As we come up on Halloween– here I am posting about Christmas. Well, look, yes, I know. I know Halloween is my traditional obsession, and also I know that I’m not exactly Christian, that here I am a few days before Yom Kippur, an Orthodox Jewish woman, writing about a book for a holiday I don’t precisely, as it were, celebrate– and yet. Given an opportunity to talk to Alex Willan, author of Elves Are the Worst! about early readers, giving characters a distinct voice, and carrying on the interest and personality of a series, as he does both for his Jasper and Ollie and for his The Worst! series… wouldn’t you? I knew you’d get me.
Elves Are the Worst! is a Gilbert the Goblin story, and while there’s an actual plot in the book, with Gilbert getting a chance to learn about working together, teamwork, and so on– just wait until you meet the kitty canes. The driving force, as usual in Alex Willan’s lovable books, is character: Gilbert is the at the heart of the story, and the shenanigans (and kitty canes) occur in relation to him. And without more ado, thank you so much to Alex for answering my questions– and I’ll let his voice take the lead here!
On a sheer writerly level, I love the voices of your characters. And I do mean “voices,” because I hear them in my head! I have noticed that, textually, you are very sparing. When we have text, it’s direct from a particular character, in voice: Jasper, Ollie, our Goblin friend. The elves, in Elves Are the Worst! are not so chatty. Is limiting the speakers a deliberate choice? And how do you go about developing that perfect vocal timbre on the page—do you speak the text yourself, as you write?
Thank you so much! I really like writing characters who speak from a very specific point of view. With Gilbert the Goblin, he is so opinionated that it made sense for him to do most, if not all, of the talking. My intention is for it to be pretty clear from the start of each book that what Gilbert is saying is incorrect (that unicorns, elves, etc. are not the worst) and I really wanted him to always come to that realization on his own, as opposed to being corrected by those around him.
There are times when I’m writing where it does help if I read the text aloud. And I also find it very useful to have someone read the text to me so that I can focus on how it sounds in a voice that isn’t my own (or the one I give Gilbert in my head). Since I also illustrate the text, I’m constantly making changes to both the words and illustrations as I work. That back and forth can be quite beneficial, but it can also mean fighting the urge to endlessly tweak everything.
A funny note on voices: I was surprised to hear from multiple people that when they read The Worst! books out loud, they give Gilbert a British accent!
Since the characters I mentioned are in series, The Worst! and Jasper and Ollie, you aren’t just developing a voice and character for a book; you have to maintain or develop that character across a series of books. As a reader, when I see a new book in a series I always seize up in temporary panic: “Will my beloved friend, whichever character, stop working for me in this book?” (Fortunately, you maintain these voices beautifully!) How on earth do you brilliant authors do that? I always imagine, from my vantage point, that the best of these creations were fully enfleshed in the authors’ minds, talking away: Frog and Toad, of course, and Sergio Ruzzier’s Fox and Chick… do you have little characters in your head all the time? (Am I insane?)
Absolutely! (Wait, not about you being insane!) I constantly have various characters chatting away inside my head. For me, most of my time “writing” doesn’t involve writing down anything at all. By the time I’m able to sit down and type out a manuscript, or even just a few lines of text, those characters have existed in my mind for a good long while. Especially when it’s a character from a series. It’s really kind of bizarre to put into words, but I have spent so much time with Gilbert, in my head, that it’s less about me deciding what Gilbert will say or do, and more about imagining him in any given situation and “seeing” how he reacts. I guess there was some point, when I first thought of these stories, where I created his character, but at this point I feel like he’s steering his own ship.
I unabashedly love Christmas books. But the debate about creating lovely books for Christmas which maintain quality as well as being commercially viable for a lucrative market is an old one. I quote from Ursula Nordstrom writing to Maurice Sendak, who declined to produce a Nutshell Library for Christmas or Chanukkah. He wrote to her: “Wouldn’t people be bored too easily with too many Nutshells—and wouldn’t Harpers come in for its share of cynical criticism?” She asked, “What people, Maurice? Surely children won’t be bored with a Christmas Nutshell in the toe of their stockings. Surely children won’t be offering any ‘cynical criticism.’ […] We wanted to do the first Nutshell because we thought children would love some perfect little books…” and she continues, brilliantly. It was fascinating to see how far back the “commerce vs quality” hemming and hawing went. How do you approach this?
That is fascinating. I think that debate is something everyone in a creative field struggles with. I was fortunate in that every book in the Worst! series focuses on a different group of magical creatures, so having Gilbert turn his attention to elves seemed like a natural fit (Gilbert even mentions elves in the first book, Unicorns Are the Worst!). While it is certainly a holiday book, I wanted to keep the focus on the elves, and make sure that what Gilbert learns from them is universal (the importance of teamwork) as opposed to something more holiday focused.
I believe the industry tendency is to think of early readers and series as kind of a gateway for young readers, not yet confident enough to tackle a novel, into the world of reading independently. But a number of earlier-level-readers I see today, Fox + Chick by Ruzzier and your Jasper and Ollie among them, seem to poke cleverly at that not-so-clean divide between picture books for reading aloud (or, perhaps, together) and early readers. Is that something you think about as you write, or is that entirely a product of my readerly end of things? (Disclaimer: my daughter and I read Jasper and Ollie together as a read aloud. I liked doing the voices. I do hope I didn’t break rules there! She made me read the whole thing: the flap copy, author bio, everything.)
I am so thrilled to hear that you and your daughter read Jasper and Ollie together! I do appreciate that the lines between reading levels are getting increasingly blurred. I have always been a slow reader, myself, so there was definitely an internal shift for me growing up when reading stopped being something I enjoyed and became something I had to get through. I went from getting lost in the story to getting lost in the words. That’s part of why I loved comics and graphic novels growing up (and still do) so I’m also thrilled to see the growing appreciation for that genre as well.
I wish that I could say I was intentionally straddling that line when I write, but I think it’s more a case of having my own favorite books influence my work without me even realizing it! I’ve heard from several people that they see a clear influence of graphic novels in my books, which I am happy to hear, but wasn’t something I was consciously going for. I do love the rare occasions that I get to hear a young reader reading one of my books out loud – you really get to hear them take ownership of the story, pausing at the moments they like and brushing past the parts they don’t connect with. It is always a special moment for me.
Thank you again to Alex Willan for the chance to chat about his book, Elves Are the Worst!
The Children's Bookroom 