Jo Shapcott is the award-winning author of Electroplating the Baby, Phrase Book and My Life Asleep, which were gathered together in a selected poems, Her Book.

Of Mutability

Her new collection Of Mutability explores the concept of change – in nature, in the body and in human interaction. As a collection it celebrates the small wonders of life, acting as a reminder of its transience.

Jo Shapcott discusses this new collection as well as her earlier work in the new Faber Podcast – listen here. The interview is interspersed with a selections of readings.

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Jo also recorded several video readings for us, which you can view on Faber’s Vimeo channel.

Jo Shapcott reads ‘A Letter to Dennis’ from FaberBooks on Vimeo.

Syd Barrett is one of the great unknowns of twentieth century music. The early creative force behind Pink Floyd, he spent most of the second half of his life outside of public view, away from fans, press and ex-band members.

In Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head, author Rob Chapman attempts to dispel the myths surrounding Syd, and in this video interview, shares his experiences researching the life of a notoriously private artist.

Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman is out now.

Faber senior designer Miriam Rosenbloom on the Faber Poetry Hardback Collections, produced together with British printmakers, and published in May 2010.

Print-design has long been a key component of the look of Faber books, and has also always been one of my favourite media. My fascination with it began the first time I gouged into a potato aged five and sailed right up until my late-20s when I realised I was never going to be as good at it as I wanted to be. At that time I decided that rather than being mediocre at something I could channel my passion for printmaking into working with people who are brilliant at the very same thing.

This new set of books is based around a collection of some of our best-loved poet’s first published editions with Faber. My brief for the series was for the covers to look like ‘cousins’ rather than ’siblings’ to the first set.  I took this to mean more colour than the mainly monochrome initial series. After considering design ideas for a few weeks and with a vague panic setting in, I was lucky enough to stumble across a book at the Oxford Fine Press Fair that set me on my way.

The inspiration was this book of Frances Cornford’s poems from 1960, illustrated with prints designed by her son Christopher. The book used two- and three-colour prints with unusual colour combinations such as light grey with rust red and an inky purple with caramel and lime.  Many of the prints used black ink to provide detail and pattern while the coloured layer provided texture and depth. This got me thinking about colour and how we could use it in a more dramatic way in the new series.

I usually don’t begin designs projects with a colour palette but I did for this poetry series. I set up a group of six Pantone colours which I then broke down further into three sets of two. I had decided that I wanted to have contrasting endpapers and covers, so each pair of colours would be used twice in the series, once as a cover and once as an endpaper.

The next stage was finding artists to work on the series. After a lot of gallery trawling and internet dawdling I pulled together a list of artists I wanted to work with. Following this, I spent some time with one of our Poetry editors matching the style and tone of each printmaker to that of each poet. Surprisingly this was one of the simplest parts of the job as most of the matches were instinctively clear and we quickly sorted each poet’s colours this way as well. So now we had the poets, the printmakers and a set of pantone chips, it was time to get going.

For this series I worked with Peter Clayton (for Simon Armitage’s Kid), Jonathan Gibbs (Alice Oswald’s Dart), Michael Kirkman (Philip Larkin’s The Whitsun Weddings), Ed Kluz (Wendy Cope’s Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis), Charles Shearer (Don Paterson’s Nil Nil)  and Sarah Young (Sylvia Plath’s Ariel).  All the printmakers provided roughs that were then approved by the poets or their estates as well as in-house at Faber before we got to the printing stage. These roughs were intriguing insights into the artists’ differing printmaking techniques with some very closely resembling the finished prints while others were much looser evocations.

It was also interesting to see the different approaches the printmakers used to engage with the subject matter. For example the stunning graphic spareness of Charles Shearer’s relatively low-fi collographs reflected the immediacy of Don Paterson’s work, while the intricate wood-engravings of Jonathan Gibbs were ideal for Alice Oswald’s beautifully nuanced depictions of the natural world.

The unique endpapers added an extra dimension to the series. And I was really happy with the way the slightly unusual colour combinations worked together with the prints.

As the series was to be printed in Pantone colours all printmakers had to deliver their work as separations in the form of two black prints—the traditional way of supplying artwork. All prints were professionally scanned and made print-ready in Photoshop—a very low-tech/high-tech way of working which was strangely satisfying. We really wanted this series to use an uncoated stock to reflect the tactile nature of the printmaking but the large areas of white made this really tricky as marking was a potentially serious problem. Our production team worked extremely hard to find a new printing method to give the books their rough feel and provide enough protection for the paper at the same time. The arrival of the printed finished set in all its glorious Pantone colour with the stunning prints perfectly matched to the paper stock was proof that this was well worth the effort. This series was a joy to work on and also, I hope, a testament to the enormously talented British printmakers currently working.

