Interview de Sara O'Leary (pour The Little Books of the Little Brontës)

Nous sommes plusieurs à avoir été conquises par The Little Books of the Little Brontes   (Au Pays des histoires en VF), j'ai donc proposé à Sara O'Leary, son autrice, de répondre à quelques unes de mes questions sur son parcours et son travail sur cet album (notamment sur sa collaboration avec l'artiste Briony May Smith). Ce qu'elle a accepté plus que volontiers, merci à elle   




Can you tell us about your journey a little and tell us how you came to write albums for children?

I’d been writing for about twenty years before it occurred to me to write children’s books. When I started out, I wrote poetry and then switched to short stories and published a couple of collections. After that, I wrote plays for a bit and then tried my hand at screenwriting. At the time I was approached by a children’s publisher I was actually a newspaper columnist. And it turns out that picture books are my favourite form. (Although I did publish a novel for adults while I was working on this book!)

My first picture book was called When You Were Small, and it is part of a series of three books, the final of which is published in France as Quand j’étais petite…


How did this album project on the Brontës come about? Was this your idea ?

It was my idea! One that I carried around with me for quite a long time. It started with a fascination with the little books which seemed to me such a remarkable remnant of a long-ago childhood. I find a lot of picture books tend to skip over the childhood of their subjects and I wasn’t interested in doing that. Instead, I wanted to really try to bring the Brontë children to life in a way that today’s readers might be sympathetic to.


How was your collaboration with illustrator Briony May Smith?

Collaboration is such a funny term when it comes to picture books. As a rule, the writer and Illustrator are kept very much separate from each other with communication only going through intermediaries. So, I’ve only really been talking with Briony since the book was finished. But I am so grateful she agreed to do this book. She brought so much life and warmth to the characters and her depictions of the material culture of 1820s Yorkshire are just brilliant.


What is your relationship to the Brontë sisters? What are your favorite novels?

I feel like I’ve been reading them all my life. And the funny things that the novels change as you go back to them. My favourite of the novels would be Emily’s second. Would love to see how she would’ve followed up Wuthering Heights.


Do you have a favorite sister or at least one who moves you more than the others?

I’m not really a Team Charlotte or Team Emily type although I see the appeal. I think spending so much time wading through letters and biographies has given me such sympathy for all of them. All that said, I do love Emily for her strangeness!


Would you like to write other albums dedicated to a writer? If yes, who?

There’s the question! This is the first picture book I’ve done with any basis in non-fiction or biography. I was really attracted to the subject and I’m kind of waiting to hit on something that interested me as deeply. I’d really like to do a book about Edith Sitwell as a child, but I don’t have the sense that there are that many people who even know who she was! I’ve also done a lot of reading around Jane Austen, and it interests me so much that she saw a future for herself as a writer very early on, in a period when careers for women weren’t really the done thing. I like to think of little Jane in her father’s library pulling down the novels and noting the ones that were written by women, imagining that life for herself, and then actually making it happen. Perhaps I should take a poll to see who readers would like to see a book on!


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Les commentaires sont bien sûr plus qu'appréciés

Merci pour ce topic Je n’ai pas lu cet ouvrage, mais je l’ai vu circuler! Interessant ce qu’elle dit sur la façon dont la scénariste travaille si peu en contact avec la dessinatrice, j’ignorais totalement ce fait. J’imaginais que les 2 côtés collaboraient au jour le jour!

Je l'ignorais aussi mais finalement, ce n'est pas si surprenant. Peut-être même que ça se passe souvent comme ça, à fortiori lorsque l'auteur et l'illustrateur ne vivent pas à proximité et que l'illustratrice est quelqu'un d'aguerri (c'est le cas de BMS qui a déjà une sacrée expérience).
Et merci pour ton commentaire, Barbara

Très intéressante interview, comme toujours ! Merci Emjy

Ce qu'elle dit du travail entre auteur et dessinateur est très intéressant. Je note aussi qu'elle a beaucoup travaillé sur Jane Austen et je croise les doigts pour qu'un album du même type que celui-ci naisse un jour sur Jane Austen !

Merci Sandie !

J'adorerais qu'elle consacré un album à Jane Austen évidemment. En tous cas, elle ne tarit pas d'éloges sur l'album illustré par Qin Leng qu'elle adore (topic ici :  )

J'arrive bien en retard mais merci beaucoup @Emjy pour cette interview ! C'est super intéressant ce qu'elle dit sur son travail et son envie de se concentrer sur la période de l'enfance, qui a tendance a être rapidement passée en revue effectivement. Et évidemment, un album sur Jane Austen avec l'angle qu'elle évoque serait une super idée ! Je ne suis pas une grande connaisseuse d'albums illustrés mais Whoopsy me pousse vers leur découverte.