Lari Don
About Author
Lari Don is an award-winning writer for young people of all ages. She loved Scottish traditional tales as a child, and now loves gathering myths, legends and folktales from all over the world to inspire her novels.
Since becoming a full-time author, she has written more than 30 children's books, from picture books and early readers to middle-grade adventure novels and a teen thriller.
Lari is passionate about visiting schools and libraries to share the traditional tales she loves, to show how those old stories can be used to inspire new stories, and to encourage young people to create their own adventures. Fierce, Fearless and Free is her fifth collection of traditional tales for Bloomsbury, returning to the theme of her first, the bestselling Girls, Goddesses and Giants.
She lives in Edinburgh with her husband and two fierce, fearless and free daughters. @LariDonWriter
Author link
Interview
FIERCE, FEARLESS AND FREE
BLOOMSBURY EDUCATION
MARCH 2020
FIERCE, FEARLESS AND FREE is collection of heroine stories from around world. What you won't find in this collection is stories of princesses waiting to be saved; these are heroine stories where 'strong, fierce women plotted, schemed, took action, showed kindness, used magic and trickery, and made their own destiny'.
The stories, the latest collection from LARI DON, are also immensely readable and will be enjoyed by children across age ranges, from seven to 11 years.
The stories are drawn from around the world, including China, Scotland, Armenia, Italy and Nigeria.
We asked LARI DON to tell us more about FIERCE, FEARLESS AND FREE:
Q: What took you into writing for children?
A: My love of the books I read as a child (Diana Wynne Jones, CS Lewis, Roger Lancelyn Green...) then my reintroduction to kids' books when I became a parent. I'd already been writing short stories and flash fiction for adults, but once I started playing with ideas for children's books, I realised that was much more fun!
Q: What gave you the idea of re-writing myths and legends for children?
A: As well as being an author, I'm a storyteller, passing on traditional tales by telling them out loud to audiences. It's not possible to meet every child and tell them every story, so it made sense to write some of my favourite stories down and pass them on that way. I try to keep the written version as close as possible to the rhythm of the language in the spoken tale.
Q: Can you give us a glimpse into what Fierce, Fearless and Free is about and what you wanted to achieve with your retellings?
A: I love traditional tales, particularly adventure stories about defeating monsters and escaping danger, but I've always been a bit bothered by the typical role of girls in these stories, either as victims to be rescued or prizes to be given away, if they appear at all. And there are plenty of folktales about girls, but they are often passive characters, rewarded for being patient or silent or enduring or pretty. I wanted to tell stories about girls who DID things. So I started looking for them, by digging about in old books... And I found them!
I don't tend to radically alter stories with passive girls to make them active or put girls into stories that were originally told about boys. I'm more interested in finding the stories that have always been told about strong active girls solving their own (and other people's) problems.
The oldest story in Fierce, Fearless And Free is about a Sumerian goddess who wrestles a mountain, and that myth is at least 4000 years old. We have always told stories about strong girls, and I want to bring those wonderful stories back into the light!
Q: Where did you research your myths and legends - were they hard to track down? Do you feel powerful girls and women are generally given a bad press in the stories you researched?
A: Many of them were hard to track down, but that's part of the fun! With a few of them, it was possible to find several different version of the same story - like Medea defeating the first-ever robot on the shores of Crete - which meant I could develop my own retelling from elements of different versions. Sometimes I had to build the story from little snippets and hints, like the Lithuanian story of Neringa and the sea dragon. But my favourite way of finding a story is not reading it in a book, it's hearing it from another storyteller, like the Ecuadorian tale about a girl and a condor, which I heard from a teenage Scottish storyteller, Ailsa Dixon, who had heard it from two Ecuadorian girls she met at a scout camp. That's how stories travel!
And women have a variety of roles in these old tales. Quite a few of the baddies in Fierce, Fearless And Free are female: a hungry werewolf, a child-stealing ogre, an ambitious queen... But the stars of these stories - the girls who escape or defeat or thwart the baddies - are generally fairly positive characters, certainly when I tell the stories! But perhaps the fact that some tellings of these tales have traditionally ended with the girls getting married and settling down was a way to neutralise their power?
When I retell the stories, I generally miss out the 'married a handsome prince ending' because it's either irrelevant to the adventure plot, or it actively undermines the girl's independence. I'd rather give young readers the chance to imagine their own happy ever afters...
Q: How did you decide which stories to include in your collection? Were you looking for stories we might be familiar with or did you want to find less familiar stories? Do you feel retelling familiar stories might have more impact, as the children are more likely to recognise how your story has been changed?
A: I chose them because they were exciting stories! And my main goal was to share fabulous old stories that were 'new' and unfamiliar to most of my readership. There are so many stories out there, we don't just have to play with the same few dozen. There is nothing more satisfying than sharing a story with kids who didn't know it before, and who now have it in their head, to pass on to others and to power their own imaginations.
However, I do think that hearing different versions of similar stories can show how traditional tales change and evolve naturally. So in a previous collection (Girls, Goddesses and Giants) I told an early French version of Little Red Riding Hood where the girl escapes from the wolf all on her own, without needing a woodcutter. And in Fierce, Fearless And Free I retell an Italian folktale which is similar to the Rapunzel story we all know, but with a few differences: she has to find three acorns to escape, and there's a fantastic magical chase scene. But I didn't make these changes, these two 'girl with long hair trapped in tower' stories will have diverged as they were told by different storytellers centuries ago.
Q: Do you have a favourite among these stories?
A: My favourite is whichever one is the best option to tell to the children in front of me on any given day! I'm having fun with the first story in the collection at the moment: an Armenian folktale about a girl who uses a ruthless trick to escape from a werewolf. I love watching the kids' faces when they realise she's met a werewolf, then their wincing delight when they realise how she's about to trick the werewolf...
Q: What would you like your young (and older!) readers to take from your book?
A: That we don't just have to create new stories that show diversity and give us strong role models, because if we look hard enough, we can find the whole world in old stories too! And I'd love it if readers of any age put the book down and shared some of the stories out loud with others, in their own way, in their own voice...
Q: Will you be writing more retellings of myths and legends?
A: I hope so!
Q: What else are you working on?
A: I'm currently writing the first novel in a middle-grade adventure trilogy.
Q: For our schools and libraries, can you tell us a bit about what your school events involve?
A: I'm passionate about showing how the old tales can be used to inspire new stories. So I would generally share a traditional tale and read from a novel, to show how the old stories can offer images and characters and questions that can lead to new stories. Then I'd encourage the pupils to play with story ideas of their own.
Q: The stories in your collection come from across the globe - are you a traveller? Are there any places in the world where you haven't visited yet but hope to one day?
A: I travel widely in Scotland, to research locations and landscape for my novels. But I don't have to travel the world to find myths and legends, because stories travel the world more easily than mums with school-age children, so I tend to find my stories in libraries or by listening to other storytellers!
Q: What are your favourite escapes from writing?
A: Does reading count?
Q: If you also read children's books, are there any you have come across recently that you'd recommend to our members - especially, perhaps, books involving myths, legends or retellings?
A: I love reading children's books - that's why I write them! Probably my favourite series based on ancient stories and lore is Jonathan Stroud's Bartimaeus Sequence. It's a wonderful story with amazing characters and a stunning ending, but it's also based on very impressive research.
I'm doing a bit of reading around the magic of the djinn right now, and I keep bumping up against things and thinking 'oh THAT's where he got it from...' So, these books are a wonderful example of how the old tales can inspire wonderful new fiction!
Fierce, Fearless and Free: Girls in myths and legends from around the world