Find the Faber Poetry Hardback Collections at faber.co.uk

Joanthan Gibbs
Ed Kluz
Michael Kirkman
Peter Clayton
Sarah Young
Charles Shearer

Roland Chambers, author of The Last Englishman: The Double Life of Arthur Ransome, discusses the two volumes of Ransome’s Russian journalism brought back into print by Faber Finds.

Arthur Ransome is usually remembered as the author of Swallows and Amazons and eleven further novels which earned him a reputation as one of the safest pair of hands in the British children’s canon. Few writers have identified themselves so effectively, or so exclusively, with nostalgia for the British Empire in its heyday, or the confidence and moral clarity with which British pioneers explored new territories.

Six Weeks in Russia and The Crisis in Russia belong to an earlier and entirely different episode in Ransome’s career: an episode which he was glad to forget until his children’s books had established him as a household name. Long before the Walkers first set sail for Wild Cat Island, he was one of the most influential and controversial journalists of his generation. Escaping from a disastrous first marriage, he had fled to Russia to study fairy tales, and was still in Russia when the First World War exploded in 1914. Over the next ten years, before returning to England with Trotsky’s former private secretary, he worked as Russian correspondent for the radical Daily News, then for the Manchester Guardian. Following the Bolshevik coup d’état in November 1917, he became one of a tiny number of Western journalists permitted regular access to the Bolshevik leaders and achieved a notoriety that at one point brought him within a hair’s breadth of prosecution for treason.

In addition to newspaper journalism, Ransome wrote three political pamphlets in defence of the Bolshevik government, the first and most aggressive completed in May 1918, as Allied troops prepared a military intervention. Six Weeks in Russia is his second pamphlet, written in early 1919 to describe conditions in St Petersburg and Moscow in the aftermath the World War. It includes several meetings with Lenin, a conversation with the deputy head of the Bolshevik secret police, Jacob Peters, and a description of the inauguration of the Third International, Lenin’s vehicle for spreading revolution abroad. Ransome maintained an essentially sympathetic view of the Communist experiment in Russia, but Six Weeks (the title suggests a visit) is also a self-conscious effort at distancing its author from the politics of the Revolution. Since his first pamphlet the Bolsheviks had unleashed the Red Terror, the Allies were supporting the Whites in the Civil War, and Ransome had been recruited to MI6 as a British spy. Six Weeks is therefore both a rare eye witness account and a careful high wire act: an effort at pleasing both the Bolshevik administration, British intelligence, and the Allied peace conference then sitting in Paris. The book was translated into Russian, and in England was read by Sir Basil Thomson, head of Special Branch, who congratulated Ransome and invited him to tea.

When Ransome wrote Six Weeks in Russia, he was the only British journalist living in Moscow with access to the Kremlin. By contrast, The Crisis in Russia was published in 1921, when the Bolsheviks and the British were negotiating a trade agreement and the Kremlin had opened its arms to all sorts of visitors. Owing to competing books by Bertrand Russell and H G Wells, Ransome’s third and final pamphlet received little attention. But it is essential to anybody interested in how the West came to terms with the Soviet as a sovereign government, and also for those who want to understand Arthur Ransome, whose friends at the time ranged from Karl Radek, the Bolshevik propaganda chief, to Enver Pasha, former Ottoman Minister for War and one of the chief architects of the Armenian genocide. Ransome, who in his first pamphlet had praised Soviet Russia as the freest country in the world, now openly acknowledged Bolshevik tyranny, insisting that it was the essential vehicle of economic recovery. Privately he had long since lost faith in the Revolution and was longing to go home.

Comfortably installed in the Lake District, it is, perhaps, unsurprising that Ransome discouraged searching questions about his time in Russia, while his second wife, Evgenia, admitted only that her father had been ‘a very senior gardener to the Tsar.’ But in Swallows and Amazons, Ransome could not resist at least some reference to a colourful past, casting himself as Captain Flint, a retired pirate struggling to complete his memoirs.

Editor Katherine Armstrong shares her passion for Irish and Northern Irish crime fiction, and selects 25 of the best writers of Emerald Noir.

