Alexander Armstrong on Why Children's Fantasy Books Matter

There’s an excellent reason why Fantasy is the most popular genre with young readers (and why, for that matter, all of us – whatever age – should be following Katherine Rundell’s excellent advice and reading far more children’s literature). It’s because Children’s Fantasy takes the plain biscuit of day-to-day life, punches a hole in it, adds a couple of mad ingredients and turns it into a jammy dodger.  

Our first years from the cradle are filled with the genuine WOW of our unfurling existence. First food! First steps! First whoosh on a swing! First yards on a bicycle; the steady reveal of life’s marvellousness, and the scope for growth and progress seems infinite. Until . . . suddenly we’re six, and we’ve reached the point where the new runs out. And it's precisely at this point, just when we discover what ordinary means, that our imaginations need the trajectory of WOW to continue so that we never lose our sense of life’s potential for magic. This is where Fantasy novels charge to the rescue by showing us the hidden worlds that might lurk at the back of wardrobes.  

My first novel, Evenfall: The Golden Linnet comes out on the 12th September and – surprise, surprise – it’s a children’s Fantasy novel. It’s set in the very real world of contemporary Durham, where the fantasy element is almost perfectly hidden, and would remain so were it not for a chain of extraordinary events. The Golden Linnet tells the tale of Sam, an ordinary boy on the cusp of his teens, who learns an extraordinary secret about his family and the role it has played in thousands of years of history. But just as he discovers that their ancient magic lives on through him, he also learns that a terrifying, all-powerful enemy is circling. Sam needs urgently to bring together the Linnets, a forgotten sect of storytellers, older than history itself, and unlock their power to save the world from unspeakable evil. 

My intention was to write a book that my children would read to the end without having to be prodded. So it had to be full of beguiling flavours, adventure, danger and characters you wanted to spend time with. In short, it had to be a page turner. 

I’m asked again and again how I have found the time to write in amongst my other jobs (presenting Classic FM’s morning programme every weekday morning and hosting BBC1’s Pointless). The answer is (after explaining that Pointless isn’t live) that I have found writing this book to be one of the most fulfilling and enjoyable things I have ever done. Far from adding any burden to my schedule, writing lightens everything else I do. Creating something, I discover, is the perfect antidote to stress – especially if you’re writing Fantasy – because you get to disappear into a world of your own creation, one that’s been tweaked to zing and crackle with your own bespoke magic. So I fill all the nooks and crannies in my day with writing; my poor battered laptop with its scratches and sticking P key (every word with a P in didn’t have a P in until spell check kindly put it in for me) gets whipped out any time I reckon I can get a couple of uninterrupted minutes: on trains, in dentist receptions, in car-parks waiting for boys’ football matches, even during some of the longer pieces on my Classic FM show.

I believe in reading stories for children out loud. In our household, story-time has followed bath-time religiously every night for the past seventeen years and it means we as a family have shared so many wonderful, moving, hilarious, heart-stopping, uproarious, cliff-hanging moments together over the years. We’ve been through Narnia, Hogwarts (I’m now on The Prisoner of Azkaban in my fourth cycle of the Potter books...), and Jordan College, Oxford; we’ve joined Emil and his Detectives, escaped to Brendan Chase AND Willoughby Chase, traipsed around Lamonic Bibber, hung out with Percy Jackson, Moone Boy, TimeRiders, Witches, Magic Fingers, Champions of the World; Fantasy has taken us all over this world and many, many others. 

When our youngest (currently nine) reaches the age when he no longer wants his father to read to him every night, I shall make sure there’s always a shelf of Rowlings, Pullmans, Scarrows, Rundells et al, close to my bedside table. I’ll say that I’m keeping them for when grandchildren come along, but it’ll be a total lie.