Tony Bradman

1. Reading the stories in your brand-new Dilly collection, Dilly Breaks the Rules, I'm struck by the sense in which they are moral fables, each with a fairly overt message at the end. In 'Dilly Goes to Big School', it's that teachers should not refer to children as somebody's brother or sister. In 'Dilly And the Book of Bad Behaviour' the moral comes in the final line - "A little naughtiness is a small price to pay for a happy Christmas!" And in 'Dilly Breaks the Rules' you seem to be having some fun with the current obsession with agreeing rules-based contracts between teachers and pupils, between schools and parents. Are these little moral lessons your starting-off points?

With Dilly stories, I usually start off with a situation, a what-if, or a what-would-happen... for example, it might be - what would happen when Dilly leaves nursery school and goes to Dorla's school? This kind of thing is fuelled by my own experience - I remember my oldest, Emma, feeling pretty miffed when her younger sister Helen moved up from the infants to primary... she saw it as an invasion of her private domain, one where she wasn't referred to as somebody's sister... and I think that's quite a common experience for kids. I then do what writers of fiction always do... I think about the characters, how they'd feel in that situation, what they'd do, how they'd react... and generally explore the area I've marked out. And in general this leads me to some fairly universal themes... and working them out in a well-told story usually brings you to some kind of moral position.
I also think that children are very moral creatures. In any argument in a family or a school, you're likely to hear kids saying 'That's unfair!' or 'He/she shouldn't be allowed to do that!' or 'You kids ought not to watch that prgramme...' etc. All moral terms... kids want to find out how to live their lives, how to get on with other people etc, and I think that means they are constantly obsessed with moral issues, big or small. They also pretty much like things to be stated clearly... parents are also continually faced by moral/ethical issues and dilemmas as we bring our kids up, and they crop up at almost every point in daily life (and sometimes we get them wrong and our kids tell us!) That's what I'm exploring in the Dilly stories... they're explorations of the moral issues families wrestle with all the time.

2. The reissued titles are still illustrated by Susan Hellard, but there are new coverdesgns by a design company called 'blacksheep' and the books have been given new titles. Why have the titles changed, as well as the look?

Series can last for a long time, and styles of presentation change, so it's important to refresh the look of books periodically. It's something publishers of most series do (see the various looks for William... The Worst Witch... Narnia etc). Also, you find out over time that some titles sell better than others in series fiction, and that doesn't appear to have anything to do with the quality of the stories. I thinkI've been pretty consistent with Dilly... and yet some titles sell four times more than others. Why? Well, I think titles have a lot to do with it. For example: Dilly IV was originally called DILLY AND THE HORROR FILM. It sold very poorly in comparison to the others, and I suddenly realised why when I saw a parent and child at a book fair... the little boy wanted the book (Wow! Horror film!), Mum was reluctant (Oh dear! Horror film!). Mum won. I suggested we re-title the book... DILLY GOES TO SCHOOL, and we did. And it sold four times as many copies in a couple of months as it had done in a year. Same book. The point is that for younger fiction, it's often parents who do the buying, and you have to be careful about titles... the five that are being re-issued this year have got new titles because they were the weaker selling titles, and I think the new look and titles are a great improvement. I don't think this is wrong, by the way... the re-titled books always state clearly that they were formerly published as... and the market continually refreshes itself anyway. I think the new look is also terrific... very contemporary!

3. In the Books for Keeps Authorgraph printed in March 1996, you spoke about the 'guerilla warfare between parents and kids'. It's a very good-natured warfare featured in the Dilly books, and Dilly and Dorla maintain a polite and formal manner of interacting with 'Mother' and 'Father'. Readers must be left thinking this is essentially a nice family. Is that response aimportant one?

The use of 'Mother' and 'Father', and the generally 'nice' tone of the interactions in the family IS deliberate... I want readers to see this as a pretty normal loving family. To a certain extent it's all based on my own family... and we-re pretty close, but also pretty, er... volatile. Dilly and his family have their ups and downs, just like anybody, but they love each other and they sort things out. Things can get quite hairy, though - there's a fair amount of shouting and stamping, and kids telling each other and their parents that they hate them... and in one or two stories there's even some violence, with characters being pushed over, sent off down hills on bikes to crash into bushes, tears, tantrums... and occasionally some very dark emotions are glimpsed. But that's life... part of growing up is about learning how to deal with your emotions, and I think helping our kids learn to do that is one of the most important things parents can do. So in the stories I try to show that actually happening... without being preachy.

