The God Beneath The Sea

"What I find extraordinary about this is that I can’t actually tell that it’s a children’s book . Nor is it a straight blow-by-blow retelling. It’s poetic. Such a wonderful, joyous use of language. It’s so inspiring. And that’s what I really take from it. I read a lot of books about mythology–there are endless books that recount–but what these books have in common is that they are bringing myth to life, reviving them, receiving myth in the same inspired way that people have done for thousands of years. The beauty of the ideas. The illustrations, by Charles Keeping, appeal to me. They have an abstract quality, which doesn’t always work with illustration. He does with his lines what the authors do with their words. I try not to impose myself when I’m illustrating. I try not to impose myself between the author and the reader. I try to complement the storytelling. And The God Beneath The Sea is a beautiful example of text and picture working together. “If you want intelligent children read them fairy tales” I discovered this book when I’d just left art school. I’ve been reading mythology all my life from early childhood–from as soon as I discovered there was such a thing. It seemed to open-up this wonderful world of imagination where anything is possible. Myths have a lot in common with fairy tales–fairy tales are myths further down the line. These stories appeal to parts of our own experience, but put in this strange context, we can get a larger picture of ourselves. I have an idea that isn’t based on any kind of scientific knowledge–it’s more an intuition really–that stories develop the brain. Whether stories in book form or simply overhearing your mother chatting, “this happened, then this happened”, I think this is actually building the brain physically. The richer the story experience is for children the richer their brains will be. I think Albert Einstein said, “if you want intelligent children read them fairy tales, if you want more intelligent children read them more fairy tales.”"