posted on 22 Oct 2023

A Whale of a time with Benji Davies at Cheltenham Book Festival

While waiting in the queue outside the event tent I listened to a conversation between a little boy aged about four whose body language looked tense with anticipation. His mother asked him ‘Are you feeling excited?’ And he thought for a moment before replying ‘I don’t know!’. This made me reflect that, unlike me and other experienced adult literature festival goers, going to see a live appearance by a well-loved author or illustrator could seem puzzling. Do they actually exist outside the experience of the book and do they have any relationship to the characters in the book?

In this case, Benji Davies was at least wearing a distinctive stripy T shirt, much like Noi, the boy who is the main character in his popular picture books about the Storm Whale. This was a well organised family friendly event with plentiful blankets and cushions at the front for younger members of the audience.

I was sitting in the back row, well placed to observe how some of the children reacted to watching the very interactive performance by a personable man who is clearly experienced at talking with them in a non patronising way. Many of them were undaunted, perhaps they have already experienced plenty of live theatre. Others stepped more tentatively into the big space, stopped and looked about with open mouthed wonder. Not all of them opted to sit on the floor and I heard one boy fiercely expressing his need to go near the back ‘because it would be much too loud!’

The author /illustrator was introduced by Elsie, a confident and articulate eleven year old who explained that she had won a competition to present at the festival. He then talked about how the story of the Storm Whale originated ten years ago. I am a big fan of that book's end papers, and so it was very pleasing to hear him talk about why they are so important in setting the mood for a story before and after it unfolds. He used powerpoint slides to retell the first story using an easy and relaxed pace to engage and interact with the children. This made me think about the difference between reading a story on a screen and from a book. I know that the former now happens a lot in classrooms and it bothers me. What is missing from the screen experience is the slow turning of the pages and the physicality and texture of the pages. Watching on a screen makes it too similar to film, TV and gaming and I think the real book experience definitely needs to be included in children’s regular diets.

He then moved onto a very engaging drawing lesson where he took us through the stages of Noi running along the beach. He explained that he never includes a mouth on the face of this character because he wanted to convey that he was a very quiet and introverted boy who is only ever shown talking to the whale as his special friend. I had never noticed that! There was plenty of opportunity for him to tell the audience about different illustration techniques and introducing relevant vocabulary like ‘ horizon’, ‘perspective’, ‘foreground’ , ‘hatching’ and ‘shading’. As we all busily drew our pictures following his example, he emphasised the need to sign our own work because everyone should be proud of their own creations.

He went on to talk more generally about his inspiration for various stories and how he had written more about Noi and his extended family. We had a peep into what he uses in his studio and the four stages of constructing a story: imagination; getting ideas down on paper; deciding the order of pictures and text; colouring it in. Lastly, he read us his beautiful new book’ The Great Storm Whale ’ to an audience that was still entranced after an hour.

I really enjoyed this lively session and was thrilled to meet him afterwards at the book signing. Fingers crossed that he might agree to do an interview for The Letterpress Project at some point.

 

Karen Argent

October 2023