Joy Cowley: A Joyful Life, with John Allen

Joy Cowley is truly a living legend, and it was a privilege to be at this final event of NZ
Festival Writer’s Week. John Allen is himself a great speaker, and it was wonderful to hear the obvious admiration in his voice as he spoke with Cowley about her life and career to date.

Allen had a chat with one of Joy Cowley’s friends before coming to interview her, and she described her friend thus: “When I think of Joy, I think of Yoda: he is old, he is wise, he is strong, he is serene, he has seen it all, done everything, and loves it all.” Is this how Joy Cowley sees herself, asked Allen.

Cowley says, “I’m a very big container filled with stuff that’s come from other people, other places. There’s something within me that wants to process what people have given me. I relate to the world most strongly as a mother. But as far as looking in the mirror; as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing there.”

Cowley’s early life was covered briefly in her autobiography from 2010, Navigation: A Memoir. She has long been a risk-taker, she rode motorbikes, and was one of the first female Tiger Moth pilot in the country. There were frequent references throughout the chat to Cowley’s enjoyment of life on the wild side. She bungy-jumped to celebrate her 65^th birthday, and got a tattoo to celebrate her 70^th.

Allen wondered about her early reading life. “I was slow to come to reading,” Joy said, “My parents moved around a lot when I was young, I had been to 5 different schools by the age of 7.” At that stage in school, kids were taught reading by phonetics, which made no sense to her. The first book she remembers reading by herself was a picture book called Ping – a marvellous adventure of a duck. “And I finished it and started it again, and the story was the same. This was the first time I’d encountered the constancy of print.”

Her family were great storytellers, but of course stories changed as they grew. “The stability of story is very important, especially if you are from a muddly home, as I am.” When she was about 9, she started telling stories to her sisters, using universal stories but changing the details. These stories were always about powerful children, who could do anything. “I made these into our stories.” Cowley later noted that she wasn’t young as a child – she was the eldest, the responsible one, while her parents were often ill and unpredictable.

Powerless kids empower themselves through stories, says Cowley. “It’s very important that kids are made powerful. In their stories children may solve adults’ problems, but adults can’t solve children’s problems.” To give a child a positive, empowering world in a story is very important.

Cowley uses her lived experience in her fiction. “Fiction writers are dealing with reality, but taking it to another level. They are deconstructing and reconstructing the ingredients of their stories, and pouring them out, making something new.”

After a brief discussion of Cowley’s adult novels, the discussion moved on to young writers using writing as therapy – as Cowley herself did. “You go deep when you are writing. If it is bleak, good – write it, but not for children.” She is concerned by the bleakness in many YA novels. You can empathise, but not sympathise.

Dreams are a recurring theme in Cowley’s writing. “They are important to me, mainly because I remember my dreams. Sometimes they are just the muddle of the day, but then there are messages that take you home to yourself.” There was also a longer discussion about spirituality, and the place of religion in Cowley’s life.

If fascinates Allen that her books have travelled so well around the world, despite their clear kiwi character. Cowley says, “I like to see a strong sense of place in any book. It is important to see where the character is and what the child is doing there. “

As a child, Cowley read so many stories giving children serious messages about being good and responsible. “I used to wish I could be twins so one could be good and one could be bad. There are stories by adults that place adult expectation on children. But my first duty to a reader is to entertain.

“I work with children who are reluctant readers. No one can be tense when they are laughing.”

Her road to publication wasn’t exactly straight-forward. She says, “My writing was always invisible to me. I had no idea of how to evaluate my writing. I didn’t know until I got some feedback, how to begin.” The person who she owes her breakthrough to was Monty Holcroft, who edited The Listener when her first story was accepted – he asked her how many times she had reworked her stories. “Being a writer is one thing, but learning to be an editor is another. I still need a good editor to work on my manuscripts. I very easily go into self-doubt.”

Allen wondered about her eponymous characters snake and lizard – are they Cowley and her husband Terry Coles? “Yes” she says, “I firmly believe that friendship is not made of sameness, but the accommodation of differences.” They married in mid-life, which was the right time for them – and now they are a unit. In Snake and Lizard, Terry is represented by snake and Joy is represented by Lizard. Joy Cowley and Gavin Bishop are currently working on a third in the series, to be called Helper and Helper, which she then read an excerpt from.

