Authorgraph No.152: Jeanne Willis
Jeanne Willis interviewed by Julia Eccleshare
It seemed rather terrible to be interrupting Jeanne Willis. Not that Jeanne gave any impression that she didn’t want to talk, it’s just that she tells me with such conviction that’s there’s nothing she likes doing more than writing, she even eats her lunch – brought to her by her husband – at her computer, that I feel I’m taking her away from her real pleasure.
Also my interruption to her work may have cost you and me a title or two. Jeanne doesn’t know exactly how many books she’s written since her first was published when she was 21 but it’s somewhere over the 100 mark – and she seems to be speeding up. What she does know is what she currently has on the go: seven picture books with Andersen Press (‘possibly eight if they like the one I sent this morning’), three picture books with novelty elements with Puffin, seven other novelty books, four novels for young readers, one novelette, some non-fiction titles for girls about their bodies, sex, lipstick and the rest, and a number of Secret Fairy titles which she’s adapting. It’s a prodigious and apparently limitless output.
Jeanne works in an immaculately tidy office at the top of her beautifully preserved Victorian house. She shares the space with her husband Ian, a graphic designer, though, she makes no bones about it, she’d really rather have it to herself. They sit back to back at their computers, not wasting time gossiping or idling on the phone but, in Jeanne’s case, writing any one of the fistful of titles that are currently in the pipeline.
In front of her is a row of neat files – Shamanko, Novelty, TV. In each there is her work in progress, the books which she seems to dream up almost effortlessly and then works on to get exactly right. ‘I usually have about 20 projects at any time including novelty books and numerous picture books. At the moment I’m half way through a fat novel for 10+s and I’m editing a novelette.’ Jeanne laughs at the idea of a novelette, ‘it sounds very grand, doesn’t it?’
Jeanne doesn’t think of herself as grand at all: she doesn’t like being out and about as a ‘personality’ writer, she writes entirely because she loves it, in fact, she can’t imagine existing without writing. She wrote all through her childhood for the simplest but most compelling of reasons. ‘Most of why I wrote spun from boredom. I thought it was more interesting in my head than in the world so I kept doing it.’ But, just when that might make you think how imaginative and kind of cute and all the things we might like to associate with a children’s author, Jeanne adds almost as an afterthought, ‘And it’s a power thing. You are in control.’ which may actually give a clearer explanation of why she does what she does. For whichever reason, as it comes so naturally to her, she always assumed she’d be a writer, though she does add, ‘but I thought I’d have to have a job as well.’
At first Jeanne did have a job. Having done a diploma in Advertising at Watford College – ‘where the art students looked down on us for not doing anything truly creative’ – Jeanne did writing of another kind. She became a very successful copywriter at Young and Rubicam and loved it. With a place on the board of directors in the heady days of the 1980s it was hard to imagine not working but when her first child was born she realised advertising and having a baby didn’t go well together so she quit to write. ‘I loved being at home but I was worried about the money. I didn’t know if I could sustain myself through just writing but I was lucky. I got some writing for TV – it was a boom time in children’s TV – and I was taken on to write for the children’s TV series The Slow Loris.’ More work quickly followed. Jeanne started writing for The Wombles and other pre-school series and became increasingly good at turning out simple stories for the very young. ‘I realised I could make a living if I just did it in quantity.’ It’s a maxim which she still sticks to though with some regrets. ‘I didn’t necessarily intend to write for children and certainly not for very young children, but writing a novel takes up so much time. It’s not a practical thing to do, is it?’
But, it’s not only the financial practicalities of spending too much time on one project that mostly keep Jeanne away from longer books. It is also that Jeanne’s ideas pour out and she needs to get them down on paper as soon as possible. In addition, many of them are as much visual as written which is why she’s currently having such success with novelty titles. ‘When you mention novelty books to most people they think they’re a bit gimmicky but I think they’re just great. It’s a bit like advertising. It’s a project that has to work in lots of different ways.’ Her latest, Never Too Little to Love, a simple story prettily illustrated by Jan Fearnley, has cut away pages which ‘tell’ the story. It has already sold prodigiously well right across the burgeoning Valentine’s Day market.
But Jeanne is best known for her picture book stories. Although their authors tend not to be fêted in the same way as the authors of the blockbusting fantasies, it’s well known that good picture book texts are like gold dust. Jeanne is the author of many of the best such as The Monster Bed and more recently Misery Moo and, of course, the ‘Dr Xargle’ series. ‘I’m very lucky that I started with Andersen Press and they are my spiritual home,’ she says. ‘My stories have been illustrated by lots of artists but I have an especially close working relationship with Tony Ross.’ It was Tony who picked up the manuscript of Jeanne’s first ‘Dr Xargle’ title and took it away to illustrate. From its success a long series of ‘Dr Xargle’ books was born which gathered momentum, spinning off into increasingly wild and funny fantasies as Jeanne’s ideas evolved.
