Episode #170: Are you ever scared to share your book? with James Catchpole

Grace Lin: Hello, I'm Grace Lin, children's book author and illustrator of many books, including the middle grade novel Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and the picture book a Big Moon Cake for Little Star. Today I'm here with James Catchpole, the author of the picture book, What Happened to You? Welcome, James.

James Catchpole: Hi there. Hello, Grace.

Grace Lin: Thanks so much. Now, I think our listeners probably might be able to tell by your accent that you are from England, correct?

James Catchpole: Yeah, well done. Exactly.

Grace Lin: I wasn't sure. Is it correct to say UK or England? What is more correct?

James Catchpole: Oh, it confuses everyone. You can even say British. I mean, as long as you don't call a Scottish person English, then you're basically fine.

Grace Lin: Okay, good to know. Anyway, are you ready for today's question?

James Catchpole: Absolutely. Hit me.

Grace Lin: Okay. Today's question is from a kid named Sylvia and Sylvia asks, are you ever scared to share your book?

James Catchpole: Oh, it's a good 'un. It's a good 'un. Thanks Sylvia. So do you know what? Writing books isn't my day job. My day job is being an agent, so actually I represent authors, and so I work with lots of authors and I help them tell their stories, and I see their books come out maybe 20 of them each year. And I'm a bit afraid for each book that comes out because I want them all to do well. But then there's definitely a different thing when you write your own book and then that really, that's a different kind of, I wouldn't say fear isn't the only emotion. There are lots of wonderful things as well, but goodness me, it's different when A, it's your own book, and B, the book is about you. And my book is about me. It's me when I was a child. I am Joe. It's not even a very good disguise. I've got one leg and my name begins with J. So writing a story about Joe and all the things that he thought and felt and experienced as a child was kind of nerve wracking. How would people respond?

Grace Lin: Oh, wow. I had no idea that the book was based on you. Do you want to give our listeners a little synopsis of the book? What happened to you?

James Catchpole: Yeah, sure. So Joe is just playing in the playground as he normally does. He comes to the playground, he chucks his crutches down on a bench because he doesn't really need them when he jumps around on the playground equipment and he's playing a game of pirates, when a child comes up and a scene begins, that's happened umpteen times before. It happens every single day of his life, the child comes up and says, "Oh, you've only got one leg." And Joe says "Yep." And the child says, "What happened to you?" And Joe says, "oh!" Because Joe has told that story so many times all right? And he's just a bit bored of it. And so the story is the scene that plays out after the children, inevitably it's children who haven't met Joe before, ask him about his missing leg.

Grace Lin: Wow, that's great. That is a really, really great idea for a story. And it's really touching that It's based on your own personal life, and I think a lot of kids to relate to it on both sides. So what a great book. I can't wait for everyone to read and share it.

James Catchpole: Thanks, Grace. It should be a story that should interest any child who looks demonstrably different, who looks very different from other children in the class in any way. So different that they get asked about it by other children all the time. That doesn't have to be that you've got one leg. It could be anything. Maybe you use a wheelchair maybe. Maybe you're missing some other body of your body. Who knows? All sorts of disabilities, all sorts of ways that bodies can be different. And this story should apply for everyone because it's probably true to say that the trickiest thing about having a disability, certainly when you're a child, is the way that people respond to you. And that's what the story is about.

Grace Lin: And I could see why that might make you feel a little scared about sharing your book going back to Sylvia's question. I mean, as an author, I'm always scared to share my book. Because you're always afraid. You spend so much time writing it and you spend so much time working on it and you want people to like it so much, but I could see you have an added layer because it's so much based on your own life.

James Catchpole: Yeah, yeah, certainly. Yeah. There's always the usual sorts of things, like you write a joke in the book and you think, well, they laugh at this? And it's only when you go and do a school visit and they laugh and you think, oh goodness, that worked. That can be years after writing it that you finally find out if it works or not. But actually, I'll tell you what the other thing is, Grace, is that the book is trying to change the world in a small way, which for this reason, there is a sort of an agreement out there, or there's a differing point of view that says, if you are a child in the playground and you see another child who looks different to you, the best thing to do is to go up and just ask. Just ask them why they're different. And I don't think that's a point of view that actually comes from people with a visible disability, the people who actually have that experience of being disabled.

