All aboard! An interview with Emma Swan, author of Cruise Ship Kid
Joanne Owen joins author Emma Swan to discuss the voyage of comic confidence-boosting crime capers that is Cruise Ship Kid.Is it a thrilling detective story? Is it a high-spirited seaborne adventure? Is it a doodle-in diary packed with puzzles, quizzes, and inspirational activities? In fact, Emma Swan’s Cruise Ship Kid series is all three and more as its endearing protagonist, ten-year-old Silver, investigates crimes aboard the good ships Potentia and Fabula. Striking an elusive sweet spot between humour and heart, it gently rocks the middle grade boat to radiate confidence-boosting ripples as Silver investigates the curious case of missing mega-expensive watches (Thief at Sea!) and the mystery of a missing influencer (Kidnap at Sea!).
In Silver’s words, ‘Living on a cruise ship is like living inside a cake. A cake that floats on the sea.’ Emma grew up on in this world, her parents worked on cruise ships, and this magical description chimes with her admiration for the ‘positive, brilliant’ crew she knew: ‘Cruises are this glamorous thing, but people at the bottom of the ship are the people who make the magic. I had a lot of cabin steward friends, and I’d think of them as magicians. People would get off the ship and embarkation day would start for the next cruise, and they’d be turning these cabins around like magicians.’
After growing up Rotherham and living ‘a double life on land and at sea’, Swan read English and Spanish at the University of St Andrews before studying drama in London: ‘I’d wanted to be an actress since I was tiny, and a writer. And in a way, they go hand in hand. Any opportunity I get to do events, I say, ‘yes, please!’ because I love it. I do an event that’s a mixture between being an author and an actor.’ This happy union of story and stage, page and theatre, is also borne out by Swan’s performances for the Birmingham Stage Company’s celebrated Horrible Histories shows, and by the fact that’s she’s ‘always loved character and dialogue. I think it’s the starting point for me with any book.’
Swan has also long been passionate about children’s books: ‘I’m the 33-year-old woman on the tube reading kids’ books. I always have. I’m just obsessed! And I thought my love of children’s fiction and my background would tie in nicely together.’ The subject of personal background resonates with one of Cruise Ship Kid’s core recurring virtues. Namely, representation, such as when Swan shares that it was ‘really important to me that Silver had a northern accent. She does get a little bit picked on for how she sounds and wants to change her voice, but realises she’s so proud to have the voice she has.’ As Silver puts it, ‘When you are northern, lots of posh people like to copy your accent REALLY badly and think that you will laugh at how funny they are. I don’t find it funny at all.’ Happily, through Thief At Sea!, Silver comes to realise that ‘All the things I wanted to change I think are my best bits,’ while Kidnap at Sea! explores ‘learning to speak up’ and sees Silver ‘starting to realise that online life doesn’t always represent reality.’ Crucially, in Swan’s hands, such themes are handled with age-appropriate lightness as she integrates them into her crime caper storylines: ‘The thing that’s very important to me, is even though they’re crime books, and hopefully a load of fun and interactive, there’s also heart.’
A whole lot of heart (and humour — hands up who fancies tucking into a KFSea takeaway, or buying a new necklace from Frank Costa Lot’s stall, persuaded by his ‘I’ve never seen it look better on anyone!’ sales patter?) comes courtesy of Swan’s talent for creating refreshingly relatable characters, replete with age-related nuances, from representing ten-year-old Silver’s in-between age so authentically, through to The Gang — a glorious gaggle of older cruisers who join Silver’s all-hands-on-deck detective duties. Swan affords much importance to ‘intergenerational relationships and celebrating that in writing.’ In the case of The Gang, ‘it’s about celebrating older generations as being these super-cool people.’ Rather wonderfully, Swan’s grandparents (‘the best people I’ve ever known in my life. They were my best pals’) appear in the books as Tommy and Sylvia, an adorable octogenarian couple who’ve ‘been married for 60 years and still like each other (WOAH). Sometimes they even wear matching outfits.’
Another of Cruise Ship Kid’s standout qualities is its melding of detective fiction with a diary-style format and activities: ‘This is the me-ishtwist I hope makes this series different. It’s a book children can write in. That’s really at the heart of the whole series, that this is their book. No one’s book will be the same because it includes their ideas, thoughts and creativity.’ Also at the heart of the series is Swan’s hope that readers ‘take away self-confidence and a sense of self, so they’re happy with who they are.’
Given the open-ended creativity of the books’ interactive elements, it’s not surprising that Swan’s writing process is of the open and organic variety. Moreover, she handwrites her first drafts: ‘I take a notebook absolutely everywhere. I just think there’s something so lovely about writing a book with a pen, and maybe that’s why I wanted the series itself to have that element for children.’ At the same time, Swan ‘likes a deadline’, and takes her research seriously, as revealed when she shared the joys of taking a Caribbean cruise to research Kidnap at Sea!: ‘I was the lady running around with my notebook going to observe things like a fitness class or a line dancing class, because what better way to find characters? So, if anyone sees a lady with a notebook on a cruise ship, that might be me!’
In good news for landlubbers, Emma is set to appear at a host of literary festivals through 2026, in between writing Silver’s third shipshape sleuthing adventure and taking to the stage for summertime Horrible Histories shows. In the meantime, the action-packed Kidnap at Sea! is out now.
Joanne Owen is a writer, reviewer and workshop presenter. With a background in children’s publishing, she’s the author of several books for children and young adults, among them the Martha Mayhem series, the Carnegie Medal-nominated Puppet Master, and You Can Write Awesome Stories.
Emma Swan’s Cruise Ship Kid books Thief At Sea! (978-1835409954) and Kidnap at Sea!( 978-1835409961) are published by Usborne,
