Interview with Giles Paley-Phillips

Giles Paley-Phillips has written two monstrous picture books – which we talked about on Tuesday. Today he’s very kindly answered some questions about his writing.

What made you want to write scary books for children?

I grew up reading books by the Grimm brothers, Roald Dahl and Edward Gorey, so I’ve always been drawn to to write something darker.

Do you worry about scaring the children too much?

I do sometimes worry about if I’ve gone too far, but children seem to react to them differently, they don’t perceive them the way an adult does.

In The Fearsome Beastie, you have a proper bad monster, but in Tamara Small and the Monsters’ Ball the monsters and ghouls are quite fun and friendly. Was this a conscious change of track, or did it just turn out that way?

A lot of the stories I write involve the fear that comes with sleep, I was very often fearful at bedtimes when I was a child. In The Fearsome Beastie, the fears are justified; In Tamara Small and the Monsters’ Ball I wanted to explore how the things we fear at bedtime are not quite what they seem, plus I wanted to try and do something like ‘The Snowman’ but with a monster!

Do you have any tips for how to build suspense in children’s books?

I think it’s about not giving away too much in the text, as well as the illustrations, just hinting at what is about to occur!

Have you written (or are you considering writing) any scary books for adults or older children? If so, how do you think the writing process might differ?

I haven’t thought about it really. I like to write scary books for little ones as it’s not really done, there are loads of scary books for teens and adults.

If you’d like, we could also do a round-up of your favourite scary children’s books (e.g. two or three scary children’s books that you loved as a child, and two or three that you love now) on the children’s books day – but only if you want to, of course!

Books I love/loved are: The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey, Not Now Bernard by David McKee, The Meloncholy Death of Oyster Boy by Time Burton, Cautionary Tales for Children by Hilaire Belloc.

You can find Giles on Twitter and also see his Amazon author page.