4. Dorla is the narrator in nearly (but not quite) all the Dilly stories, so that we see her younger brother at one remove, and through her superior and condescending eyes. In the new book, she's very put out because Dilly is joining her at big school, cutting off her one means of escape. It's important that she's a cannily understanding and essentially sympathetic girl, who can read why Mother and Father are behaving as they do. (There's a nice moment when she sees Father coughing up with a bribe paid to Dino Claus' charity.) Is the Dilly-Dorla relationship based on observations of your own children?

Yes, it most definitely is. I've come out of the closet on this one... Dorla IS to a large extent based on Emma, my oldest, and Dilly IS Helen, her younger sister. I spent a lot of time with them when they were younger (I was a very hands on Dad!), and they just had very definite characters, although over the years I've come to realise that they're very much like older and younger children everywhere. Oldest children tend to be a bit bossy and superior, high achievers expecting a lot of themselves, and often feel responsible for younger siblings, and resentful of them. Younger siblings often identify themselves as NOT like their older siblings, and spend most of their time fighting off their interference by being generally awkward... anyway, that's the basis of the characters. I love Dorla and Dilly equally, and I think part of the secret of the stories' appeal is that there's someone for everyone to identify with. Older siblings see Dorla's problem, and understand her moral dilemmas... younger siblings love to see Dilly come out triumphant, but also love the way he has a heart of gold... parents like to see other parents wrestling with the problems caused by these volatile charactrers, and sometimes getting it wrong! It makes you feel better to know that it's hard to be perfect... Most of the stories do grow out of real observation of this kind of thing...

5. The Dilly books are published by Egmont (Mammoth), as is your first Epix title. More of that, in a moment. But a selection of your recent paperbacks shows that you also write for Puffin, Transworld and Bloomsbury. Is it just that you accept whatever work is available, or do you have particular reasons for not having built up a relationship with a single publisher?

I was once talking to Allan Ahlberg about the writer's life, and he said that when you've been in the business for a long time, you end up with a chain of books, editions and publishers clanking along behind you like Jacob Marley's chains. I signed my first contract 16 years ago, and there are a number of factors involved in my being on the lists of a number of publishers.
First off: I'm quite prolific. I haved more ideas than I can actually turn into books... I also started off doing picture books and short texts, and I could produce more than any one publisher was likely to be able to publish in a reasonable length of time. Second: I always wanted to be a writer, and although I think a lot of people are capable of getting published, actually making a living (and supporting a family as main breadwinner) out of writing is pretty tough. Doing it by writing children's books is very tough indeed... an average sort of advance for a book might be £2000. The book might take six months to write... the figures don't add up. So in my early days as a freelance writer, I consciously did as much as I could, which inevitably meant working with a number of publishers. Over the years things do well, you start to get royalties coming in, and it gets a bit easier... although it's always hard. Third: While you're busily writing away, building a career, faceless men in suits are busily selling publishing companies to each other, and occasionally you discover that the company you used to publish with is now a desk in the corner of another office, and your books will have a new imprint name on the spine. Meanwhile, your former editor has moved on, and needs some good titles to get her career kick- started at her new employers', so she rings you up and asks you to do a book for a new series she's starting, probably named after a small furry animal and designed to help new readers... you liked working with her, the central heating boiler's just packed up, there was that idea for a story about a girl who's had 17 hamsters you've been toying with, and you end up appearing in another catalogue. And so it goes on.
That said, I don't take on anything, and I'm growing increasingly reluctant to sign up to do things unless I have a very strong idea of the story I'm going to write. I do have excellent relationships with Egmont - I've been working with them for a long time - and with Transworld, and they are definitely my two main publishers, and they're great. The Bloomsbury connection was Barry Cunningham. I knew him as a friend from Penguin, and he asked me to write for him when he started the Bloomsbury list. I finished the series after he left... and I now work with Emma Mathewson, who was my editor for a while at Puffin, who published me right at the start of my career...

