LIFESTYLE

As Bath Festival of Children’s Literature embarks upon its fourth outing, Anna Britten talks to participant and local teen fiction queen Joanna Nadin.

The great thing about the Bath Festival of Children’s Literature – which begins Fri 23 Sept and runs for 10 days – is that it’s nothing like as formidably highbrow as it sounds. This annual gathering of stars in the ever-expanding universe of children’s and young adult fiction, you see, is not just about getting today’s youth to read the sort of wholesome or ‘improving’ fiction their parents want them to (although that’s obviously an obsession round these parts). It’s also about building Lego models, meeting the Moshi Monsters and dressing up as a zombie. In short, there’s something for every type of non-adult reader – from gobby geezerlings and girly girls to their tiny siblings. No bookworm? No problem.

This year’s event is the biggest and most exciting yet, with tickets for many events long since sold out. Bath-based author Joanna Nadin is one of many top names on the bill but she also worked as a volunteer during the festival’s inception in 2008. She is impressed by this year’s line-up, which includes Roddy Doyle (pictured above), Andy Stanton, Francesca Simon, Eoin Colfer, Axel Scheffler, Melvin Burgess, Meg Rosoff, Darren Shan, Charlie Higson, Robert Muchamore, Jacqueline Wilson, Judith Kerr and ‘The Office’ star-turned-children’s author Mackenzie Crook.

“When the idea was first mooted of a Bath Kids’ Lit Fest I don’t think any of us imagined anything quite as star-studded as this year’s programme,” she says. “It’s just got bigger, and better, but at its heart is the same mission: to get more kids reading, more often.”

The teen fiction world in particular has seen a massive boom in the past decade, with teen and young adult sections in every bookshop, and hundreds of new titles out every month. As many parents will recall, it wasn’t always that way.

“With the exception of ‘Sweet Valley High’, I don’t remember there being much ‘teen fiction’ as such,” says Joanna. “Most of us jumped straight from reading ‘Five on Kirrin Island’ under the duvet to Shirley Conran’s ‘Lace’ behind the bike sheds. It wasn’t until a Canadian girl came to my class in 1983 with a bookcase full of Judy Blume that I knew the genre existed. “

As the author of the popular ‘Rachel Riley’ series for teenage girls and a new creation, ‘Buttercup Mash’, as well as many titles for younger children, Joanna uses box sets of ‘Freaks and Geeks’, ‘Dawson’s Creek’ and ‘My So-Called Life’ “and my diaries from 1985” to tap into her inner teenager. “The music references and clothes change but the emotions and embarrassment don’t.”

“Buttercup is sort of the anti-me. I spent most of my teen years (in small-town Essex) desperately wishing my life were less normal, with flaky, bohemian or, better, divorced parents and some kind of tragic terminal disease. Buttercup spends her days (in Bath) desperately wishing her mum wasn’t an art-school hippy drop-out and hoping her dad doesn’t turn out to be a homeless man called Fergal O’Shaughnessy.”

Having volunteered and appeared at it, Joanna also can’t wait to be in the audience at this year's festival. “I’m looking forward to ‘Writing for Children and Teenagers’, a must for teen authors old and new. And Bath author Moira Young, whose dystopian debut ‘Blood Red Road’ was already a phenomenon before it was published. And Andy Stanton on the first Saturday. Both my daughter and I are mildly obsessed with his beard. Plus he made my friend’s son laugh so hard last year he was sick.”

JOANNA NADIN APPEARED WITH CATHY CASSIDY, SAMANTHA MACINTOSH AND KAREN MCCOMBIE IN ‘QUEENS OF TEEN’ AT BATH FESTIVAL OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE ON MON 26 SEPT. FFI: WWW.BATHKIDSLITFEST.ORG.UK

Right YA

Joanna Nadin’s tips for would-be YA (young adult) authors.

1 Know where you’re going, even if you don’t know exactly how you’re going to get there. I plot the outcome of every scene so that when I come to actually set off into the unknown, I feel I have a satnav, or at least a map and compass, and it doesn’t seem half as scary.

2 Write, even if you don’t like the words that come out. You can always go back and change them later.

3 And I should say “turn off Facebook and Twitter”, but they’re lifelines to the outside world. Writing is a lonely business and being in your own head for that long isn’t healthy. You need small talk. Plus if I need an idea for a name I can get hundreds of replies in seconds.

Copyright Anna Britten 2011