Hello, welcome to Hertford's literary podcast. I'm Emma Smith,
I teach English at Hertford and I'm Fellow Librarian and that, in some ways gives me the
great privilege of connecting with Hertford writers in all different genres.
And I'm so excited today that we're going to be talking to Anya Glazer, illustrator and author of children's books.
We're going to be talking about her most recent book, 'Thesaurus has a secret', a really charming book about a wordy dinosaur.
If you can think of anything that's more designed to appeal to young readers, we'd love to hear about it.
But this is a fantastic book and we're going to be chatting with Anya about how she went from Hertford to this and what's coming next.
So, Anya, thanks so much for joining us. Thanks so much for having me.
Tell us about you and Hertford. You read History and French, didn't you?
Yeah, so I read History and French at Hertford and I, I started in 2009 and then I, because I was studying French,
I had a year abroad in Paris,
which was, sort of, where I started getting back into children's books or thinking about that as a possible avenue to pursue.
And then after I graduated, I did a Master's in children's book illustration and then it sort of went on from there.
Fantastic. And just sticking with Hertford for a minute, what what are your memories of college now,
looking back? I guess for most people that they're a little bit mixed, but how about for you?
I think for me, largely positive. I would say.
I think the main thing that I think about when I think back to my time at Hertford was, was the people there and the friends that I made.
And I just think of it as sort of a very warm, friendly, open, welcoming college.
And a lot of the people there are still very good friends.
And I think it was a lot of hard work and a lot of stress doing that work.
But I think looking back on it now, I've probably, with a bit of hindsight,
have sort of forgotten about quite how stressful some of the late night essay writing and revision sessions were.
And and just think about, sort of, a great three years in Oxford,
going to lectures and tutorials and lots of time spent in cafes and coffee shops working and libraries also.
Yeah, well, where were your haunts and what was your coffee shop haunt?
I think my main coffee shop haunt was actually it was the Cafe Nero in Blackwells on Broad Street,
because it was, it just had a very nice, it had the right kind of energy to be able to actually do a bit
of work with, sort of, some buzzing background noise and then sort of have a look at the books afterwards.
And also it was just sort of a few minutes away from Hertford. So that was, sort of, my main place.
And then, yeah, I remember when that cafe first opened and it seemed so glamorous, so American,
I suppose, to have a coffee shop in a bookshop, which I had never, I'd never encountered before.
Yeah. It was an amazing landmark in Oxford history, I think!
Yeah. Yeah. Have you been back? Are you based now in London?
I'm based in London now, yes. Although I have been back to Oxford a few times and actually, having not been back in several years,
I was back there just visiting some friends about a month ago and it was really lovely to to go back and to sort of visit some old haunts,
and especially after so long of not being able to travel at all
it was a very nice place to to meet up with people again and to go back to some old favourite Hertford spots.
That's brilliant. You'll have seen our marquee which is over front quad as a covid safe space,
I think we all thought when it arrived and, well, God knows when, when did when did all this start?!
Well, whenever it arrived! I think we thought, you know, it would be there for a few months.
We're about to just turn into the new academic year. And it's still there.
Perhaps it will, perhaps we'll put some stone cladding around it. It will be there forever.
So you just said then that you obviously had a sort of long term interest in children's writing or illustrating children's books.
Maybe we could start with what were your, what were your influences? What are the children's books which were really formative for you?
Sure, I'd say, I mean, we had a lot of children's books in the house growing up, and, so my family is American, but we grew up in Europe.
So I feel like we had sort of mixture of classic American picture books and also some of the British ones and even some French ones,
because we lived in Brussels and some of the big ones that stand out to me are things like Where The Wild Things Are by
Maurice Sendak, who has just this amazing kind of wildness and darkness to his books,
and he was the first person that I remember sort of, aged about probably not much more than four or five
that I remember being aware of as being a person who wrote and illustrated children's books as a job.
And that was a thing that you could grow up to do and I just remember being very excited by that as an idea!
Some of the other sort of classic books that we had when I was little were, we loved Posy Simmonds,
Lulu and The Flying Babies, which is another very wonderful, silly, slightly offbeat story.
And then we had a lot of the sort of Roald Dahl, Quentin Blake collaborations, which I think had a big influence.
