I May Be Some Time

"My idea for Titus Oates came from a wonderful book called, I May Be Some Time by Francis Spufford . It’s all about the British obsession with The Ice – i.e. Antarctica. It contains the most perfect retelling of the Scott expedition that made my heart pound because it was so beautifully written. I love that man’s writing. I read up on Antarctica so much that I knew more than I’ve ever known in preparation for writing any book. It really got to me – the way it does to most people – but I still had no idea if my book would work. It was so ambitious and peculiar and mined from so deep inside me. After it won the Printz Award in America, I started to get messages from people in Idaho and Nebraska who said, “I didn’t realise anybody else thought like me. This is just how I feel.” It was amazing to think that teenage life really hasn’t changed very much over the years. Song Hunter by Sally Prue is based on an unrecorded historical event but one that must logically have happened: the moment when Neanderthal man collided with Homo Sapiens: when things other than basic survival and reproduction were coming into being – like art and music. What an impossible barrier there must have been between brains geared to basic survival and brains yearning after spirituality and creativity. Young people are the ones who ‘bridge the gap’ in the book, of course. Tall Story by Candy Gourlay was sparked by a newspaper story Candy read in which the victim of an earthquake was able to…. oh. But no, that’s no good. I can’t give away the crux of the book. It’s full of unusual themes – basketball, gigantism, Filipino life – friendship and dilemmas – and it’s thoroughly life-affirming. Life: An Exploded Diagram by Mal Peet , which culminates with the Twin Towers. It goes from bomb to bomb. Unexploded bombs to the Twin Towers via a wealth of wonderful characters and every kind of emotion. Apologies, though, for the spoiler. The Prince Who Walked with Lions by Elizabeth Laird is about an Abyssinian prince who was brought back to England after his father had been killed by an English expedition to Abyssinia. He’s brought here and put in a boarding school. He’s confronted with the British upper-class system and copes as best he can. But he’s somehow like some noble lion taken out of its rightful habitat. Original and sad in that way only true-life stories can be. Heartsong by Kevin Crossley-Holland , who’s always such good value, and with Jane Ray doing the illustrations, it’s also a really pretty book, too. Inspired by Vivaldi’s Four Seasons and the fact that Vivaldi used orphanages for practise runs of his latest pieces! The life-enhancing power of music and kindness, in four movements, that’s what."