6. Most of your children's fiction is short and aimed at readers who've recently developed confidence. Take your chapter-book, Tommy Niner and the Moon of Doom for instance. This is exactly the kind of book that helps turn tentative readers into real readers. But chapter books like this don't often get included on any of the big Prize/Award shortlists. Where awards are split between 'Novels' and 'Picture Books' the good old chapter book or first reader drops to oblivion down the middle. As an author who specialises in turning the young on to reading with just this kind of fiction, does the Carnegie/Whitbread fixation with older children's books frustrate you?

I don't think about it much these days, although I will admit to being disappointed earlier in my career when I never seemed to get onto any shortlists. I think you're absolutely right, though... all the attention goes to novels at one end and picture books at the other... and the bigger, more 'prestigious' prizes (ie the Carnegie) seem to go to big, serious, grim, issue-based, terribly literary (in a self-conscious way) kinds of books. Or to very arty, message-laden picture books. I think there's still a very elitist culture in some areas of children's books. You won't win a prize or an award if you write comedy, or short books, or your books sell lots and kids like them... unless those prizes are awarded by kids themselves or by organisations which are a bit more populist and commercially minded. I think it's changing... the sheer success of Jacky Wilson and good old Harry Potter is helping, and I'm pleased to see such marvellous work being awarded prizes. But I still think there are plenty of areas of children's books where to be popular and successful with kids means you'll be looked down on, and won't win prizes.
The 5-8s category also has another problem division into the holy trinity... picture books, beginner readers, novels... looks neat, but isn't, and the messiest bit is in the middle. There's a huge difference between a 5 year old and an eight year old, much bigger than that between a 3 year old and a five year old, or a nine year old and an 11 year old. It's the hingeof childhood in a sense... but books of hugely differing levels are lumped together as 5-8s. At one end they're just a slight development from picture books - at the other, they're quite demanding short fiction. Even within some series that are supposed to be for one 'level' you get widely differing kinds of stories. It's also a very difficult act to pull off. Too many writers of longer fiction think they can earn a few bob by knocking off a short, farcical, funny story for a 5-8 series... a lot of the books I see aimed at this age range are very poor. I've thought a great deal about the children I write for, and try to write stories which address their concerns and interests. I try to do it in an original and interesting way... and write at a level they find easy to read. Which means attention to language, but also great care in plotting and character... for a new reader of 6 or 7, a 2000 word story is as big as a novel for an adult, so it has to have a corresponding level of interest... all of which makes them very hard to write. In fact, I think writing for this age range is one of the hardest things you can do...
Publishers and booksellers have a role to play... publishers are often unsure of how to market this kind of book, and retreat into series publishing with a reading scheme/literacy feel, and booksellers often don't present 'beginner reader fiction' very well, shoving it in shelves on their own in a corner. The Tommy Niner books are a case in point... written specifically for 7 and 8 year old boys as a bridge from shorter fiction to longer reads, they looked like a (very) short novel, and were usually shelved with fiction for kids over 10. I didn't have much control over that.... the result? No reviews, poor sales, two out of print now... although universally praised by teachers I met, and enjoyed by lots of kids (they wrote to me). If we want boys to keep reading, then we have to make sure there are books like these, and that they're put in the right hands...

7. Boys, the disgusting beasts, and girls too, but perhaps with greater reserve, are going to adore your bogey-classic, The Thing That Came From Jason's Nose. Was the idea for the main story--a bogey that turns into a radioactive monster--yours or the idea of the illustrator, Martin Chatterton?

One day, many, many years ago, I found myself writing a poem called THE THING. I wanted to do something that read like one of those B movie posters of the 50s (I saw a lot of those movies on TV in the early 60s and loved them... THE BLOB, IT CAME FROM OUTER SPACE, THEM, THE THING itself...). This is what I wrote...

See the teacher reel with horror!
Hear the children squeal and scream!
Watch them all retreat in terror...
From THE THING that's not a dream.

Listen to the slimy sliding!
See THE THING emerge some more!
Feel the panic, watch them hiding!
Could they make it to the door?

Is THE THING an alien creature?
Is that why the classroom froze?
No... 'Get a tissue!' said the teacher.
THE THING had come... from Jason's nose!

