Piers Torday

Piers Torday

About Author

Piers Torday began his career in theatre and then television as a producer and writer. His bestselling first book for children, The Last Wild, was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Award and nominated for the CILIP Carnegie Medal as well as numerous other awards. His second book, The Dark Wild, won the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize. The third book in the trilogy, The Wild Beyond, was published in 2015 to critical acclaim and There May Be a Castle was published in October 2016.

In regular demand as a speaker at schools and festivals, Piers is also a reading helper with Beanstalk, a former judge on the Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a Patron of Reading at Heathmere School and a trustee of the Pleasance Theatre. Born in Northumberland, Piers now lives in London with his husband and hopefully a cat.

Interview

THERE MAY BE A CASTLE

PUBLISHED BY QUERCUS

OCTOBER 2016


Award-winning author Piers Today's (The Last Wild trilogy) latest book for children is an accomplished and powerfully emotional story about love, death and confronting fear.

Eleven-year-old Mouse is a dreamer but when he is thrown from the family car after an accident, it is his strong imagination that leads him on a quest to find a castle; a castle that will help to save his family. He is helped on the way by a horse, a dinosaur and a sheep, but all the while they are pursued by the foreboding Pink Knight.

We spoke to PIERS TORDAY and asked him the following questions about THERE MAY BE A CASTLE:


Q: You were involved in writing for theatre and television, so what took you into writing for children?

A: I had always wanted to write but I suppose I hadn't found my voice. I love theatre and had written plays and bits and pieces for television, but it wasn't until my dad, who is a businessman, wrote a novel that I thought I should try. His success with his novel, 'Salmon Fishing in the Yemen', was like a bolt out of the blue. Suddenly there was all this interest from around the world and then they were talking about film deals - it changed everything for me, so I took myself off to Arvon where people were encouraging about my early drafts, so I set of on a new writing journey.

I wasn't sure which age I was writing for but when my agent saw my book she said, ' Talking animals - that's a children's book', so the last four years have been for me a discovery and rediscovery of children's books.


Q: What do you enjoy about writing for children?

A: The great thing about writing for children is that you can write about anything, as long as it's done in the right way and you have the right tone of voice. From the age of about eight children are inquisitive and curious about the world and their primary motivation is to be older, so they are hoovering up knowledge.

They live in a multilayered world with television, the internet, gaming, and the world is exciting but baffling. As a writer, that's a challenge I find fascinating; how can I help them make sense of a nonsensical world? We can't impose sense on the world but we can help children to think how they might find a way through it.

I also like to write stories that have substance, that are about something. The Last Wild was me trying to make sense of what we are doing to this planet, while There May be a Castle was my response to what was quite a sad time for me.


Q: There May be a Castle looks at death, and our fear of it; quite big subjects for children. Why did you want to approach this through a story for children?

A: About three years ago I lost my father, who had been ill for a long time, and my stepfather, who hadn't been ill but was old. So I experienced two different deaths very quickly in my family and it was a very sad time but it made me reflect on death and what it is, and how we don't really deal with death anymore. Our mortality rates are down thanks to our quality of life, the food we eat and the treatments now available so we don't talk about death anymore, although it's the one certainty that we will all die. I wondered why we have this taboo in talking about death while other cultures and times are very open about it.

It's the one question children always ask; where do I come from and what happens when I die? I don't want to upset children, quite the opposite. If you don't deal with the idea of death then anxieties can emerge in other ways; fear of the other, fear of the unknown, because you've not dealt with the central fear.

So we tell ourselves stories - we're very good at doing that, telling stories about the shining city on the hill whether that's Jerusalem or, in this book, the castle - but we have to tell the truth behind the stories. Hope is important but it needs to be authentic, it's important to tell people, 'Make the most of your life and be happy, but do it in the knowledge that today could be your last. Embrace the opportunities that you have.'

So while this story involved death, it's also about the incredible potential of humanity within these parametres; if too much energy is spent worrying about death, you won't live. By all means go ahead and find a cure for cancer by 2030, but what are we buying this longevity for?

All children have this incredible potential to bring about change in the world and what we should do is encourage them to fulfill their potential; not hold them back with fears.


Q: What inspired you to use a boy on a quest as the driver for this story?

A: It was inspired by a real life story in the US that I read about. A mother was driving her sons in the snow and the car came off the road; the younger boy walked several miles in the snow to get help. So my story is about love and how it can inspire the most incredible acts in the face of devastating odds.


Q: During Mouse's quest, we come across knights, dragons, castles and dangerous creatures; why do you use such traditional elements in his quest?

A: Because I'm playing around with quite unusual ideas, I needed to use traditional tropes that people will recognise and understand as the framework; then I can explore the stories from that. If I had created an alternate fantasy world, what I was trying to explore would have been lost. So instead I have drawn on the stories we all know and that my dad told me as a child.


Q: The other characters in Mouse's quest include a horse called Nonky and a dinosaur, Trex, both inspired by Mouse's toys. How did they develop?

A: Sometimes these things just pop into your head and the horse and its name just came to me. I wanted Mouse to have friends during his quest but I had just written a book about a boy who goes on an adventure with talking animals ('The Last Wild') and I wanted to do something different in this book but it ends up not being that different....

Mouse interacts very differently with each of the characters, the horse, the dinosaur and the sheep (called 'Bar') because of the different ways children interact with stories. Children might project a very articulate character, like Nonky, but also have a more basic type in the mix, like Trex. They are all part of the mix to a young child with a developing imagination; they are all there, and they are all fun.

I also felt there was a danger of the story becoming sentimental and these characters bring a humour that helps avoid that. I'm always astonished, when people describe very hard times in life with a kind of black humour; humour helps us through those difficult events.


Q: Your characters in the story often remind the boy that this is 'his story' and that he can change it. Are you suggesting to children that they can also change their own 'stories'?

A: I liked the idea of children driving their own stories. So often today we test and judge and evaluate children but we never sit down and say to them, 'at the end it's up to you'. Children are born with different opportunities and difficulties but whatever those are, ultimately it's your life.

If you can realise your own potential, even as a young child, what can be achieved? In this story it is something dramatic and personal; we're not talking becoming the president of the US, that's too far off. But just as they do in their stories, children can become their own wizard and defeat the lord of evil. If you love Harry Potter, there is a character who achieved amazing things and discovered what happened to his parents, but what can we take from these stories? So I am also exploring the role of reality and imagination.


Q: So There May be a Castle is also a celebration of children's imagination?

A: I was a chronic daydreamer as a boy and there's a lot of anxiety these days about children escaping into ipads and their phones. When I was young it was all about watching too much television and when the first video shop opened we signed up straight away and I remember watching Watership Down 35 times.

Of course we need to be cautious about our new digital landscape but we need also to remember that play is a huge part in developing children's imagination and we must let children find their way, with guidance, but it's about finding that balance.

I am saying that we need to let children play with their imaginations. If a child says it wants to write a story about a box meeting another box. It might seem a crazy idea but they must be allowed to follow it through. And we should celebrate that imagination, yes.


Q: Are you planning to write other children's books?

A: I am starting a new children's series exploring how children might react to change in the world. At the moment there's a lot of chat about politics and democracy and lots of discussions going on and I'm interested in exploring that and how children react to it. But I can't say too much more about that just yet.

Author's Titles