Yeah, that's I'm just sort of rifling through those in my, in my head and the visuals of that, because I've got your, one of your books here,
which is the book that I'd really like to talk to about 'Thesaurus, has a secret' about this absolutely lovely dinosaur.
And I'm just looking at the style of your drawing and thinking,
I mean, it's softer, isn't it, than the Quentin Blake.
It's not pen, do you use pencils?
Well, tell us about the sort of the actual practicalities of the drawings.
Yeah, I work mostly mostly in pencil.
I sort of, that's very much where my drawings start and where it's kind of all based in and I'm sort of happiest with a
coloured pencil or a 2B pencil just sort of sketching away in a sketchbook and then all of my final art and everything,
it will all start with that pencil line. And then I, I work in, sort of, traditional colour as well.
So, sort of, working with wash paints and acrylics and coloured pencil.
But I'll work all of that, sort of, on a separate layer. So, sort of, using a light box to trace over the line on a separate piece of paper.
And then afterwards I, sort of, scan in the original pencil line and the colour layers and I assemble it all in Photoshop.
So that it ends up being a kind of a digital collage, but very much based originally around the freshness of that pencil line.
Wow, that's so interesting. I realised I had absolutely no idea how that would work.
I'm obviously quite familiar with how you send a Word document to a publishers, but you do all that.
Are you preparing, effectively, the page layout then as well,
or the illustrations that then the designer, the book designer, sort of makes into book pages?
More I would say, I guess, the page that the book designer will turn into book pages,
but I'll work, sort of, within a layout which is the size of the finished book.
So that the idea is that by the time I'm working on the final artwork, the, the layout and the format has all been agreed.
And I'm not, and because I'm working in Photoshop rather than, sort of, just sending pieces of paper over to the designer.
But then I think they do a lot of wizardry at their end to make it all into the final book as well.
Yeah, that's really fascinating. Do you ever sell any of the drawings? I think the original drawings must be absolutely glorious.
I haven't done, but maybe it's something I should look into!
It's sort of funny because I have, I end up with them with folders full of lots of pieces of paper, some of which have just all of the lines,
some have layers of colour, but because it's assembled on Photoshop, it means that what's sort of a shame is that
I don't have, sort of, one piece of paper, which is the original artwork in the end, because it's, sort of, in four or five different places.
Yeah, I can imagine that. But that would probably make the drawings,
I mean, I don't want to, I don't know why I've taken on me to to be your commercial agent and vulgarise
this is beautiful work, but since I've started, maybe I'll just, I'll just carry on.
I was just thinking about those, you know, black and white sketches you can get of Mickey Mouse, which don't correspond to any of the cartoon
Mickey Mouses is but are such a fascinating insight into how that
gets put together.
I just, I just thought the illustrations, I do get the illustrations and the words are absolutely, not least because you're responsible for them
both, are absolutely interconnected. But I thought that the, the drawings are so, so absolutely lovely.
And I think a cuddly, cuddly toy Thesaurus is just just waiting to happen!
Let's move from my terrible commercial ambitions. Oh, no.
It's definitely something that I should probably be, sort of, exploiting more.
And there are lots of those pieces of paper that are at the moment just kind of hidden away in a folder
so I should be looking into what to do with those more. So tell us about how you came to this particular, this particular, story?
Because I suppose I'm asking because I've seen a peep of what your next book is, about sisters.
Yeah, but, you know, that seems in some ways, one could speculate about how you came to that idea
but that's not quite so available to think about, about this one.
So I wondered if this, is this, is this autobiographical? Are you Thesaurus?
I think what I tend to find is that there is more autobiographical elements
that sneak into my stories that I'm then I'm aware of when I'm making them,
which I think probably happened with this one. I think I probably am Thesaurus in that I love reading,
I'm quite shy and I'm quite happy just, sort of, sitting away with my book and kind of ignoring the rest of the world.
But I don't know if that, sort of, if that was my intention going, going into it,
but I think you probably end up putting a lot more of yourself into, into your stories and your characters than ends up happening.
I've definitely done that in several books in a row now, which is which is interesting.
But the origins of this, of this story, it sort of developed actually over quite a long period of time.
It was the grains of an idea I'd had for years and years
This one actually, I had just always thought that the word thesaurus always sounded like it should be a dinosaur,
just even when, you know, I was opening my synonym dictionary. And I would just always think like that.
