I’m quite excited! My tenth book (ten books, in four years!) will be published this week. Orange Juice Peas is about a little girl called Jessie, her big brother Ben and a very messy teatime. And it has wonderful bright cheery pictures by Lizzie Wells.
Even though Orange Juice Peas isn’t in the shops yet (it should be available at the weekend) I already have a copy which I’ve sneakily read to a few groups of children.
Reading a new picture book out loud to children for the first time is a strange experience. It’s not the same as reading a carefully selected cliffhanger extract from a novel to 9 year olds. Reading a whole picture book to group of 5 year olds, especially for the first time, feels quite risky. What if they won’t sit quiet and listen? What if they get bored and wander off, or start picking their noses, or asking to go to the toilet, or poking the child sitting beside them? What if they don’t like it? (These are very small children, remember, and if they don’t like something they might not be polite about it!)
So I get quite nervous the first few times I read a picture book to an audience. It’s my first chance to see if the story works. I do read a book out loud to myself when I’m drafting it, and to my own kids when I think it’s finished. But the book doesn’t feel real until I read it to kids I don’t know, to see what they think, to see how they react, and to find out the most important thing: will they laugh at the right bits?
I’m delighted to say that yes, the couple of times I’ve read Orange Juice Peas to kids – in Selkirk and in Falkirk – they have laughed. At the bits I hoped they’d find funny, and at other bits as well!
Also, some of them went “aww” at the right bit near the end too. And some of them tried to count the peas on the pages where the editor, designer and I had spent hours checking the numbers of peas (so Sally and Helena, that was totally worthwhile!)
Now I am ready to take this book out into the world, because it seems to work. (Phew.) And that’s something you can never be sure of, whether it’s your first book, your third book, your tenth or your hundredth, until you actually know what the readers think of it!
Orange Juice Peas
I laughed and said aww as well, at the right bits I hope.
Actually I suppose “the right bits” is the wrong way to put it. I can hope that readers will find a certain bit funny or touching or weird or exciting, but really how they read it (or hear it) is up to them. No right bits or wrong bits, just a story!
You are so right about the utter frankness of small children.
Yes. It can be VERY risky to ask small children questions. I know that if I ask a class of kids “Do you want me to read you a book / tell you a story?” there will always be one wee boy at the end of the front row (near the teacher, where she can keep an eye on him) who will say “NO!” But I ask anyway, and just hope I get a “yes” from the rest of the class! I usually do. In fact today, when I read Orange Juice Peas to a class at Flora Stevenson, one little girl was very disappointed that I only read it once.
Yay for your tenth book! And yay for OJP going down so well with its first audiences. I may manage into Edinburgh on Saturday to support you at the Centre.
It would be lovely to see you!
Congratulations, Lari – my copy was awaiting me last night, and I think you’d have approved of all my sound effects too.
I’m trying very hard to imagine the sound effects. Did you pour orange juice into a glass loudly and splashily? Throw frozen peas around? Try to borrow your brother’s teddy bear? Or did you just laugh elegantly and approvingly? (One of the characters in the book laughs so hard he has to blow his nose, but I’m sure you’re too refined to do that!)