In contrast to Sally Gardner about the UK education system, Joy Cowley loves the kiwi education system. New Zealanders are in the top 10 in the world in many different areas, because our education system encourages individual potential. There issomething in the New Zealand character that will give anything a go, and that will persist.

Take heed, Elizabeth Heritage – Joy Cowley loves rats! The Road to Ratenburg is her next Gecko Press publication, about some rats that are made homeless. A bit like Pilgrim’s Progress, apparently – but for rats.

This was a fantastic look into the mind of a legend. I was second in the signing queue, with my well-loved copy of Just One More. It will be Cowley’s 80th birthday this year, and to celebrate this, everybody who attended received a greeting card from Gecko Press, featuring a print of one of Gavin Bishop’s illustrations for the next Snake & Lizard book.

Attended and reviewed by Sarah Forster
NB: I have just gone to Nielsen to find something by Joy Cowley, and come up with 1480 hits for her author name. Now that is a publishing backlist!

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Booksellers NZ has been privileged to attend and report on twenty-five world-class events over the last four days. I’d like to give a huge shout-out to Elizabeth Heritage, who bore a full load beginning last Tuesday with Henry Marsh; to Sarah McMullan, whose account of the Robert Dessaix event was fantastic, and to Emma Shi, who attended the more poetry-focused events on the programme. Thank-you also to Kathryn Carmody and Claire Mabey, for being amazing organisers; and to the Radio NZ bloggers, Charlotte Graham and Ellen Falconer, who did an incredible blow-by-blow account of all the activities of the weekend.

Now we have the Auckland Writer’s Festival to look forward to!

Ten years of curious, inspiring, wonderful books

I invited Sarah Jane Barnett to join me on the floor in the kids’ section of Unity Books just before Christmas to talk about Gecko Press and their amazing 10 years of publishing, with a half-cooked concept of coming up with the ultimate top 10 (or more) Gecko Press titles to recommend. Instead, we ended up having a bit of a fan-girl over some of our favourites, and talked a little about what sets Gecko Press books apart.

Sarah Forster: What do you think is your favourite Gecko Press book?
Sarah Jane Barnett: I think my favourite for me is Duck, Death and the Tulip (Wolf Erbruch, 2008, translated from German, 9781877467172), because I find it so moving. But my favourite for Sam is Snake and Lizard (Joy Cowley and Gavin Bishop, 2007, 9780958278737) What I like is that the stories are short, so we can read just one, or we can read many of them; and that there’s a lot of conflict in them that we can talk about, but they’re funny as well. I mean, what I like about all the Gecko Press books really is that the characters aren’t too sweet – they’re not smoothed out.
SF: Yeah, see, Reflections of a Solitary Hamster is a good example of that, because he is not a likeable guy, but you love him anyway. He’s really unpleasant to all his friends, and then they all come to his party anyway and give him really good presents. But you love it, and you can’t put your finger on why. That is one of my favourites.

SF: My boys are completely different readers. Dan will read everything just once, while you will read the same books for a week to Alex, and he’ll still want them every night. Both of them though, went through a long period of obsession with The Big Book of Words and Pictures (Ole Konnecke, 2011, 9781877467875)*
SJB: I think that’s a brilliant book.
SF: It was published at exactly the right time for me, Dan was one. It was perfect!
SJB: I think what I do like about those books, and a lot of the Gecko books, is that Sam will just sit down and read them by himself. And he’ll want me to read them as well, but the illustrations are so interesting. And they go from that really young age, through to things like Snake and Lizard, where you’ll start to read these short chapters, and you know but it’s got a few illustrations… Up to the chapter books.
SF: A wonderful moment in domestic publishing by Gecko for me was when they published The Travelling Restaurant; I was blown away by the newness of it. Despite the fact it was a trope, it’s done again and again but, the newness of what Barbara had come up with and their ability to recognise it.
SJB: Yeah, they’ve got very good taste, haven’t they?
SF: I guess, like with Mrs. Mo’s Monster, they just picked it up and ran with it.
SJB: I do find these books bring up a lot of conversations.

