Author and teacher Pauline Deeves’ book for 8- to 12-year-olds, Midnight Burial, won the 2015 ACT Writing and Publishing Awards (children’s fiction category). She explains here why books aren’t broccoli, how her upcoming book about WW I is told through the eyes of a young girl on the home front, and how musk sticks kick-started her storytelling career.
In your new book for children, Socks, Sandbags and Leeches: Letters to My Anzac Dad, to be published in February, Ivy writes to her father, who is fighting overseas in the Great War. How did you strike on the idea of telling this war story from the point of view of a young girl at home in Australia rather than from the point of view of a soldier in the trenches in Gallipoli?
WWI is such an enormous topic it seemed to become manageable when told through the eyes of a single major character, her family and their friends.
Ivy’s letters illuminate life on the home front (sewing sandbags, knitting socks and living in cramped conditions for example) and attitudes towards the involvement of Australia in the war. Children who read Ivy’s story will get a comprehensive picture of what life was like 100 years ago in wartime. What research did you do to make the detail of what Ivy describes in her letters believable?
The book took almost three years to write. I live in Canberra and had the advantage of access to the collection and wonderful staff at the National Library of Australia (NLA). I also heard stories from elderly people whose parents had passed on information.
Did any of the detail you have used in the book come from direct experience via your family? If so, what?
A little bit did but mostly people of that generation didn’t complain or pass on their stories. That is why I would like to acknowledge their contribution now. Of course they went on to experience the Great Depression and the WW II. I had a cousin who died from the Spanish Flu and my grandfather used to go shooting rabbits in the country to help feed the family.
Can you give A Bigger Brighter World a sneak preview of what your readers can expect from Socks, Sandbags and Leeches: Letters to My Anzac Dad?
Very little is available about the impact of the war on children. One of the aspects that struck me as a teacher was the impact on education. Many classes were cancelled so kids could do war. Kids left school as soon as it was legally possible and sometimes they left earlier, especially in the country. However the object that disturbed me most was a tiny brooch I found in the NLA collection. If a woman lost her husband she was given a brooch and then for each son who was killed a star was added. Some of the propaganda urged women not to weep for lost sons and husbands but to be proud of their sacrifice for ‘King and country’. In the book Ivy can’t cope with this idea.
You have been a teacher for more than 30 years, including 15 years as a teacher librarian, and have contributed to, and reviewed, educational and children’s publications. What’s the key to writing a children’s book that tells a great story like Socks, Sandbags and Leeches: Letters to My Anzac Dad but also has sound educational components?
I think the key is to introduce components that are at a level that is appropriate to the age of your audience and which confront readers with real life decisions. In my workshops I ask kids if they would buy black market food. Would they hide a deserter? How would they have voted in the conscription referendum? Would they allow returning soldiers who had Spanish Flu to land on Australian soil? Ivy wins some money in a running race in the book and has to decide if she should spend some of it on family food or give it to the Red Cross.
You present writing workshops for students and teachers and your most popular workshop is called ‘Your Writing Slave for the Day’. What keys to unlocking student and/or teacher creativity have been most successful in these workshops?
I run a workshop for kids who know they are writers. They usually come with very definite ideas about where they want help. Getting started? Being bogged down in the middle? Tying the plot in knots? The kids who turn up for these workshops are rarely the best at spelling, grammar or handwriting. Some of them are very slow readers. I had a 10 year old walk into a workshop recently and say, ‘Good morning, Pauline, I am a poet.’ They know they are meant to be writers and come alive when others acknowledge that. Their teachers are sometimes surprised at what has been going on in their heads!
Socks, Sandbags and Leeches: Letters to My Anzac Dad is released on February 1. What are you working on now? Do you have any more stories for children in the pipeline—if so, what inspired them?
I have several things in the pipeline and I don’t know which ones are going to come good. I think I need a month to research at the NLA (and to eat their excellent cakes). I am waiting to hear about a recent submission. It is still secret. Sorry!
What’s your top tip for other authors who want to write a children’s or YA book?
Try to find a topic that has not been done to death and find a critique group that will offer honest feedback. Teenagers can be very honest, indeed discouraging, and they usually require only a box of chocolates as payment.
Your book, Midnight Burial, just won the ACT Writing and Publishing Awards (children’s fiction category). Set on a remote sheep station in 1860s Australia, your young protagonist, Florence, is concerned about why her older sister Lizzie has been buried quickly at night and why no-one will answer her questions about her sister’s death. What themes (if any) are too dark for children’s literature?
I would not write a book about teen suicide because I don’t feel equipped to do so. Other writers could well have the skill and experience to write such a book and have a brilliant outcome. I think in dealing with dark topics it is the approach taken and a hope filled message that matters.
What were your top three children’s or young adult’s (YA) book discoveries in 2015? And which children’s or YA authors should we be watching in 2016 (including you)?
After my years as a teacher librarian there is no way I could answer this. Harry Potter sat on the library shelves for months and was slammed as ‘dumb’ and ‘too young’ until the momentum started to build. After that there were waiting lists a mile long. We write books for kids and they decide when we have hit the mark.
What was your favourite book or more pleasant reading experience during your childhood and why?
I was very fond of the book I wrote when I was 4. I couldn’t write or read but my Dad wrote it out for me and I sold it to him for the price of three musk sticks. I thought this writing lark had huge potential. I didn’t realise that payment from some media organisations would still be stuck in the musk-stick economy decades later!
If you could rewrite one (short) conversation or confrontation you had between the ages of 5 and 10, how would the new script go?
At 10 I would have said grammar is boring! Now I know what a wonderful foundation for language it is.
What are the best ways to encourage children to love reading?
Never force them to finish a book they hate. Never force them to read books that are ‘good for them’. (We are talking books here, not broccoli.) Use word-of-mouth from their peers as a way of encouraging interest in a title.
What three things do you most hope children will encounter and/or learn as they read or are read to?
That they can go into other people’s heads and share ideas, that they can respond in any way they choose to what they encounter and that they will never run out of books to read.
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