| tBk Talkback |
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Kate Greenaway Medal winner, Mini Grey won the under 5’s category of the Smarties Book Prize for her picture book Biscuit Bear. tBkmag caught up with her about her earlier title Traction Man. |
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tBKmag: Where did the idea for Traction Man is Here come from? Well I think it came from two places. I used to work as a teacher and one day on playground duty a little boy came up to me. He was having this fantastic game zooming his action man all over the playground. And he said to me “Look at the outfit my action man’s got, my granny made it for me!” and it was a green woollen romper suit! I thought that was a really funny idea. In addition to that, I remember growing up with a big brother who had lots of action men and was always hurling them out of windows on handkerchief parachutes! So it was a combination of these ideas that made me want to write Traction Man. tBKmag: How do you go about creating a book? I tend to have a brainstorm in my sketchbook, with lots of scribbles and writing. I then try to make these bits into a book almost immediately. So I really try and do the pictures and words together. I work mostly in watercolours – Dr Martin’s Watercolours! I’ve worked out that it’s not how big the artwork is that takes the most time, it’s the number of things in the scene. The more things, the longer the painting takes! The kitchen and garden scenes in Traction Man took the longest. I actually painted them bigger than they appear in the book because I wanted to get this panned-out effect, a sort of bird’s eye view on real life. tBKmag: Your books are very funny and there’s always lots to read within the illustrations. Well, I like little-word plays and putting words within pictures. Traction Man has references to bits from James Bond films and other things. It also has this melodramatic voice-over which tells the story. When you’re writing the book you really get into character and the narrative. I even played all the villains as I wrote them! My favourite was Dr Sock, but I also liked the Evil Pillows, because they go “Grrrr!” and then “heh, heh!” tBKmag: And are the family in the story based on real people? Actually it’s the places in Traction Man that are based on real places rather than people. Granny’s driveway is based on my own grandparent’s house and the kitchen in the boy’s house is taken from a house I lived in. Also the things on the window sill in the kitchen are all from the window sill of my house in Oxford! But I tried to make the family very average and normal, so they’re not really based on anyone. tBKmag: What books did you like as a child? I liked Dr Seuss and Asterix and with Traction Man I’ve gone for that feeling of a comic book or graphic story unfolding but I’ve simplified the text and the narrative, so there isn’t too much to read. tBKmag: What’s your favourite book that you’ve written? Actually my favourite is the one I’m working on at the moment. It’s quite different from Traction Man – it’s a sort of love story! But one that ends in disaster obviously! However, I’m also very fond of Biscuit Bear, which won the Smarties prize. tBKmag: Are you ever tempted to put characters or images from past books into the background scenes of new books? As an illustrator you can do whatever you want, which is great, and yes there always seems to be an egg and eggcup cropping up in each book. Did you spot them? Mini Grey won the 2007 Kate Greenaway Medal with The Adventures of the Dish and the Spoon. tBk Issue 9 / Spring 2005
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