The Snowman Code by Simon Stephenson

Simon Stephenson shares his inspiration behind writing books for children. The Snowman Code is now available in paperback ahead of the Christmas season.

 

 

What Inspired Me to Write Children’s Books

The Snowman Code is my first book for young readers. It tells the story of the unusual friendship that develops between Blessing, a precocious ten-and-a-half-year old girl, and Albert Framlington, a snowman of some six hundred winters. The story takes place during the longest winter London has ever known, and along the way there are laughs and tears and even something to do with otters. The book contains some beautiful illustrations, and I can say that without boasting because I did not do them.

I have always wanted to write a book for children, and perhaps I just needed to write three adult books as practice first. After all, kids are the toughest crowd: they know what they like, and they certainly know what they do not like. No kid ever accessorized with a Booker prize-winning work on the London Underground, and no kid ever plodded through a novel just to save face at their book group.

So it is a high bar, but I have at least had some training. My other job is screenwriting, and I worked at Pixar for a couple of years – I wrote the early drafts of Luca – and on Paddington 2. Still, if I’d turned up at Pixar hoping to learn the secret of writing for kids, I was quickly disabused of that notion: they were adamant that there was no secret, other than to do your best work and make sure it comes straight from the heart.

The American film industry is nothing if not reductionist and having worked on two successful films for children, inevitably the only screenwriting jobs that came my way after that became adapting children’s books. Or more specifically, adapting children’s books written by other people. I was sent dozens and they were all perfectly good but they all had exactly the same problem: if they came straight from the heart, it was somebody else’s heart.
 Thus, in my mid-forties, I realized the time had finally come to write my own book for children. I had at least known for a while who – and what – it would be about. When I was a children’s doctor I’d worked with kids in the care system, and I’d long wanted to write something that those brave, smart and funny kids might recognize themselves in. And growing up in Scotland, I’d always loved a good snowman, and wondered where it was that they all went to when spring came.

And so The Snowman Code was born. For my part, I can certainly promise it comes straight from the heart, but the rest of it will be for you – and those ever-discerning kids – to judge.

 

Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the Federation.