive, fun, adventurous female character. It is also a truly hilarious series, and I mean ‘laugh-out-loud until your belly aches’ hilarious. Pippi, Jennings, Fantômette: the trio of characters that made my childhood ache with laughter.

I collect old editions of Fantômette, and the series built my identity much more than I can say. My little Sesame Seade, the heroine of my children’s series coming out with Hodder, is unashamedly inspired by Fantômette; in many ways I see her as a British version of Chaulet’s 1960s heroine.

Georges Chaulet was 81 and I’m sure he had a long and fulfilling life; still I’m feeling today as saddened by his death as I was by Astrid Lindgren’s death when I was still only a child.

Clem x

Happy Sunday! as you may or may not know, my friend Lauren and I do a monthly podcast on children’s literature called Kid You Not Podcast. I’m the children’s literature criticism person, she’s the voice of publishing.

And it’s been a year already! and episode 12 is out, and it’s with the wonderful Sita Brahmachari, the author of Artichoke Hearts and Jasmine Skies, who agreed to cohost our anniversary episode. In which we discuss multiculturalism in children’s literature.

Click here to get to the website, where you’ll also find the link to subscribe to us on iTunes…Enjoy!

Clem x

Hello, debut author! Congratulations on the book deal! While you’re busy getting Vistaprint to produce acceptable promotional bookmarks (next time you’ll know better and use Moo), finding ways of getting better known on the Internet (don’t worry, no one actually has any idea how to), practicing answering ‘so what do you do?’ with ‘well, I’m a writer’ (seriously, it’s ok), and fervently noting down what every single author, agent and editor blog says about what you should be doing or else, here’s my little contribution to your constant migraine: the 10 questions you will get asked by everyone, from complete randomers to your grandmother, within your first year of publication.

Oh you will have fun. Here we go.

10. ‘But like, how many, I mean like not exactly, but more or less, how many books have you sold, like, approximately?’

This question can occur at any time, including the day after publication. And you cannot be vague: even if the questioner is otherwise incapable of adding three and four without frantically reaching for a calculator, s/he wants numbers. Not sure why; but it is absolutely vital. Saying ‘Oh, it’s going well, I think’ will only drag you into a labyrinth of subdefinitions of the adverb ‘well’ associated to specific numerical values.

The assumption, you see, is that part of the induction ceremony into the Great Publishing Sect consists of implanting a magical chip in your brain which permanently connects you to every single online and brick-and-mortar bookshop in the whole world. Every time they sell one of your books, a little ringtone goes off in your skull. You can personalise this ringtone (I have the first few chords of Supermassive Black Hole). The latest version synchronises with your iPhone5 and compiles the data into easily understandable statistics. This is why all debut authors seem to be affected by chronic incontinence. They’re not actually going to the loo – they’re surreptitiously checking their sales.

How to get out of this tricky situation without having to reveal the latest figures? The only solution is to say, with an expression of disdainful detachment which you shall practice in front of your mirror, ‘Not enough to pay for your Frappucino, you cheapskate.’

9. ‘Why aren’t you on an intergalactic promotional book tour?’

O friend, I share your perplexity. I too wish I were wanted from Johannesburg to Santa Monica by armies of fans with bellies and chests tattoed with my (probably misspelt) name. Unfortunately, this isn’t normally what happens to the debut author. Unless you are Pippa Middleton (in which case, please leave a comment explaining why Pilates doesn’t do to my body what it does to yours), you are relatively low on the list of people whom your otherwise lovely publisher would like to send on a first-class trip around the world. You might be invited to a few book fairs, bookshops and schools, but the probability that it will be Melbourne, East Anglia rather than its rather more glamorous Australian equivalent is large (unless you are from the suburbs of the latter).

The relentless questioner will not take this for an answer. Instead, offer the following explanation: ‘Because I would have missed the chance to be with you today.’ Then bat your eyelids.

8. ‘When will you be on the Oprah Winfrey show?’

(I don’t know if that thing still exists, by the way. I don’t watch much TV. Please suggest acceptable equivalents in the comments.)

