Author Sally Gardner fought against dyslexia and created a world of her own through words. She chatted with Iknoor Kaur about coming up with swearwords for children
A mother of three, Sally Gardner was an illustrator for children’s books when her husband moved from london to New York and left the family on its own. Soon she realised that she had to do a lot more to make money. “I had written a book, but was shy about showing it to anyone. It was called The Strongest Girl in the World. I showed it to my editor and she published it just the way it was. That led me to publishing more books and I was able to bring up my children,” said the author, who was tagged, by almost all of her childhood teachers, as ‘unspellable’ and stupid.
Suffering from pattern dyslexia, Gardner couldn’t even spell the Tuesday properly. She shared, “I think sometimes in life you have a capacity to do something but in my case, due to my dyslexia I was too shy. I couldn’t spell simple words. Writers do need to be able to spell, don’t theyIJ But I think the necessity turned me into the writer and not every child who is dyslexic has this opportunity. Ironically I have found what I love doing best in the world.” So much so that not only is she a bestselling children’s author today, but has also won the Costa Book Award in 2012, Carnegie Medal in 2013 for her latest book Maggot Moon.
Gardner is also know for her phrase ‘Night time is grown-up time’. She laughed, “Oh my God, that is from Mummy Don’t Go Out Tonight. I have no idea how that became so popular. This happens often and I don’t even realise it. For instance, I’ve written this series about a detective agency and there is this character in it who always says ‘spot in the fishcake’. I was doing a show once and this woman came to me and she said that whenever something happens in her family they all say ‘spot in the fishcake’.”
With that kind of a response, Gardner actually invented a no-curse, swearword for kids. She said, “Children can’t swear because there is nothing there for them. So, I came up with this word called ‘buttlier’. The influence was so good that, people say it all the time.”
Out of her usual children’s book, Maggot Moon falls slightly off the track. It is a dystopian vision of Britain imagined after a German victory in the war. The story is told through a boy called Standish who is a severe case of dyslexia. She said, “I wanted people to visualise what dyslexia is by seeing the world the way Standish saw it. But I didn’t want it to go over the top.” In order to do that, Gardner didn’t use the word ‘like’ in her entire book. She elaborated, “In lots of books people use sentences that say, ‘She was sitting here like,’ ‘She looked like’ or ‘She was like’. But I feel that as a writer you should describe the person without using ‘like’. This word puts you away and detaches the reader because it makes him or her think.”
As a teenager, Garner was fascinated with the world of Charles Dickens. According to her, he was her uncle who lived in her building. “I lived in a place called Grey’s Inn in london. I used to think that Dickens stayed on the floor below mine. When there was dense fog, I could sense ghosts. So I grew up in quite an extraordinary place,” she said. Apart form Dickens some of her favourite books are The Brother’s Grimm, The Wind in the Willows, Swallows and Amazons.
Since Gardner didn’t read many children’s books, she gets her ideas from her research. “I am fascinated by all the things that make me think again. A lot of my ideas come out of research. Maggot Moon came out of research I’d done on The Double Shadow. I was fascinated with ‘what if’ histories. What would have happened if certain things hadn’t gone they way they had in our worldIJ” she said.
Gardner follows a writing ritual as well. She shared, “I have an old war desk from the 1940s. It weighs a tonne and was designed in a way that if a bomb was dropped, you didn’t have to go out. The desk would protect you if you went under it. I bought it off an old junk shop and they didn’t know the value of it. I had it restored and I have my computer on it where I sit and type.” Gardner has just released her new book Tinder and is working on another one called The Door That led to Where.