PHILIP Ardagh is best known for The Eddie Dickens Trilogy, The Grunts series, and his book released last year, The Little Adventurers: Leafy the Pet Leaf.
The six foot seven author, aged 55, says that the question he is asked most often, by both children and adults, is where he gets his inspiration from. The answer is not clear for every story however, The Eddie Dickens Trilogy was not originally written as a book.
Philip Ardagh had only one nephew, Ben, who attended a boarding school in England after his parents had to live in Moscow due to work commitments and they thought it would be too unsafe for Ben. Philip himself attended boarding school as a young boy, and describes it as “like Hogwarts without the magic and the fun”, and used to receive quite boring letters from his parents – discussing the weather and how everybody was.
Thinking back to receiving these letters, Philip thought to write Ben an adventure story every couple of weeks, featuring a character named Eddie Dickens. Philip explains where the name came from:
“Because I remembered my school days were very old-fashioned, it felt very Dickensian, very Victorian, very ye olde worldy, so I thought ‘I’ll set it in the time of Queen Victoria, and I’ll call the hero Eddie Dickens after Charles Dickens’. So, I thought Dickens sounded like an old-fashioned name, and Eddie sounded like a modern name, so it was a deliberate contrast”.
Philip kept a copy of all the letters he wrote to Ben, but did not originally think to turn them into The Eddie Dickens Trilogy. It was not until he was promoting a non-fiction book that he had written, The Hieroglyphs Handbook: Teach Yourself Ancient Egyptian, and was asked why he did not write more fiction books, that he mentioned the tales of Eddie Dickens.
The trilogy is now published in over 30 languages around the world, and was only ever initially written for one boy.
Philip has written many books in his time, and the most recent was The Little Adventurers: Leafy the Pet Leaf, which Philip describes as an unusual book for him, and also for a picture book, because of the close collaboration between him and Elissa Elwick.
Philip and Elissa both had inputs into the writing and the illustrations within the book, and Elissa originated the idea through the use of a character called Finnegan, who became one of the Little Adventurers.
The pair met at a party in the Discover Story Centre, Stratford, which launched a new online feature where children could finish off stories that they read. Philip met with Elissa several times after that, and spoke more about their ideas for the book, which features the Little Adventurers hosting a pet day.
Philip recalls: “I never had a pet. On lawns in Britain, there are often these bits of grass that look a bit like hairy caterpillars. I used to lie on the ground and pretend these were caterpillars.
“What a sad and deprived life… As a child, the longest time I was in contact with a pet was I think one weekend I was allowed to take home the class tadpole”.
There will be more Philip and Elissa collaborations in following books about the Little Adventurers, including What Bear? Where?, and the series is dedicated to Sally Goldsworthy, who was the head of the Discover Story Centre, and who sadly died of leiomyosarcoma, a form of cancer, but was the reason that the duo met.
Philip says: “Sally had a fantastic vision to getting books out to children… It was nice to be able to dedicate the series to her”.
Currently, Philip is incredibly busy, with lots of new books coming up. One of them will be published by Barrington Stoke, and is Norman the Norman from Normandy, where the audience will be told the story of Norman the Norman from Normandy after his father was killed.
Norman’s father was amazingly tall, like Philip himself, and after nearly killing a whole village of people, three of them kill him instead, and chop him into three pieces.
They each want to bury their third separately, to pay their respects, and they send big Norman’s enormous sword to his son. When Norman decides to visit his father’s separate graves, he rides his pet boar, Truffle, to where the different sections are buried, carrying his father’s sword.
Norman asks a villager where his father’s ankles are buried, and the man points to the location. As Norman turns to see, without meaning to, he swings his father’s sword, and chops off the man’s head.
A host of fabulous authors & illustrators at the @nationaltrust Children’s Book Festival 4-5 March, Wray Castle https://t.co/y1KhBX5Jv1 pic.twitter.com/IKYs3LrLr2
— Philip Ardagh (@PhilipArdagh) 24 Feb-ruary 2017
He travels back to Normandy a hero, having accidentally got revenge for the death of his father, and Norman the Norman from Normandy tells this story.
This World Book Day weekend, from Friday 3rd February, Philip will be at Wray Castle in Cumbria, where Beatrix Potter first stayed when her parents rented it in 1882. While there, Philip will be launching his new National Trust books; The Secret Diary of John Drawbridge, a Medieval Knight in Training, and The Secret Life of Jane Pinny, a Victorian House Maid.
Do something different this #WorldBookDay. Sit in an old wardrobe eating turkish delight, or pull up floorboards to look for little people.
— Philip Ardagh (@PhilipArdagh) February 22, 2017
The aim of the new books will be to tell the reader as much about castles and Victorian times as possible, through the use of a diary, but with a comical aspect. Philip explains the books as having an “amazing amount of information”.
He wanted to write them in unusual dialects, and figured that neither John Drawbridge or Jane Pinny could write their diaries in modern English. The Secret Diary of John Drawbridge, a Medieval Knight in Training is written in fake medieval, and The Secret Life of Jane Pinny, a Victorian House Maid is written from the perspective of a Cockney pigeon.
Philip Ardagh explains: “Jane Pinny lives in a little attic room, and there’s a cracked window there, and outside on the window ledge lives a pigeon, so the pigeon can write it… Girls couldn’t write, so the pigeon writes it for her”.
Philip speaks passionately about why World Book Day is so important: “There are a whole raft of reasons why people don’t have books in their homes, and they’re the people we’re really trying to get to, because every child gets a one pound book token, and even if they can’t afford… Because you can buy a six pound book and get the pound off. But they also bring out these one pound books”.
Ardagh without Elwick at @WalkerBooksUK today. And, hey, look! There's @em_dash_ ! She LOVES being in photographs with me. pic.twitter.com/qkGPXuqahU
— Philip Ardagh (@PhilipArdagh) February 27, 2017
He continues: “Even if you can’t afford any other book, that one pound book token will buy you a book – a small book. That’s fantastic, and it also gets people into book shops that might not ordinarily be there. I’ve done events in schools and in book shops on World Book Day when children have never been in a book shop before.
“I’ve had someone come up to me and say, ‘Mister, are all these books for sale? Can people just buy any of these books?’ And it’s fantastic, it’s amazing, and it just makes children aware, seeing what’s out there.
“I don’t care whether you’re reading it on a Kindle, or how you’re reading it, books become an open access to you, it just changes your world.”
Philip also stresses how important it is for children to see their parents or other adults reading for pleasure, because it encourages them to read for other purposes than their schoolwork. World Book Day also does a fantastic job in getting schools across the country interested in books, and that’s why Philip thinks it is so vital.
When asked what top three books Philip would recommend people reading this World Book Day, he replied with these books:
1. Comet in Moominland – Tove Jansson
2. Timmy Failure book series – Stephan Pastis
3. Tom Gates book series – Liz Pichon
Philip says: “All of them are great for everyone”. So, keep a look out for them this World Book Day. In fact, Philip Ardagh has been asked to write a 400-page book about the Moomins, for an exhibition in October.
It will be called The World of Moominvalley, and will feature pictures that have never been shown before, details about all the characters, plus Tove Jansson’s inspiration for writing the books. He says: “It was a dream come true to be asked to write it”.
Visit local books shops around Manchester to find special £1 books or to get £1 off other books.
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