As a children's writer I started to get invited to schools, and one day I had the idea of telling kids I'd read them the world's most disgusting poem if they asked me lots of brilliant questions... and gradually it became an essential part of my patter in schools, a tease, a treat saved up for the very end of each session. It always went down a storm, too...
I never published the poem, though every time read it, I thought I really ought to do something with it. Years went by, then a couple of years ago, Gill Evans and Cally Poplak at Egmont told me about EPIX, their new series of graphic novels... and on the train coming back from the Edinburgh Festival, I suddenly thought of turning my disgusting poem into a disgusting graphic novel, with all the feel of those B movies I loved... and the rest, as they say is history. I had already worked with Martin on the Tommy Niner books, and THE MAGNIFICENT MUMMIES and MIDNIGHT IN MEMPHIS, and we've always really got on well. I love his stuff, and he and I both share an interest in popular culture... SF movies in particular. So he was always the right man for the job. He kinew inmmediately what I was aiming at, and we could exchange ideas in a sort of B-movie-reference-shorthand...
I wrote the story out as a script, a screenplay really, with blocks of description for how I saw the pictures, and speech bubble dialogue. Both Martin and I are very much at home with graphic novel/comic strip, and that's how I wrote it. I wrote way too much, but the final product is very close to the original storyline... the process was one of refinement, with Martin making suggestions and doing roughs, me cutting and re-writing to make them work, Martin re-doinmg the roughs... I was still re-writing bits at the artwork stage to make the plot work and ensure that every single speech bubble and bit of narrative did its job. Cally Poplak was our hard-working editor, and she did a terrific job too. The whole thing was a real pleasure to do, and I hope kids will like it. Martin and I have plans to do a series of graphic novels, so watch this space... my dream is to bring comic strip into mainstream children's publishing, and produce books of real quality and interest for all those reluctant readers more at home with THE TERMINATOR and THE MATRIX...

8. What kind of pleasure do you derive from working as an anthologist?

It started off as a money-making sideline... freelance writers need a variety of sources of income, and this was something somebody asked me to do. But early on I decided that most anthologies were pretty poor efforts... you saw the same poems and stories being endlessly re-cycled. So I decided to invite poeple to write original material for me, and the whole thing really grew from there.
I started off with poetry anthologies, aimed at 5-8s, but then I moved on to short stories, and did a couple for Miriam Hodgson at Methuen, one about relationships between parents and children (YOU'RE LATE, DAD) and one about brothers and sisters (LOVE THEM, HATE THEM), both of which were related to the kinds of interests behind the Dilly stories... then I started doing things for Transworld, and suggested various ideas to them for anthologies that filled gaps, and ended up doing quite a few... there are now two FOOTBALL FEVER anthologies (and a third to come), and a whole series aimed at top juniors (reluctant male readers, mostly!) - FANTASTIC SPACE STORIES, INCREDIBLY CREEPY STORIES, SENSATIONAL CYBER STORIES, and a new one for later this year (and the best so far!), PHENOMENAL FUTURE STORIES. With these I wanted to produce books that I would have wanted to read when I was 10 or 11... great stories, a real SF/horror movie feel... and they've been very successful.
Each one takes a long time. I think of the theme, then send out a detailed brief to about 120 writers and agents whose addresses I have on file, then wait to see what comes in. I see a lot of very poor stories, but occasionally brilliant ones come in, and gradually the collection takes shape. I write long letters to writers making suggestions for changes, do loads of editorial work (sometimes stories go through three or four re-writes), and am very, very fussy. Over the years I've developed some real friendships with other writers, I've published the early (or first!) work of quite a few who've gone on to write novels and become successful, and I've had the occasional run-in with some well- known writers over their work. But I don't think I've got too many enemies, and I've enjoyed it all enormously. Editing is an art in itself, and one too few writers learn... editing other people has taught me a lot about writing and I think has made me a better writer. And I think that's made it all worthwhile in itself...
In recent years I've started doing poetry anthologies again - for Macdonald, and a couple for Bloomsbury, coming out later this year, and I've really enjoyed reading some of the marvellous work poets have sent me. So much so that I'm beginning to feel I'd like to start writing some more poetry myself again...

9. As you know, ACHUKA always looks forward to your reviews in the Daily Telegraph. Children's book reviewing can be very bland, and it's good to come across someone prepared to find fault. You've been reviewing children's books for a very long time. Have there been discernable trends/fluctuations in quality over that time?