I grew up in Northern Ireland in the eighties and nineties, which was probably not Judith Chalmers’ first point of call for Wish You Were Here but still, it was home. As most people will remember, Northern Ireland during that period was an interesting place to be if you were particularly keen on scaring yourself silly. The television most evenings would have talk of car bombs, murders, knee-cappings and other assorted terrorist activities. Going to school in Belfast every day on the train you became used to having to get a replacement bus service due to bomb scares.  For anyone who wanted to skip class the various alphabetical groups bent on death and destruction could guarantee that no one would question your excuse for being late – there always seemed to be a bomb scare somewhere.

Throughout the difficult years there were books that focused on the Troubles – you know the stuff – where an English spy from British Intelligence would invariably fall in love with a Catholic girl who would betray him to the IRA and he’d be executed. But there was a huge gap in the market for really good home grown crime fiction. Over the past twenty years or so there has been an emergence of what has become known as Emerald Noir. It’s gritty, it’s realistic, and contemporary Ireland – both north and south – is a whole lot better for it.

But how has this come about? I think one of the main reasons is the change in the political state of Northern Ireland: the Republican and Loyalist ceasefires and the creation of the Stormont government. Once this happened all the terrorist groups moved into ‘ordinary’ crimes, running drugs and guns etc., which makes for more interesting and diverse fictional narratives. In the Republic of Ireland there was the rise of the Celtic Tiger that saw a huge influx of money enter the country and that inevitably led to more crime on the streets with the increase of gang culture. Traditionally Ireland has always had quite literary tastes in fiction – Joyce, Beckett, Shaw etc – but the success of ‘chick lit’ authors such as Marian Keyes and Cecilia Ahern has also meant that genre fiction has become more acceptable and that has helped open the Irish market to genres such as crime fiction.

Below is a list of twenty-five of the best Irish and Northern Irish crime writers past and present. This is by no means a definitive list as there are many other fantastic Irish/Northern Irish writers out there but I’ve narrowed the criteria specifically to writers who were born in Ireland/Northern Ireland and whose works are set there.

1. Eilís Dillon (1920–1994)

Eilís Dillon was born in Galway in 1920. Her uncle was the poet Joseph Mary Plunkett who was one of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. He was executed in Kilmainham Gaol at the end of the Easter Rising in 1916.

Apart from writing children’s books in both Irish and English Eilís also wrote three detective stories that were published by Faber. Two were translated into other languages and all were published in America. They have since been reissued in America by specialist crime publisher Rue Morgue Press.

2. Eoin McNamee (1961–)

Eoin McNamee was born in Kilkeel, County Down. His debut novel, Resurrection Man, was described by the Irish Times as ‘one of the most outstanding pieces of Irish Fiction to come along in years’ and by Jonathan Coe as  ‘Impressively confident . . . as lean and grimly purposeful a book as the demon-driven terrorist it sets out to explore.’ McNamee is one of the leading chroniclers of Ireland’s troubled past and his latest novel, Orchid Blue, about the murder case that led to the last hanging to occur in Northern Ireland, will be published by Faber in November.

3. Colin Bateman (1962–)

Colin Bateman was born in Newtownards, County Down, but grew up in Bangor (my home town!). Bateman is a prolific writer but the book that launched his career in 1995 was Divorcing Jack (which was also made into a film in 1998). Dan Starkey, his not yet mature Belfast journalist protagonist, gets involved in murder and mayhem on the streets of Belfast before being rescued by a stripper dressed as a nun. Hilarity ensues. Fourteen novels have been published since then including Murphy’s Law, for which Bateman wrote the television screenplay. The character was specifically written for the actor James Nesbitt. The Day of the Jack Russell won The Last Laugh Award for the best comic crime novel published in the UK in 2009 at CrimeFest.

4. Brian McGilloway (1974–)

Born in Derry, Brian McGilloway is the author of the acclaimed Inspector Benedict Devlin series, the first of which, Borderlands, was published by Macmillan New Writing and was shortlisted for the CWA New Blood Dagger in 2007. Gallows Lane, his second novel, was shortlisted for the 2009 Irish Book Awards/Ireland AM Crime Novel of the Year and has been longlisted for Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year.

Inspector Devlin is an unusual police detective in that he has a (mostly) happy family life and works in a close community where everyone knows everyone. The setting of Donegal provides Devlin with the added problems of policing the borderlands when he can’t investigate over the borderline. It’s a good series that has been building nicely.

