As we continue to celebrate the winners of this year's Waterstones Children's Book Prize, we are delighted to share a piece from Pari Thomson whose debut novel Greenwild: The World Behind the Door was chosen as the overall winner. In this exclusive piece, Pari talks about the joy of reading and the book that made her a writer.
When I was a child, I used to read by torchlight under the covers. When my parents confiscated my torch, I would read by the light coming through the crack in the door from the landing. When the landing light went off, I would read by the moonlight slanting in through the tall window next to the bed.
The books I read on those moonlit nights made me the person and the writer I am today. There were Tove Jansson's Moomin stories, strange and beautiful and full of hobgoblins riding panthers through the sky. There were the Narnia books by C.S. Lewis, and the moment when a girl called Lucy steps through a magical door into a snowy forest where a lamppost glows among the frosty trees. Then came Brian Jacques' Redwall series, full of brave mice and wicked weasels and the best feasts that imagination could conjure (I still dream about fresh plum cake with meadow cream, washed down with raspberry cordial). There was The Secret Garden, which showed me that main characters could be spiky and unrepentant, and that gardens could be places of enchantment. There was Howl’s Moving Castle, which showed me that the best children’s books were odd and eccentric and utterly magical. And there was Northern Lights, which took the fantasy of doorways between worlds and created a whole universe to fall into headfirst, without looking back.
But I think the book that made me a writer has to be one by Eva Ibbotson, perhaps the greatest writer for children in the last fifty years. I adore her books for younger children, including Dial a Ghost and The Secret of Platform Thirteen. I love her story of mystery in Vienna, The Star of Kazan, and her wartime adventure, The Dragonfly Pool. But her most perfect book, for me, remains Journey to the River Sea, a story loved by generations of children and endlessly beloved by me. I still have my old hardback copy, which I have read so many times that it’s falling apart.
It's the story of orphaned Maia, who is sent to stay with family in the Amazon rainforest. Her cousins are uniquely nasty in the way of all of Ibbotson’s villains – selfish and greedy and blind to the wonders of the world around them. But Maia has the rare and unusual gift of truly noticing the astonishments that she encounters, from the aye-ayes in the forest with their sad eyes, to the butterflies that flit through the vine-festooned waterways of the Amazon – and, of course, the mysterious boy who lives in the forest, on the run from the authorities.
It's a glorious adventure story that shines with jokes and wit and fun. It has boats and a travelling theatre; it has disguises and narrow escapes, along with great food and friendship and music and pink dolphins. It has a glittering opera house in the middle of the Amazon rainforest, and altogether it is a book that is calculated to produce sheer joy in anyone who reads it. There’s a wonderful Eva Ibbotson quote where she says that her books are designed to be gifts to the reader, and I love this idea. Journey to the River Sea is a gift to humanity, but it was also a gift to me, reading by moonlight when I was ten years old and looking for escape, for comfort, for pure delight. Even though there is no wizards-and-wands magic in the book, it weaves a spell of total enchantment.
I think that it’s the book that made me want to be a writer, more than any other, because it made me fall in love with the things that stories can do. It showed me that humour is important; and so are bravery and kindness and fierce hope. It opened my eyes to the wonder of the natural world, and to the beauty and complexity of the Amazon rainforest, a place I have longed to visit ever since. And it made me want to write books that feel like gifts to the reader. Books that make you feel safe and comforted, but also propelled, like Maia, into a grand adventure where all your grit and courage will be called for. Books that might have the power to make a child out there now pick them up after the lights go out, and begin turning the pages by moonlight.
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