We all remember that motivating teacher at school who made the classroom experience fun. Emma Clegg talks to one of these, teacher and writer Catherine Bruton, who is a master of capturing young hearts with stories.
My first ever teaching job was in Otjikondo Primary School in the rural north of Namibia, south west Africa. That’s where I became a writer, and it’s where I became a teacher – I became both at the same time, because the two are interconnected.”
The school that gave Catherine Bruton her first teaching role was set up for refugees and asylum seekers after the Namibian War of Independence: “My eyes were opened to a whole different world, and some of the themes I discovered there do run through my work. I think that experience is pretty central to who I am. Africa was stunning and terrifying in equal measure. The culture, the children, the wildlife, the landscape, the loneliness, the isolation – they were oppressive and yet inspiring, they stunned me, forcing me to question almost every single thing about myself and the world. I remember reading my students Roald Dahl stories, and that was opening up their own world as well. My desire now, I suppose, is to make sure that books can be this window onto the world for young people.”
Catherine has worked as a senior school English teacher and writer ever since, and the interdependence between the two is evident: “I’m constantly inspired by my students and it’s just an absolute privilege to be the person who introduces young people to the stories that open their eyes, make them ask questions about the world, make them confront difficult topics, and make them think about themselves. The books that you encounter when you’re at that key age actually really shape who you are. But also, I think the sort of things they’re interested in often really inform what I write about.”
Catherine has written a dizzying number of books for children, and the themes all address difficult issues. We Can Be Heroes (2011, nominated for the Carnegie Medal) is about a character whose father was killed in the 9/11 attacks in New York; I Predict a Riot (2014) was inspired by the London riots; No Ballet Shoes in Syria (2019) tells the story of a girl seeking asylum with her family. Another Twist in the Tail (2020) and Following Frankenstein (2021), both Victorian adventures, deal with life experiences and ideas that matter to children.
In the case of Following Frankenstein, “It was inspired by lots of texts that I love teaching, but also it’s a book about embracing diversity and the need for kids to respond urgently to Black Lives Matter and Me Too and how they champion alternative gender identities. Young people can really push us as adults, I think, to make us think about the world in different ways. They do that to me all time.”
Her latest book, Bird Boy, published earlier this year, tells the story of Will who is sent to stay with his uncle in the Lake District after the death of his mother. There he discovers an osprey’s nest and when one of the chicks is knocked out of the nest, Will is determined to save her.
“Bird Boy is very much about is my response to the spike in mental health issues that we’re seeing amongst young people, and their openness to talk about that, as well as the need, perhaps, to give them a vocabulary to be able to articulate complex emotions that they’re going through. It’s a book about healing through nature, and about coming back from some difficult places. It’s the relationship between Will and Whitetip the osprey and it is in helping Whitetip to heal that Will is able to heal too.”
Her latest book was conceived around the experience of a friend of Catherine’s who works for Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. She was responsible for this incredible project, using nature therapy with traumatised children and unaccompanied minors, and she put me on the track of exploring how beneficial nature can be for children struggling with mental health conditions.”
The book No Ballet Shoes in Syria is described by Catherine as being written as part of the immigration ‘crisis’, but then she corrects herself immediately: “Even that term presents immigration as a problem, and I wanted to get them to look beyond those labels of refugee and asylum seeker – and that’s what I know that texts can do. I hope my books don’t tell children what to think, but make them stop and think.”
Catherine taught my son English for GCSE, so I can attest that she is a dynamic, resourceful and endlessly inspirational teacher. He was carried along by her energy, her ideas, her enabling positivity, and her absolute conviction in his ability, and under her tutelage he even ended up falling a little in love with poetry. So when she takes her Masterclass workshop at the Children’s Literature Festival on 5 October at The Forum, expect (whatever your age) to be enraptured by a whirligig of energy and enthusiasm.
The theme of the workshop, based around Bird Boy, is the telling of animal stories. “Some of the greatest books that we all love from childhood and from adult life are about relationships with animals, from Kes to Watership Down and Warhorse, and I think that relationship between animals and humans, and particularly children, is really important. And giving children an opportunity to be able to tell their own stories is part of getting to know who you are and working through complex things. I’m really passionate about helping young people to find their own voices. And I think education sometimes can be so focused on grades, and for SATs requirements such as fronted adverbials and subjunctives, that it just seems to be the death of creativity.”
Creativity will be at large in the workshop on 5 October. “This workshop always brings fantastic results”, says Catherine. So they will be writing from the perspective of an animal, but it will be an encounter between an animal and a human, and exploring that unique relationship. It is going to be structured around seven stages of telling a story, and they’ll write each stage in a little burst. I like getting those at my workshops to write in really small bursts, without crossing out, without looking back, just letting the pen move across the page. It’s good to get rid of the internal editor in your head that can be so critical and destructive and just see what comes out. Because that will often free them from the anxiety that kids can sometimes experience around writing.”
In terms of her own writing style Catherine admits that she works best when she has a tight plan, but that’s not a fail-safe approach. “I’m quite disciplined in the way that I write. But sometimes you write something and then you have to rip it all up and start replotting. Every writer is different, but I think some people are plotters and some are panthers – I definitely write better when I plot, but sometimes it just doesn’t work like that. I think possibly the books that I’ve written that are dealing with bigger topics have meant that I haven’t always been able to fix the plan. The crucial thing is that while I might confront my readers with some really big, complex realities, the key thing is that I want to offer hope at the end of my books.”