5. Stuart Neville (1972–)

Stuart Neville was born in Armagh and is an author who has really taken off over the past year. His short story, The Last Dance, was published by ThugLit, the online crimezine, in 2008 which prompted a literary agent to get in touch and take him on. Neville’s short story turned novel, Followers, was published as The Twelve in the UK and as The Ghosts of Belfast in the US; it was also published in Japan. It has since won the LA Times Book Prize and been optioned for a movie. The sequel, Collusion, will be published in August.

6. Adrian McKinty

Originally born and reared in Carrickfergus, Adrian McKinty studied politics at Oxford University before moving to New York City in the 1990s. He worked as a security guard, postman, construction worker, barman, rugby coach and bookstore clerk before becoming a teacher, author and moving to Australia.  He is the author of the Dead Trilogy (featuring hitman Michael Forsythe) and two standalone novels, Fifty Grand and Hidden River. Dead I Well May Be was shortlisted for the 2004 Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award and selected by Booklist as one of the ten best crime novels of the year. The Dead Yard was selected by Publisher’s Weekly as one of the twelve best novels of 2006 and won the Audie Award for best mystery or thriller. Fifty Grand won the 2010 Spinetingler Award.

7. Ingrid Black

Ingrid Black is the pseudonym of Irish journalist Eilis O’Hanlon and her husband Ian McConnel. Their first novel, The Dead, was published in 2003 and won a Shamus award. The Dark Eye was published in 2004, The Judas Heart in 2007 and Circle of the Dead in 2008.

Their main characters are former FBI agent turned true crime writer Saxon and Dublin Metropolitan Police Detective Grace Fitzgerald who is part of the Dublin Murder Squad.

8. Declan Burke (1969–)

Ken Bruen once said of Declan Burke, ‘I have seen the future of Irish crime fiction and it’s called Declan Burke. Here is talent writ large – mesmerizing, literate, smart and gripping . . . at last my hopes for crime fiction are renewed. Declan Burke, who was born in Sligo, is the author of Eightball Boogie (2003), The Big O (2007) and also runs the crime fiction blog Crime Always Pays. The Big O earned Burke comparisons with Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiassen.

9. Ken Bruen (1951–)

Ken Bruen is like the Big Daddy of Irish crime fiction. His most famous creation is Jack Taylor and he sets his Taylor novels in Galway, where he was born and still lives. The Guards, the first book in the Jack Taylor series (published in the UK in 2001; US 2003), won a Shamus Award for Best Novel in 2003. The Jack Taylor series focuses on disgraced ex-Guard Jack Taylor who turns private investigator while struggling with a drink problem. The most recent Jack Taylor novel is The Devil (2010), described by the Irish Independent as ‘Brilliant . . . Bruen’s Galway is certainly not Bord Faílte-approved, but once again he has delivered a disturbing story that casts a very cold eye on the state of our nation’.

10. Eugene McEldowney (1943–)

Eugene McEldowney was born in Belfast but lived in Dublin as a journalist for the Irish Times before writing full time. His series of crime books feature Superintendent Cecil Megarry of the Northern Ireland Special Branch. He also writes standalone novels like 1999’s The Faloorie Man and 2002’s Stella’s Story.

11. Liz Allen (1969–)

Dublin born Allen worked on several national newspapers in Dublin before leaving journalism in 2001 to work on her first novel. The lead characters in her standalone books are both independent women: solicitor Deborah Parker [Last to Know], and crime profiler Kate Waters [The Set-Up]. Allen has been compared to Minette Walters.

12. Alan Glynn

Alan Glynn’s Winterland was published by Faber in 2009 to rave reviews. Returning to his native city of Dublin Glynn looks at big business corruption as the Celtic Tiger begins to wane. The Irish Independent thought it was ‘a fast-moving, tightly-plotted, exciting read from the bright new star of Dublin noir crime fiction’, while the Irish Times described it as ‘a page-turner in the best sense of the word, a novel filled with clearly drawn, morally ambiguous characters . . . The plot never lets up for a moment and the three set-pieces of the story are as good as anything I have read in contemporary crime fiction. The great achievement of the novel, however, is the creation of Gina Rafferty herself. Believing that a property developer has destroyed her family’s life, she acts as a metaphor for an entire country that has been shattered by greed and the machinations of the filthy rich. Because of this, Winterland takes its place as the first contemporary Irish novel to explore the disastrous effects of the property boom and the damage it has done to countless Irish families. For that, and for this thrilling, brilliantly written novel, Alan Glynn deserves enormous praise.’