Tony Ross has illustrated numerous others of Jeanne’s titles and it’s a relationship which Jeanne prizes highly. ‘Tony interprets everything just as I hope,’ she says. ‘He gets the subtexts exactly right adding layers that I have implied but not actually written.’ In particular, he is the illustrator of my own favourite Tadpole’s Promise. It turns out that Tadpole’s Promise is also particularly dear to Jeanne’s heart. ‘I first wrote the story when I was about 18. Later, after some of my other books had been published, I found it in a fat file and realised that I hadn’t written it with much grace so I revisited it. Initially Klaus* was a bit reluctant, he thought it was a bit much, but Tony insisted that he would do it. He did everything just right.’ On cue, from a bag of goodies she whips out a tadpole and a caterpillar. But, these are no ordinary tadpole and caterpillar. Like their book-characters, these can metamorphose becoming respectively a handsome frog and a gloriously iridescent butterfly. They are Jeanne’s props for talks to children but they – and the book – also reflect her long-term fascination with insects and especially with metamorphosis. ‘As a child I kept insects in jars and I adored watching them change,’ she says. ‘More recently I’ve kept African smooth-clawed toads. They live for 25 years and I’ve spread their progeny across North London.’
But no one publisher could contain Jeanne’s creativity and, despite her very close relationship with Andersen Press, she’s constantly wooed by other publishers and enjoys the challenge of working with new editors and illustrators. ‘Tonally, I’m quite chameleon-like. If someone says, “write me a sad story” I can do it. That’s what I learnt in advertising. And, I love to respond to a brief. It could just be a picture – as when editors say, “I’ve got a new illustrator whose work I’d like you to see” – or it could be, I’m walking along and just come up with an idea.’ It was observing a group of children with Down’s syndrome that led Jeanne to writing Naked without a Hat, a thoughtful story about how we perceive differences and how easily we are misled by physical appearances. Both in this and in Susan Laughs, Jeanne writes about living with a difference in an optimistic and hopeful way without making readers feel that she is solving a problem through fiction.
Optimism of this kind, and in general, is a key part of Jeanne’s character. ‘I’m a very happy person and always was as a child. I don’t bother much with the outside world if I don’t like what I see there and I remember being astonished when I first heard about evil.’ From this comes the essence of Jeanne’s books. She can turn her hand to any kind of story but all of her stories have one common factor: whatever the audience or subject matter, they are underpinned by a delicious sense of humour. She likes the dotty and wacky – as in the ‘Dr Xargle’ books or Misery Moo – and it’s this lightness of touch which makes whatever she writes so distinctive. There’s not much that doesn’t interest Jeanne and she certainly doesn’t feel that she’s limited to writing for any particular age group. One of her latest projects is a chic, pocket-sized series of information books for girls. ‘I went and met up with a lot of girls and discovered that they knew absolutely nothing about themselves and their bodies so I thought they needed some basic information.’ Highly illustrated by Lydia Monks, Snogs, Sex & Soulmates, Bits, Boobs and Blobs, Zitz, Glitz and Body Blitz deliver exactly what they promise in a direct, funny and, as one would expect from Jeanne, completely unpatronising way.
Who can say what she’ll write next? I’d better leave so that we can find out…
* Klaus Flugge, publisher of Andersen Press.
Julia Eccleshare is co-director of the Centre for Literacy in Primary Education and the Children’s Books Editor of The Guardian.
Details of books mentioned
(published by Andersen Press unless stated otherwise)
Never Too Little to Love, ill. Jan Fearnley, Walker, 0 7445 9650 5, £8.99 hbk
The Monster Bed, ill. Susan Varley, Red Fox Mini Treasures, 0 09 926345 9, £1.50 pbk
Misery Moo, ill. Tony Ross, 1 84270 294 7, £9.99 hbk
‘Dr Xargle’ series, five titles in Andersen pbk with Dr Xargle’s Book of Earthlets also available as a Red Fox Mini Treasure (0 09 972551 7, £1.50 pbk)
Tadpole’s Promise, ill. Tony Ross, 1 84270 426 5, £5.99 pbk
Naked without a Hat, Faber, 0 571 21280 8, £5.99 pbk
Susan Laughs, ill. Tony Ross, Red Fox, 0 09 940756 6, £4.99 pbk
Snogs, Sex & Soulmates (0 7445 8683 6), Bits, Boobs and Blobs (0 7445 8682 8) and Zitz, Glitz and Body Blitz (0 7445 8684 4), ill. Lydia Monks, Walker, £3.99 each pbk
Dozy Mare (featured on our cover), ill. Tony Ross, 1 84270 386 2, was published in April 2005 at £9.99 hbk.