Your persecutor is here hunting for a Claim to Fame to disclose at the watercooler on Monday when Amanda of the green miniskirt is passing by. ‘I know a girl who knows *person on TV*’ is indeed guaranteed to saturate the ambient air with pheromones. They will not be happy to hear that you have given an interview to the (cutely keen) work experience boy at the local newspaper. It will not satisfy them to know that people have blogged about your book. They want names. And yet, in my experience blogs are the best way for books to get known and promoted, and the local press can do a lot for debut authors, remarkably more efficiently than national magazines and papers.

But your questioner will not believe this. Your best bet is to mention offhandedly that ‘Judy’ liked the book a lot, and you’re hoping she’ll do something with it. No one needs to know that Judy is your aunt’s dog-walker.

7. ‘So I went to Waterstones the other day and your book wasn’t there. That means it’s out of print or what?’

Yep, it’s only been a year but people hated it so forcefully that the publisher discontinued it, burnt all the stock and issued a public apology.

Your questioner is here betraying their vision of bookshops as a land of magic with unlimited storage space, very much like Mary Poppins’s bag or its newer Hermionesque equivalent. It would be very cruel to shatter their lovely reverie with dull considerations of the fact that the number of books currently in print divided by the available squared metres in your average bookshop results in an imaginary number which spontaneously creates dangerous amounts of antimatter if it is written down or spoken.

What you want the person to do here is to order the book: that way, the bookshop will know that it’s wanted (and order more) and you will have sold another copy. But you don’t want them to know that your book isn’t still the number one favourite darling of said bookshop. So the only way is to say, ‘Oh dear, tell me about it. Every time they restock the shelves, they’re empty again within the next half hour. I would recommend ordering it; only way to make sure you can have it.’ Win.

6. ‘When’s the next one coming out?’

That one’s easy if you’ve got a multiple book deal, because it’s written in your contract. If not, it is a considerably stressful question, because of the vaguely existential sense of vertigo it triggers in your insecure psyche. You are not allowed to take this as an opportunity to confess that you are terrified that your editor might not like the next one and stop loving you and that as a result your agent will slap you in the face and worst of all that the people who once ‘Liked’ your Facebook page will ‘Unlike’ it. This is not an acceptable response. You are not on a psychoanalyst’s sofa. This is war.

The perfect answer is a lie: ‘November 7th, 2014’. Repeat this to everyone who asks. Tell everyone who doesn’t ask. Write it on your blog. That way, there’ll be so much pressure to do it that you’ll actually write that second book. No choice.

5. ‘Do you Google your name everyday to see what people are saying about you?’

No need. I’ve installed a piece of software on my iPhone5 connected to the aforementioned chip in my brain and whenever my name appears in any corner of the world wide web another special ringtone reverberates through my skull (Lensky’s aria in Eugene Onegin).

People seem to assume that finding reviews of your books is always the most wonderful experience. And of course it is when they’re good, and of course there are (many) writers who get completely obsessive-compulsive with looking up reviews. But for me, if I do start looking for them, there’s always that horribly stressful feeling that you just don’t know what you’re going to end up finding.

It’s as if you could google your kid’s name and find reviews of the dear child. Of course, a lot of the time it’s all going to be ‘Sharon’s adorable little boy is a charming example of toddlerhood with perfectly rosy cheeks under an avalanche of cherubic curls’. But once in a while you’ll get the occasional ‘Scrawny-looking and relatively indistinguishable from a tiny piglet, Billy suffers from a worrying lack of vocabulary for an eighteen-month-old’. Maybe that would make you think twice before asking Larry Page what his disciples think of your progeny.

Your questioner will not agree with that, of course, so just evasively mention that you don’t need to because your mum and dad do it for you and select which ones they tell you about, haha! (and tragically it’s probably true, too.)

4. ‘Why don’t you translate your own books into French/ Chinese/ Martian to sell them abroad?’

(This isn’t a question asked to the chronically monolingual: lucky, lazy you!). This one primarily betrays a forgivable lack of knowledge of how the publishing industry works on an international level (clue: not like that).

But the more worrying (and frankly annoying) assumption is that any bilingual person can translate anything, including their own prose. What is the point, quel est le point, I ask you, of studying translation? Absolutely none. Bilingual people are naturally endowed with the gift of translation; fact. Any Jean-Pierre Dawson born of an English dad and a French mum can write with equal velocity and Booker/Goncourt-winning quality in both languages.Therefore, they can translate their own work, of course, since they wrote it to start with. The assumption is strengthened, of course, when you do write in both languages.