I think if everyone comes and asks who's curious, you spend your whole life answering what's actually a very personal question. What happened to you is a very personal question. It's like marching up to ... Imagine you see a daddy in the playground that you've not met before, and you go up to him and you say, why have you got no hair?

It happens, right? We've got children. We know that happens, but that doesn't mean it's okay. So for a child who's got one leg, for instance, to have all the children coming up to just ask all the time, no it's not that child's job to explain themselves all the time. So actually, I think my book is ... Here's my fear about it, Grace. My fear was that the book might get pushback. People might be made angry by it. People might say, "Hold on, we're supposed to be educating people all the time. We are meant to be answering these questions. You are meant to be answering these questions." So I was a little bit worried about that, but I haven't had that pushback so far, it's been okay.

Grace Lin: Well, I think it's really great this book, because you're saying, and I agree, I think it's not a child's responsibility to answer what happened to them, but I do think that there is a kind of a beauty in putting it out there and just saying, yes, this is it. Because I know as a child, when I was a child, it was almost like a secret. The people weren't about supposed to talk about race. So nobody mentioned that I was Asian. And so it was almost like it was like everybody knows, but we don't talk about it. So I think what a book like yours does, which I think is so lovely, is that it puts it out there and it says it's there, it exists. We don't have to make a big deal out of it. It's just part of our life. And I think that's what's really lovely.

James Catchpole: That's a really interesting perspective. Thank you, Grace. Yeah. I hope in a way that the book will be able to open up those conversations about disability so that disabled children don't have to all the time. I mean, obviously they can. And if they want to talk about disability, absolutely they must. And if their good friends ask them, hey, of course they'll ask and they could ask and you want to answer. It's when you get people you've never met before, crossing the road, even as a grownup, crossing the road to ask you those questions. That's, that implies that disabled people shouldn't have privacy. And that's the problem.

Grace Lin: That is.

James Catchpole: But if the book can do the work so that disabled children don't have to do it, then that'll be a good thing.

Grace Lin: Yes, I agree. And I think, like you said, I think it's a really lovely way to change the world just a little bit at a time, and that makes a big difference.

James Catchpole: I hope so.

Grace Lin: All right, well thank you so much Sylvia, for asking your really wonderful question that opened all these discussions up. And thank you so much, James, for answering it.

James Catchpole: No problem. Thanks Grace and thank you Sylvia. Great question.

Grace Lin: Bye.

More about today’s authors:

James Catchpole was destined to be either an itinerant singer or an amputee footballer. He managed to get off the substitutes’ bench a couple of times for the England Amputee Football Team, and also busked around Provence with a guitar (another profession where it actively helps to have one leg), but reached the limits of his talent in both fields by his mid-twenties, and so joined the family business of children’s books.

He now runs The Catchpole Agency with his wife Lucy, and represents authors and illustrators of children’s picture books, non-fiction and novels, including Polly Dunbar, SF Said and Michelle Robinson. Lucy and James live in Oxford with their two young daughters, the eldest of whom is firmly convinced she will be joining the business too – but at six, she has plenty of time to recant.

Grace Lin, a NY Times bestselling author/ illustrator, won the Newbery Honor for Where the Mountain Meets the Moon and her picture book, A Big Mooncake for Little Star, was awarded the Caldecott Honor. Grace is an occasional commentator for New England Public Radio , a video essayist for PBS NewsHour (here & here), and the speaker of the popular TEDx talk, The Windows and Mirrors of Your Child’s Bookshelf. She is the co-host of the podcast Book Friends Forever, a kidlit podcast about friendship and publishing (geared for adults). Find her facebook, instagram , twitter ( @pacylin) or sign up for her author newsletter HERE.

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