Journalism: all articles in categorised under Interviews

Jacqueline Wilson interview

16 February 2009

'I'm very alarmed,' says the famous woman sitting next to me at the Covent Garden Hotel. 'The bullying, the distressing roles, the crying, all makes you so anxious for those children. It's compulsive, but very disturbing.' Jacqueline Wilson could almost be talking about her own fiction but she is in fact considering the Channel Four programme Boys and Girls Alone which has been causing so much controversy this month. Wilson, who is referred to, hurtfully, in some middle-class households as 'the devil woman' has published the second part of her autobiography, My Secret Diary. It sounds more suggestive to the adult ear than it is; like her books, it contains an utterly unpretentious story about a young girl, born the year after the War ended, and her problems with dating, dancing, dreams and friends. Her passion for writing has made her Britain's best-selling children's author, with over 90 novels to her name, and our former Children's Laureate . A heroine to a generation of children between 8 and 13, she is also almost as reviled by some parents as another popular British author, Enid Blyton

Lian Hearn

12 February 2009

The true identity of Lian Hearn was until recently one of the most closely guarded secrets of children's literature. Who was the author of the best-selling novel Across the Nightingale Floor, an adventure set in medieval Japan which readers from 8 to 80 became passionate about in the space of a single chapter? Was it a man or a woman? Was the author Japanese or European? Where had this passionate, ferocious, magical tale of revenge and love sprung from? Snapped up by Universal Studios and the producer of Indiana Jones, it is one of many crossover fantasies progressing, in the wake of Harry Potter's success, to a cinema near you. Yet for three years, nobody knew who the author was. Eventually the word spread that Lian Hearn was Gillian Rubinstein, an English-born Australian writer of teenage fantasy. The rangy, white-haired, white-skinned woman sitting opposite me does not look remotely Japanese; only her extreme stillness and reserve suggests something that isn't Western.

Anthony Horowitz

12 February 2009

If you were to ask a boy aged between eight and twelve who his greatest fictional hero is, the answer wouldn't be Harry Potter, but Alex Rider. The reluctant teenaged spy, blackmailed into working for MI6 has now saved the world four times, and is back in Scorpia, published this month to a fanfare of publicity that is, for once, completely deserved. For Anthony Horowitz, who published his first children's novel at 23 and has written over 23 books while simultaneously becoming one of Britain's leading TV scriptwriters, is himself something of a hero. His struggle to break through a mountain of indifference was so monumental that he twice gave up - once after being told by his ex-publisher that 'you might as well stop.' That was before JK Rowling galvanised the children's market, and before Alex entered the picture in Stormbreaker, the novel that, according to The Ultimate Book Guide, children want to see filmed more than any other - and a series that, as one critic put it, 'reads like every bored schoolboy's fantasy, only a thousand times slicker and more exciting.'

Raymond Briggs

12 February 2009

Fungus the Bogeyman exploded into childhoods thirty years ago with the disgusting thrill of a boil bursting. He was green! He was slimey! He loved eating dead snails, smelling farts and wearing filthy clothes. His entire life consisted of doing and promoting all the things that children are forbidden to do or even think about. Perhaps more surprisingly, he was the work of Raymond Briggs, now better-known for his pristine fantasies The Snowman, The Bear and Father Christmas - all favourite Yuletide TV fare...

Michelle Paver

01 September 2006

Michelle Paver is showing me how to make friends with a wolf. 'If you give it a hard stare' - her eyes suddenly drill into mine like agates - 'it'll get upset. Whereas if you look at it with an open attitude and a soft, grazing look in your eyes'- her large eyes melt into something between toffee and chocolate - 'it knows not to be scared.'