Talking Children’s Books with Jonathan Emmett

With over 60 books published (and more on the way!), Jonathan Emmett has firmly made his mark in children’s literature. In the past, he has worked with a variety of illustrators, publishers and authors, to produce fun, educational stories for children across the world. In this interview, we take a look at Jonathan Emmett’s career, from working as an architect to being a full-time children’s author…

1. Tell us a bit about your background

I originally trained and worked as an architect, but spent much of my spare time writing and illustrating stories, poems and song lyrics. When the architectural practice I was working for made me redundant in 1995, my wife and I decided I’d spend a year attempting to start a new career in children’s books. A month later I had the tremendous good fortune to be accepted by distinguished UK children’s literature agent Gina Pollinger. I spent the next few years juggling writing and pop-up design with being a stay-at-home dad, but have been a professional children’s author and occasional novelty book designer ever since.

2. Where do you get your inspiration from?

Anywhere and everywhere! Things that happen to me, things my children said or did when they were little, the books, films and TV shows I enjoyed as a child or now enjoy as an adult. Sometimes, I come across a phrase that I think would make a great book title, so I write a story to fit it. I don’t have a great memory, so when inspiration strikes, I try to write down the idea immediately. I used to carry a little notebook for this, but now I jot them down on my phone. 

3. Which other children’s authors do you admire?

I grew up in the UK, but the village library I visited as a child had a big collection of children’s books by US authors and illustrators that have been a big influence on the books I now write. Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are is a lifelong favourite. As an adult, I can appreciate that it’s beautifully illustrated with a deftly written text that reads wonderfully aloud, but as a four-year-old it was the sheer nightmarish scariness of ‘the wild things’, with their “terrible roars”, “terrible teeth”, “terrible eyes” and “terrible claws” that drew me in. Their wildness was in stark contrast to the tameness of most other picture books then and now. 

Dr Seuss is another childhood favourite I often draw on for inspiration. I had Seuss’s work very much in mind when I was writing  How the Borks Became: An Adventure in Evolution, a picture book illustrated by Elys Dolan that introduces Charles Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection to young children.

4. How do you get your books published?

It’s almost impossible to get a children’s book published these days without the help of a literary agent. Gina Pollinger retired a couple of years after taking me on and passed me on to Caroline Walsh at David Higham Associates, who has done a great job of representing my work ever since. When I’ve written a new story I’m happy with, I send it to Caroline who will often give me some feedback as to how it could be improved and I do a further draft or drafts in response to this. Once we have a draft we’re happy with, Caroline submits it to publishers that she thinks might be interested. If I’m lucky, one of them will accept it and Caroline will negotiate terms and draw up a contract. However most of the stories I write don’t make it into print, and the ones that do can sometimes take years or even decades before being accepted by a publisher. My latest novelty book, Alphabet Street, was sent to Caroline in 1999 but wasn’t published until 2018. People outside of publishing sometimes imagine that once an author has had a few books published, it’s relatively plain sailing, but rejection remains a regular occurrence for most ‘successful’ writers.

5. What advice would you give to aspiring children’s authors?

Get to know the market! If you want to write picture books, then borrow a stack from your local library or spend some time browsing the picture book section of your local bookstore. When you’ve found some books that appeal to you, try to understand what makes them appealing and incorporate this into your own writing. You should always try to write something that you would enjoy reading yourself!

And don’t be disappointed if the first stories you write are not as impressive as you’d hoped. If you keep at it, you will get better.

You should always try to write something that you would enjoy reading yourself!

6. Which is more important: the story or the illustrations? 

Both are equally important for picture books. In the best picture books the illustrations tell the story as much as the words and extend and embellish the narrative with additional detail. 

Having said that, many people are surprised to learn that close collaborations between picture book authors and illustrators are relatively rare and it’s not unusual for the author and illustrator to have no direct contact with each other, with the book’s creation being co-ordinated by the publisher. I’ve always regarded this lack of direct collaboration as a missed opportunity and have got around it on several occasions by teaming up with an illustrator to develop a book together before offering it to a publisher. The Silver Serpent Cup was developed with illustrator Ed Eaves in this way.

7. What are your future plans?

I’ve co-written a picture book called The Plesiosaur’s Neck: A Prehistoric Puzzle with palaeontologist Dr Adam S. Smith that Adam Larkum is currently illustrating for UCLan Publishing here in the UK. The book combines a humorous rhyming text and comical illustrations with detailed scientific information in a very unusual – but hopefully engaging – format. It’s probably the most complex picture book I’ve ever worked on, but Dr Adam and I have really enjoyed writing it together, so if it proves popular we’re hoping to continue our partnership with other books. 

I also have a couple of new picture and novelty books in production with other publishers.

This interview was not paid. All pictures come directly from Jonathan Emmett.