Graham Marks
About Author
Graham is an ex-graphic designer-turned author. When he's not writing teen/YA novels for Bloomsbury and younger fiction for Usborne, he is Children's Books Editor for the -trade paper Publishing News. In this capacity, he has interviewed just about every major publisher, author and illustrator in the field.
Graham Marks was interviewed by ReadingZone in 2006, following publication of his novel Snatched! for readers aged eight to 12 years.
Snatched! is a historical novel about a young orphan called Daniel who brought up by a circus. When he is kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity, he starts to unlock the riddle of his past...
Interview with Graham Marks:
Q: Orphans, mistaken identities and the poverty of Victorian London - it's all a bit Dickensian, isn't it?
A: Actually, I hated Dickens when I was at school, they made us read Little Dorrit - I might have been alright with Oliver Twist.
Q: So why is the book set in the past?
A: Writing historical novels frees up what the children can do - they can get up to anything, almost, without their parents worrying about why they were late for school!
Q: Did you have to do a lot of research about Victorian times?
A: I normally set my books in real cities like London, Tokyo or New York - my other books are for teenagers. So I had to read a lot to find out about Victorian England. I read about circuses and social histories. I think they knew how to enjoy themselves in 1855 - unless you were very poor and then it was pretty awful.
Q: Read about anything interesting?
A: There was a guy called Henry Mayhew, who was like a reporter. The Victorians had just invented shorthand and were amazed by what it could let them do - it was like having a tape recorder, you could write down everything someone said. The Victorians were also very socially aware of different parts of their society.
Henry Mayhew used shorthand to go and interview ordinary people and write down exactly what they said and thought in a book called Mayhew's Characters. He writes about people like 'the blind lace seller' or 'the street seller of rhubarb and spice'. There's even 'an Italian with a monkey'. His book gave me a good idea of the kinds of people Daniel might come across when he ends up in London.
Q: Daniel's name is easy - he was found in the lion's cage. But what inspired the name of the circus master, Hubble?
A: Actually, I misheard something on the radio - I thought I heard someone say, "Hubble and the child" and I started to imagine who Hubble and the child might be. A week or so later, I heard it again on the radio - and realised it was 'Help a London Child'! But by then I had the germ of an idea for the novel, starting with a baby left in the lion's cage.
Q: What do you do when you're not writing?
A: To relax, I like cooking and walking and cooking. So maybe go for a long walk, and then cook for friends. When I was a child I used to like daydreaming a lot, too. Now I feel like I do it for a living, it's great.
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