I really enjoy reviewing for The Daily Telegraph. Fiona Lafferty handles the commissioning, and she's terrific... she really knows children's books very well, and we have long conversations about particular books and writers. They've also given children's books plenty of space on a regular basis, which is not common in national newspapers! John Coldstream was the editor of the books pages for The Daily Telegraph until this month, and he was a great supporter of Fiona and her team of reviewers, and children's books in general.
As a reviewer, I think you have one primary duty above all - and that is to serve the reader. People who read the children's books reviews in The Daily Telegraph want to know what new books are available to their children, what those books are like, and whether they're worth buying. It's therefore incumbent on a reviewer (in my humble opinion) to answer those questions... which I do to the best of my ability as someone with a deep and abiding interest in children's books, and some knowledge of the field (and particular writers), as well as some experience of writing myself. I also believe it's a reviewer's duty to write entertainingly, so I spend a great deal of time trying to do that... each set of reviews takes me a couple of days of writing and polishing (as well as a lot of reading time!). I'm aware that not all reviewers of children's books would agree with me... there's a certain amount of special pleading, ie let's not be too critical of a particular book because even though it's not very well written. it's worthy, or by someone who's been around a long time, or because children's books don;t get much review coverage. I'm afraid I believe in calling a turkey a turkey, just as much as I believe it's important to draw people's attention to the great books that are being published... I also like to bring in references from other areas... just to make things interesting and to break down the barriers between the world of children's books and the rest of the world!
As far as fluctuations of quality are concerned, I think over the 18 years I've been reviewing, things have stayed pretty much the same. Publishers seem more professional these days, more children's books are being written, illustrated, sold and read... but it doesn't feel all that different. Publishers come and go... trends come and go... (and I've seen the same trends come and go two or three times)... authors come and go. But the percentage of great books seems to stay about the same. If I read 10 novels, three are awful, five are average, one is good, and one (if I'm lucky) is very good indeed. And once in a while a classic like BUMFACE comes along.

10. You work as a freelance, full-time writer and you also visit schools. How do you organise your time so that you end up spending a commensurate amount of time on writing, reviewing, anthologising, meetings, telephone calls etc.

It's very difficult to get the balance right. I'm most protective of my writing time, but I love school visits, so I'm always trying to juggle the two... I now work with Jan Powling of Speaking of Books, who organises my school visits, and that's a great help. I'm better at limiting myself to a certain number... I do work very hard, and I'm very disciplined, so I find it quite easy to arrange my time and get things done. These days I don't have too many other demands on my time - my kids are all pretty grown up, so I don't have to pick them up from school, although I miss that. I suppose the one thing I'm not very good at is having time off... I probably work far too hard, but then that's what us working class boys made good (driven high achievers) tend to do.

11. Has e-mail and the Internet changed the way you work at all?

It's more a question of speed than anything. I do use e-mail a lot, but that's just a speedier way of sending things to people. I don't surf the web a lot... I've used it for odd bits of research, and for checking out things to do with children's books and writing (hence my first visit to ACHUKA!), but that's about it.

12. You've lived in the same area of south London for a very long time. What is it about remaining in one place for so long that is important to you as a writer.

I don't think it's been that important so far. I love London, and spent a lot of time roaming the streets, the cinemas, the bookshops, the museums as a teenager... it was fantastic for the kind of intellectually curious teenager I was to have one of the world's great cities to explore for the price of a return to Charing Cross. I like south London, too... it's a funny old place, but it's home. Interestingly enough I'm now embarking on a massive six book football series, which I'm doing with a 'soap' feel, and I'm finding that a lot of the characters and stories I've known all my life in south London are finding their way into it. Part of me would quite like to be the Charlie Dickens of Penge for kids...

13. The Puffin website describes you as a "lifelong Beatles and John Lennon fan". What other fan clubs do you (figuratively) subscribe to, and do any of them influence the way you work and write.

I think it's fairly obvious from a lot of the stuff I wrote above that I'm just a slave to art in all its forms. Yes, I love the Beatles and Lennon, but hardly a day goes by without me discovering something else to read or listen to or look at that's amazing/fantastic/incredible. We live in a golden age for entertainment and information, and I just can't get enough... I suppose what it all comes down to is that inside I'm still the same 8 year old who stumbled into Anerley Library and founf it stuff with wonderful things. I keep finding more... and I'd like to add my few bits and pieces to the treasury other 8 year olds might stumble across, now and in the future...