13. Alex Barclay (1974–)

Author of the Joe Lucchesi novels – Darkhouse and The Caller – Dublin born, Cork based Barclay has had great success since making the move from fashion and beauty journalism into crime writing. Darkhouse, her first novel, garnered a lot of critical acclaim and was sold to ten countries. Blood Runs Cold and Time of Death are a separate series featuring FBI Special Agent Ren Bryce.

14. Gene Kerrigan

Dublin journalist and author Kerrigan writes both non-fiction and fiction. His crime fiction explores the Dublin underworld and gang culture and has garnered him much praise.

15. Cormac Millar (1950–)

Cork born writer Cormac Millar [pseudonym of Cormac Ó Cuilleanáin] is the son of Eilís Dillon and brother of the poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin. He is Associate Professor of Italian at Trinity College Dublin. His Dublin based crime novel An Irish Solution was the first work of fiction to be published in 2004 by the Penguin Ireland imprint. His second crime novel, The Grounds, was published in 2006.

16. Sam Millar (1955–)

Sam Millar was born in Belfast. He has been shortlisted for numerous awards including the Martin Healy Short Story Award and the Cork Literary Review Award. His short story Rain won the Brian Moore Short Story Award in 1998. His novel Bloodstorm introduces readers to Belfast private investigator Karl Kane. It was described by Publisher’s Weekly as ‘the first in a powerful new crime series from Millar. Extremely original, it is a chillingly gripping book’, and by BBC Radio Ulster as ‘a powerful, relentless page-turner of a book, leaving you gasping for more’.

17. Declan Hughes

Declan Hughes’ Dublin based PI Ed Loy books have seen him nominated for an Edgar, the CWA New Blood Dagger, a Shamus and a Macavity Award. His first Ed Loy novel, The Wrong Kind of Blood, won the Shamus for Best First PI Novel. Hughes is also co-founder of Dublin’s Rough Magic Theatre Company, Ireland’s leading independent theatre company, as well as an award-winning playwright and screenwriter.

18. Tana French

Former professional actress French grew up in Ireland, Italy, the US and Malawi before settling in Dublin. Her first novel In the Woods won an Edgar for Best First Novel, Newcomer of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and was sold to 22 countries.  Her latest book, Faithful Place, will be published on 1 July.

19. Vincent Banville (1940–)

Vincent Banville was born in Wexford. Faber published An End to Flight under the pen name Vincent Lawrence in 1973. His crime series features Dublin PI John Blaine and he also writes a children’s series featuring Hennessey.

20. Arlene Hunt

Since beginning her writing career at the young age of 27 Arlene Hunt has since published 6 novels. Her books follow John and Sarah of QuicK Investigations, who were first introduced to readers in Hunt’s second novel False Intentions. Her fifth novel, Undertow, the fourth in the QuicK Investigations series was nominated for Best Crime Novel at the 2009 Irish Book Awards. Her latest novel, Blood Money, was published in March 2010.

21. John Banville (1945–)

Born in Wexford John Banville is one of Ireland’s best known and celebrated authors. His novel The Sea won the Man Booker Prize in 2005. Christine Falls was first published in 2006 under his pseudonym Benjamin Black. It was a New York Times Editor’s Choice and a finalist for the 2007 Los Angeles Times Book Prize and introduced ex-hard-drinking Dublin pathologist Quirke.

22. Jim Lusby (1951–)

Waterford born Lusby now lives in Dublin. As well as writing short stories, for stage and radio, Lusby also writes as James Kennedy. His protagonist is Inspector Carl McCadden of Waterford police.

23. K. T. McCaffrey

Graphic designer McCaffrey’s first novel Revenge introduced feisty Dublin journalist Emma Boylan. The Observer has called McCaffrey, ‘A welcome addition to the ranks of superior crime writers’.

24. Andrew Nugent

Former lawyer turned Benedictine monk, Andrew Nugent’s novels set in Dublin follow Inspector Quilligan and Molly Power of the Irish Police Force Murder Squad.

25. John Galvin

A member of the Gardaí, John Galvin wrote Bog Warriors, a comic thriller set in Co Kerry, in his spare time. Published in 2000 it was followed by The Mercury Men in 2002. Galvin, originally from Co Cork, comes from a family of Guards.

R. N. Morris is the author of a series of historical crime novels set in St Petersburg and featuring Porfiry Petrovich – A Gentle Axe, A Vengeful Longing and A Razor Wrapped in Silk.