A thesaurus should probably be a dinosaur rather than a dictionary,
I don't know how they came up with that.
And actually, I'm still not really sure where the word came from, which is probably something I should have researched at this point.
So then the source character, kind of a bookish literary dinosaur, kind of evolved from that and then, sort of, became a story when I was on
My Masters studying children's book illustration and putting together, my sort, MA final project,
which was essentially making a picture book.
And so I sort of took this idea of literary dinosaur who loves to read.
And then it sort of emerged into this story.
While maybe reading isn't something that dinosaurs typically do or that you would think that the other dinosaurs typically do,
therefore it's something that he hides from the other dinosaurs and then one day, not to spoil anything too much.
But the other dinosaurs will discover his secret and then we'll find out what they really think.
And it turns out that everybody loves to listen to him read because reading is a wonderful thing.
I love that. And I love the fact that Thesaurus is this lover of words and a lover of reading, and that this enables you, with quite a lot of confidence
I guess, in your young readers or the people who are being read to from this book, to enjoy various synonyms.
'What a beautiful sunset, so magnificent, resplendent, awe inspiring' and I was thinking about how children.
Can really love the sounds of words and actually really love unfamiliar words,
we sometimes assume they're going to be put off by them, but actually that's less the case.
So although I think this is a book, what age of a child do you anticipate for this? about five or six?
Yeah, probably about five or six. I think officially the age guidelines are about four to eight.
But I think I agree. I think what's nice about this book in particular, because it is quite wordy for a picture book,
which is quite conscious because that's sort of what it's all about.
But then I think you can enjoy it, hopefully both as a child and an adult sort of on different levels,
because I think you can just appreciate that it's a nice story about dinosaurs.
And then the more, the older you get, or the more you're sort of taking in from it,
hopefully with all of the wordplay and hope then the more sophisticated vocabulary,
which may be a, sort of a, a safe place or an interesting place to encounter slightly bigger
words for the first time and then to get excited about the possibilities of language,
I hope. Yeah.
And I could imagine some of the, I could imagine some of those phrases actually really being adopted by families, you know, 'keep going, persevere.
You can do it', that just seemed really nice, a nice thing.
And I love one of the things you've you've got for for the adults.
Reading is a lovely, lovely spread. I'm just flicking to it, which is Thesaurus' secret stash of books.
Oh, yes. And these are these are an amazingly funny, witty set of spines.
Jurassic Mansfield Park, for instance, One Flew Over The Pterodactyls Nest.
This is my favourite, I think, T. Rex of the d'Urbervilles. I mean, these are fabulous like that.
You've also got some some books which I guess, you know,
going back to the question I asked you about your influences, classic American kids book, The Phantom Tollbooth.
Yes. One of my favourite. A little peep of the Amber Spyglass, Philip Pullman.
That's a lovely, lovely, lovely spread. Oh, thank you very much.
That was definitely one of one of the most fun.
to do and I had a lot of fun coming up with, basically as many dinosaur literary puns as I could possibly think of!
And so then I think that's exactly right,
The book pile is sort of compiled of the best puns I could come up with and then also I tried to sneak in some of my favourite books,
whether or not they were exactly connected to the theme and then also managed to get a little bit of my French degree in there,
too, because I discovered there is an actual real dinosaur called Alberto Saurus!
So then I have Alberto Saurus Camus' The Stranger, in there as a nod to to my studying French at Hertford.
That's that's such that's so excellent. That's such a lovely, lovely spread.
Thank you very much. Yeah. It's it's a really wonderful book. I would really recommend it, especially for parents and godparents and aunts and uncles,
grandparents who are looking for Christmas presents for young people.
It's a it's a book that I think anybody has to read aloud would also enjoy as well as the recipients of that.
So tell us a bit about what's coming next. Anya, you've got another book.
is that already in more or less in press? The Sisters book?
Yes. So so my next picture book is called What are Sisters For?
And that's with the same publisher, which is an imprint of HarperCollins in the US called Katherine Tegen Books.
And so this next one is actually coming out at the end of this month in America and then in the UK at the end of October.
And it's basically a story about sisters, but also sibling relationships in general.
And it's also sort of exploring the idea of curiosity and having lots of questions and what to do when you don't really have all the answers.