The only appeasing answer you can bring to this question is, ‘If I’m asked to, I might.’ But you might not. Because nothing, of course, guarantees that you are the best translator of your own words.

3. ‘Did you choose the illustrator/ the title/ the layout/ the cover/ the chapter headings font/ the ISBN/ etc?’

Niet. Nein. No. Non. … [I’ve run out of other languages]

This will not satisfy your well-intentioned questioner. ‘What!?! but it’s YOUR book!?! How come?!?’. They will think your editor is Really Mean. Then they will think you’re a Loser who only had Bad Ideas. Then they will laugh at you in secret. It will be the beginning of the end of your social respectability.

The problem here is that once again the writer is envisaged as a prodigy multitasker who must by definition know everything about what a book is. ‘Of course I chose the exact paper texture I wanted, 68.9g/mm and ivory-off-white with a tinge of cerulean’. The editor is just the person who makes the money. S/he has no experience and no right to interfere in the great creator’s vision of the work.

The truth is that making a book, for the editor, is about n-ego-tiating the author’s ego with the actual reality of the fact that the book has to sell and that their vision of a full-colour picture of a Murakami sculpture with the elliptic title ‘Albeit Capricious’ will not be the most efficient way of reaching out to the average Waterstones customer. And they will very probably be right.

You don’t want your questioner to ruin your professional life and career by spreading rumours about how powerless you are, of course, so the only acceptable answer is, ‘Oh of course I had a say’. And to be fair, you probably did.

2. ‘Which authors are you friends with now?’

This assumes that other authors are by necessity your best friends forever, just like all accountants flock together and all academics only have friends who are academics. Ok, that last one may actually be true.

The fact is of course that there are many authors you are now friends with because they’re actually nice and others that you really can’t stand because they’re terrible people, however adorable their picturebook series may be. You are not automatically on the same wavelength as someone who writes in the same genre. It is also possible that you are not the kind of person who can bear the frequently disproportionately huge ego of other writers on top of your own equally impressive self-confidence.

But the myth about birds of a feather must be maintained, so name all the writers that you’ve met, from the loveliest to the most unpleasant, and with a generous smile, tell your questioner that ‘They’re all amazing, what can I say? We’re like a big family.’

1. ‘Yeah ok so you write children’s books, right, but when are you going to write, like, real literature?’

When the rest of the world starts to understand that children’s literature is real literature.

Clem x

So yes, I’m supposed to be writing the thesis, but when a friend calls me to say that she’s going with her boyfriend to the Harry Potter Studios at Leavesden and do I want to come along? then the only thing to do is to stop writing the t. and jump into the car, Leavesden-bound.

For those of you who haven’t heard of that new brave new world of Pottermania (and I was one of them), here’s the elevator pitch: while sipping caviar milkshake on the shore of their artificial lake of liquid gold, the Warner brothers reflected that now that the Potter films were all filmed they had all those props and sets and costumes lying around in their attic gathering dust and that they should really give them all to Oxfam. Or alternatively, stack it all in half a dozen gigantic hangars and ask people for £28 in non-Leprechaun money to come and look at them. They thought about it for about half a second, and settled for the latter option.

Now, Harry Potter is more or less the most important thing to have happened to me in my late childhood and for all of my adolescence, but I’m not a huge fan of the films at all. And  I’m even less of a fan of enormous American money-making corporations such as WB. So I wasn’t expecting to love the visit: I was expecting to have fun superficially while grinding my teeth at what they’d done to Jo’s universe and remembering what it was like when no one but me had read the books in my school and now all those untrue fans of the series who discovered it through the films are pretending that they know it better than me. It’s a hard life, you know, having to constantly prove that you’re a better fan than the people who call Emma Watson ‘Hermione’. (‘Have you heard, Hermione’s going to Brown University!’ ‘No she isn’t, and you’re a troll.’ ) (Childish, me?)

But against all odds, I loved it. I absolutely adored every moment of it. Here’s why.