You can follow him at twitter.com/rnmorris
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A Razor Wrapped in Silk

One of the things that appeals to me about Twitter is the creative challenge. You get 140 characters in which to say what’s on your mind. Of course, for some people that isn’t a challenge at all, because it turns out they don’t have that much on their mind to begin with. If all you want to say is “Had tuna bagel for lunch, tasted a bit icky”, then 140 characters is more than enough. But I’m a storyteller by instinct. When I see an empty communication medium – however big or small – I want to fill it with story.

Last year I littered the Twitterverse, or my own section of it, with a sentence-by-sentence serialisation (let’s call it a Twitterisation) of my 2007 novel, A Gentle Axe. Insane endeavour. And now that it’s behind me, I’m not quite sure why I did it. I can only say it seemed like a good idea at the time. Having laid that project to rest, I tried using Twitter like everyone else does. Passing on news of my lunch options, commenting on other people’s updates, waving to strangers, and encouraging friends.

It’s all very well but I am a writer – a writer of mysteries at that. The little empty box on my Tweetdeck simply demanded that I fill it with micro-examples of my own chosen genre. And so the Twistery was born. A 140-character space just about gives me enough room to set up a mystery, but not enough to provide the solution. I leave that to my followers. That’s the beauty of twitter – it’s uniquely and instantly responsive. No sooner had I posted my first Twistery (A locked room, empty apart from the smell of decomposition. They ripped up the boards to find a corpse holding a strong magnet.) than I had a flurry of possible solutions. Someone even came up with the correct solution, or something close enough.

I decided I owed it to all those who had bothered to furrow their brows over my puzzles to write a full solution. Hardcore Tweeters will probably take issue with the fact that I’m posting the solutions on my blog, and that I’m taking far more than 140 characters to expound the mysteries. It just seemed to me that as well as setting my followers a nice little brainteaser, I had set myself a brief for a mystery story. And I wanted to have fun writing it. So if you want to know the solution to the Twistery above, click here.

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See if you can solve the Twisteries at twitter.com/rnmorris

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rogernmorris.co.uk

Children’s editor Emily Hardy on publishing  for children and the snobbery that all too often surrounds series books.

Like a lot of people working in publishing, my first foray into the commercial reality of the industry was as a bookseller. Selling books is tough work, and where your personal passion and advocacy for an author can generate a few extra sales here and there, the feeling is pretty special. But as often as not, bookselling is about letting the books that sell themselves do just that: sell themselves. This is especially true of children’s books, where the predominance of series and branded publishing can make retail buyers’ choices of stock (after a useful glance at previous sales figures) little more than no-brainers. The new Darren Shan gore-fest? Tick. Another instalment of the Wimpy Kid’s escapades? Yes please. And was there a bookseller on earth who didn’t splash displays of Harry Potter’s farewell tome all over their windows? I doubt it.

There’s a reason for this, one that goes beyond economics and takes us right back to what is most important: children – their independence and their passions. Kids know what they like; and when they find it, they quickly – and often obsessively – want more of the same. (Until, that is, they notch up a few more inches on the great doorframe-inscribed measure of change.) For at least a year of my brother’s youthful existence he subsisted on almost nothing more than the same meticulously prepared meal of Shreddies cereal with sultanas, shovelling them into his mouth every single day while he thumbed prized copies of Janet and Allen Alberg’s many, many storybooks. The next year, it was ham sandwiches and Match magazine. He’s now a (basically) well-adjusted thirty-three-year-old – a happy reader, and with an evolved culinary palate.

In the children’s literary world, we’ve accepted these cycles of popular series and genres as a fait accompli. And they are met with remarkably little intellectual resistance; all broadsheet press literary editors happily commission review pieces of not just Phillip Pullman’s stunning Northern Lights trilogy, but also the fifth book, say, of Charlie Higson’s Young Bond franchise. This year’s longlist for the Guardian Children’s Fiction Prize – a brilliant, serious prize that each year brings to greater prominence the very best of children’s writing – features no fewer than seven books from firmly established series and branded authors. As publishers, we seek out the newest popular trend, hoping to catch a wave before it crashes and fizzles back to sea. And why not? Those industry commentators who do sometimes cry foul and accuse children’s publishers of derivativeness, or even cynicism, often seem to overlook the fact that we children’s publishers love young fiction with the same passion as our authors’ young readers do. The general picture does adjust itself as different trends come and go because the truth is that we’re as bored of vampires as you are. It is through a combination of imaginative acquisition and constant dialogue with our readers that the magicians give way to spies, only to be bitten by werewolves, before fairies are having their day in the sun. In the meantime, in the spaces between such transitions, as young readers rush back to what they love again and again, they are having great, great fun. This matters, and we seem to have accepted it to a large extent, happy to see children making their own choices and reaping huge personal reading pleasure.

