Dragonborn An interview with Struan Murray, shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards
Struan Murray won the Branford Boase Award with his debut novel, Orphans of the Tide. Dragonborn, the first in a new series, was the subject of a heated publishing bidding war and has now been shortlisted for the children’s fiction category of the prestigious Nero Book Awards. Andrea Reece spoke to Struan Murray about the book in our series of interviews with the Nero children’s category shortlist.
With his talent for epic adventure and love of dramatic and highly visual scenes and settings, Struan Murray seems to have been born to write about dragons and Dragonborn, one of four books on the shortlist for the Nero Book Awards, is everything his fans would expect, ‘like riding the most exhilarating rollercoaster, full of adventure and authentic emotion’ to quote the judges. It’s been a while coming, however. ‘For years I’ve wanted to write a dragon book,’ says Struan, ‘But I was waiting for the right kind of dragon book to strike me. Dragons have been in our culture for so many thousands of years, and every culture has stories about these giant reptiles. I really wanted to find a story that I could put my own spin on and that felt like it was a story that was meant for me to write. I love writing stories about young protagonists who are grappling with a great inner struggle, and it was when I realized that this could be a story about children discovering that they really are dragons and that this was a world where dragons could take human form that I got really excited.’
In the world of Dragonborn, dragons have been hiding as humans for so long that they’ve forgotten what they really are. Her dragon nature certainly comes as a huge and subsequently frightening discovery for his central character, Alex. ‘Alex is discovering this inner fire,’ says Struan, ‘And I knew as a writer that meant it could represent all her frustrations; she’s literally just this bubbling, boiling pot waiting to explode. And I think lots of children can sympathize with that. They feel hemmed in, they feel controlled; they’ve got all these big feelings and they don’t always know how to let them out. And sometimes the world is trying to tell them to keep these feelings buried inside.’
Alex is an only child, her father died in a tragic accident at sea – or so everyone believes – and her mother is strict to the point of obsession, controlling every minute of her daughter’s day. When she finally escapes and arrives at Skralla, her new dragon home, and a kind of training camp for young dragons, Alex finds it very different. She quickly makes friends with the other young dragons but is still overwhelmed by their fiery boisterousness: even in human form, her new friends are still very much dragon. ‘A lot of that inspiration comes from my childhood,’ explains Struan. ‘I have three much older siblings (two brothers and a sister) and I always felt like I was surrounded by these dragon-like children who were just so much bigger, so much louder, and could eat so much faster than I could! I wanted to tap into that.’
Other than the fact they have both have bright red hair, there is, he says, no similarity between his mum and Alex’s mum who, we discover, knows much more about Alex’s true nature than she’s been letting on, and has been keeping other even more shocking secrets besides (devotees of his books will recognise totally unforeseen twists as characteristic of Struan’s plotting). Struan has recently become a dad for the second time and explains Alex’s mother’s characteristics: ‘When you become a parent, you welcome into your head constant nightmares about what could happen to your child. I just gave into my worst desire to overprotect, keep your child at a distance from the world. Alex’s mum is the person keeping her from being a dragon. She’s so afraid of Alex’s inner strength that she is trying to suppress it with everything she does. The only challenge was I wanted her to feel real, so I had to find ways to soften her.’ Alex’s mum has, surprisingly, ‘ended up being possibly my favourite character.’
Alex herself was equally challenging to write. ‘In Alex’s case, it was simply that all my protagonists previously have been quite outspoken and brave. And Alex very much isn’t that when the story begins.’ Alex has repressed everything: ‘And I found it quite a challenge to write a character like that, who’s still going to have enough personality that the reader wants to follow them on their journey and can connect with them, even though she is clearly keeping so much of herself bottled up.’ Once Alex accepts her dragon self, things change, and in book two I learn, readers will encounter her giving vent to all her feelings, primarily anger, an emotion Struan explores. ‘We don’t often help children understand that anger can be a terrible force, but it serves a function. There’s a reason we get angry and children need to be helped to understand where their anger is coming from because the power of anger is that it helps us identify when we’ve been hurt and to figure out, okay, well, what’s hurt me and why and what can I do about it?’
He adds, ‘Obviously the useful thing about writing a story about dragons is whenever you are grappling with these heavy themes and things are getting quite serious, then you have the dragons to keep things adventurous and fun.’
Despite the background of the story – dragons and humans on the brink of a war that threatens huge losses on both sides – the young dragons in Dragonborn certainly do provide lots of moments of adventure and fun. ‘Whenever I write stories, I always make sure that the children are shown having fun together. I love writing kids just goofing around and making the most of even a bad situation. It’s one of the reasons I love writing Middle Grade, you’ve always got this warm backbone of friendship so that even when you’re handling darkness and difficulty, you can balance it out.’
This brings us round to the issue of reading for pleasure. Struan describes himself as a reluctant reader as a child. ‘I struggled quite a bit to read and I still do. I don’t think I’m someone with a good attention span and I keep that in mind when I’m writing. I’m always thinking, okay, how can I keep the reader engaged and at the same time not have things become too frenetic. My primary objective is always to keep the reader’s attention, and I spend a lot of time thinking about what they want and what they’re expecting. I know a lot of writers really are writing for themselves when they write, I’m not convinced that I do that. I think I’m writing for my audience. There are absolutely things that I include in the story to keep my own interest, but I do think a lot about readers and about reluctant readers too. I don’t believe that reaching a reluctant reader requires dumbing things down or making things easier. I think there is a way to do it without sacrificing depth or without avoiding weightier ideas that children are grappling with. But it’s tough. When I was a kid, my mum would read a lot to me. And I think that really, really helped. It was Mum who got me into fantasy. She read me The Hobbit when I was eight or so and I still remember that vividly.
‘And it’s been said often, but reading to children is, I think, absolutely crucial [to reading for pleasure] and my favourite letters to receive are the ones that come from parents saying that they have a child who is a reluctant reader and that they read my book together. Reading together, if there are things a child’s struggling to understand and the parent gets to explain, it provides something to bond over. And that I think is the absolute best thing about being a children’s writer: giving parents and children something they share.’
Adults who share Dragonborn with children will certainly be glad they did.
Andrea Reece is Managing Editor of Books for Keeps.
Dragonborn by Struan Murray is published by Puffin, 978-0241688816, £8.99 pbk
