Guinea Pigs Online
Guinea Pigs Online: Christmas Quest is different from the first three stories because the guinea pigs travel further than Strawberry Park. Quite a bit further: Peru! It is an exciting adventure involving flying, skiing, snowboarding and riding on llamas.
Why does every child need a hooking read at Christmas time?
Every child needs a hooking read all the time, but I guess at Christmas there is so much going on you need a good hook to distract you. And lots of children get books at Christmas who maybe don’t like reading that much so the book’s got to be good.
Who did you used to read over the festive period?
I can’t remember exactly what I read at Christmas but as a child I enjoyed books like The Railway Children by E. Nesbit (who also wrote The Treasure Seekers and Five Children and It) and one called Lotte and Lisa that was made into a film called The Parent Trap. It’s by Eric Kastner, the man who wrote Emil and the Detectives (dramatised and on at the National Theatre this Christmas). I used to get hardback books from my parents for Christmas. I remember once year receiving a wonderful edition of The Jungle Book with beautiful illustrations.
Jennifer, you are a former lawyer, so at what point did you decide to change your career path and write children’s books?
I took a career break to have children and enjoyed reading books with them so much I decided to have a go at it myself. Of course it was much harder than I thought it would be! A lot of manuscripts and several years later I met up with Amanda and we started working on Guinea Pigs Online together.
Please tell us a bit about the Atticus Claw series.
Atticus Claw is the world’s greatest cat burglar. Things change for him when he finds a home with the Cheddar family in Littleton-on-Sea and Atticus decides to stop being a cat burglar and become a police cat instead. He has lots of adventures and has to outsmart some devious villains including Jimmy Magpie and his greedy gang of birds as well as Ginger Biscuit, Atticus’s sworn enemy from when he was a kitten.
Amanda, at what point did you decide to leave acting for writing?
For a while I did both. I did stand-up comedy so I had to write my own jokes. I stopped acting when I was about 30. I found I liked writing more. You don’t have to work in the evenings and you can wear your pyjamas all day.
Please tell us about your three novels written for the 9 plus age group.
They are all comedy-dramas about growing up. The Boys’ Club is about a boy who’s scared of his friendships with girls changing when he becomes a teenager (and they do!), Big Bones is about a girl who thinks she’s too fat and is uncomfortable about a German boy coming to stay as part of the school German exchange. Anna/Bella is about a girl whose parents are divorced and she has different clothes, attitude and boyfriend depending which home she’s at.
How did your collaboration come about?
We were in the same writing group. The writing group meets once a month in a cafe and we talk about our writing. We were chatting about writing a series and came up with the idea of GPOL. Jennifer and I volunteered to do the writing and took it forward together.
What is next for you both?
We are writing a new series for Quercus about Puppies Online. It is about three puppies who meet on holiday at a kennels in a lighthouse. They become friends and have adventures together, involving sun, sand and technology. I am also writing a new comedy series for Faber called Chicken Mission.