So and it started with me sort of wanting to explore those ideas of curiosity and asking questions.
And then it, this sibling dynamic sort of emerged more out of that.
And it's about a little sister there, a little koala,
I should also mention, they're all koala characters, called Bea, who asks lots of questions, and her older sister, Ada, who always has all the answers.
But Bea keeps asking more and more questions, which gets harder and harder.
And her sister sort of struggling to keep up,
which kind of reaches this breaking point and leads them off on this adventure to try to find some answers.
And it's yeah, it was, I had a lot of fun working on this one, actually.
And whereas Thesaurus was, sort of, several years in development, in different stages, this one,
sort of came together quite quickly, actually, and I was actually working on the artwork for this one in March 2020,
which was an interesting time to be working on the book.
But actually it was a really wonderful, solid thing to be focussing on during that time.
So, yeah, I'm very proud of this one. And I hope that people like it, too.
That's fabulous, there are two things I really want to ask you about.
One is about whether you feel there are differences in the US and the UK children's book market?
So maybe I'll just plant that. But the other thing I was thinking, just as you as you were talking, is, oh,
are you drawing on children who are around you and part of your life or do you think you're drawing on your own,
sounds a bit, kind of hooky, but are you drawing on your own, kind of, inner child, is that is that where this comes from?
Yeah, I think probably a lot of it is more drawing on my inner child in that I actually, I'm not that surrounded by small children on a regular basis,
although I do not have a young nephew so I will be watching his reading carefully.
But but I think yeah, I think a lot of it is, sort of being in tune to your, sort of remembering your own
sort of reading and feelings as a child and just sort of not losing track of that.
And I think that sort of the best,
the best children's books, as any books, are books that anyone can appreciate and that can still be sort of excited by,
and remember those feelings of when you're an adult. So that's I think that's sort of where I'm coming at it from.
And with this one, again, I am the youngest sibling, so I think I probably put a lot of that in there,
again, more than I might have anticipated when I was actually writing it in the first place.
And what about that trans-Atlantic experience? Are you how does that play out?
Do you feel the American audience is a different one? It's hard to say.
I think there are some differences in, in terms of what what does get published in the states versus here sometimes,
although I may be not as attuned to it as as I could be,
partially because I haven't, sort of, had as much opportunity to kind of spend over there in
the last couple of years and really immerse myself in sort of the American picture books,
as I would like to. But one of the things I thought was interesting is that, so Thesaurus, for example,
was a book that I had worked on originally on my MA and so I did get feedback from it, on
it from UK publishers originally because I had sort of presented it as our final graduation show.
And one thing that kind of came up sometimes was that British publishers, I think,
are often quite conscientious of international sales and having books that can work in co-editions so that you can produce, for example,
a German edition or a Korean edition, et cetera, which sometimes means that there is less opportunity when you're starting out to maybe explore
things like a book that's entirely all about word play and lots of different puns and rhymes.
And a lot of these things that I've got into Thesaurus which, because the American market just has such a big home market in the first place,
I think that was something they were a bit more receptive to.
So I think it can, in some ways lead to more opportunities for playing around with language in that way,
sort of when when you're starting out and kind of getting established, which is something that I think I have definitely tried to do.
That's fascinating, though. It's really interesting to think about a picture book, as you say, which your picture book,
which is consciously verbal and has more words perhaps than a standard in that genre and the difficulties that poses for international editions.
I was wondering then whether you said earlier on that you're, I am perhaps paraphrasing,
but that you're quite an introvert person, maybe a bit like Thesaurus.
Do you find, are you going to find, do you think, that as an author for children,
you're going to be called upon or involved in more, as it were,
Hands on. Probably not Hands on.
I'm sure that's probably illegal, but you know what I mean, face to face encounters with your, with your readers? I am conscious that,
you know, that seems to be quite a big part of literary festivals
now, as well as events for adult readers, they are increasingly junior events and children's authors often seem quite active in that sphere.
Yeah, definitely. I think they're in more ordinary times that there's a lot of that in sort of book events and school visits and things like that.
And it is something that, as an introvert is quite daunting as a prospect.
But I think it's something that I haven't really done much of yet.
But it's something that I, I definitely hope will sort of become a part of my, sort of author,
illustrator practise and more so as I have another book with a UK publisher coming out next year as well.