But. There is one significant, and massively successful, subsection of children’s publishing where long-running series are often met by booksellers, parents, teachers and librarians, with vague and ill-defined uncertainty, queasy resistance, and, in some extreme cases, moral outrage. I’m not talking about the risqué subject matter of sex-fuelled young adult romantic fiction, or the gruesome, blood-soaked horror of much boys’ adventure storytelling. I’m talking about the books published by every major children’s publisher in the UK for an utterly rapt readership of five-, six- and seven-year-old children about worlds of fairies, ponies, dinosaurs, lost puppies, magic kittens, dancing unicorns and other such apparently offensive creatures.

One of my most vivid memories of working as a bookseller is of a five-year-old girl storming into the shop, seemingly out of nowhere, all on her own, screaming: ‘I need another one! I need another one! I need another one! I need another one NOW!’ Here was a child on a personal mission. After a minute or two foraging in the children’s section she ran to me at the till, placed her chosen book down and was met by an exhausted mother who had by this time caught up with her. The book in question was number seventy-something in Orchard Books’ series, Rainbow Magic. She had, she told me with a puffed out chest, ‘read all the rest. THREE TIMES!’ Rather than express any pride in her young daughter’s demonstrably prodigious literary commitment, the mother turned to me and said tiredly and with cringing embarrassment that she was ‘ashamed’ to be buying these books. Ashamed to be buying books; we’re not dealing in alcopops here.

Why is this? I think the answer lies in a knotty tangle of issues about literary snobbery and authenticity, often with some class anxiety thrown in for extra tense fun. (The bookshop I was working in was in an extremely affluent residential area of London; such comments among parents were not uncommon.) But none of these notions really make any sense, and the type of unexamined resistance they produce can have a retrograde effect on the long-term reading habits of children. Rainbow Magic is an astonishingly popular series of stories about different magical fairies, well into the hundreds of titles now, and which have sold nearly twenty million copies in the UK alone. I make no claims for their status as contemporary classics, but they are sweet, familiar, good-natured fun, and they are clearly adored. It is the creation of a specialised company called Working Partners, a group of passionate, brilliantly skilled children’s editors and writers who have similarly produced a succession of wildly popular and ubiquitous series of fiction for young boys and girls. Working Partners’ footprint and track record in the UK children’s publishing trade is very large indeed, and for no other reason that they are brilliant at what they do, care deeply about children’s books and culture, and understand exactly the types of books that children really want to read, with very little sense of precious anxiety. Contrary to any perception that books are somehow written by factory line, contributing to each series is a group of highly talented writers, all of whom are among the most experienced and accomplished authors working in children’s books.

For the last year and a half I have had the great pleasure to work alongside Faber’s children’s team with Working Partners to produce a fresh and original series as part of our list branching out to publish for younger readers aged between five and seven. We initially approached them with some possible avenues to explore – we loved the idea of teddies, almost instinctively, and without quite knowing why – and, after a series of brilliantly fun creative discussions, the Hoozles were born, a delightfully motley group of handmade toys that come magically to life when they form a bond with a girl or boy, their special friend. Throughout the creative process we were continually referencing tropes of classic children’s fiction – from the escapism of Narnia, to Lyra’s demon, from Hilary McKay’s sense of contemporary childhood experience, to Philippa Pearce’s lovely rendering of magical transformation, to name but a few. Our Hoozle stories are of course completely different sorts of books – intentionally so. But they have been created with real care and, yes, love, and with absolute attention to the myths and themes that sustain and lift all children’s storytelling.

The result is a series of books, beautifully illustrated by the artist Penny Dann, that I am especially proud of – proud, also, that Faber is publishing these stories alongside our legendarily outstanding list. The Hoozles hit the shops at the end of this month and so far the response among children – the one that really counts – has been a total joy to witness. But some eyebrows have been raised, with a few grumbles being voiced by some independent retailers. One sales rep told me recently that a bookseller was ‘shocked’ that Faber – Faber – was publishing these sorts of books. Books that sparkle! The horror! This strikes me as a largely pointless notion for so many reasons, not least because Faber’s children list is home to a stunning array of writing of the highest literary quality, writing that not even the fuddiest of fuddy-duddies could take issue with.

