The Kidlit Interview Series
Children's literature encompasses some of the most imaginative, entertaining, well-written fiction out there, so every Tuesday I shine a spotlight on it by interviewing a different middle-grade author. Come back regularly to find writers answering crucial questions like who they'd want riding alongside come the zombie apocalypse...
This week I'm delighted to have the award-winning Katherine Rundell as my guest. Her enchanting, whimsical novel Rooftoppers has been shortlisted for numerous prizes including the Carnegie, and is fresh off winning not only the Blue Peter Book Award, but also the Waterstones Prize (see a smiley Katherine below, in orange, with her trophy!).
Katherine is a Fellow in English Literature at All Souls College in Oxford; her research is in Renaissance literature and she also teaches a bit of feminist theory. She wire-walks, and loves heights. Her first book, The Girl Savage, is about a girl growing up half-wild in Zimbabwe, where she spent her childhood; Rooftoppers is about a gang of children living secret lives on the rooftops of Paris, and a girl searching for her mother, chasing snatches of music across the city.
Katherine is a Fellow in English Literature at All Souls College in Oxford; her research is in Renaissance literature and she also teaches a bit of feminist theory. She wire-walks, and loves heights. Her first book, The Girl Savage, is about a girl growing up half-wild in Zimbabwe, where she spent her childhood; Rooftoppers is about a gang of children living secret lives on the rooftops of Paris, and a girl searching for her mother, chasing snatches of music across the city.
THE HERE BE DRAGONS 8 KILLER QUESTIONS
1) Uh oh, it’s the zombie apocalypse. Which author (living or dead) do you want riding shotgun?
John Donne, who is the subject of my doctorate, was a ferociously clever man - he'd be brilliant company and I think he'd have good strategies for evading the undead. Or Beckett, I think, would be both wily and fighty - and, as he went down, he would say things like this: 'No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.'
2) Look, I got a time machine on eBay! Where do you want to go? (Said time machine may possibly malfunction and leave you there. Possibly. It was *very* cheap.)
I'm torn! Going back to the sixteenth century to meet Donne and Shakespeare would be glorious and would also make my research project *much* easier. But it would have to be the future, five hundred years from now. I hope and believe we'll be free from institutional sexism and racism, and also that those skintight zip-front silver jumpsuits will at last have come into fashion.
3) What’s your favourite thing about writing for kids?
Kids are brilliant readers; they carry their favourite books close to their hearts, and they invest the world you've written with details of their own - a lovely kid once told me her favourite scene was when Sophie and Matteo waltz on the rooftops; which doesn't actually happen. And the books I loved when I was about 10-12 shaped my vision of what bravery and kindness might look like.
4) A witch has cast a spell on you (sorry about that) and you’ve woken up as a character in a children’s book – what’s your special talent or power?
I'd like to live in Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series: in real life I'm quite scruffy but I'd like to be a nine-lifed enchanter with an immaculate dress-sense.
5) What’s the scariest or strangest thing you’ve ever done?
As you might know - because I bang on about it ceaselessly - I love climbing and being up high. I've been on the rooftops of about half the Oxford colleges, and a few beautiful buildings in London. And just recently I flew circuits in a tiny two-seater bi-plane in Zimbabwe - it was old and the wind came in through the cracks, but I was knocked breathless with the joy of it.
6) What’s something you wish you’d known about publishing when you started out?
I wrote my first book at 21, and if I'd been a bit older I think I would have been less startled and dismayed to find out that publishing is very much an industry, and has imperatives of its own. I love the actual writing, and I adore meeting the kids; but the PR bit can be hard. One of the reasons I love climbing beyond the eyeline is that I love to be invisible and see without being seen, so self-promotion was always going to be a fraught business.
7) What would your daemon be?
I get asked this quite a lot on school visits - I find it's almost impossible not to sound grandiose or vain or David Brent-ish! I'd love to say a bird, but I'm not a good enough person for a bird yet: probably, realistically, some kind of squirrel.
8) My book doesn’t have dragons, but it does have... feeding the birds whilst tightrope-walking high above Paris in the moonlight.
John Donne, who is the subject of my doctorate, was a ferociously clever man - he'd be brilliant company and I think he'd have good strategies for evading the undead. Or Beckett, I think, would be both wily and fighty - and, as he went down, he would say things like this: 'No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found.'
2) Look, I got a time machine on eBay! Where do you want to go? (Said time machine may possibly malfunction and leave you there. Possibly. It was *very* cheap.)
I'm torn! Going back to the sixteenth century to meet Donne and Shakespeare would be glorious and would also make my research project *much* easier. But it would have to be the future, five hundred years from now. I hope and believe we'll be free from institutional sexism and racism, and also that those skintight zip-front silver jumpsuits will at last have come into fashion.
3) What’s your favourite thing about writing for kids?
Kids are brilliant readers; they carry their favourite books close to their hearts, and they invest the world you've written with details of their own - a lovely kid once told me her favourite scene was when Sophie and Matteo waltz on the rooftops; which doesn't actually happen. And the books I loved when I was about 10-12 shaped my vision of what bravery and kindness might look like.
4) A witch has cast a spell on you (sorry about that) and you’ve woken up as a character in a children’s book – what’s your special talent or power?
I'd like to live in Diana Wynne Jones' Chrestomanci series: in real life I'm quite scruffy but I'd like to be a nine-lifed enchanter with an immaculate dress-sense.
5) What’s the scariest or strangest thing you’ve ever done?
As you might know - because I bang on about it ceaselessly - I love climbing and being up high. I've been on the rooftops of about half the Oxford colleges, and a few beautiful buildings in London. And just recently I flew circuits in a tiny two-seater bi-plane in Zimbabwe - it was old and the wind came in through the cracks, but I was knocked breathless with the joy of it.
6) What’s something you wish you’d known about publishing when you started out?
I wrote my first book at 21, and if I'd been a bit older I think I would have been less startled and dismayed to find out that publishing is very much an industry, and has imperatives of its own. I love the actual writing, and I adore meeting the kids; but the PR bit can be hard. One of the reasons I love climbing beyond the eyeline is that I love to be invisible and see without being seen, so self-promotion was always going to be a fraught business.
7) What would your daemon be?
I get asked this quite a lot on school visits - I find it's almost impossible not to sound grandiose or vain or David Brent-ish! I'd love to say a bird, but I'm not a good enough person for a bird yet: probably, realistically, some kind of squirrel.
8) My book doesn’t have dragons, but it does have... feeding the birds whilst tightrope-walking high above Paris in the moonlight.
So jealous, one day I will climb the roofs of Oxford colleges too! That sounds magical. If you'd like to find out more, you can look up Katherine on Twitter.
Come back next Tuesday for the Here Be Dragons interview with Julia Lee, author of The Mysterious Misadventures of Clemency Wrigglesworth!
