Sally Gardner has written and illustrated lots of books for children. This seems remarkable since she didn't learn to read until she was 14 due to severe dyslexia. She's won several awards including the Nestle Smarties gold award for her book
I Coriander which is about the unhappy daughter of a silk merchant living in 17th century London. We caught up with her at the Cheltenham Literature festival.
You were extremely dyslexic as a child and here you are now a prize winning author. How did that happen?
I describe myself as word blind. Words jump around on the page and give me headaches. The best way for me to get information is through the ear and that's how I can take it all in. I was so severely dyslexic that without audio books I wouldn't be the reader I am today, I could never have done the classics or have an understanding of English literature.
I think writing is like being able to sing, if you've got a song in you then sing it. Lots of people can spell or write grammatically but they have nothing worth saying. Writing and dyslexia do not rule each other out. Writing, for me, is like music. I hear the word as it goes down on the paper and I like the act of writing although my spelling is beyond belief - but I don't care anymore.
I now work with a very proper speller who's very good at crossword puzzles and loves the fact that I don't put my work through a spell checker anymore!
Do you speak out the story and then capture it?
I do a lot of thinking about it and I do a lot of acting. I walk the dog and pretend to talk to the dog so I don't look too insane but I'm actually thinking out loud as to what the character might say. Dialogue is very important to get right. I love conversation but it also breaks up the book.
There was an occasion when you fended off bullies at school by telling stories. Tell us about that.
I was very badly bullied at boarding school because I was eccentric. They used to make apple pie beds, where you fold a sheet over so it looks like a proper bed and then you end up putting your feet through the sheet and tearing it. So all term I'd have to sleep with a sown up sheet which had a horrible ridge, and was very uncomfortable. I'd had enough of this and I decided to tell everyone a ghost story about a hand that crept up the stairs and strangled the girl that made the apple pie bed. The scream was so loud that the matron had to come and the light had to remain on. I was never bullied again.
Our readers are blind and partially sighted. How have you have overcome the things thrown at you?
I can't imagine what sight loss is like but all adversity sharpens you into doing things. I don't think adversity is a reason for failure. My advice is that nothing should stop you.
The term I would like banned is "special needs", I don't have special needs I have my own way of doing things. Children are usually horrid to the ones that are most interesting because they are different. The thing is to cling onto what your strengths are and not to let it get you down. There are other ways of dealing with it but I told myself stories.
Tell us about your latest book The silver blade which I believe is the sequel to The red necklace?
It's set in the French Revolution which is a really interesting time. It's the beginning of modern history as we know it and why Europe is shaped as it is today. You discover so many amazing things that you have to be careful that they don't hold the story up. I used privately published diaries I found on eBay.
I've been criticised that Sido, one of the main characters is not gutsy enough. But you have to be true to the time. If you came from aristocracy and were too gutsy you would have been guillotined or put in a mad house.
This follows
The Red Necklace so I hope that reading that inspires readers to find out what happens next.
Do you feel privileged doing what you do?
I'm blessed and I wouldn't want to do anything else. Somebody once asked me what I would be if I could be anybody and I thought, well this, what else could I possibly want to be?
Books in the Library by Sally Gardner:
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The glass heart: a tale of three princesses (braille 1v)
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I, Coriander (braille 3v; giant print 2v; TB 15813)
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The red necklace (available soon in braille)
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The invisible boy (braille 2v)