Making Marnie Midnight: an interview with Laura Ellen Anderson

A moth, a moon and magic. It sounds so simple. Who could have guessed that ‘squishing them together’ could create something marvellous? But when it’s author-illustrator Laura Ellen Anderson doing the squishing, a fantastical delight can be taken as read. Anderson is, after all, the creator of the beloved Amelia Fang series, along with the Rainbow Grey books and the Evil Emperor Penguin strips for the Phoenix comic. In Marnie Midnight she once again casts her magic, this time across the tiny world of minibeasts. Michelle Pauli interviewed Laura Ellen Anderson for Books for Keeps.

In Marnie Midnight and the Minibeast Mission, the third and final outing for the little moth, Marnie and her friends from Minibeast Academy are excited to go on a camping trip. But when they find themselves trapped in a human house, complete with an adorable little girl, her father and a cat, it takes all their teamwork and bravery to find their way home – with more surprises lying in store for them on their journey.

It’s a long way from Anderson’s original idea, which began, as all her story ideas do, with a sketch.

‘I’ve got a little drawing of a moth flying up towards the moon. I just loved the idea of this little moth being able to cast moon magic spells,’ says Anderson. ‘I love books about magic. I’ve grown up reading The Worst Witch. I was a big fan of TV programmes like Sabrina the Teenage Witch. So it was my chance to really delve into that: write a book about my own kind of magic, basing it on the moon.’

While they are certainly magical, all the bugs in the Marnie Midnight stories are based on real-world insects and have some of their characteristics, even if adapted and made fantastical. Anderson was initially daunted by her lack of bug knowledge but soon got stuck into researching the different creatures she would fill the books with, from Marnie the moth to Floyd the ‘glambulous’ bee/ladybird/wasp and Star the strong, brave ant.

‘I’m not a bug expert. I’m not the amazing MG Leonard [the author of the Beetle Boy series]! But I always say to kids when I do my events, there’s nothing to stop you learning new things no matter how old you are. So I bought a load of kids’ books about bugs because the kids’ books are so accessible and beautiful. I have taken little facts, had lots of fun with them and put them into the books, sprinkling them in among the fiction.’

The friendship between these very different creatures is, as always, at the heart of this final Marnie book, but Anderson also weaves in some important life lessons. Floyd, for example, learns to embrace the fact that he’s 1% wasp – ‘it’s a part of who he is and he should be proud of it. It’s really important for everyone to realise that all our differences are something to be proud of and not something to be ashamed of at all,’ says Anderson.

In fact, all the bugs have an epiphany when suddenly faced with dozens of wasps as they try to flee the human house. As the friends start to see the wasps as individuals (each with their own sartorial flair – think bow ties, jolly jumpers, tutus and twirly moustaches) and understand them better, their fears diminish.

‘It’s fearing what you don’t know. They think wasps are these angry, awful, sting-happy creatures but it’s because they don’t know them and they haven’t had a chance to get to know them. And when we start to know more about the wasps and why they are the way they are, we can empathise and see they are just the same as everyone else. Even though something can seem scary and different, it doesn’t mean it’s bad, it’s just different. That’s really important for kids and adults to know, especially in our current climate,’ says Anderson.

She is also keen to show children that they can make a difference, just as Martha’s kindness saves Marnie’s life when she gets trapped in her bedroom – ‘If every kid helped a little bug every day, then that’s millions of kids helping millions of bugs, which is wonderful.’

This all risks making Marnie Midnight sound terribly worthy, which could not be further from the truth. Anderson’s humour brings a lightness to the stories, which comes through in both the narrative and the glorious, detailed illustrations of the bugs with their oversized features. The contrasts of scale when she introduces larger creatures such as the cat or humans into the minibeast world are especially fun.

Playing with scale is a thread running through Anderson’s work and pastimes, whether it’s her hobby of stamp collecting – ‘it’s to do with just how intricate and beautiful a lot of them are – I can spend ages looking through the little magnifying glass, all of the tiny teeny patterns, and then seeing the little hidden numbers on the margins…’ – or model making. She recently converted a Cinderella Castle Polly Pocket into the Amelia Fang mansion.

‘It’s taking bits of my childhood that I love and then converting them into something up to date. But everything is always creative. I love to be hands-on with everything, I’m constantly painting or sticking or glueing and making and that’s where all of my joy is,’ she says.

That was the case from her earliest childhood; she grew up in Essex in a creative family who supported her artistic pursuits. She was creating comics for her classmates from a young age and her mother has kept every single piece of her artwork, stored in the family’s attic, and examples of her childhood drawings often find their way into the events she does with children. An art foundation course in Southend was transformational – she ‘found herself’, discovered the work of Tim Burton, who has been a huge influence, and determined that illustration was the path she wanted to follow. A degree at Falmouth University came next and she was swiftly picked up by Charlie Bowden’s new illustration agency Pickled Ink at her graduation show in 2010. The agency has grown with her, taking on a new agent, Helen Boyle, when Anderson wanted to branch out into writing with Amelia Fang, with the first book in the series published in 2017.

Now a whole new series is in the offing, taking Anderson in a slightly different direction with a younger readership. But just like Amelia, Rainbow or Marnie, it all starts with a little sketch – that grows into something much, much bigger, as Anderson explains.

‘Once you’re holding the final book at the end, it’s like, wow! You look at the sketch with all the notes that went into it and it’s a really lovely, rewarding feeling. I think it makes it all worth it, especially when you inevitably have the bad days when you’re writing or illustrating – it’s a job, at the end of the day, and you’re going to have your ups and downs. There are moments where you’re oh, this is looking horrible. But then when you see it all printed, you think, ok, I am proud of this now. It’s an emotional rollercoaster!’

Michelle Pauli is a freelance writer and editor specialising in books and education. She created and edited the Guardian children’s books site.

The Marnie Midnight books are published by Farshore, £7.99 pbk.