People who think that this exhibition is just for Harry Potter fans are wrong. It isn’t. As a Potter fan, you will have a lot of fun; but even if you haven’t read the books or seen the films, even if you’re not even that interested in children’s literature, you have to go. Because it’s not just about Harry Potter, far from it: it’s an incredible, exhilarating celebration of cinema.

Even though you’ve been told again and again that making a film takes a lot of time, money and people, even for tiny details that only appear on screen for a few seconds, I don’t think you can actually believe it until you see it. That’s exactly what the Studios exhibition does. In the three to four hours that it takes to visit it, you get to see the unbelievable variety of objects, costumes, sets, special effects which you’d never noticed on screen, but which were necessary for the whole thing to function. The incredibly detailed architects’ drawings which preceded the building of the models. The conception of the clothes, wigs, make-up, accessories down to the merest sleeve button. The thought that went into the design of each wand, each wand box. The oil paintings full of private jokes among members of the crew. The wonderful handmade objects of the Room of Requirement which you barely see before they get destroyed by Fiendfyre. The handwritten books and handbooks, the handprinted newspapers and magazines, the handlettered Marauders’ Map.

So many hands.

Everything is beautifully, neatly presented; the aim is to make the visitors feel that they’re walking not from one set to the next, but from one room of Hogwarts to the next. The organisation of the visit is a bit dictatorial: you have to book a timeslot in advance, and don’t you dare arrive late. The exhibition is packed, even in the middle of the week, in the middle of the day. Barely any children, but hundreds of 20-45-year-olds. Yes, it’s a big Disneylandish from time to time, but by no means all the time. Generally, the quality of the materials used – real stone, real wood, beautifully-textured fabrics – prevents it all from looking like the Haunted House.

By definition, I don’t think you can get a good idea of what it truly feels like just by looking at pictures, since even the films didn’t do that. But here’s a bit of what we saw that day – thanks Zahra for most of the pictures- :

Drink-driving the Ford Anglia.

The wand boxes, all individually handlettered with names of the thousands of people who worked on the films

A Potter named desire

The letters we all wish we’d received on the day of our eleventh.

The Knight Bus, without even needing to call it.

Privet Drive. Or, Any British House.

The amazing interior of the Weasleys’ house, with all the details you never spotted.

An uncommon look at the Gryffindor Common Room

Up and down Diagon Alley

Now what, you also want to know how much I spent that day? Here’s a breakdown:

• Ticket: £28
• Audioguide: £4.50 (don’t take it, it’s not worth it; there’s too much to see to bother with it)
• Sandwich and coffee at the cafeteria conveniently placed halfway through the exhibition: £5
• Two chocolate wands at the shop conveniently placed at the end of the exhibition: £7

That’s almost £45, and not counting transport, nor the indispensible glass of Butterbeer, which my friend treated us to:

Ka-shing!

So yes, the Warner brothers are doing great, thank you very much. And I’d understand if it bothers you. But really, what a shame it would be to miss this completely disproportionate, extremely well-thought-out, immensely enjoyable look at the secrets of the eight Potter films.

Clem x

Today, I worked hard with my editor, Ellen Holgate, and the illustrator of the Sesame Seade series, Sarah Horne.

And by working hard I mean that they both came to Cambridge on a mission to take pictures of all the places in town that Sesame goes to so that they could be adequately rendered in Sarah’s illustrations.

It was hard work.

We had to visit Christ’s, Sidney Sussex, Gonville & Caius, Trinity, Auntie’s Teashop, Michaelhouse Café, the Fitzwilliam Museum, the Anchor pub, and walk up and down the streets of Cambridge, all that while taking lots of pictures (well, Sarah did) and talking about work (and food. And holidays. And boyfriends. And books.).

Sometimes being an author is all about sacrifices. When I think I could have been at home writing the thesis! But duty was calling.

On the way, Ellen and Sarah met my good friend Charlie Darwin:

And after a long day of research, here’s the three of us near the river… and yes, I know, it looks like the girls are trying to conceal an intimate part of my anatomy with the rough cover of Sleuth on Skates.

Sarah, me, and Ellen

Anyway, all this research will allow Sarah to produce perfect pictures for Sleuth on Skates and the other Sesame books, such as this fabulous one of Sess roller-derbying around the First Court of Christ’s!:

Right. Back to work. The other kind.

Clem x