I don’t intend to advance the blanket, over-rehearsed argument that as long as children are reading, it’s all good. We all have our own tastes and sense of ethical propriety, and publishers of children’s books do have a responsibility to tread these lines sensitively. Many publishers have certainly been guilty in the recent past of selling books that raise seriously troubling issues, particularly around the subject of gender. I have absolutely no time for books that suggest it’s a good idea for girls to be sexy at age six. Faber is proud to be a publishing house where the covenant and trust that exist between us and our readers are valued, and we take these judgements seriously, always.

But, in insisting on a distinction between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ children’s fiction, whatever such categories might mean, if anything, we risk suggesting to young people, perhaps unconsciously, that simple pleasurable entertainment and reading are mutually exclusive experiences. This can only be bad news for publishers, parents, teachers, booksellers and children alike. Those who are seriously troubled at the idea of very young children reading stories about baby animals and teddies (as opposed to what exactly? Proust?) should ask themselves whether their expectations of their kids’ tastes, not to mention literacy abilities, are entirely realistic. The last thing any of us should want is for children’s earliest reading experiences to seem like work – difficult, stressful and anxiety-inducing. These are patterns that can bed in, particularly at a young age.

If we want children to read voraciously, especially at the period when they are making the often difficult transition from lavishly illustrated picture flaps to more challenging, text-heavy chapter books, the key, surely, is to make books accessible, undaunting and, yes, visually appealing. After all, most adult men and women regularly indulge in the aesthetic pleasures of personal grooming, wearing attractive clothing and living in nice-to-look-at homes without feeling it compromises their ability to hold a conversation or live intellectually fulfilling lives. My friend Kate makes a really valuable point here, saying: “Surely the objection is that they appeal to a radically different aesthetic – these adults haven’t decked their homes out in pink satin and presumably wouldn’t object to the Hoozles if they looked like a Jigsaw dress. I think what’s at issue is parents forcing their own tastes on children – I don’t personally love the way these books look, but that’s presumably as it should be and I hope as a parent I’d see that my own tastes and that of my child don’t have to coincide. Perhaps it’s because books and culture are so personal to us; we can accept that children are different to adults in a million different ways (they go to bed at 8, like Alton Towers etc) but somehow we can’t stomach that our children might make their own choices in something so ‘important’.” I agree.

What is more, as the range of competing media – film, television, gaming, music, online activity and the digital evolution of publishing itself – is changing the ways in which children choose how to spend their time, it’s more important than ever for books to be made available with relaxed expectations, and as entertainment, if they are to choose the written word at all.

I want children to read so that they read some more, and then some more, and more after that, endlessly. And I want them to be making these choices of what to read for themselves. Then, whether they’ve grown into horny teens grabbing for The Rachel Papers, slick cynics going all Brett Easton Ellis, romantic idealists inscribing ‘Reader, I married him’ in exercise books, or sentimental footballers with hearts at Fever Pitch, we can breathe a collective sigh of relief (our own tastes hands off) that they could just be on their individual, independently navigated rocky road to Eng Lit after all. And with any luck, they might not even have noticed.

Sam Taylor – critically-acclaimed author of The Republic of Trees, The Amnesiac and The Island at the End of the World – has started offering summer writing holidays at his home in southwest France.

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At The French Workshop, accommodation is available in three beautiful B&Bs in the same village, and the courses can be 3-day, 5-day or 7-day stays with variations including Writing and Wine-Tasting, Writing and Cycling, Writing and Jazz, Writing and Golf, Writing and Toulouse, and – for those of you who are really keen – Writing Only.

Sam has written three novels for Faber, translated into eight languages, and his first novel, The Republic of Trees, has just been made into a film (All Good Children) premiered at this year’s Cannes Festival. He proposes to guide aspiring authors through every aspect of the novel-writing process – from the first glimmer of an idea to how to deal with agents, publishers and film companies. For more details, go to www.french-workshop.com

In this charming novel from Andrew O’Hagan, author of Be Near Me and Personality, we look through the eyes of Maf the dog, Marilyn Monroe’s constant companion for the last two years of her life, and get a glimpse into an extraordinary period of the twentieth century.

We commissioned this fun animated trailer to set the scene, illustrated and animated by Robin Davey.

Animated trailer for ‘The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe’ by Andrew O’Hagan from FaberBooks on Vimeo.

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The Life and Opinions of Maf the Dog and of His Friend Marilyn Monroe by Andrew O’Hagan is out now. [more]