Almost each time I am introduced as a children’s writer, regardless of whether the audience is young, middle aged or elderly (not children, though, they have too much sense!), one of the first questions I am asked is, “I want to write for children, how do I start?” My counter question inevitably is, “What do you want to say to children?” And to my surprise and disappointment, most of the time the answer is a blank look.

What does writing for children involve? First and most importantly for me, it is having something to say – you want to tell a story, or invoke an emotion, or pose a moral or ethical or logical question, or convey some facts, or open up a world for the child to explore. It may be as complex as dealing with death, or as simple as teaching English to children who don’t have much opportunity to learn it. But you must have something to say. Something that children would like to read. And what WOULD children like to read? How do you know?

Well, the second and perhaps equally important component to make you a children’s writer is that you have some understanding of children – you must know how to speak to them. This implies that you have spent time with them, have an interest in them and how they think and feel. It is said about Roald Dahl that he did not like being with children, but I suspect he listened to and observed  children nevertheless, which is what makes him so delightful to read. So you may not be the sort who always has a toddler on your lap, but you must have an interest in the unique and complex mind of the child.

Without these two things, I think you become the sort of children’s writer who either writes preachy and tedious stories or some awful whimsical fantasy which somehow leaves kids cold.

For me, what has driven me to write is the germ of a story. I remember when I wrote Just A Train Ride Away, the germ of the story was a rather dusty looking but handsome lawyer who had set up a table outside the office where one went to register affidavits. Here was a qualified professional, quite personable, who seemed to have set up his office on an old wooden table under an umbrella. Who was he? How did he land up here? And, because I work with children, the next question - What did his children say when someone asked them “What does your father do?” This was what set off the series of ideas that became the book about a 12-year-old’s search for his father. Worms In My Family arose out of a horribly embarrassing teenage memory when my father shamed me in front of a boy I had a crush on. I wanted to share that with children and laugh about it, and help them understand their sometimes embarrassing parents.

For me that germ of an idea comes easily, because my work involves constant contact with children, and because I have brought up two of my own. It is the rest that is hard. Very, very hard! Building up that idea into an interesting book takes so much hard work that at times I have shelved the whole project for years. It involves fleshing out the story, peopling it with believable characters, with interesting turns in the plot, and especially for older children, with a satisfying ending that is not too fairy tale-ish. And all of this must be interesting to read, be funny, and above all, be authentic. Whew!

Authenticity is a strange thing – the whole fantasy world of Harry Potter is authentic, but a recent book I read about a poor beggar girl is not. What makes something authentic? Hard to say. But within the fantasy world of Harry Potter, everything hangs together, everyone behaves in believable ways. While in this beggar girl story, the girl actually thanks God for making her poor because it helps her to be more spiritual or something like that, making it totally inauthentic to my ear.

While writing my latest book, The Boy With Two Grandfathers, I needed to understand how an 11-year-old would feel when his mother died. Sad? Of course, that’s obvious. But what else? I just could not get into his mind. You cannot research something like this, you cannot go about asking kids who have lost their mothers how they felt. I tried to read up psychological studies of loss in children, but they did not really help me. So I just left it – for two years! I could not bring myself to invent feelings and emotions that were inauthentic – I don’t believe good fiction comes like that. And suddenly one day, serendipity! Reading a travelogue, I found the writer digressing into his childhood memory of his mother’s death, and the feeling of embarrassment when he went back to school and faced the kindness and pity of teachers and classmates. There – I had it – and the book wrote itself to a conclusion in the next week.

If we look at all the children’s books we love, we will find this authenticity there somewhere, even if the subject is outlandish like Horton Hears a Who – Horton is entirely believable, we WANT him to succeed. In the world the writer has created, Horton is real and true.

And that child in the story I mentioned earlier, thanking God for her poverty? We don’t really care because we don’t believe she exists or can exist in any world.