Meet wee witch Ivy Newt and her creator Derek Keilty

Could there ever be too many children’s books about witches? In a market packed with classics such as The Worst Witch and newer favourites such as Witch Wars, it was a genuine concern for Derek Keilty as he conjured up ideas for a follow-up to his Flyntlock Bones pirate series. Fortunately, he decided there might just be room for one more and the delightful Ivy Newt flew her broomstick on to the bookshelves.

Michelle Pauli interviewed Derek for Books for Keeps.

Now in her fourth outing, with Ivy Newt and the Vampixies, the young witch from the bat-shaped island of Miracula is once again on an adventure and standing up to bullies as she takes on Drusilla, queen of the Dust Pixies, who wants to suck all the magic from Miracula.

The idea for the ‘wee witch’ came when Keilty was walking his dog, with Ivy swiftly followed on the same walk by the notion that her witch’s familiar would be a wolf who could instantly change into a boy, Tom. From there, the world building and plot followed easily.

‘That first chapter or two just came out as I was writing the first draft. The first page literally did not change from my handwritten version to the published page, he says.

What did change, on advice from Sarah Pakenham, his publisher at Scallywag Press, was the age of the readership – Ivy Newt is for younger children than Keilty’s previous books, covering the ‘early reader’ audience of age 5+. The books may be slightly shorter but they are no less rich and engaging and, as Keilty explains, there is something quite special about writing the books that may encourage children to take their first steps towards a life of independent reading.

While there’s peril aplenty throughout the story – in Vampixies, Ivy faces evil fanged fairies, clouds of magic-sucking dust that make her broomstick plummet into the sea, a terrifying Dust Monster and a dramatic rollercoaster-style ride in a runaway mining cart – and although she faces off with some genuinely nasty characters, the books always come to a satisfyingly resolved ending.

‘Although the books have scary antagonists, there’s always a scene at the end of all the Ivy books where there’s usually a wee cup of tea and even the baddie can maybe get a little job making the tea to try and get back into not being so bad or a have second chance. It’s a way to lessen the scariness so that they maybe have a redemptive quality after all their nastiness,’ says Keilty.

As the stories are for early readers, the pages are not dense with words, leaving all the more room for Magda Brol’s simply glorious illustrations. She captures the magical world of Miracula and the appeal of brave little Ivy perfectly, cute and comic by turns. For Keilty, Brol’s illustrations also provided a perhaps more surprising benefit when he first saw them – of revealing to him what his characters looked like.

‘I love getting the roughs, even the first stages. I didn’t really have a clear idea and I don’t really ever, same with Flyntlock or Will Gallows, I just wait to see what the illustrator comes up with. I only have a vague shadow, if you like, of what they would be like in my head, so I’m never disappointed. And whenever I see them, I almost just adopt them then as that. So now I couldn’t really see Ivy as anything else.’

The younger readership hasn’t hampered Keilty’s love of a good pun or wordplay, either. Ivy Newt herself comes from the witches’ infamous refrain in Macbeth: ‘Eye of newt…’ (read it quickly!) and there are plenty of others where that came from. There are also short poems in the fourth book – the Vampixies cast their spells in rhyme – taking Keilty right back to his writing roots.

‘I started out as writing poetry when I was 18 – I published a poem when I was in sixth form in Country Life magazine, they sent me £20. And then I sent them three more and they took them all and sent me £75 pounds,’ he says, smiling at the memory.

Although Keilty’s love of storytelling goes even further back – he recalls writing stories and making ‘books’ by folding paper and taking them in for his teacher to read out to the class at primary school – it wasn’t until he had children of his own (twin girls who are now 29) that he started seriously writing and submitting his work, all the while working for the civil service and writing in the evenings.

‘They were bringing home books from primary school and I was reading them and then that’s when I remembered doing it myself and I thought I’ll have another go,’ he recalls.

He was intrigued by the idea of ‘what happens next’ with fairy tales such as Goldilocks and the Three Bears and Jack and the Beanstalk and set out to write sequels. Back to the Beanstalk was snapped up by a Dublin publisher in 2003, followed by The Bears Bite Back and a handful of reluctant reader books. But his real breakthrough came in 2011 with Will Gallows, a Western/fantasy series, illustrated by Jonny Duddle, which was chosen as a Richard and Judy Book Club title. He felt he ‘had a dip’ after that success and struggled to get his submissions accepted but eventually followed up strongly in 2020 with Flyntlock Bones, his pirate investigator series.

While there are no more Ivy Newt books in the pipeline after Vampixies, Keilty notes that Scallywag Press ‘hasn’t completely drawn a line under more’. In the meantime, he has two more exciting ideas on the drawing board: a detective story featuring a girl called Olivia Shivers, and another starring the Grim Reaper’s son, Finn Reaper. Duke the dog can expect to be going on a lot of walks.

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

Ivy Newt and the Vampixies by Derek Keilty, illustrated by Magda Brol, is published by Scallywag Press, 978-1915252791, £7.99 pbk, as are earlier books in the series, Ivy Newt and the Storm Witch, Ivy Newt and the Time Thief, Ivy Newt and the Swamp Dragon.