Chris Riddell at the literature festival
Sunday at the Bath Children’s Literature Festival saw an evening full of laughter. Chris Riddell, Children’s Laureate from 2015–2017 and current political cartoonist, was entertaining an audience full of his Goth Girl fans.
Having been loitering in Bath between events I turned up at the Guildhall early for this one. Asking an attendant if there was somewhere to sit while I waited I was told people were already queuing if I wanted to join the line. I was 45 minutes early. Admittedly there weren’t too many people there, but those that were excitedly reading their Goth Girl books in anticipation.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that I was about to see an illustrator do a talk, and that that would mean we were in for something a bit different.
As we walked into the room there were little gasps from the children as they saw Chris sitting on the platform already. Usually we’d be sitting around for a while listening to the kids regaling their parent’s with the best bits of the books, which I sort of missed. This time as we waited the talk was more of a whisper, and the girl next to me was deep in conversation with her friend about the way he was drawing. There were clearly a lot of budding illustrators amongst them.
We were all about to be treated to an event with a difference, spoken and illustrated answers.
Goth Girl
A huge gasp went up in the audience when it was mentioned that this was the last Goth Girl book. But it’s okay, stop your own gasping now. There are plans to do another book with some short stories in that will include the 2015 World Book Day book Goth Girl and the Pirate Queen.
There seem to be lots of ideas still swimming about in his head, a big ship, the highlands of Scotland (because he wants to draw the cattle with the crazy hair), so I’m sure there will still be some fun to be had with Goth Girl.
Hearing a reading from Goth Girl and the Sinister Symphony, I was delighted to see how much humour for children and adults there were in it’s pages. Metaphorical Smith, the landscape gardener, and Donald Ear-Trumpet being two of the moments that entertained me the most.
On the cover of Sinister Symphony you can see Ada holding a lion cub, and we were told the story of how this came about. Chris was having a conversation with a friend about his love of The Chronicles of Narnia, the idea of going through a wardrobe to another world was amazing, and Alsatian was wonderful… “Do you mean… Aslan?”
One of the perils of putting little surprise books in the back of our books is that occasionally you have to read them. In Cape Town he decided to do a reading from this book rather than the novel, Ghost Of A Mouse.
But when you get to a certain age, the size of printing doesn’t look like it used to. He squinted and he moved the page further away, and then back in again. More squinting. Then thankfully someone in the audience handed him her glasses to borrow which made the whole experience much easier.
As you can see, lots of inspiration is taken from real life and fiction, with hilarious reactions from the readers.
Hiding out in the bottom of his garden drawing in his office, watching the singalong version of Frozen, Chris added a character called Elsa the show queen. She loves to make snow men and strap them to catapults and fling them through the air. Being taught by Raymond Briggs at Brighton Art School *might* have something to do with the flying snow men… possibly.
Professional jealously is a thing no matter your trade. In this case it happened to be over a certain stripy clothed gentleman. Having seen the artist’s print-making skills of crowd scenes someone suggested that he add a little character for people to find… and so the popular children’s books were born.
Lots of projects in the pipeline for lovers of Chris’ books. One top secret one that he’s not allowed to talk about, but he could tell us that he had to sign a non-disclosure agreement about it.
We’ll also get to see his illustrated edition of Alice in Wonderland, a picture book featuring Little Green Rain Cape, and a wordless book about Mr Munroe’s adventure coming soon.
