‘Heart and Humour’ An interview with Jenny Pearson, shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards
Though a departure from what author Jenny Pearson describes as her ‘heart and humour’ novels, Shrapnel Boys, her story of brothers Ronnie and Micky and their experiences at home in Deptford during the Blitz, boasts a bounty of both. In the first of our interviews with the children’s authors shortlisted for the Nero Book Awards, Joanne Owen spoke to Jenny for Books for Keeps.
Described by the Nero Book Award judges as ‘A stunning piece of historical fiction which combines meticulous research with a beautifully imagined plot,’ Shrapnel Boys brims with empathy, soul-stirring bonds between boys and lashings of humour, including some corking one-liners (‘Dad says never trust politicians any more than a fart when you’ve got a dicky stomach’), and though it tackles heavyweight topics head on — bullying, loss of innocence, coercion, moral integrity and Oswald Mosley’s fascist movement in Blitz-time Britain — it is, above all, a gripping wartime adventure that tells of friendship, family and doing the right thing. A poignant page-turner made all the more impactful by Pearson’s extraordinary ability to balance big subjects, and big emotions, with lightness and laughter.
Indeed, though as a teacher she’d relished introducing her students to Michael Morpurgo’s Private Peaceful, and had long wanted to write historical fiction, it was, in part, funny stories from her own family that propelled Jenny to write Shrapnel Boys. ‘There was so much humour,’ she laughs, ahead of relating an incident that saw her great-grandfather run around in his underpants in an effort to catch chickens that had escaped from a bombed shed. Then there were her granddad’s tales of ‘building dens and collecting shrapnel, which gave me an image of boys scrambling around, having this adventure.’ Driven by this image, Jenny became ‘completely absorbed by huge amounts of research,’ including listening to thousands of first-hand accounts, ahead of finding her own story, which ‘came out in the writing.’
‘It was always Ronnie,’ she says, speaking with moving affection about the unforgettable, brilliantly described protagonist of Shrapnel Boys. ‘First-person is my natural comfort zone, and he just emerged.’ That naturalness shines through a story that sees Ronnie grow up through stepping up to support his mother and little brother Micky during the Blitz. ‘It’ll be alright,’ Ronnie says early on, wise beyond his years, and partly as a result of his bullying dad being out of the picture, ‘You’ve got me and Micky. We’ll look after you.’
Through Ronnie’s clear voice, and the dilemmas and dangers that arise when Johnny Simmons wheedles his way into the family’s life (fascist Johnny manipulates Micky into criminal activities), readers feel his loss-of-innocence journey in all its complexity. In Ronnie’s words, ‘I suppose like life, people aren’t simple…I guess we are all carrying round the scars of what has happened to us and finding ways to stop ourselves getting wounded again,’ which chimes with, and delivers, Jenny’s desire to show how ‘there’s no black and white. There’s no good and bad. There are just people, reacting, struggling to carry on, trying to work out what’s right. And that’s what Ronnie is dealing with the whole time. He has to do something he knows is bad, but thinks is the right thing to do,’ referring to the heart-stopping moment Ronnie weighs up whether to get involved in a wrong-doing he’s long resisted in order to protect Micky, and in the name of the greater good. Other characters are just as richly nuanced. For example, the boys’ bullying father becomes an RAF pilot, and their cane-wielding authoritarian headmaster has an affectingly unexpected past. As Pearson puts it, ‘The world is a complicated and difficult place and no one is all good and no one is all bad. Even with Johnny Simmons, there’s something of an explanation.’
Another powerfully pervasive element of Shrapnel Boys is empathy, and showing children it’s OK to not always have all the answers: ‘What I like to do when it comes to empathy is to show kids struggling with it, trying to put themselves in other people’s shoes, and trying to work out why people are behaving as they are. Books aren’t there for the answers, and the world is a confusing, difficult place, but we all feel like this. We’re all muddling through and you’ll find your own way to navigate people and the world.’
In Ronnie’s case, having a friend like Lugs means he doesn’t have to navigate the world alone, with their relationship another driving force of the novel: ‘Always in the back of my mind is that I want to show how kind and how thoughtful and empathetic boys can be, and especially in this book because, back in the 1940s, it was very much “button up, don’t show your emotions, be strong.” I look at the kids I’ve taught and the girls are always really close, but the boys are, too.’ That’s certainly the case with Ronnie and Lugs, whose bond sees them through truly trying times, not least because they know exactly how to lift each other’s spirits. Which brings us full circle to Jenny’s trademark talents — that blend of heart and humour: ‘You know, I think you can only battle through the darker sides of life if you’re able to laugh; it’s the same with my books. I think if you’re going to write about a difficult topic, a little bit of humour is almost like a comfort blanket for kids. If you go down, you bring them up. It’s a reminder that there’s still joy.’
When I ask what she hopes readers will take from reading Shrapnel Boys, Pearson makes a compelling comparison between why kids are often drawn to collect shrapnel during conflict and the power of books: ‘Collecting shrapnel is having sense of agency and power and control in a world that’s dangerous and scary. It gives kids something they can control. And I kind of think books are a little like that, too. The world’s a confusing place, and a book is something they can hold and look into to try to make sense of the world.’ At once honest and authentic, thrilling and funny, Shrapnel Boys is perfectly-pitched to do exactly that.
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.
Shrapnel Boys is published by Usborne, 978-1805312963, £7.99 pbk.
