Party time! You Choose creators Pippa Goodhart and Nick Sharratt chat

With over 2.5 million books sold, the You Choose series is a publishing phenomenon and beloved of small children everywhere. Publication of You Choose Party Time brings the series to six, the simple but irresistible concept the same in each: double pages present readers with themed scenarios and invite them to choose from pages packed with options. In the latest offering, for example, they can pick who to invite, what to wear, party activities and, of course, the cake. It’s endlessly enjoyable for youngsters and a wonderful way to get them talking and imagining. In this special article for Books for Keeps, author Pippa Goodhart and illustrator Nick Sharratt interview each other about the books and their collaboration.

Nick: Where did the idea for the very first You Choose book come from?

Pippa: It came from watching my three young daughters delighting in working through catalogues that came in the post, each choosing what they wanted. Lots of chat and laughter and argument and fun … all done with the knowledge they wouldn’t actually get those things! It also came from my own childhood love of pictures in books when I was scared of the text I couldn’t easily read. Creating a picture book that you didn’t have to read to enjoy very much appealed to me, even though I’m now a writer! The way this catalogue idea might work visually came from seeing one particular example of your artwork.

Nick: It was a stroke of luck that you were at that talk I gave at a Federation of Children’s Book Groups conference and saw the detailed pictures that I liked drawing when I was a youngster. I don’t think the book work I’d undertaken up to then had really shown that side to me.

Pippa: It was a large picture absolutely crammed full of life and interest set in a shopping centre, done, I think, when you were eleven years old? It must have taken ages because everything was so clear and so rich in detail. Astonishing! So, I dared to suggest your name to Penny, the editor who at last took an interest in You Choose after nine other publishers had turned it down. She rang you straight away as I sat beside her in the Random House offices and you said, ‘Yes!’

Nick: I knew the concept of You Choose was a winner because I remembered the huge pleasure my siblings and I got when we were little, looking through our grandparents’ Green Shield Stamps catalogues and picking out the furniture we’d have in our future homes, the watches and jewellery we’d wear, the food we’d feast on from the hamper selections… It was such an enjoyable thing to do, imagining the lives we’d lead and the worlds we’d live in.

Pippa: Your style offers clarity of detail in small images, but it also offers range in moods, so that choices made can be serious or silly, imaginative of realistic. Crucially, your style suits the very young right up through the ages, making the You Choose books accessible and used even by adults.

Nick: My drawing style hasn’t really changed from how I drew as a youngster, although I did try other approaches and techniques when I was at arts school. When I was a boy what I liked in pictures was clarity of image, bright colours and cheerfulness, and that’s what I’ve always tried to achieve in my picture books. It’s interesting hearing how important pictures in books were to you. I was the same, I always needed some engaging visual imagery to encourage me to read the text. When I started tackling chapter books, the chapter heading illustrations kept me going.

What about your writing style?

Pippa: I write so differently for different kinds of books. The You Choose books have simple texts (richer ones on the endpapers!) that stretch my rhyming abilities. Some early reader books have to fit the strict rules of phonics that allow only certain letter combinations at different levels. But I’m free to write as I like when it comes to my novels and picture books. I do like to trim writing down to tell a story quite fast, ever aware of childhood me who found the reading process hard and needed to be rewarded with story progress to encourage me to keep going.

The You Choose books themselves have developed over time, haven’t they?

Nick: As the series has grown, it’s been fun developing a You Choose universe and incorporating things from one book into another. The pink palace from the original You Choose has cropped up in three more books so far, as has the space station. Characters hop around from book to book, and children always pick up on that. You and I make a few appearances too, in You Choose in Space and You Choose Christmas, plus in You Choose Party Time there’s a Pippa’s Pizza Place and a Nick’s Diner.

Pippa: I think and hope that the fact that you and I are having such fun creating these books comes through to the reader! What’s your best reader response been?

Nick: We both get moving messages from people about how the books have been of significance to them. I learned of one little boy who was so taken by the picture of the ballet dancers on the ‘jobs’ page of You Choose that his mum found him a local dance class to go to and he grew up to be a professional ballet dancer.

Pippa: I’ve had some wonderful messages from children and parents for whom one of the You Choose books has become a moment of breakthrough in speaking, because there’s such a compulsion to talk about what you see.

Nick: Because of that conversational aspect, they do seem to have become a helpful tool to a lot of speech therapists and child counsellors. And I know we’ve both been brought, at festivals and signings, the most worn-out copies of the books to sign, a wonderful indication of how much they’ve been read. One You Choose I was presented with had actual holes in the pages.

Pippa: The funny thing is that parents tend to get apologetic about presenting tatty, chewed, torn, scribbled-on copies of the books. But loved-to-shreds books are the very best compliment to the book’s creators!

Pippa: And now we have a very beautiful new You Choose book coming out!

Nick: You Choose Party Time was particularly fun to illustrate. Parties are an enjoyable subject for an illustrator anyway, but it was lovely to include so many details from personal childhood memories: the ‘mummy’ party game when we kids would wrap up adults in toilet paper, the maypole cake that my mum made for one of my sister’s birthdays …

Pippa: And that book gives you and me the excuse to enjoy those childhood joys all over again, all in the name of ‘book promotion’. Hooray!

You Choose Party Time by Pippa Goodhart and Nick Sharratt is published by Puffin, ‎ ‎ 978-0241730836, £12.99 hbk.