SF: One book that Dan goes back to and back to, was this one: The Magical Life of Mr Renny. The reason he goes back to it is because he gets it. At the end there’s a joke. He sends a picture to his friend Rose, and Dan was immediately really proud of himself for ‘getting’ it. He’d have just over 3 at the time.
SJB: Yeah, Leo Timmers is – we have Bang! and we’ve got Franky, and a lot of Bang! is just the same joke over and over again. And I like that in Franky, the young boy is so sure that robots live on another planet, and the boy’s right. It’s so affirming, for their world view.
SF: Redemption for kids and how they think.
SJB: Poo Bum and I like Spaghetti are like that as well, the kid gets to say ‘Poo Bum’. The fun of reading Poo Bum is saying it over and over again.
SF: I also love the depth of Mr Renny, because he paints everything his heart desires, and it shows that everything your heart desires is never going to be enough. He gets to the point that he’s got the lot, then he has to paint the person who gave him the power, to get him back, to make himself a painter again. Because he can’t paint without it becoming real. A very clever little philosophical problem.
SJB: They are quite philosophical, aren’t they.
SJB: I think with Gecko, you just always know you’re going to get a good book. I think it’s because its such a small operation as well, the books are so carefully chosen.
SF: Jane had input, but Julia goes to the book fairs and things, and pays money for them – she has very good business nous, coupled with excellent taste.
SJB: You can really see all the love.

SF: When they brought out Toucan Can, by Juliette McIver & Sarah Davis – I like most of what Juliette & Sarah do, but this, for me was like Dr Seuss. I thought, wow – that is so good it’s stunning. I remember writing in a review “I cried a little when I first opened this book.” I think it is her best work, certainly to date – nothing has hit me as hard since. I think there’s something in that. Gecko only take really the cream. They have a very high standard, for what they want their stories to do.

SJB: One of the ones that I really liked – I think I reviewed it for you – was The Lazy Friend. Yes, the sloth.
SF: A wordless one.
SJB: Having the wordless ones, it’s a real diversity of different types of books. The wordless one was brilliant for making up the different stories that you could make, and talking about the illustrations.
SJB: They do some puzzle books as well, don’t they. We had the dinosaur one of those (Dinosaurs Galore, by Masayuki Sebe), and Sam loved that.

SF: Here’s one I really like – Sheep in Boots. It’s a different take on a sheep and a wolf tale. And I adore Just One More, its a really quirky combination of very short stories, illustrated by Gavin Bishop.
SJB: I got a book by Gavin recently, Bruiser. It really only worked at one level. That’s what I like about the Gecko books, is they work at lots of different levels. They’re funny, and they have ways to talk about difficult emotions. Poo Bum and I want Spaghetti are like that.
SF: Actually, A Deals A Deal, have you got that – from the same series. That ones actually very clever, because they’re trying to do a deal on these cars, he swaps him three cars for his one. The car falls apart because it’s plastic, so he puts it together with boogies and says its treasure inside it so the friend takes it back. That was one of Dan’s favourites for awhile.
SJB: And you get to talk about problems kids encounter every day. I find they are very fun to read, really beautifully produced (even just having this half-flap) and the paper stock just makes it so nice to hold.
SJB: And because they are mostly translated, we are getting these cherry-picked books from all these slightly different cultural takes on the world, which I enjoy. It means that Sam’s not just getting one world view.
SJB: In The Cake, they’re all kind of slightly mean to each other, its another book in which they’re not really these sweet characters. In some other children’s books, the characters have conflicts or they’re not very kind to each other, but I don’t believe it. In The Cake, you do believe that they are actually mean.

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Mean characters, meaningful discussion points and illustrations that tell the story by themselves: all things that you will find in Gecko Press books. Thank you Julia, for starting such a fine little company 10 years ago, and for having the good business sense and excellent taste to grow it to where it is today. May the next ten years be even kinder to you.

Sarah Forster & Sarah Jane Barnett are fans of Gecko Press. One Sarah has a 5 & a 3 year old boy, the other has a 4 year old boy; they all love Gecko Press books, even if they don’t know it quite that specifically yet.

*After this interview, I took Who’s Hiding, by Satoru Onishi home for Alex, thinking it would be a likely hit. One month later, he has memorised it and enjoys asking us who’s hiding and who’s sad. Every Night.

(I will add a list of details for each of the books mentioned here, in the next day or two)