Jasmine Richards is the author of “The Book of Wonders.” Below is a complete transcript of her interview with Cracking the Cover.
Background — Have you always wanted to write? Why?
When I was younger I always had my nose in a book and when I wasn’t reading I was coming up with stories and poems. Books made me the person I am today and inspired me to write. I love the idea that with The Book of Wonders I might have written a story that one day could inspire someone else to write.
Why write for young readers?
One of my favourite answers to that question is from the Nobel Prize-winning author , Isaac Bashevis Singer.
“Why I Write for Children,”
by Isaac Bashevis Singer
There are five hundred reasons why I began to write for children, but to save time I will mention only ten of them.
Number 1. Children read books, not reviews. They don’t give a hoot about the critics.
Number 2. Children don’t read to find their identity.
Number 3. They don’t read to free themselves of guilt, to quench their thirst for rebellion, or to get rid of alienation.
Number 4. They have no use for psychology.
Number 5. They detest sociology.
Number 6. They don’t try to understand Kafka or Finnegan’s Wake.
Number 7. They still believe in God, the family, angels, devils, witches, goblins, logic, clarity, punctuation, and other such obsolete stuff.
Number 8. They love interesting stories, not commentaries, guides, or footnotes.
Number 9. When a book is boring, they yawn openly, without any shame or fear of authority.
Number 10. They don’t expect their beloved writer to redeem humanity. Young as they are, they know that is not in his power. Only the adults have such childish illusions.
Do you have any rituals?
I don’t really have writing rituals but I do have favourite places to write. I live in Oxfordshire, in the UK, and so I’m very lucky to be surrounded by the many amazing libraries that belong to Oxford University. My favourite of them all is the Radcliffe Camera which is right in the centre of Oxford.
I go there because it reminds me of when I was a student – this is the place where I’d go to write essays about Dickens, Austen and Beowulf.
It is also possible to order ANY book that has ever been published in the UK in this library. These books are kept beneath the streets of Oxford. It always makes me smile when I think that the streets are literally paved with books!
Most importantly, Lyra talks about the Radcliffe Camera in The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman. This is one of my favourite books and so I always feel extra inspired when I work here!
Do you write all day?
I work at Oxford University Press as a senior commissioning editor for children’s fiction which means, besides other things, I get to read books all day. This also means that my writing is reserved for evenings and weekends!
Where did the idea for “The Book of Wonders” come from?
The Book of Wonders draws on the tales of 1001 Nights also known as Arabian Nights. As a young reader, I absolutely loved reading these stories and the seed of the idea for The Book of Wonders came to me when I was 9 or so after finishing these tales!
Many of the stories in 1001 Nights are well known and include Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves and The Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor. For those of you who haven’t read Arabian Nights they begin with a young woman called Scheherazade who tells tales to a cold-hearted sultan for 1001 nights in order to escape execution [the sultan has a nasty habit of executing his new wives!]. Through her stories, she manages to melt the sultan’s heart and they end up living happily ever after. I loved that Scheherazade was such a good storyteller and that she always made sure that she was at the most exciting bit of the story when the sun rose so that she would get to live for another day.
However, the 9 year old me was enraged by the idea that the sultan got a happy ending after killing lots of innocent young women! Even back then I wanted to create a new story, one where the sultan was challenged and maybe even defeated.
The Book of Wonders” pulls characters together from a number of tales. Was it hard to twist/adapt them?
Not at all. Arabian Nights is like a treasure chest of great characters and creatures but each element is just a seed that allowed me to create my own world and adventure. It was also a great excuse to get to reread Arabian Nights.
How much research was involved?
I think it is important to try and experience some of the physical challenges you put your characters through. So I tried practising jumping from rampart to rampart in Morocco above a raging sea but I got scared so I had to come down again immediately! My boyfriend did it for me instead and I then got him to describe how it felt.
I did better when I was on holiday in Thailand and handled a pretty big snake. That experience was invaluable as I came to understand a bit more about the texture and movement of snakes.
How long did it take you to write?
I have been writing The Book of Wonders on and off for five years. As I work full time, it is about snatching moments where you can sit down and write and really immerse myself in the world I am trying to create,
Magic certainly plays a role in “The Book of Wonders,” but ingenuity and inner strength seem to be even stronger. How did you incorporate those themes so seemlessly?
I loved Harry Potter but I really wanted to write about a character that didn’t have magic but rather had to rely on wits and pluckiness to get through difficult times. I also wanted to examine how you would feel if you found out that your best friend was a sorcerer and you were still just you! However I still wanted to have magic in The Book of Wonders and so I knew that Rhidan had to have magic even if Zardi didn’t.
Who is your favorite character in “The Book of Wonders”?
I have been with the characters in my book for a long time. I feel both protective and very proud of them. But if I have to choose my favourite character – it’s Zardi. She is brave, loyal and smart. But she is not perfect. She has a temper and can be impulsive. It was important to me that no one in the book was perfect. I wanted them to all have many sides. I wanted them to feel real.
How does “The Book of Wonders” differ as a published book from your first idea for it?
I thought The Book of Wonders would draw more heavily from Arabian Nights than it actually ended up doing. I found the story taking me in rather unexpected directions but I trusted the process and I’m so glad I did!
This is your first published book. Is it your first novel?
This is my first novel. When I was younger I wrote short stories and lots of poems but The Book of Wonders was the first piece of writing that you could call novel length.
How has your writing evolved from when you first started until now?
I think I’m still evolving and still getting better but going through the editing process has made me really aware of some of the things I do well and some of the things I need to work on [I’ll leave you to decide which is which]! I think writing, like most things, needs to be worked at if you are going to excel and I hope that over my career as a writer I will continue to improve.
What are you working on now? Please tell me there’s a follow-up in the works!
At this very moment, I am writing the second part of Zardi’s and Rhidan’s adventure. It is provisionally called the Spell Scrolls but I still need to agree that title with my editor! In this second novel we get to learn more about Rhidan’s home, The Black Isle, and Zardi’s and Rhidan’s relationship is put under massive strain. I’m having an absolute blast writing it.
What do you hope readers bring away from your book?
Magic, friendship and adventure. That is what I like writing about and I hope that is what readers will get from my book. I also hope that reading The Book of Wonders might inspire them to read some of the tales in Arabian Nights. That would make me very happy indeed!
Did you have a favorite book or book that really resonated with you as a young reader?
As a young reader I loved Phillip Pullman and his Victorian detective novels that started with Ruby in the Smoke. He creates a wonderful sense of time and place but not to the detriment of plot or pace,
Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder had a huge influence on my understanding of the world, history and humanity. I love this story for its clarity yet complexity.
Roald Dahl for his honesty. This author never spoke down to young people and he put his characters in extremely challenging situations – two things that I absolutely love about his writing.
Nancy Drew for slick plotting
Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams for the sheer delight of the language and its cast of crazy characters.
Meredith Ann Pierce author of The Woman Who Loved Reindeer. I love this author for all of her brave new worlds