And I think it's one of those things that, as an introvert, I find things can be quite sort of scary from the outset,
but it won't necessarily stop me from trying it in the first place. And I suspect that after you do a first one,
then that sort of helps you get over the nerves and then you find that it's actually just quite lovely, fun thing to do.
So I think I'll just need to just get started and do it.
Despite being quite scared of the idea of it.
And then I think hopefully it will also be another sort of really inspiring part of the job,
both to see the children who are your audience actually interacting with the books
and then also the inspiration that you can get from them and seeing how they
respond to the stories and think about all of these things and then just make all
of these connections and ask all of these questions that you would never think of. So I think it's one of those things that I'm quite nervous about,
but also really looking forward to at the same time when things like festivals and events are starting up again.
Yeah, it's been such a, it's been such a sort of time of stasis, hasn't it?
And and and I think lots of us have not, I mean, everybody's had such challenges to me during this period,
but in some ways we haven't tested ourselves in some of these ways that you're describing
and it would be great to have that that opportunity. So you've got a pipeline of these amazing books.
I mean, I'm so pleased to have encountered your work.
And it's certainly going to be one of my go-to gifts, I think.
I think now and I am going to look out with great interest for the next ones.
What's you? are you taking it as it comes? Do you have an ambition that you're willing to share with us?
Do you have a sense how how you would like your career to shape up?
Are you are you looking at something else along alongside or are you able to do to devote a lot of your time to this?
So at the moment, I'm devoting the majority of my time to this,
I do also at the moment, I have, I work for a small independent publishing company a couple of days a week at the same time.
And I think at the moment, in terms of my long term plans,
I'd love to keep on being able to make picture books and hopefully other stories for children as well and other,
sort of, illustrated children's projects and work in all kinds of ways that those things can intersect.
I've got another book coming out with Oxford University Press Children's Books actually next year, which is called Otters versus Badgers.
So that will be the next one after that. And then just kind of hope that I can keep on thinking up new fun ideas and be able
to keep making them because it's, it's such a privilege to be able to do work,
which is something that's also your passion.
I was the kind of person who was also always just kind of coming up with story ideas and scribbling in notebooks.
So I just want to be able to keep on doing that as my work it's just such a wonderful thing.
Yeah, that's amazing. That's amazing to hear. I love the idea of Otters versus Badgers!
That sounds like a sort of like the Marvel comic that we have been waiting for!
I hope so. We are, partly the prompt for doing these podcasts has been thinking about Hertford's Library
we're just on the brink of a big new project to develop study space and develop the facilities
And us all being away from college has made us more conscious,
I think of how important it is that we've got space on site where people can, can do their work and be
together and be part of the college. Do you, were you were you a library dweller?
was that the location of your of your essay crises, or were you more inclined to work somewhere else when you were when you're here?
I was a sometime library dweller. I will admit that I sort of hopped around between a few different ones.
I definitely did do some good work sessions in Hertford Library,
especially if you could get a seat in sort of the upstairs area with the the nice table sort of overlooking OB quad.
I think that was, sort of, my area of choice.
And but it was usually not the site of my essay crises so much because those would take place, more late at night, the night before the deadline.
So I did a fair amount of sort of essay writing back in my room as well.
But for the earlier, sort of gentle research note taking elements of my, of my work,
then I did definitely appreciate Hertford Library as a lovely place to be based.
I would sort of hop around between there and The Taylorian, The Languages Library and the Bod,
which was, sort of a nice trio of libraries to me. Yeah, it's a wonderful part
of Hertford's position, isn't it, that we are really in that great sort of library quarter
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Fantastic.
Anya, it's been really lovely to talk to you.
I'm strongly and highly recommending 'Thesaurus has a secret' from HarperCollins
Children's and alerting people to look out for books forthcoming from you.
Thanks so much for being willing to talk with us about your work and about your time at Hertford.
It's been, it's been really inspiring and lovely.
Thank you so much for having me and it's an honour to be part of the Hertford literary community.
We're proud to have you Anya. Thanks. Thanks so much.
I'd also like to thank Hannah Bironzo, who is producing this podcast and you for listening.
And next time we'll be staying with with secrets, but perhaps less benign ones when I'm going to be talking with a crime writer, Claire Mcgowan.
So do join us again then. Thank you.